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Cropper   Listen
noun
Cropper  n.  
1.
One that crops.
2.
A variety of pigeon with a large crop; a pouter.
3.
(Mech.) A machine for cropping, as for shearing off bolts or rod iron, or for facing cloth.
4.
A fall on one's head when riding at full speed, as in hunting; hence, a sudden failure or collapse. (Slang.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cropper" Quotes from Famous Books



... with all his heart they could get away without an upset. The ground was far from being all that might be wished; but then he had known even worse in his experience, and had never yet come a cropper. Besides, Tom would be at the helm, and that stood for a great deal. Jack hastened ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach

... him with his faint, cynical smile. "No," he said, "you certainly don't know everything, my son. You never have come a cropper in your life." ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... have," was the quick reply; "so I have, an' I still keep to it. Don't you see this, my lads; when you start playing antics with me you're playing a fool's game, an' you're bound to come a cropper. Some men would ha' waited longer afore they spiled their game, but I think you've suffered enough. Now there's a lump of beef and some taters on, an' you'd better go and make a good square meal, an' ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs

... captured your goal, and the greater effort ceased. You have had time to examine your prize in microscopic fashion. It isn't at all what you intended—but it is quite what you deserve. No one can make a lie serve for the truth—at all times and for an indefinite period. There is bound to come a cropper somewhere—usually where you least expect it. And you lied to yourself in the beginning, a passive sort of falsehood, in merely refusing to see the truth and groping for the unreal. You had to justify your race for wealth, so you said, 'Oho, I'll love a story-book ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... The blue eyes opposite were still twinkling. "In the first place, you're my good friend—my best friend. You wouldn't be seen letting me start off on a wild-goose chase like this without your guiding hand at the helm to see that I didn't come a cropper." ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter

... what you're doing—it's great," Graham said with sparkling eyes. "I've fooled some myself with the critters, when I was a youngster, down in the Argentine. If I'd had beef-blood like that to build on, I mightn't have taken the cropper I did." ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... ground small. The best o' baccy, Matt, for lunatics, which we was when we cast anchor on this island. Here, fill your pipe an' fire away. You won't notice the difference if you don't think about it. My! what a cropper you must have come down when you got ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne

... that she believed, in giving people what they wanted. As for the consequences, there was no mortal lapse or aberration that could trouble her serenity or bring a blush to her enduring candor. If you came a cropper you might be sure that Fanny's judgment of you would be pure from the superstition of morality. She herself had never swerved in affection or fidelity to Will Brocklebank. She took her excitements, lawful or otherwise, vicariously in the doomed and dedicated persons of her friends. Brocklebank ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... hadn't even time to guess wot 'ad 'appened. Got no warnin' wotsomedever. I just felt a tree-mendous shock all of a suddent that struck me motionless—as if Tom Sayers had hit me a double-handed cropper on the top o' my beak an' in the pit o' my bread-basket at one an' the same moment. Then came an 'orrible pressure as if a two-thousand-ton ship 'ad bin let down a-top o' me, an' arter ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne

... great owl, you came a cropper that time! [He and PODBURY indulge in a subdued bear-fight up the stairs, after which they enter the Upper Hall in a state of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various

... of journalistic and periodical literature are largely recruited from the failures in other professions. The bright young barrister who can't get a brief takes to literature as a calling, just as the man who has 'gone a cropper' in the army takes to the wine-trade. And what aeons of time, and what millions of money, have been wasted ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... or uprights is avoided; and as wood is dirt-cheap, the additional length caused by their diagonal construction is of no importance;—but, being all loose, they are as awkward to leap as a swing-bar, which those who have once got a cropper at, are ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... them people could live. They didn't give but ten dollars a month for common labor. They didn't give anything to the share cropper. They took all of it. They said he spent it, borrowed it, ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... regarded in the light of a continuous chain extending between the two termini, the failure of any link of which would derange the whole. But the fixed engine party was very strong at the board, and, led by Mr. Cropper, they urged the propriety of forthwith adopting the report of Messrs. Walker and Rastrick. Mr. Sandars and Mr. William Rathbone, on the other hand, desired that a fair trial should be given to the locomotive; and they with reason objected to the expenditure of the large capital ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... cowboy made a fairly graceful dive through the air, landing on his head and shoulders. The riders directly behind him were obliged to hurdle pony and rider, which they did without mishap to either. Stacy, fortunately was ahead, else he too might have come a cropper. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin

... had left him, Nidderdale sat down, thinking of it all. It occurred to him that he would 'be coming a cropper rather,' were he to marry Melmotte's daughter for her money, and then find that she had ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... order, Wild Geranium racing neck to neck with Pas de Charge; the King was all athirst to join the duello, but his owner kept him gently back, saving his pace and lifting him over the jumps as easily as a lapwing. The second fence proved a cropper to several, some awkward falls took place over it, and tailing commenced; after the third field, which was heavy plow, all knocked off but eight, and the real struggle began in sharp earnest: a good dozen, who had shown a splendid stride over the grass, being down up by the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... man to find his work. If there was no room for him in a higher work it was no excuse for his not working in a lower plane. There would be no failures, he thought, if folk were only wise. If a man came a cropper in a big way, it was because he had rushed into a work before Destiny, the invisible infallible nuncio of God, had chosen her man. Or because he was dissatisfied, ambition and ability not being equal. ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... hard about the matter," was the answer. "I hardly know what to do. I'm afraid it's only another one of Dick's hare-brained ideas, and if he goes in for it, he'll come a cropper. ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis

... lowering his voice, "I nearly came a cropper when I spoke of that Russian affair before your friend. I was thinking of— of— well, I wasn't thinking ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... devolved on me, as one of the trustees of the Liverpool Association, the gratifying office of tendering to you, at then request, a slight testimonial of their gratitude and respect. We had hoped almost to the last moment that Mrs. Cropper would have represented, on this day, the ladies with whom she has cooperated, and among whom she has taken a distinguished lead in the great work which you had the honor and the happiness to originate. But she has felt with you that the path most ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... pony will do it, Bates," cried Vixen. "I don't jump. How can I help it if papa has given me a jumping pony? If I didn't let Titmouse take a gate when he was in the humour, he'd kick like old boots, and pitch me a cropper. It's an instinct of self-preservation that makes me let him jump. And as for poor dear, pretty little mamma," continued Vixen, addressing herself to Roderick, and changing her tone to one of patronising tenderness, "if she had ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... not knowing what to do, stood still. At that instant the huge rhinoceros blundered right on to him, and getting his horn beneath his stomach gave him such a fearful dig that the buffalo was turned over on to his back, while his assailant went a most amazing cropper over his carcase. In another moment, however, the rhinoceros was up, and wheeling round to the left, crashed through the bush down-hill ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard

... slice of London's life,' said Smyth after he had given the order, crossing his left leg over the right, 'that you visitors would never find. You hear about the chaps who succeed and those who come a cropper, but these are the poor beggars who never had a chance to do either. There's genius in this room, gentlemen, but it's genius that started swimming up-stream with a millstone round ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... the swashbuckler made descended to his son, who went to Wall Street with it. There the usual cropper wiped him out, affected his health, drove him, and not in a landau either, from Madison Avenue, left him the portrait, the violin, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... I share crop? No, ma'am!" (Sharply as tho repramanding the inquirer for an undeserved insult.) "I didn't share crop, except just at first to get a start. I rented. I paid thirds and fourths. I always rented. I wasn't a share-cropper.[A] ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration

... to sit, it's my chance! You've got it all there in you—the immense manner. You, a nineteenth century gentleman, to do this game of Ridley Court, and paddle round the Row? Not you! You're clever, and you're crafty, and you've a way with you. But you'll come a cropper at this as sure as I shall paint two big pictures—if ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... man," said Thompson, "seen the hounds? This is Cropper's Gorse, I suppose?" "Noa, Sur; this be Cropper's Plantation. The Gorse be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various

... which analyzes the growth of settlement in the Potomac River valley. Histories of the Eastern Shore are numerous: Susie M. Ames, Studies of the Virginia Eastern Shore in the Seventeenth Century (Richmond, 1940), Jennings Cropper Wise, Ye Kingdome of Accawmacke, or the Eastern Shore of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century (Richmond, 1911), and Ralph T. Whitelaw, Virginia's Eastern Shore, ...
— Virginia Under Charles I And Cromwell, 1625-1660 • Wilcomb E. Washburn

... himself wake her up. After all, whatever it was, she had come to fill quite a large place in his life, as he had discovered that afternoon while scanning the sea between the squalls. Then he remembered the accounts of Berande, and the cropper that was ...
— Adventure • Jack London

... his grasp in London out of "old Brown's farm." Finally, after a long silence, Job got a letter one day, written in pencil, that betrayed the deepest depression and most utter disgust. He had "come an awful cropper from a mustang," and been laid up for three months; his money was all gone; he could get nothing to do. "I tried to get a clerkship in a 'country store' before I got my fall," he explained, "though if I have got to that I had better go back ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... you can take a cropper more gracefully at twenty than at fifty-five. However, the knee is getting on quite well—you shall see it presently—and you observe that I am giving it complete rest. But that isn't the whole of the trouble or the worst of it. It's my ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... Bold-street after the Bolds, who built the first house in it: now occupied by Mr. Dismore. Colquitt-street after the Colquitts, whose mansion was converted into the Royal Institution. Berry-street, was named after Captain Berry, who built the first house at the corner of Bold-street. Cropper-street after the Cropper family. Fazakerly-street after the Fazakerlys. Oakes-street after Captain Oakes, who died in 1808. Lydia Ann-street after Mademoiselle Lydia Ann De La Croix, who married Mr. Perry, the originator ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... it was a mean trick, and you deserve all you got. Get up, Hank. You took a lovely cropper that time. Where did you learn how to run a motorcycle?" he asked, helping the ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen

... the Stock Exchange," explained Cedric. "Clever old chap—shouldn't mind if he would give me the straight tip. I tell you what, Die," and here Cedric lit himself another cigarette, "if I come a cropper in the exam, the Stock Exchange would not be a bad place for me to make my ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... Captain Cropper, an old Marylander, had a restaurant that was much patronized by good livers, and in addition to the usual Southern dishes he specialized on terrapin a la Maryland, sending back to his native State for the famous diamond-back terrapin. His recipe ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords

... Just beyond was a tributary ditch, which would have been considered a fair jump in the hunting-field: both brigands took it in splendid style. The hindmost was not ten yards ahead of the leading trooper, who came a cropper; on which the brigand reined up, fired a pistol-shot into the prostrate horse and man, and was off; but the delay cost him dear. The other trooper, who was a little ahead of me, got safely over. I followed suit. In another ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various

... my fist straight towards his bullet head and giving him a cropper on the mouth that sent him tumbling backwards on the deck, all of a heap; ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... the iesser-known English painters who had given great promise at the time it was published but who dropped completely out of notice soon afterward because of a mistaken notion of his own importance. If Booth's memory served him right, the fellow came a cropper, so to speak, in trying to ride rough shod over public opinion, and went to the dogs. He had been painting sensibly up to that time, but suddenly went in for the most violent style of impressionism. That ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... of it," cried the excited boy. "The old daisy-cropper looks as fresh as a rose. Hurrah, boys! let us run down to the wharf, and see ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... playing the fool, and you'll come an awful cropper," I went on. "Not that it matters so much for you, but you've got a father and a mother to ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... so if there had been only one, but it didn't seem likely that both of you could have come a cropper," Knight replied. ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs

... worst of walking carefully all your days: you do come such an awful cropper when you do come one. Two women. The Jasmine lady must have been practising on his poor little heart. Heigh-ho, I wish she could do as much for me! And the ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... was very simple, Colonel. My horse was hit in the head with a round shot. I went a frightful cropper on some stones in the middle of a clump of bushes. I lay there insensible all night, and coming-to in the morning, saw that the French had advanced, and the firing on the hill over the town told me that the troops had got safely on board ship. I lay quiet all day, and ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty

... the angle formed by the cloth in contact with them. This is, of course, at the feed side; the cloth is pulled through the machine by three rollers shown distinctly on the right in Fig. 42. This view illustrates a double cropper in which both the spirals are controlled by one belt. As the cloth is pulled through, both sides of it are cropped by the two spirals.[3] When four spirals are required, the frame is much wider, and the second set of spirals is identical ...
— The Jute Industry: From Seed to Finished Cloth • T. Woodhouse and P. Kilgour

... Covent Garden, for and as an Assembly, where all persons of credit are at liberty to frequent and play at such diversions as are used at other Assemblys. And I have hired Joseph Dewberry, William Horsely, Ham Cropper, and George Sanders as my servants or managers (under me) thereof. I have given them orders to direct the management of the other inferior servants (namely): John Bright, Richard Davis, John Hill, John Vandenvoren, as box-keepers,—Gilbert Richardson, housekeeper, John Chaplain, regulator, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... Hughie," he muttered aloud, once. "I'm glad you didn't live to see it, old man. What a cropper, what a cropper!" ...
— Adventure • Jack London

... T. Cropper (lawyer from the E. Shore) driving a one-horse wagon containing his bedding and other property of his quarters. He said he had just been burnt out—at Belom's Block—and that St. Paul's Church (Episcopal) was, he thought, on fire. This I found ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... Germany, and an expert player was sent with it. It is supposed that this organ was the first ever used in Rome. Of the quality of these early organs little is known."—Answers also received from F. CROPPER, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... what is the most difficult thing in the whole world to stumble up against—an excellent idea for a new play. Apart from that, you seem, for so intelligent a man, to have wasted a good deal of your time and to have come, what we should call in English, a cropper. I will take you into my confidence so far as to admit that I am not particularly anxious to disclose my private history, but if ever the necessity should arise I shall do so without hesitation. Until that time comes, you must forgive me if I choose to preserve ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the sequel. So utterly at variance is destiny with all the little plans of men. I may perhaps mention here that very recently I had come an ugly cropper in certain business enterprises. Sitting now surrounded by all the circumstances of wealth, there is a luxury in admitting my extremity. I can admit, even, that to a certain extent my disasters were conceivably of my own making. It may be there are directions ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... close for my salvation: so close that her blue, shadowy eyes bewildered me, and her lips, red and moist, with a gleam of white teeth between, I recall, tempted me quite beyond the endurance of self-respect. I slipped, indeed, most sadly in the path, and came a shamefaced, ridiculous cropper. ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan

... how old Tommy is, but it isn't over eight, and just as noisy as ef he wasn't the oldest. And so I come here to take care of the place; but I can't stay no longer than Tuesday fortnight, as I told Sarah Ann, fur I've got to go to Betsey Cropper's then to help her with her spinnin'; and there's my own things—seven pounds of wool to spin fur Truly Mattherses people, besides two bushel baskets, easy, of carpet-rags to sew, and I want 'em done by the time Miss Jane gits her loom empty, or I'll git no weavin' done this year, and what do ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton

... it, I suppose. Poor Lola! She was an awfully good sort you know!" said Dale, "and I won't deny I was hit. That's when I came such a cropper. But I realise now how right you were. I was just caught by the senses, nothing else; and when she wrote to say it was all off between us my vanity suffered—suffered damnably, old chap. I lost the election ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... good while ago, that business, and it's just as likely as not that it was Adam whom the devil first put up to a thing or two, and Eve got it out of him—for I grant you that women are curious—and then they both came a cropper together, and it was a case of six of one and half a dozen of the other. It mostly is, I should think, in a business of ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... my poor dear," answered the landlady, relenting at the sight of Mary's obvious distress. "He's sailed, my dear—sailed in the John Cropper this very blessed morning!" ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... despite the protests of the clerk, the money would be handed over and the shop released from levy. Unfortunately, after working the game for several years, Levine came a cropper by carelessly trying it on one of the same clerks that he had victimized some time before. The clerk, being of an unusually vindictive disposition, followed the matter up. Having first arrested the man who made the false affidavit of service, he induced him to turn State's evidence ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... away, or a growl or sneer. This one, he decided, called for an angered scowl, particularly in view of the tone of voice which only brought home doubly how his planning of a full two years had come a cropper. ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... the two dates. It was evident that somewhere between April 18th and May 5th Tom had come a cropper. With a smile, half bitter, Frederick skimmed on through the correspondence: "There's a wreck on Midway Island. A fortune in it, salvage you know. Auction in two days. Cable me four thousand." The ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London

... cousin from France," and in saying this they carefully gave the impression that he had been well paid. Nobody dreamed that the money Mr. and Mrs. Grant Doran-Reeves spent in such charming ways had once belonged to Max. He was supposed to have "come a cropper" somehow, as so many young men did, and to have disappeared with everything he had, out of the country, for his country's good. When people realized that there was a secret, perhaps a disgraceful one, many were sorry for poor Grant and Josephine, mixed up in it through no fault ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... his charge, Captain Burton's smooth elephant. Now Bombay rode much after the fashion of a sailor, trusting more to balance and good-luck than skill in sticking on; and the consequence was, that with the first side-step the donkey made he came to the ground an awkward cropper, falling heavily on the small of the stock of the gun, which snapped short off, the piece being thus irredeemably damaged. At first I rated him heartily, for this was the second of Captain Burton's guns which had been damaged in my hands. I then told Bombay of the circumstances which ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... to like fast water," said Jack, "but don't let that make you careless. You can never afford to be careless even in rather easy water. If you do, you'll come a cropper sure." ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton

... much what was the matter with Rupert, and guessed that he had "come an awful cropper" of some kind. It must certainly be an exceptional cropper to cloud his spirit. Perhaps he had lost a really large sum of money, or perhaps he—The thought of a woman came suddenly to her, she did not know why. Suspicion, jealousy woke in her. She glanced sideways ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... at Penticton, B. C., is proving a regular cropper of uniform large round nuts of good flavor. This tree is a seedling from my own nursery. I do not know from what tree it grew, but it is worthy of testing for hardiness in districts north of present location as there is some evidence of hardiness. I know this tree to be a good cropper but have ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... of fools there is literally no end, but for the king of fool who is predestined to come a cropper in the field of life, and to spill other people in his own downfall, there is no rival for the Quixote. The man who is over-anxious to pay in the market of morals is the man who goes bankrupt You may be a good deal of a scoundrel and retain your ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... matter of the composition is by no means memorable, but I think I have a right to congratulate myself upon the fact that I was able at that age to manage the triple rhymes and the twelve-syllable line at the end of each stanza without coming a complete cropper. I could not do it now, even if my ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... at hand. He selected the dubious spellings that had caught his attention and ran them down one by one. "Oppresor" was wrong. "Defensless" was fearful. "Neighbor" started out brilliantly but came a cropper at the end. And that curious phrase, "Who hast"; what about that? Simon was a trifle hazy over this, so he gave the writer the benefit of the doubt. It sounded queer, though. Anyway, he had established to his satisfaction ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... cried Davie to him. "Ye'll no mak it, and ye'll come an awfu' cropper, as sure as deith." But Hughie, swaying gently back and forth, was measuring the distance of his drop. It was not a feat so very difficult, but it called for good judgment and steady nerve. A moment too soon or a moment too late in letting go, would mean a nasty fall of ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor

... horse alongside; she set her mount at a gallop, and away they went, wheeling into the swale, knee-deep in dry, silvery grasses, until the deputy fire-warden drew bridle with a side-flung caution: "Muskrats! Look out for a cropper!" ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... spirit. After all, there was a measure of truth in what the old man said, and his bark was worse than his bite. If his own boy, Pat, took it into his head to go off on some scatter-brain prank when he came of age, it would be a big trouble, or if later on he came a cropper in business— Jack waited for a convenient pause, and then deftly turned the conversation to politics, and by the time that cheese was on the table, he and his father-in-law were discussing the mysteries of the last Education Bill with the satisfaction of men who ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... a bad cropper. I was thrown clear of the machine, but knew nothing until I waked up, feeling like a bag of broken bones. It was night, and I saw a huge fountain of red flame and a lot of dark figures like silhouettes moving between it and me. That brought ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... I thought "eugenist" "zany," Now I know better and raise high in air Bumpers Falernian, "Looking towards you." Great be the glory the future awards you, You that have given the first-born a cropper, Bay-leaves immortal encircle your topper; Though you're a scientist, you are no dry ass— I take off my hat to you, KARL, for I share Your "very ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various

... fortunes just when he needs them most. Old fellows in the Antipodes, don't you know, who might really quite as well be dead as not. It's all straight enough, of course, but the funny thing is that if one hears one day that Wildred has come rather a cropper at Newmarket or the Derby, or somewhere else, the news within the month is pretty sure to be that another Johnny in Australia or elsewhere has conveniently slipped his cable and left Wildred a cool fifty thousand or so at the ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson

... Dewitt ... leased the land in question to William McIlhatton as a Cropper, who took possession of it after Huggins left it: That the Terms of the Lease were that McIlhatton should possess the Land about two or three Years, rendering hold of the Crops to be raised unto Peter Dewitt, who was to ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf

... criterion of wealth and culture at the South, did not prevail at all at the North, they unconsciously and naturally came to associate self-help with degradation, and likened the Northern farmer to the poor white "cropper." Where social rank was measured by the length of the serving train, it was not strange that the Northern self-helper should be despised and his complacent ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... land. They hired me to work around the house and I ate what the boss ate. But the general run of slaves got pickled pork, molasses, cornmeal and sometimes flour (about once a week for Sunday). The food came out of the share of the share cropper. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... pity she didn't go back before Beaufort's cropper," he repeated. "If she goes NOW, and if he fails, it will only confirm the general impression: which isn't by any means peculiar to Lefferts, ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... Danes, and its present talk of the hunt. About five o'clock on winter afternoons there is a clank of spurs in the courtyard of the old inn, and the bar is crowded with men in breeches and top-boots. As they refresh themselves there is a ceaseless hum of conversation, how so-and-so came a cropper, how another went at the brook in style, or how some poor horse got staked and was mercifully shot. A talk, in short, like that in camp after a battle, of wounds and glory. Most of these men are tenant farmers, and reference ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... lives nine miles northwest of Winnsboro, S.C., on lands of Mr. R.W. Lemmon. There is one other occupant in the four-room house, John Giles, a share cropper. The house has two fireplaces, the brick chimney being constructed in the center of the two main rooms. The other two rooms are shed rooms. Charlie ekes out a living as a day laborer on ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... him now, or he never will jump anything," Harley said to his wife, as he whirled about to gallop back to a distance. "Either I lift him over or I take a cropper." ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... "mizzles," After all his recent "fizzles"? (Most expressive slang, the Yankee!) Pas si bete, my friends. No thank ye! Came a cropper? Very true! But I remount—my hobby's new, So's my trumpet. Rooey-too! France go softly? Pas de danger! Whilst ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various

... himself face to face with a boy of ten or twelve years old. Mr. von Rambow also smiled, but fortunately it never occurred to Braesig that their amusement could mean anything but satisfaction with a well delivered speech, so he went on seriously: "And then he came a regular cropper." "I'm very sorry to hear it," said Mr. von Rambow. "Yes," he continued with a, sigh, "these are very hard times for farmers, I only hope they'll change soon. But now to business—Alick, just run ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... groaned Mr. Sponge, in disgust, digging the Latchfords into his sides, as if he intended to make them meet in the middle. 'Ah, ye brute!' repeated he, giving him a hearty cropper as he put up his head after trying ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... Jove, he has cheek! I don't know about his reputation, but he'll come a cropper if he tries that ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... didn't want me to leave her. He despised nasty Negroes he said. One of them fellows what come for me had been to Cargo's and seen me. He was the Negro man come to show Patsy's husband and his share cropper where I was at. He whooped me twice before them deer hunters. They visited him every spring and fall hunting deer but they reported him to the Freemens Bureau. They knowed he was showing off. He overtook me on ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... her niece, in a one-room annex to a two-room frame house, on the plantation of Mr. Lake Howze, six miles west of Winnsboro, S. C. Her niece's husband, Golden Byrd, is a share-cropper on Mr. Howze's place. The old lady is still spry and energetic about the cares of housekeeping and attention to the small children of her niece. She is a delightful old lady and well worth her keep in the small chores she undertakes and performs ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various

... for any such purpose; but merely to show how we must be always casting back to those concrete foundations with which we began. Bernard Shaw, as I have said, was never national enough to be domestic; he was never a part of his past; hence when he tries to interpret tradition he comes a terrible cropper, as in this case. Bernard Shaw (I strongly suspect) began to disbelieve in Santa Claus at a discreditably early age. And by this time Santa Claus has avenged himself by taking away the key of all the prehistoric scriptures; so that a noble and honourable artist flounders about ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... stirrups, shaped like shovels, dangle far below your feet. Aha! I thought so, one has fallen off. I try to pull up quickly to dismount and help you, and my bridle, which is made of worsted, like the toy reins children play with, breaks suddenly and my noble steed comes a cropper! ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... a poor, old, broken-down father quite so easily. After all, he's not a horse. You might more or less forsake him when all was going well, and yet want to stick to him through thick and thin if he came a cropper. Look at me! I go off and leave my poor old dad for a year and more at a time—because he's a saint; but if he wasn't—especially if he'd got into any such scrape as Cousin Henry's—which isn't thinkable—but if he did—I'd never leave him again. That's my temperament. It's every girl's ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... sincerity, I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with." Assurance, or by its other name, self-confidence, is only a continuing willingness to keep coming back and trying, without fear of coming a cropper, but with a care to the constant strengthening of one's own resources. The motto of Admiral Robert E. Peary: "I will find a way or make one," is not over-bold; any officer can afford to paste the words inside his own hat. But in the hard game ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... girl. My fist seems unclean," he said, in huge disgust. "I'd give Todd his three sovs. back if I could recall that blow. I wish I'd left the fool alone, and anyhow, it's my opinion I don't shine much in our little squabble. Todd has been playing the man since his Perry cropper, and I've been playing the cad just because he was once useful to me and I did not want to let him go." Cotton devoted the next few hours to a little honest unselfish thinking, and the result was that he came pretty ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson

... Colonization Society as odious there as his "Thoughts" had made it in America. The great body of the anti-slavery sentiment in Great Britain promptly condemned the spirit and object of the American Colonization Society. Such leaders as Buxton and Cropper "termed its objects diabolical;" while Zachary Macaulay, father of the historian, did not doubt that "the unchristian prejudice of color (which alone has given birth to the Colonization Society, though varnished over with other more plausible pretences, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... having a devil of a time with female hysterics. She heard the bell toll and ran away with the idea that it was for you, and paid you the compliment of losing her head. I came on her here when she had ridden her horse half to death and they had both come a cropper. Confound women's hysterics! I could do nothing with her. When I left her for a moment she ran away and hid herself. She is concealed somewhere on the place or has limped off on to the marsh. I wish some New York millionairess would ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... cropper over something or other on this road, and I'm only bruised, though the machine has suffered worse," replied the stranger, in a fresh, cheery voice. He was a good-looking fellow of about Paul's own age, and the young American's heart ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... a cropper in that slide, an' the road wud be minus a coal-heaver!" said Carson. "Wud ye luk at ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... Lilla, "don't be frightened." Why do people always use this agitating formula? "But the fact is poor Bertie has had an awful cropper. Good gracious, Cecil! don't look like that! Are you going to faint! He is not so very much hurt,—stunned ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... that decoration. The Jew with the beard, as you call him, is Herr von Lungen, the eminent hautboy-player. The three next gentlemen are Mr. Smee, of the Royal Academy (who is shaved as you perceive), and Mr. Moyes and Mr. Cropper, who are both very hairy about the chin. At the piano, singing, accompanied by Mademoiselle Lebrun, is Signor Mezzocaldo, the great barytone from Rome. Professor Quartz and Baron Hammerstein, celebrated geologists from Germany, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... come a nasty cropper, and reaped what, sooner or later, is the inevitable reward ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery

... a nipper in London, before any of you were born except our friend the doctor, I saw in a place called Cremorne Gardens a silly fellow of a Frenchman—present company excepted—try to fly with wings strapped to his arms. Of course he came a cropper and broke his back. I remember my dear old mother shaking her head and telling over to me that fine ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... fresh-plowed field is a blue print, the forest maze a roll of plans and specifications. Each fence is a business barrier. Every ditch is of a competitor's making, dug craftily so that the clumsy-footed may come a cropper. All the romance is out of it, all the color, all the joy. But two things remain the same: The look in the face of the hunter as he closed in on the fox is the look in the face of him who sees the coveted contract lying ready for the finishing stroke of his pen. And his words are those of the hunter ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber

... missed the ugly foundations of his fancy, as it were, by jumping over the soup and fish, the joint, the entree, and the sweet, and has got his lovers to the coffee, the cigar-and-liqueur stage, when, if the truth be known, all the hurdles over which the "horse of disillusion" may come a nasty cropper have been passed. So, if you be wise, sit on the side of your best-beloved until the nourishing part of your gastronomic "enfin seul" is over; and then, if you must gaze into his eyes and he into yours, move your seat round—and your evening will probably end by both of ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... where you think you know better than your boss, while it's bad business for me to tell you, keep your eye open, and maybe you can save him. Books and theories are all right, but there are times when a man comes a cropper on them. You watch, and if you think he's riding for a fall, you come skinning and tell me, not over the 'phone, come and tell me. Here, take this, it will get you to me any time, no matter where I am or what I'm ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... with negroes superstition was to get a tenant to inhabit the house nearest the barn. This cabin was in better repair and larger than the other two cabins and the hardest thing to do was to get a tenant or negro cropper to take this cabin. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... come back," remarked Barry at last, looking up abruptly from the fish he was dissecting. A shade of anxiety clouded his lazy blue eyes. "I hope she's not come a cropper down ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... tropical fruits, we now come to the papaw, one of our most wholesome and useful fruits. It is grown all along our eastern seaboard in situations that are free from frost. It comes into bearing early, and is a heavy cropper. Like the other tropical fruits already described, it does best in our warmer parts, coming to maturity earlier, and producing better fruit. In many of the Northern coastal scrubs it is often met with growing wild, and producing fruit in abundance, the seeds from which the trees have ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson

... big empire," I may have explained, "with under-trained, under-educated, poor-spirited stuff, and we shall come a cropper unless we raise our quality. I'm still Imperialist, more than ever I was. But I'm an Imperialist on a different footing. I've no great illusions left about the Superiority of the Anglo-Saxons. All that has gone. But I do think it will be a monstrous waste, a disaster ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... Francis, coming in a little apprehensively, found them flushed and laughing, and whirling wildly around to the music of a record played much too fast. Peggy, in an effort to show off heavily before Francis, came a cropper over a stool at his feet, pulling Marjorie down in her fall; both of them laughing like children as they fell, so that they could scarcely disentangle themselves, and had to be unknotted ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer

... fortunate in my application to my cousin, Mr. Rollo Russell, and to four of Sydney Smith's descendants—Mr. Sydney Holland, Mr. Holland-Hibbert of Munden, Miss Caroline Holland, and Mrs. Cropper of Ellergreen. To all these my thanks are due for interesting information, and access to valuable records. In common with all who use the Reading-Room of the British Museum, I am greatly indebted to the skill and ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... started about 2 P.M. to catch up the troops, who had started about 9 A.M. Luard had a beast of a pulling pony, and as his double bridle hadn't got a curb chain, it was about as much use as a headache, so I suggested he should let the pony rip, and promised to bury his remains if he came a cropper. He took my advice and ripped; you couldn't see his pony's heels for dust as he disappeared across the plain. We found him all right in ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon

... "What's one man agin a hull gang o' scoundrels? You'll sure come a cropper, Kiddie; take my word. As fer the boy, why, takin' him along o' you's only a added responsibility, a ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton

... of men, in my line and in others, have come a cropper in their careers, because of some woman. But I'm the first to come such a cropper on account of a woman with a white soul and the eyes of a child,—a woman I scarcely know, and who has no interest in me. But, to-night, I shall telegraph my resignation. Some saner man can take charge. There ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... get her a cocktail dress in one of the women's shops. The right dress helped, but more steaks would have helped even more. I'll bet I put five pounds on her that day. She was one hungry 'cropper. Hungry ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett

... not make is not to be too sure of the value of a nut because it is large, thin-shelled and has a fine flavor but is a poor cropper. The nut that produces a very heavy crop is the valuable nut. Thus McAllister hican and the Stabler black are worthless because of their extremely ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various

... at all," Thorndyke replied cheerily, "though very disreputable to look at. Just came a cropper in the mud, Jervis," he added, as he noted my dismayed expression. "Dinner and a clothes-brush are what I chiefly need." Nevertheless, he looked very pale and shaken when he came into the light on the landing, and he sank into his easy-chair in the limp manner of a man either ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... comparatively inexpensive—or at least much cheaper than those plans of cold storage where ice is stored in quantity over the cool room. However, any process that could be devised would probably be unprofitable to the small cropper, and the larger the business done, the less the cost per bushel. If it should be found that individual operators could not reach such an improvement on a profitable scale, why could not several of them pool their issues sufficiently to build, jointly, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various

... the same street, but on the other side of Fourteenth Street, Colonel and Mrs. Robert N. Scott resided for many years; while just around the corner, on Iowa Circle, in what was then a palatial home, lived Allan McLane and his only child, Anne, who married from this house John Cropper of New York. She is now a widow but lives in Washington, where she is greatly beloved. In this same general region, on the corner of N and Fourteenth Street, lived Lieutenant Commander (now Rear Admiral) and Mrs. Francis J. Higginson, and the latter's attractive sister, ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... you please!" said Beevor, a little stiffly; "you always were an obstinate beggar. I've had a certain amount of experience, you know, in my poor little pottering way, and I thought I might possibly have saved you a cropper or two. But if you think you can manage better alone—only don't get bolted with by one of those architectural hobbies of yours, ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... because he was familiar with this landscape of bog and hummock and pine knoll. Jack Cockrell fell into a hidden quagmire and had to be fished out by main strength. Bill Saxby was caught amidst the tenacious vines, like a bull by the horns, and old Trimble came a cropper in a patch of saw-tooth palmetto. They straggled to the nearest knoll after Blackbeard had crossed it. Then he followed a ridge which led in the direction of another of ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... can dare almost anything—when I have to. You do not seem to understand. You have come a cropper—a bad one. Left to yourselves you are all going to die here. If I am to help you to your feet, I must do it without interference. I think we shall get through: but I am not at all certain. Go and sit down and ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... of the same paper appeared a letter from the same culprit. He ingenuously confessed that the line did not belong to Shakespeare, but to a poet whom he called Grey. Which was another cropper—or whopper. This strange and illiterate outbreak was printed by the editor with the justly scornful title, "Mr. Chesterton 'Explains'?" Any man reading the paper at breakfast saw at once the meaning of the sarcastic quotation ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... billet at Coxon & Woodhouse's, of Draper's Gardens, but they were let in early in the spring through the Venezuelan loan, as no doubt you remember, and came a nasty cropper. I had been with them five years, and old Coxon gave me a ripping good testimonial when the smash came, but of course we clerks were all turned adrift, the twenty-seven of us. I tried here and tried there, but there were lots of other chaps on the same lay as myself, ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... leave. One of my officers rode him off the ball in a fierce drive for goal, and by some devilish mistake the post hadn't been sawed half-through, so when Barlow crashed into it it stood up. As he lay perfectly still after his cropper it looked as though Resident Hodson had lost his jackal. But Barlow is one of those whip-cord Englishmen that die of old age; he was in the saddle again in two days. ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... all these artificial varieties, which man has designedly produced by selection, are descended from a single common parent-form, from one wild "true variety." The same is the case with the numerous and highly differing varieties of pigeons. Domestic pigeons and carrier-pigeons, turbits and cropper-pigeons, fantail pigeons and owls, tumblers and pouters, trumpeters and laughing pigeons (or Indian doves), and the rest, are all, as Darwin has convincingly proved, descendants of a single wild variety, the rock-pigeon (Columba livia). And how wonderfully various they are, not only in general ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... sir!" quoth my father. "The man is talking largely on matters of which he can know nothing; and in five minutes (I bet you) he will come a cropper." ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... those 'eels down! Lost your stirrup, Mr. JELLY? Never mind that—feel for it, Sir. I want you to be independent of the irons. I'm going to make you ride without 'em presently. (Mr. JELLY shivers in his saddle.) Captin' CROPPER, Sir; if that Volunteer ridgment as you're goin' to be the Major of sees you like you are now, on a field-day—they'll 'ave to fall out to larf, Sir! (Mr. CROPPER devoutly wishes he had been less ingenuous ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various

... my dear chap. But it's up to you to make yourself some other way, if you don't want to come a cropper and leave the Service. I hope I am no Pharisee, but I've been reared to believe that living in debt is an aristocratic, and rather mean form of theft. My notion of you doesn't square with that; and I know a good man when I see one. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... of wordless disgust. Fool that he was to spill the beans as he had! All set to put one over on the leader of the Llotta, then to come a cropper like this! He knew he had been spared for a purpose. The gas was not intended to kill, only to render him helpless for a time. He opened his eyes to the light of a familiar room. He had awakened before in this bed. It was his own ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... into one of their tents, and there found about a dozen Gipsy men of all sizes, ages, and complexions, squatting upon peg shavings. Some of their faces looked full of intelligence and worthy of a better vocation, and others seemed as if they had had the "cropper" at work round their ears; so short was their hair that any one attempting to "pull it up by the roots" would have a difficult task, unless he set to it with his teeth. They looked to me as if several of them ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... had brought hither the Honourable George, promising a personage who would for once and all unify the North Side set and perhaps disintegrate its rival. I had been felicitated upon my master-stroke. And now it seemed I had come a cropper. But I resolved not to give up, and said as much ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... son—a thief! I'll have the law of him: I'll sprag his wheel: for all his pretty pace, He'll come a cropper yet, the scrunty wastrel. This comes of marrying into a coper's family: I might have kenned: ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

... father stayed on with Marster Mappin as a cropper running a two horse farm for himself. In the early 70's my father bought 12 acres of land from Judge Lawson near Eatonton, which was later sold in lots to different colored people, and became known as Gullinsville, and is ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... examined the illustration.] By Jove, yes—anybody can see she was bound to come a moral cropper, eh? ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones

... the least afraid. I've often noticed that when young fellows of your sort prefer their own haste to the Lord's leisure there's a Lord's haste that hurries on before 'em, so as to be all ready to meet 'em when they come a cropper in the ditch." ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... good inch to spare. It got precious ticklish after this; and no one said a word till each Jump was done: and then we let out. Violet stood up and looked as if she'd got a ten-pound note on the event. At 5 foot 3 Barnworth came a cropper; and I fancy he must have screwed his foot. Anyhow, he had to sit a minute before he tried again. Then he went over like a shot—and you may guess we yelled. Five foot 31/2. Both of them mulled the first—but Barnworth cleared easily second shot. We ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed

... "this is the limit! The idea of your smashing yourself like this! Here I've played every old kind of ball and everything else and never broke one of my two hundred and eight blessed bones! And you just go out on lady-like roller skates and come a cropper. Fie upon ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells

... at her. "Because, my dear, unless El Hassan is able to retake Tamanrasset, his movement has come a cropper." He turned his eyes back to Crawford, who was nervously running his hand through his hair. "I knew you had done considerable work in this area, so your whereabouts became obvious seeing that Tamanrasset is in Tuareg country. It was simply a matter of finding what Tuareg encampment was your base, ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... seriously, half an hour afterwards, "Royce Pederstone is going to come a terrible cropper over this business. He is mortgaged up to the neck and, singly or with some of the political gang, he is in almost every realty proposition ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... timber, being far from any house. A large part of the crop is often stolen; the crops of 1911 and 1912 were not so heavy, perhaps 50 to 75 pounds. It usually bears a fair crop, however, but I do not consider it a heavy cropper like the Indiana or Niblack. Its large size and splendid cracking qualities, however, will make it a popular variety and it may prove to bear much better on budded ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... Captain Digby-Soames, "but I doubt if he's conscious. He must have come a frightful cropper. You can see there's a compound fracture of the right femur from here, and one of his feet is fairly pointing backwards. Blood from the mouth, too. Anyhow he's alive. Better shoot him if we ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... sunken-chested, with cheeks cavernously hollow, he looked like a man in the last stages of consumption. Little life as Sundry Buyers showed, Nancy showed even less life. And these were bosuns!—bosuns of the fine American sailing-ship Elsinore! Never had any illusion of mine taken a more distressing cropper. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... college Ogilvy's father, a well-known railroad magnate, had come a disastrous cropper in the stock market, thus throwing Buck upon his own resources and cutting short his college career—which was probably the very best thing that could happen to his father's son. For a brief period—perhaps five minutes—Buck had staggered under ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... of "direct action's" heavy cropper at the Trade Union Conference had reached the Front Bench before the PRIME MINISTER, in reply to a question regarding the shortage of labour in the building trades, bluntly attributed it to the stringency of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various

... one longer than the other. Lieutenant Amir made a careful plan of the remains, and then pushed forward to Shuwk by the direct track, westward of that taken by the caravan. He arrived in camp, none the worse for a well-developed "cropper;" his dromedary had put its foot in a hole, and had fallen with a suddenness generally unknown to the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... origin. M'Intosh describes it as being "decidedly the best kidney potato grown, and an excellent cropper. Tubers sometimes seven inches in length, and three inches in breadth. It is longer in coming through the ground in spring than most other varieties, and the stems at first appear weakly; but they soon lose this appearance, ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr

... worked my share of it—it has not been what you may call least by our having put Charlotte so at her ease. THAT has been soothing, all round; that has curled up as the biggest of the blue fumes, or whatever they are, of the opium. Don't you see what a cropper we would have come if she hadn't settled down as she has?" And he had concluded by turning to Maggie as for something she mightn't really have thought of. "You, darling, in that case, I verily believe, would have been the ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... his horse over a fallen tree, and Miss Stevens out of bravado followed him, Sam Turner well-nigh ground his teeth, and, acting upon the impulse, he too attempted the jump. The horse got over safely, but Sam went a cropper over his head, and not being a particle hurt had to endure the good-natured laughter of the balance of them. Miss Stevens seemed as much amused as any one! He had not caught her look of fright as he fell nor of concern as he rose, nor could he estimate ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester

... Deppingham, who had come a severe cropper in his single attempt to interest her in a ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... country they know, Across it for years they've been rangers, All right, when the going is slow, When 'tis fast, are they fly to its dangers? For Hares to raise scares 'midst the Hounds were improper, But how if the pack come a general cropper? ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various

... They got our wind, however, and were gone before we were aware of it. They were all young, and so fast, it took a twenty minutes' gallop to come up with them. Samson's horse put his foot in a hole, and the cropper they both got gave the band a long start, as it became a stern chase, and no ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke



Words linked to "Cropper" :   agricultural laborer, agricultural labourer, sharecrop farmer, sharecropper



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