"Duffer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... There's a duffer in your district Whose sheer cussedness is such He has neither pride nor manners— No, nor gumption, overmuch. 'Twould be great to up and tell him Where to go. But be resolved— He's no foeman to be fought with, Just ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... on mother's part," returned Malcolm loudly; his eyes were bright with excitement. "It was the loveliest thing you ever saw, Anna. The princess was a beauty, and no mistake; even Charles thought so, and he has seen princesses by the score. I am glad I went; the boys won't think me such a duffer when I tell them. Don't shake your head, Anna; you are a girl, and you don't understand how much one has to put up with from the fellows. They call me the Puritan, and ask if I wear pinafores at home. But I stopped that," and here Malcolm ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... thoroughly ashamed of himself. To be "sech a duffer" as to return that money, when by means of a little strategy he might have kept it, made him feel both humiliated and indignant. A hundred and forty dollars; When would he have a chance to get such a windfall again? Pah! he was a fool—to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... scouted the mule-skinner's person for evidence of hardware. Observing none, he said fiercely "You mutton- headed duffer!" and for the first time within the memory of the citizens of San Pasqual he had recourse to his hands. He clasped Mr. O'Rourke fondly around the neck and choked him until his eyes threatened to pop out, the while he shook O'Rourke as a terrier shakes a rat. Then, after two prodigious parting ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... be, dear. Perhaps if I also made two million dollars, and if I felt I had grown worthy of you, I might come to you and say—two and two are four—let us go into partnership. But then, you see," he went on briskly, "the odds are I may never even have two thousand. Perhaps I'm as much a duffer in music as in other things. Perhaps you'll be the only person in the world who has ever heard my music, for no one will print it, Mary Ann. Perhaps I shall be that very common thing—a complete failure—and be worse off than even ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... can't all play for the Gentlemen," said Lord Amersteth slyly. "My son Crowley only just scraped into the eleven at Harrow, and HE'S going to play. I may even come in myself at a pinch; so you won't be the only duffer, if you are one, and I shall be very glad if you will come down and help us too. You shall flog a stream before breakfast and after ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... me feel sort of glad, Miss Helen. You see, I'm not such a duffer really. I think an awful lot, and it don't come hard either. But folks have always told me I'm such a fool, that I've kind of got into the way of believing it. Now, when I saw that pine and the valley I felt sort of queer. It struck me then it was sort of mysterious. Just as though the ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... head of the herd, "yer could slap that old duffer across the face with your hat, and ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... yours is a duffer," she said sharply, pointing a very earthy trowel at the unconscious figure of the gardener, who was busy in the middle distance digging potatoes. "A man," she continued, "who calls a plain, every-day squash a vegetable marrow isn't fit to run a well-ordered truck-patch; ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... you," said he, "but I'm afraid I should show myself such a duffer. I used to be a pretty fair trout-fisher when I was a lad," he went on to say; and then it suddenly occurred to him that the offer of her companionship ought not to be received in this hesitating fashion. "But I shall be ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... Daughter. "O ma! there was such a precious guy at the ball last night, and I had no end of a lark with him. Good gracious! here comes the duffer himself." ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... climb high enough!" Phil said regretfully. He had been "a regular duffer" at climbing at school, and the bigger boys had often dragged him up a fairly tall tree and left him there, clinging helplessly to the boughs, until they were tired of jeering at him. He shivered now as he thought of it; then squared his shoulders. His grey eyes flashed; ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... know all about the will and its mysterious disappearance, so I need not recapitulate that. Well, I have been to Ireland and seen the lawyers—Burrows and Fagan. I could not make much of Burrows, who is a duffer; but Fagan has his wits about. He had never had to do with that branch of the business, but now the credit of the firm was at stake he busied himself in making searching and pertinent inquiry. A sharpish boy-clerk was certain ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... to them in a famous letter, "you have crucified my God and you want my life too; I warn you that I will not be such a duffer as He was and that I will cut off your fourteen hundred ears. Accept my boot ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... Gehenna just for wanting to get posted in the show business of old times, do you? When Pa said Dan was saved from the jaws of the lions because he prayed three times every day, and had faith, I told him that was just what the duffer that goes into the lions den in Coup's circus did because I saw him in the dressing room, when me and my chum got in for carrying water for the elephant, and he was exhorting with a girl in tights who was going to ride two horses. Pa said I was mistaken, cause they never prayed in circus, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... N. bungler; blunderer, blunderhead^; marplot, fumbler, lubber, duffer, dauber, stick; bad hand, poor hand, poor shot; butterfingers^. no conjurer, flat, muff, slow coach, looby^, lubber, swab; clod, yokel, awkward squad, blanc-bec; galoot^. land lubber; fresh water sailor, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... week on the field Burton and Done cleared close upon seven hundred pounds. By the end of the second week they had worked out their first mine, and Jim possessed eight hundred pounds. They tried another claim, and bottomed on the pipeclay. The hole was a duffer. They tried a third, and cut the wash once more. This claim was not nearly so rich as their first, but rich enough to pay handsomely, and Mike, young as he was, was too old a miner to abandon a good claim on the chance ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... quite see Davy as strong," said Jim, "though he is paying his debts. But Dick certainly is getting to be a conceited duffer. The ayes," he sighed, "seem to have it. The next question is ways and means. Old Bixby's method in St. X looks good to me. A conditional contribution—what ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... after, my other comrade was badly wounded, and I lay down and hid the whole day till dark, when I got back to the laager." This would go to prove that, comparing him with the Boer, the British infantry soldier is not such a duffer with his weapon as some of those in authority were in ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... broke out again. "I'll go t'ump hell outa deh mug what did her deh harm. I'll kill 'im! He t'inks he kin scrap, but when he gits me a-chasin' 'im he'll fin' out where he's wrong, deh damned duffer. I'll wipe up deh ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... shell, and what the officer didn't say to Hambone for trotting, which was a violation of orders, would not be worth repeating. He bellowed at him to go and search for it, and with wicked delight we watched the duffer going back over the route, peering from side to side of the road ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... "'You know what a duffer I am on a horse, Governor,' he says. 'Well, I want to try for the Melford Cup. I'd like to build a course on the place, and school myself under ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... his head. "Just clean cleared out, that's all. Pretty hard luck, I call it. Just at the end of things too—when he had a right to expect the fellows home. Pretty tough luck. I wish I could find the poor old duffer and do ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... weary, faint, and in low spirits. The events of the past days seemed to fit themselves to the strain, till his brow wrinkled up, then grew full of knots, and he angrily muttered the word "Muff!" A few moments later he ejaculated "Duffer!" and then twisted himself suddenly round to look up at the open window from which, mingled with the loud conversation and rattle of plates, the ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... safety. The gipsy cant is the remnant of a pure and ancient language; we all occasionally use terms taken from this remarkable tongue, and, when we speak of a "cad," or "making a mull," or "bosh," or "shindy," or "cadger" or "bamboozling," or "mug," or "duffer," or "tool," or "queer," or "maunder," or "loafer," or "bung," we are using pure gipsy. No distinct mental process, no process of corruption, is made manifest by the use of these terms; we simply have picked them up unconsciously, and we continue to utter them in the course ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... being detected, he put a bold face on it, stepped on the deck and slammed the door behind him. Lady Victoria was somewhat surprised to see him tread the slippery deck with perfect confidence and ease, for she thought he was something of a "duffer." But Barker knew how to do most things more or less, and he managed to bow and take off his sou'wester with considerable grace in spite of the rolling. Having obtained permission to smoke, he lighted a cigar, crooked one booted ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... Anthony threw back. "It's let to a duffer, of course. None but a duffer would be duffer enough to ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... thankful for. One likes novelty, especially if it's feminine. Well, I'm out for the sole purpose of saving a million or so for old Wharton, and to save as much of her reputation as I can besides. With the proof in hand the old duffer can scare her out of any claim against his bank account, and she shall have the absolute promise of 'no exposure' in return. Isn't it lovely? Well, here's Albany. Now for the dinky road up to Fossingford ...
— The Purple Parasol • George Barr McCutcheon
... 'Duffer, Cis!' cried Hilary, contemptuously, for Cecily had appointed herself professional peacemaker to the family, and her efforts were about as successful as ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... halted in its tracks, wheeled toward Bradley and then back again toward Tippet. Again the former's rifle spit angrily, and the bear turned again in his direction. Bradley shouted loudly. "Come on, you behemoth of Holy Writ!" he cried. "Come on, you duffer! Can't waste ammunition." And as he saw the bear apparently upon the verge of deciding to charge him, he encouraged the idea by backing rapidly away, knowing that an angry beast will more often charge one who moves ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... absence of the most natural instinct of self-protection. The pinnated grouse, sage grouse, Bob White quail and ptarmigan exercise but little keen reason in self-protection. They are easy marks,—the joy of the pot-hunter and the delight of the duffer "sportsman." ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... laughed, or she could have cried, but she did neither. She sensed in some way the fact that to her father this experience was a positive ordeal. So she just slipped her arm through his and whispered, "Of course you'll do, you silly old duffer," and tripped down the stairs by the side of his ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... moment. Don't despise me. I have it. I'll, yes—I'll do it—I'll break into his desk. There's no help for it. I know the drawer where he keeps his plunder, and I can buy a chisel on my way home. He will be terribly upset, but, you know, the dear old duffer really loves me. He'll have to get over it—and I, too. Kirylo, my dear soul, if you can only wait for a few hours-till this evening—I shall steal all the blessed lot I can lay my hands on! You doubt me! Why? You've ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... duffer I am to be sure!" I said to myself. "If I begin to get notions like this in my head there is no knowing where I may end. As if any girl would ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... can assure you, is a particular instance of the general assertion. Were I not of a profoundly indolent, restless, adventurous nature, and horribly averse to writing, I would make a great book of this and live honoured by every profound duffer ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... cattle if they didn't get out of her way. They say dogs and horses are all honest, and it's only us as teaches 'em to do wrong. My notion's they're a deal like ourselves, and some of 'em fancies the square racket dull and safe, while some takes a deal kindlier to the other. Anyhow, no cattle-duffer in the colonies could have had a better pair of mates than old Sally and Crib, if the devil himself had broken 'em in special ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... my mind. In case I became satisfied that the two teams were pretty evenly matched, I had a little plan through which I felt confident I could make it a dead sure thing for Barville. I was not off my base, either, and it would have worked out charmingly if that big duffer, Lander, hadn't dipped in and messed it ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... New Edition The Confessions of a Duffer A Border Boyhood Loch Awe Loch-Fishing Loch Leven The Bloody Doctor The Lady or the Salmon? A Tweedside Sketch The Double Alibi The ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... he might have gone safely by the path, for one bullock was saying to another: "There's that little duffer going all that long way out of his course just for fear of us. What do you say to trotting down to the gate and giving him ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... good! that's little Duffer, I know! We've seen him before! Wouldn't mind giving him a chase to-day, just for ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... the only one as would come at the price. 'Tain't big wages; but I'm seein' loife. Lor', I come down here with Madame and Mounseer a fortnight ago, and Monte Carlo ain't got many secrets from me. I was a duffer, though, at first. When I 'eerd all them shots poppin' off every few minutes, up by the Casino, I used to think 'twas the suicides a shooting theirselves all over the place, for before I left 'ome, I 'ad a warnin' from my young man that was the kind of goin's on they 'ad ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... is still an abundance of material to justify the belief that the first naval authority of his time was the target of snobs, and that, but for his strong personality and the fact that he was always ready to fight them in the open, he would have been superseded, and a gallant duffer might have taken his place, to the detriment of our imperial interests. It is a dangerous experiment to put a man into high office if he has not the instinct of judging the calibre of other men. This applies to every department of life nowadays. ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... and excel, at Lord's, on the river, on the Moors, in the forests, in Society, on the Links, bitter personal experience and the remarks of candid friends, tell me that the doom has come upon me. I am "an all-round Duffer," as my youngest nephew, aetat. XI., freely informed me, when I served twice out of court (once into the conservatory, the other time through the study window). I was a Duffer at marbles, also at tops, and my personal efforts in these kinds were constantly ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... to think Santa a pretty jolly old duffer, who made lots of sport for the infants, but I'm ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... ill with playing out of doors and having fun,' returned Tricksy scornfully; 'I'm not such a duffer, Marjorie.' ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... jargon means. From Aristotle to William James, I have dipped into quite a lot of them—Descartes, Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer (the thrice besotted Teutonic ass who said that women weren't beautiful), for I hate to be thought an ignorant duffer—and I have never come across in them anything worth knowing, thinking, or doing that I was not taught at my mother's knee. And as for her, dear, simple soul, if you had asked her what was the Categorical Imperative (having explained beforehand the meaning ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... "copy, declined with thanks," Of novels returned in endless ranks, And thousands more, I suffer. The only line to fitly grace My humble tomb, when I've run my race, Is, "Reader, this is the resting-place Of an unsuccessful duffer." ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... happened—but I should have known more what the world was like, I should have depended more upon other people, I should have made friends. As it was, I left school entirely innocent, very solitary, very modest, thinking myself a complete duffer, and everyone else a beast. It got a little better at the end of my time, and I had a companion or two—but I never dreamed of telling anyone what I was really ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 'hands,' I am told. Certainly, whenever I take up the rudder-lines to put his head for any particular course the brute takes it as a personal affront, and begins to fret, go sideways, and bore and all but tell me what a duffer he thinks me. There's my cousin Kate, who will spoon with me by the hour in a greenhouse, and dance as often as I like to ask her, but at the cover-side she is so ashamed of me she shuns me like the plague; and then, of course, next ball it is, 'Dear Harry, do introduce me to Major Rattletrap,' ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... friends, with whom I habitually associated, much behind him in this respect. Even during this Junior year he was offered the post of secretary to our Ambassador at Vienna. From him and the others I acquired a second-hand knowledge of life, which was sufficient to keep me from being regarded as a duffer or utterly "green," though in all such "life" I was practically as innocent as a young nun. Now, whatever I heard, as well as read, I always turned over and over in my mind, thoroughly digesting it to a most ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... not all exactly like Levick," said Philip, who was a little ashamed of himself for having frightened his little brother; "but I was only joking when I said that about the policeman in Borsham, Dan. What a little duffer you are!" ...
— The Gap in the Fence • Frederica J. Turle
... 'cold feet' a few days after we left New York, and wrote to his friends to get his discharge," said "Bill." "Got it and quit two weeks after we left New York, the duffer," added "Hay." ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... first day of December, 1881, there had been a gold robbery, and the robbers had got completely away. They had been followed, and subsequently a man had been killed in the Grampians who had been identified as John Bradby, a noted sheep and cattle-duffer. When dying he refused to tell who his pals were, and had in the same breath stated that the police would never find the gold. That in itself was conclusive, yet the additional fact remained that the whereabouts of the gold was still as big a mystery as ever it had ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... you young duffer,' said Oswald, who could now smell the coffee. 'All that isn't History it's Humbug. Come on ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... to horses generally. The riding capacities of the Australians are well known. Nearly every one born in the colonies learns to ride as a boy, and not to be able to ride is to write yourself down a duffer. Horseflesh is so marvelously cheap, that it is not taken so much care of as at home. In outward appearance, the Australian horse has not so much to recommend him as a rule, but his powers of endurance rival those fabled of the Arabian. A grass-fed horse has been known to go as ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... "Only in a translation." Yet there was a certain falseness in his humility, for he was proud of having read the work. What sort of a duffer would he have appeared had he been ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Behind him a dog yelped with pain, and above the noise someone shouted: "Here, you kids, let up on that! Shame on you! Let him alone! Call off your dogs, there! Poor little duffer, let him ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... solemnly. "Granny Cronk used to talk about him. He's the Man what's a sleepin' in the grave with the kid with the same name as that bright-eyed duffer who don't ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... took out his cigarettes. "What do you take me for, you old duffer? Think I should commit myself at this stage? An old hand like ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... eloquence surpasses the opening and the closing paragraphs of this great work, nor—with some naive and almost childish passages of humour omitted—a richer, terser, purer, or more perfect style than that of the whole narrative. Nowadays, the fashion in criticism has changed, and the feeblest duffer amongst us receives welcome ten times more enthusiastic and praise less measured than was bestowed upon 'The Cloister and the Hearth' when it first saw the light. Think only for a moment—think what would happen if such a book ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... he resumed, "so that was the way you worked it. Wouldn't that make the doctor mad, though—what was the old duffer's name, anyway? You did tell me, but I've got such a poor memory—now, yours is good, I'll ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... figures, and with the very domestic tale of Little Billee's affair of the heart, proves our greatest stumbling-block when we are invited to follow the machinations of the superlative Svengali. That the story of Svengali and of Trilby's voice is a good story only a duffer would deny. So is Gautier's La Morte Amoureuse; perhaps the best story of its kind ever written. But suppose Thackeray had taken La Morte Amoureuse and tried to ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... duffer pays fare," said the other. "There'll be a freight along pretty soon, and she stops at the water tank just below here. ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... out-door amusement is considered an interminable bore, the game of Football has, of course, no charm. There is too much hard work for him, and the training required to put one in condition, fraught with all that is called self-denial, he could never endure. The musty old duffer, too, looks upon the game in the light of a deadly sin, which can never be associated in his mind with anything short of idiocy and the most virulent fanaticism. To some of his young men he remarks—"And you call that a grand game, running about a ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... that ol' duffer," he went on, as he pointed at the stern features of grandpa Smead. "Wouldn't ye think he'd smile now an' then. Maybe he'll cheer up after I've ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... night only Dick had assumed the role of Moonlighter Ryan, a notorious Queensland cattle duffer, recently hanged for his part in a disputation with a member of the mounted police. The dispute ended with the death of the policeman, who succumbed to injuries received. As Moonlighter Dick was characteristically remorseless, his courage and cunning were understood ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... Jem Mace tort me dis trick w'en I sparred wid him in Liverpool. He says ter me, says he: 'Buster, ye're a boid, dat's wot ye are. If you knowed der trick of breakin' a bloke's wrist dere ain't no duffer in der woild dat can do yer. I'll show yer der crack fer sixty pound.' He wouldn't come down a little bit, an' I paid him wot he asked. Since dat time I've knocked roun' all over der woild, an' it's saved me life fife times. Dat was a cheap trick wot I got from old Jem, dat were. ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... all that, though of course he is the first in the world for that and everything else; it's the sense, the heart that he puts into it. In that adagio—well, I played it to you once, like the cheeky little duffer I was, and felt pleased as Punch with myself, and no end cocked up because you liked it. Hilda, I ought to have been taken out and shot for daring to touch it! When the maestro (they call him maestro here, so you mustn't think me Frenchified), when he played it, the world seemed ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... gentleman had finished his story and leant back in his chair. Both the matter and the manner of his narration had, as time went on, impressed me favourably. He was an old duffer and pedant, but behind these things he was a country-bred man and gentleman, and had showed courage and a sporting instinct in the hour of desperation. He had told his story with many quaint formalities of diction, but also with a very ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... short of men on the farm, and I took hold. I'm glad of the chance, for I get precious little exercise since I left college. You came from East Branch by morning stage, I suppose? Oh, is that your trunk dumped out in the road? What a duffer I was not to know. Wait a minute—I'll bring it in," and he sprang down ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... speaks mighty well for you," he cried enthusiastically. His whimsical smile returned and the points of his little moustache went up once more. "Just think of waiting for a golden wedding anniversary with a duffer like me! By Jove, I can see the horror of that myself. You just couldn't do it. I get your idea perfectly, Anne. Would it interest you if I were to promise to be extremely reckless with my life? You see, I'm always taking ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... a pedestal. They think that they lose dignity if they are not able to answer every question that a child puts to them. One result is that the child develops a dangerous inferiority complex. I knew one boy who was a duffer at mathematics. His weakness was due to the inferiority he felt when he saw the learned mathematical master juggle with figures as easily as a conjurer juggles with billiard balls. The little chap lost all ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... Grigsby severely, "you are a duffer. I see the solution at a glance. Here you are! These two ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... been looking for you everywhere! How many dances can you give me? I've kept my programme as free as I could till I found you. I thought the pixies must have spirited you away! What did you say? I ought to ask Gwen? It isn't necessary in the least. You know I'm a duffer at it, and I should probably tread on her toes and she'd hate me for evermore. May I have ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... flag? This is awful! Couldn't you have let me know? What a duffer you are! I would have sacrificed my life to get that flag! I wouldn't have stood their nonsense like I did had I thought that was our flag. I would have fought them till my last breath. Why—why didn't you ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... Tenor had accomplished his mandate, his good humour returned, and he began to beam again. "What a duffer you are!" he said, taking the lid off the dish he held in his hand. "You have no imagination. You never lifted a dish cover. Why, I've found a dozen eggs—fresh, for I broke one into a cup to see; and here are a whole lot of ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... him fast by either shoulder, at arm's length, and shaking a reproving head at his friend. "You big duffer!" he said. "Did you think for a minute I'd let you throw ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... Mountstuart (whom I've nicknamed "Stewey") remembered that there was a ball going on, and that he was the host. So he and the other duffer pottered away, leaving the coast clear and the door wide open. It was just my luck (which is always bad and always has been) that a pair of flirting idiots, for whom the conservatory, or our "den," or the stairs, wasn't secluded enough, must needs be prying about and spy that open door before ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... there, you old duffer," said he, looking at me in a stupid, expressionless sort of a way, "you are not hurt yet. I'll give you something to cry about if you don't quit making such a fuss over nothing. You're the ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... bottle outside Adams' bar, he took up a friend's pistol and hit it plumb in the centre at twenty-four paces. There were few things he took up that he could not make a show at apparently, except gold-digging, and at that he was the veriest duffer alive. It was pitiful to see the little canvas bag, with his name printed across it, lying placid and empty upon the shelf at Woburn's store, while all the other bags were increasing daily, and some had assumed quite a portly rotundity of form, for the weeks were slipping by, and ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... it's clear if you can't shoot with that drilled arm of yours you can't play the concertina. Wish I could knock a tune out of the thing, Leash, for your sake—enough to make a Boer put his head up. But I'm a duffer at musical instruments—always was. What do you say, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... arms, while he was asleep, and as he began to move I took an icicle, and in the dim light of the candles, that were sitting on the table in beer botles, I drew the icicle across Pa's stummick and I said to my chum, 'Doc, I guess we had better cut open this old duffer and see if he died from inflamation of the stummick, from hard drinking, as the coroner said he did.' Pa shuddered all over when he felt the icicle going over his bare stummick, and he said, 'For God's sake, gentlemen, what does this mean? ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... win with odds of forty to one against them, these are the animals of which I was in search, not the hackneyed favourites of the Press and the Public. This, I think you will find, is usually the attitude of the Duffer, who, in my time, was known, I cannot say why, as the "Juggins." I liked to bring a little romance into my speculations. Often I have backed a horse for his name, for something curious, or literary, or classical about his name. Xanthus, or Podargus, or Phaeeton, ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... bore an uneasy resemblance to Colihan's own think-machine. Wilson, the oldest employee of General Products, had been the operator of the maintenance Brain. He had been a nice old duffer, Wilson, always ready to do Colihan a favor. Now that he had been swept out in Colihan's own purge, the Personnel Manager had to deal with ...
— The Success Machine • Henry Slesar
... Is bending and testing The wood for the wheel-rims. One piece does not please him; He takes up another And bends it with effort; 240 It suddenly straightens, And whack!—strikes his forehead. The man begins roaring, Abusing the bully, The duffer, the block-head. Another comes driving A cart full of wood-ware, As tipsy as can be; He turns it all over! The axle is broken, 250 And, trying to mend it, He smashes ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... of what they've told you, Mr. Snelling," laughed Robert Morton. "Our friends are always over-indulgent to our faults. When I begin work under you, a thing I am greatly anticipating, you will find out what a duffer I ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... gentlemen, and it don't try a fellow," would Rake say in confidential moments over purl and a penn'orth of bird's-eye, his experience in the Argentine Republic having left him with strongly aristocratic prejudices; "but when it comes to a duffer like that, that knows no better than me, what ain't a bit better than me, and what is as clumsy a duffer about a horse's plates as ever I knew, and would almost let a young 'un buck him out of his saddle—why, then ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... stupid old Senator. They told me he would be amusing, but I’ve been bored to death.’ Which reminded me of my one visit to England, when I heard a young nobleman declare that he had been to ‘such a dull dinner to meet a duffer ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... ganger, the Wild Hunter, the spooky old critter, has been seen agin. i wuz on the top of the painted Butte yesterday squinten one i in the valley look'n for elk and look'n up with tother i for Big horn on the mountain, when i staged the old duffer snoop'en along in one of the parks an' he had the same long hair and long rifle he uster have. He sure is a ghost or else he's a nut or an old timer gone locoed. He sends the chills down my backbone every time i sots my ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... by a graceful fiction, as all unskilled in the art. An instance of similar modesty is found in Mr. Andrew Lang, who entitles the first chapter of his delightful ANGLING SKETCHES (without which no fisherman's library is complete), "Confessions of a Duffer." This an engaging liberty which no one ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... the outer office. "I was sane when I came in here, but the eyes of the girl outside—oh, yow, them eyes! I must be introduced to her. And you're scolding me for coming around here in broad daylight. Why, you duffer, if I come at night, d'ye suppose I'd ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... is too rediklus for anythink. Look at the kiddish kick-up along o' the visit of the Hempress! Why, if we 'ad that duffer, DEROULEDE, on Newmarket 'Eath, we should just duck him in a 'orsepond, like a copped Welsher. Here they washup him, or else knuckle under to him, like a skeery Coster's missus when her old man's on the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... pulling her round. 'Look at that! Well, if you're so cross you needn't, but you must be a duffer if you don't care to see what's coming ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... arm and knee; if trouble came he'd quickly shin up the nearest tree. No hale man ever loves him; he stirs the sportsman's wrath; the whole world kicks and shoves him and shoos him from the path. For who can love a duffer so pallid, weak and thin, who seems resigned to suffer and let folks rub it in? Yet though he's down to zero in fellow-men's esteem, this fellow is a hero and that's no winter dream. Year after year he's toiling, as toiled the slaves of Rome, to keep the pot a-boiling in his old mother's home. ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... the megaphone asked for me, and when I requested the name of 'the party speaking,' as Clarke says, it replied with an oily chuckle, exactly like the old duffer, 'It's old Loggy.'" ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... been a very second-rate helmsman while alive, but now he was dead he might have become a first-class temptation, and possibly cause some startling trouble. Besides, I was anxious to take the wheel, the man in pink pyjamas showing himself a hopeless duffer ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... words," went on the Vere calmly. "Eat 'em up with sauce for dinner. The 'admired actress well known at the Brilliant,' has nothing to do with the Bruce-Errington man,—not she! He's a duffer, a regular stiff one—no go about him anyhow. And what the deuce do you mean by calling me an offending dama. Keep your oaths to yourself, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... have had half a chance—" began Barton, and then didn't know at all how to finish it. "Why, you're so plucky—and so odd—and so interesting!" he began all over again. "Oh, of course, I'm an awful duffer and all that! But if we'd had half a chance, I say, you and I would have been great ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... means thorough. There is no record of his having distinguished himself academically in the slightest degree. It is related of him, on the contrary, that he was such a duffer at classics as to be incapable of grasping the rule that 'ut' should be followed by the subjunctive mood. The following account of Disraeli's schooldays, given by one of his school-fellows, is ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... from the editor of the 'Sunday Illustrated.' He's in a beastly bad temper, and says my last batch of illustrations isn't funny enough. The old duffer's bringing out a religious serial, and he must have humour to make ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... he. "I'm good and tired of this fake Bishop business, and if I don't jolt the old lady out of that nonsense, I'm a duffer. You can help ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... generous an allowance of bread and stuff per man, and there is a very fierce but not very efficient system of weighing and checking. A rather too generous allowance is, of course, a direct incentive to waste or stealing—as any one but our silly old duffer of a War Office would know. The checking is for quantity, which any fool can understand, rather than for quality. The test for the quality of army meat is the smell. If it doesn't smell bad, it ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... and doing formal and insignificant things. It was like hearing voices through the noise of leaves in spring. "Wawawawa—-" What did it matter? People in the audience talked to one another. "Wawawawawa—-" the thing went on. Would that grey-headed duffer never have done? Interrupting? Of course they were interrupting. "Wa, wa, wa, wa—-" But shall ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... doubt; but I believe it to be broader, deeper, more worthy of the great Demiurgus than that which pictures him telling a priest how to carve his pantaloons or sacrifice a pair of pigeons, than standing idly by with his hands under his coat-tails, while some drunken duffer beats the head of his better half with a bootjack, or a bronze brute rips the scalp from a smiling babe. If that's the kind of a hairpin who occupies the throne of Heaven, I don't blame Lucifer for raising a revolution. I would have taken a fall out of him ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... continued Brady, "and a fine-looking one too, as Dr. Cricket will testify, for on my soul I think the old duffer wants ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... Yesterday, for the first time, I got an inkling of who and what he is. I saw him performing an operation upon a horse, in the yard of a livery stable. He is a VETERINARY SURGEON! He consorts with BUTCHERS! Put that and that together, Mr. PUNCHINELLO, and see what you can make of it. And the duffer always eats mutton, too, or fish. I never yet heard him call for beef. He knows all about nag, and likes it alive, but he is not to be nagged into eating it. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... honestly. He's right here, or I would," answered Ned in a low voice, as he drew his friend's soft hat forward and turned down the brim. "You're all right; and, besides, he's such an old duffer that he won't notice anything. He won't stay here, any way; he comes to see cousin Euphemia, and help her out when she gets in a tight place with Wang Kum. Wang's been cutting church lately, and most likely the doctor's come ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... briskly. "Keep your eyes sharp for footprints. Wynne must have struck off here into the Fens, it's the most direct course. He wouldn't have been such a duffer as to walk too far out of his way—if he was bent upon going there at all.... Hello! Here's the squelchy mark of a man's boot, ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... poor," said the artist, with a glance about the little room. He was thinking what a dear old duffer the man was—with his curious, impracticable philosophy of life and his big, kind ways. "You'll die poor if you don't look ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... Like anuff this man yere," pointing with his cigar to Mr. Kemble, who was listening with a deeply-troubled face, "knows 'bout me too, yet wants to ast questions. I don' keer ef I do say it, I had better times with the Johnnies that call me Yankee Blank than I ever had sence. Well, ole duffer [to Mr. Kemble], ast away and git yer load off'n yer mind. I don't like glum faces roun' en folks jes' nachelly ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... was profoundly bored by her ill-temper. Moreover she insisted on advising him about his work, looked upon it as a slight when he did not follow her precepts, and would not understand that he felt himself no longer the duffer he had been at first. Soon he forgot all about her. He was working in oils now and he was full of enthusiasm. He hoped to have something done of sufficient importance to send to the following year's Salon. Lawson was ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... cried on a cheery note, 'Well, father, how are you getting on? No worse than usual, I hope?' Then she added, regarding him with her head slightly aside, 'We must have a talk about your case. I've been going in a little for medicine lately. No doubt your country medico is a duffer. Sit down, sit down, and make yourself comfortable. I don't want to disturb any one. About teatime, isn't it, mother? Tea very weak for me, please, and a slice of lemon with it, if you have such a thing, and just a mouthful of ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... a crazy duffer had gone about over the desert for years digging wells, but at last he struck water. A few miles ahead was a well flowing like an artesian well. There would be plenty of water for every one, even the cattle. Next morning we could start ahead of ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... words that divert him as the tone in which they are called. Now and then the cry comes in a way that makes him feel he is acquitting himself well. But sometimes it sends a cold shiver down his back; the speaker might just as well have added the word "Duffer!" — there is no mistaking his tone. It is no easy matter to go straight on a surface without landmarks. Imagine an immense plain that you have to cross in thick fog; it is dead calm, and the snow lies evenly, without drifts. What would you ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... James Stuart proudly. "I was a duffer at it till she showed me what she was after. I wanted to buy brocaded silk furniture, like that in her home—while my money held out. But she would have nothing but this sort of ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... the proceeds. The first thing, then, is for each man to peg off his claim. That done, you can work the properties conjointly under the supervision of a committee, pay the gross takings into a common account, and divide the profits. In this way the owner of a duffer claim participates equally with the owner of a rich one. In other words, there is less risk of failure—I might say, no risk at all—but also much temptation. Such a scheme would be quite impossible except amongst gentlemen, but I should imagine that where men hold ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... no means a studious person; perhaps I am never so happy as when I have nothing to read. Nevertheless, I do occasionally look into books, and greatly appreciate their gentle, kindly ways. They never shut themselves up with a sound like a slap, or throw themselves at your head for a duffer, but seem silently grateful for being read, even by a stupid person, and teach you very patiently, like a ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... a bit of good," said a young doctor. "I tried and she turned me down—said she had promised the old duffer the whole dance." ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... mean the old duffer who lived up Wildcat Canyon?" demanded Penhallow. "Woman had a stroke—they found her up there dead. Their name was 'Gasca' or 'Gomez' or something ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... withdrawn to report and to receive augmentation. No one felt alarm at their absence. The inhabitants of Foss River were a self-reliant people—accustomed to look to themselves for the remedy of a grievance. Besides, Horrocks, they said, had shown himself to be a duffer—merely a tracker, a prairie-man and not the man to bring Retief to justice. Already the younger members of the settlement and district were forming themselves into a vigilance committee. The elders—those to whom the younger looked for a lead in such matters—had ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... be a little duffer." (He may have said, "a couple of little duffers .) "Who is it, and ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... that went by I knocked over two; and, in my keenness, jumped out of the stand with the FORSTER who ran to finish them off. I was immediately collared and brought back; and as far as I could make out, was taken for a lunatic, or at least for a 'duffer,' for my rash attempt to approach unarmed a wounded tusker. When we all met at the end of the day, the bag of the five guns was forty-five wild boars. The biggest - and he was a monster - fell to the rifle of the Prince, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Mr. DUFF, M.P., to be Governor of New South Wales is a "positive" good, seeing that they might have appointed "a comparative Duffer." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, March 4, 1893 • Various
... the result was that many a mishap occurred in consequence of cables fouling the anchor stock, or flukes, thereby pulling it out of the ground and causing it to drag. It was also the occasion of many bitter quarrels between master and mate. The former may have been a duffer at the manoeuvre himself, but that did not bother him now that the position had changed. Even a consciousness of the mate's knowledge of his fallibility did not qualify his hostile remarks; indeed, the recollection of it never failed ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... 'ere Kaiser's a slob, And 'is word isn't worth 'arf a bob, (If I lets Belgium suffer, I'm a blank bloomin' duffer) So 'ere goes for ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... If I get into a chest, you may depend I shall know how to get out of it. That girl in the poem was a duffer for not having made more row; and her lover was a beastly sneak for not ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... it not been for Willy Horse I should not have got the property at all. That chief with the iron toes is a shrewd old duffer. He has owned the property for some years, and all that time the Hiram Dusenbery Company has been trying, by fair means or otherwise, to buy it of him, but Old Iron-Toe put the price so high that they preferred to wait, hoping ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... dear lady!'—he turned upon her a glowing countenance—'and you fitted it exactly. You laid hands on what has proved to be your job, and Chicksands, I expect, has been telling you how marvellously you're doing it, and begging you not to let this duffer'—the Squire pointed to his leather waistcoat—'get hold of ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... honourable duffer, that if we did so the explosion would put all Port Arthur, and the fleet too, on the qui vive long before we could get at them, and thus spoil our chances of bagging the battleships?" I replied. "No, certainly not. Let the cruiser go; it is the battleships ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... not! I haven't been able to get a dollar out of the old duffer since I left college. He is icy toward me, and he says I can go it for myself and ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... words meant for his fellows, but in tones that went farther. "There'll be conflict of authority now or I'm a duffer!" ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King |
