"Gaffer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... yer white nigger," she said, in a loud whisper, "and I's boun' to gaffer de las' news;" and putting on a demure face, she ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society
... "Why, y' see, Gaffer," began the smith, almost apologetically it seemed to me, "it do come sort o' nat'ral to heave the likes o' Job about a bit—Job's made for it, y' might say, but ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... there before a poor blind man came groping his way out with a couple of sticks. 'Good morning to you, gaffer,' said the boy; 'pray, did you see a little girl come this road, with a basket of eggs upon her head, dressed in a green gown, with a straw hat upon her head?' 'God bless you, master,' said the beggar, ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... "Gaffer Fenwick? I should think so indeed! Well he might!" Then, after a moment's consideration: "He looked like my idea of Sir Richard Grenville. It's only an idea. I forget what he ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... birdie within its cosy nest, Awa' to lap the wee flooers on their mither's breast, Awa' to loosen Gaffer Toil frae his daily ca', For Auld Daddy Darkness ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... carry away Perronel with him, as he was like to have done. To end my story, here am I, getting showers of gold coins one day and nought but kicks and gibes the next, while my good woman keeps house nigh here on the banks of the Thames with Gaffer Martin. Her Flemish thrift has set her to the washing and clear-starching of the lawyers' ruffs, whereby she makes enough to supply the defects of my scanty days, or when I have to follow my lord's grace out of her reach, sweet soul. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... posted on Wednesday last?" exclaimed the mayor, a respectable tradesman in whom he confided and who placed himself at his disposal. "Listen, I think I can give you a valuable clue: on Saturday morning, Gaffer Charel, an old knife-grinder who visits all the fairs in the department, met me at the end of the village and asked, 'Monsieur le maire, does a letter without a stamp on it go all the same?' 'Of course,' said I. 'And does it get there?' 'Certainly. Only there's double postage to ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... said: "Well, gaffer, I do not quite understand what you mean. All I can say is, that I hope he will not leave us: for don't you see, he is another kind of man to what we are used to, and somehow he makes us think of all kind of things; and already I feel as if I could understand Dickens ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... Yule-tide bowl—your head's a-work and both your eyes Break loose? Afeard, you fool? As if the dead can rise! Say—Bagman Dick was found last May with fuddling-cap Stuffed in his mouth: to choke's a natural mishap!' 'Gaffer, be—blessed,' cries she, 'and Bagman Dick as well! I, you, and he are damned: this Public is our hell: We live in fire: live coals don't feel!—once quenched, they learn— Cinders do, to what dust they moulder while ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... crossing a wood, which lay in her road, she met a Gaffer Wolf, who had a great mind to eat her up, but dared not indulge his wicked wish, because of some woodcutters who were at work near them in the forest. He ventured, however, to ask her whither she was going. The little girl, not knowing how dangerous ...
— A Apple Pie and Other Nursery Tales • Unknown
... the line was kept in perfect working order. The travelling inspectors had under them a large body of "surface-men" or "plate-layers," men whose duty it was to perform the actual work of keeping the line in order. They worked in squads of four or five—each squad having a foreman or gaffer, who was held responsible for the particular small portion of the line that he and his squad had to attend to. The average number of surface-men was about two to the mile—so that the entire staff of these ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... Arnobius; "I've no ancestors. I'm not African certainly, not Punic, not Libophoenician, not Canaanite, not Numidian, not Gaetulian. I'm half Greek, but what the other half is I don't know. My good old gaffer, you're one of the old world. I believe nothing. Who can? There is such a racket and whirl of religions on all sides of me that I am sick of ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... stultified. If the rick had been really destroyed, a little blame certainly attached to him, but he could not understand how it had happened. However, blame or none, it was clear he could not, with any self-respect, declare himself to be this peppery old gaffer's son-in-law in the face of such an attack ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... fifty years old and a married man, escaped the great Requisition which swept the bulk of French workmen into the army. The old pressman was the only hand left in the printing-house; and when the master (otherwise the "gaffer") died, leaving a widow, but no children, the business seemed to be on the verge of extinction; for the solitary "bear" was quite incapable of the feat of transformation into a "monkey," and in his quality of pressman had never ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... in the blissful task of getting Mistress Waynflete into the domino, bungling as usual over arranging the hood because my fingers lost control of themselves at the touch of her hair, I sat down to reload it, intending to carry it with me. I had settled matters with the absent gaffer, Doley, by putting one of my guineas conspicuously on the table, and was just finishing my task when Mistress Waynflete, who had stepped to the rear window and was looking back on the scene of my recent exploit, suddenly ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... what the diggins the squire did it for, Gaffer Solomons?" asked one many-childed matron, with a baby in arms, an urchin of three years old clinging fast to her petticoat, and her hand maternally holding back a more adventurous hero of six, who had a great ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is too low, said Panurge; then took him by the ear, saying, Sing higher in Ge, sol, re, ut. So, so poor devil, thou hast a good throat; thou wert never so happy as to be no longer king. And Pantagruel made himself merry with all this; for I dare boldly say that he was the best little gaffer that was to be seen between this and the end of a staff. Thus was Anarchus made a good crier of green sauce. Two days thereafter Panurge married him with an old lantern-carrying hag, and he himself made the wedding with fine sheep's heads, brave haslets with mustard, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... old Giaffar (which is painfully like "Gaffer," i.e. good father) means either a rushing river ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... gristle of no mortal kind; Some God, my Noodle, stept into the place Of Gaffer Thumb, and more than [1]half begot This ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... who knew a gusto in living greater than that of any English writer since Borrow. Let no one forget those lines with which Christy Mahon cries defiance to the Mayo folk who have known his greatness and his fall: "Ten thousand blessings upon all that's here, for you've turned me a likely gaffer in the end of all, the way I'll go romancing through a romping lifetime from this hour to the dawning of the judgment day." I do not deny that these words are in a sense wrung from the Playboy, but what I do hold is that they prove how vital ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt |
