"Cropper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a cropper in that slide, an' the road wud be minus a coal-heaver!" said Carson. "Wud ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... on the Stock Exchange," explained Cedric. "Clever old chap—shouldn't mind if he would give me the straight tip. I tell you what, Die," and here Cedric lit himself another cigarette, "if I come a cropper in the exam, the Stock Exchange would not be a bad place for me to make ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... "A lot of men, in my line and in others, have come a cropper in their careers, because of some woman. But I'm the first to come such a cropper on account of a woman with a white soul and the eyes of a child,—a woman I scarcely know, and who has no interest in me. But, to-night, I shall telegraph ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... thinking pretty hard about the matter," was the answer. "I hardly know what to do. I'm afraid it's only another one of Dick's hare-brained ideas, and if he goes in for it, he'll come a cropper. ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... an hour afterwards, "Royce Pederstone is going to come a terrible cropper over this business. He is mortgaged up to the neck and, singly or with some of the political gang, he is in almost every realty proposition we ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... won't refuse." The blue eyes opposite were still twinkling. "In the first place, you're my good friend—my best friend. You wouldn't be seen letting me start off on a wild-goose chase like this without your guiding hand at the helm to see that I didn't come a cropper." ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... afraid. I've often noticed that when young fellows of your sort prefer their own haste to the Lord's leisure there's a Lord's haste that hurries on before 'em, so as to be all ready to meet 'em when they come a cropper in the ditch." ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... would come back," remarked Barry at last, looking up abruptly from the fish he was dissecting. A shade of anxiety clouded his lazy blue eyes. "I hope she's not come a cropper down one of these ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... follows:—"I, Dame Mary, Baroness of Mordington, do hold a house in the Great Piazza, Covent Garden, for and as an Assembly, where all persons of credit are at liberty to frequent and play at such diversions as are used at other Assemblys. And I have hired Joseph Dewberry, William Horsely, Ham Cropper, and George Sanders as my servants or managers (under me) thereof. I have given them orders to direct the management of the other inferior servants (namely): John Bright, Richard Davis, John Hill, John Vandenvoren, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... at all," Thorndyke replied cheerily, "though very disreputable to look at. Just came a cropper in the mud, Jervis," he added, as he noted my dismayed expression. "Dinner and a clothes-brush are what I chiefly need." Nevertheless, he looked very pale and shaken when he came into the light on the landing, and he sank into his easy-chair in the limp ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... it were, by jumping over the soup and fish, the joint, the entree, and the sweet, and has got his lovers to the coffee, the cigar-and-liqueur stage, when, if the truth be known, all the hurdles over which the "horse of disillusion" may come a nasty cropper have been passed. So, if you be wise, sit on the side of your best-beloved until the nourishing part of your gastronomic "enfin seul" is over; and then, if you must gaze into his eyes and he into yours, ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... book is the sequel. So utterly at variance is destiny with all the little plans of men. I may perhaps mention here that very recently I had come an ugly cropper in certain business enterprises. Sitting now surrounded by all the circumstances of wealth, there is a luxury in admitting my extremity. I can admit, even, that to a certain extent my disasters were ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... he said, "I hadn't even time to guess wot 'ad 'appened. Got no warnin' wotsomedever. I just felt a tree-mendous shock all of a suddent that struck me motionless—as if Tom Sayers had hit me a double-handed cropper on the top o' my beak an' in the pit o' my bread-basket at one an' the same moment. Then came an 'orrible pressure as if a two-thousand-ton ship 'ad bin let down a-top o' me, an' ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... luxury at times," Redford answered, "to be able to indulge in absolute candour. We cannot last the session. You pulled us through our last tight corner, but we shall part, I suppose, on the New Tenement Bill, and then we shall come a cropper." ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... practically unrewarded toil. Formerly all tenants had some capital, and often considerable; but absentee landlordism, rising rack-rent, and failing cotton have stripped them well-nigh of all, and probably not over half of them to-day own their mules. The change from cropper to tenant was accomplished by fixing the rent. If, now, the rent fixed was reasonable, this was an incentive to the tenant to strive. On the other hand, if the rent was too high, or if the land deteriorated, the result was to discourage and check the efforts of the black peasantry. ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... his faint, cynical smile. "No," he said, "you certainly don't know everything, my son. You never have come a cropper ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the tension may be varied by rotating slightly the two rails so as to alter the angle formed by the cloth in contact with them. This is, of course, at the feed side; the cloth is pulled through the machine by three rollers shown distinctly on the right in Fig. 42. This view illustrates a double cropper in which both the spirals are controlled by one belt. As the cloth is pulled through, both sides of it are cropped by the two spirals.[3] When four spirals are required, the frame is much wider, and the second set of spirals is identical with those ...
— The Jute Industry: From Seed to Finished Cloth • T. Woodhouse and P. Kilgour
... wondered if he could love her just as she was and himself wake her up. After all, whatever it was, she had come to fill quite a large place in his life, as he had discovered that afternoon while scanning the sea between the squalls. Then he remembered the accounts of Berande, and the cropper that ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... crossed the second in the same order, Wild Geranium racing neck to neck with Pas de Charge; the King was all athirst to join the duello, but his owner kept him gently back, saving his pace and lifting him over the jumps as easily as a lapwing. The second fence proved a cropper to several, some awkward falls took place over it, and tailing commenced; after the third field, which was heavy plow, all knocked off but eight, and the real struggle began in sharp earnest: a good dozen, who had shown a splendid stride over the grass, being down up by ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... pursued, "it happened a good while ago, that business, and it's just as likely as not that it was Adam whom the devil first put up to a thing or two, and Eve got it out of him—for I grant you that women are curious—and then they both came a cropper together, and it was a case of six of one and half a dozen of the other. It mostly is, I should think, in a business of ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... again at the two dates. It was evident that somewhere between April 18th and May 5th Tom had come a cropper. With a smile, half bitter, Frederick skimmed on through the correspondence: "There's a wreck on Midway Island. A fortune in it, salvage you know. Auction in two days. Cable me four thousand." The last he examined, ran: "A deal I can swing with a little ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... I read with special pleasure his seven Self-Congratulations, in which he records seven occasions when he felt that he had really done himself justice. The first of these was when he watched a man riding horseback in a reckless fashion; he predicted that the man would come a cropper, and he did so. The next four self-congratulations refer to times when his knowledge of literary and artistic matters enabled him to place an unfamiliar quotation or assign a painted tablet to the right artist. One ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... Libreville, and found to be doing well. This would be an excellent tree to plant in among coffee, for it is very clean and tidy, and seems as if it would take to West Africa like a duck to water, but it is not a quick cropper, and I am informed must be left at least three or four years before it is tapped at all, so, as the gardening books would say, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... want to joke, Honey-Chile," I told him. "But we're not the first of these wild-catting westerners who've come a cropper. And since we ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... the dust with its nose, while the cowboy made a fairly graceful dive through the air, landing on his head and shoulders. The riders directly behind him were obliged to hurdle pony and rider, which they did without mishap to either. Stacy, fortunately was ahead, else he too might have come a cropper. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... Temple! That's the worst of walking carefully all your days: you do come such an awful cropper when you do come one. Two women. The Jasmine lady must have been practising on his poor little heart. Heigh-ho, I wish she could do as much for me! And the ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... Sam's children never had no bringin' up. I disremember how old Tommy is, but it isn't over eight, and just as noisy as ef he wasn't the oldest. And so I come here to take care of the place; but I can't stay no longer than Tuesday fortnight, as I told Sarah Ann, fur I've got to go to Betsey Cropper's then to help her with her spinnin'; and there's my own things—seven pounds of wool to spin fur Truly Mattherses people, besides two bushel baskets, easy, of carpet-rags to sew, and I want 'em done by the ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... of country they know, Across it for years they've been rangers, All right, when the going is slow, When 'tis fast, are they fly to its dangers? For Hares to raise scares 'midst the Hounds were improper, But how if the pack come a general cropper? ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... had given great promise at the time it was published but who dropped completely out of notice soon afterward because of a mistaken notion of his own importance. If Booth's memory served him right, the fellow came a cropper, so to speak, in trying to ride rough shod over public opinion, and went to the dogs. He had been painting sensibly up to that time, but suddenly went in for the most violent style of impressionism. That ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... to every man to find his work. If there was no room for him in a higher work it was no excuse for his not working in a lower plane. There would be no failures, he thought, if folk were only wise. If a man came a cropper in a big way, it was because he had rushed into a work before Destiny, the invisible infallible nuncio of God, had chosen her man. Or because he was dissatisfied, ambition and ability not being equal. Or because he ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... lives nine miles northwest of Winnsboro, S.C., on lands of Mr. R.W. Lemmon. There is one other occupant in the four-room house, John Giles, a share cropper. The house has two fireplaces, the brick chimney being constructed in the center of the two main rooms. The other two rooms are shed rooms. Charlie ekes out a living as a ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... ever so much better. Why he only had two stumbles, and one cropper, doing his three hundred yards this morning. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... carrying the gun consigned to his charge, Captain Burton's smooth elephant. Now Bombay rode much after the fashion of a sailor, trusting more to balance and good-luck than skill in sticking on; and the consequence was, that with the first side-step the donkey made he came to the ground an awkward cropper, falling heavily on the small of the stock of the gun, which snapped short off, the piece being thus irredeemably damaged. At first I rated him heartily, for this was the second of Captain Burton's guns which had been damaged in my hands. ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... remarked William, himself interested, and ready to snap his camera at the procession as soon as it got within open range; "and they look like they've had a bad scare, as sure as you live. Oh! there goes Scissors head over heels in the bushes. What a cropper he took, and how ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... Nobody can afford to despise a woman with twenty millions. It isn't in human nature. Particularly when you save Mr. James Eustis himself from coming a breakneck cropper, to say ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... down at tell-tale streaks of red clay on the skirt of her riding habit, and shook her head. "'Twill never, never do to go back like this," she sighed. "They'll know I've come a cropper, and they fancy I'm as breakable as Sevres. There will be ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... often, to Messrs. Robertson Nicoll and Shorter. In choosing "Confessio Medici" as the book of the season in general literature, Dr. Nicoll [Now Sir William Robertson Nicoll] has already come a fearful cropper, and he must regret it. I would give much to prevent him from afflicting the intelligent when the solemn annual moment arrives for him to make the reputation of ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... those 'eels down! Lost your stirrup, Mr. JELLY? Never mind that—feel for it, Sir. I want you to be independent of the irons. I'm going to make you ride without 'em presently. (Mr. JELLY shivers in his saddle.) Captin' CROPPER, Sir; if that Volunteer ridgment as you're goin' to be the Major of sees you like you are now, on a field-day—they'll 'ave to fall out to larf, Sir! (Mr. CROPPER devoutly wishes he had been less ingenuous as to his motive for practising his riding.) Now, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various
... He could not go on like that: Lawson would help him when he knew what straits he was in; it was absurd to let his pride prevent him from asking for assistance. He wondered why he had come such a cropper. He had always tried to do what he thought best, and everything had gone wrong. He had helped people when he could, he did not think he had been more selfish than anyone else, it seemed horribly unjust that he should be reduced to such ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... that's Jane Sweetman! Well, if Jane was bound to come a moral cropper, I'm very glad I wasn't bound to come a moral cropper with Jane, eh, ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... Bold-street after the Bolds, who built the first house in it: now occupied by Mr. Dismore. Colquitt-street after the Colquitts, whose mansion was converted into the Royal Institution. Berry-street, was named after Captain Berry, who built the first house at the corner of Bold-street. Cropper-street after the Cropper family. Fazakerly-street after the Fazakerlys. Oakes-street after Captain Oakes, who died in 1808. Lydia Ann-street after Mademoiselle Lydia Ann De La Croix, who married Mr. Perry, ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... preparing to annex the topic, "whether the situation actually happened or not, which is in itself a mere triviality, Peters has constructed it in a masterly way, the proof of which is that he has made me listen. Observe, each person present might have taken the ring—Flanders, a broker, just come a cropper; Maude Lille, a woman on the ragged side of life in desperate means; either Mr. and Mrs. Cheever, suspected of being card sharps—very good touch that, Peters, when the husband and wife glanced involuntarily at each other at the end—Mr. Enos Jackson, ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... was impossible to see a thing. Any minute he might go plowing into some hillside or foul his landing gear in the tops of trees. It was eerie business, this flying by instinct and facing the dreaded possibility of coming a cropper. ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... owing to the far too sharp eyes of the French custom-house officials on the Belgian frontier. Others of the band were also under lock and key again: it really seemed as if Mother Toulouche and her circle were being strictly watched by the police ... and now here was Emilet who had come a regular cropper in his aeroplane—no doubt ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... take a cropper more gracefully at twenty than at fifty-five. However, the knee is getting on quite well—you shall see it presently—and you observe that I am giving it complete rest. But that isn't the whole of the trouble or the worst of it. It's my confounded nerves. I'm as irritable as ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... my son. Dreamers are our strictly unpaid torch-bearers. They light the path for us; and we murmur 'Poor fools!' with a kind of sneaking self-satisfaction, when they come a cropper." ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... can sit here and say that I've worked my share of it—it has not been what you may call least by our having put Charlotte so at her ease. THAT has been soothing, all round; that has curled up as the biggest of the blue fumes, or whatever they are, of the opium. Don't you see what a cropper we would have come if she hadn't settled down as she has?" And he had concluded by turning to Maggie as for something she mightn't really have thought of. "You, darling, in that case, I verily believe, would have been the one ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Colonel. My horse was hit in the head with a round shot. I went a frightful cropper on some stones in the middle of a clump of bushes. I lay there insensible all night, and coming-to in the morning, saw that the French had advanced, and the firing on the hill over the town told me that the troops had got safely on ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... Without a definite word of any sort having been spoken, there was a widening circle of belief that Brenton's days at Saint Peter's were coming to an end; that he had stumbled over some obstacle in his professional pathway; in short, that he had come an ecclesiastical cropper. Just the form taken by that cropper, just when his relations with Saint Peter's would cease, just why and wherefore, just what would be the next page of Brenton's history: all this was still an enigma past all finding out. For that very reason, it added untold ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... I suppose. Poor Lola! She was an awfully good sort you know!" said Dale, "and I won't deny I was hit. That's when I came such a cropper. But I realise now how right you were. I was just caught by the senses, nothing else; and when she wrote to say it was all off between us my vanity suffered—suffered damnably, old chap. I lost the election through ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... not inclined to buy anything except a fox-terrier pup, and I told Ward that he would come a most howling cropper if he did not look out. But I have never yet happened to find the man who was inclined to take my warnings seriously, and Jack Ward, at any rate, was so naturally optimistic, that I might have known that he would take no notice whatever of ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... frightened." Why do people always use this agitating formula? "But the fact is poor Bertie has had an awful cropper. Good gracious, Cecil! don't look like that! Are you going to faint! He is not so very much hurt,—stunned a bit ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... wood is dirt-cheap, the additional length caused by their diagonal construction is of no importance;—but, being all loose, they are as awkward to leap as a swing-bar, which those who have once got a cropper at, are not anxious ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... this very morning, my poor dear," answered the landlady, relenting at the sight of Mary's obvious distress. "He's sailed, my dear—sailed in the John Cropper ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... you what," said Silverbridge. "If I thought this was all fair sailing I'd do it. I should feel certain that I should come a cropper, but still I'd try it. As you say, a fellow should try. But it's all meant as a blow at the governor. Old Beeswax thinks that if he can get me up to swear that he and his crew are real first-chop hands, that will hit the governor hard. It's as much as saying to the governor,—'This ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... small. The best o' baccy, Matt, for lunatics, which we was when we cast anchor on this island. Here, fill your pipe an' fire away. You won't notice the difference if you don't think about it. My! what a cropper you must have come down when you got that ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... About five o'clock on winter afternoons there is a clank of spurs in the courtyard of the old inn, and the bar is crowded with men in breeches and top-boots. As they refresh themselves there is a ceaseless hum of conversation, how so-and-so came a cropper, how another went at the brook in style, or how some poor horse got staked and was mercifully shot. A talk, in short, like that in camp after a battle, of wounds and glory. Most of these men are tenant farmers, and reference is sure to be ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... girl up and was dancing over the rough floor with her. And so Francis, coming in a little apprehensively, found them flushed and laughing, and whirling wildly around to the music of a record played much too fast. Peggy, in an effort to show off heavily before Francis, came a cropper over a stool at his feet, pulling Marjorie down in her fall; both of them laughing like children as they fell, so that they could scarcely disentangle themselves, and had to be unknotted ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... it," cried the excited boy. "The old daisy-cropper looks as fresh as a rose. Hurrah, boys! let us run down to the wharf, and see what becomes ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... with negroes superstition was to get a tenant to inhabit the house nearest the barn. This cabin was in better repair and larger than the other two cabins and the hardest thing to do was to get a tenant or negro cropper to take ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... edge of a cornfield near heavy timber, being far from any house. A large part of the crop is often stolen; the crops of 1911 and 1912 were not so heavy, perhaps 50 to 75 pounds. It usually bears a fair crop, however, but I do not consider it a heavy cropper like the Indiana or Niblack. Its large size and splendid cracking qualities, however, will make it a popular variety and it may prove to bear much better ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... come a beastly cropper over something or other on this road, and I'm only bruised, though the machine has suffered worse," replied the stranger, in a fresh, cheery voice. He was a good-looking fellow of about Paul's own age, and the young American's ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... than the other. Lieutenant Amir made a careful plan of the remains, and then pushed forward to Shuwk by the direct track, westward of that taken by the caravan. He arrived in camp, none the worse for a well-developed "cropper;" his dromedary had put its foot in a hole, and had fallen with a suddenness generally unknown ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... a billet at Coxon & Woodhouse's, of Draper's Gardens, but they were let in early in the spring through the Venezuelan loan, as no doubt you remember, and came a nasty cropper. I had been with them five years, and old Coxon gave me a ripping good testimonial when the smash came, but of course we clerks were all turned adrift, the twenty-seven of us. I tried here and tried there, but there were lots of other chaps on the same ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... means memorable, but I think I have a right to congratulate myself upon the fact that I was able at that age to manage the triple rhymes and the twelve-syllable line at the end of each stanza without coming a complete cropper. I could not do it now, even if ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... of the wife?" Lillian broke in, with a little laugh. "Why, the end of all stupid people who, instead of going through life with a lot of delightfully human stumbles, come just one big cropper. She naturally ends ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... the news of "direct action's" heavy cropper at the Trade Union Conference had reached the Front Bench before the PRIME MINISTER, in reply to a question regarding the shortage of labour in the building trades, bluntly attributed it to the stringency of the Trade Union regulations. When Mr. ADAMSON attempted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... Davie to him. "Ye'll no mak it, and ye'll come an awfu' cropper, as sure as deith." But Hughie, swaying gently back and forth, was measuring the distance of his drop. It was not a feat so very difficult, but it called for good judgment and steady nerve. A moment too ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... despite the protests of the clerk, the money would be handed over and the shop released from levy. Unfortunately, after working the game for several years, Levine came a cropper by carelessly trying it on one of the same clerks that he had victimized some time before. The clerk, being of an unusually vindictive disposition, followed the matter up. Having first arrested the man who made the false affidavit of service, he induced him to turn State's evidence against ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... of us, my dear chap. But it's up to you to make yourself some other way, if you don't want to come a cropper and leave the Service. I hope I am no Pharisee, but I've been reared to believe that living in debt is an aristocratic, and rather mean form of theft. My notion of you doesn't square with that; and ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... isn't exactly that, Tom. I'd go in a minute if you didn't have this new fangled thing on your airship. But how do you know how it's going to work—or whether it will work at all? We may come a cropper." ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton
... ever. If they had mothers or sisters they were the secrets of each man's heart. The scapegrace youth, the stranded man of thirty who would forget his past, the born adventurer, the renegade come a cropper, the gentleman who had gambled, the remittance man whose remittance had stopped, the peasant's son who had run away from home, criminals and dreamers, some minor poets, some fairly good actors, scholarly fellows who chanted the "Odyssey," ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... On my soul, M-RL-Y, we want that light you're seeking, swarming Up that lank lamp-post in a style alarming! Take care, my JOHN, you don't come down a whopper! And you, young R-S-B-RY, if you come a cropper Over that dark, dim pile, where shall we be? Pest! I can hardly see An inch before my nose—not to say clearly. Hold him up, H-RC-RT! He was down then, nearly, Our crook-knee'd "crock." Seems going very queerly, Although so short a time out ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... of tropical fruits, we now come to the papaw, one of our most wholesome and useful fruits. It is grown all along our eastern seaboard in situations that are free from frost. It comes into bearing early, and is a heavy cropper. Like the other tropical fruits already described, it does best in our warmer parts, coming to maturity earlier, and producing better fruit. In many of the Northern coastal scrubs it is often met with growing ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson
... publicity, has devolved on me, as one of the trustees of the Liverpool Association, the gratifying office of tendering to you, at then request, a slight testimonial of their gratitude and respect. We had hoped almost to the last moment that Mrs. Cropper would have represented, on this day, the ladies with whom she has cooperated, and among whom she has taken a distinguished lead in the great work which you had the honor and the happiness to originate. But she has felt with you that the path most grateful and most congenial to female ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... still. At that instant the huge rhinoceros blundered right on to him, and getting his horn beneath his stomach gave him such a fearful dig that the buffalo was turned over on to his back, while his assailant went a most amazing cropper over his carcase. In another moment, however, the rhinoceros was up, and wheeling round to the left, crashed through the bush down-hill and towards the ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... remark so many literary gentlemen with that decoration. The Jew with the beard, as you call him, is Herr von Lungen, the eminent hautboy-player. The three next gentlemen are Mr. Smee, of the Royal Academy (who is shaved as you perceive), and Mr. Moyes and Mr. Cropper, who are both very hairy about the chin. At the piano, singing, accompanied by Mademoiselle Lebrun, is Signor Mezzocaldo, the great barytone from Rome. Professor Quartz and Baron Hammerstein, celebrated geologists from Germany, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... slightly in the side. Lord Audley and the unknown knight struck each other fairly upon the helmet; but, while the stranger sat as firm and rigid as ever upon his charger, the Englishman was bent back to his horse's cropper by the weight of the blow, and had galloped half-way down the lists ere he could recover himself. Sir Thomas Wake was beaten to the ground with a battle-axe—that being the weapon which he had selected—and ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the War my Pappy belonged to a man named Sander or Zander. Might been Alexander, but the negroes called him Mr. Sander. When pappy got free he come and asked me to go with him, and I went along and lived with him. He had a share-cropper deal with Mr. Sander and I helped him work his patch. That place was just a little east ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... Sponge, in disgust, digging the Latchfords into his sides, as if he intended to make them meet in the middle. 'Ah, ye brute!' repeated he, giving him a hearty cropper as he put up his head after trying to ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... stumble up against—an excellent idea for a new play. Apart from that, you seem, for so intelligent a man, to have wasted a good deal of your time and to have come, what we should call in English, a cropper. I will take you into my confidence so far as to admit that I am not particularly anxious to disclose my private history, but if ever the necessity should arise I shall do so without hesitation. Until that time comes, you ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... God I had come with you then. I might have been—well, I should have been saved some bumps and a ghastly cropper at last." ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... dress, or rather want of it, being made the subject of remark. I had a nice quiet horse, who allowed me to thoroughly test my invention by falling off his back in every conceivable direction, my husband being present to prevent my voluntary fall from degenerating into a "cropper." Mr. Tautz, the well-known breeches maker of Oxford Street, witnessed these acrobatic feats, and after we had all been perfectly convinced of the absolute safety of the garment, he took it on a royalty. My skirt has now been on the market ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... effort ceased. You have had time to examine your prize in microscopic fashion. It isn't at all what you intended—but it is quite what you deserve. No one can make a lie serve for the truth—at all times and for an indefinite period. There is bound to come a cropper somewhere—usually where you least expect it. And you lied to yourself in the beginning, a passive sort of falsehood, in merely refusing to see the truth and groping for the unreal. You had to justify your race for wealth, ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... the tall girl was already drawling with consummate impudence, "that the record of past performances are all against your finishing the distance without coming a cropper in these international matrimonial hurdles. Just what is ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... cavernously hollow, he looked like a man in the last stages of consumption. Little life as Sundry Buyers showed, Nancy showed even less life. And these were bosuns!—bosuns of the fine American sailing-ship Elsinore! Never had any illusion of mine taken a more distressing cropper. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... Robert N. Scott resided for many years; while just around the corner, on Iowa Circle, in what was then a palatial home, lived Allan McLane and his only child, Anne, who married from this house John Cropper of New York. She is now a widow but lives in Washington, where she is greatly beloved. In this same general region, on the corner of N and Fourteenth Street, lived Lieutenant Commander (now Rear Admiral) and Mrs. Francis J. Higginson, and ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... own car, and am authorized to sport the Embassy insignia when on official business. I forgot to remove it before starting and that was why not a single gendarme did more than salute as we tore past. Good joke, so long as it ended well, but if we'd come a cropper on the way, there'd have been rather a row and Max would have stood for an official wigging, to say the least. Lucky for us that nothing went wrong. What's done you ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... have," was the quick reply; "so I have, an' I still keep to it. Don't you see this, my lads; when you start playing antics with me you're playing a fool's game, an' you're bound to come a cropper. Some men would ha' waited longer afore they spiled their game, but I think you've suffered enough. Now there's a lump of beef and some taters on, an' you'd better go and make a good square meal, an' next time you want to alter the ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... and there found about a dozen Gipsy men of all sizes, ages, and complexions, squatting upon peg shavings. Some of their faces looked full of intelligence and worthy of a better vocation, and others seemed as if they had had the "cropper" at work round their ears; so short was their hair that any one attempting to "pull it up by the roots" would have a difficult task, unless he set to it with his teeth. They looked to me as if several of them had worn bright ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... bad cropper. I was thrown clear of the machine, but knew nothing until I waked up, feeling like a bag of broken bones. It was night, and I saw a huge fountain of red flame and a lot of dark figures like silhouettes moving between it and me. That brought me out of my stupor. I knew ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Julien," she said, "I've told you before that you never knew me. If you had appreciated me as I deserved, when you came that cropper you wouldn't have called on me to say good-bye. You'd have left that red-headed friend of yours at home and told me that the empty place ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... born except our friend the doctor, I saw in a place called Cremorne Gardens a silly fellow of a Frenchman—present company excepted—try to fly with wings strapped to his arms. Of course he came a cropper and broke his back. I remember my dear old mother shaking her head and telling over to me ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... same paper appeared a letter from the same culprit. He ingenuously confessed that the line did not belong to Shakespeare, but to a poet whom he called Grey. Which was another cropper—or whopper. This strange and illiterate outbreak was printed by the editor with the justly scornful title, "Mr. Chesterton 'Explains'?" Any man reading the paper at breakfast saw at once the meaning of the sarcastic quotation marks. They meant, of course, "Here is a man who ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... doing—it's great," Graham said with sparkling eyes. "I've fooled some myself with the critters, when I was a youngster, down in the Argentine. If I'd had beef-blood like that to build on, I mightn't have taken the cropper I did." ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... but merely to show how we must be always casting back to those concrete foundations with which we began. Bernard Shaw, as I have said, was never national enough to be domestic; he was never a part of his past; hence when he tries to interpret tradition he comes a terrible cropper, as in this case. Bernard Shaw (I strongly suspect) began to disbelieve in Santa Claus at a discreditably early age. And by this time Santa Claus has avenged himself by taking away the key of all the prehistoric scriptures; ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... but when Hollis, out of sheer showiness, turned aside from the path to jump his horse over a fallen tree, and Miss Stevens out of bravado followed him, Sam Turner well-nigh ground his teeth, and, acting upon the impulse, he too attempted the jump. The horse got over safely, but Sam went a cropper over his head, and not being a particle hurt had to endure the good-natured laughter of the balance of them. Miss Stevens seemed as much amused as any one! He had not caught her look of fright as he fell nor of concern as he rose, nor could he estimate that her laugh was a mild form of ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... smashing yourself like this! Here I've played every old kind of ball and everything else and never broke one of my two hundred and eight blessed bones! And you just go out on lady-like roller skates and come a cropper. Fie upon you! does ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... descended from a single common parent-form, from one wild "true variety." The same is the case with the numerous and highly differing varieties of pigeons. Domestic pigeons and carrier-pigeons, turbits and cropper-pigeons, fantail pigeons and owls, tumblers and pouters, trumpeters and laughing pigeons (or Indian doves), and the rest, are all, as Darwin has convincingly proved, descendants of a single wild variety, the rock-pigeon (Columba livia). And how wonderfully various they are, not only in general ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... Captain Cropper, an old Marylander, had a restaurant that was much patronized by good livers, and in addition to the usual Southern dishes he specialized on terrapin a la Maryland, sending back to his native State for the ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... 1924), which analyzes the growth of settlement in the Potomac River valley. Histories of the Eastern Shore are numerous: Susie M. Ames, Studies of the Virginia Eastern Shore in the Seventeenth Century (Richmond, 1940), Jennings Cropper Wise, Ye Kingdome of Accawmacke, or the Eastern Shore of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century (Richmond, 1911), and Ralph T. Whitelaw, Virginia's Eastern Shore, ...
— Virginia Under Charles I And Cromwell, 1625-1660 • Wilcomb E. Washburn
... do come a cropper, it will go hard with you, old man; you can't shoot or hunt or fish off the blues, ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... steps!" Yes, he could be sure of that; I had come one cropper that day, and it was enough. We once more descended into the Barrier by broad, solid snow-steps covered with boards. Suddenly a door was opened — a sliding-door in the snow-wall — and I stood in Bjaaland's and Stubberud's premises. The place might ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... motor siren. The fresh-plowed field is a blue print, the forest maze a roll of plans and specifications. Each fence is a business barrier. Every ditch is of a competitor's making, dug craftily so that the clumsy-footed may come a cropper. All the romance is out of it, all the color, all the joy. But two things remain the same: The look in the face of the hunter as he closed in on the fox is the look in the face of him who sees the coveted contract lying ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... periodical literature are largely recruited from the failures in other professions. The bright young barrister who can't get a brief takes to literature as a calling, just as the man who has 'gone a cropper' in the army takes to the wine-trade. And what aeons of time, and what millions of money, have been wasted in ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... fist seems unclean," he said, in huge disgust. "I'd give Todd his three sovs. back if I could recall that blow. I wish I'd left the fool alone, and anyhow, it's my opinion I don't shine much in our little squabble. Todd has been playing the man since his Perry cropper, and I've been playing the cad just because he was once useful to me and I did not want to let him go." Cotton devoted the next few hours to a little honest unselfish thinking, and the result was that he came pretty near to despising himself. "I'll go and ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... went backwards, a most imperial cropper. Then he picked himself up, thrust the tip of his trunk into his mouth, sucked it as one does a cut finger, and finally, roaring in defeated rage, fled into the river, which he waded, and back upon his tracks towards his own home. Yes, off he went, Hans screaming ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... study how them people could live. They didn't give but ten dollars a month for common labor. They didn't give anything to the share cropper. They took all of it. They said he spent it, borrowed ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... got it all there in you—the immense manner. You, a nineteenth century gentleman, to do this game of Ridley Court, and paddle round the Row? Not you! You're clever, and you're crafty, and you've a way with you. But you'll come a cropper at this as sure as I shall paint two big pictures—if you'll stand to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Stobart's note to the boy in the middle of the night. The blacks laughed at the drover's question, and one of them pointed towards the troughs. "Him tummel aller same kangaroo," he said, with a grin, making movements with his body like a man being flung off a horse. "Him come down cropper, I think," and he rubbed the back of his head and made grimaces which caused the others to laugh heartily. A black-fellow is always highly amused ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... they think BOULANGER "mizzles," After all his recent "fizzles"? (Most expressive slang, the Yankee!) Pas si bete, my friends. No thank ye! Came a cropper? Very true! But I remount—my hobby's new, So's my trumpet. Rooey-too! France go softly? Pas de danger! Whilst she has her ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... the end of the street; and oh, you've no idea what an awful time I was about it; the slit was so high, an' I come down sitch a cropper ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... step, Wildeve's eye passing over his form in withering derision, as if he were no more than a heath-cropper. When the reddleman's figure could no longer be seen, Wildeve himself descended and plunged into the ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... the fool, and you'll come an awful cropper," I went on. "Not that it matters so much for you, but you've got a father and ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... year after the marriage of William York and Mary Brooks, they lived at the Old Coonrod Pile home, and William York worked as a "cropper." Securing the farm that had been given the bride, they modeled into a one-room home the corn-crib of Elijah Pile, that stood across the spring-branch and up the mountainside. It was a log crib, and they chinked ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... the cropper pigeon?" said one of the others. "Do you see how she swallows the peas? She takes too many, and the very best into the bargain!"—"Coo! coo!"—"How she puts up her top-knot, the ugly, mischievous creature!" "Coo! ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... that you came to me to make it up. And I was afraid. I tried to keep off the subject. I'd come such an awful cropper that I didn't want any more falls. But you would have it out.... And you said—don't laugh—that you'd turned me down because of Anne Alison." He stopped still and looked at her. "What ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... stream wound through the plain, which we dashed across. Just beyond was a tributary ditch, which would have been considered a fair jump in the hunting-field: both brigands took it in splendid style. The hindmost was not ten yards ahead of the leading trooper, who came a cropper; on which the brigand reined up, fired a pistol-shot into the prostrate horse and man, and was off; but the delay cost him dear. The other trooper, who was a little ahead of me, got safely over. I followed suit. In another moment he had fired his carabine into the brigand's horse, ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... hold the willow, a shooter from Wills May transform you into a hopper, And the football meadow is rife with spills, If you feel disposed for a cropper; In a rattling gallop with hound and horse You may chance to reverse the medal On the sward, with the saddle your loins across, And your hunter's loins on the saddle; In the stubbles you'll find it hard to frame A remonstrance firm, yet civil, When oft as "our mutual friend" ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... English origin. M'Intosh describes it as being "decidedly the best kidney potato grown, and an excellent cropper. Tubers sometimes seven inches in length, and three inches in breadth. It is longer in coming through the ground in spring than most other varieties, and the stems at first appear weakly; but they soon lose this appearance, and grow most vigorously. ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... very much what was the matter with Rupert, and guessed that he had "come an awful cropper" of some kind. It must certainly be an exceptional cropper to cloud his spirit. Perhaps he had lost a really large sum of money, or perhaps he—The thought of a woman came suddenly to her, she did ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... and fearless to dare. Once I thought "eugenist" "zany," Now I know better and raise high in air Bumpers Falernian, "Looking towards you." Great be the glory the future awards you, You that have given the first-born a cropper, Bay-leaves immortal encircle your topper; Though you're a scientist, you are no dry ass— I take off my hat to you, KARL, for I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... female hysterics. She heard the bell toll and ran away with the idea that it was for you, and paid you the compliment of losing her head. I came on her here when she had ridden her horse half to death and they had both come a cropper. Confound women's hysterics! I could do nothing with her. When I left her for a moment she ran away and hid herself. She is concealed somewhere on the place or has limped off on to the marsh. I ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett |
