"Loafing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you a piece of news, and to ask advice," he said; "but before doing so, I may tell you, in answer to your question, that the Sabbath here is devoted to drinking, gambling, and loafing about." ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... Mr. Landover,—cut it out," he snapped, inelegantly. "Now, listen to me. For two days you and these boon companions of yours have been loafing on the job. While the rest of us have been working like dogs, you and your friends,—you needn't look insulted, because by the looks of things they are your friends,—you've been sitting up here talking to the ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... Bourget, is among the largest and most important, and the Commandant, M. de L'Horme, is as interested as a father in his children. The yard when we arrived was full of soldiers, some about to march out and entrain for the front, others still loafing, and M. de L'Horme seemed to know each ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... their power in the present crisis to assist the government and, above all else, to help themselves by conserving food. The president of the conference said the colored people had to work harder than ever before with so many problems confronting their country. "It is no time for loafing," he said, "we must work early and late, and make our work count."—Savannah Morning ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... actually had before a cent was expended. But of course if the thing goes smash, we in the East have to stand the loss; you're losing no cash, you have nothing in it but a shoestring. Well, I'm expecting you to put your back into the job and do no loafing and pull us out of the hole you've got ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... never do," said Jack, finally; "we have too much on hand this morning to be loafing here. First we'll get the dishes out of the way, and then arrange programme for the work. By noon I expect ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... twentieth century. Every man to the age he lives in—it must be so. The old phrase, "Drunk as a sailor," meant, in most men's minds, drunk as a man-o'-war's man. I was born and brought up in a great seaport—Boston—and my earliest memories are of loafing days along the harbor front and the husky-voiced, roaring fellows coming ashore in the pulling boats from the men-o'-war; fine, rolling-gaited fellows, in from long cruises and flamingly eager to make the most of their short liberty. Great-hearted ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... religion is a "here and now" experience, intended to help people with their human worries to-day, rather than an elaborate system of golden streets, big processions, walls of jasper, and endless years of listless loafing on the shores of the River of Life! The Church has directed too much energy to the business of showing people how to die and teaching them to save their souls, forgetting that one of these carefully saved souls is after all ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... afternoon of January 2, Mrs. Holton drank a cup of bouillon at Struby's counter, informed the white-jacketed attendant that it was excellent, and crossed Main Street to Montgomery's Bank under the admiring eyes of a dozen young collegians who happened to be loafing in the drug-store. Amzi escorted his sister at once to his private room at the rear, poked the fire, buttoned his coat and ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... we're too good to eat with the help but because, around 1830, the help is too busy setting up the next paper to eat with us. The dining room, which is also the library, living room, and general congregating and loafing place, is as big as the editorial room above. Originally, it was an office, at a time when a lot of Fenris Company office work was being done here. Some of the furniture is original, and some was made for us by local cabinetmakers out of native hardwood. The dining table, ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... I've gone through most of what I had. All that is left are the rents; they keep me going, after a fashion. Now that it is too late, I'm beginning to wake up; I'm getting tired of loafing. I'd like to get out and do something, but I can't; I'm too well known in Chicago, and besides, as a business man I'm certainly ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... emptiness. It would prepare me far better for to-morrow work than pondering Johnny's defections, or his grades, whether high or low, or marking silly papers with marks that are still sillier. I like Walt Whitman because he was such a sublime loafer. His loafing gave him time to grow big inside, and so, he had big elemental thoughts that were good for him and good for me when I ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... of careless loafing about Canea. I have intimated my slight experience of Turkish towns; and if the critic should think it worth while to remark that I should have seen Constantinople and Cairo, Smyrna and Salonica, before attempting to describe one, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... palace of the governor. It was of adobe, like the rest of the buildings, but the thick walls were ornately decorated with stone. It was a fortress as well as a dwelling place, and it contained many rooms. Several dozen rather ragged soldiers were loafing about the presidio when Kid Wolf reached it, for a regiment was stationed ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... so that they got on very well together, and everybody was satisfied—especially Jim, who was benefiting by Aunt Victoria's bequest to the extent of being able to keep up with the best of his bar-loafing acquaintances. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... And that wretched old fool of a husband was not man enough to fix it! Oh, no, he wasn't handy enough for that; he went at every blessed thing as if his fingers were all thumbs. And where could he be loafing tonight? Not home yet! Serve him right if she locked the house and allowed him to stay in the sheepcotes, or wherever it was he was dawdling. There now, those infernal brats were at the spinning wheel. Groa jumped ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... loafing in front of the undertaker's shop. Sometimes we were quite active. Many windows and street lamps were smashed. And we derived great joy from being pursued by the "cops"—especially by a certain fat one, for whom we made ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... the game by now. 'Twas a fine thing to snap her up in front of all the rest, and have her for his own the few weeks he was there—but he was going elsewhere now, like as not to a sweetheart at home—he had other things in view. Was he to stay on loafing about here for the sake of her? He had reason enough for bringing the thing to an end, as she herself must know; but she was grown so bold, so thoughtless of any consequence, she seemed to care for nothing. No, things had not held for so ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... from one resort of the wealthy to another—deer-stalking in Scotland, salmon-fishing in Norway, shooting in the Rockies, hunting in the Shires, yachting everywhere, and everywhere adored of a crowd of women as idle as himself—was loafing at Monte Carlo when he heard of Mr Thornycroft's death and Deb's accession to his throne. Ennui and satiety possessed the popular young man at the moment—for he was made for better things, and his ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... mountings and dress parades, five or six hours a day were consumed in company, regimental and brigade drills. The men were worked hard, and, by this time it was generally understood that learning to be a soldier was no loafing business. ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... guess, I dare say. Well, you're the best judge, and we won't say any more about that. But look here—about Mrs. S. and her scandal. I feel sure, as I said, that she's toadying to Mrs. Carnaby, and expects to make her gain out of it somehow. Her husband's a loafing, gambling fellow, and I shouldn't wonder if he gave her the skip. Most likely she'll have to live by her wits, and we know what that means in a woman of her kind. She'll be more or less dangerous to everybody that's ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... Power in silence and through work. Prayer gives you strength to "work"—the answer comes from your Larger Self—which is the Spirit of God "brooding" over all and pouring strength into all. But do not fly in the face of DEITY by expecting it to "do the work" for you while you go about loafing after offering your prayer. Nonsense. That man prays who works constantly, ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... horses came pouring around the house, and I let her hand loose—it was hard to do it, too—and then she was gone, and we rode on to the ford. We stopped when we got to the stream to let the horses have their turn at drinking, and as I sat loafing in the saddle, with my mind pretty full of what had just passed, my eyes were all over. Every cavalry officer, and especially an aide-de-camp, gets to be a sort of hawk in active service—nothing can move within ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... what sailors are, my dear sir. Let me just show you by an instance. One day in dock at home, while loafing on the forecastle head, I noticed two respectable salts come along, one a middle-aged, competent, steady man, evidently, the other a smart, youngish chap. They read the name on the bows and stopped to look at her. Says the elder man: 'Apse Family. That's the ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... officer new strength and determination, so he shut his teeth and spurred his rebellious limbs into swifter action. There was no longer any opportunity of riding the sled, even where the trail was hard, for some of the Police dogs were limping and loafing in their collars. This was indeed a race, a Marathon, a twenty-three-mile test of courage and endurance, and victory would go to him who could call into fullest response his last ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... look of that high oriel window convinces the imagination, and we enter into all the sorrows of the imprisoned dame. We conceive the burthen of the long, lack-lustre days, when she leaned her sick head against the mullions, and saw the burghers loafing in Maybole High Street, and the children at play, and ruffling gallants riding by from hunt or foray. We conceive the passion of odd moments, when the wind threw up to her some snatch of song, and her heart grew hot within her, and her eyes overflowed at the memory ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wholesale signing on was suspicious, but at the time we thought some powerful chief had removed the ban against recruiting. The morning of the fifth day our two boats went ashore as usual—one to cover the other, you know, in case of trouble. And, as usual, the fifty niggers on board were on deck, loafing, talking, smoking, and sleeping. Saxtorph and myself, along with four other sailors, were all that were left on board. The two boats were manned with Gilbert Islanders. In the one were the captain, the supercargo, and the recruiter. In the other, which was the covering boat and which ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... red-haired fellow would never pass as you will. All the American residents of Vera Cruz are already under military protection, and I am glad there are so few of them, for there are said to have been two or three assassinations. Part of the mountain men who are loafing in town just now are wild Indians, as reckless and cruel as any of your Sioux warriors on a war-path. Come along to breakfast. You won't meet the ladies this time, but I believe the senora and senorita like you a little, because you had the good taste to admire their ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... soil under cultivation. Greenfield was, therefore, in part an agricultural town and in part a lumber town. Like most small towns, it was slow-moving and uninteresting. The scenes most frequented were the loafing places. ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... might—probably would—pall after a time; and the physical exertion of "walking with the guns" in Kashmir is decidedly more of an undertaking than over a Perthshire grouse moor! Our original arrangement, before coming out to join the Smithsons, was that the time should be spent in camping, boating, "loafing," and shooting. Being perfectly ignorant of the conditions of life out here, we were unaware of the fact that it is practically impossible to combine serious shooting with any other form of amusement. In Scotland one may stalk one day, fish the next, and golf the third, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... I'm loafing about, and I very much doubt if my excellent Ma is aware that I'm out; My time I employ in attempts to annoy, and I'm not what you'd call an agreeable boy! I shoe the cats with walnut-shells; Tin ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... either of her two elder daughters. And her sons were quite frankly a trouble to her. The eldest, Sarah's junior by a year and a half, had just left Oxford suddenly and ignominiously, without a degree, and was for the most part loafing at home. The youngest, a boy of fifteen, was supposed to be delicate, and had been removed from school by his mother on that account. He too was at home, and a tutor who lodged in the village was understood to be preparing him ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... be idle now to inquire too closely into the springs of Philip's resolve to take service under a foreign flag. Perhaps the irksome state of affairs at Las Flores, where there was no mean between loafing and soldiering, was intolerable to a spirited youngster. Perhaps San Benavides, constantly riding in from the front, irritated him beyond endurance by his superior airs. Or it may be that a growing belief in Iris's determination to sacrifice herself ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... to the hole, and saw, following steadily one after the other, four of the great beasts, with the little, squat driver seated on the neck of the last; and after they had passed, loafing carelessly along as if he were too important and disdained to be driven, came the Rajah, muttering as if to himself, and walking straight up to the big stable door before going ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... sceptical, and this despite his faith in the Upper Country. Had he not, only a few days before, seen Carmack loafing with his Indians and with ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... ground. "This is from Ricker," he said, opening the other. "If you'll excuse me," and he began to read it. "Well, that is all right," he said, when he had run it through. "He can manage without me a little while longer; but a few more days like this will put an end to my loafing. I begin to feel like work, for the first time since I ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... of the business and do it well; the men are a lazy, loafing lot; very genial and sporting, fond of cock-fighting and gambling—absolutely regardless of expense or debt. Mrs. Salter is rich; if you will look round now you will see her—the little woman with the yellow fan and diamond comb; notice her blazing ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... point of blushing with shame when the thought struck us that all the time our salaries went on. Young Cole was aggrieved because, as he said, we could not enjoy any sort of fun in the evening after loafing like this all day; even the banjo lost its charm since there was nothing to prevent his strumming on it all the time between the meals. The good Paramor—he was really a most excellent fellow—became unhappy as far as was possible to his cheery nature, till one dreary day I suggested, ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... child, as a rightless slave, as a mindless automaton, and by encouraging the public (whom he protects) to regard him as a low criminal ruffian to be classed with the broad-arrowed convict, and to be excluded from places where any loafing rotten lout may go.... When would a lawyer-ridden Army Council realize that there is a trifle of significance in the fact that there are four times as many soldier suicides as there are civilian, and that the finest advertisement for ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... The carelessly tossed arms lie abroad from this in one direction, and the legs in the opposite quarter. It is a very lank and shambling figure, without elegance or much proportion, and the attitude is the last wantonness of loafing. We followed our lout up the right leg, which is a gentle and easy ascent in the general likeness of a street. World-old stone cottages crouch on either side; here and there is a more ambitious house in decay; trees wave ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... because there aren't enough of them. You meet another member of the company on the same errand and say, "I don't see much paper out," this being the technical phrase. You both agree that the advance agent must be loafing. Then you set out to see what opposition you are playing against, and emit groans on learning that "The Million Dollar Doll in Paris" is also in town, or "Harry Bulger's Girly Show" will be there the following evening, or Mack Sennett's Bathing Beauties in Person. ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... and cobwebs of unwashen years. For all the cold that snapped and bit through the stillness of the forest night, the door of the camp was thrown wide open, and from it a long sheet of light spread out across the trodden and chip-littered snow. Around the doorway crowded the rough-shirted woodsmen, loafing and smoking after their prodigious dinner of boiled pork, boiled beans, and steaming-hot molasses cake. The big box-stove behind them, which heated the camp, was wearing itself to a dull red glow; ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... pulled at Buck's heels, and who never put an ounce more of his weight against the breast-band than he was compelled to do, was swiftly and repeatedly shaken for loafing; and ere the first day was done he was pulling more than ever before in his life. The first night in camp, Joe, the sour one, was punished roundly—a thing that Spitz had never succeeded in doing. Buck simply smothered him by virtue of superior weight, and cut him up till he ceased snapping and ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... to do with the house and domestic affairs; he turns the care for them over to his wife, who is obliged to procure provisions as well as she can and cook them. The husband devotes himself to drinking, eating, smoking, loafing, and sleeping, and takes no more concern about the affairs of his family than if he had none at all. If he goes out to fish or hunt, it is rather to amuse himself than to help his wife and children.... Even the care of his cattle the poor wife, despite all ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... was loafing about in Nuremberg. Quite by accident he had met him a few days before near the fair booths on Schuett Island. His appearance was indescribable. He had tried to question him, but Daniel had disappeared. What had brought him to the city he, Jason Philip, could ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... the horses made a sudden turn, and wheeled into a wide, dusty street, that runs right along the edge of the water. It was an awful grand sight, but the waves didn't seem to have strength enough to move, only gave out a lazy sob once in a while, as if they were tired of carrying so many loafing ships about that hadn't spirit enough to ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... he was a student again, loafing along the arcades after dinner, eager for novelty, careless of draughts. Little by little he lost himself in dim reveries. His cigar never left his lips. The ash grew longer and longer yet, a lovely white ash, slightly swollen at the tip, dotted with little ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... members treated the new order of things in football as childish amusement, and unworthy of free-born Britons. "Give us," they said, "the exciting runs, the glorious tackling, the manly maul, and the beautiful dropped goal, and we will meet you a bit of the way, but not otherwise. We don't believe in loafing about the field at times, when only one or two of the side are engaged; we want to be active." "Well," said the Conquerors (one of whom had been offered a place in the Twenty in the Rugby match between Glasgow and Edinburgh), "you ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... loafing around here for? Why don't you get out and start work on a new dam? You needn't think a little thing like a busted dam is going to stop Wingate & Gray. Go on now! You know what to do. We two are the only ones who've ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... think about. They may even decide not to vote to-day at all. Miller has some strong supporters. He appeals tremendously to a certain class of labour—and that class exists, you know, Dartrey—which loves the excitement and the loafing of a strike, which feels somehow or other that benefits got in any other way than by force are less than ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of tents and shanties pitched under a hill. A number of flatboats lay in the backwater behind the bend and a quantity of ties corded along the bank indicated a loading-place, but no one seemed to be doing any loading. The few men that could be seen in the distance appeared to be loafing in the sunshine along the straggling street-way that led to the river. Stanley checked ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... school, that they get most of the losses and few of the profits of industry. They get a living wage when times are good. When times are bad they lose the one thing they've got to sell, and that's their day's work; when a loafing day is gone there's nothing to show for it, and no way to make it up. Maybe that's as it should be, but the worker can't see it, especially if the boss can still buy gasoline and tires when the plant is idle. Oh, yes, laddie, I know the working man is headstrong. ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... spectacular. But Dexter Allison's garments had always retained their insistent note. Hunter himself had sold Allison the ground upon which the stucco house stood; he had heartily agreed that it was an ideal spot for a loafing place—and the fishing was good, too! Now whenever Caleb thought of those first conferences which had preceded the sale, and recalled Allison's accentuation of the natural beauties of the spot, Caleb allowed ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... your time like this—loafing longshore, and sailing boats, and—and driving an automobile. Why! you are a regular beach comber, Mr. Tapp. It's not much of an outlook for ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... making an ass of yourself. While the other fellows have been improving themselves you have been loafing around public-houses. Good night," and Penrose ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... haunt," said he; "here is where we ramble, here is where we loaf. And Khalid once said to me, 'In loafing here, I work as hard as did the masons and hod-carriers who laboured on these pyramids.' And I believe him. For is not a book greater than a pyramid? Is not a mosque or a palace better than a tomb? An object is great in proportion to its power of resistance to ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... the same—I think not," he said slowly; then made a clumsy attempt to modify the blank refusal. "You see, though I've taken this extra leave, I don't mean to spend it in loafing. We've had our fill of that. As soon as I get to town, I shall start reading in ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... to the loafing which invariably takes place upon the occasion of the relaying of the wooden pavement. I say wooden more particularly, inasmuch as new fangled varieties of pavement, such as Concrete, Nicholson, etc., although they have their day, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... G'wan, now—faster! No loafing, Bo, or I'll wallop you!" Nor did he cease until they both paused from exhaustion. Even then he would not allow his charge to do more than regain his ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... was it to him what Larry's politics or his matrimonial intentions were? Confound Cloherty, anyway! He was a sufficiently common object of the Cluhir scene—and infernally common at that. Hardly a day that you didn't meet him loafing about the town. Larry hadn't the smallest wish to talk to Cloherty. When, some brief time before the Day of Judgment, they reached the covert, it was drawn blank, and Bill Kirby took quite a month to get the hounds out. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... there had been berries enough for the bears and for the Indians. Now that the salmon run was heralded in the Columbia by the little fish scouts, all of the scattered members of the Flathead tribe not otherwise engaged coagulated from their several loafing grounds and headed for Memloose Island to pay their annual respects to the ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... Ferry Boat First Impressions Hospitality American Hotels Bar and Barbers Bridal Chamber Paddy Waiter Feeding System Streets and Buildings Portrait Hatter Advertisements Loafing ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... away. After all, however, our Governor represented our King, and I was personally horrified, intending to correct Israel's position with a round turn, and show him that we are especially enjoined to obey "Governors and Rulers"—as better also than the sacrifice of loafing. But the Governor forbade it, quietly unpacked, put his things away, and stayed aboard. Israel subsequently cultivated the habit of remaining in bed on Sundays—thereby escaping being led into temptation, as even Governors would not be likely to ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... That was not all they did. But while resting and eating and loafing and sleeping and enjoying each other's company, both watched Operation Moon closely enough to be completely informed as to everything that ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... certainly requires explanation. Kalisch seems to think that Cain went about his work, after the interview with God, in a better frame of mind; but while he toiled hard "in the field" he became incensed at the sight of Abel loafing under a fine umbrageous tree and calmly watching his flock. Forgetting the divine admonitions, and listening only to the voice of passion, he madly killed his only brother, and made himself the first murderer. The Talmud ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... preferred the indolence of dreamers to aimless stir, easy-going pleasure to the useless toil which would have exhausted our courage and worn out the edge of our intelligence. We had analyzed social life while smoking, laughing, and loafing. But, though elaborated by such means as these, our reflections were none the less ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... A month's loafing in the Hollow. Nothing doing and nothing to think of except what was miserable enough, God knows. Then things began to shape themselves, in a manner of speaking. We didn't talk much together; but each man could ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... look as though they had caught Mickey," he muttered, with a feeling of inexpressible relief; "for, if they had, they wouldn't be loafing ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... "Well," he said, suddenly changing the subject, "talking about nerves reminds me that when the holidays are over you and I are going away on a honeymoon. After this we are to have one a year. We'll drop everything and indulge in the heaven-given luxury of loafing. You need it. Your eyes are too big and your face too pale. I don't see what has ailed me not to notice before. But right after Christmas, dear, I'm going to run away with you.... What are you thinking ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... Henry was happy or unhappy. On the one hand, to realize that Alice was so near and yet so inaccessible was a constant source of misery; yet, on the other, he could not but admit that he was having the very dickens of a time, loafing ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... of the sidelights of a carriage came round the curve of the avenue. It was a smart little landau which rattled up to the door of Briony Lodge. As it pulled up one of the loafing men at the corner dashed forward to open the door in the hope of earning a copper, but was elbowed away by another loafer who had rushed up with the same intention. A fierce quarrel broke out which was ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... had no help for himself, and at Mrs. Jones's he found his wife's brother-in-law seated in the bar of the public-house,—that everlasting resort for American loungers,—with a cigar as usual stuck in his mouth, loafing away his time as only American frequenters of such establishments know how to do. In England such a man would probably be found in such a place with a glass of some alcoholic mixture beside him, but ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... his pony in the meadow above the third cross-fence. Loafing down the slope toward the spring, he noticed the faint smoke of a fire. Farther down the line fence, he could see Collie in the distance, riding slowly toward the three live-oaks. The foreman found a convenient seat on a ledge, rolled another of his eternal ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... permit your office to be a loafing place, even for your fellow lawyers. You cannot afford to cultivate professional courtesy at the expense of the discipline of your office. It is nothing to your client that your friends find your society so charming that they seek the felicity of your conversation even in your ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... and in the waters under the earth! With what fresh delight, in keeping with the scene, we compared our favorite authors and capped each other's quotations! Rare Walt Whitman told Mr. Conway that his forte was "loafing and writing poems." Well, we loafed too, and if we did not write poems, we startled the birds, the sheep, the cattle, and stray pedestrians, by reciting them. I returned home with that pleasant feeling of fatigue which is a good ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... becomes symbolic or realistic by turn. Some of her figures are creatures of the imagination, winged and iridescent, like the 'Spirit of Hope.' Again, she paints good, honest Dutchmen, loafing about the docks. Sometimes she has recourse to poetry and quotes Emerson for a title.... If technically she is not always convincing, it is apparent that the artist is doing some thinking for herself, and her endeavors are in ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... to the Prison of Mazas, which in ordinary times would have been strongly guarded; but now, save for a few National Guards loafing about, it was deserted—the criminals all being liberated and set plundering and fighting—the ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... said Stafford to himself. "Now, what on earth am I to do? I suppose they'll spring on me—the collie, at any rate. It's no use running; I've got to stop and face it. What a confounded nuisance! nuisance! But it serves me right. I've no business to be loafing about the place." ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... you smarties who talk so much about the wonderful things you can do make yourselves receiving sets! Too lazy? Baseball and swimming and loafing around are all you think about. But leave it to the girls; Dot and I are ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... "Here, you!—loafing again, damn you!" She saw the black whip writhe and curl across the shoulders of the plough-boy. The boy crouched and snarled, and again the whip ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... up like mushrooms. Literally thousands of boys who have heretofore wasted the glorious summer time loafing on the city streets, or as disastrously at summer hotels or amusement places, are now living during the vacation time under nature's canopy of blue with only enough covering for protection from rain and wind, and absorbing through the pores of their body that vitality ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... plump feet mechanically felt for his slippers. He looked regretfully at the blanket—forever a suggestion to him of freedom and heroism. He had bought it for a camping trip which had never come off. It symbolized gorgeous loafing, gorgeous cursing, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... roofs are of red tile which look like red clay drain pipes cut in two and so laid that they overlap each other. The residences are usually built around a narrow court, and their floors are of marble, tile or stone. This court often contains plants and flowers, and it forms the loafing place of the family in ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... "What a set of loafing swine you are!" he coolly remarked. "It's not to the point that I'm no better, but if any of you feel insulted, I'll be happy to ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... love of enjoyment of a sailor after a long voyage. His ordinary life seemed to him so uninteresting, so dull, that he tried to give color and charm to it by taking as many holidays as possible, and making his work more agreeable with gambling and drinking, and going for loafing excursions about the neighborhood. Visits to wine and beer-houses and dancing-rooms were endlessly multiplied, and everything had the golden foundation which the proverb of an age of simplicity hardly attributed to honorable handicraft. Profits were squandered in drink; life ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... fearfully dull, loafing around, in this fashion, on a lonely island, yet in plain sight of the sea that we long to rove over," nodded Captain Tom Halstead of the motor ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... fire-insurance business, but as a matter of fact the tiny two-roomed frame structure that bore his painted sign was nothing more or less than a loafing place for him and his rheumatic friends, and a place in which the owner could spend the heat of the day in a position of comfort to his stiff leg—that is to say, asleep in a high-backed office chair, his feet propped upon his desk. It was here that Tom could usually be ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... they are spoken—and the man who speaks them. One man may growl, but you like him. Another may speak smoothly, but you itch to strike him. Is it not so? I am Pedro Andrada, a seringueiro who should be tapping trees instead of loafing here. But my partner and I have just come in from a long trip into the ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... moment had also fallen to the lot of Jimmy Knight on this day. Lacking the hospitality of Tony's back room, Jim had of late taken up loafing-quarters in a Seventh Avenue saloon, frequented by a coterie of parasitic young men who subsisted on the crowds which passed daily in and out of the Pennsylvania Station. On the very afternoon of the Melcher raid Jim was sitting at a table with one of these fellows, lending a willing ear to tales ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... higher and raise my pillows, do you hear, woman? I want to see what that lazy scamp of a husband of yours is about—loafing for a certainty, if he thinks no one ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... Oh, a loafing, idle lubber to him Is the sexton of the town; For sure and swift, with a guiding lift, He shovels the ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... his lap; a dirty ragged blanket covered his legs. I had found him out in Bankok through that busybody Schomberg, the hotel-keeper, who had, confidentially, directed me where to look. It appears that a sort of loafing, fuddled vagabond—a white man living amongst the natives with a Siamese woman—had considered it a great privilege to give a shelter to the last days of the famous Gentleman Brown. While he was talking to me in the wretched hovel, and, as it were, fighting for ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... me into his cabin, and with a large map of the polar regions on his table, to which he often referred, he said: 'Son, I've been hunting for a current; there's plenty of 'em in the Arctic ocean, but the one I want ain't loafing around here. You see, son, it's currents that carries these icebergs and floes south; I didn't tell you, but some days when we were in those floes, we lost as much as we gained. We worked our way north through the floe, but not on the surface of the globe; the floe ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... Toby," he went on to say, pleasantly. "'Course it'll seem like an everlastingly long time while I'm loafing here, but my heel is going to have a fair chance to get well. Then I've got that bully book, which I can enjoy if the weather gets real warm, so I won't shiver at descriptions of the terrible times they had when nearly freezing to death in the ice packs. Oh! don't ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... Norwegian woman usually carries a little more than her share of the load, and can support a husband without difficulty if he insists upon it. There is nothing so admirable in this world as a useful woman, particularly if she is married to a man inclined to leisure and loafing. In Norway and other countries of northern Europe the ballad, "I Love to See My Dear Old Mother Work," is something more than an affectionate sentiment. It has a practical significance, and is frequently found in husbands as well ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... a poet or a musician or an artist. [That's so; all abominable scamps take to some artistic pursuit as an excuse for loafing.] His fancies take hold of him very strongly. [They do—they do; "shee wheels go wound," for instance.] He has not Budgie's sublime earnestness, but he doesn't need it; the irresistible force with which he is ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... discuss those varied attainments, which one acquires in an official career, so that you also may be able in time to have some idea about matters in general; and that when by and bye you've made friends, they may not see you spending the whole day long in doing nothing than loafing in our midst, up to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... artistic legend, of which the name itself was, in the more benighted years—years of the contadina and the pifferaro—a bright evocation! Oh, the echo, on the spot, of each romantic tale! Oh, the loafing painters, so bad and so happy, the conscious models, the vague personalities! The "beautiful Capri girl" was of course not missed, though not perhaps so beautiful as in her ancient glamour, which none the ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... inhabited by coachmen, chauffeurs, gardeners, mill-hands, and degenerate Yankees. The inn is a mere barroom. Sounds of revelry and the odor of stale beer come out of it. In front are teams of burden, abandoned, for a time, by their drivers, and sundry human signs of decay loafing in the shadow of the old lindens. Among them are the seedy remnants of a once noble race. They are fettered by 'rheumatiz' and the disordered liver. They move like boats dragging their anchors. To make life tolerable their imaginations need assistance. They ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... security for their return, and this arrangement allowed Kirk no spare cash whatever. Even with all his necessities paid for, it surprised him to find how many channels remained for spending money. For instance, the most agreeable loafing spot on the ship was the smoking-room, but whenever he entered it he was invited to drink, smoke, or play cards, and as he was fond of all these diversions, it required such an effort of will to refuse that ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... companions were loafing gossips, and those who were married would tell their wives. In a very short time the rumor he meant to start would travel about the neighborhood, and there was enough truth in it to make it ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... Peter, the snake, loafing contentedly about the carpet, found himself seized by what the Encyclopaedia calls the "distensible gullet" and looked up reproachfully. The next moment he was in his bag again; and Archie, bounding silently into the bathroom, was tearing the cord ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... the Gipsies were busily engaged in singing songs and plundering, and in this work they were encouraged by the Persians as they passed through their territory. The Persians have always been friendly to these wandering, loafing Indians, for we find that during the wars of India by Timur Beg, and other monsters previous, they were harbouring 20,000 of these poor low-caste and outcast Indians; and, in fact, the same thing may be said of the other countries they ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... cushions in a punt is equally fallacious, and, while promising much, ends in a headache. Besides, the river does not always smell very nicely now that it has so long been unrelieved by rain. All through the hot day, in fact, civilized northern man finds loafing very difficult, especially as his Aryan impetuosity is always urging him to do something active. Cows in this climate are the only true lotus- eaters. Next to them in enjoyment comes the angler who approaches the river about eight ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... soon picketed. "I will go in first and see who is here, Tom. There are usually a lot of loafing Indians about these forts, and though it is safe enough to leave our traps, out on the plain, it will not do here. We must stay with them, or at any rate keep them in sight; besides, these two horses would be a temptation ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... either side, hung to the roof with carpets, or brooms, or umbrellas, plastered with advertisements, and blazing with gas. While in the street between streamed the ever-moving crowd of East London folk, jostling, chattering, loafing, doing their business or their pleasure, and made perpetually interesting, partly by their frank preoccupation with the simplest realities of life: with eating, drinking, earning, marrying, child-rearing; still more, perhaps, by the constant presence among them of that ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Herbert. 'I wouldn't go with them if they went down on their knees to me! What should I do, loafing about among a lot of disputing frog-eaters, without a word of a Christian language, and old Frank with his nose in a guide-book wanting me to look at beastly pictures and rum old cathedrals. You would be a fish out of water, too, Ida. Now Conny will take to it like a house afire, and ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dress and bring it over the head, thus partially concealing the face. Men, women and children, all in bare feet, squat in the sand or sit hunched up against the sunny side of their houses. Beyond any other Orientals I have seen, these Egyptians have the capacity for unlimited loafing under circumstances that would drive an American insane in a few hours. Flies swarm over them; passing donkeys or camels powder them with dust; the fierce sun beats down on their heads; but all these things they accept philosophically as an inevitable part of life, as ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... means nothing to me. I intend to visit my camps. I should have gone before, as no doubt the men are loafing. I am going to surprise them. They'll never expect to see me at this season of the year. The men'll want to take three days off, and I can't allow it. They always come back unfitted for work after their celebrations. They'll do nothing of ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... practically unknown. The communistic idea of homes in common, which has received so much attention of late years, was not adopted by the founders of this city, who, however, took excellent precautions to stamp out loafing, begging and other accompaniments of what may ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... the earth begins to quiver and shake under the bounding hoofs, and with another moment all the valley will wake to the ringing battle-cry. "My God!" mutters little Sanders, lunging along after his major, "why ain't I with my own instead of loafing here?" ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... her mother's voice, sternly, "thou good-for-nothing! Thou'st let the syrup burn, and the smell is all over the house. Charles, what dost thou mean by loafing indoors at this hour of the day? Go about ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... when your country's talking her great heart out for men to stand by 'er! Gawd! If I was a man—If was a man she wouldn't have to ask me twice, but before I went marching off I'd take time off to help the street cleaning department wipe up a few streets with the slackers I found loafing around under a government they were afraid to fight for. I'd show 'em. I'd show 'em if a government is good enough to live under it's good enough to ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... a craving for remorse, through moral sensuality. It was a laceration of the nerves... Defiance of common sense was too tempting. Stavrogin and a wretched, half-witted, crippled beggar! When you bit the governor's ear did you feel sensual pleasure? Did you? You idle, loafing, little ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Nature had made him what he was, and all beside was her business, and not his. I don't deny that I laughed at him, and made him wroth by telling him that his doctrine was 'the apotheosis of loafing.' But my heart went with him, and the jolly oyster too. It is very beautiful after all, that careless nymph and shepherd life of the old Greeks, and that Marquesas romance of Herman Melville's—to enjoy the simple fact of living, like a Neapolitan lazzaroni, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... where the tunnel branched, each branch forming a cul-de-sac. Here she slew swiftly several suspicious-looking little tawny beetles and one field-cricket, who put up a rare good fight for it, found loafing ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... shared the games and little amusements of her childhood. From these day-dreams she would be rudely awakened by the harsh voice of her stepmother calling to her: "Come here, my girl, and attend to the animals. I don't feed you for loafing and doing nothing." ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... be occupied in reading books, papers, letter writing, needlework, etc. Loafing or wasting time ...
— How Department Stores Are Carried On • W. B. Phillips
... Loafing under ledge and tree, Leaping over boulders, Sitting on the pasture bars, Hail-fellow with storm or stars— Three of us alive and free, ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... Negro not only at his best, but also at his worst. As I drove around with the doctor, he commented rather harshly on those of the latter class which we saw. He remarked: "You see those lazy, loafing, good-for-nothing darkies; they're not worth digging graves for; yet they are the ones who create impressions of the race for the casual observer. It's because they are always in evidence on the street corners, while the rest ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... a noble lord, and that is why they admire Abraham, and even Lazarus, because he ultimately got such an excellent place in the next world. They don't care much about Lazarus in this, because their souls have not such a natural affinity with his when he is hanging about anyone's doorstep, or loafing round street-corners with oranges to sell or a barrel-organ. Sometimes they give him the crumbs that fall from their tables, and sometimes they don't, because they are afraid he will take advantage of it to steal the spoons. Or else ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... began, "a Friday, an unlucky day,—a week, about, before 'The Conquest' sailed. It might have been two o'clock. I had eaten nothing; I had not a cent in my pockets and I was walking along the boulevards, loafing, and thinking how I could ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... from further question, helped the old man up the stairway to his bed and then returned to the barroom, in which several of the regular boarders were loafing. One or two greeted him familiarly, and it was evident that they all knew something of the capture and were curious to learn more. His answers to their questions were brief: "You'll learn all about it to-morrow," ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... we began to talk; others approached. He was from Smolensk, and had come to seek employment that he might earn his bread and taxes. "There is no work," said he: "the soldiers have taken it all away. So now I am loafing about; as true as I believe in God, I have had nothing to eat for two days." He spoke modestly, with an effort at a smile. A sbiten{4}-seller, an old soldier, stood near by. I called him up. He poured ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... only understand it, mother, as I have come to, you wouldn't mind. Here, the saloon is chiefly a loafing place for the lazy and shiftless, but in New York, it's very different. It's the poor man's club. If you could see the dark, cold, foul-aired tenements where they live, and then the bright, warm, cheerful ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... had seen good in The Rat, but no one else had. Policemen had moved him on whenever they set eyes on him, the wretched women of the slums had regarded him as they regarded his darting, thieving namesake; loafing or busy men had seen in him a young nuisance to be kicked or pushed out of the way. The Squad had not called "good" what they saw in him. They would have yelled with laughter if they had heard any one else call it so. "Goodness" was not considered ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... going to do with yourself or make of yourself?" she asked Tyrrel one evening when they were sitting together. "I do hope you'll find some kind of work. Anything is better than loafing about clubs and such ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... three fellows, tall as trees, were also loafing round. They were the three Kings: Top had turned his big jacket and blackened his face; Grendel wore a white sheet over his back and blew the horn; and Wulf had a mitre on and carried a great star with a lantern on a stick. So they dragged along the ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... worked hard enough. At least he turned out a good deal. But that was spasmodic—night and day for weeks, and then loafing for weeks more. That's how he always got ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley
... everything to degrade, the race; who choose the sunny side of the street corners in winter and the shady side in summer; who use all kinds of vulgar and indecent language, insulting ladies as they pass. It is this loafing, nomadic young class that drifts to crime, caused by idleness, evil associations, and the fact that this class does not know the value of a dollar or the enormity of a crime. These young men are millstones welded by chains around the necks of those of us who are trying ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... but he managed to get time to make engines of clay, with hemlock sticks for pipes. At seventeen he had charge of an engine, with his father for fireman. He could neither read nor write, but the engine was his teacher, and he a faithful student. While the other hands were playing games or loafing in liquor shops during the holidays, George was taking his machine to pieces, cleaning it, studying it, and making experiments in engines. When he had become famous as a great inventor of improvements in engines, those who had loafed and played called ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... cars, which, as I carefully learned beforehand from the book of the words, were a Byng-Beatty and a Tanglefoot, these being the cars for which we are what they call concessionaires. (The bat is tricky, but one picks it up loafing about garages.) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... My parents, loafing North, via Hot Springs, were delighted to see me. As soon as courtesy to my mother made it possible, I got my father aside, and told him that my real purpose in coming was to raise ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... the man who owns it," said he, "a genteel dilettante with a bank account and an easy conscience, a steam-yacht ain't in it with a camera. You see a man doing nothing but loafing around making snap-shots, and you know right away he reads up well in 'Bradstreet.' You notice these old millionaire boys—soon as they get through taking everything else in sight they go to taking photographs. People are more impressed by a kodak than they are ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... "Not loafing, Mr Frayne, sir," said the man in an injured tone, as he fixed his eyes on the rather handsome student who had entered the room, and took in at a glance his white flannels and yellow-striped blazer, from the breast-pocket of which a thick ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... occasion—for the Oracle; and, as he was an indifferent workman, the boys said he only did this so that the Oracle might keep him on. If O'Briar took things easy and did no more than the rest of us, at least one of us would be sure to get it into his head that he was loafing on us; and if he grafted harder than we did, we'd be sure to feel indignant about that too, and reckon that it was done out of nastiness or crawlsomeness, and feel a contempt for him accordingly. We found out accidentally that O'Briar ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... interrogated Rickart. "I thought it was funny you were loafing along so leisurely. Didn't you know to-day was the ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... together in a long, single line, all chained to a long heavy cable, and prepared to march. About the middle of the chain stood John Logan, now strong enough to walk. At the front were placed a few miserable, spiritless Indians, who had been found loafing about the miners's cabins—the drunkards, thieves, vagabonds of their tribe, such as all tribes have, such as we have, citizen-reader—while the rear was brought up by a boy and girl, Carrie and ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... sure that we were not Germans—to get all their friends together with pickaxes and shovels and start digging entrenchments where we showed them. It was Sunday afternoon, and all the miners were loafing about with nothing to do. The idea rapidly caught on, and soon they were hurrying off home for their tools, whilst we got hold of the best-dressed and most authoritative-looking men and showed them what we wanted done. It was scratch work, in more senses than one, as we had no time to lose and could ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... or two loafing about the schooner and swearing under his breath as he regarded the shore, where the crew was ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... right to the homestead, I was informed that there was no such sentiment. It was solely because the men were so lazy and unreliable that the perpetuity of the race was endangered. The fathers of the children were here to-day and away to-morrow. They spent their time in loafing, drinking, gambling and plotting "revolutions." The women, anchored by the love for their children, lived in the little huts on their small plantations, raising yams and bananas, and if the men became too drunken and abusive the women ordered them to leave. Among those people, in a tropical climate, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... hated "loafing." His brain and body loved activity. He would far sooner have taken a sound flogging than all the idle hours that had been forced on him to endure. To-night, particularly, time hung very heavy on his hands. He ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... sensible use of leisure, healthy both for mind and body, is by no means the least important part of education. Nor is it by any means the least pressing, or the least difficult, of school problems. "Loafing" at times that have no recognised duties assigned them, is generally a sign of slackness in work and play as well; and if we do not find occupation for thoughts and hands, the rhyme tells us who will. The devils of cruelty and uncleanness will be ready to enter ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... connects the teaching of the school with the life of the home. It makes the instruction a real and practical help instead of being merely theoretical. It affords pleasant and profitable employment to the pupils during spare moments that would otherwise be lost in idle loafing or play. ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... rules. And if the skipper or the purser comes along, and finds you loafing about in, the alley-way when you ought to be turned in, I'll get into trouble as well as yourself. Captain Forreste is a very liberal gentleman, but he puts it on a bit too thick when he asks me to run risks." But as he spoke he took out his keys, and proceeded to open his sideboard lockers—he ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... shop I nearly ran into a little man who was loafing in the doorway. He was a wizened, scrubby old fellow wearing a dirty peaked cap with a band of tarnished gold. I knew him at once for one of those guides, half tout, half bully, that infest the railway termini of all ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... side, however, stood a man who was not so busy. To put it plainly, he was loafing, with the handle of his improvised mattock supporting his weight. Clearly the two up in the air ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... a large Tartar population in Chengtu, and the Manchu quarter is one of the most picturesque parts of the city, with the charm of a dilapidated village set in untidy gardens and groves of fine trees. Loafing in the streets and doorways are tall, well-built men and women, but they had a rather down-at-heel air, for their fortunes were at a low ebb when I was in Chengtu. The military service they once rendered had been displaced by the new modern trained ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... passions and blasphemous against God. The other one, having spent a term in our Illinois State University at Champaign, married a beautiful neighbor girl and moved to Missouri. Here he lived off the money of his father's estate, practicing his early-learned habits of drinking, gambling, and loafing. He moved from State to State until, finally left in poverty, he tended bar in a saloon. While visiting with relatives in his old neighborhood a few years ago he stole a watch and some money from his own nephew, and was tried in the courts, and sentenced to the penitentiary for one year. His ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... down in the shade in front of the store and talked with the consumptive storekeeper, whose liability to hemorrhage accounted for his presence. Bill and Kink told him how they intended loafing in their cabin and resting up after the hard summer's work. They told him, with a certain insistence, that was half appeal for belief, half challenge for contradiction, how much they were going to enjoy their idleness. But the storekeeper was uninterested. He switched ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... in the course of the day at the manufacture of their rude fishing tackle, constructed chiefly of their clothing, the hooks being nothing more than a rough sort of pin bent to the right shape. This done, they spent the rest of the day in loafing and lolling about, although Paul took a half hour for the thorough exploration of the island, which presented no unusual features beyond those that he had already seen. After that he came back to ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... this sort of thing, Hal," whispered Bert, "I am afraid I was not cut out for a strenuous life. Do you think there are any Spaniards loafing around in ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... a real father. I've got a step-father; but he's worse than none, for he is loafing round most of the time, and spends all the money he can get on drink. If it wasn't for me, he'd treat mother worse than he does. How long have you been ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... a week in Paris, loafing about by day among old haunts of my childhood—a melancholy pleasure—and at night trying to "dream true" as my dream duchess had called it. Only once ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... practicing with your team this P. M., instead of loafing around here watching the scrub eleven do things." remarked Charlie Scott, one of the group. "It can't be possible that a seasoned veteran of two years' experience can pick ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... known that in all these transactions not a dollar in money changed hands. Men bought with promissory notes and sold for the same consideration. The mercantile venture was not successful. Berry was drinking and loafing, and Lincoln, who did not work as faithfully for himself as for another, was usually reading or telling stories. So when a couple of strangers, Trent by name, offered to buy out the store, the offer was accepted and more promissory ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... her head in emphatic negation. "And do you understand why? It's simply because every girl knows that the manager of her department would think he could get along without her, if he were to see her sitting down ——loafing, you know! So, she would be discharged. All it amounts to is that, after being on her feet for nine hours, the girl usually walks home, in order to save carfare. Yes, she walks, whether sick or well. Anyhow, you are generally so tired, it ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... as it was light, he could see them loafing and sleeping in the grass outside with their guns beside them. After dark their ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner |
