"Tenderfoot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "It won't do to let the goose and gander slip through our fingers, Billy; their feathers are too valuable. Our crowd is prepared and able to step into the shoes of the government at once; but with the treasury empty we'd stay in power about as long as a tenderfoot would stick on an untamed bronco. We must play the fox on every foot of the coast to prevent their getting out ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... his two men seemed to be persons who ordinarily would be classed as honest. Still, they appeared to listen to Tooly's tales of prowess in the looting of emigrant trains as if they regarded such proceedings as acts of exceptional valor; exhibiting as much interest in the recital as did the "tenderfoot" emigrants—who held a different opinion regarding ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... roundin' up a tenderfoot who will be a bad man to handle if he has half a chance. I saw as much the day he took his horse away from Silver. He finally did fer the Shawnee, an' almost put Jim out. My brother oughtn't to give rein to personal revenge at a time like this." Girty's face did not change, ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... poor success. Bob White admitted that he had often been in the mountains with some of the men who worked on his father's place, and had spent lots of nights afoot in the Blue Ridge; so that he could not really be called a "tenderfoot scout." ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... You have enumerated objections to my course; here is their . "This is no , thou unfeeling man. To excuse the current of thy cruelty." There was silence throughout the chamber as the old statesman rose to make his . To the tenderfoot's remark the guide mumbled an indifferent . Our appeal for the sufferers elicited but a ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... work mir'cles sim'lar in the conduct of that maverick French which Enright an' the camp, to allay the burnin' excitement that's rendin' the outfit on account of the Laundry War, herds into her lovin' arms. Tenderfoot as he is, when we-all ups an' marries him off that time, this French already shows symptoms of becomin' one of the most abandoned sports in Arizona. Benson Annie seizes him, purifies him, an' makes him white ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... the disasters that in a camp must be viewed with anxiety, a fire ranks next to a sudden hurricane. Paul had spoken about these things so much that every fellow realized the seriousness of the case, even though he might be a tenderfoot, who had up to now never slept ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... his fur was drawn well forward over the face. He wore blue glasses, as a protection against snow-blindness apparently. Jessie smiled, judging him a tenderfoot; for except in March and April there is small danger of the sun glare which destroys sight. Yet he hardly looked like a newcomer to the North. For one thing he used the web shoes as an expert does. Before ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... alienism. foreign body, foreign substance, foreign element; alien, stranger, intruder, interloper, foreigner, novus homo [Lat.], newcomer, immigrant, emigrant; creole, Africander^; outsider; Dago [Slang], wop, mick, polak, greaser, slant, Easterner [U.S.], Dutchman, tenderfoot. Adj. extraneous, foreign, alien, ulterior; tramontane, ultramontane. excluded &c 55; inadmissible; exceptional. Adv. in foreign parts, in foreign lands; abroad, beyond seas; over sea ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... no intention of giving way to them, the two cowboys held their course, their eyes fixed on the offending tenderfoot until finally only ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... vivid succession, Butch Brewster beheld a burning stockade besieged by howling Indians, and a frontier town shot up by recklessly riding cowboys on a jamboree. Then he became a tenderfoot, badgered by yelling, shooting roisterers, and later a sheriff, bravely leading his posse to a sensational battle with that same Two-Gun Steve and his gang, entrenched in ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... would get a rise out of you, you blessed tenderfoot! What difference does that make? He rescued you from a serious predicament; and more than that he's a fine fellow and one ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... very extensive cattle belt, and a few days after I had arrived I noticed the town had filled up with "cow punchers." They had just had their semi-annual round up, and were in town spending their money and having a whooping big time. You probably know what that means to a cow-boy. I was a tenderfoot of the worst kind, and every one at the boarding-house and depot seemed to take particular delight in telling me of the shooting scrapes and rackets of these cow-boys, and how they delighted in making it warm for a tenderfoot. Bob ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... you two could stand it, and are evidently so much thought of now, I'll grin and bear it, too. Though it isn't just as we are taught to treat strangers out home. At Rose Ranch if a person is a tenderfoot we try to make it particularly ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... sixty-five miles. But the trail makes it a good hundred miles, and some putty stiff climbin' at that. I'm glad ye are used to roughin' it, for this traveling don't go well with a tenderfoot." ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... loafed in the saloons of the little villages and amused them selves by running amuck and shooting up the town. These men, and indeed nearly all of the pioneers, held the man from the civilized East, the "tenderfoot," in scorn. They took it for granted that he was a weakling, that he had soft ideas of life and was stuck-up or affected. Now Roosevelt saw that in order to win their trust and respect, he must show himself ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... drinking liquid flame— The assassinating wassail that has given him his name; Where the enterprising dealer in Caucasian hair is seen To hold his harvest festival upon his village-green, While the late lamented tenderfoot upon the plain is spread With a sanguinary circle on the summit of his head; Where the cactuses (or cacti) lift their lances in the sun, And incautious jackass-rabbits come to sorrow as they run, Lived a colony of settlers—old Missouri was ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... to me, he added: "You're young and a tenderfoot. You'd better stick to what you've begun upon. That's the way to do somethin'.—I often think it's the work chooses us, and we've just got to get down ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... team was "Tenderfoot Sorrel," so called because of his red hair and his comparatively recent arrival from the east. He was less familiar with the country than the other two teamsters and had been assigned to the place in the middle of the little cavalcade, ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... the vest pocket metropolis of Coyote Centre, which in turn, to quote Landor himself, was "a hundred miles from nowhere," was the Mecca of every traveller whom chance drew into this wild, of every curious tenderfoot seeking a glimpse of the reverse side of the coin of life, of every desperate "one lunger," who, with gambler instinct, staked his all on prairie ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... needs of that one stage. Thus the heroic may run from the twelfth to the fifteenth year, and the activities of this phase should be graded to meet the development of the phase. This is well illustrated by the Tenderfoot Second Class Scout and First Class Scout degrees of the Boy Scouts which ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... about 500 yards distant. Here the airplane spotted me again and directed a barrage to stop me crossing, but I took the chance and got through it. Every step of the way to the bridge crossing the Yser Canal, shells were being planted at my heels. I can only liken my state of mind to that of the tenderfoot in the saloon of the Wild and Woolly, when Halfbreed Harvey, just for the fun of it, took a revolver in each hand and commenced sending the nuggets of lead into the floor at the unoffending feet of the "Lady from the East," just to see him ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... mining camp and the making of a man, with which a charming young lady has much to do. The tenderfoot has a hard time of it, but meets the situation, shows the stuff he is made of, ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... and west loomed the black line of the Bad Lands. To a tenderfoot they would not have appeared to be more than a mile distant. Midway in the prairie between there toiled a human figure. Even at that distance Philip and Billinger could see that it was moving, though with a slowness that puzzled them. For several minutes they stood breathing their horses, their ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... it looks ridiculous, but my notion is some fires start themselves; you'll find them burning in belts of woods the Indians and prospectors leave alone. Some are probably started by cooking fires. The man who knows the bush is careful; the tenderfoot is not." ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... hearers: "Report me? You! Report and be damned, sir. I was old at this work when you were a sucking babe. These men were learning the desert when you were attending a fashionable dancing school. Why, you damned lily- fingered tenderfoot, you couldn't find your way five hundred yards in this country without a guide or a compass. Now, sir, I'm running this outfit and if you have any protests against my cowardly inhumanity I advise you to smother them in your manly breast, or, by hell! I'll ship you out on the first wagon to-morrow ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... to say I haven't the badge for camping?" the diminutive Raven demanded as he unburdened himself of his various paraphernalia. "Do you mean to say I didn't study the heavens when I was a tenderfoot?" ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... never say another word 'bout city folks being skeery. You ain't so bad for a tenderfoot. How'd you know enough to face them that way instead of running? If you'd run they'd trampled you all into mince meat! Steers are ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... no tenderfoot when it comes to a book, but this one was sure the corkin'est I ever met up with. I had allus thought 'at "Seventeen Buckets o' Blood; or the Mormon Widder's Revenge" was about the extreme limit in books, but this here one lays over even that. ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... helplessly over the granite boulders, unable to lift himself more than a few feet in the air, while the pipit and the leucosticte, inured to the heights, would mount up to the sky and shout "Ha! ha!" in good-natured raillery at the blue tenderfoot. And would the feathered visitor feel a constriction in his chest and be compelled to gasp for breath, as the human tourists invariably do? It is even doubtful whether any eastern bird would be able to survive the changed meteorological conditions, Nature having ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... The tenderfoot manager of a mine in a lonesome gulch of the Black Hills has a hard time of it, but "wins out" ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... onless I had to. Neither have I. Varmints, o' course, is a different matter. I've shot plenty o' them, an' once in a while I've had ter kill fer food. But just shootin' for the sake o' shootin' is the trick of a coward or a fool or a tenderfoot or a mixture of all three. It's plumb unnecessary, an' ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... an hour's travel he pulled up, threw down his bridle reins, and studied the ground carefully. He had cut Indian sign. What he saw would have escaped the notice of a tenderfoot, and if it had been pointed out to him none but an expert trailer would have understood its significance. Yet certain facts were printed here on the desert for this boy as plainly as if they had been stenciled on a guide-post. He knew that within forty-eight hours a band of about twenty Mescalero ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... impression of the wilderness was that of a far-stretching desert, forgotten and desolate and unpeopled as the fiery stars. Likewise this was Lounsbury's view, as in the case of every tenderfoot who had preceded him, but Lounsbury would likely grow old and perish without discovering his mistake. Clear eyes are needed to read the secrets of the wild: the dark glass through which he gazed at the world had never cleared. Vosper had lived months and years in the North, but he ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... lie still. If you attempt to create an alarm, I'll fill you so full of lead that some tenderfoot will locate you for ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... needed the money. He was the only man with the crazy nerve to try such a thing. And there were twenty men, with all kinds of money, crowding him to take them along: to beat the bunch in might mean a million dollar strike to any tenderfoot ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... one all right," he said to himself. "This is no trail for a tenderfoot. I hope we don't run into anything worse before we get through. How are ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... tie. The sombrero swinging in his hand was quite new, ornamented with a broad band of stamped leather, and it had the widest brim obtainable at the shop in Denver where a specialty is made of equipping the tenderfoot for life in the ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... dust of the sleepin' dead! The thunder kept droppin' its awful shells, One at a minute, on mountain an' rock: The pass with its stone lips thunder'd back; An' the rush an' roar an' whirlin' shock Of the runnin' herd wus fit tew bust A tenderfoot's heart hed he chanc'd along; But I jest let out of my lungs an' throat A rippin' old verse of a ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... at Circle City, ere the year was out, that Pete's apprehensions were realized. "Black" Burton, a man evil-tempered and malicious, had been picking a quarrel with a tenderfoot at the bar, when Thornton stepped good-naturedly between. Buck, as was his custom, was lying in a corner, head on paws, watching his master's every action. Burton struck out, without warning, straight from the shoulder. Thornton ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... him, the great and underlying virtue of a good stomach. To-night, however, the Missioner's deep and regular breathing as he lay on the floor was a matter of vexation to him. He wanted him awake. He wanted him up and alive, thoroughly alive, when Tavish came. "Pounding his ear like a tenderfoot," he thought, "while I, a puppy in harness, couldn't sleep if I wanted to." He was nervously alert. He filled his pipe for the third or fourth time and sat down on the edge of the bunk, listening for Tavish. He ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... is, eh? But what's that got to do with finding a trail, or following one that's already found?" asked the latest tenderfoot. ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... caused the trail to turn aside and run around it. He looped the reins over his arm and placed his hands in his coat pockets. As he leaned against the tree-trunk nibbling nonchalantly at a sprig of grass, a tenderfoot would never have dreamed that his fingers were tensely held against the triggers of the revolvers ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... saw the tenderfoot pilgrimage to the Alaskan goldfield in '97-8 and the same crowd six months later will understand what had happened to these men. The puny had put on muscle; the city dweller had blown his lungs; the fat man had lost some adipose; social ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... me take a six-shooter or a rope," said Curly. "I ain't fixed for this here tenderfoot game you-all have sprung on me. If it wasn't for that there spur, I'd have sent Doc's ball plumb over Carrizy Mountain that last carrom. You watch me when onct I get the hang of ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... his own personal affairs was merged with the pleasures and the novelty of the life in camp. Often he wished that he had more time to spend with these boys, who welcomed him to their fellowship, although he was not even a tenderfoot, with hearty good will and friendliness. Whatever Ralph did, work or play, he did with all his heart. He entered into the games and recreations "for all he was worth," and won ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... notorious establishment. In front of him, barefooted and in overalls rolled up over well-browned legs, old blue cap, astride a little black pony whose eyes rolled appreciatively as he lovingly half leaned upon her neck, sat Job Malden, as the store-keepers called him; or "Andy's Tenderfoot," as ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... in his chair and gazed into the fire gloomily. It was the first time Creede had heard his partner use even the mildest of the range expletives, for in that particular he was still a tenderfoot, and the word suddenly conveyed to him the depths of the little man's ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... Pugilism Absent Minded A Calm Accepting the Laramie Postoffice A Circular A Collection of Keys A Convention A Father's Advice to his Son A Father's Letter A Goat in a Frame A Great Spiritualist A Great Upheaval A Journalistic Tenderfoot A Letter of Regrets All About Menials All About Oratory Along Lake Superior A Lumber Camp A Mountain Snowstorm Anatomy Anecdotes of Justice Anecdotes of the Stage A New Autograph Album A New Play ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... was completed and the stage coaches began to travel over it his house was turned into a stage station and you can guess that Uncle Dick Wooten had many a stage story to relate to the "tenderfoot" who chose his house to order a meal ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... after me?" Haney asked, irritably. "I'm out of it. 'Tis like the fool tenderfoot. Don't he know I had nothing to do with ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... a lesson," said Pelliter, at last, smiling with the confidence of a man who was half a tenderfoot among the little ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... tall slender poles for piling that would ultimately hold up bridges and wharves. The crew was a cosmopolitan lot so far as nationality went. In addition they were a tougher lot than Thompson had ever encountered. He never quite fitted in. They knew him for something of a tenderfoot, and they had not the least respect for his size—until he took on and soundly whipped two of them in turn before the bunkhouse door, with the rest of the thirty, the boss and the cook for spectators. Thompson did not come off scathless, but he did come off victor, although ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... men you rate the highest in California, your "Pioneers" and "Forty-Niners," as to the future of the empire they were founding on this coast. There lingered in my mind the flavor at least of an old response by a California public man to the compliment a "tenderfoot" New-Yorker, in the innocence of his heart, had intended to pay, when he said that with this splendid State, this glorious harbor, and the Pacific Ocean, you have all the elements to build up here the New York of ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... does," he said. "He knows. Mr. Tenderfoot, there's a rule out here among white men in the Nation that you can't shoot a man when he's with a woman. I never knew it to be broke yet. You can't do it. You've got to get him in a gang of men or by himself. That's ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... it has now. Faith, I never expected to see it again, nor the paymaster either. We were both bored through and through. 'Twas our good habits that saved us. Sure your predecessor was a game fighter, Mr. Barnes, if he was a tenderfoot." ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... mountains in the lumbering Concord coach. There was the constant fear of meeting the wily red man, who persistently hankered after the white man's hair. Then there was the playfulness of the sometimes drunken driver, who loved to upset his tenderfoot travellers in some arroya, long after the moon ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... slowly and with extreme dignity. When he reappeared, he was leading Midget, a little silverpoint runt of a Klamath Indian pony, and Moses, a sturdy pinto cayuse from the cattle ranges over in Trinity County. "I'll have to ride with you," he announced. "Can't let a tenderfoot like you go out alone ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... fine tenderfoot I was at the start!' laughed his uncle. 'When B.-P. told the townsmen they'd got to lend a hand, I was like a good few more. I thought I'd pick up what was wanted in no time. But I found that a useful man in the firing-line isn't ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... time I mounted old Good Eye I knew I had not learned what pitching was. This proved the worst horse to ride I had ever mounted in my life, but I stayed with him and the cow boys were the most surprised outfit you ever saw, as they had taken me for a tenderfoot, pure and simple. After the horse got tired and I dismounted the boss said he would give me a job and pay me $30.00 per month and more later on. He asked what my name was and I answered Nat Love, he said to the boys we will call him Red River Dick. I went ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... there is," Trapper Jim replied. "You see, it drags on the ground and leaves such a plain trail that any tenderfoot could foller it." ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... to admit. Among the few matters he would have otherwise he gives the first place to the tough "range" or "snow-fed" beef upon which the dwellers in this favored land must needs subsist. "I heard a story once," said he, "about a young man, a tenderfoot, who, after long wondering what made the beef so fearfully tough, at length arrived at the solution, as he thought, and that quite by accident. He was riding out with a friend, an old resident, when they chanced to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... Sanders the following afternoon. "This is Mr. Davies,—Lieutenant Davies,—just graduated,—who's to go on with 'em," said he to the commanding officer of that old army post, adding for his private ear, "He's a tenderfoot and doesn't know anything but moral suasion." To this conclusion Captain Tibbetts has been impelled by what he had heard as well as by the events of the night. Mr. Davies, of whom he knew nothing except what Muffet had to say, having been told that he needn't bother ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... "Tenderfoot, when I'm around after this you shut your mouth and keep it shut! You needn't take the trouble to call me Peter again, either. My name is Bad Pete, and I am bad. ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... free range is like to be opened up to homesteaders any day. Too much noise about cattle-and-sheep war would scare good money from coming to the State. I heard the other day that that Sundown Jack picked up is settled at the water-hole. I took him for a tenderfoot once. I reckon he ain't. It's hard to figure on those queer kind. Well, you meet the two-thirty. I guess I'll ride over to the Concho and see ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... nobody can say that I ever butt in when a patrol is breaking in a tenderfoot. That's one thing I wouldn't do. I wouldn't even have bothered to tell you about it at all, except that it had momentous consequences—that's what ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... all I said about your being a tenderfoot. There aren't three men on the ranch who can stick on his back when he takes a notion that he ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... Kit Carson's dangerous scouts in enemy country this turned out to be the most ticklish. For young Lieutenant Beale, the tenderfoot, it was hair-raising. Captain Pico had known that the celebrated Kit Carson was with the Americans upon the hill, and feared him. He had placed three lines of mounted patrols around the base of the hill, and instructed them to keep riding so as to ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... buffalo, elk and bear, you must get into sympathy with their methods of reasoning. No tenderfoot stands any show, even with the ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... somewhat of a tenderfoot then, Hadn't jist got the lay of the land; Thar wuz a good many things in them thar parts As I couldn't quite understand. But I took a likin' to Yosemite Jim, Wuz with him on my very first trick; ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... appropriate costume, and the costume is not the result of arbitrary choice, but of natural selection; if we hunt, fish, or play any outdoor game, sooner or later we find ourselves dressing like our associates. The tenderfoot may put on his cowboy's suit a little too soon and look and be very uncomfortable, but the costume is essential to success in ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... cares for his dogs!" thought the tenderfoot; and he turned (with his more delicate sentiments) to caress Jan's head. But Jan abruptly lowered his head to avoid the touch; though, obedient now to Jean, the proved master, he remained where he had been ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... our shanty. Drive a few nails or—I'll tell you; kill that bear and save that tenderfoot's life." Tom pointed to a Winchester calendar on the rear wall, which bore the lithographic likeness of an enraged grizzly upon the point of helping himself ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... sandy-haired man, testily. (Pedro was the only Mexican cowboy at the ranch, and even he was barely tolerated.) "But the little mistress ain't no tenderfoot girl. She don't howl at a rattlesnake nor jump at a prairie dog; and she knows how to ride, and which end of a gun ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... that in my case was accentuated by the fact that I wore spectacles—which at that day and in that region were usually held to indicate a defective moral character in the wearer. He had never previously acted as guide, or, as he expressed it, "trundled a tenderfoot," and though a good hunter, who showed me much game, our experience together was not happy. He was very rheumatic and liked to lie abed late, so that I usually had to get breakfast, and, in fact, do most of the work around camp. Finally one day he declined to go out with ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... not been very long in this country, but I have noted the peculiarities of the people. They do not seem to have time to bother much about an affair like this train hold-up, and the shooting of an occasional tenderfoot, as they call all Easterners. If they should happen to capture Black Harry, they would give him their full attention for a short time—a very short time. They would be pretty sure to lynch him, as they would consider that the easiest way of disposing of him, and they ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... work long enough to try the springy boughs with her arms; then she gave him an answering smile. Even a tenderfoot can make some sort of a comfortable pallet out of evergreen boughs—ends overlapping and plumes bent—but a master woodsman can fashion a veritable cradle, soft as silk with never a hard limb to irritate the flesh, ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... an undemonstrative being, this man of the West, and you take a long time to find out whether he likes you or not. If you are a "tenderfoot" you can't do better than hold your tongue about the wonders of Europe and its cities, about your own various exploits here and there. You will learn a lot by not talking, and if you don't mind soiling your hands a little, and keeping an eye lifted ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... Peter exclaimed, with warm approval, "the way you master this business certainly does win me. I tell you, it's a mighty good thing we got your brains to depend on. I'm all right the other side of Council Bluffs, but I'm a tenderfoot here, sure, where everybody's tryin' to get the best of you. You see, out there, everybody tries to make the best of it. But here they try to get the best of it. I told that to one of them smarties last night. But you'll put them in their ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... lawbreaking, and bloodshed. Order reigned within her borders. Life and property were as safe there, sir, as anywhere among the corrupt cities of the effete East. Pillow-shams, churches, strawberry feasts and habeas corpus flourished. With impunity might the tenderfoot ventilate his "stovepipe" or his theories of culture. The arts and sciences received nurture and subsidy. And, therefore, it behooved the legislature of this great state to make appropriation for the purchase of ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... THE BIG TIMBER; or, The Search for the Lost Tenderfoot. A serious calamity threatens the Silver Fox Patrol. How apparent disaster is bravely met and overcome by Thad and his friends, forms the ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... fourthly, it was too late in the day to allege a boil. What was the use of your remarking that the first backing of a colt is nothing—that, in this case, it is the second step that costs? The four fellows knew as well as you did—everyone except the tenderfoot novelist knows—that in nearly every instance, a freshly backed colt is like a fish out of water; stupid, puzzled, half-sulky, half-docile. It is at the second backing that he is ready to contest the question of fitness for survival; he has had time to think the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... "If I was to tell you some of the things that happened, you would think I was a heap sight bigger liar than I am. Seein' some of them yarns in print, folks around this country would say: 'Steve Brown's corralled some tenderfoot and loaded him to the muzzle with shin tangle and ancient history!' Things that would seem amazin' to you would never ruffle the hair of the mavericks that ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... "No. He's a tenderfoot, but he can ride a horse as if he was sewed to the skin, and I've an idea that he can do other things up to the same standard. If you can find two or three men who have silent tongues and strong hands, you'd better take them along. I'll pay their wages, ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... appealed to me. I was out of everything more nourishing than hope and one slab of pay-streaked bacon, when two tenderfeet 'mushed' up the gulch, and invited themselves into my cabin to watch me pan. It's the simplest thing known to science to salt a tenderfoot, so I didn't have no trouble in selling out for ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... much-lightened pack, for the supply of "grub" is getting low; perhaps assist him swing the packs on the packsaddle, put on the canvas covering and throw the "diamond hitch," and then saddle your own horse—for by now you will have begun to feel some confidence and pride in doing things that the "tenderfoot" generally leaves to the guide—and soon you are climbing up the trail on your way to the rim. As soon as you are on "top," you "push on" the pack animals and "hit the trail hard" by way of Hance's Ranch, now owned by Martin Buggel, to Grand View, and over ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... "You are a tenderfoot, and you couldn't shoot," she continued eulogistically, as if it were necessary to have it all stated plainly, "but you—you are what my brother used to call 'a white man.' You couldn't shoot; but you could risk your life, and hold that coat, and ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... the East, but I won't let them call me a tenderfoot," Bob exclaimed earnestly; "and I'll try and get on the right side of them, so they won't play ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... no man save an unmitigated tenderfoot would picket a horse on loco, which looks very much like wild peavine and is known the West over as the deadliest weed that grows. A little of it mixed with a diet of grass will drive horses and cattle insane, and there is no authentic case of recovery, that I ever heard, once the infection ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... "We're dealing with a tenderfoot and a stranger to the saloon-keeper," he said, as we struck into the sage-brush wilderness. "The fool didn't know enough to spend a few dollars at the bar. ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... owl when you hear one? Gee! but you're a tenderfoot, ain't you?" Catching sight of the Dean who was coming toward them, he shouted gleefully. "Uncle Will, Mr. Patches is scared of an owl. What do you know about that; Patches is ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... assume it. He was suddenly ashamed. Patricia's reference to his "training," recurred to him. He understood, now, exactly what she had meant—it had not been plain to him before. Here before him was "the man of the East," at whom he had so often scoffed, for the word "Tenderfoot" had, until now, been synonymous with contempt. But Morton felt himself to be the tenderfoot, in the present case. He replied, stiffly, to the invitation ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... in lofty scorn, reassuming her nasal tone. "You is shore a tenderfoot! Don' you-all know that blastin' scares all th' deer ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... spoils the toutensemble, as that young Melrose tenderfoot used to say—kinder as if a bald-haided guy was playing Romeo and had lost his wig in the ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... A tenderfoot could have told now that they were "in for weather." The snow by midday was not falling, it was being shovelled down in loads. The temperature had dropped so rapidly that the flakes, as large as goose feathers, were dry ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... that'll be all right," said Linda. "I wondered if you'd go murdering yourself like a tenderfoot." ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... command of its slang, to which he made copious contributions, enriching its vocabulary with a wealth of uncommon phrases more remarkable for their aptness than their refinement, and which impressed the unlearned "tenderfoot" with a lively sense of the profundity of their inventor's acquirements. When not entertaining a circle of admiring auditors from San Francisco or the East he could commonly be found pursuing the comparatively obscure industry of sweeping out the various dance houses and purifying ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... join him. The greeting is not of the exuberant character expected, and frequently the heart of the newcomer is broken by being told to go back to his mammy and spend a few years more in the nursery. A runaway tenderfoot just fresh from school is not wanted on the cattle ranch, and although Western farmers are too good-natured to resent very severely the liberty taken, they never flatter the newcomer by holding out any inducements or making any prophecies as ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... the kind on which Jim Duff fattened his purse. Clarence Farnsworth, about twenty-five years of age, was as verdant a "tenderfoot" as had lately graced ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... humorously called a goose by the woodsmen because they all make their beds of its "feathers." It is the sapin of the French-Canadians, the cho-kho-tung of the New York Indians, the balsam of the tenderfoot, the Christmas-tree of the little folk, and that particular Coniferae known by the dry-as-dust botanist as Abies. There is nothing in nature which has a wilder, more sylvan and charming perfume than the balsam, and the scout who has not slept in the woods on a balsam bed has a pleasure in store ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... Mr. M———shines in Teheran society as the only Briton with sufficient courage to wear a chimney-pot hat. Although the writer has seen the "stove-pipe" of the unsuspecting tenderfoot from the Eastern States made short work of in a far Western town, and the occurrence seemed scarcely to be out of place there, I little expected to find popular sentiment running in the same warlike groove, and asserting itself in the same destructive manner ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... of Texas. She would wander for days as others had, and she would die in the end of starvation and thirst. Nobody would know where to look for her, since she had told none where she was going. Only yesterday at her boarding-house she had heard a young man tell how a tenderfoot had been found dead after he had wandered round and round in intersecting circles. She sank down and ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... the Yukon as completely changed as everything else. Even the technical expressions once used by the gold-mining fraternity were now replaced by others. Thus the "Oldtimer" had become "a Sourdough," and his antithesis, the "Tenderfoot," was now called a "Chechako." A word now frequently heard (and unknown in 1896) was "Musher," signifying a prospector who is not afraid to explore the unknown. This word is of Canadian origin, and probably ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... the lapel of the latter. "H'm. Your name's Hollis, an' you own the Circle Bar. Seems I've heard of you." He squinted his eyes at Hollis. "You're Jim Hollis's boy, ain't you?" His eyes flashed with a sudden, contemptuous light. "Tenderfoot, ain't you? Come out here to try an' show folks how to ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the big woods, the mountains, and the tangled swamps. He was educated and a gentleman, and I knew that in spite of his brown face and arms, his hard muscles and splendid health, he was three-quarters tenderfoot. ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... Nick with a tolerant sneer in his voice, "the car was stolen by a boy scout, probably a tenderfoot. Maybe it was ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... had the reputation of being the hardest fighter in the country. His name was William Jackson, so he was called Bill. I had met Jackson often, and we had taken kindly to each other. I admired his frank manner and sturdy physique, and he looked upon me as a good-natured tenderfoot, who might be companionable, and who would certainly stir up things in the neighborhood. I went in search of him that afternoon to discuss the line fence, a full mile of which ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... comes the man. Which way he come I do not know. Only do I know he is checha-quo—what you call tenderfoot. His hands are soft, just like hers. He never do hard work. He is soft all over. At first I think maybe he is her husband. But he is too young. Also, they make two beds at night. He is maybe twenty years old. His eyes blue, his hair yellow, he has a little mustache which is yellow. His name ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... Tom Slade," is a suggestion which thousands of parents have followed during the past, with the result that the TOM SLADE BOOKS are the most popular boys' books published today. They take Tom Slade through a series of typical boy adventures through his tenderfoot days as a scout, through his gallant days as an American doughboy in France, back to his old patrol and the old camp ground at Black Lake, and ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... out if this tenderfoot came here to murder me. I'll tell him he's to be shot, see, and Quail will put on the priest's robes, say that he's a priest and hear his confession. If he's got anything up his sleeve, he'll come out with it, and then I'll shoot him. Otherwise I'll ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... Northern Lights. I can't help feeling that these Merry Dancers of the Pole, as some one has called them, make up for what the prairie may lack in diversity. Dusk by dusk they drown our world in color, they smother our skies in glory. They are terrifying, sometimes, to the tenderfoot, giving him the feeling that his world is on fire. Poor old Struthers, during an especially active display, invariably gets out her Bible. Used to them as I am, I find they can still touch me with awe. They make me lonesome. They seem like the search-lights of God, showing up my human littlenesses ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... knew just how to go about starting a fire. True, the recent rain had wet pretty much all of the wood, so that a tenderfoot would have had a difficult task getting the blaze started, though after that trouble had been surmounted it would not be so bad. But Jud knew just how to split open a log, and find the dry heart that would take fire easily; ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... strained for the slightest sound. The cook and the boss, the only men up, hurried back to bed. Watson had risen so hurriedly that he had not been careful about his "tarp" and water had run into his bed. But that wouldn't disconcert anybody but a tenderfoot. I kept waiting in tense silence to hear them come back with dead or wounded, but there was not a sound. The rain had stopped. Mrs. Louderer struck a match and said it was three o'clock. Soon she was asleep. ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... Cattle Co. had not paid a dividend in years; so Edgar Barrett, fresh from the navy, was sent West to see what was wrong at the ranch. The tale of this tenderfoot outwitting the buckaroos at their own play will sweep you into the action of this ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... easily and quickly made, is warm and comfortable and stands a pretty heavy rain when properly put up. This is how it is made: Let us say you are out and have slightly missed your way. The coming gloom warns you that night is shutting down. You are no tenderfoot. You know that a place of rest is essential to health and comfort through the long, cold November night. You dive down the first little hollow until you strike a rill of water, for water is a prime necessity. As you draw your hatchet you take in the ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... have no business hirin' a man thet can't ride," he said. "Why thet there Brazos pony never did stumble, an' if he'd of stumbled he'd a-stood aroun' a year waitin' to be caught up agin. I jest cain't figger it out no ways how thet there tenderfoot bookkeeper lost him. He must a-shooed him away with a stick. An' saddle an' bridle an' all ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the nurse, and the mother. The program provides incentives for practicing woman's world-old arts by requiring an elementary proficiency in cooking, housekeeping, first aid, and the rules of healthful living for any Girl Scout passing beyond the Tenderfoot stage. Of the forty odd subjects for which Proficiency Badges are given, more than one-fourth are in subjects directly related to the services of woman in the home, as mother, nurse or homekeeper. Into this work so often distasteful because solitary is brought the sense of comradeship. ...
— Girl Scouts - Their Works, Ways and Plays • Unknown
... pair of riding gauntlets. Long John was in there, and seeing the well-dressed, dapper little man, with his white collar and eastern complexion—not burned red by the Colorado sun, as all of ours are—he winked to the assembled company as much as to say, "See me take a rise out of the tenderfoot," sidled up to Bertie, who was a foot shorter than himself, leaned over him, and putting on his worst expression, said, in a harsh, growling voice, ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... hope to get a few, by and by," admitted Bob, modestly, but with a determined gleam in his eye. "I'll be just a tenderfoot to start with, you know. But I'm hoping it won't be so terribly long before I can qualify as ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... be prospecting, he would know the ways of the red-skins and how to travel among them without ever leaving a trail or making a smoke, but even for him it would be risky work, and not many fellows would care to take the chances even if they knew the country well. But for a tenderfoot to start out on such a job would be downright foolishness. There are about six points wanted in a man for such a journey. He has got to be as hard and tough as leather, to be able to go for days without food or drink, ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty |
