"Loafing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have these experiences as an antidote for emptiness. It would prepare me far better for to-morrow work than pondering Johnny's defections, or his grades, whether high or low, or marking silly papers with marks that are still sillier. I like Walt Whitman because he was such a sublime loafer. His loafing gave him time to grow big inside, and so, he had big elemental thoughts that were good for him and good for me when I think ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... later in the evening that the woman came along to give chin-music through the window. I am bound to say," added the captain generously, "that no one I can place my hand on saw his lorship loafing about the hotel after dark. But what of that? He may have laid his plans, and arranged for the corpse to be found later, ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... worked hard enough. At least he turned out a good deal. But that was spasmodic—night and day for weeks, and then loafing for weeks more. That's how he always got into trouble: loafing ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley
... previous, he said, he had chanced to arrest an Irish mechanic who, during the season, had been employed at the neighboring hotel in replacing some plaster that had fallen by reason of leakage. Since then, a hard drinking man, he had been idly loafing, occasionally jobbing, about the country, but the offence charged was that of being concerned in a wholesale dynamiting of fish in the Tennessee River some months ago. The man protested violently against his arrest, being unable to procure bail, and declared he could ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... his eyes at the group of loafing local statesmen in his office as he viewed the wreckage, and went to the telephone and ordered a carpenter, without wasting any words on ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... dozen or fifteen of the most glaring faults displayed and read a new line-up. With the exception of Clint, Hall, Carmine and Tyler every fellow was new. "And now," said Mr. Detweiler, "let's see what you can do this half. Do something, anyway! Stop loafing! If you can't play football, wave your arms and ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... sisterless or many-sistered, lived in this beehive which she lived in, though it were 99 Linwood Street. Into her own cell of that beehive, however, she took poor, sad, desolate Nora. Into the hallway she bade the loafing neighbor boys bring Nora's trunk; in a language Nora could hardly understand she explained to her that all would be well as soon as the policeman passed by. She sent Mary Murphy, who happened to be at home from school, for a pint of milk, and so compelled Nora to drink a cup ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... bottle-shaped passage with a narrow inlet to each end and the shadow of the Andes Mountains darkening all. And, laying to moorings there, was a cargo steamer of perhaps fifteen hundred tons. Even if she wasn't too big a steamer to be loafing there, I knew her of old. Red Dick was handy. I took a look around to the north'ard, and at the other end of the passage and jam in to the high rocks was a whaling steamer about our own tonnage. I also knew her ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... helped the old man up the stairway to his bed and then returned to the barroom, in which several of the regular boarders were loafing. One or two greeted him familiarly, and it was evident that they all knew something of the capture and were curious to learn more. His answers to their questions were brief: "You'll learn all about it to-morrow," ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... supplemented by a vigorous use of brains. The Americans as a rule do not like heavy or coarse manual labor, thinking it beneath them; and, indeed, when they can get Irish and Chinese to do it for them, perhaps they are not far wrong. But the idea of idleness and loafing is very far from the spirit of the country, and this is why we see the necessity for industrial education so vigorously recognized, both as a national duty, and by private ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... do them myself," the latter explained. "But I'm loafing this summer. I'm in town only because there's talk that St. ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... small school; or earn a trifle by drawing up conveyances, or by keeping the accounts of the lord of the manor. In some cases they acted as private chaplains, getting their victuals for their remuneration, and sometimes they were merely loafing about, and living upon their friends, and taking the place of the country parson if he were sick or past work. Then, too, the smaller monasteries had one or more chaplains, and I suspect that the canons at Castle Acre always would keep two or ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... knell of parting day; The loafing herd winds slowly o'er the lea; The wise man homeward plods; I only stay To fiddle-faddle in a ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... eighty of the gloomiest and most sullen-looking people I have seen in this country. The very little cheerfulness there is in Connaught is quite absent from Munster, or at least the Tipperary border of county Limerick. I learn that the occasion of this general loafing is a "rent-gathering," or rather an attempt to gather rent, and that Mr. Sanders, the agent for the Erasmus Smith School Trusts, is sitting, but not in receipt of custom. There has been the usual talk of Griffith's ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... people were fond of him in spite of all. But he was even more afraid of work than he was fond of drink. Whenever want pressed too hard, he worked a few days; but, as soon as he had earned ten francs, good-by! Off he went, lounging by the road-side, talking with the wagoners, or loafing about the villages, and watching for one of those kind topers, who, rather than drink alone, invite the first-comer. Trumence boasted of being well known all along the coast, and even far into the ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... a motley cluster of tents and shanties pitched under a hill. A number of flatboats lay in the backwater behind the bend and a quantity of ties corded along the bank indicated a loading-place, but no one seemed to be doing any loading. The few men that could be seen in the distance appeared to be loafing in the sunshine along the straggling street-way that led to the ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... retorted with emphasis. "This loafing life of just-enough-to-live-on doesn't give you a chance to play the man. Go out and fight and colonize and prove ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... a pretty fine lot. But I can't stand palavering or those rowdies loafing around will pull the house about our ears. When the Unemployed are idle, the police have enough to do! Ponder over it, Sir; ponder over it! [Curtain, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... be got to do it. The Sion Mills, which employ twelve hundred people, eight hundred Catholics and four hundred Protestants, would employ many more if they could be had. The labourers of this district are Catholic, and they prefer to stand loafing about to the performance of regular work. They believe that a perpetual holiday is coming, and that they may as well have a foretaste of the ease which is to come. Up to the times of the Home Rule Bill they were industrious enough. The Catholics of Tyrone and Donegal ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... away quickly, the boys amusing themselves by exploring their little island, fishing from the bank, and loafing in the shade of the solitary palm, at whose base was supposed to lie ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... speculator thought of establishing there. He was more punctual than either his employer or the merchandise, and met with the usual reward of punctuality in being forced to waste his time in waiting for the tardy ones. He seemed to the New Salem people to be "loafing"; several of them have given that description of him. He did one day's work acting as clerk of a local election, a lettered loafer being pretty sure of employment on such an occasion. [Footnote: Mrs. Lizzie H. Bell writes of this incident: "My father, Menton Graham, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... her great heart out for men to stand by 'er! Gawd! If I was a man—If was a man she wouldn't have to ask me twice, but before I went marching off I'd take time off to help the street cleaning department wipe up a few streets with the slackers I found loafing around under a government they were afraid to fight for. I'd show 'em. I'd show 'em if a government is good enough to live under it's good enough to ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... Binnie. "That's the man who wrote about 'gilded subalterns loafing luxuriously in cushioned cars in a giddy round of useless and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... practiced signals with the second squad until half past. Then came lunch. After lunch I scurried up to my room and dug up on chemistry, which was at one-thirty. Then came Greek at half past two. Then I had an hour of loafing—that is, I should have had it, but I was afraid of my to-morrow's history, so put in part of the time studying that. At a little before four I hurried over to the gymnasium, got into football togs, and reached the campus 'just in time to be in time.' We had a stiff hour's practice with the ball ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Oh, a loafing, idle lubber to him Is the sexton of the town; For sure and swift, with a guiding lift, He shovels the ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... soldiers think, he spent long hours loafing with the genuine article. He watched them at work and at play and at prayer from the points of view of all his confidants—the combatant officer, the doctor, the chaplain, the drill sergeant, and the private himself. With the navy, with every branch ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... kind, and he had scant patience with censure. Thus once, when harassed by an Admiralty order purposely issued to annoy him, he wrote back: "The biggest fool can see that to obey would defeat all my plans. I shall not do it. It may suit folk who love loafing about shore, but to an honest man such talk is disgusting, let alone that the thing can't be done." He was at that time twenty-six years old, and in charge of the whole North Sea fleet. No wonder ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... requires explanation. Kalisch seems to think that Cain went about his work, after the interview with God, in a better frame of mind; but while he toiled hard "in the field" he became incensed at the sight of Abel loafing under a fine umbrageous tree and calmly watching his flock. Forgetting the divine admonitions, and listening only to the voice of passion, he madly killed his only brother, and made himself the first murderer. The Talmud ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... everywhere in the wilderness, until he changes what he would call his mind; and then he is nowhere, and you cannot find him. He delights in solitude, and cares not for his own kind; yet now and then you will stumble upon a whole convention of porcupines at the base of some rocky hill, each one loafing around, rattling his quills, grunting his name Unk Wunk! Unk Wunk! and doing nothing ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... was a student again, loafing along the arcades after dinner, eager for novelty, careless of draughts. Little by little he lost himself in dim reveries. His cigar never left his lips. The ash grew longer and longer yet, a lovely white ash, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... right by her. Wasn't it right to suppose she must be tremendously fond of him, to let him keep her on the string the way he has? They've been engaged four years now. And was it any wonder I was mad with Micky, seeing how he was loafing along, fooling his money away, not looking ahead and denying himself as a man ought who's got a nice girl waiting for him? I'm quite frank, you see; but when you hear what an ass I've made of myself, you'll not begrudge me the few excuses I have to offer. All I tried ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... was loafing about there at night waiting for Maud, and quite ignorant of her death. I made him tell me everything of his connection with the matter. He's as bad a lot as that girl, but she had some excuse, seeing her grandmother was a murderess; Tray is nothing but a wicked ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... wild hair, while his plump feet mechanically felt for his slippers. He looked regretfully at the blanket—forever a suggestion to him of freedom and heroism. He had bought it for a camping trip which had never come off. It symbolized gorgeous loafing, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... was an idle, loafing, thieving, swearing, disreputable young man, who lived, when out of gaol, with the low prostitutes of Little Bourke Street. Was taken in hand by our Prison Gate Brigade Officers, who got him saved, then found him work. After a few months he expressed a desire ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... fortnight has passed since I left Brookline, without my being able to get at my work. This loafing about and waiting upon the movements of Government officials is the hardest work ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... have a nice loafing spell over Sunday for a change now," remarked Jack on the following morning when, having partaken of breakfast, they moved down to a position nearer the river, where they could ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... to—to start something! I'd like to get away somewhere and do things. I'm tired of loafing around in white flannels all day and keeping my hands clean. And I'm tired of dabbing whitewash on my shoes! Didn't you fellows ever think that you'd like to get good and dirty and not have to care? Wouldn't you like to put on an old flannel shirt and a pair of khaki trousers ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... me. I intend to visit my camps. I should have gone before, as no doubt the men are loafing. I am going to surprise them. They'll never expect to see me at this season of the year. The men'll want to take three days off, and I can't allow it. They always come back unfitted for work after their celebrations. They'll ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... I didn't begin to keep boarding-house yesterday. It means that I am not the kind that can be taken in by every hack-driver's son that comes loafing over here because he can't bum a living at home. It means that you can't skip out ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... bit by whipping a few to Larkins at first, while Copley was buckling on the body protector and adjusting the mask. Oakdale had put her second baseman, Jack Nelson, at the head of the batting order, and Jack did not delay the game by loafing on his way into the ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... "Loitering. Loafing suspiciously. Drinking. A lot of things, my boy. They'll nab you if you hang around here till three o'clock. You saw ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... itself. There was nothing special doing. A few enthusiastic athletes had donned their flannels, and were taking practice trots round the half-mile path. Another lot were kicking about a football in an aimless way. Others were passing round a cricket ball at long range. But most were loafing, apparently undecided what to turn themselves to thus early ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... vicinity he at once ordered camp pitched forty-five minutes from our camp, and started across to see Akeley. The latter had also started across to see the colonel, and they met on the way. And during all this time the native runner with the message to Colonel Roosevelt was loafing the morning away in our camp. What the message might be, of course, we didn't know, but we hoped that it was nothing of importance. It was only when the colonel and his party reached our camp that the message was delivered. ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... for me," remarked her father. "After all, there isn't much difference in prisons! But I want to repeat, as emphatically as possible, that I can't keep on loafing here for a month and preserve my sanity. Don't you see how much whiter my hair's getting? I'm willing to do anything in reason to oblige you, and I fully realise the importance of ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... far out in the ocean, called Coney Island.... The only distinguished contemporary he had ever met was the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, of Brooklyn, who had visited him.... He confessed to having no talent for industry, and that his forte was 'loafing and writing poems:' he was poor, but had discovered that he could, on the whole, live magnificently on bread and water.... On no occasion did he laugh, nor indeed did I ever ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... the date!" cried Whitey. "They said the thirtieth of September." Other scraps of the men's whispered talk began to come to Whitey's mind, and to have meaning. "They were to meet on that date, and they did. That's what String Beans was loafing around here for, pretending to be lame. And they rode south. Don't ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... pouring around the house, and I let her hand loose—it was hard to do it, too—and then she was gone, and we rode on to the ford. We stopped when we got to the stream to let the horses have their turn at drinking, and as I sat loafing in the saddle, with my mind pretty full of what had just passed, my eyes were all over. Every cavalry officer, and especially an aide-de-camp, gets to be a sort of hawk in active service—nothing can move within range that he doesn't see. ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... him. I inquired where he came from? he answered readily, and we began to talk; others approached. He was from Smolensk, and had come to seek employment that he might earn his bread and taxes. "There is no work," said he: "the soldiers have taken it all away. So now I am loafing about; as true as I believe in God, I have had nothing to eat for two days." He spoke modestly, with an effort at a smile. A sbiten{4}-seller, an old soldier, stood near by. I called him up. He poured out his sbiten. The peasant took ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... kitchen, bath, and toilets opened, a few feet from the table. It was the sleeping and amusement quarters of five dogs, the loafing place for the girls, the office of the hotel, the entry for guests to the dining-room or to the other conveniences. Through it streamed all who came to eat or drink or for any other purpose. The hotel having grown slowly ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the people was to clear the forests and bring the soil under cultivation. Greenfield was, therefore, in part an agricultural town and in part a lumber town. Like most small towns, it was slow-moving and uninteresting. The scenes most frequented were the loafing places. ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... by, nor aught cared I; Such things are not in my way: I turn'd me to the tinker, who Was loafing down a by-way: ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... does he mean by loafing about here?" he thought, feeling something like a pugnacious bull-dog at the prospect of a possible rival. "I forgot to ask Nan about him; but I dare say he is after one of the other girls." But these reflections were nipped in the bud, as the short, sturdy form of Mr. Mayne was dimly ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... in the nature of a picnic to him, accustomed to rubbing up against hard knocks as he was. And it felt pretty nice to be looked on as a "comrade" by these fellows whom he had always fought tooth and nail in the past; much nicer than loafing with that old crowd once led by Ted Shatter but now under the ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... "What are you loafing around here for," says the grocery man to the bad boy one day this week. "It is after nine o'clock, and I should think you would want to be down to the drug store. How do you know but there may be somebody dying for a ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... him as a depraved child, as a rightless slave, as a mindless automaton, and by encouraging the public (whom he protects) to regard him as a low criminal ruffian to be classed with the broad-arrowed convict, and to be excluded from places where any loafing rotten lout may go.... When would a lawyer-ridden Army Council realize that there is a trifle of significance in the fact that there are four times as many soldier suicides as there are civilian, and that the finest advertisement for the dwindling Army is the soldier. To ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... away in imagination, during a pleasant half hour, not to the vineyards and olive yards of Roman Italy, but to the blue hills of a far distant Virginia where the corn was beginning to tassel and the fat cattle were loafing in the pastures. Subsequently, when it appeared that there was then no readily available English version of the Roman agronomists, this translation was made, in the spirit of old Piero Vettori, the kindly Florentine scholar, whose portrait was painted ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... saw him loafing clear over the corn, The next the boy heard was a shout; And he wished for a moment he never was born To mow ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... possible that into the fellow's dull mind might steal a ghost of suspicion. I'm ready to take my turn now, though I hate the damned inactivity. I am a presumed illiterate. I struggle over the printed page—and with me loafing in his office he would chat ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... head in emphatic negation. "And do you understand why? It's simply because every girl knows that the manager of her department would think he could get along without her, if he were to see her sitting down ——loafing, you know! So, she would be discharged. All it amounts to is that, after being on her feet for nine hours, the girl usually walks home, in order to save carfare. Yes, she walks, whether sick or well. Anyhow, ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... 1880, the Kid enlarged his list of victims by killing, in a very justifiable encounter, a bad man from the Panhandle by the name of Grant, who had been loafing around in his country, and who, no doubt, intended to kill the Kid for the glory of it. The Kid had, a few moments before he shot Grant, taken the precaution to set the hammer of the latter's revolver ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... was loafing on the steps of the bank as if he were one of the stockholders, and began to ask him questions about the town, feeding him dimes at intervals. By and by the young lady came out, looking royally unconscious of the young man with the ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... seems to be suffering from ophthalmia, which is aggravated by crouching over the densely smoking tezek; and one miserable-looking old character is groaning and writhing with the pain of a severe stomach- ache. By loafing lazily about the tent all day, and chewing these flinty dried peaches, this hopeful old joker has well-nigh brought himself to the unhappy condition of the Yosemite valley mule, who broke into the tent and consumed half a bushel of dried peaches; when the hunters ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... to the point of blushing with shame when the thought struck us that all the time our salaries went on. Young Cole was aggrieved because, as he said, we could not enjoy any sort of fun in the evening after loafing like this all day; even the banjo lost its charm since there was nothing to prevent his strumming on it all the time between the meals. The good Paramor—he was really a most excellent fellow—became unhappy as far as was possible ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... discuss those varied attainments, which one acquires in an official career, so that you also may be able in time to have some idea about matters in general; and that when by and bye you've made friends, they may not see you spending the whole day long in doing nothing than loafing in our midst, up ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Thus each arm made only two armed men, whereas a bit of ingenuity might have made each serve three or four; by dividing the stocks and barrels, for instance. The tatterdemalion of the treble fiercely demanded my passport, while the "army" quickly degenerated into a ragged rabble loafing in ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... Ham; "we must be as solemn as we can and say to him that we didn't see or hear a bear, lion, or any other animal; then add, that if he had just been with us on the job, climbing up canyons, hunting birds, and doing his share, instead of just loafing, he wouldn't have gotten scared. But, rats! he must know that we have played a joke ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... it must have been done in a moment of abstraction, and then I hailed the "cab runner" who was loafing down the road; and, what with him and a messenger boy in a hurry, we got the basket down and lifted it into a big square hall and laid it almost at the foot of the staircase, up which we should have to ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... no one, and the solicitor's clerk, after one or two attempts at polite formality, adopted a like demeanour. The man's proximity caused his neighbour a ceaseless irritation; of all objectionable types of humanity, this loafing and boozing degenerate was, to Miss Rodney, perhaps the least endurable; his mere countenance excited her animosity, for feebleness and conceit, things abhorrent to her, were legible in every line of the trivial features; and a full moustache, evidently ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... rattletrap of a stove! And that wretched old fool of a husband was not man enough to fix it! Oh, no, he wasn't handy enough for that; he went at every blessed thing as if his fingers were all thumbs. And where could he be loafing tonight? Not home yet! Serve him right if she locked the house and allowed him to stay in the sheepcotes, or wherever it was he was dawdling. There now, those infernal brats were at the spinning wheel. Groa jumped up, darted into the ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... when we do work we only just earn enough to keep body and soul together. Under the present system everybody who can possibly manage to do so avoids doing any work, the only difference being that some people do their loafing better than others. The aristocracy are too lazy to work, but they seem to get on all right; they have their tenants to work for them. Rushton is too lazy to work, so he has arranged that we and Nimrod shall work instead, and he fares much better than any of us who do work. Then there ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... that Abraham Lincoln appeared in the village of New Salem, Illinois. Neither Denton Offutt nor his merchandise had arrived as promised. While paying the penalty of the punctual man—by waiting for the tardy one—he seemed to the villagers to be loafing. But Abraham Lincoln was no loafer. He always found something useful and helpful to do. This time there was a local election, and one of the clerks had not appeared to perform his duties. A New Salem woman wrote of Lincoln's first ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... had made of the vicinity. He was greatly pleased with our work, and it was then that he gave us an order for the bridge over the gorge. From that day on he became our staunchest ally, so that when my father and Mr. Van Syckel complained that we were loafing away a lot of time which could be more profitably spent in study or work, Mr. Schreiner stood up for us and declared that our experiences on the island were doing us far more good, both physically and mentally, than any other work that they could conceive of; that ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... it was light, he could see them loafing and sleeping in the grass outside with their guns beside them. ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... much about it, excepting that a score or more of tough characters have come down in the past two months. They settled on a mangy plantation up the coast, north of Davao, but they aren't working: just loafing around all day. They seem to be waiting for something—or somebody. The natives are scared, and the whites don't feel any too good about it either! You know we are scattered all over the Gulf—everybody a mile or more away from his neighbors—and that means ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... ephemeral existence, and his consequent horror of ennuyering his world—in short, to perceive the joke of life is rarely given to our people, whilst it forms the mainspring of the Parisian's savoir plaire. The finesse of the Frenchman, acquired in long loafing and clever cafe cackle—the glib go and easy assurance of the petit creve, combined with the chic of great habit—the brilliant blague of the ateliers—the aptitude of their argot—the fling of the Figaro, ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... it," replied Leopold; "my stomach is loafing, too. 'Twouldn't be fair to make it work and do nothing myself. Just as much obliged. Some other day. Don't forget the book," he cried, as Quincy ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... "Yes—to you! You've been loafing on your job, old man, and it won't do—it won't do at all. You should have put a stop to these things. What right have these girls to interfere in a game ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... craving for remorse, through moral sensuality. It was a laceration of the nerves... Defiance of common sense was too tempting. Stavrogin and a wretched, half-witted, crippled beggar! When you bit the governor's ear did you feel sensual pleasure? Did you? You idle, loafing, little snob. ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the last time we were here? You lectured me for loafing, and shooting woodpeckers. There were other things, but you couldn't recall them at the moment. I've been doing some right stiff thinking ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... "will half a dozen of you see to the wine. Get hold of some of those fellows loafing about there and make them roll out as many barrels as will supply a pint to every man in the regiment, ourselves as well as the men. O'Grady, take Lieutenant Horton and Mr. Haldane and two sergeants with ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... carelessly tossed arms lie abroad from this in one direction, and the legs in the opposite quarter. It is a very lank and shambling figure, without elegance or much proportion, and the attitude is the last wantonness of loafing. We followed our lout up the right leg, which is a gentle and easy ascent in the general likeness of a street. World-old stone cottages crouch on either side; here and there is a more ambitious house in decay; trees wave over the street, and down its distance comes an occasional ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... not much to do in the air. Scouting had been almost dropped. One day, when there was a little more to do than usual, I had gone up twice in the morning and was loafing around on the field. I suddenly heard machine-gun firing in the air and saw a Nieuport attacking one of our biplanes. The German landed and told me, all out ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... Ricks and Mr. Skinner, in a fast motorboat, came flying up the bay and caught sight of the Retriever loafing lazily past Fort Mason. On she came, with a tiny bone in her teeth; and suddenly, as Cappy peered ahead through the spray that flew in over the bows of the launch and drenched him to the skin, the Retriever's mainsail was lowered rapidly. The ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... the imagination, and we enter into all the sorrows of the imprisoned dame. We conceive the burthen of the long, lack-lustre days, when she leaned her sick head against the mullions, and saw the burghers loafing in Maybole High Street, and the children at play, and ruffling gallants riding by from hunt or foray. We conceive the passion of odd moments, when the wind threw up to her some snatch of song, and her heart grew ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of one of the figures in the milky globe was moving out slowly, loafing along, aimed at the head of the other. Slowly the other twisted his body aside, but too slowly. The fist finally touched the head, still moving slowly forward, the body following as slowly. The head of the creature twisted, ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak
... time to choose for loafing,' answered Lady Maud. 'By the bye,' she added, 'you may as well know. Poor Leven is dead. I had a telegram a few minutes ago. He was killed yesterday by a ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... travel a long journey, Al," said Dick with some satisfaction, "but it's not hard on us. It's more like loafing along on ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... was, Guy came home to the paternal mansion an ignorant but amiable and inoffensive young man, with a small, fluffy moustache, and no particular bent in life beyond smoking short pipes, and loafing about the premises with his hands ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... it. I mean to read it many times, for there are pages that I am not sure that I understand. One looks into its depths of suggestion as one looks into a clear but very deep lake; one can see far down, but not to the bottom of it, which remains mysterious. He invites his own soul, but there is no loafing. Indeed his mind seems preternaturally active, as in a ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... time on verses the last few years, Sam," answered Songbird. "I've been too busy attending to business. But maybe I'll get back to it while loafing around the ranch," ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... you for this, Rorie," she cried. "I cannot tell you what a load you have taken off my mind. I felt sure you would do me this favour. And yet, if you had said No——! It would have been too dreadful to think of. Poor old Bates loafing about Beechdale, living upon his savings! I shall be able to pension him by-and-by, when I am of age; but now I have only a few pounds in the world, the remains of a quarter's pocket-money, according to the view and allowance of the forester," added Vixen, quoting the Forest law, with a little mocking ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... Yeager rode out with Pasquale to review the troops. It was an entirely informal proceeding. The youthful army was happily engaged in loafing and in play. A bugle blew. There was an instant scurry for horses. They swung into line, stood at attention, and at a second blast charged yelling across the plain, ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... Bartholomew in the Lapwing and proceeded on our way towards Grenada. I was treated with kindness by every person in the sloop, and found my situation far more agreeable than when loafing ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... dimly they had come to look upon as their one friend, Carleton had at last succeeded in purchasing. When that, too, pictured Phillips's plan as a diabolical intent to take from them even the little that they had, and give it to the loafing socialist and the bloated foreigner, no room for doubt was left ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... her blankly, his laughing, impertinent brown face sobered at once by the sight of her own. He made a reply in Italian, raising his shoulders. Some ill-dressed, loafing stragglers on the wharf drew near Sylvia with an indolent curiosity. She turned to them and asked, "Do any of you speak English?" although it was manifestly inconceivable that any of those typical Neapolitans ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... the earth begins to quiver and shake under the bounding hoofs, and with another moment all the valley will wake to the ringing battle-cry. "My God!" mutters little Sanders, lunging along after his major, "why ain't I with my own instead of loafing here?" ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... spent an hour or two loafing about the schooner and swearing under his breath as he regarded the shore, where the crew was ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... you practicing with your team this P. M., instead of loafing around here watching the scrub eleven do things." remarked Charlie Scott, one of the group. "It can't be possible that a seasoned veteran of two years' experience can pick ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... Uncle Jack, decisively, as he watched a party of rough-looking idlers loafing out of the place, "we'll arrange with the captain to let us stay on board till we go up-country. Rather a shabby lot ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... among the largest and most important, and the Commandant, M. de L'Horme, is as interested as a father in his children. The yard when we arrived was full of soldiers, some about to march out and entrain for the front, others still loafing, and M. de L'Horme seemed to ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... is that generally held by Indians. They say the bank beaver is lazy and refuses to work with the others; so they drive him out. When beavers are busy they are very busy, and tolerate no loafing. Perhaps he even tries to persuade them that all their work is unnecessary, and so shares the ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... said, as they started, "Brown Betty looks as played out as if she had been druv instead of loafing ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... "Loafing is not resting; labor is the grindstone of life's dull edges," quoted Dorothy Dale on the evening of her return from ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... the tents were not large or comfortable enough to hold the wounded, and so we built barracks there. George Kidder, Will Dreyer and I joined the corps together. My first service was to beg Bowles Brothers' American flag and hoist it over our tents. Then our duties consisted for a while in loafing about the grounds, driving tent pegs, greasing the wagons and drawing up rules for our own government, for there was no fighting just then. Those were the bright, sunny days of September. Montretout and Chatillon had been taken, the Zouaves had disgraced ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... glorious life of loafing," came the instant answer. "The hours with the stars and the flowers, under the green trees with the whisperings of breezes in the grass. My books, my thinkers and their thoughts. Beauty, music, all ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... get back. Loafing round the hotel is dreary and my job's not getting on. Although I'm ordered to lie off, this won't count for much. I'll be ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss |
