"Hanger-on" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... herself have been deceived concerning it. Unconsciously to herself, she may have been the victim of a daring fraud on the part of some hanger-on who had access to her jewels, but, as no such evidence had yet come to life, as she had no recognized, or, so far as could be learned, secret lover or dishonest dependent; and, moreover, as no gem of such unusual value was known to have been offered within the year, ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... they ceased teasing old Battle, whom he now reined up in front of a large portico that opened into a spacious hall of the hotel. The bystanders, among whom there was a lawyer or two, as well as another species of hanger-on about a country tavern, sent up three loud and long cheers, which brought the major's friends in a crowd about the door. The major raised his hat, acknowledged the compliment with his usual grace, and dismounted over the wheel, displaying as he did so, the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... and fall as an artist came his simultaneous transformation from invited guest to parasite and hanger-on; he could not bring himself to quit dinners so excellently served for the Spartan broth of a two-franc ordinary. Alas! alas! a shudder ran through him at the mere thought of the great sacrifices which independence ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... man of regularity. Also, a knowing and eccentric hanger-on; one who will not move ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... for which fate perhaps intends great duties and greater deeds. I cannot fulfil these duties, I can perform no heroic deed, unless you, princess, grant me the blessing of happiness. I shall be a silent, unknown, and useless prince, the sad and pitiful hanger-on of a throne, despised and unloved, a burden only to my people, unless you give freedom and strength to my sick soul, which lies a prisoner at your feet. Wilhelmina, put an end to the tortures of the last ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... what cheerful wisdom he laughs away the fancy, which threatened to become an obsession, that Allegra was still alive in 1869: "My dear Clare, you may be well in body; but you have a bee in your bonnet." He suggests raking up "some plausible cranky old dried-up hanger-on" of fifty-two or so, who "should follow you about like a feminine Frankenstein," as he carelessly puts it. He tried to mitigate the crazy malevolence she cherished for her earliest lover: "Your relentless vindictiveness against Byron is not tolerated by any religion ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... been said upon this point. If Pope erred, he was certainly unfortunate in the objects of his youthful hero-worship. Cromwell seems to have been but a pedantic hanger-on of literary circles. His other great friend, Wycherley, had stronger claims upon his respect, but certainly was not likely to raise his standard of delicacy. Wycherley was a relic of a past literary epoch. He was nearly fifty years older than Pope. His last play, the Plain Dealer, had been ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... ordered. "I'll have an end put to it, Ruth. Look at him!" he cried, mockingly, pointing to Arnold's evening clothes. "What sort of a friend is that, do you think, for us? He wears the fetters of his class. He is a hanger-on at the tables ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... petty vassal was neither a sub-kingdom nor an adjunct-function to another greater vassal, but was simply a political hanger-on; like, for instance, Hawaii was to the United States, or Cuba now is; or like Monaco is to France, Nepaul to India. Thus Lu, through assiduously cultivating the good graces of Ts'i, became in 591 a sort of henchman to Ts'i; and, as we have seen, at ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... and their grammatical appurtenances out of the window when she has one of her miraculous children in hand, had provided for that Stratford lad who came to London broken in character and probably almost broken in heart, some forty years earlier, to be a hanger-on of the theaters and to mount the intellectual throne of the world. No deer-stealing expeditions late o' nights when the moon silvered the elms of Charlecote chase; no passionate love ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... the passion of love." I know her to be a stranger to the earliest cry. So you see, dear, that utter ignorance is the mother of the Art. Dialogues "occasionally pointed." She has a sister who may do better.—But why was I not apprenticed to a serviceable profession or a trade? I perceive now that a hanger-on of the market had no right to expect a happier fate than ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... this rail bird, movie usher, alley dodger, and hanger-on at dancing academies, I could not so much as summon up the cheek to ask what he had done with the body. You'll say I ought to have acted; that I ought at least to have got up and left him. That shows two ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... weaknesses would imagine these chaps were on intimate terms with players—who, as a rule, are slow to cultivate new acquaintances, attend strictly to their own business, and do not particularly relish that particular class of hanger-on. No man knew this type better than Handy. However, he never antagonized them. That he considered would not be wise policy. He good-naturedly humored them with much superficial gossip that really meant nothing. His good nature never forsook him, and he always had his ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... memorandum book the names of the other eight wealthy men who were pilloried by the journalist. The younger men, Shirley felt sure, were of that peculiarly Manhattanse type of hanger-on—well-groomed, happy-go-hellward youths who danced, laughed and drank well,—so essential to the philanderings of these rich old Harlequins and their gilded Columbines. As he scribbled, the telephone of the room ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... thirty years longer for the auburn-haired lady my father saw in a chapel at Toronto, she will bethink herself that Owen, or Owen's eldest son, had better have it than the Queen. That's the sense of it; but I hate the hanger-on ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... give it up. I wasn't enough of a hanger-on to sink into a state of perpetual whining protest, or to commit suicide. When I was finally convinced that I couldn't draw him nearer I gave it up and began to take notice again, of other things. I let ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... Kanda quarter of Edo. O'Mino seemed to divine his thoughts. She would overload him with favors; or openly express her purpose of following wherever he went in life. Kanda? Kyu[u]bei was a well-known hanger-on at the Tamiya. Matazaemon entered him up in his expense book at so much a year. To[u]gane? He could not get there except through Kyu[u]bei. Matazaemon had farms there, and the nanushi or village bailiff was his servant. Besides, he would be a runaway. Matazaemon surely would come down on ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... sourly. "I believe he's a mischievous hanger-on, and I should like to see him sent right away. There, I've done. As you, in your diplomatic fashion, would say, ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... which he met the Captain's line. Victory was not always upon one side. Politics is a very uncertain res gestoe. And human nature, more uncertain still, would vacillate from wing to wing, now being a Sharp's retainer, and anon a hanger-on of Rush. Such changelings would not count, but that their vote ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... from me! Pocahontas was a gay little hanger-on of the camps,—not like this silent owl! Her mind seems older than her years, and just notice her care of him, will you? I reckon he'd have wandered away and died but for her grip ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... nothing mysterious about the white woman," said Marsh. "She is quite typical—just a plain mining camp hanger-on who drifted down ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... was promoted to the rectory of Diss in Norfolk, but was severely censured by his bishop for his buffooneries in the pulpit and his satirical ballads against the mendicants. He finally became a hanger-on about the court of Henry VIII.; and, daring to write a rhyming libel on Cardinal Wolsey, was driven to take refuge in the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey. There he was kindly entertained and protected by Abbot Islip until his death in 1529. Some of his poems were ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... he was back again, seeking amusement and profit. This time he followed up three of a kind to his doom. There was a better hand across the table, held by a pugnacious Irish youth, who was a political hanger-on of the Tammany district in which they were located. Hurstwood was surprised at the persistence of this individual, whose bets came with a sang-froid which, if a bluff, was excellent art. Hurstwood began to doubt, but kept, ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... was a good deal of lawlessness and violence is not to be wondered at. It has been said that for every bona fide miner there was at least one hanger-on or camp follower, who had no intention of doing any digging or washing, but who was smart enough to realize that a veritable thief's paradise would be built up by the hard workers. Sometimes these men went to the trouble of digging tunnels under ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... an injury done to their race. Peyton, uneasily conscious that his own anger had been excited by an exaggerated conception of the accident, was now, like most obstinate men, inclined to exaggerate the importance of Pedro's insolence. He was well out of it to get rid of this quarrelsome hanger-on, whose presumption and ill-humor threatened the discipline of the rancho, yet he could not entirely forget that he had employed him on account of his family claims, and from a desire to placate racial jealousy and settle local differences. ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... other game than this; Of hare or rabbit dreamed I, not of wolf. His frequent visitations have of late Perplexed me; now the riddle reads itself. A proper man, a very proper man! A fellow that burns Trinidado leaf And sends smoke through his nostril like a flue! A fop, a hanger-on of willing skirts— A murrain on him! Would Elizabeth In some mad freak had clapped him in the Tower— Ay, through the Traitor's Gate. Would he were dead. Within the year what worthy men have died, Persons of substance, ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... narrow compass. But it has to be told somehow. By the help of an equerry and a dancing-master, the writhing princess was hoisted down-stairs and got into a carriage. The dancing-master, Dunoyer, was a hanger-on and favorite of the prince; and, being employed to teach dancing to the younger children of George the Second, acted as a kind of licensed spy, so Hervey says, on the one family and the other. In the carriage ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... is the end. Oh, why couldn't I have killed him? But if you stayed here, so should I. Not with him, though. Never with him. Maybe I'm talking wildly. You'll say I'm in love with you. Perhaps I am—quien sabe? No matter as to that. I shall be no hanger-on, sir. I only ask a kind of partnership—the encouragement of some decent man near me. I have money; plenty, till we both get a footing. But you wouldn't live on me; no! I don't fancy that of you for a moment. I would be glad merely to tide you over, if you'd let me. And ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... not make the terms less sounding by his reading. Wind in leaves, went a stir through the room. I heard a page near me whispering, "O Sancta Maria! The hanger-on, the needy one! Since the beginning of time I've seen him at doors, sunny and cloudy days, the big, droning bee!" Manuel Rodriguez painted on. I felt his thought. "I should like to paint you, ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... smallest affairs of life, perhaps because the slits through which he gazed magnified the objects gazed upon, and he peered about him now with profoundest solicitude. This was Watt Brooks, a mechanic, and hanger-on about the mills, where he did an occasional bit of odd work, and employed the balance of his time in gossiping among the women, or lounging at the drinking saloons, talking a great deal about the wrongs of the working classes, and winning to himself some friends from ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... that receives; which is to the rich man as a mere drug to still his conscience and offer a spurious receipt in full for his neglect of social duties, and to the poor man an encouragement to live without self-respect, without providence, a mere hanger-on and dead-weight upon society, and a standing injury and source of temptation ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Dirk Schuiler (or Skulker), a kind of hanger-on to the garrison, who seemed to belong to nobody, and in a manner to be self-outlawed. He was one of those vagabond cosmopolites who shark about the world, as if they had no right or business in it, and who infest the skirts of society like poachers ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... uprightness of the good old lord Lafeu, make very interesting parts of the picture. The wilful stubbornness and youthful petulance of Bertram are also very admirably described. The comic part of the play turns on the folly, boasting, and cowardice of Parolles, a parasite and hanger-on of Bertram's, the detection of whose false pretensions to bravery and honour forms a very amusing episode. He is first found out by the old lord Lafeu, who says, 'The soul of this man is in his clothes'; ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... phrase of haughty Gaul, But proud Iberia soundly maul: Restore the ships by Philip taken, And make him crouch to save his bacon. Nassau, who got the name of Glorious, Because he never was victorious, A hanger-on has always been; For old acquaintance bring him in. To Walpole you might lend a line, But much I fear he's in decline; And if you chance to come too late, When he goes out, you share his fate, And bear the ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... who, if they spoke out their whole hearts, would be quite as content to have no souls, and no necessity to waste their precious time (as they think) upon religion. But, my friends, my friends, the day will come when you will see yourselves in a true light; when your soul will not seem a mere hanger-on to your body, but you will find out THAT YOU ARE YOUR SOUL. Then there will be no more forgetting that you have souls, and thrusting them into the background, to be fed at odd minutes, or left to starve,— ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... the publishing of The Closet Opened was not his doing, I think. His Choice and Experimented Receipts in Physick and Chirurgery had already appeared in 1668, which suggested to some other hanger-on of the Digby household that John Digby's consent might be obtained for printing Sir Kenelm's culinary as well as his medical note-books. Hartman followed up this new track with persistence and profit to himself. As a mild example of the "choice ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... couldn't make Jacky see this; being hot at the time Jacky could not feel the cold to come. Jacky became a hanger-on of George, and if he did little he cost little; and if a beast strayed he was invaluable, he could follow the creature for miles by a chain of physical evidence no single link of which a civilized man ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... mere empty delusions receive a shape from our fears. For my part, I am led to believe in their existence, especially by what I hear happened to Curtius Rufus. While still in humble circumstances and obscure, he was a hanger-on in the suit of the Governor of Africa. While pacing the colonnade one afternoon, there appeared to him a female form of superhuman size and beauty. She informed the terrified man that she was "Africa," and had come to foretell future events; for that he would go to Rome, would fill offices of ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... continued. "Why, public sympathy will be extended to her in full measure. Permit suspicion to fall on a woman without arresting her, and the public is ready to believe every scandal concerning her which the putrid imagination of every bar-room hanger-on can invent. Once you arrest her, the public in its eagerness to damn the police will repudiate every bit of unfavorable evidence we may offer against her. Well, we can ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... danger in that quarter, after all," said Louise, gaily. "The boy is a mere hanger-on. You see, Aunt Jane's old sweetheart, Thomas Bradley, left everything to her when he died, and she can do as she ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... eyes shut, as ill-favored a body as I ever beheld. The magistrates had him smartly whipped this morning, and sent out of the jurisdiction. I was told he was no true Quaker; for, although a noisy, brawling hanger-on at their meetings, he is not in fellowship with the more sober and discreet of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... mistake about that misshapen, twisted shadow—it was Hunchback Joe. Jimmie Dale's eyes travelled to the hunchback's companion—and narrowed as he recognised the other. The man was well enough known in the underworld, a hanger-on for the most part, a confirmed hop-fighter, though when not under the influence of the drug he was counted one of the cleverest second-story workers and lock-pickers in the Bad Lands—Hoppy Meggs, they called him. Again Jimmie Dale's eyes ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... as the courageous actress, Arbuscula, expressed herself, in contempt of the rest of the audience, when she was hissed [by the populace]. What, shall that grubworm Pantilius have any effect upon me? Or can it vex me, that Demetrius carps at me behind my back? or because the trifler Fannius, that hanger-on to Hermogenes Tigellius, attempts to hurt me? May Plotius and Varius, Maecenas and Virgil, Valgius and Octavius approve these Satires, and the excellent Fuscus likewise; and I could wish that both the Visci ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... also expressed a great contempt for the Patriarch, and for their Matraam or Metropolitan, whom the English papers call the Abuna. Abuna is Arabic for 'our father.' The man is a Cairene Copt and was a hanger-on of two English missionaries (they were really Germans) here, and he is more than commonly a rascal and a hypocrite. I know a respectable Jew whom he had robbed of all his merchandise, only Ras Alee forced the Matraam ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... one day in a casket, while she was making me wait a long time and trying to get rid of a hanger-on who could not be made to understand hidden meanings. I caught cold—but I ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... Sicilians, and to liberate the accused, by choosing the incompetent man. When Cicero rose to speak, there was probably not one of them of his own party, not a Consul, a Praetor, an AEdile, or a Quaestor, not a judge, not a Senator, not a hanger-on about the courts, but was anxious that Verres with his plunder should escape. Their hope of living upon the wealth of the provinces hung upon it. But if he could speak winged words—words that should fly all over Rome, that might fly also among subject nations—then would the judges ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... of Macedon, destroyer of the liberties of Greece, sent for Aristotle, his hanger-on, as one capable of answering any question whatsoever, and said to him (when he had ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... scientific ranks for yourself. If you do not, you had better stick to commerce. Nothing is less to be desired than the fate of a young man, who, as the Scotch proverb says, in "trying to make a spoon spoils a horn," and becomes a mere hanger-on in literature or in science, when he might have been a useful and a valuable member ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... people. For one thing, he carries out all Dr. Wellesley's medicines for him. And he shows strangers round the place—he knows all about the history and antiquities of the Castle, St. Hathelswide, and St. Laurence, and the Moot Hall, and so on. A hanger-on, and a sponge—that's what he is, Mr. Brent. But clever—as ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... this her pride was roused. Why should she remain in this position—a hanger-on—forcing herself on an unwilling man who at best only tolerated her? The only soft feeling for her that had ever arisen in his heart was nothing more than pity. Could she hope that ever this pity would change to love, or that even the pity itself would last? Was he not even now longing to get ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... ago—I want you to let me remind you of it. I should like you to know that I never forgot it. We were at St. John's then; you were right above me—in a different world altogether. You were a leader amongst the best of them, and I was a hanger-on amongst the worst. You were in with the gentlemen set and the reading set. Neither of them would have anything to do with me—and they were quite right. I was what they thought me—a cad. I'd no head for work, and no taste for anything worth doing, ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was a miserable fraud from start to finish, carried on and guided by the advice of the defendant. He told how he, a mere boy of twenty-one, burdened with a sick wife and baby, unfitted by training or ability for any sort of lucrative employment, a hanger-on of bucket shops and, in his palmiest days, a speculator in tiny lots of feebly margined stocks, finding himself without means of support, conceived the alluring idea of soliciting funds for investment, promising enormous interest, and paying this interest out of the principal intrusted ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, Alvina was very quiet, subdued, and rather remote, sensible of her humiliating position as a hanger-on. They none of them took much notice of her. They drifted on, rather disjointedly. The cordiality, the joie de vivre did not revive. Madame was a little irritable, and very exacting, and inclined to be spiteful. Ciccio went his ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... He walked round the little circle discontentedly, thinking this matter over with deepening displeasure. When he came to the orchestra again the handsome Greek was there, with an expression so devilish on his face that Barndale regarded him with amazement. Demetri Agryopoulo, salaried hanger-on to the Persian embassy, was glaring like a roused wild beast at these two shadowy figures in the shadow of the orchestra. The band was crashing away at the overture to 'Tannhaeuser,' the people were laughing and chattering as they circled, ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... have been deceived. This fellow is no lord. He is a hanger-on of the Court, one John Harvey, a disreputable blackguard whom I heard boasting to his boon-companions of his conquest. I implore you to return home as quietly as you went. ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... you? You are a new scholar and rich. The teacher is not exacting with the rich. And I am a poor hanger-on; he doesn't like me, because I am impudent and because I never bring him any presents. If I had been a bad pupil he would have expelled me long ago. You know I'll go to the Gymnasium from here. I'll pass the second class and then I'll leave. Already a student is preparing ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... daring fellows; several of them had borne arms, as, for example, Clement Marot, who had been taken prisoner with Francis at the battle of Pavia. Brusquet had been a hanger-on of the camp at Avignon; Villot, a Paris student; Caillette had received the spirited education of a soldier in the household of his benefactor, Diane's father. And as for the others—how varied had been their careers!—lives ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... service of a man of base estate, and first asked his birth and calling. The man said that his profession was that of a sergeant. Starkad, not content with despising him, also spurned him with revilings, because, neglecting all honourable business, he followed the calling of a hanger-on; and because he had tarnished his whole career with ill repute, thinking the losses of the poor his own gains; suffering none to be innocent, ready to inflict wrongful accusation upon all men, most delighted at ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... how he had lost 20,000 pesos in consequence, but he could not tell me in which month it happened. Families are very united, and claims for help and protection are admitted however distant the relationship may be. Sometimes the connection of a "hanger-on" with his host's family will be so remote and doubtful, that he can only be recognized as "un poco pariente nada mas" (a sort of kinsman). But the house is ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... detachment that might not come at all. But Lame Wolf reasoned that the people penned at the stage station were in no condition to attempt escape. They were safe whenever he chose to return to them, and Lame Wolf knew this of Stabber—that he had long been a hanger-on about the military reservations, that he had made a study of the methods of the white chiefs, that he was able to almost accurately predict what their course would be in such event as this, and that Stabber had recently received accessions whose boast it was that they had information at first ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... always ready to do a friendly turn, and with plenty of time on his hands to do it. The genius born to live without work will make his way by his wits, whether it be in the lobby at Washington City, or as a hanger-on ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... declared that it was time for Featherhead to settle himself to some business in life, roundly declaring that he could not always have him as a hanger-on in the paternal hole. ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... billiard-room, which was mostly patronized Saturday nights, and did a meager business in fire insurance; but he was "so eternal lazy an' shifless," as Mrs. Kebble sharply asserted, that he was considered more a "hanger-on" of the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... long time to come. Accordingly, just as the provincial grand seigneur of France became the courtier of the King at Paris or Versailles, so the previously quasi-independent German knight or baron became the courtier or hanger-on of the prince within or near whose territory his ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... order to a stunted Hebrew maid of Polish culture, Judson Flack launched at once into the subject of Letty. He did this for a two-fold reason. First, his grievance made the expression of itself imperative, and next, Gorry being a hanger-on of that profession which lives by knowing what other people don't might be in a position to throw light on Letty's disappearance. If he was he gave no sign of it. As a matter of fact he was not, but he meant to be. He remembered the girl; had admired her; had pointed ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... that I am only a hanger-on to mother since we reached France," he confessed. "My French is of the sort to be exploited only among my intimates, and luckily all my ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... interested in so many other people's affairs," Nan had written, "that you haven't any time for your own. Don't make the mistake of being a hanger-on." ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... answered Dingwell promptly. His mind worked swiftly. The man with the drop on him was Chet Fox, a hanger-on of the Rutherford gang, just as he had been seventeen years before when he betrayed John Beaudry to death. Fox was shrewd and wily, but no gunman. If Chet was alone, his prisoner did not propose to remain ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... superciliousness and superiority of Paul, or to look down upon him? I ask you, as I have been asking myself every day these three weeks—is he not the wise man and I the fool? He the useful member of society, and I the mere hanger-on? His life the real, mine the shadow? That he is happy I have already said; that I am not, I know. His system therefore leads to peace and contentment, mine does not. He has set a child into the world, and though, of course, he does not know what its ultimate fate will be, he sees for the present, ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... horses. Here they agree with anything you want. I shall tell her to-day: Away with the modern bourgeois order! Let us destroy with bombs and daggers the capitalists, landed proprietors, and the bureaucracy! She'll warmly agree with me. But to-morrow the hanger-on Nozdrunov will yell that it's necessary to string up all the socialists, to beat up all the students and massacre all the sheenies, who partake of communion in Christian blood. And she'll gleefully agree with him as well. ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... main point seemed to be money and the right sort of position among the right sort of people. He shook himself, scowled, muttered: "I am a damn fool! What do I amount to except as I rise in politics and stay risen? I must be mighty careful or I'll lose my point of view and become a wretched hanger-on at the skirts of these fakers. For they are fakers—frauds of the first water! Take their accidental money away from them and they'd sink to be day laborers, most of them—and not of much ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... if you intend that, you must lay down the matter; for this rapier, it seems, is in the nature of a hanger-on, and the good gentleman would ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... Ralph, and Franklin had not as yet become acquainted with the true basis of his character. The two young men met together to consult in this dilemma and to examine their finances. It appeared that Ralph had scarcely one penny in his pocket. He had intended to be a hanger-on upon Franklin, in whose ability to take care of himself and others he had the greatest confidence. Franklin's purse contained about ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... Rudyard's, and it was heightened by a humiliation which overwhelmed her. She had been but a tool in every sense, she, Jasmine Byng, one who ruled, had been used like a—she could not form the comparison in her mind—by a dependent, a hanger-on of her husband's bounty; and it was through her, originally, that he had been given a real chance in life ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hospital at San Francisco for several months, he had been discharged from the service on "certificate of physical disability." Thurstane, who had kept track of him, immediately took him to his house, first as an invalid hanger-on, and then as ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... ne'er-do-weel in a shabby old red coat—John Ellis by name. How he gets his living no one knows, but if there is a meet of fox-hounds anywhere within ten miles, there he is sure to be, holding people's horses or ready at a gate for stray pennies and sixpences. There is usually such a hanger-on to every pack of hounds in England—one who travels immense distances on foot to turn up in unexpected places and get a few hard-earned shillings as his reward. We jog along under the magnificent silver firs, only to be equalled by those in the duke of Wellington's park at Strathfieldsaye, hard ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... it may be well to add here, remains closed the greater part of the year; and when opened seems visited by few persons, and those not of the very highest standing in society. A broken-down politician, a seedy hanger-on of some "literary club," presided over by a rich, but very stupid tailor, and now and then a lady about whose skirts something not exactly straight hangs, and who has been elbowed out of fashionable ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... playful, as he came sweeping onward, that cheers and exclamations, such as, "Good heavens! see the deacon's old horse!" "Look at him! look at him!" "What a stride!" etc., ran ahead of him, and old Bill Sykes, a trainer in his day, but now a hanger-on at the village tavern, or that section of it known as the bar, wiped his watery eyes with his tremulous fist, as he saw Jack come swinging down, and, as he swept past with his open gait, powerful stroke, and stiffles playing well out, brought his hand with a mighty slap against his thigh, ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... comers were welcome, for of all his visitors he contrived to make some use;—from the nobleman and general by whose interest he could provide for some of his followers, and by that means strengthen his interest with the rest, to the idle hanger-on whose excursions might procure the fish and game which he was barely suffered to eat a part of at his patron's table. Never was there a mixture of society so miscellaneous as was there assembled. From an affectation of loyalty to his new masters Lovat paid a great court ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... belt. She can make Bruce do pretty nearly anything, they say. He's the latest conquest. I got the story on pretty good authority, but until I verified the names, dates and places, of course I wouldn't dare print a line of it. The story goes that her husband is a hanger-on of the System, and that she's been working in their interest, too. That was why he was so complacent over the whole affair. They put her up to capturing Bruce, and after she had acquired an influence over him ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... doctor—hang him! I wish he were an otter himself; but if he's so thick with his lordship it won't do to quarrel." For, indeed, Thurnall might tell tales. So Trebooze swallows his spite and shame,—as do many folk who call themselves his betters, when they have to deal with a great man's hanger-on,—and sends down a note ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... said. "An utter waster and only a hanger-on of sport—can't do anything himself but talk. Now he'll tell everybody in Bridport about you coming up here in the dinner-hour. Come and cheer me up. I'm bothered ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... whatever he pleased without allowing anybody to reply to him, and made the King smile by this sally. But M. de la Rochefoucauld treated the matter in another manner he said that he could not induce himself to go like the merest hanger-on about the Court, and beg a seat of the officer who distributed them, and then betake himself early to church in order to have a good one, and wait about in order to put himself where it might please that officer to place him. Whereupon ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... a sex interest. Of course every newspaper and agency developed a virtuous anxiety to track the culprit, and all resources were directed to that end. Journalism is perhaps the only profession in which so fine a public spirit may be found. So it was that the North Country paper of which I was a hanger-on flung every available man into the fighting line, and the editor told me that I might, in place of the casual paragraphs for the London Letter, do something good on the ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... said Roderick. "Besides, the little old man is not the papa." Rowland smiled, wondering how he had ascertained these facts, and the young sculptor went on. "The old man is a Roman, a hanger-on of the mamma, a useful personage who now and then gets asked to dinner. The ladies are foreigners, from some Northern country; ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... century earlier could have been seen a droll figure with "indescribable nose, bald head, round body, eyes rolling and twinkling with good humor," scantily clad,—an incorrigible do-nothing, windbag, and hanger-on, a later century might assert,—yet history has given to him ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... and the blue-faced Major, it was enough for Princess's Place—as with a very small fragment of society, it is enough for many a little hanger-on of another sort—to be well connected, and to have genteel blood in its veins. It might be poor, mean, shabby, stupid, dull. No matter. The great street round the corner trailed off into Princess's Place; and that which of High Holborn would have become a choleric word, spoken ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... calling. It will be a privilege for vulgar people to attend the hall where he lectures; and they will consider it an honor to be allowed to pay their money for articles the value of which is stamped by his high recommendation. Nor can such a person be a mere fribble; nor can any loose hanger-on of fashion imagine he may assume the character. The gentleman auctioneer must be an artist above all, adoring his profession; and adoring it, what must he not know? He must have a good knowledge of the history and language of all nations; not the knowledge of the mere critical scholar, but of ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shadows of the great men. Under their very feet the little street boys play their games of pitching at tiny pyramids of dried lupins, unless they have filberts, and lupins are almost as good; and as the dandified hanger-on of Maecenas, straining his ear for the sound of his patron's voice from within the litter, heedlessly crushes the little yellow beans under his sandal, the particular small boy whose stake is smashed clenches his fist, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... exactly yearn for the portfolio; but she didn't have much choice about taking it. She was kind of a hanger-on, Cornelia was, you see, and she was used to going where she was sent. So when word would come that Aunt Mehitabel's rheumatism was worse and was threatenin' her heart, that meant a hurry call for Cousin ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... Avis Beechinor. I am a poor relation, a penniless cousin, a dependent, a hanger-on, do you understand? And you—Ah, how—how funny! Why, Margaret always gives me her cast-off finery, the scraps, the remnants, the clothes she is tired of, the misfit things,—so that she won't be ashamed of me, so that I may be fairly presentable. She gave me eight of those ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... himself of, to make his statement of the whole of his proceedings to Parliament. I have little doubt that this will set up Lord Wellesley again. At present he is run down with the greatest activity by every hanger-on and agent of the Protestant part of the Government. I hear Peel behaves very well indeed, and is perfectly moderate and well-judging upon the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... a line on my own account. Be careful what you are doing in this business. The fellow who informed is a sort of hanger-on to the missionaries here. They don't think much of him, but seem to put up with the swab as a necessary evil. He confessed that jealousy had something to do with the matter, and I could see the Admiral wanted to kick him out of the cabin. Make sure that this man Barcom ...
— Officer And Man - 1901 • Louis Becke
... well excite wonder. But wonder should always be watched with a wary eye; for he is apt to bring in his train a hanger-on called worship, who can do nothing but mischief here. It is a short step from a passage like that quoted above to a glorification of the existing system of society, to a defence of all manner of indefensible things; and a cross-grained attitude towards all projects of reform. It is a short ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... anticipated, Marie de Medicis was startled by so extraordinary a proposition. De Luynes was a mere hanger-on of the Court; the companion of the boyish pleasures of her son; and without one claim to honour or advancement. But these very arguments strengthened the position of the Marechal. The poverty of the King's ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... drifted to Rome, where he started a commerce in Boetican girls which had so far prospered that he bought two vessels to carry the freight. Unfortunately the vessels met in a storm and sank. Then he became a hanger-on of the circus; in idle moments a tout. It was in the latter capacity that Antipas met him, and, pleased with his shrewdness and perfect corruption, had attached him to his house. This had occurred in years previous, and as yet Antipas had found ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... Snell hunching down on a bench, a nerveless and shaken man if there ever was one. He had been a hanger-on round the gambling dens, the kind of sneak I never turned my ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... well to choose our intimate friends from those who are neither much above us nor beneath us. If a man is poor, and chooses as a friend one who is rich, the chances are either that he becomes a toady and a mere "hanger-on," or that he is made to feel his inferiority. Young men in this way have been led into expenses which they could not afford, and into society that did them harm, and into debts sometimes that they could not pay. Making friends of those beneath us is often equally a mistake. We come ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... fancy, partake sufficiently of the nobleness of their nature, to put proper words in their mouths.... My knowledge of the tongues is but small, on which account I have read ancient authors mostly at secondhand. I remember, when I first came to London, and began to be a hanger-on at the theatres, a great desire grew in me for more learning than had fallen to my share at Stratford; but fickleness and impatience, and the bewilderment caused by new objects, dispersed that wish into ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... nearly ten years had passed. Then the vicious De La Motte laid an adroit plan for getting it into her possession, through the aid of the Cardinal de Rohan, who had come to admire her. She was a hanger-on of the court, and began her work by persuading the cardinal that the queen regarded him with favor. The credulous dupe was completely infatuated with the idea. One night, in August, 1784, he was given a brief interview in the groves around Versailles with a woman whom ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... because you have used other people's understandings instead of your own. Be yourself, my lord. See with your own eyes, and hear with your own ears, and then you'll find me still, what I've been these seven years; not your understrapper, your hanger-on, your flatterer, but your friend! If you choose to have me for a friend, here's my hand. I am your friend, and you'll ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... of the other Herod of whom we hear in the Acts as a persecutor. This one appears from other sources, to have had the vices but not the force of character of his bad race. He was weak and indolent, a mere hanger-on of Rome, to which he owed his kingdom, and to which he stoutly stuck during all the tragedy of the fall of Jerusalem. In position and in character (largely resulting from the position) he was uncommonly like those semi-independent rajahs in India, who are allowed to keep up ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... hanger-on about camp, but in everything but actual fighting was as useful as any of the boys she loved with all her big, warm, Irish heart, and served with the undaunted bravery which led her to risk the dangers of every battle-field ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... that among my enemies was a worthless fellow, a hanger-on of the local political machine, who had that afternoon been in the office annoying me with his loud and boisterous talk. He was drunk, and as there were some people to see me, I put him out. He ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... Maurice, I blush to say that rather than become an unprincipled adventurer living on my wits, or a mean-spirited hanger-on fawning upon acquaintances for a livelihood, or doing anything rather than soil my hands with honest toil, I became a blacksmith fellow some four ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... themselves up with a loathly dialect of their own which transcends the comparatively harmless efforts of the Black Country potter. Foul is not the word for this ultra-filthy mode of talk—it passes into depths below foulness. I may digress for a little to emphasize this point. The latter-day hanger-on of the Turf has introduced a new horror to existence. Go into the Silver Ring at a suburban meeting, and listen while two or three of the fellows work themselves into an ecstasy of vile excitement, then ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... with me. In the world, with people, I am self-conscious. It is only in music that I am lifted above myself. When I am not living in that, I need activity, restlessness, change. This is why I must go away. Here I can easily be persuaded to become a conceited fool, a flattered hanger-on of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is a shabby outcast, a tavern hanger-on, a genial wayfarer who tarries longest where the inn is most hospitable, yet with that suavity, that distinctive politeness and that saving grace of humor peculiar to the American man. He has his own code of morals—very exalted ones—but honors them in ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... gentleman the answer his insolence deserved; or that you did better, and referred him to me. I should be glad to give him my opinion of his conduct—a person admitted to this house as your brother's hanger-on—tolerated only on your brother's account; such a person, nameless, penniless, friendless (except for Maulevrier's too facile patronage), to dare to lift his eyes to my granddaughter! ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... did not choose to play that part. It would not suit him to drink Sir Hugh's claret, and be bidden to ring the bell, and to be asked to step into the stable for this or that. He was a fellow of his college, and quite as big a man, he thought, as Sir Hugh. He would not be a hanger-on at the park, and, to tell the truth, he disliked his cousin quite as much as his father did. But there had even been a sort of friendship—nay, occasionally almost a confidence, between him and Lady Clavering, and he believed that by her he was ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... was anxious to appear as the intimate friend of the great writers of England; but what reason is there to believe that he was not embroidering upon the facts, and that his true position was not that of a mere literary hanger-on, eager simply for money and reclame, with, perhaps, no particular scruples as to his means of getting hold of those desirable ends? The objection to this theory is that there is even less evidence to support ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... meeting references to him. He rose during the reign of the last Han,—the Chien-An period, as it is called, from 196 to 221,—by superiority of energies and cunning, from a wild irregular youth spent as hanger-on of no particular position at the court,—the son of a man that had been adopted by a chief eunuch,—to be prime minister, commander of vast armies (he had at one time, says Dr. H. A. Giles, as many as a million men under arms), father of the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... so illiterate as to be barely able to write his name. During the Revolutionary War he had been a spy and "horse-provider" to the loyalist troops. More recently he had been chiefly known as one of the most bigoted and unprincipled of the Compact's minor satellites; a hanger-on who was ever ready to undertake any disreputable work which the Executive might have for him to do. He was a smooth-tongued hypocrite, who made extravagant professions of zeal for religion when ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... fired by the "Last Day" and by a creation of peers, who fluctuates between rhapsodic applause of King George and rhapsodic applause of Jehovah. After spending "a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets," after being a hanger-on of the profligate Duke of Wharton, after aiming in vain at a parliamentary career, and angling for pensions and preferment with fulsome dedications and fustian odes, he is a little disgusted with his imperfect success, and has determined ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... much wealth, he would remain a mark for future exactions; and if he made no display, his rivals in consequence would treat him with contempt. He had not deigned to consult me for along time, and I had dwindled into a mere hanger-on; but recollecting the success which had attended my negotiation with the European doctor, he called me again into ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... whole of the way along never once desisted from trying to persuade us that we must pay what he had asked, and perhaps a little more. There was another fellow seated by him on the box, evidently a "hanger-on" and friend of his, who had come with the hopes that we should believe he had carried our luggage to the carriage, and was therefore entitled to something. These Neapolitan beggars are as importunate and persistent as a swarm of gnats, and it is almost impossible to get rid ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... indebted to the previous care of Marston's present editor. Far be it from me to intrude on the barren and boggy province of hypothetical interpretation and controversial commentary; but I may observe in passing that the original of Simplicius Faber in "What you Will" must surely have been the same hanger-on or sycophant of Ben Jonson's who was caricatured by Dekker in his "Satiromastix" under the name of Asinius Bubo. The gross assurance of self-complacent duncery, the apish arrogance and imitative dogmatism of reflected ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... you?" he asks. "You are not scientific. You are merely a dreaming, fooling hanger-on to the fields and woods; one of those who are forever hearing more than they hear, and seeing more than they see. We scientists hear with our ears, see with our eyes, feel with our fingers, and understand ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... was Andrew Larkspur, late Bow Street runner, now hanger-on of the new detective police. He was renowned for his skill in the prosecution of secret service; and it was rumoured that he had amassed a considerable fortune by ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... like many another English gentleman who has travelled, with a character by no means improved by his foreign experience. He had dissipated his small paternal inheritance of a younger brother's portion, and, as truth must be told, was no better than a hanger-on of ordinaries, and a brawler about Alsatia and the Friars, when he bethought him of a ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... would have been simple, if it had been another person than Robbie; Montague would have concluded that his brother was a "hanger-on." There were many great families whose establishments were infested with such parasites. Siegfried Harvey, for instance, was a man who had always half a dozen young chaps hanging about him; good-looking and lively fellows, ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... not merely like his fellow minnesingers, in the way of reading and writing, but in the sense of complete absence of all habit of literary form; extremely noble and pure of mind, chaste, gentle, with a funny, puzzled sense of humour, reminding one distantly of Jean Paul in his drowsy moments; a hanger-on of courts, but perfectly simple-hearted and childlike; very poor and easily pleased: such is, for good and for bad, Herr Wolfram von Eschenbach, the only real personality in his poem. And he narrates, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... make sleeping visits, to recompense the trouble you must unavoidably give to servants. And if you join any party to any public place, make a point to pay for yourself. It will be far better to go seldom, and with that gentlemanly spirit, than often, with the air of a hanger-on. How infinitely hospitable has been your uncle James! But hospitality is his characteristic. We had only insisted upon your regularity at chapel and at lectures, and we hear of your attention to them comparatively, and we are fixed to be contented ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... junior partners and dependants, they employing his capital. Mr. Fox was merely a clerk in this establishment, and not in very high standing either. He was also another unwholesome product of metropolitan life. As office boy among the lawyers, as a hanger-on of the criminal courts, he had scrambled into a certain kind of legal knowledge and had gained a small pettifogging practice when an opening in Mr. Allen's business led to his present connection. Mr. Allen felt that in his varied and extended ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... he became Pollyooly's perpetual companion, or, to be exact, her perpetual hanger-on. He could not be said to afford companionship to her, for, like the Lump, he preferred the grunt to articulate speech. He played in all the games in which she played—at least, if they were not too difficult for his understanding. If they were, he watched her play them with ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... that hung over his lip, and I guessed, what I afterwards found to be the truth, that his stepfather was no small trial to him; being, in fact, an unprosperous tutor and hanger-on on some nobleman's family, finally sent out by his patrons in despair, ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bought, Who neither get nor lose a groat; For none, alas! by me can gain, But those who give me greatest pain. Shall man presume to be my master, Who's but my caterer and taster? Yet, though I always have my will, I'm but a mere depender still: An humble hanger-on at best; Of whom all people make a jest. In me detractors seek to find Two vices of a different kind; I'm too profuse, some censurers cry, And all I get, I let it fly; While others give me many a curse, Because too close I hold my purse. But this ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... softly with amazement each time. For on April 28th, and again on May 5th, Nita Selim had deposited $5,000! Where had she got the money? Were the sums transfers from accounts in New York banks? But it was hardly likely that a little Broadway hanger-on had had so much hard cash on deposit. Then where had she got it—$5,000 at a time, here ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... have bound myself to marry him; but I do love him, and thank him with all my heart for having given a definite end and aim to my life. Don't think I underrate your kindness, darling; I know that I should never want a home while you could give me one. But 'tis hard to be a hanger-on in any household; and Valentine will exact all his sweet ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... hundred dollars cleared in a year is opulence—that holds them to the wild, free, perilous life. It is the call of the sea in their blood. Of such men are victorious navies made, and if Canada is to be anything more than the hanger-on to the tail of the kite of the British Empire, she, too, must have her navy, her men of the sea, born and cradled and crooned and nursed by the sea. That is Newfoundland's first importance ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... think of the difference between plus and minus in money matters." "People like you, there's no use trying to help," said another, worn-out, when Maimon pleaded for only a few coppers. Yet he never acquired the beggar's servility, nay, was often himself the patron of some poorer hanger-on, for whom he would sacrifice his last glass of beer. Curt in his manners, he refused to lift his hat or embrace his acquaintances in cold blood. Nor would he wear a wig. Pure Reason alone ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... before the hanger-on of the turf. A bookmaker roars "10 to 1 Bendemeer;" he suddenly fishes out a sovereign of his own—and he hasn't money to spare, for all his knowingness—and puts it on Bendemeer. His friends' money he puts on the favourite and Royal ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... 'You have got hold of a man of character, St. Ives! A bite-hard, a bull-dog, a weasel is on your trail; and how are you to throw him off?' Who was he? By some of his expressions I judged he was a hanger-on of courts. But in what character had he followed the assizes? As a simple spectator, as a lawyer's clerk, as a criminal himself, or—last and worst supposition—as a Bow- ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cried. "You will become a dependent in this house, a hanger-on, a sponger. I will hate you. You will hate yourself. It went through me like a knife ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... that mere empty delusions receive a shape from our fears. For my part, I am led to believe in their existence, especially by what I hear happened to Curtius Rufus. While still in humble circumstances and obscure, he was a hanger-on in the suite of the Governor of Africa. While pacing the colonnade one afternoon, there appeared to him a female form of superhuman size and beauty. She informed the terrified man that she was "Africa," and had come to foretell future events; for that he would go to Rome, would fill offices of state ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... without special hardship. Then suddenly the rusted name-plate on Hannibal's old rifle danced again before his burning eyes, and a bitter sense of hurt and loss struck through him. He saw himself as he was, a shabby outcast, a tavern hanger-on, the utter travesty of all he should have been; he dropped his ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... certainty can be learned of his career during this period. That he sold "base-ball" cards (a unique kind of playing-cards) at the Providence railroad station is stated on credible authority; that he "worked the trains" between New York and Providence; that he sold books; that he was a hanger-on at race-tracks, has been alleged. Any or all of these rumors may be true—or false—for whatever may be said of Lawson, his career has undoubtedly been one of marvellous activity in ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... "A society hanger-on, grafting dinners and week-end parties because he's good-looking and there with the family tree, but not rich enough to marry? Thode's too much of a man for that, and I fancy he prefers to lead a man's life. I'm getting ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... tide. He sat quite still and tried to think calmly, tried to piece together in his mind the sequence of events which had brought him to this part of the world and which had led to his remaining where he was, an undesired hanger-on at the threshold of Miles Fentolin. He had the feeling that to-night he had burned his boats. There was no longer any pretence of friendliness possible between him and this strange creature. Mr. Fentolin suspected him, realised that he himself was suspected. But of what? ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to believe in the refinement of a girl who permits her fresh young lips to utter the slang of the bar-room hanger-on, the gambler and ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... flame, Bessy Randolph, my dear," he observed; "she was a great belle and beauty and half the men in Virginia proposed to her, they used to say, before she married Ned Peyton. 'No, I can't accept you for a husband,' the minx would reply, 'but I think you will do very well indeed as a hanger-on.' It looks as if you'd got George ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... as much service as she could get from her inferiors; and good-naturedly to take leave of them when she no longer found them useful. Gratitude among certain rich folks is scarcely natural or to be thought of. They take needy people's services as their due. Nor have you, O poor parasite and humble hanger-on, much reason to complain! Your friendship for Dives is about as sincere as the return which it usually gets. It is money you love, and not the man; and were Croesus and his footman to change places ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... writer, began life as a page to the Earl of Surrey, and subsequently passed through many vicissitudes as a soldier in Scotland, Ireland, France, and the Low Countries. He was latterly a hanger-on at Court, and had a pension of eighteenpence a day from Queen Elizabeth, which was not, however, regularly paid. He wrote innumerable pamphlets and broadsides, and some poems, of which the best are Shore's Wife (1563), The Worthiness ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... are too young to understand these things; and I hope that when you grow up, you will not do to poor forlorn girls as I was done by. A dicing soldier fellow that was a hanger-on at my Lord Duke's house, and was called Captain, ran away with me. Of course I was at once discarded from the Great House as a good-for-nothing Light o' love, and was told that if ever I presumed to show my face on the Quay-side again I should be sent to the Spinning House, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... man as Shandon," Pen said, musing, and talking that night over the sight which he had witnessed, "of accomplishments so multifarious, and of such an undoubted talent and humour, an inmate of a gaol for half his time, and a bookseller's hanger-on ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... crackled when outward motives failed, or when opposition fanned the inner glow. With the elements of a despot but half tamed, and like many another tyrant, unchallenged master of his surroundings, Staneholme wielded his authority with fair result. Tenant and servant, hanger-on and sprig of the central tree, bore regard as well as fear for the young laird—all save Staneholme's whilom love ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... have gained a greater victory than the North dreams of. By forming a permanently military nation, they go a step further, and relieve their communities from the weight of a non-productive, idle, dangerous class of poor whites. When every 'bush-whacker,' 'sand-hiller,' 'Arab,' and other hanger-on shall have become a soldier, with his settled place in society, a few new troubles may be incurred, but much greater ones can not fail to be avoided. The leaders in a military government may preserve that unity ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... dozen miners who came in at the opportune moment. A few days afterward in the slack time of the afternoon Thompson, while drinking at the bar of the Empire and conversing with a friend, was approached by a well-known sodden hanger-on of the saloons. ...
— Gold • Stewart White |
