"Loafing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into its depths of suggestion as one looks into a clear but very deep lake; one can see far down, but not to the bottom of it, which remains mysterious. He invites his own soul, but there is no loafing. Indeed his mind seems preternaturally active, as in a combination ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... mass interests that are so abundant in nature, the activities that give the country boy such an advantage for the real enjoyment of life over the city lad. Two weeks or two months in camp, they are too valuable to be wasted in loafing, cigarette smoking, card playing or shooting craps. To make a camp a profitable thing there must needs be instruction; not formal but informal instruction. Scouting, nature study, scout law, camp cooking, ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... old; and what could I do? What I should have liked would have been some nice place where I could do light work, and stand a chance of learning a good business. But beggars mustn't be choosers. I couldn't find such a place; and I wasn't going to be loafing about the streets, so I went to selling newspapers. I've sold newspapers ever since, and I shall be twelve ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... main-rigging. They gave me a meaning look, which I did not at all relish. Then, as I stood in the galley, while the cook dished up, I noticed that the stranger raised his hand to a tall, lanky, ill-favoured man who was loafing about on the wharf, carrying a large black package. This man came right up to the edge of the wharf, directly he saw the stranger's signal. It made me uneasy somehow. I was in a thoroughly anxious mood, longing to confide in some one, even in the crusty cook, ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... the victoria step from loafing in front of a jeweller's window, and stiffened into a statue of himself. ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... not to be occupied in reading books, papers, letter writing, needlework, etc. Loafing or wasting time away ...
— How Department Stores Are Carried On • W. B. Phillips
... and started across to see Akeley. The latter had also started across to see the colonel, and they met on the way. And during all this time the native runner with the message to Colonel Roosevelt was loafing the morning away in our camp. What the message might be, of course, we didn't know, but we hoped that it was nothing of importance. It was only when the colonel and his party reached our camp that ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... two returned to camp. The rivermen were loafing in camp awaiting Larsen's reappearance. The jam was as before. Larsen walked out on the logs. The boy, seated on the clump of piles, gave a shrill whistle. Immediately from the little mill appeared the brown-bearded man and his two companions. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... lot might have been thrown. With others of his associates, whatever he thought of them and their ways, he was friendly and tolerant, if not sociable; it was in connection with these that the gossip circulated of his "loafing about with hard drinkers." Dr. Loring describes them to the life as "a group of men all of whom had remarkable characteristics, not of the best many times, but original, strong, highly-flavored, defiant democrats, with whom he was officially connected, who made ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... to dinner. Julio would have his a little later, not because we're too good to eat with the help but because, around 1830, the help is too busy setting up the next paper to eat with us. The dining room, which is also the library, living room, and general congregating and loafing place, is as big as the editorial room above. Originally, it was an office, at a time when a lot of Fenris Company office work was being done here. Some of the furniture is original, and some was made for us by local cabinetmakers out of native ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... pleasantly; so that they got on very well together, and everybody was satisfied—especially Jim, who was benefiting by Aunt Victoria's bequest to the extent of being able to keep up with the best of his bar-loafing acquaintances. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... more to do with the house and domestic affairs; he turns the care for them over to his wife, who is obliged to procure provisions as well as she can and cook them. The husband devotes himself to drinking, eating, smoking, loafing, and sleeping, and takes no more concern about the affairs of his family than if he had none at all. If he goes out to fish or hunt, it is rather to amuse himself than to help his wife and children.... Even the care of his ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... event, when he had forgotten all about it, he was loafing in his room one morning after breakfast, smoking an eccentric pipe from his collection, and comforting himself over his decision once more that German teachers and grammars ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... leaping. Whatever the purposes of these people he was again upon the right trail. The uplifted curtain was immediately lowered, and, if any signal had thus been conveyed, there was no other evidence visible. A little later one of the two better dressed fellows loafing on the pier, a rather heavily built man, with closely clipped red moustache, and a scar over one eye, slowly crossed the deck, and entered the cabin. He came forth again a moment later, asked some question of the workmen below and then clambered back carelessly over the rail, joining his companion ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... streets and the crowd. O, my darling, thank God I have found you! I only knew yesterday that you had left Paris; and some happy instinct brought me here. I felt sure you would come to Austin. I arrived late last night, and was loafing about the streets this morning, wondering how I should discover your whereabouts, when I turned a corner and saw you going into St. Gudule. I followed, but would not disturb your orisons, fair saint. I was not very far off, Clarissa—only ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... 1914.—Our place has got to be the local diplomatic corner grocery, where all the village loafers come to do their heavy loafing. They bring in all the fantastic rumours that are abroad in the land, and discuss them with all solemnity. In the last day or so we have had it "on the best authority" that the Queen of Holland has had her consort ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... and dress parades, five or six hours a day were consumed in company, regimental and brigade drills. The men were worked hard, and, by this time it was generally understood that learning to be a soldier was no loafing business. ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... later in the evening that the woman came along to give chin-music through the window. I am bound to say," added the captain generously, "that no one I can place my hand on saw his lorship loafing about the hotel after dark. But what of that? He may have laid his plans, and arranged for the corpse to be found later, in that blamed ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... loafing around; but he was not idle. His activities brought nothing palpable to light, still he was building up the inner life in a manner of which Stoffel had ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... absence of more general excitement and crops and agricultural methods filled in the pauses. In recent years the store circle has degenerated. The better class of habitual members has organized its lodges or found satisfaction in the grange, while the hangers-on at the store, barber-shop, or other loafing-place indulge in small talk on matters ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... credulous multitudes with responses from Delphi, we have a Congress which can enact tariff regulations susceptible of interpretations enough to satisfy the love of mystery of the entire nation. Instead of loafing round Memnon at sunrise to catch some supernatural tones, we talk words into a little contrivance which will repeat our words and tones to the remotest generation of those who shall be curious to know whether we said those words in jest or earnest. All these mysteries made common and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... else to do. They fought their way to the rambling boarding house, there to join the loafing group in what passed for a lobby and to watch with them the lingering death of day in a shroud of white. Night brought no cessation of the wind, no lessening of the banks of snow which now were drifting high against the first-story windows; the door was only kept in working order ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... his arrival down-town he telegraphed the joyous news to Jack Starlett, in Washington, to prepare for an old-fashioned loafing bee. ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... if uttered in Philadelphia, would undoubtedly have been answered by a direction to the chocolate factory on Race Street. But in Camden every one knows about Walt. Still, the colored men said nothing beyond returning my greeting. Their race, wise in simplicity, knows that loafing needs no explanation ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... and the capitan stopped to say a few words to two of his vagabonds. One of these immediately hurried off in the direction of the river. The other was still loafing outside the cafe ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... nor aught cared I; Such things are not in my way: I turn'd me to the tinker, who Was loafing down ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... we came to the Prison of Mazas, which in ordinary times would have been strongly guarded; but now, save for a few National Guards loafing about, it was deserted—the criminals all being liberated and set plundering and fighting—the hostages ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... the frost was hard and the days short, we were absolutely idle—idle to the point of blushing with shame when the thought struck us that all the time our salaries went on. Young Cole was aggrieved because, as he said, we could not enjoy any sort of fun in the evening after loafing like this all day; even the banjo lost its charm since there was nothing to prevent his strumming on it all the time between the meals. The good Paramor—he was really a most excellent fellow—became unhappy as far as was possible to his cheery nature, till one dreary day I suggested, ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... to telling anybody else in this town that that poor convict ought to be drinking and will have to do it again; because it might get to his ears, you know, and if it did it might break him down, and then he'd go to lying and stealing and loafing and fighting again, and there is no knowing whose chicken-coops and wood-piles would have to suffer. Yours might be one of the first ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... not idle words. He is an admitted expert at loafing, but all the same he has brought wounded in under fire and saved their lives. Without any ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... is the dominie of a high-priced school, that they get most of the losses and few of the profits of industry. They get a living wage when times are good. When times are bad they lose the one thing they've got to sell, and that's their day's work; when a loafing day is gone there's nothing to show for it, and no way to make it up. Maybe that's as it should be, but the worker can't see it, especially if the boss can still buy gasoline and tires when the plant is idle. Oh, yes, laddie, I know the working man is headstrong. I'll tell you privately, ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... gleam of the sidelights of a carriage came round the curve of the avenue. It was a smart little landau which rattled up to the door of Briony Lodge. As it pulled up one of the loafing men at the corner dashed forward to open the door in the hope of earning a copper, but was elbowed away by another loafer who had rushed up with the same intention. A fierce quarrel broke out which was increased by ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... had seen good in The Rat, but no one else had. Policemen had moved him on whenever they set eyes on him, the wretched women of the slums had regarded him as they regarded his darting, thieving namesake; loafing or busy men had seen in him a young nuisance to be kicked or pushed out of the way. The Squad had not called "good" what they saw in him. They would have yelled with laughter if they had heard any one else call it so. "Goodness" ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... idleness has come to an end and loafing has been trampled out, then many a one, who now thinks that mental work is mere chattering, will learn through his novitiate at the desk, that thinking hurts. If he does not feel himself equal to this kneading and rummaging of the brain, he will ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... about arriving home very late in the afternoon is the excuse it gives you for loafing in your own room while other people are getting supper. No existent domestic sound in the whole twenty-four hours is as soothing at the end of a long journey as the sound ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... enjoyed some days of careless loafing about Canea. I have intimated my slight experience of Turkish towns; and if the critic should think it worth while to remark that I should have seen Constantinople and Cairo, Smyrna and Salonica, before attempting to describe one, I admit the justice of the criticism, and pass over ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... for a time when there was no work and no money for a man, a time of stagnation and dreary hungry loafing day after day. Such interludes seemed in those days a necessary consequence of ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... start something! I'd like to get away somewhere and do things. I'm tired of loafing around in white flannels all day and keeping my hands clean. And I'm tired of dabbing whitewash on my shoes! Didn't you fellows ever think that you'd like to get good and dirty and not have to care? Wouldn't you like to put on an old flannel shirt ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... spectacular. But Dexter Allison's garments had always retained their insistent note. Hunter himself had sold Allison the ground upon which the stucco house stood; he had heartily agreed that it was an ideal spot for a loafing place—and the fishing was good, too! Now whenever Caleb thought of those first conferences which had preceded the sale, and recalled Allison's accentuation of the natural beauties of the spot, ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... sub," said another. "I used to poke around the Great Barrier Reef, skindiving out the air lock or loafing on the surface. You wouldn't believe how blue the waves could be. They tell me on Rustum you can't come down ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson
... On the Gym. steps, loafing a few moments before jogging out to Bannister Field for a strenuous scrimmage under the personal supervision of Slave-Driver Corridan, the Gold and Green football squad had gathered. It was from these stalwart gridiron gladiators that the caustic criticism of T. Haviland ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... "a Friday, an unlucky day,—a week, about, before 'The Conquest' sailed. It might have been two o'clock. I had eaten nothing; I had not a cent in my pockets and I was walking along the boulevards, loafing, and thinking how I could ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... stay the winter in it. But before the cold weather comes on they are going to send up a darky to look after me. I only hope I won't have to wait on him,—awful lazy nigger! He used to be a porter of ours. Loafing around these woods with a gun on his shoulder, pretending to hunt, will be just about his size. He's out of a job now, and comes cheap. I couldn't afford to pay him wages all the time, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... with which he takes to his games when in the lower school, is a fair test of the spirit with which he will take to his work when he rises into the higher school; and that nothing is worse for a boy than to fall into that loafing, tuck-shop- haunting set, who neither play hard nor work hard, and are usually extravagant, and often vicious. Moreover, they know well that games conduce, not merely to physical, but to moral health; that in the playing-field boys acquire virtues which no books can give them; not merely daring ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... better conditions. I'm tired loafing such long hours. I'd like a little leisure in ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... are taken on the frontier, by the loafing population from the States, to persuade the young soldiers to desert; and that, too, without any adequate prospect of benefit, but merely out of hatred, intense hatred, to England; for they soon leave the ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... sea, you old money-grabber. There's a sight for your soul. Did you ever think of the beauty of it? Such a day!—no wonder you're loafing. Oh! I beg your pardon, Madam. I ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... loafing here for?" he burst forth, no doubt glad to thus vent his anger on someone. "Who the ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... selfish. You guess I haven't acted as I ought to help push our boat along. You reckon I've become a sort of saloon-loafing bum. Guess you sort of think I'm just about the limit. Well, maybe I'm nothing to shriek about. However, I've told you all I feel. I've told you what you're going to feel—later. Meanwhile it's up to me to help you all I know. Tell me the whole thing, ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... myself," the latter explained. "But I'm loafing this summer. I'm in town only because there's talk that St. Mark's ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... far out of sight of land in the morning and loafing south before the trade wind, with a heavy ground swell kicking them along from behind. Harrigan saw the Mary Rogers plainly for the first time. She was small, not more than fifteen hundred or two thousand tons, and the dingiest, sootiest of all tramp freighters. He had little ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... Apex!—could, even for a moment, cause consternation in the Driscoll camp? He had always said he "saw things big"; but no one had ever believed he was destined to carry them out on the same scale. Yet apparently in those idle Apex days, while he seemed to be "loafing and fooling," as her father called it, he had really been sharpening his weapons of aggression; there had been something, after all, in the effect of loose-drifting power she had always felt in him. Her heart beat faster, ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the people was to clear the forests and bring the soil under cultivation. Greenfield was, therefore, in part an agricultural town and in part a lumber town. Like most small towns, it was slow-moving and uninteresting. The scenes most frequented were the loafing places. ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... emptiness. It would prepare me far better for to-morrow work than pondering Johnny's defections, or his grades, whether high or low, or marking silly papers with marks that are still sillier. I like Walt Whitman because he was such a sublime loafer. His loafing gave him time to grow big inside, and so, he had big elemental thoughts that were good for him and good for me when I think them ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... the lieutenant, "what sort of way is this to use me? Here I've been loafing about here for hours, and you haven't sent or brought me word ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... it's all smooth enough for him," said Collin, grinding his heel. "I was bad enough, but I didn't do anything sneaking mean, the way he did. But he isn't going to suffer for it; not a bit. His father's got money, and Dolph can go on loafing around town and getting other fellows into trouble. He'll never ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... a girl than into a tough from loafing on the streets, Pat," said the General heartily, as he rose from his chair. "I'll tell Mrs. Brady ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... worked hard enough. At least he turned out a good deal. But that was spasmodic—night and day for weeks, and then loafing for weeks more. That's how he always got into trouble: loafing ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley
... removed the ban against recruiting. The morning of the fifth day our two boats went ashore as usual—one to cover the other, you know, in case of trouble. And, as usual, the fifty niggers on board were on deck, loafing, talking, smoking, and sleeping. Saxtorph and myself, along with four other sailors, were all that were left on board. The two boats were manned with Gilbert Islanders. In the one were the captain, the supercargo, and the recruiter. ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... such habits as drinking and loafing around saloons and clubs and abusing the family have been checked on account of the gardener's time and attention being occupied ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... Charles Rogers, charged with loafing, sleeping in the park, and leaving the gate open, were discharged, with a caution to take care how they interfered with corporation rights in future, or they would get their ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... was a laceration of the nerves... Defiance of common sense was too tempting. Stavrogin and a wretched, half-witted, crippled beggar! When you bit the governor's ear did you feel sensual pleasure? Did you? You idle, loafing, little snob. Did you?" ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... been loafing on your job, old man, and it won't do—it won't do at all. You should have put a stop to these things. What right have these girls to interfere in a ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... Spanish bull-dog, Bouncer, loafing outside the hotel door at Inchnadampf. He greeted Merton in a state of suppressed glee; the whole adventure was much to the taste of the scion of Rostalrig. Merton handed him Mr. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... many such centres of contemplation along the West Coast of Scotland. Few places are better loafing-ground than a pier, with its tranquil "lucid interval'' between steamers, the ever recurrent throb of paddle-wheel, the rush and foam of beaten water among the piles, splash of ropes and rumble of gangways, and all ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... life as are available are being utilized to the utmost by the Soviet Government. Such trains as there are, run on time. The distribution of food is well controlled. Many industrial experts of the old regime are again managing their plants and sabotage by such managers has ceased. Loafing by the workmen during work hours has been overcome. ...
— The Bullitt Mission to Russia • William C. Bullitt
... generally held by Indians. They say the bank beaver is lazy and refuses to work with the others; so they drive him out. When beavers are busy they are very busy, and tolerate no loafing. Perhaps he even tries to persuade them that all their work is unnecessary, and so shares the fate ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... of the market house, There was an engine company and a hook-and-ladder company. Half of each was composed of rummies and the other half of anti-rummies, after the moral and political share-and-share-alike fashion of the frontier town of the period. Enough anti-rummies were loafing in quarters to man the engine and the ladders. In two minutes they had their red shirts and helmets on—they never stirred officially in unofficial costume—and as the mass meeting overhead smashed through the long row ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... as Bog Hollow) because he thought it a literary thing to do. He used to take a book along with him when he drove over to Redfield for supplies; sometimes the wagon would be two hours late coming home, with old Ben loafing along between the shafts and Andrew lost in ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... broad, pleasant window of the post-office, under the "NO LOAFING HERE!" sign, half a dozen of us discussed it while we waited for the noon mail. There seemed to be a half-formed belief that Potts might adroitly be made to perceive advantages ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... One day we were loafing along, everything drawing well, and everybody but the doctor on deck to enjoy the sun. I was in the crow's-nest for my pleasure. Below me on the deck Captain Selover roamed here and there, as was his custom, his eye cocked out like a housewife's for disorder. He found ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... time we were here? You lectured me for loafing, and shooting woodpeckers. There were other things, but you couldn't recall them at the moment. I've been doing some right stiff thinking ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... and turned away, looking forward to where two or three men were loafing about on the forecastle, ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... for their entertainment. Presently he came out in a loose blouse and slippers, a short pipe in his mouth, and an old newspaper in his hand, and threw himself on the heathery scrub which met the shingle, within easy hail of the fishermen. There he lay, the picture of free-and-easy, loafing, hand-to-mouth young England, "improving his mind," as he shouted to them, by the perusal of the fortnight-old weekly paper, soiled with the marks of toddy-glasses and tobacco-ashes, the legacy of the last traveller, which he had hunted out ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... judgment, that he ordered his carriage and drove off there and then to his bank, while I went down to the harbour, arranged about a boat, and having done so, proceeded up to the town, where I purchased a false beard, an old dungaree suit, such as a man loafing about the harbour might wear, and a slouch hat of villainous appearance. By the time I got back to the house Mr. Wetherell had returned. With great delight he conducted me to his study, and, opening his safe, ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... called out Peter Polk, striding up as Randy was going to the lower deck. "What are you loafing ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... came home to the paternal mansion an ignorant but amiable and inoffensive young man, with a small, fluffy moustache, and no particular bent in life beyond smoking short pipes, and loafing about the premises with his ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... century. Every man to the age he lives in—it must be so. The old phrase, "Drunk as a sailor," meant, in most men's minds, drunk as a man-o'-war's man. I was born and brought up in a great seaport—Boston—and my earliest memories are of loafing days along the harbor front and the husky-voiced, roaring fellows coming ashore in the pulling boats from the men-o'-war; fine, rolling-gaited fellows, in from long cruises and flamingly eager to make the most of their short ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... a large Tartar population in Chengtu, and the Manchu quarter is one of the most picturesque parts of the city, with the charm of a dilapidated village set in untidy gardens and groves of fine trees. Loafing in the streets and doorways are tall, well-built men and women, but they had a rather down-at-heel air, for their fortunes were at a low ebb when I was in Chengtu. The military service they once rendered had been displaced by the new ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... Phin Drayne, loafing about town, and with his pocket money nearly cut off by his father, had formed the acquaintance of Stevens, who, besides being a junkman, was a very fair locksmith, though about the latter trade ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... schools are doing a great work for the elevation of the colored people. In a silent, unobtrusive way, these schools are leavening the thought and life of the race. The status and progress of the Negro are too commonly gauged by the deeds of the loafing and criminal element. The honest, law-abiding Negro who has a home, is getting a little property, has a small bank account, and is educating his children to useful citizenship, attracts little or no attention. But a race that has in a generation since chattel slavery gotten property worth ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... for himself, and at Mrs. Jones's he found his wife's brother-in-law seated in the bar of the public-house,—that everlasting resort for American loungers,—with a cigar as usual stuck in his mouth, loafing away his time as only American frequenters of such establishments know how to do. In England such a man would probably be found in such a place with a glass of some alcoholic mixture beside him, but such is never the ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... ultimately got such an excellent place in the next world. They don't care much about Lazarus in this, because their souls have not such a natural affinity with his when he is hanging about anyone's doorstep, or loafing round street-corners with oranges to sell or a barrel-organ. Sometimes they give him the crumbs that fall from their tables, and sometimes they don't, because they are afraid he will take advantage of it to steal ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... as yours, Harry, my boy," he said; "and I don't believe that there's a heartier man within fifty miles. No, my lad, I'm not jaundiced. There's no real prosperity here. The people are a lazy, loafing set, and never happy but when they are in hot water. There's the old, proud hidalgo blood mixed up in their veins; they are too grand to work—too lazy to wash themselves. There isn't a decent fellow in the neighbourhood, except one, and his name is ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... new order of things in football as childish amusement, and unworthy of free-born Britons. "Give us," they said, "the exciting runs, the glorious tackling, the manly maul, and the beautiful dropped goal, and we will meet you a bit of the way, but not otherwise. We don't believe in loafing about the field at times, when only one or two of the side are engaged; we want to be active." "Well," said the Conquerors (one of whom had been offered a place in the Twenty in the Rugby match between ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... to do with yourself or make of yourself?" she asked Tyrrel one evening when they were sitting together. "I do hope you'll find some kind of work. Anything is better than loafing about clubs and ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... never do," said Jack, finally; "we have too much on hand this morning to be loafing here. First we'll get the dishes out of the way, and then arrange programme for the work. By noon I expect to ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... I lingered not, and spoke no more, but walked away into the woods and the darkness. However, the legend went forth on the roads, even unto Kingston, and was told among the rollicking Romanys of 'Appy Ampton; for there are always a merry, loafing lot of them about that festive spot, looking out for excursionists through the months when the gorse blooms, and kissing is in season—which is always. And he who seeks them on Sunday may find ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... rode out with Pasquale to review the troops. It was an entirely informal proceeding. The youthful army was happily engaged in loafing and in play. A bugle blew. There was an instant scurry for horses. They swung into line, stood at attention, and at a second blast charged yelling across the plain, serapes ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... done, we started for Taos, for it was now almost time to start out for the winter's trapping. On our arrival at Taos we found Johnnie West, who had been loafing around for two months, and who was anxious to get at work again. Uncle Kit hired him to go with us to South Park to trap the coming winter, that being the place he had decided upon for the ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... had lain heavily upon Nicky-Nan's conscience: but with time he had forgotten it. Since the new order came into force, he had fulfilled his obligations regularly enough—until the year before last, by which time his leg really disabled him. It had fortuned, however, that one afternoon on the Quay, loafing around less on the chance of a job (for odd jobs are scarce at Polpier) than to wile away time, he had encountered Dr Mant, the easy-going practitioner from St Martin's. Dr Mant fancying an excursion ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... thridded another sound—the whine of a loafing tramp slowly pleading along the house ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... loafing around here for," says the grocery man to the bad boy one day this week. "It is after nine o'clock, and I should think you would want to be down to the drug store. How do you know but there may be somebody dying ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... gin-palace, with shops on either side, hung to the roof with carpets, or brooms, or umbrellas, plastered with advertisements, and blazing with gas. While in the street between streamed the ever-moving crowd of East London folk, jostling, chattering, loafing, doing their business or their pleasure, and made perpetually interesting, partly by their frank preoccupation with the simplest realities of life: with eating, drinking, earning, marrying, child-rearing; still more, perhaps, by the constant ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was a favourite "loafing place" for the New Salem boys and young men. Among these, were some of the roughest fellows in the settlement. They were known as the "Clary Grove Boys," and they were always ready for a fight, in which they would, sometimes, prove themselves to be bullies and tormentors. When, therefore, Offutt ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... chain-making district. Edge, the sights I saw there were not good for any man to see and remain quiet. Women work at the fires when pregnant, and fuddle themselves with beer at night; the men are a shiftless lot, who spend their lives hand-in-hand with poverty and think only of beer, "baccy," and loafing. You know I'm no prohibitionist, but I hate to see beer the goal of men's ambitions. In one school there was a class with forty "backward" children. That's the kinder word, Edge, but the real one is "imbecile." Think of it—forty human destinies that ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... their little property. That village, amid the waters, was a sad sight to see; but I heard no complaints. There was no tearing of hair and no gnashing of teeth; no bitter tears or moans of sorrow. The men who were not at work in the boats stood loafing about in clusters, looking at the still rising river, but each seemed to be personally indifferent to the matter. When the house of an American is carried down the river, he builds himself another, as he would get himself a new coat when his old coat became unserviceable. But ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... of Pulaski there was a large beer-garden, known as Dominick's headquarters. He received half the profits in return for making it his loafing-place, the seat of the source of all political honor, preferment and privilege in the third, sixth and seventh congressional districts. I found him enthroned at the end of a long table in the farthest corner of the garden. On one side of him sat James Spencer, ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... partially concealing the face. Men, women and children, all in bare feet, squat in the sand or sit hunched up against the sunny side of their houses. Beyond any other Orientals I have seen, these Egyptians have the capacity for unlimited loafing under circumstances that would drive an American insane in a few hours. Flies swarm over them; passing donkeys or camels powder them with dust; the fierce sun beats down on their heads; but all these things they accept philosophically as an inevitable part of life, as something decreed by fate ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... last year he and Miss Nell had made their first pilgrimage to Valley Mead. It was just such a day as this, warm and lazy, with big white clouds loafing off there in the west. He wondered if the peach trees were in bloom now, and whether the white violets were coming up along the creek-bank. How happy and contented Miss Nell always seemed in the country! She had never known before what the outdoor life was like. How he would ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... symbolic or realistic by turn. Some of her figures are creatures of the imagination, winged and iridescent, like the 'Spirit of Hope.' Again, she paints good, honest Dutchmen, loafing about the docks. Sometimes she has recourse to poetry and quotes Emerson for a title.... If technically she is not always convincing, it is apparent that the artist is doing some thinking for herself, and her endeavors ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... plowin' all my life and in the hot days I cuts and saws wood. Then when I gets outer cotton pickin' I put each boy on a load of wood an' we sell wood. Then we clear land till next spring. I don't find no time to be loafing. I never missed a year farming till I got the Brights disease an' it hurt me to do hard work. The last years we got $3 a cord. Farmin' is the best life there is when ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... enlarged his list of victims by killing, in a very justifiable encounter, a bad man from the Panhandle by the name of Grant, who had been loafing around in his country, and who, no doubt, intended to kill the Kid for the glory of it. The Kid had, a few moments before he shot Grant, taken the precaution to set the hammer of the latter's revolver on an "empty," as he whirled it over in examination. ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... tile which look like red clay drain pipes cut in two and so laid that they overlap each other. The residences are usually built around a narrow court, and their floors are of marble, tile or stone. This court often contains plants and flowers, and it forms the loafing place of the family in ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... a splendid kind of thrade, For thim that goes to London for't, and gets their tickets paid! I'm loafing on the road myself, an' sorra know I know What way I'll live the winter through, an' where on earth ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... the yacht, which Monkey had sailed up to the wharf at the head of the harbor, as he had been instructed to do. Bobtail sent word to his mother that he should be gone two or three days, and went on board. But his passengers did not appear, and he waited impatiently for them. Captain Chinks was loafing about the wharf, and Bobtail concluded that this was the reason they did not come. The captain was evidently curious to know who were to go in the Skylark. After waiting half an hour, a boy brought a ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... more amusing than a short sojourn at a popular summer hotel among the mountains or by the sea, with its constant round of drives, rides, tennis and golf matches, picnics, "germans," bathing, boating, and loafing, all permeated by flirtation of the most audacious and innocent description. The focus of the whole carnival is found in the "piazza" or veranda, and no prettier sight in its way can be imagined than ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... Wulf and Grendel, three fellows, tall as trees, were also loafing round. They were the three Kings: Top had turned his big jacket and blackened his face; Grendel wore a white sheet over his back and blew the horn; and Wulf had a mitre on and carried a great star with a lantern on a stick. So they dragged along the ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... have a tambourine which he must not jingle. But the shady charm of the garden compensated for the repression of noisy instincts. After months of tramping in the broiling sun, free and perfect as it was, the easy loafing life seemed sweet. We went little into the gay town itself. For my part I did not like it. Aix-les-Bains consisted of a vast Enchanted Garden set in a valley, great mountains hemming it round. Skirting the Enchanted ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... been raised on an English farm and from childhood he had learned the ways of work animals and how to make them comfortable. So, for the ease of their feet, the cattle shed and its attached, roofed loafing pen had earth floors. All soil removed from the silage pits, dusty sweepings from the threshing floors, and silt from the irrigation ditches were stored near the cattle shed and used to absorb urine from the work cattle. This soil was spread about six inches deep in the cattle stalls ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... rain had ceased, the day gave promise of being bright and warm, they had a small supply of biscuit and bacon left, and then, as Chouteau said, it was a comfort to have no orders to obey, to have their fill of loafing. They were prisoners, it was true, but there was plenty of room to move about. Moreover, they would be away from there in two or three days. Under these circumstances the day, which was Sunday, the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... narrative certainly requires explanation. Kalisch seems to think that Cain went about his work, after the interview with God, in a better frame of mind; but while he toiled hard "in the field" he became incensed at the sight of Abel loafing under a fine umbrageous tree and calmly watching his flock. Forgetting the divine admonitions, and listening only to the voice of passion, he madly killed his only brother, and made himself the first murderer. The Talmud gives ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... loafing out there in the brush and having a smoke. Said he was going to operate at once, then locked ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... him. All who go to Simla, know the slope from the Telegraph to the Public Works Office. Hannasyde was loafing up the hill, one September morning between calling hours, when a 'rickshaw came down in a hurry, and in the 'rickshaw sat the living, breathing image of the girl who had made ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... loaf; who do nothing to elevate, but everything to degrade, the race; who choose the sunny side of the street corners in winter and the shady side in summer; who use all kinds of vulgar and indecent language, insulting ladies as they pass. It is this loafing, nomadic young class that drifts to crime, caused by idleness, evil associations, and the fact that this class does not know the value of a dollar or the enormity of a crime. These young men are millstones welded by chains around the necks of those of us who are trying to ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... further a source of displeasure to Shyuote, who above all things disliked work. He had not come down to the fields to toil. What he sought for was a friendly chat with his father, a few hours of lounging and loafing near him. Disappointed and pouting, he bent over the work assigned, while the two men went on with their task as well as with ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... Downing vehemently. "I don't like it. I tell you I don't like it. It is not for me to interfere with one of my colleagues on the staff, but I tell you frankly that in my opinion it is an abominable waste of time for a boy. It gets him into idle, loafing habits." ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... down to Trout Creek Mill and told Dave Fellows. Dave got on the old grey mule and came up to town to find out further news. The townsfolk, loafing under the trees around Main Street and going about on little errands, shouted when they saw Dave come in on his mule beside Mottie on the bony horse. "Two of a kind," was passed round the circle of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... hour or two loafing about the schooner and swearing under his breath as he regarded the shore, where the crew was going ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... it, for his eyes fell upon a dozen villainous-looking fellows, several of whom he recognized as having seen loafing at the Overland stations, and who were considered ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... runs right along the edge of the water. It was an awful grand sight, but the waves didn't seem to have strength enough to move, only gave out a lazy sob once in a while, as if they were tired of carrying so many loafing ships about that hadn't spirit enough to ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... lesson of self-control, and developed a spirit of self-help. The parents have been enabled to control indirectly the associations of their boys, and, in a very mixed boy-community, to have them in a measure under observation without in the least restricting their freedom. The habit of loafing, and the evils that attend it, have been avoided, a strong practical and even industrial bent has been given to their development, and much social morality has been taught in the often complicated modus vivendi with others that has been evolved. Finally, this may perhaps ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... intelligent soldier, by treating him as a depraved child, as a rightless slave, as a mindless automaton, and by encouraging the public (whom he protects) to regard him as a low criminal ruffian to be classed with the broad-arrowed convict, and to be excluded from places where any loafing rotten lout may go.... When would a lawyer-ridden Army Council realize that there is a trifle of significance in the fact that there are four times as many soldier suicides as there are civilian, and that the finest advertisement for the dwindling Army is the soldier. To think ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... He learned to attend to its little wants with deft fingers, listening with a smile to the kindly banter of the women. His manner changed to Ada and her mother; he was considerate, even kind. Then he began to drop in on Monday or Tuesday instead of loafing with the Push at the corner. Ada was at the factory; but Mrs Yabsley, sorting piles of dirty linen, with her arms bared to the elbow, welcomed him with a smile. He remarked with satisfaction that a change had come over the ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... the sort here, let me tell you," snapped the unreasonable old man. "I can't afford to do business at cost just to please a lot of harum-scarum boys, who want to spend days loafing in the woods when they ought to be earning an honest penny ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... system of management to adopt and the method of applying it, and further their indifference as to the individual character, worth, and welfare of their men. On the part of the men the greatest obstacle to the attainment of this standard is the slow pace which they adopt, or the loafing or "soldiering,'" marking time, as ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor |
