"Duffer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... if I catch my death of cold; I've got to go on a Christmas dance when I deposit you on your doorstep," grumbled Sidney. "Catch! There, you duffer! It's gone into the mud. Sure you won't jump in? Plenty of room. Addie can sit on my knee. Well, ta, ta! ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the only one as would come at the price. 'Tain't big wages; but I'm seein' loife. Lor', I come down here with Madame and Mounseer a fortnight ago, and Monte Carlo ain't got many secrets from me. I was a duffer, though, at first. When I 'eerd all them shots poppin' off every few minutes, up by the Casino, I used to think 'twas the suicides a shooting theirselves all over the place, for before I left 'ome, ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and IX. of Meredith's story are very good, I think. But who wrote the review of my book? whoever he was, he cannot write; he is humane, but a duffer; I could weep when I think of him; for surely to be virtuous and incompetent is a hard lot. I should prefer to be a bold pirate, the gay sailor-boy of immorality, and a publisher at once. My mind is extinct; my appetite is expiring; I have fallen altogether into a hollow-eyed, ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and what he is. I saw him performing an operation upon a horse, in the yard of a livery stable. He is a VETERINARY SURGEON! He consorts with BUTCHERS! Put that and that together, Mr. PUNCHINELLO, and see what you can make of it. And the duffer always eats mutton, too, or fish. I never yet heard him call for beef. He knows all about nag, and likes it alive, but he is not to be nagged into eating it. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... was thoroughly ashamed of himself. To be "sech a duffer" as to return that money, when by means of a little strategy he might have kept it, made him feel both humiliated and indignant. A hundred and forty dollars; When would he have a chance to get such a windfall again? ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... he's weak of arm and knee; if trouble came he'd quickly shin up the nearest tree. No hale man ever loves him; he stirs the sportsman's wrath; the whole world kicks and shoves him and shoos him from the path. For who can love a duffer so pallid, weak and thin, who seems resigned to suffer and let folks rub it in? Yet though he's down to zero in fellow-men's esteem, this fellow is a hero and that's no winter dream. Year after year he's toiling, as ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... off now to Squaw Pond. I think I can follow the trail easily enough. Uncle Eb showed me yesterday where he had spotted some of the trees all the way along to the water. And if I don't shoot a couple of black ducks for dinner or supper, I'm a duffer, ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... how you always manage to find out such things?" remarked the other, reflectively. "By Jove!" he added, "Hester is the name of that major duffer whose message to Sir Jeffry caused my delay; I wonder if they can ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... haven't, you duffer!" put in young Bawdrey, with a laugh. "You've got eight fingers—eight fingers and two thumbs. This bony Johnny has nine fingers and two thumbs. That's what makes him a freak. I say, dad, open the beggar's box, and let ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... estates. I'll tell you what, though, you could not buy that for less than thirty pounds at any shop in London. Could she, my little duck? Never mind, it is no brighter than her eyes. Now do you know what she will do with that, Master Christie? She will give it to some duffer ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... enough!" Phil said regretfully. He had been "a regular duffer" at climbing at school, and the bigger boys had often dragged him up a fairly tall tree and left him there, clinging helplessly to the boughs, until they were tired of jeering at him. He shivered now as he thought of it; then squared his shoulders. ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... that half-sister mixed up a bit, but just the same you were the one I really wanted. Hope's all right; she's a mighty fine girl, but you are the one for me, Christie. Could you—could you care for such a duffer as I am?" ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... killing range of modern, high-power, long-range rifles. Is it not pitiful to think of animals like the caribou, moose, white sheep and bear trying to survive on the naked ridges and bald mountains of Yukon Territory and Alaska! With a modern rifle, the greatest duffer on earth can creep up within killing distance of any of the big ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... talk, do you?" he said a little sadly. "Well, I don't see but what I shall have to do it, then. Still, I should think a nice little lady like you might find lots nicer people to talk to than an old duffer like me." ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... our search in the Mount Margaret district, and we shared the opinion of everybody there that it was a "duffer," and after events had proved what that opinion was worth. Travelling and prospecting as we went, we at last succeeded in finding a reef which ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... half a chance—" began Barton, and then didn't know at all how to finish it. "Why, you're so plucky—and so odd—and so interesting!" he began all over again. "Oh, of course, I'm an awful duffer and all that! But if we'd had half a chance, I say, you and I would have been ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... "You duffer of a Cranajour! Go along with you! You're the man for my money, old fellow! Here's something for a glass—but come with me for five minutes: I want to interview you and make a jolly good article ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... he, "but I'm afraid I should show myself such a duffer. I used to be a pretty fair trout-fisher when I was a lad," he went on to say; and then it suddenly occurred to him that the offer of her companionship ought not to be received in this hesitating fashion. "But ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... awful! Couldn't you have let me know? What a duffer you are! I would have sacrificed my life to get that flag! I wouldn't have stood their nonsense like I did had I thought that was our flag. I would have fought them till my last breath. Why—why didn't ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... down upon it His head is sheltered by a bonnet; And though it makes him look a duffer, He hasn't ...
— A Horse Book • Mary Tourtel
... point of view regarding a certain duffer aged fifty-two was nearer the truth than the duffer himself realized. Second childhood! As if the drums of jeopardy would ever again see light, after that tempest of ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... knows more about life than any one I have ever met. I feel an awful duffer when I am with you, Lord Illingworth. Of course, I have had so few advantages. I have not been to Eton or Oxford like other chaps. But Lord Illingworth doesn't seem to mind that. He has been ...
— A Woman of No Importance • Oscar Wilde
... was by no means thorough. There is no record of his having distinguished himself academically in the slightest degree. It is related of him, on the contrary, that he was such a duffer at classics as to be incapable of grasping the rule that 'ut' should be followed by the subjunctive mood. The following account of Disraeli's schooldays, given by one of his school-fellows, is quoted by Sir ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... one solid tangle of scrub-bushes interwoven with brambles. It would have taken at least forty seconds to tear through them, and in that time he could most assuredly snap off all six chambers, however big a duffer he might be. This would bring up some of the country people without fail; and besides, out of the six, he might fluke one shot into me. About that last possibility I didn't trouble my head much, as it ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... details. "Poor little chap wasn't putting on weight... desperately anxious.—Winkles, a frightful duffer ... former pupil of mine ... no good.... Mrs. Redwood—unmitigated confidence in Winkles.... You know, man with a manner like a cliff—towering.... No confidence in me, of course.... Taught Winkles.... ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... see Davy as strong," said Jim, "though he is paying his debts. But Dick certainly is getting to be a conceited duffer. The ayes," he sighed, "seem to have it. The next question is ways and means. Old Bixby's method in St. X looks good to me. A conditional contribution—what do ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... proposal had been greeted. Yet there was no well-defined jealousy between them. Mr. Walking Delegate Dennis Quigg, confidential agent of Branch No. 3, Knights of Labor, had too good an opinion of himself ever to look upon that "tow-headed duffer of a stable-boy" in the light of a rival. Nor could Carl for a moment think of that narrow-chested, red-faced, flashily dressed Knight as being able to make the ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and a half of their first week on the field Burton and Done cleared close upon seven hundred pounds. By the end of the second week they had worked out their first mine, and Jim possessed eight hundred pounds. They tried another claim, and bottomed on the pipeclay. The hole was a duffer. They tried a third, and cut the wash once more. This claim was not nearly so rich as their first, but rich enough to pay handsomely, and Mike, young as he was, was too old a miner to abandon a good claim on the chance of finding a better. ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... develop at school, and if there is stuff in him he succeeds. He does not set a high value on learning. Even if he works and brings home prizes he will not be as proud of them as of his football cap, while a boy who is head of the school, but a duffer at games, will live for all time in the memory of his fellows as a failure. But the German boy goes to school to acquire knowledge, and he too gets what he wants. The habit of work must be strong in him when at the age of eighteen he goes to one of his many universities. ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... "What a duffer I am to be sure!" I said to myself. "If I begin to get notions like this in my head there is no knowing where I may end. As if any girl would ever ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... scoffer, and would go to Gehenna. Now I don't want to go to Gehenna just for wanting to get posted in the show business of old times, do you? When Pa said Dan was saved from the jaws of the lions because he prayed three times every day, and had faith, I told him that was just what the duffer that goes into the lions den in Coup's circus did because I saw him in the dressing room, when me and my chum got in for carrying water for the elephant, and he was exhorting with a girl in tights who was going to ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... man of yours is a duffer," she said sharply, pointing a very earthy trowel at the unconscious figure of the gardener, who was busy in the middle distance digging potatoes. "A man," she continued, "who calls a plain, every-day squash a vegetable marrow isn't fit to run a ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... does not make a golfer—it only helps. You may chip, you may wallop the ball if you will, But the slash of the duffer will cling round it still. Look before you cheat. Every water hole has a silver lining—ask the boat boy. To stymie is human; to lift up divine. Half a stroke is better than none. He laughs last who putts best. When ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... said, assuming an enthusiasm I did not feel. Put on the gloves with this strapping, skillful boxer? Not I! I was firmly resolved to stop while my record was good. In a scientific clash with the gloves he would soon find out what a miserable duffer I was. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... to think of something worth saying, but the words wouldn't come, and I could only shake her hand. But, duffer as I was, the way she had said those words, and the double meaning she had given them, would have made me the happiest fellow alive if I could only have forgotten the ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... bullocks then I say No matter where you stray, You will never be impounded any more; For you’re running, running, running on the duffer’s piece of land, Free ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... good! that's little Duffer, I know! We've seen him before! Wouldn't mind giving him a chase to-day, just ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... "You lazy duffer!" said Charley laughing; "you are incorrigible. But do come along with me, Tom. We haven't landed now for two days, and I can't stand the Muscadine ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... Colin. His skin lies by my fireside as I write this tale. But it was during the days I could spare for an expedition into the plains that I proved the great qualities of my dog. There we had nobler game to follow—wildebeest and hartebeest, impala, and now and then a koodoo. At first I was a complete duffer, and shamed myself in Colin's eyes. But by-and-by I learned something of veld-craft: I learned how to follow spoor, how to allow for the wind, and stalk under cover. Then, when a shot had crippled the beast, Colin was on its track like a flash to ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... a crazy duffer had gone about over the desert for years digging wells, but at last he struck water. A few miles ahead was a well flowing like an artesian well. There would be plenty of water for every one, even the cattle. ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... ill with playing out of doors and having fun,' returned Tricksy scornfully; 'I'm not such a duffer, Marjorie.' ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... he retorts, amiably rubbing his hands together. "Anyhow, I won't, which means about the same thing. Where's the little duffer?" ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... "Old duffer! you are one thing to-day, and another thing to-morrow: there's no knowing how to tyke you. You're such a sinful old 'ypocrite, that you play-act before yourself, I do believe. What is it you do mean? You myke anyone sick of you; your incense ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... are not all exactly like Levick," said Philip, who was a little ashamed of himself for having frightened his little brother; "but I was only joking when I said that about the policeman in Borsham, Dan. What a little duffer you are!" ...
— The Gap in the Fence • Frederica J. Turle
... treat a deficiency as if it were a gift. The G.E. was apparently a duffer at arithmetic, but she tells you so in a way that makes you admire her for it. All the same I wish I had been one of those factory-girls that she used to reclaim in their dinner-hour; I am fundamentally honest, ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... one of my hostesses come to round me up to do my duty," he confessed. "I'm a duffer at dancing, so I've taken cover in here. I see you don't remember me, but we've met before—at Red Ridge ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... through his paces. Ask him what he knows. Process (I fear) incidentally reveals to him what I know. Hear him at lunch explaining to HERBIE (with whom he has made friends again) that I am "not bad at sums, but a shocking duffer at Latin." Pretend ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... friend's pistol and hit it plumb in the centre at twenty-four paces. There were few things he took up that he could not make a show at apparently, except gold-digging, and at that he was the veriest duffer alive. It was pitiful to see the little canvas bag, with his name printed across it, lying placid and empty upon the shelf at Woburn's store, while all the other bags were increasing daily, and some had assumed quite a portly rotundity of form, for the ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... incongruous with his little feet and mincing gait! It was as though as much as possible of his body were seeking to escape that all-devouring tension in relapse. How familiar it all was! Even during those months at camp the picture would recur and Joe would laugh softly to himself. Poor old duffer! He was a product of the plant just as much as ploughs and tillage implements were. How soon would he begin to show ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... Is bending and testing The wood for the wheel-rims. One piece does not please him; He takes up another And bends it with effort; 240 It suddenly straightens, And whack!—strikes his forehead. The man begins roaring, Abusing the bully, The duffer, the block-head. Another comes driving A cart full of wood-ware, As tipsy as can be; He turns it all over! The axle is broken, 250 And, trying to mend it, He ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... himself running alone. Behind him a dog yelped with pain, and above the noise someone shouted: "Here, you kids, let up on that! Shame on you! Let him alone! Call off your dogs, there! Poor little duffer, let him go. Get back ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... fouling the anchor stock, or flukes, thereby pulling it out of the ground and causing it to drag. It was also the occasion of many bitter quarrels between master and mate. The former may have been a duffer at the manoeuvre himself, but that did not bother him now that the position had changed. Even a consciousness of the mate's knowledge of his fallibility did not qualify his hostile remarks; indeed, the recollection of it never failed to increase his anger. As a matter of fact, the ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... up with my poor game, I should enjoy playing immensely. But," she added smiling confidently and regarding him with her large, steady brown eyes, "I don't intend to remain a duffer at it long. I see," she continued after a moment, "from your expression, Mr. Randall, that you doubt this. I could tell from the corners ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... lowered. Round and round The court-house paced he, followed stealthily By Bengal Mike, who jeered him every step: "Come, elephant, and fight! Come, hog-eyed coward! Come, face about and fight me, lumbering sneak! Come, beefy bully, hit me, if you can! Take out your gun, you duffer, give me reason To draw and kill you. Take your billy out. I'll crack your boar's head with a piece of brick!" But never a word the hog-eyed one returned But trod about the court-house, followed both By troops of boys and watched by all the men. All day, they ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... in a sharp, clipping voice; and the next minute Bessie heard her call one of her sisters a duffer ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... worry your old head!" answered Ted, determinedly. "I'm watching to see who comes along. Do you suppose I'd let Mrs. Burton, or the rector tumble into the tub? What d'you take me for, you old duffer?" ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... actually care about talking to them? I can see you are a duffer still"—and one needed to see and near him to appreciate the profound, immutable contempt which echoed in this remark. He had been grown-up now two years, and was in love with every good-looking woman that ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... Museum in London; all of them were cracked and just stuck together like a mosaic, and bits missing. Mine were perfect, and I meant to blow them when I got back. Naturally I was annoyed at the silly duffer dropping three hours' work just on account of a centipede. I hit him ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... after, my other comrade was badly wounded, and I lay down and hid the whole day till dark, when I got back to the laager." This would go to prove that, comparing him with the Boer, the British infantry soldier is not such a duffer with his weapon as some of those in authority were in the habit ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... "Why, you duffer, of course he could get out any time he liked. It's only a latch on the door; any one can open it from inside. He could easily get down to the river in the night, and have a tub, ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... become of that duffer?" said Tom Holtum, when the Laulie arrived at the geo and no Yaspard appeared ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... roving commission in mufti, to counteract the ceaseless undermining of the Russian agents in Persia, Afghanistan and in the Pamirs. We always bear the service brand too openly. It gives away our own military agents. Now, Hawke's a fellow like Alikhanoff, that smart Russian duffer! He can do the Persian, Afghan, or Thibetan to perfection! He has been on to London. Some morning he will clear out. You'll hear of him next at Kashgar, or in Bhootan, or perhaps he will work down into China and ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... that ol' duffer," he went on, as he pointed at the stern features of grandpa Smead. "Wouldn't ye think he'd smile now an' then. Maybe he'll cheer up after ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... sheriff's a duffer! Here, Van, give me the horse." And with the words Chamberlain grabbed Little Simon's best roadster, mounted him bareback, and turned his head ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... Frank, whose head was nodding forward in an uncomfortable attitude, and whose deep breathing showed him to be asleep. "If only he warn't sich a duffer," said Barney to himself, "we might do it easy," then seeing that his partner was in danger of falling, he moved nearer to him, and placed the boy's head gently against his own shoulder so that he might ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... its tracks, wheeled toward Bradley and then back again toward Tippet. Again the former's rifle spit angrily, and the bear turned again in his direction. Bradley shouted loudly. "Come on, you behemoth of Holy Writ!" he cried. "Come on, you duffer! Can't waste ammunition." And as he saw the bear apparently upon the verge of deciding to charge him, he encouraged the idea by backing rapidly away, knowing that an angry beast will more often charge one who moves ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... good-humoredly). Why, you duffer—(But this boisterousness jars himself as well as Eugene. He checks himself, and resumes, with affectionate seriousness) No: I won't put it in that way. My dear lad: in a happy marriage like ours, there is something very sacred in the return of the wife to her home. (Marchbanks looks quickly at him, ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... nose out of this business, an' don't speak to me again till after I'm dead. Do ye mind that, ye big duffer?" ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... helmsman while alive, but now he was dead he might have become a first-class temptation, and possibly cause some startling trouble. Besides, I was anxious to take the wheel, the man in pink pyjamas showing himself a hopeless duffer at ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... were loaded at St. Louis in the early spring. And these had come all the way without the stroke of a piston or the crunch of a paddle-wheel or a pound of steam. Nothing but grit and man-muscle to drag them a small matter of two or three thousand miles up the current of the most eccentric old duffer of a river ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... one after another came the shouts: "Stop! Drive on! Stop! On again! Stop! Pull!" And Pelle pulled the bar back, drove on and pulled until the whole thing whizzed again. Then he knew that it was Long Ole feeding the machine while Per Olsen measured the grain: Ole was a duffer ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... too, and they got me; they peppered me till I fell; And there I scribbled my message with my life-blood ebbing away; "Now, Billy, you fat old duffer, you've got to get back like hell; And get them to cancel that order before it's the dawn ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... toward the outer office. "I was sane when I came in here, but the eyes of the girl outside—oh, yow, them eyes! I must be introduced to her. And you're scolding me for coming around here in broad daylight. Why, you duffer, if I come at night, d'ye suppose I'd have met ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... from Islington; on which occasion it was remarked that as he did not come on Saturday there must be something wrong. A clerk, with Saturday half-holidays, ought not to be away from his work on Mondays and Tuesdays. Mrs. Duffer, who was regarded in Paradise Row as being very inferior to Mrs. Demijohn, suggested that the young man might, perhaps, not be a Post Office clerk. This, however, was ridiculed. Where should a Post Office clerk find his friends except among Post Office ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... that he that willeth to do the will {170} shall know whether the teaching be true. There are no doubt some mere intellectual obscurities in the ideal which I might make simpler if I were not such a duffer. But finally a paradox would be left—a paradox which can only be solved by living the ideal out, and finding it work. It is the pathos of our love, of God's love for us, that each man, however much he is loved, ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... bloomin' Republick is too rediklus for anythink. Look at the kiddish kick-up along o' the visit of the Hempress! Why, if we 'ad that duffer, DEROULEDE, on Newmarket 'Eath, we should just duck him in a 'orsepond, like a copped Welsher. Here they washup him, or else knuckle under to him, like a skeery Coster's missus when her old man's on the mawl, and feels round arter her ribs with his ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... interested me. It was not the letter of a duffer or a swindler—the sort of thing you can tell by its ornate pompousness; and it just caught me when I was somewhat bored by things, so that I rather welcomed it as an excitement. I expected to find you lodging in some miserable cottage—a Chatterton in a garret. ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... play for the Gentlemen," said Lord Amersteth slyly. "My son Crowley only just scraped into the eleven at Harrow, and HE'S going to play. I may even come in myself at a pinch; so you won't be the only duffer, if you are one, and I shall be very glad if you will come down and help us too. You shall flog a stream before breakfast and after dinner, ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... said the artist, with a glance about the little room. He was thinking what a dear old duffer the man was—with his curious, impracticable philosophy of life and his big, kind ways. "You'll die poor if you don't ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... who wears the Panama? I wonder if anyone would think of haste in connection with that duffer. It took him just one hour to buy three soft crabs from some kids at the dock yesterday," said Walter. "I wouldn't like to be his messmate. But I don't like his eye; ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... duffer! But suppose Hooker and Jo or some of that bunch should stumble onto him, Al! Was he making ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... all about you. Excuse my rig—we are short of men on the farm, and I took hold. I'm glad of the chance, for I get precious little exercise since I left college. You came from East Branch by morning stage, I suppose? Oh, is that your trunk dumped out in the road? What a duffer I was not to know. Wait a minute—I'll bring it in," and he sprang down ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... provocation from my Mongol, and my earnest prayer is that I may be able to stand it all, and not get soured in temper and feeling against the Mongols. I must have patience. Some knowledge of camel's flesh also would help me not a little. As it stands, I feel an incompetent "duffer."' ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... "Poor old duffer! I'll bet he was disappointed," came sympathetically from Christopher. "Think of his having to stay at home and miss the fun of seeing how his invention ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... the front rank shew'd, How endless appeared the tail, On the brown hill-side, where we cross'd the road, And headed towards the vale. The dark-brown steed on the left was there, On the right was a dappled grey, And between the pair, on a chestnut mare, The duffer who writes this lay. What business had "this child" there to ride? But little or none at all; Yet I held my own for a while in "the pride That goeth before a fall." Though rashness can hope for but one result, We are heedless when fate draws nigh us, And the maxim holds good, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... laughter stabbed his ear-drums. "If she sold in a year all the pretty little pictures she paints it would barely pay for her gowns. No, that won't do. But," and a new note crept into Penfield's voice, "did you see that old duffer who was with her? That's where she shows her discretion. He is kept very much in the background. It is only occasionally that ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... he sees nothing but bare facts. He is always hard up, poor fellow, and it would be a real boon to him to take me for three months and stick at it hard with me, and by the end of that time I ought to be able to take my place in some artist's school in Paris without feeling myself to be an absolute duffer among a lot of fellows younger than myself. By Jove, this news is like a breeze on the east coast in summer—a little sharp, perhaps, but splendidly bracing and healthy, just the thing to set a fellow up and make a man of ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... selfish that she had not even wished to learn how the cabinet was to be constructed. "All those figures gave her a headache," she declared. For another, when early in the winter he had owned himself at a deadlock, she had sneered at him as a duffer who was unable to fulfil his boasts. Old Bourjac never forgot that—his reputation was very dear to him—he did not speak to ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... shoot!" said Jack to Mrs. Graves; "I'm a perfect duffer beside him; he shot four-fifths of the bag, and there's a perfect mountain of rabbits ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "Nobody but a duffer pays fare," said the other. "There'll be a freight along pretty soon, and she stops at the water tank just below here. ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... only Dick had assumed the role of Moonlighter Ryan, a notorious Queensland cattle duffer, recently hanged for his part in a disputation with a member of the mounted police. The dispute ended with the death of the policeman, who succumbed to injuries received. As Moonlighter Dick was characteristically ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... receive augmentation. No one felt alarm at their absence. The inhabitants of Foss River were a self-reliant people—accustomed to look to themselves for the remedy of a grievance. Besides, Horrocks, they said, had shown himself to be a duffer—merely a tracker, a prairie-man and not the man to bring Retief to justice. Already the younger members of the settlement and district were forming themselves into a vigilance committee. The elders—those to whom the younger looked for ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... old man and the jockey had made a sneak from the grounds when Ted was having his fun with the big fellow, and I got my bronc and followed them. I came up with them a ways back, and made the old duffer halt, but the jock potted me and got away. ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... "Probably he's given it to the old duffer for a birthday present—hundredth anniversary!" he scoffed. "That would be taking his turn at doing knight-errands. Let's go right on and not disturb the poor ...
— Three Young Knights • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... happened—but I should have known more what the world was like, I should have depended more upon other people, I should have made friends. As it was, I left school entirely innocent, very solitary, very modest, thinking myself a complete duffer, and everyone else a beast. It got a little better at the end of my time, and I had a companion or two—but I never dreamed of telling anyone what I was ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to play golf himself, but he consented to walk over the course and watch the representative's strokes. The representative was rather a duffer. Teeing off, he sent clouds of earth flying in all directions. Then, to hide his confusion he said to his guest: "What do you think of our links here, ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... ignore. One night Jones heard them rotting about 'Great Circle sailing,' and 'ice to the south'ard of the Horn,' and subjects like that, when, properly, they ought to be criticising their Old Man, and saying what an utter duffer of a Second Mate they had. Jones was wonderfully indignant at such talk, and couldn't sleep at night for thinking of all the fine sarcastic remarks he might have made, if he had thought of them ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... easy to show the possibility that many a duffer was led toward the production of the homunculus by erroneous interpretation of the procreation symbolism occurring in the alchemistic writings. It was merely necessary, in their limitations, to take literally one or another of the methods. In this way there actually occurred the most ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... up, you old duffer!" he answered irritably. "Can't you ever learn anything after all your long association with me? If you can't do anything else right, at least keep still, and don't ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... be, dear. Perhaps if I also made two million dollars, and if I felt I had grown worthy of you, I might come to you and say—two and two are four—let us go into partnership. But then, you see," he went on briskly, "the odds are I may never even have two thousand. Perhaps I'm as much a duffer in music as in other things. Perhaps you'll be the only person in the world who has ever heard my music, for no one will print it, Mary Ann. Perhaps I shall be that very common thing—a complete failure—and be worse off than even you ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... me feel sort of glad, Miss Helen. You see, I'm not such a duffer really. I think an awful lot, and it don't come hard either. But folks have always told me I'm such a fool, that I've kind of got into the way of believing it. Now, when I saw that pine and the valley I felt sort of queer. It struck me then it was sort of mysterious. Just ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... this Junior year he was offered the post of secretary to our Ambassador at Vienna. From him and the others I acquired a second-hand knowledge of life, which was sufficient to keep me from being regarded as a duffer or utterly "green," though in all such "life" I was practically as innocent as a young nun. Now, whatever I heard, as well as read, I always turned over and over in my mind, thoroughly digesting it to a most exceptional degree. So that I was somewhat like the young lady of whom ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... Hunter, the spooky old critter, has been seen agin. i wuz on the top of the painted Butte yesterday squinten one i in the valley look'n for elk and look'n up with tother i for Big horn on the mountain, when i staged the old duffer snoop'en along in one of the parks an' he had the same long hair and long rifle he uster have. He sure is a ghost or else he's a nut or an old timer gone locoed. He sends the chills down my backbone every time i ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... myself—well, if this sort can go wrong like that . . . and I felt as though I could fling down my hat and dance on it from sheer mortification, as I once saw the skipper of an Italian barque do because his duffer of a mate got into a mess with his anchors when making a flying moor in a roadstead full of ships. I asked myself, seeing him there apparently so much at ease—is he silly? is he callous? He seemed ready to start whistling ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... officials of the train were tars; Told them to "Coil that rope and clean the scuppers, And then go down below and get your suppers." This must be changed, or my good name will suffer, And folks will say, JIM FISK is but a duffer. To feel myself a fool and lose my head, Too, takes the gilding off the gingerbread; And makes me ask myself the reason why On earth I have so many fish to fry? The fact is, what I touch must have a risk Of failure, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... grumbled. "You fascinate me. I should have thought you were clever if I had only heard you talk, and not known what a duffer ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Mary," said the man. "Of course I don't pretend to have cared much at first, but now!—why he's so handsome, and quick, and such a good little duffer; and so affectionate! When he gives a jump and gets his arms around my neck and his legs around my waist and 'hugs me all over' as he calls it, I almost feel as if I was a mother! I can't say more than ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... his hands in the incident that served as a climax to the distribution. He had whispered something to M. Lecompte and the result was that one little duffer, who sat all alone on a big chair, and hugged an enormous rubber boot, waited and waited expectantly to hear the name "Pierre Lafite" ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... duffer, are you going to do your share? You're not O'Roon, but it seems to me if you'd lean to the right you could reach the reins of that foolish slow-running bay—ah! you're all right; O'Roon couldn't have done it ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... Really a Duffer" type, where the nervous new boy, who has been found crying in the boot-room over the photograph of his sister, contrives to get an innings in a game, nobody suspects that he is really a prodigy till he hits the Bully's first ball out of the ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... "'You know what a duffer I am on a horse, Governor,' he says. 'Well, I want to try for the Melford Cup. I'd like to build a course on the place, and school myself under ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... girl of eighteen to himself (not counting a few chaperons lying about loose) in a motor-car for a week, passing through the loveliest country in the world, and can't make her forget for his sake some other fellow she's known only a few hours longer, must be a born duffer. This I dinned into ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... themselves on a pedestal. They think that they lose dignity if they are not able to answer every question that a child puts to them. One result is that the child develops a dangerous inferiority complex. I knew one boy who was a duffer at mathematics. His weakness was due to the inferiority he felt when he saw the learned mathematical master juggle with figures as easily as a conjurer juggles with billiard balls. The little chap lost all hope, and when he worked problems he worked ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... haven't the remotest notion what his jargon means. From Aristotle to William James, I have dipped into quite a lot of them—Descartes, Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer (the thrice besotted Teutonic ass who said that women weren't beautiful), for I hate to be thought an ignorant duffer—and I have never come across in them anything worth knowing, thinking, or doing that I was not taught at my mother's knee. And as for her, dear, simple soul, if you had asked her what was the Categorical Imperative (having explained beforehand the meaning ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... 'Poor old duffer,' said his lordship. 'If he's doing so well, I think Miles ought to be made to pay up something of what he owes. I think we ought to tell him that we shall expect him to have the money ready when that bill ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... mill; and, again, every one is trouped to the cupola of the house to see another view. She insists on every one's playing croquet before lunch, to which she gathers in a curiously mixed collection of neighbors. Immediately after lunch every one is driven to a country club to see some duffer golf—for some reason there is never "time" in all the prepared pleasures for any of her guests to play golf themselves. After twenty minutes at the golf club, they are all taken to a church fair. The guests ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... eating him, the old duffer, I wonder?" growled Holmes. "Is he falling in love, ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... badly in the spring, certainly, and why? Because we feel. And because that man is a duffer who thinks the creative artist is allowed to feel. Every genuine and sincere artist smiles at the naivete of this bungler's error—sadly perhaps, but he does smile. For what one says must of course never be the first consideration, but the ingredients, indifferent in themselves, from which the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... and there is a very fierce but not very efficient system of weighing and checking. A rather too generous allowance is, of course, a direct incentive to waste or stealing—as any one but our silly old duffer of a War Office would know. The checking is for quantity, which any fool can understand, rather than for quality. The test for the quality of army meat is the smell. If it doesn't smell ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... centuries, again, generally assumed that if a function is continuous it can always be differentiated. A comparatively unphilosophical mind may let such plausible assertions pass unexamined, but a more philosophical mind will say to itself, when it comes across them, 'You great duffer, aren't you going to ask Why?' Suppose that, by way of experiment, I assume that the fourth angle of my quadrilateral will be acute, or again obtuse, will the body of conclusions I can now deduce from my set of postulates be free from contradictions or not? If ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... the party addressed, "and if you notice the old duffer you can see that he's showing more animation than he's exhibited this hour back. It ain't that Curley's been using the whip either, for that don't hurt Dobbin any, his hide is so thick. He smells water in the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... the can of hot, till at last I rushed down and fetched it up myself from the copper. You should have seen cook's face! 'Fancy, Master Lionel,' says she, 'coming yourself for 'ot water!' I tell you, Moggy, Saunders is past his usefulness. He's a regular duffer—a gump." ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... could send them word. That Tennessee village would set up a monument to Billings, then, and his autograph would outsell Satan's. Well, they had grand times at that reception—a small-fry noble from Hoboken told me all about it—Sir Richard Duffer, Baronet." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... (loud cheers from all, and 'Jolly good job!' from Bramble). I shall go on speaking just as long as I choose, Bramble, so now! (Cheers.) I've as much right to speak as you have. (Applause.) You're only a stuck-up duffer. (Terrific cheers, and a fight down at the end of the table.) I beg to drink the health of the Guinea-pigs. (Loud Guinea-pig cheers.) We licked the old Tadpoles in the match. ('No you didn't!' 'That's a cram!' and groans from the Tadpoles.) I say we did! Your umpire was a cheat—they always ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... unskilled in the art. An instance of similar modesty is found in Mr. Andrew Lang, who entitles the first chapter of his delightful ANGLING SKETCHES (without which no fisherman's library is complete), "Confessions of a Duffer." This an engaging liberty which no one else would dare ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... mess," he gasped. "What between these Chinks and that crazy old duffer, they have got me in a nice mess. I know this girl. She belongs to that moving picture outfit. Now what ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... outrage of a character unheard of and unparalleled. It was the result of "uncertain sounds;" of "duffer" government. ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... Grigsby severely, "you are a duffer. I see the solution at a glance. Here you are! These two ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... know it?" Daney's voice rose triumphant. "The blessed old duffer!" he added. "I'll put in a call for New York immediately. We ought to get it through in an ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... eyes scouted the mule-skinner's person for evidence of hardware. Observing none, he said fiercely "You mutton- headed duffer!" and for the first time within the memory of the citizens of San Pasqual he had recourse to his hands. He clasped Mr. O'Rourke fondly around the neck and choked him until his eyes threatened to pop out, the while he shook O'Rourke as a terrier shakes a rat. Then, after two prodigious parting ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... that they had pitched in as one of the foremen some fellow or other, a friend of the firm's, a rank duffer, who pestered me incessantly with his questions. I did half his work and all my own, and it hadn't improved my temper much. On this night that I'm telling about, he'd been playing the fool with his questions ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... think me an awful duffer," he murmured, contritely. "I'm not always like this, I ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... get—hardly worth mentioning! Horses occasionally win with odds of forty to one against them, these are the animals of which I was in search, not the hackneyed favourites of the Press and the Public. This, I think you will find, is usually the attitude of the Duffer, who, in my time, was known, I cannot say why, as the "Juggins." I liked to bring a little romance into my speculations. Often I have backed a horse for his name, for something curious, or literary, or classical about his name. Xanthus, or Podargus, or Phaeeton, or Lampusa has ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... those words," went on the Vere calmly. "Eat 'em up with sauce for dinner. The 'admired actress well known at the Brilliant,' has nothing to do with the Bruce-Errington man,—not she! He's a duffer, a regular stiff one—no go about him anyhow. And what the deuce do you mean by calling me an offending dama. Keep your ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... became satisfied that the two teams were pretty evenly matched, I had a little plan through which I felt confident I could make it a dead sure thing for Barville. I was not off my base, either, and it would have worked out charmingly if that big duffer, Lander, hadn't dipped in and messed ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... Requiem, the Serious songs he wrote in his later days—he sacrificed the beauty he might have attained to the expression of emotions he never felt; he assumed the pose and manner of a master telling us great things, and talked like a pompous duffer. An exception must be made: one emotion Brahms had felt and did communicate. It was his tragedy that he had no original emotion, no rich inner life, but lived through the days on the merely prosaic ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... dat I wouldn't give it erway. Jem Mace tort me dis trick w'en I sparred wid him in Liverpool. He says ter me, says he: 'Buster, ye're a boid, dat's wot ye are. If you knowed der trick of breakin' a bloke's wrist dere ain't no duffer in der woild dat can do yer. I'll show yer der crack fer sixty pound.' He wouldn't come down a little bit, an' I paid him wot he asked. Since dat time I've knocked roun' all over der woild, an' it's ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... duffer whose watch was ticking inside my waist that very minute! Yes, sir, the same red-faced, big-necked fellow we'd spied getting full at the little station in the country. Only, he was a bit mellower than when you grabbed his chain. Well, ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... 'cold feet' a few days after we left New York, and wrote to his friends to get his discharge," said "Bill." "Got it and quit two weeks after we left New York, the duffer," added "Hay." ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... moment. Don't despise me. I have it. I'll, yes—I'll do it—I'll break into his desk. There's no help for it. I know the drawer where he keeps his plunder, and I can buy a chisel on my way home. He will be terribly upset, but, you know, the dear old duffer really loves me. He'll have to get over it—and I, too. Kirylo, my dear soul, if you can only wait for a few hours-till this evening—I shall steal all the blessed lot I can lay my hands on! You doubt me! Why? You've only to say ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... bungler; blunderer, blunderhead^; marplot, fumbler, lubber, duffer, dauber, stick; bad hand, poor hand, poor shot; butterfingers^. no conjurer, flat, muff, slow coach, looby^, lubber, swab; clod, yokel, awkward squad, blanc-bec; galoot^. land lubber; fresh water sailor, fair weather sailor; horse marine; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... not worth taking,' said Ernest. 'I'm a regular duffer at painting and sketching. You should ask Lord Connemara. He knows all about art and ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... your time. Let me see what the tickets look like. That 's all right—say, Masters, before you go, do you know that big duffer with a black beard in the ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... the megaphone asked for me, and when I requested the name of 'the party speaking,' as Clarke says, it replied with an oily chuckle, exactly like the old duffer, 'It's old Loggy.'" ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... new acquaintance, "to the little chap learning his French. I've forgotten mine. One feels a hopeless duffer knowing ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Creek), I suggested that we should go there and spell for a few days. So there we went and C——— made us heartily welcome; and he also told us that the new rush on the Don River had turned out a "rank duffer," and that we would only be wearing ourselves and our horse-flesh out by going there. He pressed us to stay for a week at least, and as we now had no fixed plans for the future we were glad to do so. He was expecting ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke |
