"Cannei" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that chance made such canny selections," observed Betty. "One of those girls manipulated the right notes into our hands. Libbie, what ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... luck, my canny Scot," said Mr. Ireby, "to have spoken to me, for I see thy cattle have done their day's work, and I have at my disposal the only field within three miles that is to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... a swap," says Sandy, climbin' oot at the back o' the cairt, an' jookin' awa' roond canny-weys to the horse's heid. ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... "No' afore her," she besought him; but before he set off to post the letter she said: "Come canny into my bed the night, when Elspeth 's sleeping, and syne I'll tell you all there is to tell about ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... succeeded in getting a cancellation of the lease. On first securing the lease the season was well advanced and it became an anxiety to me as to where I should get cattle to put in the pasture, if only enough to pay the year's rent—some 7000 dollars. One man, a canny Scotsman, had been holding and grazing a large herd of 4000 two-year-old steers, all in one straight brand, on the free range just outside. He knew I wanted cattle and I knew he wanted grass, as he could not find ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... 3 p.m.—CROWN PRINCE, who plays slashing reckless game, takes honour at first hole (Liege to Loos), hooks at right angles, dents two spectators, and ends up in Aisne Bunker. FERDINAND (canny, cautious type of player) hits a wind-cheating screamer which finished fully forty yards from the tee. Critics differ as to FRANCIS-JOSEPH's shot, and it is still a moot point whether he had a species of fit or was simply trying ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 - 1917 Almanack • Various
... the farmer, "ye'll hae heard o' Canny Elshie the Black Dwarf, or I am muckle mistaen—A' the warld tells tales about him, but it's but daft nonsense after a'—I dinna believe a word o't ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... their time, and keep their mind, as they say, to themselves, and touch pot and flagon with you, and hunt and hawk with you, and, after all, when time serves, pay off some old feud with the point of the dagger. Canny Yorkshire has no memory for such old sores. Why, man, an you had hit me a rough blow, maybe I would rather have taken it from you, than a rough word from another; for you have a good notion of falconry, though you stand up for washing ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... philanthropists took that direction; Lord Shaftesbury and Carlyle, Fowell Buxton, and Gladstone, threw their sympathies on the side which they should naturally have opposed, and did so for no reason except their eccentricity; but the "canny" Scots and ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... has always made the vendors of pictures and books and minerals find him extremely pleasant to deal with. But as his love-affair had shown his mother how little he had taken to heart her chiefest care for him, so this first business transaction was a painful awakening to his father, the canny Scotch merchant, who had heaped up riches hoping that his son ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... in winter. Now and again it was Nice or Cannes. And there you were taught by a canny Scot to hit a golf ball cunningly from a pinch of sand. But you blushed with shame the while, for in America at that time golf had not yet become a manly game, the maker young of men as good as dead, the talk of cabinets But there was lawn tennis also, which you ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... John Bairdieson takes up the Bibles for him when he preaches, and as he shuts the door, John says over the railing in a whisper,'Noo, dinna be losin' the Psalms, as ye did this day three weeks'; or perhaps,'Be canny on this side o' the poopit; the hinge is juist pitten on wi' potty [putty];' whiles John will walk half-way down the kirk, and then turn to see if my father has sat quietly down according to instructions. This John has ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... risibility was evidently much tickled by the sense of their thwarted purpose. Despite the mournful conditions under which he was at that moment abroad, he could not forbear to wish them, from his place in the procession, "a gay canny mornin'"; and failing to satisfy himself with the effect produced by this insinuating salutation, he could not resist the further temptation of reminding them that they had frightened and ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... disappearance of the ape had impressed Jimmy with the idea that it was what the Scottish peasants call "no canny," and as it was his first interview with one of these curious creatures, there was some excuse for his apparent fear, though I am not certain that it ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... smiling; but the required ecstasy, that would reconcile her to her hopeless life, did not come. She waited for it with a canny look as she did at home when she held a match to the gas-ring to see if there was another shilling needed in the slot. The light did not come. By every evidence of her sense she was in the completest darkness. But she did ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... a sweatin' hurry to come back," pronounced the canny Scot, shedding a wink from a dry, red-fringed eyelid. He produced from the roomy breast-pocket of his khaki Service jacket a rubber-tubed stethoscope, and put it silently into the hand Saxham had mechanically stretched ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... wi' a strae i' my mouth, The weyves com roun me in clusters: 'What weage dus te ax, canny lad?' says yen." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851 • Various
... up to be accessible to the lumbermen who had ravaged the lower levels. Though the long summer twilight of the North still lighted the tops of the trees, the two men rode in impenetrable darkness, leaving the horses to pick their own canny ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... be more positive than that if Morty's father had made a fortune in his own day, and the son inherited and administered it with the canny vigilance which distinguished the sons of rich men to-day from the mad spendthrifts of a former generation, he would be as logically intimate with those young capitalists who were the renewed pillars of San Francisco society, as ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... that, Andy McGuffey. Why, you're a regular old pessimist, like all your canny Scotch ancestors were. You love to look at the world through smoked glasses. On my part, I prefer to use rose-colored ones, and expect the best sort of things to happen, even if I do get fooled lots ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... touched the accursed thing. To them all parties and all governments are alike evil. The Whigs persecuted the Solemn League and Covenant—so did the Tories. Nationalists and Unionists are to them alike abominable, sold under sin. Withal they are shrewd, canny, successful farmers—and, as I inferred from sundry incidents, before Lord Ernest confided the fact to me, not averse from a "right gude williewaught" now ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... study the fairy beauties in drops of sea water, and with human interest too, so much more varied than on this P. & O. Hotel; there, would be all kinds of men, jolly, devil-may-care fellows, and even disreputable characters, mixed with canny, pawky, canting Scotties, and talk of all the corners of the world; ranting rollicking Balzacian yarns, rich in language, in poetry, and tenderness; any minute in the day amongst such people you might strike a yarn that would bear publication; the picturesque interest of life does not seem ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... up the "Cakes" now, or our cupboard will be of no use to us. We must take, as our 'Universe', some class of things which will include Dragons and Scotchmen: shall we say 'Animals'? And, as "canny" is evidently the Attribute belonging to the 'Middle Terms', we will let m stand for "canny", x for "Dragons", and y for "Scotchmen". So that our ...
— The Game of Logic • Lewis Carroll
... so eager to get rid of it that I would have wired at once, naming a figure proportionately low had it not been for the united protests of my four friends and the canny advice ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... lumbered with boxes, chests, charts, camp-seats, log lines, and rusty quadrants, and sundry marine relics which only the inveterate coaster could conceive a use for. But the good wife Molly, whose canny face bears the wrinkles of some forty summers, and whose round, short figure is so simply set off with bright plaid frock and apron of gingham check, in taste well adapted to her humble position, is as clean and tidy as ever was picture of mine Vrow Vardenstein. Nevertheless,—we know the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... with marvellous escapes from terrible beasts of the common tropical Asiatic pattern—rhinoceroses, tigers, monkeys, and leopards. Everybody believed the new Munchausen at first, except the zoologists. Those canny folks saw through the wicked hoax on the very first blush of it. If there were rhinoceroses in Papua, they must have got there by an overland route. If there had ever been a land connection between New Guinea and the Malay region, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... gathered emphasis. "You were standing on the step of the Hawk and Heron," said he, "and I waved my hand and shouted 'A canny morning to you, Master Paul'—ey, that ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... volition he has taken on a certain job and his dogged pride or obstinacy will not allow him to be beaten by it, however little enthusiasm it may arouse in him and however distasteful it may be to him at first. He offers no "ca' canny" service, but plods on and does his best in his own way. The lack of the enthusiastic temperament does not seriously retard the progress of his military education, and without much ado he becomes a stolid dependable unit of the Army. He is not carried away by success ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... we forget his canny Scotsmen, his Irish labourers and peasants, his splendid English navvies, and least of all his volunteers—he and Leech might be called the pillars of the Volunteer movement, from the manner, ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... man, with millions of imaginations daily turned upon him, rarely appears in that fiction which sprang from local color except as the canny trader of some small town or as the ruthless magnate of some glittering metropolis. David Harum remains his rural avatar and The Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son his most popular commentary. Doubtless the existence of this type in every community tends to warn off the searchers ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... to be saved by it, was constantly saying, "I am doing pretty well on the whole. I sometimes get mad and swear, but then I am strictly honest. I work on Sabbath when I am particularly busy, but I give a good deal to the poor, and I never was drunk in my life." This man hired a canny Scotchman to build a fence around his lot. He gave him very particular directions. In the evening, when the Scotchman came in from his work, the man said, "Well, Jock, is the fence built, and is it tight and strong?" "I canna say that it is all tight and strong," ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... of it, good heavens! Her husband is canny and fears the Church: he would certainly give her a beating. The priest wages fierce war with the sprites, and hunts them out of every place. Yet he might leave them their dwelling in the oaks! What harm can they do in the forest? Alas! no: from council to council they are hunted down. ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... magnetism he worked with. "Canny" Scotchmen and shrewd Yankees—ay, even Swiss innkeepers—felt the touch of his quality. There was, or there seemed to be, a geniality in the fellow that, in its apparent contempt for all worldliness, threw men off their guard, ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... sincere. The humours of a broad folk-comedy break through the scriptural web continually in the guild plays like those in which Noah the shipbuilder, or the proverbial three shepherds, appear in the pageant. Noah's unwilling wife in the Chester Deluge, and Mak's canny wife in the Wakefield shepherd's play, where the sheep-stealing scenes reveal a born Yorkshire humorist, offer a pair of gossips not easy to match for rude comedy. Mak's wife, like the shepherd's in the same pastoral, utters proverbs ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... leaden shot can cleave your delicate gold. The quail is such a canny bird, that he lies low lest he make his last appearance on toast. And so, in ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... run ashore. In the skiff were upwards of a hundred of the dodgers hastily struck off at the Timber City printing office, which proclaimed the reward for the Texan and the thousand-dollar reward for information concerning the whereabouts of Alice Endicott. Long Bill was canny. He knew the river and he had figured pretty accurately the probable drift of the ferry boat. He expected to come upon it any time. And he wanted that reward for himself. The hundred dollars offered for the Texan did not interest him at all, but if he could find out what ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... may not be 100 per cent. accurate, but after putting things together this is how it dopes out. Weintraub, who was as canny as they make them, saw he'd have to get into direct touch with Metzger. He sent him word, on the Friday, to come over to see him and bring the book. Metzger, meanwhile, had had a bad fright when I spoke to him in the hotel elevator. He ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... day a reporter asked Quentin something about me; to which that affable and canny young gentleman responded, "Yes, I see him sometimes; but I know ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... tackets, heel-capt and toe-capt, and put them carefully under the table, saying, "Maister John, I'm for nane o' yer strynge nurse bodies for Ailie. I'll be her nurse, and I'll gang aboot on my stockin' soles as canny as pussy." And so he did; and handy and clever, and swift and tender as any woman, was that horny-handed, snell, peremptory little man. Everything she got he gave her; he seldom slept; and often I saw his small, shrewd eyes out of the darkness, fixed ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... the stones as readily as he would the grass—and I had to turn the grindstone to sharpen his scythe. Uncle Edmund was a farmer and a pettifogger. Uncle William died comparatively young; he had nurseries near Rochester. Uncle Thomas was a farmer, slow and canny, with a quiet, dry humor. Aunt Hannah married Robert Avery, who drank a good deal; I can't remember anything about her. Aunt Abby was large and thrifty; she married John Jenkins, and had a large family.... Amy, my mother, was her mother's ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... aspiring American writer; but it needed a new spirit to insure its future. What it required was the kind of editing that had suddenly made the Forum one of the greatest of English-written reviews. This is the reason why the canny Yankee proprietors had reached over to New York and grasped Page as quickly as the capitalists of the Forum let him ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... there? Manifestly to assist in the betrayal of one Giuseppe something—I don't happen to know his other name. From a hint dropped by Carera I have formed the opinion that this Giuseppe must be an industrious, hard- working, and, withal, somewhat canny gentleman of the piratical profession; a man who seems to have made the business pay pretty well, too, for does not our friend on deck estimate that he has accumulated the tidy little sum of close upon twenty-five thousand doubloons? Now, however, that fickle ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... common-sense; and if such a person in telling a story poetizes the truth, if it is a principle or a tendency to believe the best of everybody, to take everybody at their highest note, is she any the less canny? Has she necessarily less insight? As there are always two sides to a shield, why not look at ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... known The Frenchman now ten or a dozen years. That he came from Marseilles, that he had served on the Confederate side in the Trans-Mississippi, that he possessed an annuity, that he must have been well-born and reared, that he was simple, yet canny, and in his money dealings scrupulously honest—was all I could be sure of. What had he done to be ashamed about or wish to conceal? In what was he a black sheep, for that he had been one seemed certain? Had the beautiful woman, his wife—a tireless church and charity worker, ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... you fellows!" returned Dick, in a disgusted voice. "What is the good of your pretending to be Irish, Hamilton, when you are a canny Scotchman?" ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... high choir, he remonstrated against it as too audacious, and insisted on a strong pillar being built to support it. The architect complied, but when Philip came to see the improvement he burst into lamentation, as the enormous column destroyed the effect of the great altar. The canny architect, who had built the pillar of pasteboard, removed it with a touch, and his majesty was comforted. Walking forward to the edge of this shadowy vestibule, you recognize the skill and taste which presided at this unique and intelligent ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... your arm, gude-wife, further than your sleeve will let you; we maun ca'canny mony a day yet before we ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... canny seeds; I'll send him some," said she, pinning a paper of sugared spices to the window curtain, and drawing it up by means of the tassel. "O, dear, um don't go high enough. ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... now and rush off on the trail of a much-feted debutante of whose engagement I have heard canny ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... But I've seen the muckle Aller come roarin' sae high that it washed awa' a sheepfold that stood weel up on the hill. And I've seen this verra burn, this bonny clear Callowa, lyin' like a loch for miles i' the haugh. But I never heeds a spate, for if a man just kens the way o't it's a canny, hairmless thing. I couldna wish to dee better than just be happit i' the waters o' my ain countryside, when my legs fail and I'm ower auld ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... Irish hound named Murphy," McBride replied promptly, for he had heard rumors of war aboard the Retriever and something told him Kendall had come to borrow his second mate, in order that the Retriever might tow out immediately. A canny, cunning lad was McBride, but for all his Scotch blood he was no match for ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... life and death, with great hollows in the cheeks and under the eyes. In the lines which marked the corners of his mouth she could see firmness, and his beetling brows and unusually heavy eyelids looked stern and formidable. Her heart sank. She looked again and saw goodness, tenderness, sorrow, canny shrewdness, and a strange lurking smile all haunting ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... him but he paid no 'tention to me. He was sitting all alone in the moonlight out there at the end of the platform, and every few minutes the poor lonely little beggar'd lift his nose and howl as if his heart was breaking. He never did it afore—always slept in his kennel real quiet and canny from train to train. But he sure had something on ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the pine timber must be something enormous. We then went to visit Dr. and Mrs. G——, and wound up these exercises of civilized life by a call on dear old Mr. C——, whose nursery and kitchen garden are a real refreshment to my spirits. How completely the national character of the worthy canny old Scot is stamped on the care and thrift visible in his whole property, the judicious successful culture of which has improved and adorned his dwelling in this remote corner of the earth! The comparison, or rather ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... was plenty of time lying around on those trips, and they took it. On the advent of the new era they complained that "King George men" took all the time and gave them none, so they frequently quit to go in quest. The nativity of my skilled labor was a piece of national patchwork—a composite of the canny Scotch, the persistent and witty Irish, the conservative but indomitable English, the effervescent French, the phlegmatic German, and the irascible Italian. I found this variety beneficial, for the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... favor among most of our public institutions, asylums, water-cures, and the like, of procuring the very cheapest servants we can get, and thinking it an economical triumph to chuckle over if [Footnote: This is all that the "canny" business men who compose the managing boards of some of the first asylums in this country permit the heads of the institutions to offer those who must for twenty-three hours of the twenty-four be responsible for the moral, and physical ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... Glasgow. Considering the circumstances, I was treated with surprising consideration. The conditions that had characterized my trial prevailed in the prison. I soon perceived that the Barlinney prison officials were trying to sound me in a canny Scotch way—with no result. ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... set on the porch, the hot-house flowers being placed against the tapestry and the old armor; bowls of drink were brewed and set to cool, and two o'clock found Dame Dickenson in sober black silk, with a canny eye for the refreshments, and myself in black as well, and a state of what might ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... death; and then with all possible dispatch he sold it, its fixtures, contents and goodwill, for what the property would fetch at quick sale, and he gave up business. He had sufficient to stay him in his needs. The Stackpoles had the name of being a canny and a provident family, living quietly and saving of their substance. The homestead where he lived, which his father before him had built, was free of debt. He had funds in the bank and money out at interest. He had not been one to make close friends. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... fingers too canny to bungle, With footsteps too cunning to swerve, They swing through the heights of the jungle, These stalwarts of infinite nerve; Blithe sailors who heed not the breezes Which play round their riggings ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... tae hear him,' said Geordie; 'he's no' canny'; and reaching out for Billy as he went stumbling past, he pulled him down to a seat beside him, saying, 'Sit doon, lad, sit doon. We'll mak a man o' ye yet.' Then he rose and, using many r's, said, 'Maister Chairman, a' doot we'll juist hae to ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... said. He himself had recently diverted the public mind by the gift of a bell to the Norembega Theological (colored) Institute, and the paragraph announcing the fact conveyed the impression that while Uncle Jerry was a canny old customer, his heart was on the right side. "There are worse men than Uncle Jerry who are not worth a cent," was one of the humorous paragraphs tacked on ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... steam. "Now, Buckland," said Stephenson, "I have a poser for you. Can you tell me what is the power that is driving that train?" "Well," said the other, "I suppose it is one of your big engines." "But what drives the engine?" "Oh, very likely a canny Newcastle driver." "What do you say to the light of the sun?" "How can that be?" asked the doctor. "It is nothing else," said the engineer, "it is light bottled up in the earth for tens of thousands of years,—light, absorbed by plants ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... aught else. But he had some notion of drawing, and when the teacher came round she was astonished to find he had set down a fair picture of a bird on a bough. "Ha! who drew this?" she asked. "Mysel'," was the canny Scotch reply. "And who's mysel'?" she queried. "Oh, I'm fine," was the second response, not less Scotch than the first. The English reader, of course, won't fairly understand the word "fine" as spoken there; but every ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... commercial field in this country the Scots have held a foremost place and stand unrivalled for integrity, energy, fidelity, and enterprise. Many jibes are made at the expense of the Canny Scot, but American business men have realized his value. In business and commercial life the success of the average Scot is remarkable and many of the guiding spirits among America's successful business men are Scots or men ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... secrets. With darkness we passed the light of an occasional inn, while cottage lights made a scattered sprinkling among the dim masses of the hills. A man might have been puzzled as to where all the kilted Highland soldiers whom he had seen at the front came from, if he had not known that the canny Highlanders enlist Lowlanders in ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... There were in the throng representatives of all America as it was then, a strange, crude blending of refinement and vulgarity, of ease and poverty, of luxury and thrift. We had there merchants from Philadelphia and New York, politicians from canny New England and not less canny Pennsylvania. At times there came from the Old World men representative of an easier and more opulent life, who did not always trouble to suppress their smiles at us. Moving ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... if anything, a trifle more cautious than canny when he came to his "in conclusion," and his zeal touched the ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... epitome of all that is appalling at sea, the danger each one instinctively dreads, but no one mentions. One ran one way and one another. The doctor (a real canny Scot, who sings "My Nannie's awa'" like Wilson) was over the rail and down the hold in a moment. I ran to Captain Meyer's room on the upper deck and roused him. He too was down and in the hold like a flash—brave fellows ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... citizens of our great nation. Such assimilated Americans had to face not only the usual conditions confronting a stranger in a strange land, but had to develop within themselves the noble conception of Americanism that was later to become for them a flaming gospel. Andrew Carnegie, the canny Scotch lad who began as a cotton weaver's assistant, became a steel magnate and an eminent constructive philanthropist. Jacob Riis, the ambitious Dane, told in The Making of an American the story of his rise to prominence ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... laughter, excited by their unwonted agility; and with bets on the winner, as loudly expressed as if they had been laid at the starting post of Middlemas races. "Half a mutchkin on Luckie Simson!"—"Auld Peg Tamson against the field!"—"Mair speed, Alison Jaup, ye'll tak the wind out of them yet!"—"Canny against the hill, lasses, or we may have a burstern auld earline amang ye!" These, and a thousand such gibes, rent the air, without being noticed, or even heard, by the anxious racers, whose object of contention seemed to be, which should first ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... women sitting for hours on end in a back room of Mlle. Javal's central establishment in Paris it is only necessary to state that they looked as intent upon making cigarettes in a professional manner, beyond cavil by the canny poilu, as if they were counting the family linen or superintending one of the stupendous facts of existence, a daughter's trousseau. Only the one to whom I was introduced raised her eyes, and I should not have been expected to distract her attention for a moment had not she told Mlle. Javal ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... made us afeard, for we expect it that we should have to pay for it wi' some rare piece o' ill luck, so as to keep up the average. It's no canny to run frae London to the Black Sea wi' a wind ahint ye, as though the Deil himself were blawin' on yer sail for his ain purpose. An' a' the time we could no speer a thing. Gin we were nigh a ship, or a port, or a headland, a fog fell on us and travelled wi' us, till when after ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... emigrants; a description of vessel called, in the classical dictionary of the cockpit, an "Irish guinea man." Out of her we pressed twenty Irishmen, besides two strapping fellows from Yorkshire, and one canny Scot. ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... anthology— "When at Hame wi' Dad" and "I'm Yorkshire, too "—appear to have an eighteenth-century flavour, though they may be a little later. Their theme is somewhat similar to that of Carey's song. The inexperienced but canny Yorkshire lad finds himself exposed to the snares and temptations of " Lunnon city." He is dazzled by the spectacular glories of the capital, but his native stock of cannyness renders him proof against seduction. The ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... canny to leave him a loophole for divorce, even in California; but I guess that didn't worry ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Lieutenant-Colonel Hobson that he knew whether women were witches or no by their looks. On a good-looking woman being brought to the finder, the gallant colonel thought it was unnecessary to try her, but the canny Scotchman knew better, and therefore submitted her to his infallible test. Having put a pin into her side, he marked her down a witch of the devil. The colonel, not satisfied that the woman was guilty, remonstrated, and then the witch-finder confessed he was in error. The highly-favoured damsel ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... or other Brook had hitherto managed to keep clear of any entanglement which could hamper his life, probably by virtue of that hardness which he had shown to poor Lady Fan, and which had so strongly prejudiced Clare Bowring against him. His father said cynically that the lad was canny. Hitherto he had certainly shown that he could be selfish; and perhaps there is less difference between the meanings of the Scotch and English words ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... contempt, they would feel some condescension in dealing and mixing with us; but I was personally of the opinion that it was easier for us to walk through China than it would be for two Chinese, dressed as Chinese, to walk through Great Britain or America. What would the canny Highlander or the rural English rustic think of two pig-tailed ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... to hear of your being fitted with a good servant. Most of the Irish of that class are scapegraces—drink, steal, and lie like the devil. If you could pick up a canny Scot it would be well. Let me know about your mess. To drink hard is none of your habits, but even drinking what is called a certain quantity every day hurts the stomach, and by hereditary descent yours is delicate. I believe the poor Duke of Buccleuch laid the foundation of that disease which occasioned ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... months hence, when the returned lists of the stoppages in the East and West Indies, consequent upon the late failures here, come home. The Western Bank of Scotland is whispered about. If that were to fail, it might bring the canny Scots to their senses; but they are a ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... "Alice is both canny and fendy," said the bold Evan Dhu, with a cock of his bonnet, "and I ken nocht to hinder ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... said Dr. May, smiling. "The boy has missed it marvellously; but, you see, he has everything that subtle imp would wish to feed upon, and it is no harm to give him a lick with the rough side of the tongue, as your canny Scots grandfather ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... more chance had Queensberry to win votes for the Union. Fletcher of Saltoun, an independent and eloquent patriot and republican, wasted time by impossible proposals. Hamilton brought forward, and by only two votes lost, a proposal which England would never have dreamed of accepting. Canny Jacobites, however, abstained from voting, and thence Lockhart dates the ruin of his country. Supply, at all events, was granted, and on that Argyll adjourned. The queen was to select Commissioners of ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... advise me, inasmuch as I was about to go amongst the savage hill tribes of canny Scotians, to previously make myself acquainted with their idioms, &c., for which purpose she lent me some romances written entirely in Caledonian dialects, also the compositions of Hon. ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... affected by Extravagant Demands on Employers.—Unduly high wages mean, of course, unduly high prices. Without here taking account of the "ca'-canny" policy, which aims to make labor inefficient, extravagant wages for efficient labor increase the cost of goods. This opens the way, as we have seen, for the free shop and the labor which is willing to sell its product at a cheaper rate. If union labor then firmly ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... superficial. And dense. And you hold me up to myself in the features of a beastly cad! I won't have it. For one thing, let me tell you that if I were the Lord Ronald Macdonald of that song we've heard Miss Felixson sing, and you were that canny lass Leezie Lindsay, I should know jolly well that after I'd carried you off to the Hielands my bride and my darling to be, it would be a very short time before Lady Ronald Macdonald had all the ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... to make a little girl smile even if her mother was too tired or too ill to say good-night. She never clambered past the other niches that she didn't whimsically wish there was a Maman on every floor to leave something outside for her. So after a time the canny child began leaving things for herself, tucked slyly back where the housemaids wouldn't find them. She used to hide her silver mug with water at the very top stair because she was so ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... is a misfortune to the atmosphere is widely supposed. In Scotland it is an agricultural maxim among the canny farmers that— ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... keepit her leddyship muvin' gey fast tae keep abriesht o't. Weel, this kin' o' wark, an' a ticht line, began for tae tak' the spunk oot o' the saumon, an' I was thinkin' it was a quieston o' a few meenits whan I wad be in him wi' the gaff; but my birkie, near han' spent though he was, had a canny bit dodge up the sleeve o' him. He made a bit whamlin' run, an' deil tak' me gin he didna jam himself intil a neuk atween twa rocks, an' there the dour beggar bade an' sulkit. Weel, her leddyship keepit aye a steady drag on him, an' she gied him the butt wi' power; but ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... coastwise states the tides will keep coming in as usual, but the wonderful changes in the flow of the Gulp stream will have a canny effect on some of the ...
— Cupid's Almanac and Guide to Hearticulture for This Year and Next • John Cecil Clay
... expect an archbishop to be as orthodox as the frailty of human nature will allow. A man who faithfully believes at the rate of fifteen thousand a year should be able to swallow most things and stick at very little. And there can be no doubt that the canny Scotchman who has climbed or wriggled up to the Archbishopric of Canterbury is prepared to go any lengths his salary may require. We suspect that he regards the doctrines of the Church very much as did that irreverent youth mentioned ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... feathers? They could not have flown; they must have been hurried out of the nest as soon as they could stand. Could it be because I knew their secret? I felt myself a monster, and I tried to make amends by hunting them up and replacing them. But the canny parents, as usual, outwitted me. Not only had they removed their infants, but they had hidden them so securely that I could not find them, and I was sure, from their movements, that they ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... overshadows the upper lip of my Tom—grey mustachios hid that of the chasseur. The pupils of Tom's eyes dilate and contract as I had thought cats' pupils only could do, until I saw those of the chasseur. To be sure, canny as Tom is, the chasseur had the advantage in the more intelligent expression. He seemed to have obtained most complete sway over his master or patron, whose looks he watched, and whose steps he followed, with a kind of distrustful interest ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... sordid but astute peasant, twirling his thumbs on his stomach and looking askance, allows this political adviser to urge upon him in a whisper that there is not a minute to lose—to lose for action, of course—if he wishes to keep his wife, his house, his field, his heifer and his calf. The canny scepticism in the ugly, half-averted face of the typical rustic who considerably suspects his counsellor is indicated ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... isn't," went on her mother blithely. "It is real. Mr. Hugh Blake, of Emberon, must have been very old; and he was probably as saving and canny as any Scotchman who ever wore kilts. It is not surprising that he should have left ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... drinker achieves is a discreet and canny semi-intoxication. And he does it by the twelve-month around without any apparent penalty. There are hundreds of thousands of men of this sort in the United States to-day, in clubs, hotels, and in their own homes—men who ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... well aware the canny boss ought to know. McAlpin had lived at one time in the Gap, and was himself reputed to have been a hardy and enduring rider on a ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... scientists either had not the wit to do this, alas, or else they were too impractical to appreciate the value of their ideas. In consequence the glory and financial benefit of what they did was often filched from them. But Watt was a Scotchman and canny enough to realize to some extent what his invention was worth. He therefore obtained a patent on it which was good for twenty-five years; and when, in 1800, this right expired he retired from business with both fame ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... sharp Cockney, with the easy-going effrontery peculiar to his race, attempted to amuse the household—namely, Mrs McAllister, Dan, Hugh, and two good-looking and sturdy-limbed servant-girls—by measuring wits with the "canny Scot," as he called the farmer. He soon found, however, that he had caught a Tartar. The good-natured Highlander met his raillery with what we may call a smile of grave simplicity, and led him slyly into committing ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... man who will illustrate and prove, perhaps better than any other of those who stood with Washington, the point at which I am aiming. There was none of the glamour of romance about old Ben Franklin. He was shrewd, canny, humorous. The chivalric Southerners disliked his philosophy, and the solemn New-Englanders mistrusted his jokes. He made no extravagant claims for his own motives, and some of his ways were not distinctly ...
— The Americanism of Washington • Henry Van Dyke
... of yours, Mary, heth he's as canny a keoghboy as I've seen. Its the queer tears he'll be taking to himself in ...
— The Drone - A Play in Three Acts • Rutherford Mayne
... supposed to believe that they had been 8 feet apart all Evening. But Mother was Canny and up to Snuff, with a Memory that reached back at least 25 Years. These little One-Act Plays under the Window did not throw her off for any part of a Minute. Before Florine turned in she was Cross-Examined and required to tell with whom she had danced, and why and how ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... how came you for to ken that? Eh! it's my uncle Monteith at Glasgow. Why, as I sit here, I've but three shillings and a penny of it lift. But there's a smell here that's no canny; so I'll just go up again ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... The Bogey by ill-trained Juniors, is among our elect set yclept Lemonade, partly owing to her habit of fizzing over, and partly to a certain acid quality in her temper, otherwise hard to define. Miss Douglas, our honoured Form mistress, being a canny Scot, goes by the familiar appellation of Thistles, intended also to subtly convey our appreciation—or shall I ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... bairn but mine ain," said Miss Horn. "I had it a' ower, my lee lane, afore the skreigh o' day. She's lyin' quaiet noo—verra quaiet—waitin' upo' Watty Witherspail. Whan he fesses hame her bit boxie, we s' hae her laid canny intill 't, an' hae ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... of what is good In olden times and distant lands, Is that do-nothing neighborhood Where the old cider-hogshead stands To welcome with its brimming gourd The canny crowd of kin and kith Who meet about the bibulous board Of old ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... shrewd physicist remarked that he saw in it "a realization of the most ardently and increasingly felt scientific aspiration of his life—an aspiration which he hardly dared to expect or to see realized." A little later, however, Sir William, always cautious and canny, began to discover the inherent defects of the primitive battery, as to disintegration, inefficiency, costliness, etc., and though offered tempting inducements, declined to lend his name to its financial introduction. Nevertheless, he accepted the principle ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... an' furder to you, Johnny, Guid health, hale han's, an' weather bonny; Now when ye're nickan down fu' canny The staff o' bread, May ye ne'er want a stoup o' bran'y To ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... self-expression—but that they might "play their piece" to the casual visitor to the school-room with priggish pride, expectant of praise; they were not to be Christian for any other reason than that it was the recommended way to Eternal Bliss and a Good Time Hereafter—the whole duty of canny and respectable man being to "save ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... canny; would ye enter a lady's chamber (even the glade of the wood) without tirling at ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro |
