"Hanger-on" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... really," he said. "An utter waster and only a hanger-on of sport—can't do anything himself but talk. Now he'll tell everybody in Bridport about you coming up here in the dinner-hour. Come and cheer me up. I'm ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... may herself have been deceived concerning it. Unconsciously to herself, she may have been the victim of a daring fraud on the part of some hanger-on who had access to her jewels, but, as no such evidence had yet come to life, as she had no recognized, or, so far as could be learned, secret lover or dishonest dependent; and, moreover, as no gem of such unusual value was known to have been offered within the year, here ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... the German peoples were to attain for a long time to come. Accordingly, just as the provincial grand seigneur of France became the courtier of the King at Paris or Versailles, so the previously quasi-independent German knight or baron became the courtier or hanger-on of the prince within or near whose territory his ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... in public! That is the end. Oh, why couldn't I have killed him? But if you stayed here, so should I. Not with him, though. Never with him. Maybe I'm talking wildly. You'll say I'm in love with you. Perhaps I am—quien sabe? No matter as to that. I shall be no hanger-on, sir. I only ask a kind of partnership—the encouragement of some decent man near me. I have money; plenty, till we both get a footing. But you wouldn't live on me; no! I don't fancy that of you for a moment. I would be glad merely ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... every newspaper and agency developed a virtuous anxiety to track the culprit, and all resources were directed to that end. Journalism is perhaps the only profession in which so fine a public spirit may be found. So it was that the North Country paper of which I was a hanger-on flung every available man into the fighting line, and the editor told me that I might, in place of the casual paragraphs for the London Letter, do something ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... Rokesle when he is quiet! Eh, I know the man,—'tisn't for nothing that these ten years past I have studied his whims, pampered his vanity, lied to him, toadied him! You admire my candor?—faith, yes, I am very candid. I am Rokesle's hanger-on; he took me out of the gutter, and in my fashion I am grateful. And you?—Anastasia, had you treated me more equitably fifteen years ago, I would have gone to the stake for you, singing; now I don't value you ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... to which all comers were welcome, for of all his visitors he contrived to make some use;—from the nobleman and general by whose interest he could provide for some of his followers, and by that means strengthen his interest with the rest, to the idle hanger-on whose excursions might procure the fish and game which he was barely suffered to eat a part of at his patron's table. Never was there a mixture of society so miscellaneous as was there assembled. From an affectation of loyalty to his new masters Lovat paid a great court ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... it. I should like you to know that I never forgot it. We were at St. John's then; you were right above me—in a different world altogether. You were a leader amongst the best of them, and I was a hanger-on amongst the worst. You were in with the gentlemen set and the reading set. Neither of them would have anything to do with me—and they were quite right. I was what they thought me—a cad. I'd no head for work, and no taste for anything worth doing, and I ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... son of the other Herod of whom we hear in the Acts as a persecutor. This one appears from other sources, to have had the vices but not the force of character of his bad race. He was weak and indolent, a mere hanger-on of Rome, to which he owed his kingdom, and to which he stoutly stuck during all the tragedy of the fall of Jerusalem. In position and in character (largely resulting from the position) he was uncommonly like those semi-independent rajahs in India, who are allowed to keep ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... you have used other people's understandings instead of your own. Be yourself, my lord. See with your own eyes, and hear with your own ears, and then you'll find me still, what I've been these seven years; not your understrapper, your hanger-on, your flatterer, but your friend! If you choose to have me for a friend, here's my hand. I am your friend, and you'll not find ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... Hugh's claret, and be bidden to ring the bell, and to be asked to step into the stable for this or that. He was a fellow of his college, and quite as big a man, he thought, as Sir Hugh. He would not be a hanger-on at the park, and, to tell the truth, he disliked his cousin quite as much as his father did. But there had even been a sort of friendship—nay, occasionally almost a confidence, between him and Lady Clavering, and he believed that by her ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... lay at your feet, a future for which fate perhaps intends great duties and greater deeds. I cannot fulfil these duties, I can perform no heroic deed, unless you, princess, grant me the blessing of happiness. I shall be a silent, unknown, and useless prince, the sad and pitiful hanger-on of a throne, despised and unloved, a burden only to my people, unless you give freedom and strength to my sick soul, which lies a prisoner at your feet. Wilhelmina, put an end to the tortures of the last few months, release me from ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... me and how he had lost 20,000 pesos in consequence, but he could not tell me in which month it happened. Families are very united, and claims for help and protection are admitted however distant the relationship may be. Sometimes the connection of a "hanger-on" with his host's family will be so remote and doubtful, that he can only be recognized as "un poco pariente nada mas" (a sort of kinsman). But the house ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... Hall, the "Cradle of Liberty." A notice was up at the door to say the key was to be found at such a store in the neighbourhood. I asked for the key; had it without a single question being put; went, opened the door myself, and staid as long as we pleased. There was no hanger-on, to try to squeeze a fee out of us, as would have been the case in a country ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... et decus. Later in life he was promoted to the rectory of Diss in Norfolk, but was severely censured by his bishop for his buffooneries in the pulpit and his satirical ballads against the mendicants. He finally became a hanger-on about the court of Henry VIII.; and, daring to write a rhyming libel on Cardinal Wolsey, was driven to take refuge in the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey. There he was kindly entertained and protected by Abbot Islip until his death ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... a good deal of lawlessness and violence is not to be wondered at. It has been said that for every bona fide miner there was at least one hanger-on or camp follower, who had no intention of doing any digging or washing, but who was smart enough to realize that a veritable thief's paradise would be built up by the hard workers. Sometimes these men ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... gunpowder, trained a goodly crew, with which he met the Captain's line. Victory was not always upon one side. Politics is a very uncertain res gestoe. And human nature, more uncertain still, would vacillate from wing to wing, now being a Sharp's retainer, and anon a hanger-on of Rush. Such changelings would not count, but that ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... dialect of their own which transcends the comparatively harmless efforts of the Black Country potter. Foul is not the word for this ultra-filthy mode of talk—it passes into depths below foulness. I may digress for a little to emphasize this point. The latter-day hanger-on of the Turf has introduced a new horror to existence. Go into the Silver Ring at a suburban meeting, and listen while two or three of the fellows work themselves into an ecstasy of vile excitement, then you will hear something which cannot be described ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... action so free, spirited, and playful, as he came sweeping onward, that cheers and exclamations, such as, "Good heavens! see the deacon's old horse!" "Look at him! look at him!" "What a stride!" etc., ran ahead of him, and old Bill Sykes, a trainer in his day, but now a hanger-on at the village tavern, or that section of it known as the bar, wiped his watery eyes with his tremulous fist, as he saw Jack come swinging down, and, as he swept past with his open gait, powerful stroke, and stiffles ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... during this period. That he sold "base-ball" cards (a unique kind of playing-cards) at the Providence railroad station is stated on credible authority; that he "worked the trains" between New York and Providence; that he sold books; that he was a hanger-on at race-tracks, has been alleged. Any or all of these rumors may be true—or false—for whatever may be said of Lawson, his career has undoubtedly been one of marvellous ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... was successful. She soon return'd with him who was to act as messenger—a little, wither'd, ragged old man—a hanger-on there, whose unshaven face told plainly enough the story of his intemperate habits—those deeply seated habits, now too late to be uprooted, that would ere long lay him in a drunkard's grave. The youth inform'd him what the required service was, and promised ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... through the narrow slits. This man had always an air of being profoundly interested in the smallest affairs of life, perhaps because the slits through which he gazed magnified the objects gazed upon, and he peered about him now with profoundest solicitude. This was Watt Brooks, a mechanic, and hanger-on about the mills, where he did an occasional bit of odd work, and employed the balance of his time in gossiping among the women, or lounging at the drinking saloons, talking a great deal about the wrongs of the working classes, and ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... and the blue-faced Major, it was enough for Princess's Place—as with a very small fragment of society, it is enough for many a little hanger-on of another sort—to be well connected, and to have genteel blood in its veins. It might be poor, mean, shabby, stupid, dull. No matter. The great street round the corner trailed off into Princess's Place; and that which of High Holborn would have become a choleric ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... not even part with their steeds till they had come to an absolute bargain as to the amount of gratuity to be given. Lambert Brown was one of these unfortunate characters—a younger brother who had a little, and but a very little money, and who was determined to keep that. He was a miserable hanger-on at his brother's house, without profession or prospects; greedy, stingy, and disagreeable; endowed with a squint, and long lank light-coloured hair: he was a bad horseman, always craning and shirking in the field, ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... [45] A hanger-on to noblemen, who are distinguished at the university by gold tassels to their caps; or in the language of the present day, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... Mohammed Ali Pasha, whom Todoros had come to visit. The merchant also expressed a great contempt for the Patriarch, and for their Matraam or Metropolitan, whom the English papers call the Abuna. Abuna is Arabic for 'our father.' The man is a Cairene Copt and was a hanger-on of two English missionaries (they were really Germans) here, and he is more than commonly a rascal and a hypocrite. I know a respectable Jew whom he had robbed of all his merchandise, only Ras Alee forced the Matraam to disgorge. ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... have you?" he asks. "You are not scientific. You are merely a dreaming, fooling hanger-on to the fields and woods; one of those who are forever hearing more than they hear, and seeing more than they see. We scientists hear with our ears, see with our eyes, feel with our fingers, and ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... that gives and him that receives; which is to the rich man as a mere drug to still his conscience and offer a spurious receipt in full for his neglect of social duties, and to the poor man an encouragement to live without self-respect, without providence, a mere hanger-on and dead-weight upon society, and a standing injury and source of temptation ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... constitution of little Sweeny, and that, after lying in garrison hospital at San Francisco for several months, he had been discharged from the service on "certificate of physical disability." Thurstane, who had kept track of him, immediately took him to his house, first as an invalid hanger-on, and then as a jack of ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... observed; "she was a great belle and beauty and half the men in Virginia proposed to her, they used to say, before she married Ned Peyton. 'No, I can't accept you for a husband,' the minx would reply, 'but I think you will do very well indeed as a hanger-on.' It looks as if you'd got George for ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... gets his living no one knows, but if there is a meet of fox-hounds anywhere within ten miles, there he is sure to be, holding people's horses or ready at a gate for stray pennies and sixpences. There is usually such a hanger-on to every pack of hounds in England—one who travels immense distances on foot to turn up in unexpected places and get a few hard-earned shillings as his reward. We jog along under the magnificent silver firs, only to be equalled by those in the duke of Wellington's park at Strathfieldsaye, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... euphemist; optimist, encomiast, laudator [Lat.], whitewasher. toady, toadeater^; sycophant, courtier, Sir Pertinax MacSycophant; flaneur [Fr.], proneur [Fr.]; puffer, touter^, claqueur [Fr.]; clawback^, earwig, doer of dirty work; parasite, hanger-on &c (servility) 886. yes-man, suckup, ass-kisser [Vulg.], brown-noser [Vulg.], teacher's pet. Phr. pessimum genus ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... England, like many another English gentleman who has travelled, with a character by no means improved by his foreign experience. He had dissipated his small paternal inheritance of a younger brother's portion, and, as truth must be told, was no better than a hanger-on of ordinaries, and a brawler about Alsatia and the Friars, when he bethought him of a means of mending ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... King Philip of Macedon, destroyer of the liberties of Greece, sent for Aristotle, his hanger-on, as one capable of answering any question whatsoever, and said to him (when he had ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... So am I. So are you. So are all of us who produce nothing tangible. Paul is a hanger-on by better right than many others who depend directly or indirectly on the energies of this great ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... tide. He sat quite still and tried to think calmly, tried to piece together in his mind the sequence of events which had brought him to this part of the world and which had led to his remaining where he was, an undesired hanger-on at the threshold of Miles Fentolin. He had the feeling that to-night he had burned his boats. There was no longer any pretence of friendliness possible between him and this strange creature. Mr. Fentolin suspected him, realised that he himself was suspected. But of ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "I'll have an end put to it, Ruth. Look at him!" he cried, mockingly, pointing to Arnold's evening clothes. "What sort of a friend is that, do you think, for us? He wears the fetters of his class. He is a hanger-on at the tables of ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... she cried. "You will become a dependent in this house, a hanger-on, a sponger. I will hate you. You will hate yourself. It went through me like a knife when I ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... a liberal share of romance, ever since the far-away days, three centuries and more ago, when the fourth son of Sir George opened his eyes at Brookesby, in Leicestershire. From being a "threadbare hanger-on" at Court this son of an obscure knight rose to be the boon companion of two kings and the lover of a Queen of France. Honours and riches were showered on this spoiled child of fortune. He was created, in rapid succession, Viscount and Marquis, and ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... make the terms less sounding by his reading. Wind in leaves, went a stir through the room. I heard a page near me whispering, "O Sancta Maria! The hanger-on, the needy one! Since the beginning of time I've seen him at doors, sunny and cloudy days, the big, droning bee!" Manuel Rodriguez painted on. I felt his thought. "I should like to paint ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... might be done without special hardship. Then suddenly the rusted name-plate on Hannibal's old rifle danced again before his burning eyes, and a bitter sense of hurt and loss struck through him. He saw himself as he was, a shabby outcast, a tavern hanger-on, the utter travesty of all he should have been; he dropped his arm ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... what was left, without question. And when the summer was gone, and the water grew cold and invigorating, and once more he put on his wedding-garment and hurried away to the gravelly shallows, how different was his conduct from what it had been when he was a yearling! Then he was only a hanger-on; now he selected his nest and his mate to suit himself; and nobody ever dared to interfere. Whether he ever again chose that beautiful little fish from the hatchery, whom he had been so fond of when he was ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... incalculable sang-froid of this rail bird, movie usher, alley dodger, and hanger-on at dancing academies, I could not so much as summon up the cheek to ask what he had done with the body. You'll say I ought to have acted; that I ought at least to have got up and left him. That shows two things—first, that you've never been a trader in the islands; second, that you ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... certain supernatural power, or that mere empty delusions receive a shape from our fears. For my part, I am led to believe in their existence, especially by what I hear happened to Curtius Rufus. While still in humble circumstances and obscure, he was a hanger-on in the suit of the Governor of Africa. While pacing the colonnade one afternoon, there appeared to him a female form of superhuman size and beauty. She informed the terrified man that she was "Africa," and had come to foretell future events; for that he would go to Rome, would ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... peer of late, whatever it is. Well, let me see; I'll throw myself in the way of this same M'Bride, and it will go hard with me or I'll worm it out of him. The knowledge of it may serve me. It's a good thing to know family secrets, especially for a hanger-on like myself. One good effect it may produce, and that is, throw worthy Lord Dunroe more into my power. Yes, I will see this M'Bride, and then let me alone for playing my card to ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... have been simple, if it had been another person than Robbie; Montague would have concluded that his brother was a "hanger-on." There were many great families whose establishments were infested with such parasites. Siegfried Harvey, for instance, was a man who had always half a dozen young chaps hanging about him; good-looking and lively fellows, who ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... Greg, disgustedly. "Doesn't he know that Laura Bentley is your girl, and that he's only a b.j. hanger-on there?" ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... service of a man of base estate, and first asked his birth and calling. The man said that his profession was that of a sergeant. Starkad, not content with despising him, also spurned him with revilings, because, neglecting all honourable business, he followed the calling of a hanger-on; and because he had tarnished his whole career with ill repute, thinking the losses of the poor his own gains; suffering none to be innocent, ready to inflict wrongful accusation upon all men, most delighted at any lamentable turn in the fortunes of another; and toiling most at his ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... side,' He walked round the little circle discontentedly, thinking this matter over with deepening displeasure. When he came to the orchestra again the handsome Greek was there, with an expression so devilish on his face that Barndale regarded him with amazement. Demetri Agryopoulo, salaried hanger-on to the Persian embassy, was glaring like a roused wild beast at these two shadowy figures in the shadow of the orchestra. The band was crashing away at the overture to 'Tannhaeuser,' the people were laughing and chattering as they circled, and ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... people, I am self-conscious. It is only in music that I am lifted above myself. When I am not living in that, I need activity, restlessness, change. This is why I must go away. Here I can easily be persuaded to become a conceited fool, a flattered hanger-on of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... may well excite wonder. But wonder should always be watched with a wary eye; for he is apt to bring in his train a hanger-on called worship, who can do nothing but mischief here. It is a short step from a passage like that quoted above to a glorification of the existing system of society, to a defence of all manner of indefensible ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... made an excellent thing out of Digby's receipts—though the publishing of The Closet Opened was not his doing, I think. His Choice and Experimented Receipts in Physick and Chirurgery had already appeared in 1668, which suggested to some other hanger-on of the Digby household that John Digby's consent might be obtained for printing Sir Kenelm's culinary as well as his medical note-books. Hartman followed up this new track with persistence and profit to himself. As a mild example of the "choice and experimented," I transcribe ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... shut or open the door as if you had been his flunkey; to say nothing of your position at the party about a month ago, where you had neither place nor partner, but hovered about like a poor, shabby hanger-on; and how patient you were under each and all ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... direction. I don't wish you to become a courtier, Edgar; for, though it is an excellent thing to be introduced at Court and to be known to high personages there, that is an altogether different thing from being a hanger-on of the Court. Those who do naught but bask in a king's favour are seldom men of real merit. They have to play their part and curry favour. They are looked down upon by the really great; while, should ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... being a hanger-on of the Camp-fire, was wandering about by the stream in the wake of the proceedings. She came running up eagerly ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... his contemporary, and in fact his near relation, was Thomas Stukely, afterwards so notorious—and a word may be said of Stukely's career as a contrast to that of Hawkins. He was a younger son of a leading county family, went to London to seek his fortune, and became a hanger-on of Sir Thomas Seymour. Doubtless he was connected with Seymour's pirating scheme at Scilly, and took to pirating as an occupation like other Western gentlemen. When Elizabeth became Queen, he introduced himself at Court and amused her with his conceit. He meant to be a king, ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... for the auburn-haired lady my father saw in a chapel at Toronto, she will bethink herself that Owen, or Owen's eldest son, had better have it than the Queen. That's the sense of it; but I hate the hanger-on position it keeps ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... story—eh? Beauty in distress. Should think they'd git tired of playing that game!" said the coarse voice, which belonged to a lounger and hanger-on at the depot. ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... a publishing country; the Books about Catharine are few, and of little worth. TOOKE, an English Chaplain; CASTERA, an unknown French Hanger-on, who copies from Tooke, or Tooke from him: these are to be read, as the bad-best, and will yield little satisfactory insight; Castera, in particular, a great deal of dubious backstairs gossip and street rumor, which are not delightful to a reader of sense. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... wit, great at charades, capping verses, and posies to Chlora, lived in society, was a hanger-on to the Duc de Nivernais, and fancied himself obliged to follow the nobility into exile; but he took care to carry his money with him. Thus the rich emigre was able to assist more than one family ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... popular heart. Here in the United States he has quickened the pulse beats of four generations. But this master creator of a country's only native songs has invariably here at home been apologized for as a sort of 'cornfield musician,' a mere banjo strummer, a hanger-on at barrooms where minstrel quartets rendered his songs and sent the hat round. The reflection will react upon his country; it will not detract from the real Foster when the constructive critic appears to write his brief and unfortunate life. I am not contending ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... am only a hanger-on to mother since we reached France," he confessed. "My French is of the sort to be exploited only among my intimates, and luckily all my ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... to his uncle Kyu[u]bei in the Kanda quarter of Edo. O'Mino seemed to divine his thoughts. She would overload him with favors; or openly express her purpose of following wherever he went in life. Kanda? Kyu[u]bei was a well-known hanger-on at the Tamiya. Matazaemon entered him up in his expense book at so much a year. To[u]gane? He could not get there except through Kyu[u]bei. Matazaemon had farms there, and the nanushi or village bailiff was his servant. ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... can endure no more To hear the Belgic lion roar. Give up the phrase of haughty Gaul, But proud Iberia soundly maul: Restore the ships by Philip taken, And make him crouch to save his bacon. Nassau, who got the name of Glorious, Because he never was victorious, A hanger-on has always been; For old acquaintance bring him in. To Walpole you might lend a line, But much I fear he's in decline; And if you chance to come too late, When he goes out, you share his fate, And bear the new successor's frown; Or, whom ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... lots of young men a hanging aroun' it, an' why—'cos it's made pleasant for 'em, an' it's the only place in town that is. I've been a faithful attendant at that tavern for nigh onto twenty year, an' I never knowed a hanger-on there that had a comfortable home of his own. Some of them that don't hev to go to bed hungry hev scoldin' or squabblin' parents, an' they can't go a visitin' an' hear fine music, an' see nice things of every sort to take their minds off, as some young men in this meetin' house can. But ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... nearly ten years had passed. Then the vicious De La Motte laid an adroit plan for getting it into her possession, through the aid of the Cardinal de Rohan, who had come to admire her. She was a hanger-on of the court, and began her work by persuading the cardinal that the queen regarded him with favor. The credulous dupe was completely infatuated with the idea. One night, in August, 1784, he was given a brief interview ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... a local friend of ours (on whom I beg to bestow a passing but a hearty malediction, with the kind permission of my reverend friend) sneaks to and fro, and dodges up and down. When not doing so himself, he may have some informant skulking about, in the person of a watchman, porter, or such-like hanger-on of Staple. On the other hand, Miss Rosa very naturally wishes to see her friend Miss Helena, and it would seem important that at least Miss Helena (if not her brother too, through her) should privately know from Miss Rosa's lips what has occurred, and what has been threatened. Am I agreed ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... at this time it would have seemed that I was but a hanger-on, and a feeble imitator of Marshall. I took him to my tailor's, and he advised me on the cut of my coats; he showed me how to arrange my rooms, and I strove to copy his manner of speech and his general bearing; and yet I knew very well indeed that mine was a rarer and more original nature. ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... down in Wiltshire where I put up once, in the days of the hard Wiltshire ale, and before all beer was bitterness. It was on the skirts of Salisbury Plain, and the midnight wind that rattled my lattice window came moaning at me from Stonehenge. There was a hanger-on at that establishment (a supernaturally preserved Druid I believe him to have been, and to be still), with long white hair, and a flinty blue eye always looking afar off; who claimed to have been a shepherd, and who seemed to be ever watching ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... in a year—and it may be said that one hundred dollars cleared in a year is opulence—that holds them to the wild, free, perilous life. It is the call of the sea in their blood. Of such men are victorious navies made, and if Canada is to be anything more than the hanger-on to the tail of the kite of the British Empire, she, too, must have her navy, her men of the sea, born and cradled and crooned and nursed by the sea. That is Newfoundland's first importance to ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... the cortege, with a hanger-on or two behind to help direct the horses. They, poor brutes, are bandaged over one eye—the eye that is to ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... he said, huskily. "It is enough to say that every devilish engine of force and cunning was put in operation against me. So it came that at last, on a hint from a hanger-on of the police-office, who had enough humanity in him to remember a kindness he had experienced at my hands, that we took flight in the middle of the night—my poor wife, myself, and our three children, with nothing in the world but our bare lives ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... weaknesses would imagine these chaps were on intimate terms with players—who, as a rule, are slow to cultivate new acquaintances, attend strictly to their own business, and do not particularly relish that particular class of hanger-on. No man knew this type better than Handy. However, he never antagonized them. That he considered would not be wise policy. He good-naturedly humored them with much superficial gossip that really meant nothing. His good nature never forsook him, and he always had his temper ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... companion, vastly interested in this sudden outburst, in the firmness of his tone and the tightening of the weak mouth. After all, then, the old chap had some grit in him. To Trent, who had known him for years as a broken-down hanger-on of the settlement at Buckomari, a drunkard, gambler, a creature to all appearance hopelessly gone under, this look and this almost passionate appeal were like a revelation. He stretched out his great hand and patted his companion ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... say. He's the latest conquest. I got the story on pretty good authority, but until I verified the names, dates, and places, of course I wouldn't dare print a line of it. The story goes that her husband is a hanger-on of the System, and that she's been working in their interest, too. That was why he was so complacent over the whole affair. They put her up to capturing Bruce, and after she had acquired an influence over him they worked it ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... came about that he became Pollyooly's perpetual companion, or, to be exact, her perpetual hanger-on. He could not be said to afford companionship to her, for, like the Lump, he preferred the grunt to articulate speech. He played in all the games in which she played—at least, if they were not too difficult for his understanding. ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... great hanger-on of garrisons, and should know the use that I can make of his back. You will remember, Tuscarora, that I have had you flogged, more than once, in ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... will never amount to anything, Joe—mark my words. He will always be a hanger-on as we call them, in ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... seasonable at this juncture." Add to this that he was the son of a dean, that he married the daughter of an earl, and that, other means of advancement having failed, he became a clergyman at the age of between forty and fifty, and the suggested portrait is that of a prudent hanger-on rather than a fiery man of genius. His prudence was rewarded with a pension of L200 a year, a Royal Chaplaincy, and the position (after George III.'s accession) of Clerk of the Closet to the Princess Dowager. In the opinion of Young ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... brought him along close to my seat, he hanging like a bag of meal, with his eyes shut, as ill-favored a body as I ever beheld. The magistrates had him smartly whipped this morning, and sent out of the jurisdiction. I was told he was no true Quaker; for, although a noisy, brawling hanger-on at their meetings, he is not in fellowship with the more sober and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the rules of the game, men said, Beeching and his hanger-on should have been starved, frozen, and eaten by their outraged dogs a week or more before the end of their trip. And failing that, some old-timers pointed out, they should have been publicly lynched on arrival ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... doings, he might have been expelled. Once Mahbub and he went together as far as the beautiful city of Bombay, with three truckloads of tram-horses, and Mahbub nearly melted when Kim proposed a sail in a dhow across the Indian Ocean to buy Gulf Arabs, which, he understood from a hanger-on of the dealer Abdul Rahman, fetched ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... content to have no souls, and no necessity to waste their precious time (as they think) upon religion. But, my friends, my friends, the day will come when you will see yourselves in a true light; when your soul will not seem a mere hanger-on to your body, but you will find out THAT YOU ARE YOUR SOUL. Then there will be no more forgetting that you have souls, and thrusting them into the background, to be fed at odd minutes, or left to starve,— no more talk of GIVING UP time to the care ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... regularity. Also, a knowing and eccentric hanger-on; one who will not move faster than ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... every one to gaiety, and an old harper was summoned from the servants' hall, where he had been strumming all the evening, and to all appearance comforting himself with some of the Squire's home-brewed. He was a kind of hanger-on, I was told, of the establishment, and though ostensibly a resident of the village, was oftener to be found in the Squire's kitchen than his own home, the old gentleman being fond of the sound of ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... tables of antique Vernis-Martin, softly faded tapestries, a pale-toned Aubusson carpet. Everything mellow and in a measure pathetic. Mademoiselle Lange, who was an orphan, lived alone under the duennaship of a middle-aged relative, a penniless hanger-on of the successful young actress, who acted as her chaperone, housekeeper, and maid, and kept unseemly or over-bold gallants ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... book the names of the other eight wealthy men who were pilloried by the journalist. The younger men, Shirley felt sure, were of that peculiarly Manhattanse type of hanger-on—well-groomed, happy-go-hellward youths who danced, laughed and drank well,—so essential to the philanderings of these rich old Harlequins and their gilded Columbines. As he scribbled, the telephone of the ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... bee, my own little, industrious bee, bad flown about with such a yellow hanger-on in its down. But while the spider had spun round with it, the larva had loosened and fallen down on the spider-web, and now the big, orange spider came and gave it a bite and transformed it in a second into a skeleton without ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... but to succeed at that period appeared hopeless; and success could only be accomplished by the greatest patience, perseverance, and most careful tact and management of all parties. It was most galling to be a hanger-on to this company of traders, who tolerated me for the sake of presents, but who hated ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... in the towns, inventing scandals to please the canons, or the families who protect the house. And there are priests who envy me! hungering against me for this coveted chaplaincy of nuns! looking upon me as a flattering hanger-on of the archiepiscopal palace, not understanding how otherwise, being so young, I could have hooked out this preferment that allows me to live in Toledo on ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... we shall put it into a very narrow compass. But it has to be told somehow. By the help of an equerry and a dancing-master, the writhing princess was hoisted down-stairs and got into a carriage. The dancing-master, Dunoyer, was a hanger-on and favorite of the prince; and, being employed to teach dancing to the younger children of George the Second, acted as a kind of licensed spy, so Hervey says, on the one family and the other. In the carriage with the prince and princess came Lady Archibald Hamilton, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Richard waiting for him. This was not customary; as in these latter days Richard, though he always drove the car, as a sort of subsidiary coachman to the young ladies to whom the car was supposed to belong in fee, did not act as general groom. He had been promoted beyond this, and was a sort of hanger-on about the house, half indoor servant and half out, doing very much what he liked, and giving advice to everybody, from the cook downwards. He thanked God that he knew his place, he would often say; but nobody else knew it. Nevertheless, everybody ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... my heart for having given a definite end and aim to my life. Don't think I underrate your kindness, darling; I know that I should never want a home while you could give me one. But 'tis hard to be a hanger-on in any household; and Valentine will exact all his sweet young wife's love ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... eldest of the legitimate daughters of Tonsard, landlord of the Grand-I-Vert, situated between Conches and Ville-aux-Fayes in Burgundy. Of coarse beauty and by nature depraved; a hanger-on at the Tivoli-Socquard, and a devoted sister to Nicolas Tonsard for whom she tried to obtain Genevieve Niseron. Courted by Charles, valet at Aigues. Feared by Amaury Lupin. Married Godain one of her lovers, giving a dowry of a thousand ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... make Jacky see this; being hot at the time Jacky could not feel the cold to come. Jacky became a hanger-on of George, and if he did little he cost little; and if a beast strayed he was invaluable, he could follow the creature for miles by a chain of physical evidence no single link of which a civilized ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... a shabby outcast, a tavern hanger-on, a genial wayfarer who tarries longest where the inn is most hospitable, yet with that suavity, that distinctive politeness and that saving grace of humor peculiar to the American man. He has his own code of morals—very ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... incipient exercise of art was affected by the moral anathema, which was denounced against these frivolous and paid trades by the narrowminded earnestness of the Roman character. "The trade of a poet," says Cato, "in former times was not respected; if any one occupied himself with it or was a hanger-on at banquets, he was called an idler." But now any one who practised dancing, music, or ballad-singing for money was visited with a double stigma, in consequence of the more and more confirmed disapproval ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... several of them had borne arms, as, for example, Clement Marot, who had been taken prisoner with Francis at the battle of Pavia. Brusquet had been a hanger-on of the camp at Avignon; Villot, a Paris student; Caillette had received the spirited education of a soldier in the household of his benefactor, Diane's father. And as for the others—how varied had been their careers!—lives of hazard and vicissitude; ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... than was good for his reputation and morals, but who was a good-hearted fellow, always ready to do a friendly turn, and with plenty of time on his hands to do it. The genius born to live without work will make his way by his wits, whether it be in the lobby at Washington City, or as a hanger-on at a ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... You don't think I can stop my brother's marrying because it might be a poor connection for me? The point is that it wouldn't be good for Dave—to be a poorly tolerated hanger-on. That's why I'm going hot-foot to Newport. And while I'm away do try to do something about the book page. Get me a culture-hound—get one of these Pater specialists from Harvard. Or," he added, with sudden inspiration ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... motives failed, or when opposition fanned the inner glow. With the elements of a despot but half tamed, and like many another tyrant, unchallenged master of his surroundings, Staneholme wielded his authority with fair result. Tenant and servant, hanger-on and sprig of the central tree, bore regard as well as fear for the young laird—all save Staneholme's whilom love ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... order to a stunted Hebrew maid of Polish culture, Judson Flack launched at once into the subject of Letty. He did this for a two-fold reason. First, his grievance made the expression of itself imperative, and next, Gorry being a hanger-on of that profession which lives by knowing what other people don't might be in a position to throw light on Letty's disappearance. If he was he gave no sign of it. As a matter of fact he was not, but he meant ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... Voltaire himself, no doubt, was anxious to appear as the intimate friend of the great writers of England; but what reason is there to believe that he was not embroidering upon the facts, and that his true position was not that of a mere literary hanger-on, eager simply for money and reclame, with, perhaps, no particular scruples as to his means of getting hold of those desirable ends? The objection to this theory is that there is even less evidence to support ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... down on a bench, a nerveless and shaken man if there ever was one. He had been a hanger-on round the gambling dens, the kind of sneak I never ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... poetry without meeting references to him. He rose during the reign of the last Han,—the Chien-An period, as it is called, from 196 to 221,—by superiority of energies and cunning, from a wild irregular youth spent as hanger-on of no particular position at the court,—the son of a man that had been adopted by a chief eunuch,—to be prime minister, commander of vast armies (he had at one time, says Dr. H. A. Giles, as many as a million men under ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... one day in a casket, while she was making me wait a long time and trying to get rid of a hanger-on who could not be made to understand hidden meanings. I caught cold—but I got hold ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... and only earned occasional pence in the most various ways. Broken in spirit, he himself first made advances to his companion of former days, and Bob, flattered by the other's humility, encouraged him as a hanger-on.—Really, we shall soon be coming to a conclusion that the differences between the nether and the ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... love." I know her to be a stranger to the earliest cry. So you see, dear, that utter ignorance is the mother of the Art. Dialogues "occasionally pointed." She has a sister who may do better.—But why was I not apprenticed to a serviceable profession or a trade? I perceive now that a hanger-on of the market had no right to expect a happier fate than mine ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... great old-fashioned kitchen, with an open range capable of roasting a small ox, one might have fancied. Norah, the cook, was busy in the scullery with her sleeves tucked up, and under the table was seated Susie Gallagher, a small and grubby hanger-on engaged in the task of washing potatoes. The potatoes were beside her on the floor and she was washing them in a tin basin of water with the help of an ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... he was back again, seeking amusement and profit. This time he followed up three of a kind to his doom. There was a better hand across the table, held by a pugnacious Irish youth, who was a political hanger-on of the Tammany district in which they were located. Hurstwood was surprised at the persistence of this individual, whose bets came with a sang-froid which, if a bluff, was excellent art. Hurstwood ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... cases a petty vassal was neither a sub-kingdom nor an adjunct-function to another greater vassal, but was simply a political hanger-on; like, for instance, Hawaii was to the United States, or Cuba now is; or like Monaco is to France, Nepaul to India. Thus Lu, through assiduously cultivating the good graces of Ts'i, became in 591 a sort of henchman ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... bitter cup of the "outward bounder," than whom there is no more forlorn, miserable creature on earth. No one but the much abused boarding-master will have anything to do with him, and that worthy is generally careful to let him know that he is but a hanger-on, a dependant on sufferance for a meal, and that his presence on shore is an outrage. As for the sailors' homes, I have hardly patience to speak of them. I know the sailor is usually a big baby that ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... sales," said the landlord, laughing uproariously, in which he was joined by a seedy, red-nosed character, addressed as Zeke, who appeared to be a hanger-on of the barroom in the function of ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... Partridge, is a much fainter and more washed-out character. But in mere interest of story and accessories the journey of Roderick and Strap to London is quite the equal, and perhaps the superior, of that of Tom and his hanger-on after we once leave Upton, where the interest is of a kind that Smollett could not reach. It is probable that Fielding might, if he had chosen, have made the prison in Amelia as horribly and disgustingly realistic (to use a horrible and disgusting word) as the ship in Roderick, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... differences, and giving Plunket a good opportunity, which he will not fail to avail himself of, to make his statement of the whole of his proceedings to Parliament. I have little doubt that this will set up Lord Wellesley again. At present he is run down with the greatest activity by every hanger-on and agent of the Protestant part of the Government. I hear Peel behaves very well indeed, and is perfectly moderate and well-judging ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... unkempt longish hair and slovenly clothes, a sort of very vulgar down-at-heel American in appearance. And he was transported with shyness. Yet ours was the world he had chosen as his own, so he took his place bravely and simply, a hanger-on. ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... and the whole of the way along never once desisted from trying to persuade us that we must pay what he had asked, and perhaps a little more. There was another fellow seated by him on the box, evidently a "hanger-on" and friend of his, who had come with the hopes that we should believe he had carried our luggage to the carriage, and was therefore entitled to something. These Neapolitan beggars are as importunate and persistent as a swarm of gnats, and it is almost impossible to get rid of them; however, on reaching ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux |
