"Toper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... indignation when one of her neighbors, in her absence, sent Annette to a saloon to buy her some beer. She told her in emphatic terms she must never do so again, that she wanted her girl to grow up a respectable woman, and that she ought to be ashamed of herself, not only to be guzzling beer like a toper, but to send anybody's child to a saloon to come in contact with the kind of men who frequented such places, and that any women who sent their children to such places were training their boys to be drunkards and their girls to be street-walkers. "I am poor," she said, "but I mean to ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... inside of a saloon looked like, but there will still be the consolation of the cider jug. Like the smell of roasting chestnuts and the comfortable equatorial warmth of an oyster stew, it is a consolation hard to put into words. It calls irresistibly for tobacco; in fact the true cider toper always pulls a long puff at his pipe before each drink, and blows some of the smoke into the glass so that he gulps down some of the blue reek with his draught. Just why this should be, we know not. Also some enthusiasts insist on having small ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... dining-room. Poor lady! there she waited till ten o'clock,—tealess. There was not much of the Bluebeard about the squire; but he had succeeded in making it understood through the household that he was not to be interrupted by messages from his wife during the post-prandial hour, which, though no toper, he loved ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... Master Droop," said the delighted old toper, leaning back against the wall as he beamed across the table at his companion, "look you! An you have a butt of this same brew, Sir Percevall Hart is your slave, your scullion, your foot-boy! Why, man, 'tis the elixir of life! It warms a body like a maid's ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... should give joy? 'Tis barbarous; leave such savage ways To Thracians. Bacchus, shamefaced boy, Is blushing at your bloody frays. The Median sabre! lights and wine! Was stranger contrast ever seen? Cease, cease this brawling, comrades mine, And still upon your elbows lean. Well, shall I take a toper's part Of fierce Falernian? let our guest, Megilla's brother, say what dart Gave the death-wound that makes him blest. He hesitates? no other hire Shall tempt my sober brains. Whate'er The goddess tames you, no ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... good wine gets into my head." (I should think so, the old toper! Four bottles all but two glasses.) "To return to poor Blanche. As I sat laughing, joking with her, she let slip a word, a little word, which filled me with dismay. Some one had told her a part of the Secret—the ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... man who seemed to me to be old, and who smoked a half-penny clay pipe, which had become as black as coal. From six to eight beer saucers were piled up on the table in front of him, indicating the number of "bocks" he had already absorbed. With that same glance I had recognized in him a "regular toper," one of those frequenters of beer-houses, who come in the morning as soon as the place is open, and only go away in the evening when it is about to close. He was dirty, bald to about the middle of the cranium, while his long gray hair fell over the neck of his frock coat. His clothes, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... longing at the brilliant cavaliers all round her, who consoled her dreary prison-hours with reading hard enough for a professor at the university, and who showed towards the peevish, violent, disgustingly-ailing old toper who overshadowed her life with his presence nothing, as Horace Mann tells us, but attention and tenderness. The fact is that Louise of Stolberg, much as her subsequent life and ways of thought proved her to be a woman of the eighteenth century, and not at all above ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... was too much for him.' The Doctor entertained different opinions: he spoke with contempt of claret,—'A man would be drowned by it before it made him drunk,' adding, 'Poor stuff! No, sir, claret is the liquor for boys: port for men: but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy!' Most toper sentiments! But Ramsay did not stint his guests. And these were constantly of a noble order. Lord Bute, the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Bath, Lord Chesterfield, and the Duke of Richmond were often at the painter's table, discussing all sorts of political questions with him. Every man ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... through linen, it will lose its entire flavor. He, who skillfully mixes the Surrentine wine with Falernian lees, collects the sediment with a pigeon's egg: because the yelk sinks to the bottom, rolling down with it all the heterogeneous parts. You may rouse the jaded toper with roasted shrimps and African cockles; for lettuce after wine floats upon the soured stomach: by ham preferably, and by sausages, it craves to be restored to its appetite: nay, it will prefer every thing which is brought smoking ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... like to see Jacob drunk," replied young Tom. "It's not like him—it's not worthy of him; as for you or me, it's nothing at all; but I feel Jacob was never meant to be a toper. I never saw a lad so altered in a short time, and I expect bad will come of it when ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... were drunk. It was thus fitting that he should make an Empress of a scullery-maid, who, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, had no vestige of beauty to commend her to his favour, and whose chief attractions in his eyes were that she had a coarse tongue and was a "first-rate toper." ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... subject further, may read at their leisure the pleasant paper in which an agreeable writer, Fontenelle, describes Aristotle and Anacreon contending for the prize of wisdom; and may decide with the essayist, giving the prize to the generous old toper of Scios, as we should have done, or to the beetlebrowed Reviewer, according to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... until the door of the Wakalah was opened after the call to the morning-prayer, they went their ways and the Veiler vouchsafed them protection[FN383] and they left the Syrian man in his room strown as a tried toper and unknowing what the women had done with him of their wile and guile. Now when it was the undurn-hour he awoke from his crapula and opening his eyes, cried, "Ho my lady Never-sawest-thou-my-like! and ho my lady Hast-thou-seen-aught-like-me! ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... and appetite; in interdicting those which she herself refuses, whets our desire to those that she allows; and, like a kind and liberal mother, abundantly allows all that nature requires, even to satiety, if not to lassitude: unless we mean to say that the regimen which stops the toper before he has drunk himself drunk, the glutton before he has eaten to a surfeit, and the lecher before he has got the pox, is an enemy to pleasure. If the ordinary fortune fail, she does without it, and forms another, wholly her own, not ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... principally for firing shells, were distinguished by the diameter of their bore in inches; with the larger guns of the new system, in addition to this diameter, the weight in tons is also specified.—Gun, in north-country cant, meant a large flagon of ale, and son of a gun was a jovial toper: the term, owed its derivation to lads born under the breast of the lower-deck guns in olden times, when women were allowed to accompany their husbands. Even in 1820 the best petty officers were ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... swiftly, nervously. There is a psychological reason for women knitting just now, beyond the need of socks. I know how these women feel! I, even I, have begun to crochet! I do it for the same reason that the old toper in time of stress takes to his glass. It keeps me from thinking; it atrophies the brain; and now I know why the women of the East are so slow about getting the franchise. They crochet and work in wool instead of thinking. You can't do both! When the casualty lists are long, and letters ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... forest den, the deer Makes, as best befits, his lair, Where is plenty, and to spare, Of her grassy feast. There she browses free On herbage of the lea, Or marsh grass, daintily, Until her haunch is greased. Her drink is of the well, Where the water-cresses swell, Nor with the flowing shell Is the toper better pleased. The bent makes nobler cheer, Or the rashes of the mere, Than all the creagh that e'er Gave surfeit to a guest. Come, see her table spread; The sorach[117] sweet display'd The ealvi,[118] and the head Of the daisy stem; The dorach[119] crested, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... a toper, therefore, it is because he, like his father before him, was born with a defect—weak control—which might have made of him a drug-fiend, a tobacco-slave, a rake, or a criminal; in his home drink would naturally be the temptation ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... and yet the gentlemen themselves took no shame in the fact, and there is little doubt they or their comrades were tipsy twice or thrice in the week. Let us fancy them reeling to bed, supported by sympathising negroes; and their vinous General, too stout a toper to have surrendered himself to a half-dozen bottles of Bordeaux, conducted to his chamber by the young gentlemen of the house, and speedily sleeping the sleep which friendly Bacchus gives. The good lady of Castlewood saw the condition of her guests without the least surprise or horror; and was up ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... enemies, nor disparaged what he admired, nor praised what he despised. Those who knew him well had the conviction that, even with time, these literary arts would never be his. His poem, The Bothie of Toper-na-Fuosich, has some admirable Homeric qualities—out-of-doors freshness, life, naturalness, buoyant rapidity. Some of the expressions in that poem ... come back now to my ear with the true Homeric ring. But that in him of which I think ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... it returned—by her who had inspired it? Both, both. He thought, wise youth! that while he was swallowing draught after draught of this delicious poison, no one perceived the deep intoxication he was revelling in. Just as wisely some veritable toper, by putting on a grave and demure countenance, cheats himself into the belief that he conceals from every eye that delectable and irresistible confusion in which his brain is swimming. His love was seen. How could it be otherwise? That instantaneous, that complete delight which he felt ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... health of every member of the company; his glass has been filled scores of times by watchful waiters. So has Mr. Bayham absorbed great quantities of drink; but without any visible effect on that veteran toper. So has young Clive taken more than is good for him. His cheeks are flushed and burning; he is chattering and laughing loudly at his end of the table. Mr. Warrington eyes the lad with some curiosity; and then regards Mr. Barnes with a look of scorn, which ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... like a pot of beer, A pewter-pot disconsolately clear, Which holds a potful, as is right and just. I will grow clamorous—by the rood, I will, If thus ye use me like a pewter pot. Good friend, thou art a toper and a sot— I will not be the lead to hold thy swill, Nor any lead: I will arise and spill Thy silly beverage, spill ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... staggering youths, screaming with alarm and laughter; if one of them lost her balance and fell she was captured with shrieks of merriment and forced to mount her insecure eminence again. Presently the car of Dionysus came to wreck over the body of an unconscious toper, but no one stopped to set it right; and though the hapless representative of the god howled loudly to them to stop while he extricated himself from the machine, in which he had stuck, it was in vain; the score or so of youths who were ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... does a toper—especially when "before the beak"—always say that he was "in drink," when he evidently means that the drink was in him? The only soaker on record who could rightly be said ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... exclaims, 'at the Evangelical people, have they become any better? Do they yield less to luxury, lust and greed? Show me a man whom that Gospel has changed from a toper to a temperate man, from a brute to a gentle creature, from a miser into a liberal person, from a shameless to a chaste being. I will show you many who have become even worse than they were.' Now they have thrown the images out of the churches and abolished mass ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... toper, sot, tippler, carouser, dipsomaniac, wine-bibber, bacchanal, bacchanalian, debauchee. Antonyms: abstainer, ascetic, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the late years of the eighteenth century. The grossness and the universality of the vice are too well known to need elaborating. All oral tradition, all contemporary literature, all satiric art, tell the same horrid tale; and the number of bottles which a single toper would consume at a sitting not only, in Burke's phrase, "outraged economy," but "staggered credibility." Even as late as 1831, Samuel Wilberforce, afterwards Bishop, wrote thus in his diary:—"A good Audit Dinner: 23 people drank 11 bottles of wine, 28 quarts ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... brave had, among other ornamental touches to his visage, painted his nose bright red. The effect on his brother braves was solemnising. It was not so impressive to his white observers, as it suggested to them the civilised toper. ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... ain't so lovely!" said the cash girl, grinning, "for I saw Mag Brady on the street last night. She was drunk as a toper, and she says she's a-goin' to ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... a confirmed toper. The people in Pinchbrook said he was a good man, but, they used to add, with a shrug of the shoulders, "pity he drinks." It was a sad pity, but he seemed to have no power over his appetite. The allusion of Ben to his besetting sin was cruel and mortifying, for ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... Rokuro[u]bei had delivered him over to her, decidedly the worse for wine and wear. He was somewhat astonished at the young man's easy discomfiture. Middle age with the Nipponese usually means the seasoned and steady toper. Regarding the matter as partly due to her own fault, and reassured by Kondo[u] as to the events of the evening, O'Iwa heated the sake with all the greater care, serving it herself, chatting on the indifferent gossip of the neighbourhood. She spoke of the talk current ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, contains in the chief figure a pronounced reminiscence of Titian's picture; while the unconventional attitude of the amorino, or Bacchic figure, in attendance on the god, is imitated without alteration from that of the little toper whose ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... incapable of sitting still, with folded hands, for any length of time; and when the stress of her attention to household work, and her devotion to neighborly good deeds relaxed, she turned to knitting wash-rags as a sportsman turns to his gun, or a toper to his cups. She seemed to find more stimulus for thought and more helpful diversion in the production of one wash-rag than most persons ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... aguardiente[obs3]; apple brandy, applejack; brandy, brandy smash [U.S.]; chain lightning*, champagne, cocktail; gin, ginsling[obs3]; highball [U.S.], peg, rum, rye, schnapps [U.S.], sherry, sling [U.S.], uisquebaugh[Irish], usquebaugh, whisky, xeres[obs3]. drunkard, sot, toper, tippler, bibber[obs3], wine-bibber, lush; hard drinker, gin drinker, dram drinker; soaker*, sponge, tun; love pot, toss pot; thirsty soul, reveler, carouser, Bacchanal, Bacchanalian; Bacchal[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... have been with a nobler philosophy of life, and a more wholesome self-restraint. Blase, toper as he was, how did he begin his Rubaiyat? ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... old Otard brandy, and poured out half a tumblerful, and offered it to Ishmael. It was a dose that might have been swallowed with impunity by a seasoned old toper like Wiseman; but certainly not by an abstinent young man like Ishmael, who, yielding to the fatal impulse to get rid of present suffering by any means, at any cost, or any risk, took the tumbler and ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the country parson after all," said Lynde, with a laugh; "it was the village toper. He's an early bird—I'll say that for him—to have secured his intoxicating worm at this hour ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... been a chorister—sang divinely. He was only four years in the regiment, and his case was brought to me before he was discharged. He came to us an angel, and departed a finished young blackguard. He drank, stole, and lied to any extent, and was as well versed in vicious sins as any old toper in the regiment. When I see a fresh drummer brought in, I wonder how long he will keep his innocence, and sometimes wish his friends could see the life he is subjected to. I give them a month generally, and then away flies their bloom ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... or a jollier-feeling fellow in the room than I am, though I may not conduct myself like a dancing dervish. But I own you may be right about the books, for there are many sorts of intemperance, and a library is as irresistible to me as a barroom to a toper. I shall have to sign a pledge and cork up the only bottle that tempts ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... to be old, and who smoked a halfpenny clay pipe, which had become as black as coal. From six to eight beer saucers were piled up on the table in front of him, indicating the number of "bocks" he had already absorbed. With the same sweep of the eye I had recognized a "regular toper," one of those frequenters of beer-houses, who come in the morning as soon as the place is open, and only go way in the evening when it is about to close. He was dirty, bald to about the middle of the cranium, while his long, powder and salt, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... of yet older brandy. The result of this mixture was extremely felicitous, pleasant to the taste, and producing a tingling sensation on the coats of the stomach, uncommonly delectable to so old a toper ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... been Mercier's eye in place of his ear which attended the two men to the upper room, he would have remarked—perhaps with surprise, since he had gained some knowledge of Grio's temper—that in proportion as they mounted the staircase, the toper's crest drooped, and his arrogance ebbed away; until at the door of Basterga's chamber, it was but a sneaking and awkward ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... a weakness for gardening and no sense at all of proportion in vegetables. I can no more resist a seed catalogue than a toper can his cup. There is no game, no form of exercise, to compare for a moment in my mind with having a row of young growing things in a patch of mellow soil; no possession so sure, so worth while, so interesting as a piece of land. ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... Pan, chief of the sile'ni or older satyrs. Sil[e]nus was the foster-father of Bacchus, the wine-god, and is described as a jovial old toper, with bald head, pug ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Phyllis, dost thou fear? at this My lesson dost thou scoff? Or would'st thou say, light draughts betray The toper falling off? Keen taste, eyes keen—whate'er be seen Of joy in thine, fair child, Love's philtre use, but don't abuse: ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... prepared by the Squire himself; for it was a beverage in the skilful mixture of which he particularly prided himself; alleging that it was too abstruse and complex for the comprehension of an ordinary servant. It was a potation, indeed, that might well make the heart of a toper leap within him; being composed of the richest and raciest wines, highly spiced and sweetened, with roasted apples bobbing ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... Potter—used to be known as 'old Toper Potter;' and she is known throughout the city as 'Little ...
— Three People • Pansy
... there not traditions, too, on the other side of the house, of casks of claret brought up into the dining-room, the door locked, and the key thrown out of the window? With such antecedents to sustain me, I ought to be able to hold my own against the staunchest toper in Iceland! So, with a devil glittering in my left eye, I winked defiance right and left, and away we went at it again for another five-and-forty minutes. At last their fire slackened: I had partially quelled both the Governor and the Rector, and still survived. ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... clothes. He saw how they set their little feet, how they carried their chins, with what grace and sinuosity they swung their bodies. A dainty, self-conscious swaying of the hips by a woman was to him as alluring as the glint of rare wine to a toper. He would turn and follow the disappearing vision with his eyes. He would thrill as a child with the unhindered passion that was in him. He loved the thing that women love in themselves, grace. At this, their own shrine, he knelt with them, an ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... very inferior kind, Such as in any town you may find, Such as one might imagine would suit The rascal who drank wine out of a boot, And, after all, it was not a crime, For he won thereby Dorf Hueffelsheim. A jolly old toper! who at a pull Could drink a postilion's jack boot full, And ask with a laugh, when that was done, If the fellow had left the other one! This wine is as good as we can afford To the friars, who sit at the lower board, And cannot distinguish bad from ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... me." They shanghaied little Tim O'Shane, they cached him safe away, An' though he objurgated some, they "cured" him night an' day; An' pretty soon there came the change amazin' to explain: "I'll never take another drink," sez Timothy O'Shane. They tried it out on Spike Muldoon, that toper of renown; They put it over Grouch McGraw, the terror of the town. They roped in "tanks" from far and near, an' every test was sure, An' like a flame there ran the fame of ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... blood to the head of an imprudent man similarly prepared, killing him, as is right. We do not build syllogisms to prove that grains and fruits of the earth are of God's best bounty to man; we allow that bad whisky may—with difficulty—be distilled from rye to spoil the toper's nose, and that hydrocyanic acid can be got out of the bloomy peach. It were folly to prove that Science and Invention are our very good friends, yet the sapper who has had the misfortune to be blown to rags by the mine he was preparing for his enemy ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... to the counter of a grog-shop, as the proprietor was mixing a drink for a toper standing at the counter, said to the proprietor, "Can you tell me what your business is good for?" The proprietor, with an infernal laugh, said, "It ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... what sailors call "water bewitched," and he never made any remark. I once, to try him, omitted the alcohol; he then said, "Tre, have you not forgotten the creature comfort?" I then put in two spoonfuls, and he was satisfied. This does not look like an habitual toper. His English acquaintances in Italy were, he said in derision, all milksops. On the rare occasion of any of his former friends visiting him, he would urge them to have a carouse with him, but they had grown wiser. He ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... seemed to be taking some kind of Sustenance, it was hard that I, a Christian, should go to bed (or into another Fox-hole, for bed I had none, and yet had slept in my time in a grand chamber in Hanover Square) with an empty belly. The Earth was beginning to drink up the dews, like an insatiate toper as she is. I passed a flock of sheep biting their hasty supper from the grass; and each one with a little cloud of gnats buzzing around it, that with feeble stings, poor insects, were trying for their supper too. And 'tis effect we have upon another. The birds had taken ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... kept up his reputation as a toper, and swallowed one, two, three bottles without wincing. He grew talkative and merry, and began to sing songs and to cut jokes; at which Wood laughed hugely, and Billings after him. Mrs. Cat could ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for a closer intimacy, till the fumes of your breath be a little less potent. Mercy on you, man! the water absolutely hisses down your red-hot gullet, and is converted quite to steam, in the miniature tophet, which you mistake for a stomach. Fill again, and tell me, on the word of an honest toper, did you ever, in cellar, tavern, or any kind of a dram-shop, spend the price of your children's food for a swig half so delicious? Now, for the first time these ten years, you know the flavor of cold water. Good by; and, ...
— A Rill From the Town Pump (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... said an old toper; and Griffith remained a good hour with his head on the table. Meantime the other gentlemen soon put it out of their power to ridicule him on the score ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... him were at war: the high and mighty fighting-man and the confidential toper. Each came bobbing ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... impunity he took as much as 320 grains of opium a day, and was accustomed at one period of his life to call every day for "a glass of laudanum negus, warm, and without sugar," to use his own expression, after the manner a toper would call ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... passed the zenith of his career. His massive paunch placed deadening strictures on his credentials as the impersonator of heroes. The buffo was an inveterate toper who had often been placed behind bars by the police for his nocturnal excesses. The barytone had a big lawsuit on his hands about an estate; his lawyers were two stars of obscurity from a small village; ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... order away, like the physician of Sancho Panza in his famous government of Barrataria, the goblet, just as it was about to be carried to the lips of the expecting guest. He had before laughed at the stare of bewildered disappointment of the astonished toper, and the subdued humor of Master Prout, hardly concealed by his austere exterior, but he felt no disposition to censure the severity of the regulation. It was of the utmost importance, as well for the peace and good order of the colony, as in accordance with the principles of self-denial ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... 90) is black, with metallic green reflections, and the legs are dark and paler at the knee-joints, the middle and hind pair of tarsi being dark honey yellow. The Wine fly is also a Piophila, and lives the life of a perpetual toper in old wine casks, and partially emptied beer, cider and wine bottles, where, with its pupa-case (Fig. 91), it may be found floating ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... denied that he had any hand in the robberies when Garvie asked him. It was about drink that he was pleadin' with him so hard. You know we have suspected him of that too, of late; but from what I heard he must be a regular toper. Garvie was tryin' to persuade him to become a total abstainer. Says he to him, 'You know, Davis, that whatever may be true as to the general question of abstaining from strong drink, your only chance of bein' delivered lies in total ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... usual, installed themselves in the most comfortable chairs on the balcony. They were boozing steadily, like gentlemen, and having no end of fun with the poor little Norwegian professor and his miscalculations. One of them—a venerable toper of Anacreontic youthfulness known as Charlie who turned up on Nepenthe at odd intervals and whom the oldest inhabitant of the place had never seen otherwise than in a state of ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... for this Calvinistic people, the year's anniversary falls upon a Sunday, when the public-houses are inexorably closed, when singing and even whistling is banished from our homes and highways, and the oldest toper feels called upon to go to church. Thus pulled about, as if between two loyalties, the Scots have to decide many nice cases of conscience, and ride the marches narrowly between the weekly and the annual observance. A party of convivial musicians, next door to a friend of mine, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Uncle Ben, who, owing to his abstraction, had not yet wiped his mouth of the liquor he had imperfectly swallowed, and was in consequence more redolent of whiskey than a confirmed toper. He rang the bell for the desired refreshment with a slightly cynical smile. He was satisfied that his visitor, like many others of humble position, was ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... am a toper. The wonderful clear sparkle, the subtle flavour, the brilliancy of wine, has for me a strange fascination; it seems to signify so much in life ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... there could not begin to ravage a pantry like a tame 'coon. They will devour honey, molasses, sugar, pies, cake, bread, butter, milk—anything edible. They will uncover preserve-jars as if Mrs. Leonard had given them lessons, and with the certainty of a toper uncork a bottle and get drunk on ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... his rival, having procured his pardon from the King to prevent it being granted if applied for a second time, and keeping this stratagem secret, next forges a letter as if from the Hague which describes in detail Bellmour's execution for killing a toper during a tavern brawl. He then plies his suit with such ardour that Leticia, induced by poverty and wretchedness, reluctantly consents to marry him. On the wedding morning Bellmour returns in disguise and intercepts a letter that conveys news of the arrival of Sir Feeble's nephew, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... depend upon ourselves. There are thousands who practice errors day after day, and whose pervading thought is, that everything which is agreeable and pleasing cannot be hurtful. The slothful man loves his bed; the toper his drink, because it throws him into an exhilarative and exquisite mood; the gourmand makes his stomach his god; and the sensualist thinks his delights imperishable. So we go on, and at last we stumble and break down. We then begin to reflect, and the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... lightning [Slang], champagne, cocktail; gin, ginsling^; highball [U.S.], peg, rum, rye, schnapps [U.S.], sherry, sling [U.S.], uisquebaugh [Ire.], usquebaugh [Scot.], whisky, xeres^. drunkard, sot, toper, tippler, bibber^, wine-bibber, lush; hard drinker, gin drinker, dram drinker; soaker [Slang], sponge, tun; love pot, toss pot; thirsty soul, reveler, carouser, Bacchanal, Bacchanalian; Bacchal^, Bacchante^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... distance to travel this evening, and must not drink more,' I observed, for prudence told me that it was dangerous work for two sober country lads to keep pace with an experienced toper. ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... knight-errant in what was called 'Saving the ladies.' At clubs and gatherings any member would toast his idol in a bumper, and then another champion would enter his peerless Dulcinea in two bumpers, to be routed by the original toper taking off four. The deepest drinker 'saved his lady,' as the phrase ran; though, says George Thomson speaking of the old concerts in St Cecilia's Hall, at the foot of Niddry's Wynd, which were maintained by noblemen and gentlemen, ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... of one piece. He was, besides, a mighty toper; he could sit at wine until the day dawned, and pass directly from the table to the bench with a steady hand and a clear head. Beyond the third bottle, he showed the plebeian in a larger print; the low, gross accent, the low, foul mirth, grew broader and commoner; ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... often, during my ministry, did I yearn to be able to utter that emphatic word! Mind, it is not a cuss-word. It is only an innocent adjective—condemned. But what eloquence and emphasis there is in it! How often I could have flung it at the head of a confirmed toper, as he knelt at my feet to take the pledge. How often I could have shot it at the virago, who was disturbing the peace of the village; and on whom my vituperation, which fell like a shot without powder, made no impression! It sounded honest. I like a good fit of anger, honest anger, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... romances appears already in Kulhwych, while in Geoffrey he is Arthur's seneschal.[440] Nobler traits are his in later Welsh poetry; he is a mighty warrior, fighting even against a hundred, though his powers as a toper are also great. Here, too, his death is lamented.[441] He may thus have been a god of war, and his battle-fury may be poetically described in a curious passage referring to him in Kulhwych: "His breath lasted nine days and nine nights under water. He could ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... the affirmative, and told him how it had happened. "Then," said our most holy and devout inquisitor of St. John Goldenbeard, (1) "then hast thou made Christ a wine-bibber, and a lover of rare vintages, as if he were a sot, a toper and a tavern-haunter even as one of you. And thinkest thou now by a few words of apology to pass this off as a light matter? It is no such thing as thou supposest. Thou hast deserved the fire; and we should ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... acquainted with certain members of the educated classes. At first he wandered up and down selling beer and kvass—filling the cups of all who wished to drink. . . . But he was driven to fare forth again, and again took up the life of a vagrant and a toper. In Odessa he found occupation in the harbour and the salt-works. Then he wandered through Besserabia, the Crimea, the Kuban, and eventually reached the Caucasus. At Tiflis he worked in the railway sheds. Here he once more foregathered ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... towns now-a-days. He sometimes inspected the "ordinaries" and made complaint of any disorders which he there discovered, and gave in the names of "idle tiplers and gamers," and he could warn the tavern-keeper to sell no more liquor to any toper whom he knew or fancied was drinking too heavily. Josselyn complained bitterly that during his visit to New England in 1663 at "houses of entertainment called ordinaries into which a stranger went, he was presently followed by one appointed to that ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... agrees with Cook as to the toper-like qualities of this priest, but speaks of his having great authority among the people. This merely apparent difference of statement is quite easily understood, by what one may witness in some other countries, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... Mary. What avail all thy private tears and remonstrances with the incorrigible Danby, so long as that brewery of a toper, Bob Still, daily eclipses thy threshold with the vast diameter of his paunch, and enthrones himself in the sentry-box, holding divided ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... too, All that distinguishes a man from you, Pray damn at will: all shining virtues gain An added luster from a rogue's disdain. But spare the young that proselyting sin, A toper's apotheosis of gin. If not our young, at least our pigs may claim Exemption from ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... like a ship Left without a sailor, Like a bird that through the air Flies where tempests hale her; Chains and fetters hold me not, Naught avails a jailer; Still I find my fellows out, Toper, gamester, railer. ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... sobriety. But there are nice degrees and various grades in our drunkenness, as in our other vices, and the man who is a druggard despises the common drunkard; and the sippers of ether look down with infinite contempt—or, more ludicrous still, with tender, pitying sorrow, upon the toper and the slave of morphia and cocaine, and take no shame in seeing the oxygenated greyhound win the coursing-match and the oxygenated racehorse run for the Cup! A year or so, and the Transatlantic oxygen-outfit will be an indispensable equipment of the British athlete. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... old toper," cried Clenk delightedly, waxing jocose in his relief, "ye been swindling me! Ye hev been playin' sick to trick me out 'n this ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... of the massive safe seemed to lear at him with a bleared eye like that of a toper, who, having spent the night in convivial company, found himself, most unaccountably, on his own ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... end? That is not hard to tell. A little more The multitude will groan and wail, Boris Pucker awhile his forehead, like a toper Eyeing a glass of wine, and in the end Will humbly of his graciousness consent To take the crown; and then—and then will rule us Just ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... toper regale in his tankard of ale, Or with alcohol moisten his thrapple, Only give me, I pray, a good pipe of soft clay, Nicely tapered and thin in the stapple; And I shall puff, puff, let who will say, "Enough!" No luxury else I'm in lack o', No ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... false conclusion," said Tinto; "I hate it, Peter, as I hate an unfilled can. I grant you, indeed, that speech is a faculty of some value in the intercourse of human affairs, and I will not even insist on the doctrine of that Pythagorean toper, who was of opinion that over a bottle speaking spoiled conversation. But I will not allow that a professor of the fine arts has occasion to embody the idea of his scene in language, in order to impress upon the reader its reality and its effect. On the contrary, I will ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... None will hear you, call as you will. I gave your four henchmen a flagon of wine wherein to drink to my safe journey hence. They have emptied it ere this, I make no doubt, and a single glass of it would set the hardest toper asleep for ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... bewildered by what he had just heard. Obliged to restrain himself at the time, he now fully appreciated his liberty of action. It was with an unsteady gait that he took his first steps in the street, like the toper, who, after being shut up in a warm room, suddenly goes out into the open air. He was beaming with pleasure, but at the same time felt rather giddy, from that rapid succession of unexpected revelations, which, so he thought, had suddenly placed ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... it!" said the toper to the shepherd, with much satisfaction. "When I walked up your garden afore coming in, and saw the hives all of a row, I said to myself, 'Where there's bees there's honey, and where there's honey there's mead.' But mead of such a truly comfortable ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... of his inventive countrymen. He died of brain-fever, followed by paralysis, the effect of drunkenness. He was a jolly old toper: I am sorry for him. You just now said that Aristophanes wanted wit. What foolish fellows then the Athenians must have been, in the very meridian of their literature, to be so delighted with what they mistook for wit as to decree him a crown of olive! He has been styled the Prince of Old Comedy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... dog-star and the driving tempest, twilight with its cheerful gleam of lamps, mid-day with its sunshine—all suggest reasons for indulging in the cup. Not that we are justified in fancying Alcaeus a mere vulgar toper: he retained Aeolian sumptuousness in his pleasures, and raised the art of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a bad bargain-driver. David's nature was of the sensitive and affectionate type that shrinks from a dispute, and gives way at once if an opponent touches his feelings. His loftiness of feeling, and the fact that the old toper had himself well in hand, put him still further at a disadvantage in a dispute about money matters with his own father, especially as he credited that father with the best intentions, and took his covetous greed for a printer's attachment to his old familiar tools. Still, as Jerome-Nicolas ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... yon spark in blue and silver? He beats Joe Addison himself, in drinking, and pious Joe is the greatest toper in the three ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... soldier, had he known as well as I did that he had gone over to the town of Nousreddin expressly to amuse himself with the women of the country, and had doubtless paid as much attention to the bouza as the most sturdy toper ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English |
