"Gaffer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his scientific achievement, the Senior Surgeon stood suddenly forth before her—a mere man—just like other men! Just exactly like other men? Like the sick drug-clerk? Like the new-born millionaire baby? Like the doddering old Dutch gaffer? The very delicacy of such a thought drove the blood panic-stricken from her face. It was the indelicacy of the thought that brought the blood surging back again to brow, to cheeks, to lips, even to the tips of ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... young man you had known when you were at the Training College. Then I would come boldly forward; and they would see that it could not be altered, and so you wouldn't suffer a lifelong misery by being the wife of a wretched old gaffer you don't like at all. Now, honestly; you do like me best, don't ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... domino, bungling as usual over arranging the hood because my fingers lost control of themselves at the touch of her hair, I sat down to reload it, intending to carry it with me. I had settled matters with the absent gaffer, Doley, by putting one of my guineas conspicuously on the table, and was just finishing my task when Mistress Waynflete, who had stepped to the rear window and was looking back on the scene of my recent exploit, suddenly called out, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... be shown free from sin from her birth. The same motive gives us a clue to the character of Joseph. That nothing may be wanting to give whiteness to the purity of Mary, she is implicitly contrasted with the crude rusticity and gaffer-like obstinacy of her aged husband. He is just such an old hobbling wiseacre as may be found supporting his rheumatic joints with a thick stick in any Dorsetshire village. He is an old man before he is required to ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... as there was a mouthful of his supper left, Tuvvy preserved a strict silence; but when his plate was empty, he pushed it away, and said grimly, "Gaffer's goin' to let ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... "Nay, gaffer, thou dost not escape me thus; my sister, we have yet no tidings of her, and, it may be, those followers or familiars of thine can ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... gripe by the roadside. There was a gravel pit just there, and Tom Ettles wished to take another gliff at it before he went on. But when he keeked into the pit, what should he see but a man attoppa a horse that could not get up or on: and says he, 'I think ye be at a dead-lift there, gaffer.' And wi' the word, up looks the man, and who sud it be but farmer Dykes himsel; and Tom Ettles saw him plain eneugh, and kenned the horse too for Black Captain, the farmer's aad beast, that broke his leg and was shot two years ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... was one of the ten thousand modes of swindling practised in London. Formerly it was a game in very great vogue among the macers, who congregated nightly at the 'flash houses.' One of these is described as follows:—This gaffer laughed a great deal and whistled Moore's melodies, and extracted music from a deal table with his elbow and wrist. When he hid a half-penny, and a flat cried 'head' for L10, a 'tail' was sure to turn up. One of his modes of commanding the turn-up was this: he had a half-penny ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... well, good Sheriff, and when next thou thinkest to despoil some poor prodigal, remember thy feast in Sherwood Forest. 'Ne'er buy a horse, good friend, without first looking into its mouth,' as our good gaffer Swanthold says. And so, once more, fare thee well." Then he clapped his hand to the horse's back, and off went nag and Sheriff ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... "Gaffer Fenwick? I should think so indeed! Well he might!" Then, after a moment's consideration: "He looked like my idea of Sir Richard Grenville. It's only an idea. I forget what he did. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... good Queen Bess's Days, when they eat Sir-Loins of Roast Beef for Breakfast; Peg would scuttle about to make a Toast for John, while Tom run harum scarum to draw a Jug of Ale for Margery: Gaffer Spriggins was bid thrice welcome by the 'Squire, and Gooddy Goose did not fail of a smacking Buss from his Worship while his Son and Heir did the Honours of the House: in a word, the Spirit of Generosity ran thro' the ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... was triumph enough. I held back the triumph, however, wary of overconfidence. The gaffer laughed the high cackle of age, and Kyral broke in with a sharp, angry monosyllable by which I knew that my remark had indeed been repeated, and had lost nothing in the telling. But only the line of his jaw betrayed the anger ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... your—that is, if it pleased you. But first I called, as is my wont, for porters. Now all that rabble sat in a row along a wall, and, by Baldur, when I looked, they had cleaned themselves! Whereupon an old gaffer, who has carried things once or twice for me when there has been no crowd and he has been able to come forward, lifted up his voice and asked how many men I ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... nothing to do with sport, and, indeed, from a narrative point of view, was somewhat uninteresting, but the man who alone held the one piece of information wanted was a keeper, backer, or "gaffer" of professional pedestrians, and it was through the medium of his pecuniary interest in such matters that Hewitt was enabled to ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... trip, trippity trip, and up came a Jackal. Said the Jackal to the Goat, "God bless you, Gaffer Goat, you'll be the first food that has passed my ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... Illustrated with nearly one hundred original wooden blocks and a coloured Frontispiece. Contents:—The Story of Punch and Judy: The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood: The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast: Little Red Riding Hood: Hop o' my Thumb: Cinderella and her Little Glass Slipper: Gaffer Gray: a Christmas Ditty: The Apple-Pie Alphabet: Dr. Watts's Cradle Hymn: Peter Piper's Practical Principles: A Merry New Song: The Rudiments of Grammar: The Froward Child Properly Corrected: Tom Thumb. LONDON: Field & Tuer, The ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... she spoke pleasantly to him as she paid him, and inquired about his father—a shiftless old gaffer who used, sometimes, to do garden work ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... filth-heap—Faugh! Aie, aie, aie, aie! [Greek: otototototoi], ('Stead which we blurt out, Hoighty toighty now)— And the baker and candlestick maker, and Jack and Gill, Blear'd Goody this and queasy Gaffer that, Ask the Schoolmaster, Take Schoolmaster first. He saw a gentleman purchase of a lad A stone, and pay for it rite on the square, And carry it off per saltum, jauntily Propria quae maribus, gentleman's property now (Agreeable to the law explained ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... 1793, Sechard, being fifty years old and a married man, escaped the great Requisition which swept the bulk of French workmen into the army. The old pressman was the only hand left in the printing-house; and when the master (otherwise the "gaffer") died, leaving a widow, but no children, the business seemed to be on the verge of extinction; for the solitary "bear" was quite incapable of the feat of transformation into a "monkey," and in his quality of ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... a border of a lawn apron of aunt's, read part of the xxist chapter of Exodous, & a story in the Mother's Gift." Later she jotted in her book the loan of "3 of Cousin Charles' books to read, viz.—The puzzling Cap, the female Orators & the history of Gaffer Two Shoes." Little Miss Winslow, though only eleven years of age, was a typical child of the educated class in Boston, and, according to her journal, also followed the English custom of reading aloud "with Miss Winslow, the Generous Inconstant and Sir Charles Grandison." It ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... only one—"Gaffer Will Webber," of Staverton, who served his apprenticeship with one of his ancestors, and who lived to a great age—say that he went from Staverton as a boy with his father, who took a cartload of apples from Staverton to the highroad from Brixham to Exeter, that ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... contending sects, and fortified by scriptural quotations those which they favoured. Some contests arose in the course of these debates, which might have proceeded farther than was seemly, but for the cautious interference of Major Bridgenorth. He suppressed also, in the very bud, a dispute betwixt Gaffer Hodgeson of Charnelycot and the Reverend Mr. Solsgrace, upon the tender subject of lay-preaching and lay-ministering; nor did he think it altogether prudent or decent to indulge the wishes of some ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the summit of a hill without the city, to give them a taste of camp life, intending the next day to renew the toils and perils of the field. But so it came to pass that in the night there fell a great and heavy rain, and melted away the army, so that in the morning when Gaffer Phoebus shed his first beams upon the camp, scarce a warrior remained, excepting Peter Stuyvesant ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Tower was already deserted and falling into ruins. It was state property, and, more from negligence than kindness, the authorities had allowed a poor old fellow to take up his abode there. He was quite a character, used to live completely alone, and was known in the district as Gaffer Patience. ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... straightforward tale with for hero a sensitive and enthusiastic young miner who draws his inspiration from BOB SMILLIE, loses his girl to the coal-owner's son and his life in a rescue-party. The villain, double-dyed, is not the coal-owner but his "gaffer," who favours his men as to choice of position at the coal-face in return for favours received from their wives. The chief surprise to the reader will be the difference between the status and power of the miner then and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... palings do; so that field laborers (like some insects) seem to absorb or mimic the colors of the vegetation round them and of their native soil. That is, on work-days. Sunday-best is a different matter, and in this the other gaffer was clothed. He was dressed like the crows above him, fit excepted: the reason for which was, that he was only a visitor, a revisitor to the home of his youth, and wore his Sunday (and funeral) ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... "Gaffer said he's no more orders—couldn't keep us on. The shop's shut up. Know of a job, guv'nor?" he asked, with a momentary eagerness. "I've two characters in ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... slender, pretty creature, almost as childlike in her way of speaking as if she had been no older than Dorothea or Alfred. The children listened with pleased excitement commingled with a certain awe. Gaffer Bartram had seemed as much a part of their lives as the sun or the wind or the old pollard willow. When he was strong enough he taught Alfred to snare rabbits and catch moles; when rheumatism crippled him he sat by the door making baskets ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... know what the diggins the squire did it for, Gaffer Solomons?" asked one many-childed matron, with a baby in arms, an urchin of three years old clinging fast to her petticoat, and her hand maternally holding back a more adventurous hero of six, who had a great desire to thrust his head into one of the grisly apertures. All eyes turned to ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... noble steeds, made by nature for war, are treated. Come, thou'lt lose nothing by coming; I'll get thee a taste of my fare. I' troth, sir, I can but love you and thank you, returned the ass; I'll wait on you, good Mr. Steed. Methinks, gaffer ass, you might as well have said Sir Grandpaw Steed. O! cry mercy, good Sir Grandpaw, returned the ass; we country clowns are somewhat gross, and apt to knock words out of joint. However, an't please you, I will come after your worship ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... sand-ridge that a far younger Atlantic than ours had piled up, and then, retreating, abandoned. In winter this rude domicile was bare and tenantless; but in the summer months it was usually occupied by some thriftless gammer or gaffer from the main-land, who, having stocked it with a few of the coarsest household goods, and whatever provisions came to hand, offered entertainment to such wreckers and 'soundsers' as happened to be in its vicinity. The present incumbent of the hostel ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various |
