"Bumpkin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bumpkin took it all for earnest,' he said. 'I should ha' done that myself. No, thankee, sir. I don't care about mixing with the lords and swells upstairs. I'll have a look in on the butler. Smoking the old pipe again, I see, sir. Not many old meerschaums ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... was told me by Mr. Crabb Robinson,[681] who was long connected with the Times, and intimately acquainted with Mr. W***.[682] When W*** was an undergraduate at Cambridge, taking a walk, he came to a stile, on which sat a bumpkin who did not make way for him: the gown in that day looked down on the town. "Why do you not make way for a gentleman?"—"Eh?"—"Yes, why do you not move? You deserve a good hiding, and you shall get it if you don't take care!" The bumpkin raised his muscular ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... off, at both of which places there were excellent bowling-greens and beautiful grounds. In these rides, of course, he was well attended and watched, but still not so strictly but that a packet could sometimes be conveyed to him by a seeming country- bumpkin on a bridge, or a letter in cipher entrusted to a sure hand. Always through the night at Holmby a light was kept burning in the King's chamber, in the form of a wax-cake and wick inside a large ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... jokes go with cheap people; but when you are with those of subtle insight, who make close mental distinctions, you should muzzle your mood, if perchance you are a bumpkin. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... as much celerity as a mountebank's Mercury upon a rope from the top of a church-steeple, every one charged with a mouthful of 'coming! coming!' This sudden clatter at our appearance so surprised me that I looked as silly as a bumpkin translated from the plough-tail to the play-house, when it rains fire in the tempest, or when Don John's at dinner with the subterranean assembly of terrible hobgoblins. He that got the start and ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... defended the stranger for the intrusion of the bumpkin tune. "She did it so well!" ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Colonel Mortimer," insisted the other officer gravely. "Perhaps we can get the truth out of this bumpkin, if we ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... his age, if ever that solitary superlative existed, could escape these unfavorable reflections of himself in various small mirrors; and even Milton, looking for his portrait in a spoon, must submit to have the facial angle of a bumpkin. Moreover, if Mr. Casaubon, speaking for himself, has rather a chilling rhetoric, it is not therefore certain that there is no good work or fine feeling in him. Did not an immortal physicist and interpreter of hieroglyphs write detestable verses? Has the theory of ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... thriving way as a general merchant in the capital of the parish, and with clear profits from his business of L300 per annum, yet suffering the mother that bore him, and suckled him, and washed his childish hands, and combed the bumpkin's hair, and gave him Epsoms in a cup when her dear Johnny-raw had the belly-ache, to go down, step by step, as surely and as obviously as one is seen going down a stair with a feeble hold of the banisters, and stumbling every foot-fall ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... gamester, who, having a deep knowledge of the world, had taken the name of Fabris, and the younger brother had to assume it likewise. Soon afterwards he bought an estate with the title of count, became a Venetian nobleman, and his origin as a country bumpkin was forgotten. If he had kept his name of Tognolo it would have injured him, for he could not have pronounced it without reminding his hearers of what is called, by the most contemptible of prejudices, low extraction, and the privileged class, through an absurd error, does ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... was he a mere bumpkin? How far was Jacob Flanders at the age of twenty-six a stupid fellow? It is no use trying to sum people up. One must follow hints, not exactly what is said, nor yet entirely what is done. Some, it is true, take ineffaceable ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... to reply to this, and contented himself with thanking her as they entered the room. He paused before Miss Conklin, and gave her "bumpkin," adding, by way of explanation, "a rude country fellow." She spelt it cheerfully, without the "p." When the mistake was made plain to her, which took some little time, she accepted his arm, and went with him into the passage. He kissed her more than once, ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... A country bumpkin the great offer heard: Poor Hodge, who suffered by a broad black beard, That seemed a shoe-brush stuck beneath his nose; With cheerfulness the eighteen-pence he paid, And proudly to himself, in whispers, said, "This rascal stole the ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... young dark-browed man who had entered his sanctuary with much the same air as a village bumpkin assumes when he is about to be shown the three-card trick on a race-course. Balsamo did not even ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... was the moonlight, glinting on Bill's immovable eye-glasses, that gave extraordinary impressiveness to his words; or it may have been Bressant's reflection, that this young country bumpkin, sullied with drink, coarse and ignorant though he was, would have probably found his sense of equality in no way diminished, had he known more of the facts to which the present catastrophe was a sequel; ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... evening and morning, might say,—"How absurd!" What a figure he cuts there, sitting in solitary state upon his glass tripod,—in the middle of a crowd of excited fellow-beings, hurried to and fro by their passions and sympathies,—like an awkward country-bumpkin caught in the midst of a gay crowd of polkers and waltzers at a ball,—or an oyster bedded on a rock, with silver fishes playing rapid games of hide and seek, love and hate, in the clear briny depths above ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... had had the chances which had come to him, if she could have gone to Smith, for instance, or Bryn Mawr, she would have come out of the mill a finished little product, clever, adaptable, and not a gawky, under-nourished, over-strenuous bumpkin like himself. In the depths of his self-abasement, Scott Brenton did not hesitate to ply himself with ugly adjectives. Indeed, they seemed to him to be doing something towards the removal of his doubts ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... is always kept in readiness for action in the fore part of the ship. The sharpest and strongest of these deadly weapons is generally stopped or fastened to the fore-tack bumpkin, a spar some ten or twelve feet long, projecting from the bows of a ship on each side like the horns of a snail, to which the tack or lower corner of the foresail is drawn down when the ship is on a wind. This spar, which affords good footing, not being raised many feet above the water, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... officer. "If you knew as much about old Dardus as I do, you wouldn't be so keen to champion this boy. The old man has been mixed up in many a questionable transaction, and I shouldn't be surprised if it turned out that he was in league with these fellows who got that country bumpkin's seven hundred and fifty dollars, and that he put the boy up to playing ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... round the corner. He wears a beaver hat and swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife. Here comes another with a sou'-wester and a bombazine cloak. No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one — I mean a downright bumpkin dandy —a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands. Now when a country dandy like this takes it into his head to make a distinguished ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... a woodside, I came upon a little lad of perhaps ten years old, who, his head hidden in his arms against a tree trunk, was crying bitterly. I asked him what was the matter, and, after a little trouble—he was better than a mere bumpkin—I learnt that, having been sent with sixpence to pay a debt, he had lost the money. The poor little fellow was in a state of mind which in a grave man would be called the anguish of despair; he must have been crying ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... worse and worse; the boat, under a close-reefed mizen on the bumpkin stepped as a foremast, was steered with an oar by the second master. When they had arrived within about two miles of the island, the wind shifted to a very severe squall, accompanied with lightning, thunder, and a heavy hail-storm. Mr. Larcom, ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... gentleman is very kind to amuse himself at the expense of a little country bumpkin, but he would do well to ascertain if his flattery would go down before administering it next time," I said sarcastically, and I heard him calling to me as I abruptly went off to ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... a sort of wit one remembers to have heard at school, of a brilliant outsider; perhaps to have been guilty of oneself, a trifle later. It was, no doubt, a blaze of intellectual fireworks to the bumpkin squire, who came to London to go to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that little Spartan savage," said one of the wreath-sellers, laughing. "He doesn't even know it's the regular festival of Athena. Run along, bumpkin, and see ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... Squire.) And you, Sir, what in the name of fifty thousand jackasses, do you mean by standing there grinning from ear to ear like a buck nigger? But I'll not stand it any longer, Sir, not for a moment. D'ye hear, you miserable turnip-faced bumpkin, d'ye hear?" (Carried away by histrionic enthusiasm, SPINKS brings his fist down violently on the precise spot where a table ought to be, but is not, standing. As a natural result, he hits himself with much force on his leg. The others laugh, and the Ladies turn away giggling, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... this never be done?" cries the Master. "Quel lourdaud! But why do I trouble you with French expressions, which are lost on such an ignoramus? A lourdaud, my dear brother, is as we might say a bumpkin, a clown, a clodpole: a fellow without grace, lightness, quickness; any gift of pleasing, any natural brilliancy: such a one as you shall see, when you desire, by looking in the mirror. I tell you these things for your good, I assure you; and besides, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... If you see advertised, The name of Nat Ricket Connected with cricket, In some mighty score or some wonderful catch, In some North and South contest or good county match. And if ever, when passing by cricketing places, You see people talking and pulling long faces, 'Cause some country bumpkin has beaten the Graces, Just step to the gate and politely enquire, And see if they don't say, "N. Ricket, Esq."; Or buy a "cor'ect card t' the fall o' th' last wicket," And see if it doesn't say "Mr. N. Ricket." ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... to have nice, ladylike manners," she said on another occasion, when Laura, summoned to the drawingroom to see a visitor, had in Mother's eyes disgraced them both. "Now, you've no more idea how to behave than a country bumpkin. You sit there, like a stock or a stone, as if you didn't know how to open ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... end of the apartment. The foolish bumpkin was slumbering. Borrow in a stage whisper, gravely assured me that the man was a murderer, and confided to me with all the emphasis of honest conviction the scene and details of his crime. Subsequently I ascertained that the elaborate incidents and fine touches of ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... out; Foy going first, and Red Martin, staring round him like a bewildered bumpkin, following at his heel, with his great sword, which was called Silence, girt about his middle, and hidden as much as possible beneath ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... when I was told that I was going into the country, I put on my country face and clothes. I arrive here and everybody, on seeing me, says to himself, 'Here's a curious bumpkin, but not a bad fellow.' Then I slip about, listen, talk, make the rest talk! I ask this question and that, and am answered frankly; I inform myself, gather hints, no one troubles himself about me. These Orcival folks are positively charming; why, I've already ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... saw that it would be useless to persevere in concealment, and said to the other with a good-humoured cheerful air, "Who are you who know me so well, and seem so much concerned about me?" "My name be Jack as well as thine," replied the honest-hearted bumpkin. Hodgkinson then discovered that the young man had been for sometime a stable-boy at Manchester, and was in the habit of going to his mother's house with the gentlemen of the long whip; but being elder than John had not ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... so clumsy. A little more and he would have been ungainly; perhaps she considered him ungainly as it was. He had tried to negative his defects by spending a great deal of money on his clothes and being as particular as a girl about his nails; but he felt that with all his efforts he was but a bumpkin compared with certain other men—Rodney Temple, for example—who never took any pains at all. Looking at her now, her pure, exquisite profile bent over her piece of work, while the sun struck coppery gleams from her masses of brown hair, he felt as he had often felt in rooms ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... your cravat for you, sir, and make you quite smart. We are not to appear abroad with a country bumpkin or a fright of a student, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... a walk in the wild, to come upon a bumpkin in cowhide boots crushing bark, to have him read within twenty minutes a cherished and well-hidden ambition which Brampton had not discovered in a month (and did not discover for many years) was sufficiently ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... strange that, though I talk thus plainly to David about his mother, he still seems to think me fond of her? How now, I reflect, what sort of bumpkin is this, and perhaps I say to him cruelly: "Boy, you are uncommonly like ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie |
