"Shiftless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... twice 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 his son; he was ashamed of the poor, slack-witted oaf. Upon the other hand, he was very fond of Levi West, whom he always called ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... mower's rifle[670] when it is too late in the season to make hay? Scatter brained and "afternoon men" spoil much more than their own affairs in spoiling the temper of those who deal with them. I have seen a criticism on some paintings, of which I am reminded when I see the shiftless and unhappy men who are not true to their senses. The last Grand Duke of Weimar,[671] a man of superior understanding, said: "I have sometimes remarked in the presence of great works of art, and just now especially in Dresden, how much a certain property contributes to the effect which ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the Rockies and Sierras. A big lumbering company, impatient for immediate returns and not caring to look far enough ahead, will often deliberately destroy all the good timber in a region, hoping afterwards to move on to some new country. The shiftless man of small means, who does not care to become an actual home-maker but would like immediate profit, will find it to his advantage to take up timber land simply to turn it over to such a big company, and leave it valueless ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... to the path. In the little compound thus enclosed, and almost overtopping the cabin, were half a dozen peach and plum trees, veritable geyser jets of pink and white bloom. Behind, in a small clearing, was the stubble of last year's corn. Squalid and poor and mean enough a dwelling, a shiftless clearing, a dirty family of children—yes. But under its geyser jets of blossom that little gray cabin was the essence of the picturesque, with the forest wall rising behind it, and behind that the great headwall of the ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... "it is a great sin and shame—the lad is neither crooked nor misshapen—the Lord has done well enough by him, Heaven knows; and yet never a stroke of work has he done since his poor father went out of the world as naked as he came into it. A shiftless, fiddling, and galavanting set they have always been, and me then as has only this one lass, givin' her away, with my eyes wide open, ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... to dream that she is leading an idle existence, she will fall into bad habits, and is likely to marry a shiftless man. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... of all her effort, McElroy lay week after week in the back room, looking for hours together into the red heart of the fire, silent, uncomplaining, in no apparent pain, but shiftless as an Indian in the matter ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... "How shiftless!" cried Annie, indignantly. "What do these men mean by letting their machinery lie out that way? I should think one winter of lying out would hurt it more than three summers ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... in 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky, on the Twelfth of February, and was the son of Thomas Lincoln, a carpenter. Thomas Lincoln was a good natured but shiftless man who never did any more work than was absolutely necessary to keep his family from starving. He had pioneer blood in his veins, as, indeed, all Lincoln's ancestors had, from the time when they first came to America in 1637; and this fact kept them pushing continually to the westward ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... all discharged soldiers—that of readjustment, not to the life of pre-war days, but to one newer, better, more ambitious, and efficient. Farrel realized that a continuation of his dolce-far-niente life on the Rancho Palomar under the careless, generous, and rather shiftless administration of his father was not for him. Indeed, the threatened invasion of the San Gregorio by Japanese rendered imperative an immediate decision to that effect. He was the first of an ancient lineage ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... with a brick, and a sign says to come in and take what you want. The price of everything is marked good and plain, and another sign says to put the money in the drawer and make your own change. The blacksmith was at him for doing business so shiftless, and Barnaby laughed and said that if anybody wanted anything he had bad enough to steal it, whoever it was, he was good and welcome to it. That just shows how crazy he is. Most of the time he's roaming around ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... character of a writer, the person who penned that letter was certainly plain, hard, and angular, while the composition of the epistle indicated the author was in the habit of bluntly freeing her mind. She began by telling her brother he was shiftless, progressed by referring to the great number of mouths he had to fill, and ended by offering to take the care of one of the children off his hands, and requesting Jem should be sent to her house ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... to them, there is no hope for these Indians. Their fate will be the same as Indians on the reservation in the State of New York, who have been for one hundred years in the midst of our best civilization, but are still lazy and shiftless, their reservation being permeated through and through with unmentionable vices. They have no interest in the civilization of the present. They are living in the past, dreaming over the glory of their ancestors. They cannot be ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 1, January 1888 • Various
... when Danvers turns American and runs for office," scoffed Latimer, remembering Joe's shiftless disposition and making the most improbable comparison that he ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... we had time to examine him. His appearance was inexpressibly shocking. Dirty, with a ragged six weeks' growth of dark hair upon his face, out at heel and elbows, shirtless and shiftless, he seemed to have reached the nadir of misery and poverty. Obviously one of the "broken brigade," he had seemingly lost everything except his manners. His amazing absence of self-consciousness made a clown of me. I blurted out a gruff "All ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... are to us the object of special solicitude. Such persons usually have intelligence and good hearts. They return to us, sometimes with usury, the sums that we lend them. Such restitutions recoup us in the long run for the losses we occasionally incur through impostors, shiftless creatures, or those whom misfortunes have rendered stupid. Through such persons we often obtain invaluable help in our investigations. Our work has now become so vast, its details are so multifarious, that we no longer suffice of ourselves to carry it on. So, for the last year we have ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... great part of the south and east, at least, of England,—though never so well off, for several generations, as they are now—are growing up thriftless, shiftless; inferior, it seems to me, to their grandfathers in everything, save that they can usually read and write, and their grandfathers could not; and that they wear smart cheap cloth clothes, instead of ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... interests or feelings, it is still more likely to refer to recent experience. Whatever may have been the reason for his caricature of Sir Thomas Lucy, its cause was evidently of a later date than his departure from Stratford. It was no shiftless runagate nor fugitive from justice who went to London in, or about, 1585-87; neither was it a wrathful Chatterton, eating out his heart in bitter pride while firing his ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... whom idleness was so pleasant, and the fame of their misfortunes so gratifying, that they preferred to scramble on in dismantled homes, on the alms extracted by their woes, to setting about such labor as would place them in comfort. Then that large class—the shiftless— was now doubly large, and there were widows and orphans in abundance, and there was hardly a bed or a blanket ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... 'Pooh!' if he heard me say it, but it 's true nevertheless that he 's a grand fellow and helped me through the first six months like a well, a brother as he is. There was no reason why he should go out of his way to back up a shiftless party like me, yet he did, and made many things easy and safe that would have been confoundedly hard and dangerous if I 'd been left to myself. The only way I can explain it is that it 's a family trait, and as natural to the brother as it is to ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... vote unhindered by his boss; when the vote of the poor anywhere is not influenced by the power of the rich; when the strong and the steadfast do not everywhere control the suffrage of the weak and shiftless—then, and not till then, will the ballot of the negro be free. The white people of the South are banded, Mr. President, not in prejudice against the blacks—not in sectional estrangement—not in the hope of political dominion—but in a deep and abiding necessity. Here is ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... in the Cincinnati Daily Commercial, that the "Court, in alluding to this presentment, remarked that 'he was not surprised at finding prejudice existing against them (the negroes) among the respectable portion of the people, for they were indolent, shiftless and dishonest, and unworthy of the sympathy that some mistaken parties extended to them; they would not work when opportunity was presented, but preferred subsisting by thieving from respectable farmers, and begging from ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the rainy season as a miserable substitute for a bridge; and once in a while, far back from the road, we caught sight of an old country-seat, whose dingy, unpainted walls, broken down fences, and dilapidated surroundings reminded one that shiftless working men, and careless, reckless proprietors, are the natural products of slavery. Thus we rode on for several hours, till, turning a slight bend in the road, we suddenly halted before the gateway of my friend's plantation. I had observed for half ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... slaves on this estate to-morrow and to send them North, I do not think that they would be in any way benefited by the change. They would still have to work for their living as they do now, and being naturally indolent and shiftless would probably fare much worse. But against the selling of families separately and the use of the lash I ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... howlin' young ass! That's what for a man you've turned out to be, Stephen Packard. Come here empty-handed an' try to buck me, would you? Me who has busted better men than you all my life, me who has got my hooks in you deep already, me who ain't no pulin' ol' dodderin' softy to turn over to a lazy, shiftless vagabond all I've piled up year after year. Buck me, would you? Tuck in an' fire my men, butt on my affairs— Why, you impudent young puppy-dog, you: I'll make you stick your tail between your legs an' howl like a kiote before ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... happy results of our unique system of free enterprise was the rewarding of men in exact proportion to their merits and abilities. The war, bringing disruption and bankruptcy to so many shiftless and shortsighted people, made of Consolidated Pemmican one of the country's great concerns. The organization welcoming General Thario was far different from the one which had hired his son. I now had fourteen factories, stretching like a string of lustrous ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... world of men by scattering seeds in a river valley, of those who grew from the sand, some went to the river and washed too pale and weak—the white man; some, enough—the strong red man; some washed not at all—the shiftless black man. But Keela came ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... there was an abundance of the pleasant sport of Indian-fighting—even now he had only to make believe a little to see the tufted head of a Navajo peer around the columns supporting the Lion of Saint Mark, or to mistake the fringe of facchini on the edge of the Grand Canal for a group of the shiftless half-breeds of New Mexico. In time the ——first Cavalry had been ordered North, where the work was then less pleasant than on the border; and, in fact, it was a distinct unwillingness to execute the Fugitive Slave Law which forced John Manning to resign his commission in the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... lead-pencil. This maxim, while losing in sententiousness would gain in reason if it ran thus: "What is worth doing at all is worth doing as well as the situation demands." "Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day," an excellent maxim for the shiftless, must not be taken too literally by the individual already obsessed to do to-day twice what he can and quadruple ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... Reuben Miller, if I die for it," said she, "I haven't had so much as a pound of white sugar nor a single lemon in my house for two years, and I do think it's a burnin' shame for you to go on sellin' 'em to them shiftless Greens, that'll never pay you a cent, ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... and deep we lie, and if I gave him place, My gentlemen that are so proud would flout me to my face; They'd call my house a common stews and me a careless host, And—I would not anger my gentlemen for the sake of a shiftless ghost." The Devil he looked at the mangled Soul that prayed to feel the flame, And he thought of Holy Charity, but he thought of his own good name:— "Now ye could haste my coal to waste, and sit ye down to fry: Did ye think of that ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... kindergarten, if he had been told that it was part of a temple. For he had no sort of an idea of letting the rag-tag and bob-tail of South Harvey into a temple; he knew very well they deserved no temple. They were shiftless and wicked. How Wright & Perry would have sniffed at any one who would have called the dreary little shack, where Laura Van Dorn held forth, a temple. For they all pretended to see only the earthly dimensions of material things. ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... really,' said Ursula, going forward. And together the two sisters approached the group of uneasy, watchful common people. They were chiefly women, colliers' wives of the more shiftless sort. They had watchful, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... yourself," she told him. "Willie Whip-poor-will is a good-for-nothing rascal. Everybody talks about the way he prowls through the woods all night and seldom goes to bed before morning. And his wife is no better than he is. They're too shiftless even to build themselves a nest. Mrs. Whip-poor-will leaves her eggs on the ground. And that's enough to know ...
— The Tale of Jolly Robin • Arthur Scott Bailey
... he'll get Hallam into bad hands. He has thought o' them, or he would nivver hev spoke o' them; and he'll go to them, rather than not hev his own way. Even if he didn't, just as soon as he was squire, he'd manage it. The Norfolk Hallams, who are next to him, are a poor shiftless crowd, that he'd buy for a song. Now dost thou want to keep Hallam i' thy own flesh and blood? If ta does, I'll tell thee what ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... self-dependence—and to do it immediately. Make it a matter of conscience. Bear constantly in mind, that whatever has been done, may be done. Shame on those who, knowing the value of self-dependence, and having the power to acquire it, pass through life so shiftless, that they cannot do the least thing without aid—the aid of a host of relatives or menials. It is quite time that woman should understand her power and her strength, and govern herself accordingly. It is quite ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... was a poor and shiftless character, a thin, stoop-shouldered man. He was only thirty-five years of age, but, being married, that was enough to secure for him the title "Old Man." In Sanger, if Tom Nolan was a bachelor at eighty years of age he would still be Tom Nolan, "wan of the bhoys," but if he married at twenty ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... possessions to gratify their appetite for strong drink. When the corn crop was short, and gave out in the spring, or had been squandered for rum, they borrowed of the traders, paying two hundred per cent for it at harvest. They became poor, shiftless, and dependent. They even pledged their children as security, to be held as slaves in default of contract. They knew they were debased, and despised by the superior race, and felt their degradation. To ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... here specify, for good reasons, that I held myself very strictly aloof from the Bohemians, save in business affairs. This was partly because I was married, and I never saw the day in my life when to be regarded as a real Bohemian vagabond, or shiftless person, would not have given me the horrors. I would have infinitely preferred the poorest settled employment to such life. I mention this because a very brilliant and singular article entitled "Charles G. Leland l'ennemi des Allemands" (this title angered ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... "Why should I? You're shiftless. You won't work. When you do find a little gold you squander it. You have nothing but a gun. You ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... is put on a man by other men depends on his value as a working hand. If he has other serious personality faults, they will be overlooked as somewhat beside the point, provided that he levels with his job. But if he embodies all of the surface virtues, and is shiftless, any superior with sense will mark him for the discard, and his coworkers will breathe a sigh of relief when he has gone on ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... him but a shiftless youth, In whom no good they saw, And yet unwittingly, in truth, They made his careless ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Quite different is his near neighbor, the bloodthirsty Apache, who seems to delight only in robbing and killing people. Cunning and revenge are pronounced traits of his character and the Government has found him difficult to conquer or control. The Mexican leads a shiftless, thriftless life and seems satisfied merely to exist. He has, unfortunately, inherited more of the baser than the better qualities of his ancestors, and, to all appearance, is destined to further degenerate. The American ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... Henry?" said the shiftless one. "I like a clean, bold country like this. No more plowin' around ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... while I made her understand that I actually meant to give it to her for her very own. But when she took it to her mother, the little woman called me to the bed and explained that it would do the child no good in that form, because the lazy, shiftless, good-for-nothing father would take it to buy tobacco. 'The children can't save a penny,' she said sadly. 'When once he gets his hands on it, they never see it again. But if you really want Essie to have the money, won't you take it and buy her ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... tobacco, and these had only brought him into trouble with the courts; but now, when the boundless resources of human credulity were suddenly revealed to him by the revivalist, he determined to exploit them. This evolution of his ideas strikingly resembles that through which the mind of a worthless, shiftless, tricky creature in western New York—Joseph Smith—must have passed forty years before, when he dug up "the golden plates" of the "Book of Mormon," and found plenty of excellent people who rejoiced in believing that the Rev. Mr. Spalding's ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... wouldn't be," eagerly said the little man, "for I don't want you to hit the breeze just now. I know you are not Will Bransford because I know Bransford intimately. I was his chum for several years. He could drink as much as I. He was lazy and shiftless, but I liked him. We were together in Tucson—and in other places in Arizona. Texas, too. We never amounted to much. Do you need to know any more? I can ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... settle themselves where land is to be taken up that will produce the necessities of life with little labor." William Byrd described with engaging wit the ne'er-do-wells who maintained a precarious existence below the Dividing Line; and Governor Spotswood deplored the shiftless servants who lived on the Virginia frontier. Yet we may suppose that freedom often transformed the idle bondsman into an industrious freeholder. Nor were all the settlers of the Virginia back country emancipated servants. In 1732 Peter ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... meant. So he laid his plans with good courage, which plans, of course, included the taking of his dog. For three or four days Steve took an extra share of corn pone and bacon, Mirandy not noticing in her shiftless manner of providing, and feeling the loss of her mother, she was even more listless than usual. These extra rations for himself and Tige Steve carried to the woods and laid away. Then his beloved fox skin, the greatest treasure which he possessed beside the watch, he must take ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... denominated "shiftless and slack-twisted" by all who ever had any dealings with him in his unlucky, aimless life—one of those improvident, easygoing souls who sit contentedly down to breakfast with a very faint idea where their ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... it! Sal left the gas-stove flarin'. I made her get up and come downstairs to put it out. That'll learn her! Of all the careless, shiftless creatures, these coloured people are the worst. Come, Ida, it's long after nine, and I'm tired. You can read in your bedroom if ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... of army usury, and with it would be removed the worst cancer of which the whole army suffers. Once the certainty that ultimately they are sure of their money would be gone, these leeches would no longer trouble the gay and shiftless young officer whom they now pursue with the persistence of bloodhounds. But what is the use of saying this? H. M. himself is not without blame in these things. As long as his personal example all tells the other way, how can we expect the army to ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... was called, to see what was to be done. Young Tom was there, swollen of lip and nose, and with sunset shades around both eyes. Libby Anne was there, too, but she had been warned by her father, a poor, shiftless fellow, living on a rented farm, that she must not say anything to offend the Steadmans, for Mr. Steadman owned the farm that they ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... much service must I render? How much ought I to be paid? Of the second kind, nearly every phase of it begins right here, that men and women demand for labor something which they have not earned. They do careless, indifferent, shiftless, reckless work, and then demand a living-wage. The capitalist is not inclined to raise his scale of prices, knowing that he has built up his business by prudence, sagacity, and tireless application—the very qualities ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... gentry of the surrounding country, some the humbler white folk, some the negroes who had managed to acquire small tracts of land which they farmed successfully or otherwise. Among them, too, was the typical shiftless, "triflin' no-'count" darkey who "jist sits 'round a-waitin'," though it would be hard for him to tell what he ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... heading of "Poetry and Drama." The outstanding state bibliography of the region is A Bibliography of Texas, by C. W. Raines, Austin, 1896. Since this is half a century behind the times, its usefulness is limited. At that, it is more useful than the shiftless, hit-and-miss, ignorance-revealing South of Forty: From the Mississippi to the Rio Grande: A Bibliography, by Jesse L. Rader, Norman, Oklahoma, 1947. Henry R. Wagner's The Plains and the Rockies, "a contribution to the bibliography of original narratives of travel and adventure, 1800-1865," ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... Day homestead was very different now from what it had been when Janice first came there to live. Like many people of the town, the Day family had got into a rut. Uncle Jason was frankly shiftless, although he was a good farmer and able to earn a fair wage at carpenter's ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... know more about Potts. It will have been inferred that he was objectionable. For the fact, he was objectionable in every way: as a human being, a man, a citizen, a member of the Slocum County bar, and a veteran of our late civil conflict. He was shiftless, untidy, a borrower, a pompous braggart, a trouble-maker, forever driving some poor devil into senseless litigation. Moreover, he was blithely unscrupulous in his dealings with the Court, his clients, his brother-attorneys, and his fellow-men at large. When I add that he ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... Carlisle jail twict fer stealin', an' in summer he jest lives shiftless like along the creek, helpin' hisself to the farmers' stuff. Now he dassent come home no more, for dad says he won't own him fur a son. Mammy cries heaps an' says ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... before entering the wide doors. Many years before, the Cosmos had been a sedate dining spot, a place where respectable family parties came to enjoy good food and the gentle breezes of a near-by lake. Now, with the lake polluted by industry and with the gradual influx of shiftless spacemen, the Cosmos had been given over to the most basic, simple need of ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... find the Goldsmiths the same shifting, shiftless race as formerly; a "shattered family," scrambling on each other's back as soon as any rise above the surface. Maurice is "every way unprovided for"; living upon Cousin Jane and her husband, and, perhaps, amusing himself ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... imposed on! How they pauperize and debauch those they try to raise! It's a law of nature, Bob, that every tub must stand on its own bottom: you can't reform a man from without. Natural selection will have its way: the shiftless and the lazy must go to the wall. If you could kill them off, now, that might do some good. The class that needs help is not like us—not that we are anything to brag of: they've not had our chance. It's very well to say, give 'em a chance; but that's no use unless they take ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... my islander, with a slow stare. 'Well I suppose they are, after their fashion; I don't know much about them. In my opinion, they are a shiftless set, those French ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... thirty cabbages destroyed by that scamp of a cow," she exclaimed in a tone bordering on despair. "I wish I'd a hit her. If I'd broken my broom over her back I wouldn't a cared so much. And it's all Mudge's fault. He's the most shiftless man I ever see. I'll give him a dressing down, see if ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... Holley, one of the inspectors, settled the whole thing. It proved that this Dennis Shea was a harmless, amiable fellow, of the class known as shiftless, who had scaled his fate by marrying a dumb wife, who was at that moment ironing in the laundry. Before I left Stafford, I had hired both for five years. We had applied to Judge Pynchon, then the probate judge at Springfield, to change the name of Dennis Shea to Frederic Ingham. We had explained ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... in the past two years; yesterday morning I learned that you were a thief. Ah-h—I despise you! Stealing from the very men who helped you—the men to whom you owe nothing but gratitude and—and friendship! Have you no manhood whatever? Besides being weak and shiftless, are you a criminal as well? How can you be so utterly lacking in—in common decency, even?" She eyed him as she would look at some strange monster in a museum about which she ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... long breath. He was tall and lank, his hair fell down upon his shoulders, his whiskers were as tangled and matted as a little brush heap—in short, he was as fine a specimen of a poor white as one could find anywhere in the seceded States. He looked stupid as well as shiftless, but the young pilot knew he wasn't. He was as sly as a fox and as cunning as well, and Marcy confessed to himself that he stood more in fear of him than he did of Captain Beardsley. When the man heard Marcy's step upon the porch, he tried to assume the servile air which was ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... the human constitution; the pious, self- denying, laborious, and ill-paid missionary; the half-educated, litigious, envious, and disreputable lawyer, with his counterpoise, a brother of the profession, of better origin and of better character; the shiftless, bargaining, discontented seller of his betterments; the plausible carpenter, and most of the others, are more familiar to all who have ever dwelt ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... brand new Republic than his actual experience warranted. The roughness of the strong, uncultured young life grated upon him. It jarred upon his sensibilities. But of Italy he wrote with very different feeling. What though the places were dirty, the people shiftless, idle, unpunctual, unbusinesslike, and the fleas as the sand which is upon the sea-shore for multitude? It mattered not while life was so picturesque and varied, and manners were so full of amenity. Your inn might be, and probably was, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... mother," he writes, "and my best friend." As we ponder on such facts and then consider for what Beethoven stands, we can only exclaim, "God works in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform." It was early seen that the young Beethoven had unusual ability, and so the shiftless father, with the example of Mozart's precocity before him, submitted the boy to a deal of enforced drudgery in the way of harpsichord and violin practice. He had one good teacher however, Neefe, who records that the boy of thirteen played ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... on. There ain't much here of anything, I kin tell yez. Min was pore and as shiftless as Jim. Ef ye opens that drawer over there yez'll find a few baby ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... excuse the looks. I'm a lone woman, and my help is so shiftless, I have to look after everything myself; so I can't keep things as straight as ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... recurred, creating a receptive spirit, so deep a religion of assent that shadow and substance intermingled to my bewilderment? I was permitted to be a sensitive percipient in the midst of the ashes of shiftless folk who had passed away, catching but a casual and deceptive glimpse of the coming of the desolating ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... people; as witness how they assist the sick and give hospitality. Such virtues must ultimately gain for them the grace of conversion. The greatest obstacle in their way is the low cunning of the unprincipled parsons, who, from being peddlers, and poor, shiftless mechanics, without any proper discipline or preparation, take to the less laborious trade of preaching. Pray for them, ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... lay across some writhing figure, find it immovable, and turn with a groan to some farther cry. How or where were they to help? Others began to come in with white faces and terror-stricken eyes; and before long the sepulchral ruin had little groups all over it, endeavouring in shiftless fashion to bring rescue to the ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... I run over to Widow Brown's; Her son, from the mines, has just got back. I don't believe he's a cent in his purse, Young men are so shiftless now, alack! ...
— Ballads • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... profession of a citizen of the world. A man of rank is a poor shivering, exotic plant, that cannot subsist out of his native soil. If the imaginary barriers of society were thrown down, if we were reduced back again to a state of nature, the nobleman would appear a shiftless and a helpless being; he only who knew how to be a man would show like the creature of God, a being sent into the world with the capacities of subsistence and enjoyment. The nobleman, an artificial and fantastic creation, would then lose all that homage ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... "Parbleu!" she would explode, when the subject was touched on, "it was a lucky thing for him that Paul had had an old mother to keep him from burning his fingers. Paris! What did the provinces want with Paris? Paris had need enough of them, the great, idle, shiftless, dissipated, cruel old city, that ground all their sons to powder, and then scattered their ashes abroad like so many cinders. Oh, yes, Paris couldn't get along without the provinces, to plunder and rob, to seduce their sons away from living good, pure lives, and to suck these lives as a pig ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... de haunts," declared Chris solemnly. "You was jes' tellin' to yourself how dis shiftless, lying nigger got dem pawpaw leaves to make dis bar ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... with a tendency—a great moral tendency—a reaching out towards a success which she has never seen, as planet responds to the attraction of planet. And the things she dreamed, her child grown to manhood makes come true. Temperance fanatics are often the offspring of drunken parents. Shiftless fathers breed financiers. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... hands when their owner knows not how to use them. Though keeping up an outside show, he was really very poor, and when he heard of the doctor's misfortune he went to his chamber and wept as few men ever weep. As Hannah well expressed it, "he was shiftless," and did not know how to take care of himself. This James De Vere understood, and after the sale at Laurel Hill he turned his attention to his unfortunate cousin, and succeeded at last in securing for him the situation of bookkeeper in a large establishment in New York with which ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... seen an infant just born,—and with what promise of future greatness? Looking ahead ten years, we should have discerned this infant, Abraham, developing into youth, still living in the old log-cabin, with neither doors nor windows, with wolves and bears for neighbors, with a shiftless father. But his mother was dead! Still this mother had left her impress, and she had become in that boy's heart "an angel of a mother." She made him what he afterwards proved himself to be. Follow Abraham Lincoln where we will,—from the cradle to the grave,—and we ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... manner thrown him overboard; and, with a cunning and artfulness which even then seemed incredible to me, laid herself out only too successfully to ensnare me, and by becoming my wife to secure for herself those comforts and luxuries which Merlani—poor shiftless scamp that he was—could ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... haunts invite their presence. Germany abounds with watering-places, which are usually rendered agreeable by a judicious disposition of walks, and by other similar temptations. In nothing are the money-grasping and shiftless habits of America rendered more apparent, than in the inferiority of her places of public resort. In all these particulars nature has done a good deal for some of them, but nowhere has man done anything ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... desperately poor at last that a borrowed two-horse sleigh carried all his worldly goods, including a wife and five children. Joel Weed was, perhaps, as unfortunate a man as ever brought an illustrious son into the world. He was neither shiftless nor worthless, but what others did he could not do. He never took up land for himself because he had nothing to begin with. A neighbour who began with an axe and a hoe, entered fifty acres, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... no home of his own, he lived by visiting his friends; left his wife and children to the support of others, and seemed incapable of any other than this shifting and shiftless existence. This natural imbecility was greatly increased during a long period by his constant use of opium, which kept him, a greater portion of his life, in a world of dreams. He was fortunate in having a sincere and ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... soon," said Salemina nervously. "Do not wait another instant; you are late enough now, and I insist on your going. Make any excuse you see fit: say I am ill, say I am dead, if you like, but don't tell the real excuse—it is too shiftless and wretched and embarrassing. Don't cry, Benella. Molly, Oonah, go downstairs to your work. Mrs. Waterford, I think perhaps you have forgotten that we have already purchased raffle tickets, and we'll not take any more for fear that we may draw the necklace. Good-bye, ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... are tempted to denounce the Muse of Dekker as the most shiftless and shameless of slovens or of sluts; but when we consider the quantity of work which she managed to struggle or shuffle through with such occasionally admirable and memorable results, we are once more inclined to reclaim for her a place of honor among her more generally respectable or ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... work, and are well acquainted with gold-working. But they work in their own way; and, save under exceptional conditions, they are incapable of regular and continuous labour. It gives one the heart-ache to see their dawdling, idling, shuffling, shiftless style of spoiling time. They are now taking to tribute, piece and contract work. The French mines supply them with tools and powder, and, by way of pay and provisions, allow them to keep two-thirds of the produce. It is evident that such ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... Whereat Johnny, admitting the alleviation of an orange, a four-bladed knife, and the reversionary interest in much of Rupert's personal property, became more subdued. Sitting there with their arms entwined about each other, the sunlight searching the shiftless desolation of their motherless home, the few cheap playthings they had known lying around them, they beguiled themselves with those charming illusions of their future intentions common to their years—illusions they only half believed ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... may look on it as a test, Bertie. If you have the resource and courage to carry this thing through, I will take it as evidence that you are not the vapid and shiftless person most people think you. If you fail, I shall know that your Aunt Agatha was right when she called you a spineless invertebrate and advised me strongly not to marry you. It will be perfectly simple for you to intercept the ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... a year after their arrival, had married a neighboring planter. Wishing to be near the sister, our hostess had also married and settled down for life in that wild region. 'I like the country very well,' she added; 'it's a great sight easier living here than in Vermont; but I do hate these lazy, shiftless, good-for-nothing niggers; they are so slow, and so careless, and so dirty, that I sometimes think they will worry the very life out of me. I du believe I'm the hardest mistress in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... He was a shiftless man indeed who could not provide ample food for his own needs. The history of Virginia during colonial times was intimately connected with the tobacco crop. The general welfare of the people rose and fell with the value placed on the ...
— Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Lyman Carrier
... likes Mr. Easterbrook lots better than she does the violinist. I heard her talking to Mother one day. She said that any one that would look twice at a lazy, shiftless fiddler with probably not a dollar laid by for a rainy day, when all the while there was just waiting to be picked an estimable gentleman of independent fortune and stable position like Mr. Easterbrook—well, she had her opinion of her; that's all. She meant Mother, of course. ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... of Scots, enamoured for a season of the clean-limbed grace and almost feminine beauty ("ladyfaced," Melville had called him once) of this "long lad of nineteen" who came a-wooing her, had soon discovered, in matrimony, his vain, debauched, shiftless, and cowardly nature. She had married him in July of 1565, and by Michaelmas she had come to know him for just a lovely husk of a man, empty of heart or brain; and the knowledge transmuted affection ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... lookin' like a pigpen, and the children runnin' around half naked. And Sam he laughed, and says he, 'Aunt Jane, if we could wear quilts and eat quilts we'd be the richest people in the country.' Sam was the best-natured man that ever was, or he couldn't 'a' put up with Sarah Jane's shiftless ways. Hannah Crawford said she sent Sarah Jane a bundle o' caliker once by Sam, and Sam always declared he lost it. But Uncle Jim Matthews said he was ridin' along the road jest behind Sam, and he saw Sam throw it into the creek jest as he got on the bridge. I never blamed ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... Fred Dill looked in on Henley without a smile or a joke. He eyed the storekeeper, as he stood behind the show-case smoking a cigar, with a new and wondering respect. Fred was beginning to see largely manifested in Henley the very qualities which were wofully missing from his own merry and shiftless make-up. He counted on his mental digits the remaining items of the defunct circus—the tent, the clown's pony and cart, and the lion's den standing open-doored like a wheelless furniture-van across the street. And even while ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... one side a beautiful border of all sorts of greeneries, just as Nature, with her inimitable touch, had placed them. It was a home and a cover for small birds; it was a shade on a warm day; it was a delight to the eye at all times. Yet in the farmer's eye it was "shiftless" (the New Englander's bogy). The other side of the road he had "improved;" it gloried in what looked at a little distance like a single-file procession of glaring new posts, which on approaching were found to be the supports of one of man's neighborly devices—barbed ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... in our New England climate and society, and his life is perpetually misunderstood by his neighbors, because he shares none of their uneasiness about getting on in life. He is even called lazy, good-for-nothing, and "shiftless,"—the final stigma that we put upon a person who has learned to wait without ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... at him. Good-for-nothing was written in every line of the shiftless, shambling figure, and pictured in every rag of the fluttering raiment, and yet—the fellow really was hungry,—and again came the thought of that fifteen cents. The young man was hungry himself; had been hungry many a time in the past, and downright, gnawing, helpless hunger ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... conviction. "A man couldn't be shiftless with you to do for, Hannah. He'd be obliged to ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... some incantation scene of which the circular fire was the visible indication. Crosstrees, of four pieces of squared timber, lay near the fire, with a tireless wheel placed flat upon them, the hub in the square hole at the center. Shiftless farmers always resisted having tires set until they would no longer stay on the wheel. The inevitable day was postponed, time and again, by a soaking of the wheels overnight in some convenient puddle of water; but as the ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... Lizzie go 'bout three years back," Tom explained. "She got—shiftless and I been sort of batching it since. Clean, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... said nothing more after that. It was no use arguing the point. Irma was the wife of old Kapus—both of them as shiftless, thriftless, ill-conditioned a pair as ever stole the daylight from God in order to waste it in idleness. How they came to be blessed with such a pretty, winning daughter as Elsa an all too-indulgent ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... conditions in the North combined eventually to exclude it thence. Slave labor in the South brought with it in turn a whole train of social and economic consequences, notably the repulsion of foreign white immigration and the development of shiftless or wasteful industrial methods, which further sharpened the contrast between the two sections. The same contrast occurs in Italian territory between Sicily and Lombardy. Here location at the two extremities of the peninsula has involved ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... legs in Canada. There has been no weak-kneed, puling greedy mob bellowing for pap from the breasts of a state treasury—demanding the rewards of industry and thrift which they have been too weak and shiftless and useless to earn. But Canada is at the parting of the ways. The day more men live in the cities demanding food than live on the soil producing it—which God forfend—that day Canada goes down in the welter of industrial ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... twenty years of age. In escaping, they had to break jail, in the dead of night, while all were asleep in the big house; and thus they succeeded. What Mr. Wilson did, said or thought about these "shiftless" creatures we are not prepared to say; we may, notwithstanding, reasonably infer that the Underground has come in for a liberal share of his indignation and wrath. The above travelers came from near New Market, Md. The few rags they were clad ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... through his papers, putting things in order, and from every leaf, every scrap, came corroboration of the new fact. He was one of those pitiful pedagogues of the rural South, shiftless, half-educated, inefficient. He had never been able to earn much, and his family had always gently starved. Then had come the chance—the golden chance—the Philippines and a thousand a year. He had taken the bait, had come ten thousand miles ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... on. He come of a race never known to give up what they catched on to. Some way he gained ground too, for, with that shiftless dad at the head of things at the homestead, there was need of a wise counsellor to back up Kitty in ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... a shiftless, unbusiness-like set of women: they can look after themselves as well as after the poor and forlorn: many of them, were they in the world, would be called strong-minded, blue-stockinged women. At Montreal there is a large establishment of the Sisters ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... young man who has in him the makings of a man and a soldier finds the life of the Army attractive. The incompetent, the shiftless and the vicious are no better off in the Army than they would be anywhere else. In fact they ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... quality, a scantily-dressed woman with a thin, wasted face and hollow eyes, who had been fighting the wolf and keeping fast hold of her integrity, or a tender, innocent-looking girl, the messenger of a weak and shiftless mother, or a pale, bright-eyed boy whose much-worn but clean and well-kept garments gave sad evidence of a home out of which prop and stay had been removed. The strong and the weak, the pure and the defiled, were there. A poor washerwoman who in a moment of weakness has ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... Perhaps ten per cent compose the well-to-do and the best of the laborers, while at least nine per cent are thoroughly lewd and vicious. The rest, over eighty per cent, are poor and ignorant, fairly honest and well meaning, plodding, and to a degree shiftless, with some but not great sexual looseness. Such class lines are by no means fixed; they vary, one might almost say, with the price of cotton. The degree of ignorance cannot easily be expressed. We may say, for instance, that nearly two-thirds of ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Andersen in literature is that of the "Children's Poet," though his best poetry is prose. He was born in the ancient Danish city of Odense, on April 2d, 1805, of poor and shiftless parents. He had little regular instruction, and few childish associates. His youthful imagination was first stimulated by La Fontaine's 'Fables' and the 'Arabian Nights,' and he showed very early a dramatic instinct, trying to act and even to imitate Shakespeare, though, as he says, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... rolled to either side, and the men were almost washed off their feet with its rush. Some of them had climbed upon the island,—the main hatch,—where they sat and wrung the pieces of their apparel dry. Among these washers was my old third mate, now transformed into a somewhat shiftless sailor. ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... will not be forgotten. The Rev. Moses Stuart, of Andover Theological Seminary, in a work in the interest of peace, spoke of the "blessings and comforts" of slavery, and declared that "Christ doubtless felt that slavery might be made a very tolerable condition—aye, even a blessing, to such as were shiftless and helpless." Another book, entitled "Aunt Phillis's Cabin; or Southern Life as it is," was issued from the press, in which it was said that slavery was "authorized by God, permitted by Jesus Christ, sanctioned by the Apostles, and maintained by good men in all ages." A very remarkable ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... our charity visitor is to be somewhat severe with her shiftless family for spending money on pleasures and indulging their children out of all proportion to their means. The poor family which receives beans and coal from the county, and pays for a bicycle on the instalment plan, is not unknown to any of us. But as the ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... the ore and by the success with which it may be made available for consumption. This view of valuation for taxing purposes is sometimes opposed by mining men on the grounds that it taxes brains, skill, and initiative, and that it puts a premium on shiftless management. The same argument might be applied to the valuing of any business or profession. To the writer the argument is not sound, in that it fails to recognize the element of human energy in resource values. If value were to be confined solely to the intrinsic ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... kind of severity or even cruelty in a master, so that it be allied with competence, than he would endure this evils which (in the northland more than in most places) attend all the steps of the man who is slack, shiftless, and incompetent; and, be it noted, make miserable the days of all and sundry who are forced to be in any way ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... seized him to turn it into an official literary history of the period, and he issued it as a "Life and Times," with an abundance of notes and references. All the pleasant air of story telling, the "Life and Adventures," so suited to poor Goldy's shiftless career, were abolished. It was a sad mistake, much deprecated by his friends, notably by Carlyle. But at the period Forster was in his Sir Oracle vein and ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... Infanta Maria Teresa, Almirante Oquendo, and Vizcaya, each of about 7000 tons, and the somewhat larger and very able former Italian cruiser Cristobal Colon. Figures and statistics, however, give no idea of the actual weakness of the Spanish navy, handicapped by shiftless naval administration, by dependence on foreign sources of supply, and by the incompetence and lack of training of personnel. Of the squadron that came to Cuba under Admiral Cervera, the Colon lacked two 10-inch guns for her barbettes, and the Vizcaya was so foul under water that ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... and more than she herself would have anticipated. She had conceived a liking, almost an affection, for poor, shiftless Pennyloaf, strengthened, of course, by the devotion with which the latter repaid her. But something more than this injury to her feelings was involved in her distress on being excluded from those sorry lodgings. Pennyloaf was comparatively an old friend; she represented ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... went on slowly, with the shiftless slouch of Southern trains, the man at the plough vanished, and ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... half drunk when his father has any money to give him, and just smart enough to keep the old man mesmerized. Lately Henry's been in a mighty serious peck of trouble. Last fall he got married to a girl here in town. Three weeks ago a family named Johnson, the most shiftless in the county, the real low-down white trash sort, living on a truck patch out Rollinson's way, heard that Henry was on a toot in town, spending money freely, and they went after him. A client of mine rents their ground to them and told me all about it. It seems they claim that ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... reproach. All her waking hours are spent in a large sun-bonnet. She is never idle for one minute, is severe and hard, and despises everything but work. I think she suffers from her husband's shiftlessness. She always speaks of me as "This" or "that woman." The family consists of a grown-up son, a shiftless, melancholy-looking youth, who possibly pines for a wider life; a girl of sixteen, a sour, repellent-looking creature, with as much manners as a pig; and three hard, un-child-like younger children. By the whole family all courtesy and gentleness of ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... through a wood, in the midst of which stood a hut occupied by a family by the name of Smith, belonging to the class known as "poor whites"; shiftless, lazy, and consequently very poor indeed, they were. Many efforts had been put forth in their behalf, by the families of the Oaks and Ion, and by others also, but thus far with small results, for it is no easy matter to ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... their destination to Italy and take the Weber family along, in order that Aloysia might further develop her talents there, he got an inkling of the true state of affairs and was furious. He had large plans for his son, knew Weber to be shiftless and the family poor, and concluded that, for their own advantage, they were endeavoring to trap Wolfgang into a matrimonial alliance. Peremptory letters sent wife and son on their way to Paris, and the elder Mozart was greatly relieved when ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... Not only in the sneering mouth above the half-formed chin, and in the lowering eyes of undecided colour beneath the receding brow, but also in every shiftless attitude and movement of his great gaunt body, and even in the torn coat and shapeless felt hat—both once black, but both now a dirty gray—his aspect proclaimed him the preeminent rowdy ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... secretly dreaded a meeting with his old partner in the "haunts of fashion;" whatever was the cause that made Uncle Jim seek this obscure retirement affected him but slightly; he even was thrilled with a vague memory of the old shiftless camp they had both abandoned. A certain instinct—he knew not why, or less still that it might be one of delicacy—made him alight before they reached the first house. Bidding the carriage wait, Uncle Billy entered, and was ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... went to housekeeping. But time, which settles all things and places them in their true light and relations, has brought to the notice of this precious pair that they are very ill adapted to each other: it is even said that they quarrel. The coarser gossips affirm that Mrs. Ebling is lazy and shiftless, and that the doctor is disheartened and neglects his business. I have seen him once, and can judge something of his state by his bearing and looks. He is certainly not the sort of man I once thought he would make. Whether there is better stuff ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... were entertained very nicely by the little girls and Sammy. Cap'n Bill Quigg was a simple-minded man, after all; he did not seem to deserve the bad name that the crabbed old lock-keeper had given him. He might have been slow and shiftless; but he was scarcely any more grown up than ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... care of the body is a patriotic exercise in that it promotes health and vigor, and these underlie efficiency. Anything short of efficiency is unpatriotic because it amounts to a subtraction from the possible best that may be done to advance the interests of society. The shiftless man is not a patriot, nor yet the man who enervates his body by practices that render him less than efficient. The intemperate man may shout lustily at sight of the flag, but his noise only proclaims his lack of real patriotism. An honest day's work would redound far ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... cottages would not commend itself to the student of that art: in those where the woman is shiftless it would be deemed simply intolerable. Evidence of this is only too apparent on approaching cottages, especially towards the evening. Coming from the fresh air of the fields, perhaps from the sweet scent of clover or ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... rather shiftless fellow, often spoilt his boys as much as the average white father spoils his, for he never thrashed them, though they frequently deserved it, and having given in to them on many previous occasions, he had now let ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming |
