"Cannei" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... following. We put her to bed. James took off his heavy shoes, crammed with tackets, heel-capt and toe-capt, and put them carefully under the table, saying, "Maister John, I'm for nane o' yer strynge nurse bodies for Ailie. I'll be her nurse, and I'll gang aboot on my stockin' soles as canny as pussy." And so he did; and handy and clever and swift and tender as any woman was that horny-handed, snell, peremptory little man. Everything she got he gave her: he seldom slept; and often I saw his small shrewd eyes out of the darkness, fixed ...
— Rab and His Friends • John Brown, M. D.
... appeared to have been strongly indented by hard knuckles, below the left visual organ,—ornaments that are as frequently to be seen upon the inhabitants of St. Giles's, as rings are upon the visitors of St. James's. His ruffianly country dress, clownish manners, broad dialect of canny Yorkshire, with a certain cunning cast of the eye,—contracted no doubt by peering through the hedge, to see if the gamekeeper was coming,—all contributed to exhibit him before us, as the very beau ideal of ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... and with a wisp of crabgrass wiped his shoes clean of the swamp mud, which was of a different color and texture from the soil of the upland. All his life Squire H. B. Gathers had been a careful, canny man, and he had need to be doubly careful on this summer morning. Having disposed of the mud on his feet, he settled his white straw hat down firmly upon his head, and, crossing the road, he climbed a stake-and-rider ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... the old creature taken herself off to? She has not eloped with one of our canny Scots, has she?" inquired the viscount, coolly lighting another cigar and puffing ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... kirk, where he sits glowerin' straecht afore him, as gin there was naebody worthy o' a glance within the four walls, I havena set my een upon him. It's inborn pride that ails him, or else he has gotten something no' canny upon ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... do ye, my bonny man. I trow ye dinna get sic a skirl-in-the-pan as that at Niel Blane's. His wife was a canny body, and could dress things very weel for ane in her line o' business, but no like a gentleman's housekeeper, to be sure. But I doubt the daughter's a silly thing—an unco cockernony she had busked on her ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... pretty well on the whole. I sometimes get mad and swear, but then I am strictly honest. I work on Sabbath when I am particularly busy, but I give a good deal to the poor, and I never was drunk in my life." This man hired a canny Scotchman to build a fence around his lot. He gave him very particular directions. In the evening, when the Scotchman came in from his work, the man said, "Well, Jock, is the fence built, and is it tight and strong?" "I canna say that it is all tight and strong," ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... of Scotland, miscalled a 'fule' 1603-1625 As James One of England comes to rule. Gramercy! 'tis a canny thing To be a 'double-barrelled' King. The son of Mary Queen of Scots Of learning he had lots and lots, Writing sundry ponderous books 'Gainst 'bacca, witches and their spooks. James thought his kingly power divine And, loathing ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... seldom far off at the finish: over good ground Richard's cocktail had no chance with him; but sometimes, if toward the close of the run they came to stiff fallows and strong fences, the great strength of the inferior animal, and that prudent reserve of his powers which distinguishes the canny cocktail from the higher-blooded animal, ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... say. The Burgundian swore by the liver and pike-staff of the good centurion, the natives had outwitted him. Then turning to Gerard, he said, "Courage, l'ami, le diable est mort," as loudly as before, but not with the same tone of conviction. The canny natives had kept an internal corner for contingencies, and polished the kid's ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... of any cause on which the sun does not shine benignantly. Popery is at present, as you say, suing for grace in these regions in forma pauperis; but let royalty once take it up, let old gouty George once patronise it, and I would consent to drink puddle-water, if the very next time the canny Scot was admitted to the royal symposium he did not say: 'By my faith, yere Majesty, I have always thought, at the bottom of my heart, that popery, as ill-scrapit tongues ca' it, was a very grand religion; ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... window. But bear it in mind while we turn to Jennie. Jennie's real name was Janet, and she was Scotch. Canny? Not necessarily, or why should she have been hungry and out ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... for the time being the centre of the rejoicing, while Ans Handerson looked pleased and asked them to have a drink with him. It was the first and last time he treated, until the play changed and his canny soul was roused to unwonted prodigality. But he paid for the liquor from a fairly healthy-looking sack. "Not less 'n eight hundred in it," calculated the lynx-eyed Kink; and on the strength of it he took the first opportunity of a privy conversation with Bidwell, proprietor of the bad whisky ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... friend, carefully cushioned his formidable claws, and became the lion playing with the lamb; and William Coward, Esq., with cramps in his legs, and crotchets in his head—the rich London merchant who was constantly changing his will, but who at last, by what Robert Baillie would have termed the "canny conveyance" of Watts and Doddridge, did bequeath twenty thousand pounds towards founding a dissenting college. At each of these and several others we would have wished to glance; for we hold that biography is only like a cabinet specimen when ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... hear him,' said Geordie; 'he's no' canny'; and reaching out for Billy as he went stumbling past, he pulled him down to a seat beside him, saying, 'Sit doon, lad, sit doon. We'll mak a man o' ye yet.' Then he rose and, using many r's, said, 'Maister Chairman, a' doot we'll juist hae to ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... Wesley preached from its steps to the keelmen and fishermen of the town. It was here that a sturdy fishwife put her arms round him, when some boisterous spirits in the crowd threatened him with ill-usage, and, shaking her fist in their faces, swore to "floor them" if they touched her "canny man." ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... pleased, and wanting in that wise scepticism which should be the handmaid of common-sense; and if such a person in telling a story poetizes the truth, if it is a principle or a tendency to believe the best of everybody, to take everybody at their highest note, is she any the less canny? Has she necessarily less insight? As there are always two sides to a shield, why not look at ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... reporter asked Quentin something about me; to which that affable and canny young gentleman responded, "Yes, I see him sometimes; but I know nothing of ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... getting on a bit. She is still the same efficient and self-obliterating mainstay of the kitchen that she ever was, but she grows more "sot" in her ways, more averse to any change in her daily routine, and more despairing of ever finally and completely capturing that canny old Scotsman whom we still so affectionately designate as Whinnie, in short for Whinstane Sandy. Whinnie, I'm afraid, still nurses the fixed idea that everything in petticoats and as yet unwedded is after him. And it is only ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... to the school-room with priggish pride, expectant of praise; they were not to be Christian for any other reason than that it was the recommended way to Eternal Bliss and a Good Time Hereafter—the whole duty of canny and respectable man being to ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... been out, going down to the Grant Avenue corner for an assortment of Bay cities papers not to be had at the hotel news-stands, so that he could see whether our canny announcement of Clayte's fifteen thousand dollar defalcation had received discreet ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... the way, he proceeded with his client down the High Street, where, along under the glimmering lamps, were the usual crowds of loungers, composed of canny Saxon and fiery Celt, which have always made this picturesque thoroughfare so remarkable. Not one of all these had any interest for our two searchers; but it was otherwise when they came toward the Canongate Tolbooth, where, out from a dark ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... who plays slashing reckless game, takes honour at first hole (Liege to Loos), hooks at right angles, dents two spectators, and ends up in Aisne Bunker. FERDINAND (canny, cautious type of player) hits a wind-cheating screamer which finished fully forty yards from the tee. Critics differ as to FRANCIS-JOSEPH's shot, and it is still a moot point whether he had a species of fit or was simply trying to follow through. When restored to perpendicular was found to have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 - 1917 Almanack • Various
... moved; and, after all, had the boy injured her so much as this? Yet how could I help him? They were his deserts. My mood was abruptly changed to diversion when I saw among our jury specimens of both types of Meakum, and prominent among the spectator throng their sire, that canny polygamist, surveying the case with the same forceful attention I had noticed first in the House of Representatives, and ever since that day. But I had a true shock of surprise now. Mrs. Sproud was in court. There could be no mistake. No one seemed to notice her, and I wondered ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... said, "but it made us afeard, for we expect it that we should have to pay for it wi' some rare piece o' ill luck, so as to keep up the average. It's no canny to run frae London to the Black Sea wi' a wind ahint ye, as though the Deil himself were blawin' on yer sail for his ain purpose. An' a' the time we could no speer a thing. Gin we were nigh a ship, ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... into her fourth year in New York, flying home to Sarah Farraday for Christmas, meeting the young year with high hopes and canny plans, a definite part, now, of the confraternity of ink. Her circle widened and widened; important persons came down from their heights of achievement to make much of her, and the late spring saw the ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... mind," he said. He himself had recently diverted the public mind by the gift of a bell to the Norembega Theological (colored) Institute, and the paragraph announcing the fact conveyed the impression that while Uncle Jerry was a canny old customer, his heart was on the right side. "There are worse men than Uncle Jerry who are not worth a cent," was one of the humorous paragraphs tacked on ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a canny fisher that," shaking his head. "The fish you'd find in its nest come from the deep waters, where heron never flew. Well, they do say," in answer to her look of inquiry, "that on stormy nights it sits on the beach with a phosphoric light under its wing, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... "Alice is both canny and fendy," said the bold Evan Dhu, with a cock of his bonnet, "and I ken nocht to hinder me to marry ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... War' His 'Robbers' His 'Fiesco' His 'Ghost-seer' Schlegel, Frederick, his writings Anecdotes of 'School for Scandal' School of Homer, Lord Byron's visit to Scotland, the impressions on Lord Byron's mind by the mountain scenery of Lord Byron 'Half a Scot by birth and bred a whole one' 'A canny Scot till ten years' old' Scott, Sir Walter, his dog 'Maida' His 'Rokeby' The 'monarch of Parnassus' His 'Lives of the Novelists' His 'Waverley' His first acquaintance with Byron His 'Antiquary' His review ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... take my meaning," agreed Triffitt. "Well, at first nobody saw any reason to doubt this theory, for the lady had been seen staggering along that path more than once. But she had a brother, a canny Scot who was not over well pleased when he found that his sister—who had come into everything that old Ferguson left, which was a comfortable bit—had made a will not very long before her death in which she left absolutely everything ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... stretch your arm, gude-wife, further than your sleeve will let you; we maun ca'canny mony a day yet before ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... by that sophism, Gerald; the fox is canny because he has been terrified so often,' said Helen. 'Let us own that it is barbarous, but such glorious sport that one tries ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... that is appalling at sea, the danger each one instinctively dreads, but no one mentions. One ran one way and one another. The doctor (a real canny Scot, who sings "My Nannie's awa'" like Wilson) was over the rail and down the hold in a moment. I ran to Captain Meyer's room on the upper deck and roused him. He too was down and in the hold like a flash—brave fellows that they are, these "true British sailors." I waited the result, ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... follow in our anthology— "When at Hame wi' Dad" and "I'm Yorkshire, too "—appear to have an eighteenth-century flavour, though they may be a little later. Their theme is somewhat similar to that of Carey's song. The inexperienced but canny Yorkshire lad finds himself exposed to the snares and temptations of " Lunnon city." He is dazzled by the spectacular glories of the capital, but his native stock of cannyness renders him proof against ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... and four syllables after it, who lived in the old town of Edinburgh. There were the bailie's wife, and the bailie's three daughters, and the bailie's grown-up son, and three or four stout, bushy eye-browed, canny, old Scotch fellows, that the bailie had got together to do honour to my uncle, and help to make merry. It was a glorious supper. There was kippered salmon, and Finnan haddocks, and a lamb's head, and a haggis—a celebrated Scotch ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... that he died there, and the mourners by his bed heard through the silence the murmuring of Tweed How many other associations there are by the tributary rivers! what a breath of "pastoral melancholy"! There is Ettrick, where the cautious lover in the old song of Ettrick banks found "a canny place of meeting." Oakwood Tower, where Michael Scott, the wizard, wove his spells, is a farm building—the haunted magician's room is a granary, Earlstone, where Thomas the Rhymer dwelt, and whence ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... in the matter of pay I must go gently, you know, at first. I must ca' canny for a while. I shall be able to make things all right a little later on, you know, but just to begin with I'm afraid I couldn't manage more than three or four ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... gracious tree From latest twig to parent root, For when all others leafless stand It gayly blossoms and bears fruit. On certain days a friendly wind Wafts from its spreading boughs a store Of canny gifts that flutter in Like snowflakes ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... Canny, and a young Tatar, whom no one knew by name, were sitting on the river-bank by the camp-fire; the other three ferrymen were in the hut. Semyon, an old man of sixty, lean and toothless, but broad shouldered and still ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... realization of the most ardently and increasingly felt scientific aspiration of his life—an aspiration which he hardly dared to expect or to see realized." A little later, however, Sir William, always cautious and canny, began to discover the inherent defects of the primitive battery, as to disintegration, inefficiency, costliness, etc., and though offered tempting inducements, declined to lend his name to its financial introduction. Nevertheless, he accepted the principle as valuable, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... its long white plume of steam. "Now, Buckland," said Stephenson, "I have a poser for you. Can you tell me what is the power that is driving that train?" "Well," said the other, "I suppose it is one of your big engines." "But what drives the engine?" "Oh, very likely a canny Newcastle driver." "What do you say to the light of the sun?" "How can that be?" asked the doctor. "It is nothing else," said the engineer, "it is light bottled up in the earth for tens of thousands ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... and I was ready to fancy it was something 'no canny.' Why I must have been dropping off to sleep, too, and it startled me into wakefulness. This won't do. Sentries must not sleep ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... partly on account of his kind-heartedness, partly since he could never resist a bargain and he got her for almost nothing, partly, perhaps because of his canny foresight, bought a wretched, puny, sickly, little runt of a four-year-old slave-girl, a mere rack of bones covered with yellow skin. She continued sickly for some years, then, when she was more than half grown, the fresh air of Trebula, its good water, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... of his years and inexperience, only a canny Scot, perhaps, grounded in common sense and established in logic, could have preserved even that measure of balance that this youth somehow or other did manage to preserve through the whole adventure. Otherwise, two things he presently noticed, while forging ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... civilized country. No wonder he became the great power into which he has developed. His whole life is a blessing and a benediction to all with whom he comes in contact—parents, wife, children, countrymen, the world. No wonder his brain is canny with resourceful wisdom; no wonder that good red human blood pours at full ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... grown in financial power with the revenues her mines earned for her investors. Boston controlled and managed the copper industry, and had since the days when copper-mining was a hazardous pursuit, in which only bold and speculative souls dared engage. In the early days the canny Bostonian demanded for the honorable dollar his parent had earned—exchanging five-cent rum for human beings worth $1,000 apiece—at least twenty per cent. interest, and having acquired this habit, it became a principle, and such principles as these ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... sudden disappearance of the ape had impressed Jimmy with the idea that it was what the Scottish peasants call "no canny," and as it was his first interview with one of these curious creatures, there was some excuse for his apparent fear, though I am not certain that ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... been dead only a year when Aunt Matilda, who had adopted me several years earlier on the death of my parents, married her father. I was twelve and Kitty eight when the marriage took place, and with canny care I tried to shield her from the severity of Aunt Matilda's system in rearing a child. I ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... ... Abraham, trading tops with little Isaac, next in line ... Hans and Gretchen, phlegmatic and dependable ... Francois, never still for an instant ... Christina, rosy, calm, and conscientious, and Duncan, canny and prudent as any ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... said Halbert, laying his finger on his nose, with a knowing expression, 'my young lady is safe from harm so long as you are out of the Master of Albany's reach. Had you come by a canny thrust in the fray, as no doubt was his purpose, or were you in his hands to be mewed in a convent, then were your sister worth the wedding; but the Master will never wed her while you live and have friends to back you, and his father, the Regent, will see she has no ill-usage. You'll do best ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... o'clock, to sit under the minister each Sunday, and to listen at home to the same stern precepts that the elders preached to them from the time they were laddies. Much they learned of women in the ends of the earth, these seafaring sons, yet a canny wisdom was theirs and they never brought wives home with them. The one solitary exception to this had been the schoolmaster, who had been guilty of bringing a wife from half a mile the other side of the loch. For this he had never been ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... such favor among most of our public institutions, asylums, water-cures, and the like, of procuring the very cheapest servants we can get, and thinking it an economical triumph to chuckle over if [Footnote: This is all that the "canny" business men who compose the managing boards of some of the first asylums in this country permit the heads of the institutions to offer those who must for twenty-three hours of the twenty-four be responsible for the moral, and physical ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... thought far, far beneath the froth and superficiality of the every-day thinking of mankind. Fortunately, she had had no previous bad training to be counteracted now. Nature had been her only tutor; and Rosendo's canny wisdom had kept out all human interference. Her associates in Simiti were few. Her unusual and mature thought had set up an intellectual barrier between herself and the playmates she might have had. Fortunately, too, Jose had now to deal with a child who all her life had thought vigorously—and, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... said the doctor, edging me farther and farther away from the tent he hardly let out of his sight for a moment. "You're a canny lad, and shall have your bite and something to drink before you take your way back. But back you go before sunset and with this message: No man from any paper north or south will be received here till I hang out a blue flag. I say blue, for that is the color of my bandana. When ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... by a single sparkle of silver or gold. On which, in a red rage (and he often was in the like) he flung the whole bowlful into the long-room fire, from the ashes whereof for days after the small boys gladly collected hot half-pence. We must recollect that the canny Scot was a mean over-reaching man, so perhaps he was well paid out. Soon after the wedding, the bridegroom held high festival, and gave a grand dinner to all the masters. Our big boys were equal to the occasion, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... to business. If you saw how useful I am to your brother, you'd thank his lucky stars that I came through myself with nothing worse than getting my ear stepped on. I was hugging the ladder (being canny and careful), and the man above me toed in. Isn't it curious to think that if he'd worn braces in early youth my ear would be all ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... he, too canny to deny the obvious. "But what has that to do with it? If I'd had a living offer, I'd have taken it. But at my age a man doesn't dare take certain kinds of places. It'd settle him for life. And I'm playing for a really big stake and I'll win. When I get what I want for you, we'll ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... dusk of the night When unco things betide, The skilly captain, the Cameron, Went down to that waterside. Canny and soft the captain went; And a man of the woody land, With the shaven head and the painted face, Went down at his right hand. It fell in the quiet night, There was never a sound to ken; But all of the woods to the right and the left Lay filled ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... conversed with the guide, he said something in Erse. The dog set off in a sneaking sort of manner up the hill, and, when he showed any degree of keenness, we hastened to follow, lest he should set up the birds; but the lad advised us 'to be canny, as it was time eneuch when Lud came back to tell.' In a short space Lud made his appearance on a knoll, and sat down, and the shepherd said we might go up now, for Lud had found the birds. The dog waited till we were ready, and trotted ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... was that Jude awoke, and his hot French blood, mingled with his canny Scotch inheritance, rose in his veins and struck madly against brain ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... Canny Candace did not go at once to the office of the brothers, James and George McIntyre, though she looked them up in the telephone book the very first thing when the train arrived in Boston even before she had had a bite to ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... shoulder - "and buildit hie, and pit my hairt in the buildin' of it. If the hale hypothec were to fa', I think, laddie, I would dee! Excuse a daft wife that loves ye, and that kenned your mither. And for His name's sake keep yersel' frae inordinate desires; haud your heart in baith your hands, carry it canny and laigh; dinna send it up like a hairn's kite into the collieshangic o' the wunds! Mind, Maister Erchie dear, that this life's a' disappointment, and a mouthfu' o' mools is the ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... A wise and canny builder is Madam Mag, for though her home must be large to accommodate her size, and conspicuous because of the shallowness of the foliage above her, it is, in a way, a fortress, to despoil which the marauder must encounter a weapon not to be despised,—a stout beak, ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... "She was too canny to leave him a loophole for divorce, even in California; but I guess that didn't ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... beside myself. You are so superficial. And dense. And you hold me up to myself in the features of a beastly cad! I won't have it. For one thing, let me tell you that if I were the Lord Ronald Macdonald of that song we've heard Miss Felixson sing, and you were that canny lass Leezie Lindsay, I should know jolly well that after I'd carried you off to the Hielands my bride and my darling to be, it would be a very short time before Lady Ronald Macdonald had all the airs and tricks of speech of my sisters and cousins. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... rebuild the city walls in 1644, and Sir Walter Scott being married to his pretty French bride there (or rather in St. Mary's Church, which was tacked on to it in those days), and so on, Americans, and even canny Scots, can't sneak out of her ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... The fairies often wrought injury amongst cattle. Every animal that died suddenly was killed by the dart of the fairies, or, in the language of the people, was 'shot-a-dead.' Flint arrows and spear-heads went by the name of 'faery dairts....' When an animal died suddenly the canny woman of the district was sent for to search for the 'faery dairt,' and in due course she found one, to the great satisfaction of the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... in this year of grace to lavender-water and red ink, when permits run dry. One turns back the clock to the time of the Chartists and the year of the nuptials of the young Queen in England. We see up here on the fringe of things the dour and canny but exceedingly humorous Adam McBeaths, John Lee Lewises, and George Simpsons, the outer vedette of the British Empire; and, seeing them, get some half-way adequate conception of what a modicum of rum or "strong ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... he worked with. "Canny" Scotchmen and shrewd Yankees—ay, even Swiss innkeepers—felt the touch of his quality. There was, or there seemed to be, a geniality in the fellow that, in its apparent contempt for all worldliness, threw men off their guard, and it would have smacked of meanness ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... herself. She knew that several officers at Reynolds, her husband and McCrea among them, had invested their scant savings in that most promising venture. She knew that McCrea had vowed it would make them all rich if not famous one of these days, and that her methodical, cautious "canny Scot" of a husband had figured, pondered, and consulted long before he, too, had become convinced. She knew their holdings had been quoted far above what was paid for them, but what of all that? She had her boys, her husband, her army home, her health, ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... fire conversed agreeably, compared their rheumatisms and other ailments wordily, and talked of old times, and early recollections, and of sick-beds they had attended, and corpses that "you would not know, so pined and windered" were they; and others so fresh and canny, you'd say the dead had never looked so ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... nations of Christendom; but the Prussian policy, too, has been diligently covered with the same decorous plea of needful provision for the common defense and an unremitting solicitude for international peace,—to which has been added the canny ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... about the Scotch novels, (as they call them, though two of them are wholly English, and the rest half so,) but nothing can or could ever persuade me, since I was the first ten minutes in your company, that you are not the man. To me those novels have so much of 'Auld lang syne' (I was bred a canny Scot till ten years old) that I never move without them; and when I removed from Ravenna to Pisa the other day, and sent on my library before, they were the only books that I kept by me, although I already have ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... coffee and bacon over to the herder to whom the mere odor of either was worth any amount of service. As they ate, Jack and Billy quizzed the Mexican as to the topography of the surrounding country. The little herder was a canny chap. ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... not like her father to thus boast. On the contrary he was usually what the Scotch call a "canny" player. He never predicted that he was going to win, except, perhaps, to his close friends. But he was now boasting ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... provision stall, reporting to their husbands at night that, after all, the money was not wasted. The Vicar might just as well have it as the grocer. All the attractions in the world cannot worm shillings out of a public which is so prudent and canny that it has self-guarded itself by leaving ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... success that excited the envy of the merchant seaman at large and drove impress officers to despair. The towns and villages to the north of the Firth were "full of men." On no part of the north coast, indeed, from St. Abb's Head clear round to Annan Water, was it an easy matter to circumvent the canny Scot who went a-sailoring. He had a trick of stopping short of his destination, when homeward bound, that proved as baffling to the gangs as it was in seeming contradiction to all the traditions of a race who pride themselves on "getting there." [Footnote: Admiralty Records ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... man," answered the farmer, "ye'll hae heard o' Canny Elshie the Black Dwarf, or I am muckle mistaen—A' the warld tells tales about him, but it's but daft nonsense after a'—I dinna believe a word o't ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... them are English, and the rest half so); but nothing can or could ever persuade me, since I was the first ten minutes in your company, that you are not the man. To me these novels have so much of 'Auld Lang Syne' (I was bred a canny Scot till ten years old), that I never move without them."—Letter to Sir W. Scott, January 12, 1822, Letters, 1901, vi. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... them up to a very riot of ravishing motion. Faster and faster flew the bounding, sliding feet; the dancers being stimulated by the musicians, and the musicians driven to a passion of excitement by those exhilarating cries, and those snappings of the fingers, through which the canny Scot relieves the ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... The Frenchman now ten or a dozen years. That he came from Marseilles, that he had served on the Confederate side in the Trans-Mississippi, that he possessed an annuity, that he must have been well-born and reared, that he was simple, yet canny, and in his money dealings scrupulously honest—was all I could be sure of. What had he done to be ashamed about or wish to conceal? In what was he a black sheep, for that he had been one seemed certain? Had the beautiful woman, his wife—a tireless church and ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... some really good music—just one night of it, and quite by chance—and this, to his mind, ennobled the Claptonites; there was the place in which to start the revolutionising of the musical world. Besides—and here he thought himself very canny, by no means a Jew for nothing—there were fine old houses at Clapton, and where there were such houses there ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... to believe once more that there was something "no canny" about the affair, but he shook off the feeling, and began searching about once more for some sign or other of his enemies; but he sought in vain, and at last he turned to his companions to ask them what they ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... and wait their time, and keep their mind, as they say, to themselves, and touch pot and flagon with you, and hunt and hawk with you, and, after all, when time serves, pay off some old feud with the point of the dagger. Canny Yorkshire has no memory for such old sores. Why, man, an you had hit me a rough blow, maybe I would rather have taken it from you, than a rough word from another; for you have a good notion of falconry, though you stand up for ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... to have been among the indispensables of our old vie de chateau." But I must not forget the reason he gave me some time afterwards for having fixed on that spot for his bowling-green. "In truth," he then said, "I wished to have a smooth walk, and a canny seat for myself within ear-shot of Peter's evening psalm." The coachman was a devout Presbyterian, and many a time have I in after-years accompanied Scott on his evening stroll, when the principal ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Travellers are characteristically canny. Never tell anyone you can swim, he advises, because in case of shipwreck "others trusting therein take hold of you, and make you perish with them."[189] Upon duels and resentment of injury in strange lands ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... money, more money than was good for that antiquated "Noah's Ark" at the bank—and whose contemplated sojourn there overnight was public to too many minds—in short, Wood was not only incorruptible, he was canny. To what one of those minds, now, would it occur that he should take away that money bodily, under casual cover of his coat, to his own lodgings behind the cobbler-shop of Boaz Negro? For ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... their water from this substance, never apparently suspecting that the really valuable product of their wells was not the salt water they so carefully preserved, but the petroleum which they threw away. Samuel M. Kier was originally a salt manufacturer; more canny than his competitors, he sold the oil which came up with his water as a patent medicine. In order to give a mysterious virtue to this remedy, Kier printed on his labels the information that it had been "pumped up with salt water about four hundred feet below the ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... were standing on the step of the Hawk and Heron," said he, "and I waved my hand and shouted 'A canny morning to you, Master Paul'—ey, ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... from a foreign land had not been able to bring in their pockets certificates of orthodoxy, and might, after all, be dangerous heretics, it occurred to Zinzendorf's canny steward, Heitz, that on the whole it would be more fitting if they settled, not in the village itself, but at a safe and convenient distance. The Count was away; the steward was in charge; and the orthodox parish must not be exposed to infection. As the Neissers, ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... from far away, From a warm land far away, A southern land across the sea, With sailor-lads about the mast, Merry and canny, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... in good luck, my canny Scot," said Mr. Ireby, "to have spoken to me, for I see thy cattle have done their day's work, and I have at my disposal the only field within three miles that is to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... Leaving the canny old Cumberland woman at her baking, we called at a cottage in Everton Gardens. It was as clean as a gentleman's parlour; but there was no furniture in sight except a table, and, upon the table, a fine bush of fresh hawthorn blossom, stuck in a pint jug full ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... were the town not surrendered to him without delay, he would train his guns on the Tower of St. Nicholas itself, and lay that first in ruins. Happily Sir John Marley, the English Commander, who was likewise Mayor of the Town, was more than a match for the canny Scot. And this was the answer that the gallant Sir John sent back from the beleaguered town: that General Leslie might train his guns on the Tower and welcome, if such were his pleasure, but if he did so, before he brought down one ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... in warmest admiration. "Eh, but the lambie must surely have been right fond of the Shepherd after that. I'm thinkin' he would know his voice better than before, and follow him right close and canny. That's the kind o' shepherd all beasts would like, for they know fine when a body cares for them," Geordie said, with a glowing face, as he looked up at Grace, and the "Third Primer" slipped ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... echoed; and he contemplated them from his gate. "That's me," he stated, with complacence. "Bill Diggs of the Bird-in-Hand has been me since April, '65." His massy hair had been yellow, his broad body must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds, his face was canny, red, and somewhat clerical, ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister
... a half-dollar into the boy's hand. The boy looked at him for a moment with bright, canny eyes out of a dirty, intelligent face, and then set off at a run. He approached the lady on the bench a little doubtfully, but unembarrassed. He touched the brim of the old plaid bicycle cap perched on the back of his head. The lady looked at him ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... unpleasant truths which marks the relative"? Well might Bob Jakes say, "Lor, miss, it's a fine thing to hev' a dumb brute fond o' yer! it sticks to yer and makes no jaw." This question of making no "jaw" is rather a vexed one. Most people's experience would lead them to attend to a canny Dutch proverb, which observes that a "friend's" faults may be noticed but not blamed: since the consequences of blaming them are mostly unpleasant; but a braver proverb says, "A true friend dares sometimes venture to be offensive;" and we read that it is our duty ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... of a broad folk-comedy break through the scriptural web continually in the guild plays like those in which Noah the shipbuilder, or the proverbial three shepherds, appear in the pageant. Noah's unwilling wife in the Chester Deluge, and Mak's canny wife in the Wakefield shepherd's play, where the sheep-stealing scenes reveal a born Yorkshire humorist, offer a pair of gossips not easy to match for rude comedy. Mak's wife, like the shepherd's in the same pastoral, utters proverbs with every other breath: "A woman's ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... philanthropists took that direction; Lord Shaftesbury and Carlyle, Fowell Buxton, and Gladstone, threw their sympathies on the side which they should naturally have opposed, and did so for no reason except their eccentricity; but the "canny" Scots ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... Yes, but leaden shot can cleave your delicate gold. The quail is such a canny bird, that he lies low lest he make his last appearance on toast. And so, in ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... Davie, hath been done), 'give my boy this letter into his hand, and start him off to the house of Shaws, not far from Cramond. That is the place I came from,' he said, 'and it's where it befits that my boy should return. He is a steady lad,' your father said, 'and a canny goer; and I doubt not he will come safe, and be ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and commercial field in this country the Scots have held a foremost place and stand unrivalled for integrity, energy, fidelity, and enterprise. Many jibes are made at the expense of the Canny Scot, but American business men have realized his value. In business and commercial life the success of the average Scot is remarkable and many of the guiding spirits among America's successful business men are Scots or men of ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... dedicated to a god, or used in his worship, or had been touched by him, or claimed by a chief or a priest, no commoner dared lay finger on it, for it was as sacred as the ark of the covenant. Some canny planters kept boys out of their orchards and palm groves by offering the fruit to certain gods until it was ripe, for a sign of taboo kept out all marauders till the crop was ready for gathering, when the owner changed his mind ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... finally persuaded to take the job of mate when his canny New England mind grasped the fact that the mate's share of the profits is much bigger than a foremast hand's. He was as good as his word, however, and, when the Janet Barry, with her flag at half mast but her hold full of fine skins, docked at St. Johns after the season was over, Shavings drew ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... perpendicular rock above the Northern Sea, may have been at Gowrie's disposal. I am disinclined to conjecture, being only certain that a young man with Gowrie's past—'Italianate,' and of dubious religion—was more apt to form a wild and daring plot than was his canny senior, the King of Scots. But that a plot of some kind Gowrie had laid, I am convinced by his secrecy, and by his falsehoods as to the King's departure. Among the traps for the King contrived by Bothwell and Colville, and reported by Colville to his English paymasters, were ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... exceedingly canny, One morning remarked to his granny, "A canner can can Anything that he can; But a canner can't can a can, ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... in the corner of a note that he had taken to Monopoly for her, "Kindness of Billy," so he wrote "Kindnus of Cheef." Then he mounted his wheel and rode to Economy. After some apparently aimless riding he brought up at the back of the Chief's garage where he applied a canny eye to a crack and ascertained just how many and what cars were inside. He then rode straight to the bank where he was pretty sure the Chief would be standing near the steps at this hour. Waiting a time of leisure he handed ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... vulgarly called The Bogey by ill-trained Juniors, is among our elect set yclept Lemonade, partly owing to her habit of fizzing over, and partly to a certain acid quality in her temper, otherwise hard to define. Miss Douglas, our honoured Form mistress, being a canny Scot, goes by the familiar appellation of Thistles, intended also to subtly convey our appreciation—or shall I say ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... in keeping your head steady. I have spent most of my life wooing Madame Fortune; I find that makes a man canny." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... roarin' sae high that it washed awa' a sheepfold that stood weel up on the hill. And I've seen this verra burn, this bonny clear Callowa, lyin' like a loch for miles i' the haugh. But I never heeds a spate, for if a man just kens the way o't it's a canny, hairmless thing. I couldna wish to dee better than just be happit i' the waters o' my ain countryside, when my legs fail and I'm ower auld for ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... dropped behind the hill, leaving the West one haze of gold: but southward and seaward this gold grew fainter and fainter, paling into an afterglow of the most delicate blue-amber. In the scarce-canny light, as he rounded the corner of the cliff, he perceived two small figures standing above the hollow which ran down funnel-wise containing his ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... INTO PLANTS. A couple of cases are reported of worms boring into the stalks of Asters, Dianthus and Carnations. Of course the tops die, and the damage is great. There is no insecticide that can be used against these canny worms which snugly hide themselves in the plant stalks where not a drop of liquor can reach them. The only remedy is to keep a sharp outlook for affected plants, cutting away each worm-infested top and burning it. This kills the worm and cuts off future crops of worms. It seems a hard method ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... of the Hundred Year Club, suggests that there is an opening in intensive farming for the benevolent but canny wealthy who are interested in the soil and want to combine ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... Follow both through the fruiting, and see whether the sweeter flower brings the more sugary fruit. This fact ascertained, perhaps it may be followed up by observation of the distinctive color of the twigs and young branches—for there are wide differences in this respect, and the canny tree-grower knows his ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... to the last. When the British rule passed he, in common with many other English sympathisers, found himself in an embarrassing position. The De Lanceys—close friends of his—lost their lands outright. But Elliott, like the canny Scotchman that he was, was determined that he would not ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... Oberland forming part of the Canton of Berne: "Where do you take your cattle and your cheese?"—"To Berne."—"Whence do you get your grain, cloth, and iron?"—"From Berne."—"Very well: 'To Berne, from Berne'—you consequently belong to Berne." The reply is a good instance of that canny materialism which he so victoriously opposed to feudal chaos and ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... gleam of humor in his eye ... Topsy, all smiles and teeth,... Abraham, trading tops with Isaac, next in line,... Gretchen and Hans, phlegmatic and dependable,... Francois, never still for an instant,... Christina, rosy, calm, and conscientious, and Duncan, as canny and prudent as any of his people. Pietro is there, and Olaf, and ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... Despite the canny management of Hanna a defection took place over the decision on the currency issue. As soon as the platform was read, Senator Henry M. Teller, of Colorado, moved to replace the gold plank by one advocating the free coinage of silver. The earnestness with which Teller urged ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... wrote to Mr Maule as she had promised. She had no communication with him from the time he left the station until they met on the E. and A. boat. He joined her, as you know, at the next port above Leuraville. It was rather canny of him to go there—yet I don't see how, in the circumstances, he could have loafed round Leuraville without making talk—though I think it was a great pity he didn't. Of course he had his own means of communication with the township, and knew she was on board. No ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... owe some of their best as well as their least attractive traits to bitter climate and a parsimonious soil; and the rural population of either is pushed into emigration by the scanty harvests at home. It is not a little singular that the Yankee and the canny Scot should each stand as a butt for the wit of his neighbors, while each has a shrewdness all his own. The Scotch, it is true, are said to be unusually impervious to a joke, while our Down-Easters are perhaps the most recondite and many-sided of American ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... reverse about six weeks or two months hence, when the returned lists of the stoppages in the East and West Indies, consequent upon the late failures here, come home. The Western Bank of Scotland is whispered about. If that were to fail, it might bring the canny Scots to their senses; but they are ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli |
