"Ne'er-do-well" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was jabbering that willainous tongue o' theirs), for he sees the name on my traps is the same as that on your traps—and in I get. Now, Mr. Cecil, let me say one word for all, and don't think I'm a insolent, ne'er-do-well for having been and gone and disobeyed you; but you was good to me when I was sore in want of it; you was even good to my dog—rest his soul, the poor beast! There never were a braver!—and stick to you I will till you kick me away like a cur. The truth is, it's only being near of you, sir, that ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Marshall was a consul after its own heart. Like a soldier, he was obedient, disciplined; wherever he was sent, there, without question, he would go. Never against exile, against ill-health, against climate did he make complaint. Nor when he was moved on and down to make way for some ne'er-do-well with influence, with a brother-in-law in the Senate, with a cousin owning a newspaper, with rich relatives who desired him to drink himself to death at the expense of the government rather than at their own, did old ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... woods, from which not a Prussian was to emerge alive; while the truth of the matter was that they had made themselves the terror of the peasantry, whom they failed utterly to protect and whose fields they devastated. Every ne'er-do-well who hated the restraints of the regular service made haste to join their ranks, well pleased with the chance that exempted him from discipline and enabled him to lead the life of a tramp, tippling in pothouses and sleeping by the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... liberally educated son of an ambitious self-made soapmaker. The first—with Sue, the pretty waitress—is thwarted by a very persistent and unpleasant clerk; the second—with Virginia, a girl of birth and breeding—is threatened by the intrusion of the girl's cousin, a queerly morbid ne'er-do-well. There is no action to speak of, so one can't speak of it. I can only say that the interest of the shrewd analysis held me, and that if my guess as to the sex of the writer be sound it is noteworthy that more pains and skill are bestowed upon the characters of the men than of the two girls, ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917 • Various
... Whittlestaff!" she said, "is it not annoying? that dreadful man with the wooden leg is here, and collecting a crowd round the place. Good morning, Mr Gordon. It is the poor woman's ne'er-do-well husband. She is herself so decent and respectable, that she will be greatly harassed. What can we do, Mr Whittlestaff? Can't we get a policeman?" In this way the conversation was led away to the affairs of Sergeant and Mrs ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... seventeen years since Elizabeth had married James Sheldon in the face of the most decided opposition on the part of her family. Sheldon was a handsome, shiftless ne'er-do-well, without any violent bad habits, but also "without any backbone," as the Ingelows declared. "There is sometimes hope of a man who is actively bad," Charlotte Ingelow had said sententiously, "but who ever ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was a tall, handsome, white-haired, fresh coloured man, proud and attractive in appearance and bearing. His family consisted of a vulgar, irritable wife, who wrangled with him continually over every petty detail, a son, a ne'er-do-well, spendthrift and roue—yet a "gentleman," according to his father's code, two daughters, of whom the elder had married well, and was living in St. Petersburg; and the younger, Lisa—his favourite, who had disappeared from home a year before. Only a short while ago he had found ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... got to Montreal I was confronted by that stupid superstition of the Canadians, that every young Englishman who has had a better education than themselves, and is possessed of a private income from the old country, must be a remittance-man and a ne'er-do-well—that he's been sent out because he wasn't wanted by his family. I tried to get employment; not that I needed it, but because I wanted to work. The moment I opened my lips and didn't speak dialect or slang, and ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... stamped and swore. When at last he found words, he cried: "Serpent! Cursed girl! Ah, deceitful creature! You know I love you, and you take advantage of it. She'd cut her father's throat! Good God! you've given our fortune to that ne'er-do-well,—that dandy with morocco boots! By the shears of my father! I can't disinherit you, but I curse you,—you and your cousin and your children! Nothing good will come of it! Do you hear? If it was to Charles—but, ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... "and I'll meet you in Lancaster"—a form of wit appreciated only by watchmakers. For there is a certain type of watch hand who is as peripatetic as the old-time printer. Restless, ne'er-do-well, spendthrift, he wanders from factory to factory through the chain of watchmaking towns: Springfield, Trenton, Waltham, Lancaster, Waterbury, Chippewa. Usually expert, always unreliable, certainly fond of drink, Nap Ballou was typical of his kind. ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... words, and slunk back to his master like a dog with his tail between his legs. When the ogre saw him, he guessed at once what had happened. He gave Antonio a good scolding, and said, 'I don't know what prevents me smashing your head in, you useless ne'er-do-well! You blurt everything out, and your long tongue never ceases wagging for a moment. If you had remained silent in the inn this misfortune would never have overtaken you, so you have only yourself to blame ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... refuse to make obeisance was treason. The entire public thought of a vast section of the country has revolved around the figure of a worthless old grafter in a tattered gray shirt. Every question is settled when some moth-eaten ne'er-do-well lets out what is known as a 'rebel yell.' The most polished and profound speech conceivable is answered when a jackass mounts the platform and brays out something about the gallant boys in gray. The cry for progress, for material advancement, for moral and ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... darkly. A tramp—a burglar, even. God knew what! When, on his third visit home, he brought an air of extreme opulence, plenty of money, and a sartorial perfection undreamed of locally, the heads wagged even harder. A gambler probably; a ne'er-do-well certainly; and one to break his ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... grief in another way, it was merged to some extent in her anxiety about her husband. With regard to Lizzie she felt less anxiety and pain about her now than she had done when Lizzie had been alive, and living a miserable life with the weak, ne'er-do-well husband who had been the ruin of her happiness and theirs. Trouble left its mark on Patience too, she became gentler and quieter, she seemed to lose some of her strength and spirit, and to lean more and more on ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... world, and now, at nine-and-thirty, with an empty purse, a light heart, a spotless conscience, and a sound digestion, I'm going to settle down and walk in the way I should go. You are glad to have your ne'er-do-well back ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... several of the surrounding towns, he had passed a village "lock-up," as the town prisons were then called—a small, square, gray building with long iron-barred windows, and he had seen, at one of these rather depressing apertures on the second floor, a none too prepossessing drunkard or town ne'er-do-well who looked down on him with bleary eyes, unkempt hair, and a sodden, waxy, pallid face, and called—for it was summer and the jail ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... naturalist was in business at Louisville, early in the century; but in 1812, he failed in this venture, and moved to Henderson, where his neighbors thought him a trifle daft,—and certainly he was a ne'er-do-well, wandering around the woods, with hair hanging down on his shoulders, a far-away look in his eyes, and communing with the birds. In 1818, the botanist Rafinesque, on the first of his several tramps down the Ohio valley,—he had a favorite ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... that bar of his'n—an' he'd oughter be tarred an' feathered for doin' of it—I 'spect Hopewell will be hangin' about there most of his time like the rest o' the ne'er-do-well male critters of this town, an' a-lettin' of what little business he's got go ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... was Gregory Novikh, known throughout the world under the name of Rasputin. A Siberian peasant by birth, immoral, filthy in person, untrained in mind, he had early received the nickname of Rasputin, which means "ne'er-do-well," on account of his habits. A drunkard, and a libertine always, he posed as a sort of saint and miracle worker, let his hair grow long, and tramped ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... like a happily-adapted recollection than the actual impromptu of a boy of nine. But another, in which, after a painful silence, he replied to the brutal enquiry of a ne'er-do-well relative as to when he meant to grow handsome, by saying that he would do so when the speaker grew good,—is characteristic of the easily-wounded spirit and 'exquisite sensibility of contempt' with which he was to enter upon the battle ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... failure as a mechanic as well? Was I unfit for anything? The other fellows at the shop had a definite foothold in life, while I was a waif, a ne'er-do-well, nearly two years in America with ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... that you had a ne'er-do-well brother in Australia, who might at any moment appear and ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... has been continually asked of old colonials in England is, what are the prospects afforded by New Zealand to men of the middle classes? The answer is usually unfavourable, simply because many colonials cannot disassociate the idea of a gentleman adventurer from that of a scapegrace or ne'er-do-well. Secondly, they look at the questioner's present condition; and never take into consideration the power he may have of adapting himself to totally different circumstances. I think this view admits of considerable enlargement, and my experience ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... rather, is the preferred epithet of derogation; or, to rise a little in the scale of valuation, it is the word "cleverness," used with that lurking contempt for cleverness which is truly English and which long survived in the dialect of New England, where the village ne'er-do-well or Jack-of-all-trades used to be pronounced a "clever" fellow. The variety of employments to which the American pioneers were obliged to betake themselves has done something, no doubt, to produce a national versatility, a quick assimilation of new methods and notions, a ready adaptability ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... not alive? She was a widow? Paul Schlieben interrupted the vestryman, and drew a long breath as though of relief. Although he had never spoken of it, he had always had a secret fear of the father: if he turned out to be a drunkard or a ne'er-do-well? A load fell from his mind now—he was dead, he could not do any more harm. Or had he died of an illness after all, of a wasting disease that is handed down to children and children's children? He had been ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... sha'n't holler," snarled the Taffy King. "I warn you. One such play as that and I'm through with you. I'm willing to support an idle, ne'er-do-well; but he sha'n't saddle himself with one of those theatrical creatures and bring scandal upon the family. Do you know what I was doing when I was your age? I had a booth at 'Gansett, two at Newport, a big one at Atlantic City, and ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... strife of it began. When he put detectives upon the lad's path, had him followed from Union Street to the caves and from the caves to his place of employment, the report came to him that he was interesting himself in a callous ne'er-do-well, the friend of rogues and vagabonds, the companion of sluts, the despair of the firm which employed him. He had expected something of the kind, but the seeming truth dismayed him. In a second interview with Boriskoff he used all his best ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... humanise a scoundrel. This is one typical side of the real optimism of Browning. And there is indeed little danger that such optimism will become weak and sentimental and popular, the refuge of every idler, the excuse of every ne'er-do-well. There is little danger that men will desire to excuse their souls before God by presenting themselves before men as such snobs as Bishop Blougram, or such dastards as Sludge the Medium. There is no pessimism, however stern, that is so stern as ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... should I? You hadn't come yet. Of course, I knew you'd be along some day. I kept it to drink to your very good health, Mr. Ellsworth—the health of the man who told me not to come around his house—told me I was an unsettled ne'er-do-well, and not suitable company for his—why, I don't think I have any corkscrew at all." His voice was slow, but harder ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... turned his eyes upon him gratefully. He might be a ne'er-do-well, and a genuine nuisance around the town on the river where he had grown up, but to the generous-hearted lads from the North he was only a poor hungry human being, and fortune had been ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... that's not like you. You're unkind and you're harsh. Her husband is the sort of man—well, he's his own worst enemy. A weakling, a ne'er-do-well—he's spent all his money and hers too. She has a child. Do you think you can condemn her for leaving him? As a matter of fact she didn't leave him, he ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... Hudson's cost, was his former surly mate, Juet, and a young ne'er-do-well named Henry Greene, who had been cast off by his family for his evil ways and his dissolute living. Hudson had befriended this young man and had offered him a refuge in his own house—and now, to keep him out of mischief, took him along as a member of his crew. With the explorer also was ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... seemed to hold him at a distance. They nodded to him with a brief, friendly smile, but were shy of shaking hands. The hand which they would have held out readily enough, had he needed assistance in misfortune, slunk hastily into a pocket. For he who climbs will lose more friends than the ne'er-do-well. Some may account this to human nature for righteousness and others quite the contrary: for jealousy, like love, lies ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... neurotic heredity on one side, and herself liable to hysteria, experienced her first sexual crisis at the age of 13, not long after menstruation had become established, and when she had just recovered from an attack of chorea. Her old nurse, who had remained in the service of the family, had a ne'er-do-well son who had disappeared for some years and had just now suddenly returned and thrown himself, crying and sobbing, at the knees of his mother, who thrust him away. The young girl accidentally witnessed this scene. The cries and the sobs provoked in her a ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... our most vexing moral problems are those in which benefit to some must be weighed against benefit to others. Shall a man who is needed by his family risk his life to save a ne'er-do-well? Shall we insist that people unhappily married shall endure their wretchedness and forego the possibility of a happier union in order that heedlessness and license may not be encouraged in the lives ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... how strong our affection for the ingratiating ne'er-do-well, there are certain charges against the poet which we cannot ignore. It is a serious thing to have an alleged madman, inebriate, and experimenter in crime running loose in society. But there comes a time when our patience with his indefatigable ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... forgiven his mother from the first. What she did must have been done with the best intentions. The poverty of her son and the dire distress of his father had tempted her to obtain possession of money by forgery. The bank had at once suspected the ne'er-do-well son. The son had been proclaimed dead, and the mother had ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... matter o' that it's easy to explain; but it wasn't my jump I was goin' to tell about; it was the jump o' a poor critter—a sort o' ne'er-do-well who jined a band o' us trappers the day before we arrived at this place, on our way through the mountains on a huntin' expedition. He was a miserable specimen o' human natur'—all the worse that he had a pretty stout body o' his own, ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... children to his trade. Each did his duty, or was adjured to do it, in the "state of life to which it had pleased God to call him." Migration to distant occupations or to foreign lands was but for the adventurous few. The ne'er-do-well blew, like seed before the wind, to distant places, but mankind at large stayed at home. Here and there exceptional industry or extraordinary capacity raised the artisan to wealth and turned the "man" into the "master." But for the most part even industry and endowment ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... Cousin Martin ("Marty" everybody called the gangling, grinning, idle ne'er-do-well of fourteen), Janice was inclined to be utterly hopeless about him from the start. If he was a specimen of the Poketown boys, she told herself, she had no desire to meet any ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... the daughter of the rector, Miriam Ainsley. I thought it was going to be a match, but they were both poor, and the girl suddenly married a young nobleman, a man I disliked very much, a wastrel and a ne'er-do-well. But there were stories about this other young man who was supposed to be in love with her, and perhaps they came to her ears, and drove her to the other man, though it was a case of out of the frying-pan ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... all accounts, he was a wholly amiable ne'er-do-well—a wonderful flyfisher, an extremely clever amateur artist, a lover of horses and dogs and children (surely, if we except a chapter of Victor Hugo's, the children in Ravenshoe are the most delightful in fiction), and a ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... as our sweet Lady, Saint Mary, worketh miracles at Walsingham, never was poor woman so be-plagued as I, with an ill, ne'er-do-well, good-for-nought, thankless hussy, picked up out of the mire in the gutter! Where be thy wits, thou gadabout? Didst leave them at the Cross yester-morrow? Go thither and seek for them! for ne'er a barley crust shalt thou break this even in this house, or my ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... skeleton outlines of its chambers still standing to make mockery of its discomfited architect. The daily anxiety about Comus and his extravagant ways and intractable disposition had been gradually lulled by the prospect of his making an advantageous marriage, which would have transformed him from a ne'er-do-well and adventurer into a wealthy idler. He might even have been moulded, by the resourceful influence of an ambitious wife, into a man with some definite purpose in life. The prospect had vanished with cruel suddenness, and the anxieties were crowding back again, more insistent ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... twentieth century the sea will no longer be regarded, to the same extent as in the past, as the refuge for the ne'er-do-well of the land-living populace; and this, more than perhaps anything else, will help to render travelling by the great ocean highways safe and comfortable. It is a common complaint on the part of owners that by far the larger part of maritime disasters are directly traceable to misconduct ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... see thee wax sensible and wise, abandoning all these courses which have landed thee in poverty, O my son; and shunning songstresses and commune with the inexperienced and the society of loose livers, male and female. All such pleasures as these are for the sons of the ne'er-do-well, not for the scions of the Kings thy peers." Herewith Zayn al-Asnam sware an oath to bear in mind all she might say to him, never to gainsay her commandments, nor deviate from them a single hair's breadth; to abandon all she should forbid him, and to fix his thoughts upon rule ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... intend to ask you, for I have not a single bribe to offer. I merely intend to marry you. I am a ne'er-do-well, a debauchee, a tippler, a compendium of all the vices you care to mention. I am not a bit in love with you, and as any woman will forewarn you, I am sure to make you a vile husband. Your solitary chance is to bully me into temperance ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... come from the mother and the nurturing of his stepmother rather than from the shiftless, paternal pioneer who gave the wilderness environment and soil to the nurturing of this stock and was as little paternalistic as the government. Perhaps this ne'er-do-well father is to be classed as one of those rough coureurs de bois who, in his ambassadorship from his ancestors to their frontier posterity, forgot the conventions and manners of the ancestral life in the temptations of the open country to a man without a slave. When he started ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... Island, Harlan would in part solve the problem. She could then see to it that he saw little of Jean. If it were not for her sister, she might find it in her to like, though she could never approve of the good-looking young ne'er-do-well. Through Kayak Bill she had come to know part of the truth about the death of Naleenah, but like most good women, she could not bring herself fully to exonerate one who had been so compromised. Potentially, if not ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... the Victoria Cross—dashed out under a storm of bullets and rescued the riddled flag. Who would have thought it of loutish Tom? The village alehouse one always deemed the goal of his endeavours. Chance comes to Tom and we find him out. To Harry the Fates were less kind. A ne'er-do-well was Harry—drank, knocked his wife about, they say. Bury him, we are well rid of him, he was good ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... port, picking up volunteers for the Western Front. The port contributed a goodly number, but there remained one berth vacant. The long-suffering Consul had a stroke of inspiration. Here was a means of at once swelling the man-power of his country and ridding himself of a pestilent ne'er-do-well. His boys, searching far and wide, discovered John Fanshawe in the back premises of a Malay go-down, oblivious to all things, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... a further instalment, including clanking chains, gongs that sounded unseen in the air, hands that gripped the passengers and tried to pull them from their seats—all the wild tales of Souter Gowans, the village cobbler, and of ne'er-do-well farm lads, idle and reckless, whose word would never have been taken in any ordinary affair of life. Jo had not time, however, for Agnes Anne had a strong imagination, coupled with a highly nervous organization. She laughed out suddenly, in the middle ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... together, find them all most obliging; but there's one thing that causes me very much concern. I have here one, who is the very root of retribution, the incarnation of all mischief, one who is a ne'er-do-well, a prince of malignant spirits in this family. He is gone to-day to pay his vows in the temple, and is not back yet, but you will see him in the evening, when you will readily be able to judge for yourself. One thing you must do, and that is, from this time ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... subterranean torrent of anguish raving through its hollows and tumbling down hidden precipices, whose voice God only heard, and God only could still. This daughter might, though from her face I did not think it, have gone away against her father's will. That son might have been a ne'er-do-well at home—how could I tell? The woman might be looking for the lover that had forsaken her—I could not divine. I would speak no words of my own. The Son of God had spoken words of comfort to his mourning friends, when he was the present God and they were the forefront ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... logical result of his principles; indeed, although our contemporary seems ignorant of the fact, he disclaimed any such intention, A press announcement was circulated by his eldest son, on his behalf, that the rascal was meant to be a sentimentalist and ne'er-do-well, who, whatever his opinions, would have come to a bad end. When the Commonwealth, therefore, talks of Lord Tennyson as "about right," it shows, in a rather vulgar way, the danger of incomplete information. Were we to copy its manners we ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... of his mouth when the glitter of something bright he had dropped on the ground, caused me to stoop and to pick up a gold watch bracelet set in diamonds. The same instant I heard a man running on the road behind me, and who should come up but the very "ne'er-do-well" who helped me to wash down my ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... prosperity, and excitement in her life. She had had seven children, only three of whom were living: Mary, a prosperous, big matron whose husband, Joe Cunningham, had some exalted position on the Brooklyn police force; Ralph, who was a priest in California; and George, the youngest, a handsome ne'er-do-well of about twenty-five, who was a "heart scald." George floated about his own and neighbouring cities, only coming to see his mother when no ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... Dick. I've been a sort of ne'er-do-well, otherwise I wouldn't have been called Roving Dick, while you are really ...
— Dick in the Desert • James Otis
... fortunate. He had been a little cross with his father, and perhaps a little cross with all the Whartons generally, who did not, he thought, make quite enough of him. In the event of "anything happening" to that ne'er-do-well nephew, he himself would be the heir; and he reflected not unfrequently that something very probably might happen to the nephew. He did not often see this particular cousin, but he always heard of him as being drunk, overwhelmed with ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... cockatrice, basilisk, urchin; tiger^, monster; devil &c (demon) 980; devil incarnate; demon in human shape, Nana Sahib; hellhound, hellcat; rakehell^. bad woman, jade, Jezebel. scamp, scapegrace, rip, runagate, ne'er-do-well, reprobate, scalawag, scallawag. roue [Fr.], rake; Sadist; skeesicks [Slang], skeezix [U.S.]; limb; one who has sold himself to the devil, fallen angel, ame damnee [Fr.], vaurien^, mauvais sujet [Fr.], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... he has caused me!" said Godeschal, "that tall ne'er-do-well of a Georges Marest is his evil genius; he ought to flee him like the plague; if not, he'll bring ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... married, the second time to the widow West. She had brought with her to her new home a good-looking, long-legged, black-eyed, black-haired ne'er-do-well of a son, a year or so younger than Hiram. He was a shrewd, quick-witted lad, idle, shiftless, willful, ill-trained perhaps, but as bright and keen as a pin. He was the very opposite to poor, dull Hiram. Eleazer White had never loved ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... bringing with him two of his familiars. So the wife met him at the entrance and said to him, "O Man, O miserablest of men, O thou disappointed, O thou dissatisfied,[FN487] thou hast brought to me a fellow which was a thief, a ne'er-do-well like unto thyself." "How so?" asked he, and she answered, "The man stole the two geese and stole away." Thereupon the husband went out and catching sight of the guest running off shouted to him, "Come back! Come back! even although thou bring only one with thee ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... success, and much addicted to port wine, and bearing a striking personal resemblance to the young French noble. These persons, and others, being drawn to Paris by various strong inducements, Darnay is condemned to death as a ci-devant noble, and the ne'er-do-well barrister, out of the great pure love he bears to Darnay's wife, succeeds in dying for him. That is the tale's bare outline; and if any one says of the book that it is in parts melodramatic, one may fitly answer that never was any portion of the world's ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... lazy ne'er-do-well, ran away from home, leaving his parents to die of grief. For being kind to a sick "old woman" he was given a magic violin. Soon after, he was arrested for climbing into a house at night. When he was about to be hanged for a thief, he was granted a last request. He asked ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... "Yes, indeed." She had other daughters there besides Maria, and was looking down the table to see whether they were judiciously placed. Her beauty, her youngest one, Ophelia, was sitting next to that ne'er-do-well Joe Fairstairs, and this made her unhappy. "Ophelia, my dear, you are dreadfully in the draught; there's a seat up here, just opposite, where ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... sir,' said she, 'I wish to goodness you would take your wretched son away and put him in a school for saints, since you think he is so good. As for me, he plagues my life out, and, if you keep him here with his ne'er-do-well ways, you'll come home some evening to find ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... returned to his home in Virginia to find it in ruins, his slaves freed and his fields mortgaged. He had pulled himself together for another start, and had practiced law in the little town where his family had lived for generations. Of his two sons, one was a ne'er-do-well. He was one of those brilliant fellows of whom much is expected that never develops. He had a taste for low company, married beneath him, and, after a career that was a continual mortification and humiliation ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... ago. They only had a lease of the place they lived in, and I really cannot tell you anything whatever about them. There was a son, who would, I suppose, succeed to any property his father left; but he was a ne'er-do-well, and was seldom at home, and I have never seen or heard of ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... in the garden, and now wanted to plant some trees in them. "Have you no children," asked the stranger, "who could help you with your work?" "No," answered the peasant, "I had a son, it is true, but it is long since he went out into the world. He was a ne'er-do-well; sharp, and knowing, but he would learn nothing and was full of bad tricks, at last he ran away from me, and since then I have heard nothing ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... doing very good editorial work," she said mendaciously, "but, after all, you are only playing at journalism. The real journalist—as I know him—is a Bohemian; a font of cleverness running to waste; a reckless, tender-hearted, jolly, careless ne'er-do-well who works like a Trojan and plays like a child. He is very sophisticated at his desk and very artless when he dives into the underworld for rest and recreation. He lives at high tension, scintillates, burns his red fire without discrimination ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... Hopley, the gamekeeper; his daughter Polly; the school Cook; Lomax, the school drill-sergeant; Magglin, a ne'er-do-well and poacher; Dr Browne, the headmaster, and Mrs Browne; Rebble and Hasnip, ushers at the school; Burr's mother, and his uncle, Colonel Seaborough; and the local big landowner, General ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... certainly was not John Smith, because when, in after years, Tanner Savery occasionally told this story he always called the stealer of his hides 'John Smith' in order to disguise his identity; so we will speak of John Smith too. 'A ne'er-do-well' was the character people gave him. They spoke of him as a man who was his own worst enemy, sadly too fond of his glass, and always quarrelling with his neighbours. Only William Savery refused to believe that any man could be altogether evil, and he kept a ray of hope in his heart for ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... was happy. He knew that for the rest of their days their troubles had all ended. So he walked about and made plans, but still he did not tell them who he was. It was so good a joke that he intended to make the most of it. But he said that he had news of their Jozef, who was not so badly off for a ne'er-do-well. Before he left the next day, he promised, they should be told about their boy. And he laughed again and slapped his pocketful of gold and the two old folks sat blinking at him in awe, until he announced that he was hungry and confided to them that his friend Jozef had ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... Florence. This change took place while I was still a Florentine. The Duke of Lucca would none of the new dukedom proposed to him. He abdicated, and his son became Duke of Parma. This son was, in truth, a great ne'er-do-well, and very shortly got murdered in the streets of his new capital by ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... "Momser! Ganef! Nebich!" by which, in smiting mother tongue, he branded his offspring with attributes of apostate and ne'er-do-well, of idiot ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... much faith in him myself," said Mrs. Bradshaw, meaning nothing more by the phrase than that she considered Reuben a ne'er-do-well. The same words would have expressed her lack of confidence in a ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... Villon, Master of Arts, rhymer at his best, vagabond at his worst, ne'er-do-well at all seasons, and scapegrace in ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... do not need to read—the speeches delivered in their streets on a Sunday morning. It is one of their pre-occupations to send their children to Sunday School by roundabout roads, lest they should pick up abominable blasphemies. When the tills of the little shops are raided, or when the family ne'er-do-well levies on his women with more than usual brutality, they know, because they suffer, what principles are being put into practice. If these people could quietly be shown a quiet way out of it all, very many of them would call in their savings (they are richer than they look), and slip quietly away. ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... strength of the argument that the doctrinal teachings of the Mormon Bible were the work of a Disciples' preacher rather than of the ne'er-do-well Smith, it is only necessary to examine the teachings of the Disciples' church in Ohio at that time. The investigator will be startled by the resemblance between what was then taught to and believed by Disciples' congregations and the leading beliefs of the Mormon Bible. In the following examples ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... incidental music which he wrote to Ibsen's drama "Peer Gynt." Peer Gynt is the Faust of Norwegian literature. Without attempting here to follow up this parallel, it may be said that he is a curious combination of ne'er-do-well, dreamer and philosopher, with a pronounced streak of impishness running through his character and giving a touch of the extravagant and grotesque to many of his actions and to some of them even a suggestion of the ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... warehouse, and apportioned out in accordance with rules to be framed by the council. There was a great deal more said that night to the same effect, some of the statements being received with rapturous applause—chiefly by the lazy and ne'er-do-well members of the party; but I could see that although all hands had in the first instance jumped readily enough at the prospect of an easy and luxurious life, free—as they thought—from all restraint, in a land of eternal summer, there were those among them to whom the Socialistic doctrine ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... and ply thy work with it." Accordingly, he went to the market and stopped by the ass-stand, where behold, he saw his own ass for sale. So he went up to it and clapping his mouth to its ear, said to it, "Woe to thee, thou ne'er-do-well! Doubtless thou hast been getting drunk again and beating thy mother! But, by Allah, I will never buy thee more."[FN120] and he left it and went away. And ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... gae to the North Pole to see it, if necessary, and they'd gae farrer still to see the murtherer weel hanggit! Ay, your grace, and what will make it a' the mair exciting, is the rumor whilk goes round to the effect that the ne'er-do-well, hizzie, Rose Cameron, hae turnit Crown's evidence to save her ain life, and will gie up all her accomplices. Sae we are a' fain to hear the mystery of the ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... confidence of course, that the doom of the Internal Navigation had just been settled, and that it would be necessary to place in other offices those young men who could in any way be regarded as worth their salt, and, after considerable manoeuvring, had it so arranged that the ne'er-do-well young navvy should recommence his official ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... shook her head absently. "Then there was Mr. Evringham's younger son, a regular roving ne'er-do-well. He didn't like Wall Street and he went West to Chicago. He was a rolling stone, first in one position and then in another; then he got married, and after a few years he rolled away altogether. All Mr. Evringham knows about ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... Land from tyrants and invaders. On that occasion, all sorts and conditions of men were represented, from the religious enthusiast, to the ignorant bigot, and from the rich man who was sacrificing his all in the cause that he believed to be right, to the tramp and ne'er-do-well, who had allied himself with that cause ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... man. He did not, however, make his appearance during our visit, and I imagine he must have been one of those individuals called 'beach-combers,' referred to in so many of the books that treat of the South Sea Islands,—a sort of ne'er-do-well Englishman or American, rather afraid of meeting any of his own countrymen, but very clever at making a bargain between a ship's crew and the natives, with considerable ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... Bottle;" her niece Penelope, "an Heroic Trapes;" and Woodcock, the Yeoman, a rich, sharp, forthright, crusty old fellow with a pretty daughter, Belinda, whom he is determined never to marry but to a substantial farmer of her own class: her suitor, a clever ne'er-do-well named Reynard, of course tricks the old gentleman by an intrigue and a disguise. It is Reynard's sister Hillaria, however, "a Railing, Mimicking Lady" with no money and no admitted scruples, but enough beauty and wit to match when and with whom she chooses, who dominates the play; and though ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... has always been ready to open his purse strings in case of distress; he is a man that does not meddle in any way with politics. It is true that he does not go to mass, but that hurts no one; and there is many a ne'er-do-well in the village who never darkens the church door. If he prefers to pray in his own house and in his own way, what matter is it to any one? His cloth mill gives employment to half the village. What we shall do if it is shut up I am sure I don't know. But what do they care for ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... as he read over this letter, and he chuckled as he addressed it. He pictured himself in the rear room of the bar in the Rue Auber, relating, across the little marble-topped table, this American adventure, to the delight of that blithe, ne'er-do-well outcast of an exalted poor family, that gambler, blackmailer and merry rogue, Don Antonio Moliterno, comrade and teacher of this ductile Valentine since the later days of adolescence. They had been school-fellows in Rome, and later roamed Europe together unleashed, discovering worlds of many ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... temporary "homelet," to coin a word. For frontier people are, for the most part, transient. They only pause at such place on their fighting journey through the wilder life. They pass on in time to other spheres, some on an upward grade, others down the long decline, which is the road of the ne'er-do-well. And with each inhabitant that comes and goes, some detail of evolution is achieved by the little hamlet through which they pass, until, in the course of long years, it, too, has fought its way upward to the mathematical precision and bold glory of a modern commercial city, or has ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... with an indignant pity. I tried in vain to sleep. In the darkness of night our plan came to seem like an atrocious outrage upon a guileless, defenceless ne'er-do-well. For my share of the guilt, I resolved to convey to Potts privately on the morrow a more than perfunctory promise of aid, should he find himself distressed at any time in what he would doubtless term his ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... Henbury, in order to give her the unpleasant information of the misbehaviour of her eldest son, who was an assistant in a draper's shop in a neighbouring town. She was full of indignation against want of steadiness, though not willing to direct her indignation against the right object—her ne'er-do-well darling. While she was thus charged with anger (for her brother justly defended her son's master and companions from her attacks), she saw Ruth standing with a lover, far away from home, at such a time in the evening, and she boiled ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... another for Philip. This last has disappeared, while the canvas which remained in Venice cannot be identified with any certainty. The finest extant example of this type of Magdalen is undoubtedly that which from Titian's ne'er-do-well son, Pompinio, passed to the Barbarigo family, and ultimately, with the group of Titians forming part of the Barbarigo collection, found its way into the Imperial Gallery of the Hermitage at St. ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... the roundhouse, and held it, too, despite the malicious efforts of Ike Slump, a ne'er-do-well who tried to undermine him. Ralph became a favorite with the master mechanic of the road through some remarkable railroad service in which he saved the railroad shops from ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... ne'er-do-well, Ed Brown!" said the old woman, shaking her fist at the distant Ed, who, realizing that Tom had got into trouble, disappeared in ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... his nickname's Cucumber. Every one about here calls him so; but what his real name is—God knows! A foolish creature! A regular ne'er-do-well.' ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... inclined to think him utterly mad. He's going to desperate lengths to search for the treasure. His conduct is tinged a good deal with resentment because Isabel has repeatedly refused to marry him. He's a ne'er-do-well, a blacksheep and a disgrace to ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... Communist maintaining his views despite the reproaches of father and mother and the nagging of his wife. It showed also the Anarchist brother (as might be expected from the Bolshevik hostility to Anarchism) as an unruly, lazy, ne'er-do-well, with a passionate love for Sonia, the young bourgeoise, which was likely to become dangerous if not returned. She, on the other hand, obviously preferred the Communist. It was clear that he returned her love, but it was not quite clear that ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... truer to Nature, more nicely distinguished as to idiosyncrasy, while alike in expression and in limited range of ideas, or more truly comic, than the two that figure in this story. Nick Whickson, too, the good-natured ne'er-do-well, who is in his own and everybody's way till he finds his natural vocation as an aid to a dealer in horses, is a capital sketch. The hypochondriac Squire Plumworthy is very good, also, in his way, though he verges once or twice on the "heavy father," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... laughing at a Punch and Judy show. If you'll kindly order a quartern of gin in a pint glass for me, I'll fill it up and be quite content all the evening. No one ill-uses me. I'm a soft, harmless, disreputable old ne'er-do-well. ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... feud had slumbered. It was understood that the Yarnells and the Bellamys were ready to drop it. Only one of the opposite faction remained on the ground, a twin brother of Duncan. Shep Boone was a drunken ne'er-do-well, but since he now stood alone nothing more than empty threats was expected of him. He spent his time idly with a set of gambling loafers, but he lacked the quality of active ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... boss-of-the-board out beyond Bourke. He spoke as though well educated, and a gentleman—as drovers often are. Why, then, was he on the road? I put him down as a scapegrace, for he had all the winning pleasant manner of a ne'er-do-well. ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... when he was a bairn. But I've kept eyes on him. He has nothing, and since I came to London I hear that he has gone gyte, I mean—ye'll not understand me—he is plighted to a long-legged shop-lass, the daughter of a ne'er-do-well Australian land-louper, a doctor. This must not be. Now I'll speak plain to you, plainer than to Tod and Brock, my doers—ye call them lawyers. They did not ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... quotation from which it is taken, in the form of a leader at the point in the action where its significance cannot fail to be impressed upon the spectators. For example, a certain Selig release was entitled "Through Another Man's Eyes." Before the next to the last scene, which showed the ne'er-do-well lover peering in at the window, while his former friend bends over to kiss his wife—who might have been the wife of the wayward young man, had he been made of different stuff—the ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... and eclipse must move Each Cause and Man, dear to the stars and Jove; Nor always can the wisest tell Deferred fulfillment from the hopeless knell— The struggler from the floundering ne'er-do-well. A pall-cloth on the Seven Days fell, Mcclellan— Unprosperously heroical! ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... universal appeal. Yet I should have written the story, even if it had been destined only to have a hundred readers. It had to be written. I wanted to write what was in me, and that invasion of a little secluded French-Canadian society by a ne'er-do-well of the over-sea aristocracy had a psychological interest, which I could not resist. I thought it ought to be worked out and recorded, and particularly as the time chosen—1837—marked a large collision between the British and the French interests in French Canada, or rather of French ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the museum I caught glimpses of what Donald's past life had been, learning incidentally that his father was rich, but since Donald was sixteen he had been considered a ne'er-do-well. He had gone away to sea when he was a boy, and had been third mate on a merchant ship; in a hotel in America he had been a boot-black, and just before he came to Paris he fought a drunken stoker and won a purse ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... Hannah Crawford, had lived in the Glen and gone to school with Rilla. They had been good friends then, though Hannah had been three years the older. She had married very young and had gone to live in Millward. What with hard work and babies and a ne'er-do-well husband, her life had not been an easy one, and Hannah seldom revisited her old home. Rilla had visited her once soon after her marriage, but had not seen her or even heard of her for years; she knew, however, that she ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... set her between his thighs; then, sitting to her as a man sitteth to a woman,[FN111] he took yard in hand and drew her towards him and weighed down upon her, when lo! he heard one saying to him, "Awake, thou ne'er-do-well! The noon hour is come and thou art still asleep." He opened his eyes and found him self lying on the merge of the cold-water tank, amongst a crowd of people all laughing at him; for his prickle was at point and the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... workmen with a grudge against him? Well, it's a very strange thing, but Queensmead was telling me this morning that one of Mr. Glenthorpe's workmen had a grudge against him. He's a chap named Hyson, the local ne'er-do-well, who was almost starving when Mr. Glenthorpe came to the district. Glenthorpe was warned against employing him, but the fellow got round him with a piteous tale, and he put him on. He proved to be just as ungrateful as the average British workman, and caused the ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... Two libel suits mushroomed into view in as many days, provoked, as it were, out of conscious nothing; unimportant but harassing: one, brought by a ne'er-do-well who had broken a leg while engaged in a drunken prank months before, the other the outcome of a paragraph on a little, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... tumbled shock of white hair, that strong-lined face; to hear again the gruff tones of that voice he loved so well. After all, there were only two Anthonys left in the world, and he had been to blame. He acknowledged that he had been a ne'er-do-well. No wonder his father had been harsh, but still—old Darwin K. should not have been so domineering, so ready to credit all he heard. Kirk pressed his lips together and swore to make good, if for no other reason than ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... She sat on his knee and talked to him, until the whole face of the earth seemed changed to him. Besides his great love for the little Madaline, he became interested in the story of Margaret Dornham's life—in her love for the handsome, reckless ne'er-do-well who had given up work as a failure—in her wonderful patience, for she never complained—in her sublime heroism, for she bore all as a martyr. He heard how Henry Dornham was often seen intoxicated—heard that ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... to meeting death at every turn. Whether Achmet the merchant lived or died was a thing as light as air to me, but at the talk about the treasure my heart turned to it, and I thought of what I might do in the old country with it, and how my folk would stare when they saw their ne'er-do-well coming back with his pockets full of gold moidores. I had, therefore, already made up my mind. Abdullah Khan, however, thinking that I hesitated, ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fledglings cannot be driven out of the nest like young birds. An Honourable John turned adrift into absolute poverty will make himself heard of in the world,—if in no other way, by his ugliness as he starves. A thorough-going ne'er-do-well in the upper classes has eminent advantages on his side in the battle which he fights against respectability. He can't be sent to Australia against his will. He can't be sent to the poorhouse without ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... am merely a pawn which is given a certain number upon entrance into this world and retains the same at the time of its exit. I am a cell of feeling long ago registered and classified by my fellow-beings as a 'ne'er-do-well,'" ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... at some time in their lives have not wondered at the vagaries of girlish complaisance: the foolish, the ne'er-do-well, the bully, the careless, the cruel,—it is to these often that a ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... boils now when I remember. Child," he demanded, "I can't see why your alluring ways should have set me talking. Fancy, I've never told this tale but twice, and I'm holding forth to a little alien whom I haven't known two days, a young ne'er-do-well not born till forty years ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... didn't never suit his style, ye see; so poor Ann Kenton— whose misfortun' made her Mrs. Ned Joselyn—cried an' wailed fer a day er two an' then crep' back to the city like a whipped dog. Funny how women'll care fer a wuthless, ne'er-do-well chap that happens to ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... tone of real and ironical humility, which is exceedingly characteristic: "Most revered father, I have received a letter from you to-day, from which I learn that you have been informed by Lapo and Lodovico. I am glad that you should rebuke me, because I deserve to be rebuked as a ne'er-do-well and sinner as much as any one, or perhaps more. But you must know that I have not been guilty in the affair for which you take me to task now, neither as regards them nor any one else, except it be in doing more than was ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... the Navy, from commanding officers about the Army, from pro-Consuls about the Colonies, or from the Foreign Office about foreign relations. But a deserter or a man dismissed from either of the Services, a broker ne'er-do-well rejected as unfit by one of the Colonies, or a foreign agitator with stories to tell of Britain's duplicity abroad; these were all welcome fish for our net, and folk whom it was my duty to receive with respectful attention. From their perjured lips it became my mechanical duty to extract and ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... said the master, "and I wouldn't take that as a bad omen. Think: nearly ten years ago, when you were a ne'er-do-well and I started you going right, how hard it was for you to do better, and how little faith you had in the possibility that everything would turn out right. But still it did, gradually. Your faith got stronger, and now you're a lad that can be said to have won his battle. So don't ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various |
