"Duffer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other automatically—I'm not a bit clever, Louis. I never was. Always I get puzzled, always I realize how utterly unlearned I am. Always father called me an idiot and threw things at me for it. But in spite of being a duffer I'm sure I can ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
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... of work. Took away the mortar in his pockets; no sign of it here. The admiral had better send for his bricklayer, for more reasons than one. There'll be a defective flue presently. Now, what the devil is the duffer expecting to find?" Fitzgerald coolly turned the light full into ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
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... 'Duffer, Cis!' cried Hilary, contemptuously, for Cecily had appointed herself professional peacemaker to the family, and her efforts were about as successful as such ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
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... silence before the man continued, "He was a strange duffer. I have seen him off an' on the last fifteen year. He never gave up his search for a mine and I guess he never found one. Strange how a man will keep on as if he was all possessed when he has once ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
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... was the only one as would come at the price. 'Tain't big wages; but I'm seein' loife. Lor', I come down here with Madame and Mounseer a fortnight ago, and Monte Carlo ain't got many secrets from me. I was a duffer, though, at first. When I 'eerd all them shots poppin' off every few minutes, up by the Casino, I used to think 'twas the suicides a shooting theirselves all over the place, for before I left 'ome, I 'ad a warnin' from my young man that was the kind of goin's on they ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
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... words meant for his fellows, but in tones that went farther. "There'll be conflict of authority now or I'm a duffer!" ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
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... down upon it His head is sheltered by a bonnet; And though it makes him look a duffer, He hasn't half the heat ...
— A Horse Book • Mary Tourtel
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... ill with playing out of doors and having fun,' returned Tricksy scornfully; 'I'm not such a duffer, Marjorie.' ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
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... broader, deeper, more worthy of the great Demiurgus than that which pictures him telling a priest how to carve his pantaloons or sacrifice a pair of pigeons, than standing idly by with his hands under his coat-tails, while some drunken duffer beats the head of his better half with a bootjack, or a bronze brute rips the scalp from a smiling babe. If that's the kind of a hairpin who occupies the throne of Heaven, I don't blame Lucifer for ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
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... Don't despise me. I have it. I'll, yes—I'll do it—I'll break into his desk. There's no help for it. I know the drawer where he keeps his plunder, and I can buy a chisel on my way home. He will be terribly upset, but, you know, the dear old duffer really loves me. He'll have to get over it—and I, too. Kirylo, my dear soul, if you can only wait for a few hours-till this evening—I shall steal all the blessed lot I can lay my hands on! You doubt me! Why? You've only to ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
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... note of cheer written by a somewhat dolorous duffer who spent last night in pain, but this morning is ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
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... that a crazy duffer had gone about over the desert for years digging wells, but at last he struck water. A few miles ahead was a well flowing like an artesian well. There would be plenty of water for every one, even the cattle. Next morning we could start ahead of the herds and so the roads ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
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... grown worthy of you, I might come to you and say—two and two are four—let us go into partnership. But then, you see," he went on briskly, "the odds are I may never even have two thousand. Perhaps I'm as much a duffer in music as in other things. Perhaps you'll be the only person in the world who has ever heard my music, for no one will print it, Mary Ann. Perhaps I shall be that very common thing—a complete failure—and be worse off than even you ever ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
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... the heart, proves our greatest stumbling-block when we are invited to follow the machinations of the superlative Svengali. That the story of Svengali and of Trilby's voice is a good story only a duffer would deny. So is Gautier's La Morte Amoureuse; perhaps the best story of its kind ever written. But suppose Thackeray had taken La Morte Amoureuse and tried to write ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
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... saddle before him. "I'm sorry!" he said, apologetically. "I fear it is very uncomfortable; but—I can—a—manage better, don't you see?" But to himself he was saying, "Lucky I got that done before the beggars began to shoot. Now they may fire all they like. Stupid duffer I ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
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... the ones they have at the Natural History Museum in London; all of them were cracked and just stuck together like a mosaic, and bits missing. Mine were perfect, and I meant to blow them when I got back. Naturally I was annoyed at the silly duffer dropping three hours' work just on account of a centipede. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
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... and would go to Gehenna. Now I don't want to go to Gehenna just for wanting to get posted in the show business of old times, do you? When Pa said Dan was saved from the jaws of the lions because he prayed three times every day, and had faith, I told him that was just what the duffer that goes into the lions den in Coup's circus did because I saw him in the dressing room, when me and my chum got in for carrying water for the elephant, and he was exhorting with a girl in tights ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
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... shot dead; shortly after, my other comrade was badly wounded, and I lay down and hid the whole day till dark, when I got back to the laager." This would go to prove that, comparing him with the Boer, the British infantry soldier is not such a duffer with his weapon as some of those in authority were in ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
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... short are the odds you get—hardly worth mentioning! Horses occasionally win with odds of forty to one against them, these are the animals of which I was in search, not the hackneyed favourites of the Press and the Public. This, I think you will find, is usually the attitude of the Duffer, who, in my time, was known, I cannot say why, as the "Juggins." I liked to bring a little romance into my speculations. Often I have backed a horse for his name, for something curious, or literary, or classical about his name. ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
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... there was no well-defined jealousy between them. Mr. Walking Delegate Dennis Quigg, confidential agent of Branch No. 3, Knights of Labor, had too good an opinion of himself ever to look upon that "tow-headed duffer of a stable-boy" in the light of a rival. Nor could Carl for a moment think of that narrow-chested, red-faced, flashily dressed Knight as being able to make the slightest impression ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
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... "Nobody but a duffer pays fare," said the other. "There'll be a freight along pretty soon, and she stops at the water tank just below here. Why don't you ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
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... of what they've told you, Mr. Snelling," laughed Robert Morton. "Our friends are always over-indulgent to our faults. When I begin work under you, a thing I am greatly anticipating, you will find out what a duffer I ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
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... got an inkling of who and what he is. I saw him performing an operation upon a horse, in the yard of a livery stable. He is a VETERINARY SURGEON! He consorts with BUTCHERS! Put that and that together, Mr. PUNCHINELLO, and see what you can make of it. And the duffer always eats mutton, too, or fish. I never yet heard him call for beef. He knows all about nag, and likes it alive, but he is not to be nagged into ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
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... right here, or I would," answered Ned in a low voice, as he drew his friend's soft hat forward and turned down the brim. "You're all right; and, besides, he's such an old duffer that he won't notice anything. He won't stay here, any way; he comes to see cousin Euphemia, and help her out when she gets in a tight place with Wang Kum. Wang's been cutting church lately, and most likely the doctor's come to ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
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... by her side, Though I really can't say that he actually cried, At least had a tear in his eye! As much as can well be expected, perhaps, From "very young fellows," for very "old chaps." And if he had said What he'd got in his head, 'Twould have been, "Poor old Duffer, he's certainly dead!" The morning dawned—and the next—and the next And all in the mansion were still perplexed; No knocker fell, His approach to tell; Not so much as a runaway ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
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... and sickly, he's weak of arm and knee; if trouble came he'd quickly shin up the nearest tree. No hale man ever loves him; he stirs the sportsman's wrath; the whole world kicks and shoves him and shoos him from the path. For who can love a duffer so pallid, weak and thin, who seems resigned to suffer and let folks rub it in? Yet though he's down to zero in fellow-men's esteem, this fellow is a hero and that's no winter dream. Year after year he's toiling, as toiled the slaves ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
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... N. bungler; blunderer, blunderhead^; marplot, fumbler, lubber, duffer, dauber, stick; bad hand, poor hand, poor shot; butterfingers^. no conjurer, flat, muff, slow coach, looby^, lubber, swab; clod, yokel, awkward squad, blanc-bec; galoot^. land lubber; fresh water sailor, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
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... the artist, with a glance about the little room. He was thinking what a dear old duffer the man was—with his curious, impracticable philosophy of life and his big, kind ways. "You'll die poor if you don't look out," he ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
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... alive, but now he was dead he might have become a first-class temptation, and possibly cause some startling trouble. Besides, I was anxious to take the wheel, the man in pink pyjamas showing himself a hopeless duffer at the business. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
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... up with my poor game, I should enjoy playing immensely. But," she added smiling confidently and regarding him with her large, steady brown eyes, "I don't intend to remain a duffer at it long. I see," she continued after a moment, "from your expression, Mr. Randall, that you doubt this. I could tell from the corners of ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
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... me feel sort of glad, Miss Helen. You see, I'm not such a duffer really. I think an awful lot, and it don't come hard either. But folks have always told me I'm such a fool, that I've kind of got into the way of believing it. Now, when I saw that pine and the valley I felt sort of queer. It struck me then it was sort of mysterious. Just as though the ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
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... I didn't take nothing—it's just as I told the old duffer. The girl waked up just as I'd got the secretary open, and I didn't ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
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... augmentation. No one felt alarm at their absence. The inhabitants of Foss River were a self-reliant people—accustomed to look to themselves for the remedy of a grievance. Besides, Horrocks, they said, had shown himself to be a duffer—merely a tracker, a prairie-man and not the man to bring Retief to justice. Already the younger members of the settlement and district were forming themselves into a vigilance committee. The elders—those to whom the younger looked for a ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
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... "What a duffer I am to be sure!" I said to myself. "If I begin to get notions like this in my head there is no knowing where I may end. As if any girl would ever think ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
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... me. You see Ross will have to read the letters, and how can you say in every other line you love me, with that duffer reading ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
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... Daughter. "O ma! there was such a precious guy at the ball last night, and I had no end of a lark with him. Good gracious! here comes the duffer himself." ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
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... not been for Willy Horse I should not have got the property at all. That chief with the iron toes is a shrewd old duffer. He has owned the property for some years, and all that time the Hiram Dusenbery Company has been trying, by fair means or otherwise, to buy it of him, but Old Iron-Toe put the price so high that they preferred ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
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... court-house paced he, followed stealthily By Bengal Mike, who jeered him every step: "Come, elephant, and fight! Come, hog-eyed coward! Come, face about and fight me, lumbering sneak! Come, beefy bully, hit me, if you can! Take out your gun, you duffer, give me reason To draw and kill you. Take your billy out. I'll crack your boar's head with a piece of brick!" But never a word the hog-eyed one returned But trod about the court-house, followed both ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
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... sycophants, liars and fools who hang around. I didn't mind 'em when I was well. But they get on my nerves now. The doctors kept dinning into my ears that I've got to rest and play and finally one old duffer over in France put an idea into my head that brought me back home to see you. He told me to get on a small boat with a single nurse and a congenial friend, get away from land, cut every telephone and telegraph line, get no mail, and ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
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... never came across! But it's clear if you can't shoot with that drilled arm of yours you can't play the concertina. Wish I could knock a tune out of the thing, Leash, for your sake—enough to make a Boer put his head up. But I'm a duffer at musical instruments—always was. What do you ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
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... she rules with infinite wisdom. The King is determined that she shall wed Prince Ernst. He would take away her principality but for the fact that there would be a wholesale disturbance to follow any such act. If I ever meet that watch dog of hers, the Count von Walden, the duffer who gave me my conge, there will be trouble. The world isn't large enough for two such men as we are. By the way, I played roulette at the Casino last night and won 3,000 francs. Well, au revoir or adieu as the case may be. They sell the worst whiskey here you ever heard of. It's ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
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... 'Why, nothing, you young duffer,' said Oswald, who could now smell the coffee. 'All that isn't History it's Humbug. Come ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
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... about you. Excuse my rig—we are short of men on the farm, and I took hold. I'm glad of the chance, for I get precious little exercise since I left college. You came from East Branch by morning stage, I suppose? Oh, is that your trunk dumped out in the road? What a duffer I was not to know. Wait a minute—I'll bring it in," and ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
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... always on the watch to take him down a peg when he was pleased with himself—to hold him cheap and overpraise some duffer in his hearing—so that I might save my own self-esteem; to pay him bad little left-handed compliments, him and his, whenever I was out of humor; and I should have been always out of humor, having ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
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... that's little Duffer, I know! We've seen him before! Wouldn't mind giving him a chase to-day, just for exercise, you ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
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... front rank shew'd, How endless appeared the tail, On the brown hill-side, where we cross'd the road, And headed towards the vale. The dark-brown steed on the left was there, On the right was a dappled grey, And between the pair, on a chestnut mare, The duffer who writes this lay. What business had "this child" there to ride? But little or none at all; Yet I held my own for a while in "the pride That goeth before a fall." Though rashness can hope for but one result, We are heedless when fate draws nigh us, And the maxim holds good, "Quem ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
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... gave it to me hard; but he's a nice old duffer, after all. Said I had had pretty near punishment enough. But I've got to keep in bounds all term, and can't go on the river again until I learn ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
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... said, assuming an enthusiasm I did not feel. Put on the gloves with this strapping, skillful boxer? Not I! I was firmly resolved to stop while my record was good. In a scientific clash with the gloves he would soon find out what a miserable duffer I was. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
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... sign," answered the boy, with a shake of his head. "Just clean cleared out, that's all. Pretty hard luck, I call it. Just at the end of things too—when he had a right to expect the fellows home. Pretty tough luck. I wish I could find the poor old duffer and do ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
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... remonstrated Nancy, with a flare in her mild eyes. (How I wish I might have seen her as she defended me!) "He's the dearest fellow in the world, and I love him with all my heart!" (How do you like that, Mr. Robert? Bravo, Nancy! I may be a duffer, true enough, but I rather object to its being called out from the housetops.) And Nancy added: "I want you to understand distinctly, Robert, that in my selection of a husband you are ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
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... paces. Ask him what he knows. Process (I fear) incidentally reveals to him what I know. Hear him at lunch explaining to HERBIE (with whom he has made friends again) that I am "not bad at sums, but a shocking duffer at Latin." Pretend not ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
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... against was a duffer, but this has been a great day," he said. "This place stimulates ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
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... I exclaimed. "Green again! Can you make anything of it at all, Garnesk? I'm sorry I'm such a duffer as to faint at the critical moment, when I might have been of some assistance to you. What in God's ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
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... thet tha' ole Dopped ganger, the Wild Hunter, the spooky old critter, has been seen agin. i wuz on the top of the painted Butte yesterday squinten one i in the valley look'n for elk and look'n up with tother i for Big horn on the mountain, when i staged the old duffer snoop'en along in one of the parks an' he had the same long hair and long rifle he uster have. He sure is a ghost or else he's a nut or an old timer gone locoed. He sends the chills down my backbone every time i sots my ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
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... And these had come all the way without the stroke of a piston or the crunch of a paddle-wheel or a pound of steam. Nothing but grit and man-muscle to drag them a small matter of two or three thousand miles up the current of the most eccentric old duffer of ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
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... Well, the old duffer whose watch was ticking inside my waist that very minute! Yes, sir, the same red-faced, big-necked fellow we'd spied getting full at the little station in the country. Only, he was a bit mellower than when you grabbed his ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
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... well. Who's going to turn over the leaf, I should like to know? I know I shall never do it. Not because the nerves of my head are giving way, but because I'm a duffer." ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
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... the head of the herd, "yer could slap that old duffer across the face with your hat, and ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
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... outside Adams' bar, he took up a friend's pistol and hit it plumb in the centre at twenty-four paces. There were few things he took up that he could not make a show at apparently, except gold-digging, and at that he was the veriest duffer alive. It was pitiful to see the little canvas bag, with his name printed across it, lying placid and empty upon the shelf at Woburn's store, while all the other bags were increasing daily, and some had ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
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... the lagoon and Uncle had stopped to look in at one of the doors of Liberal Arts hall. While he was standing there two dapper young men came walking hastily by. One caught sight of Uncle and quickly uttered a low whistle. His companion stopped short as the first one said: "Der's de old duffer; let's ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
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... his brother's eyes. He smiled weakly, the anger gone. "Same old blind duffer you always were. I wrote an answer to her letter. In that letter I told her ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
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... then, is for each man to peg off his claim. That done, you can work the properties conjointly under the supervision of a committee, pay the gross takings into a common account, and divide the profits. In this way the owner of a duffer claim participates equally with the owner of a rich one. In other words, there is less risk of failure—I might say, no risk at all—but also much temptation. Such a scheme would be quite impossible except amongst gentlemen, but I should imagine that where men ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
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... old head!" answered Ted, determinedly. "I'm watching to see who comes along. Do you suppose I'd let Mrs. Burton, or the rector tumble into the tub? What d'you take me for, you old duffer?" ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
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... 'Poor old duffer,' said his lordship. 'If he's doing so well, I think Miles ought to be made to pay up something of what he owes. I think we ought to tell him that we shall expect him to have the money ready when that bill of Vossner's ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
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... "Old duffer! you are one thing to-day, and another thing to-morrow: there's no knowing how to tyke you. You're such a sinful old 'ypocrite, that you play-act before yourself, I do believe. What is it you do mean? You myke anyone sick of you; your incense ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
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... Really a Duffer" type, where the nervous new boy, who has been found crying in the boot-room over the photograph of his sister, contrives to get an innings in a game, nobody suspects that he is really a prodigy till he hits the Bully's first ball out of the ground ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
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... should have known more what the world was like, I should have depended more upon other people, I should have made friends. As it was, I left school entirely innocent, very solitary, very modest, thinking myself a complete duffer, and everyone else a beast. It got a little better at the end of my time, and I had a companion or two—but I never dreamed of telling anyone what I was really ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
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... were tars; Told them to "Coil that rope and clean the scuppers, And then go down below and get your suppers." This must be changed, or my good name will suffer, And folks will say, JIM FISK is but a duffer. To feel myself a fool and lose my head, Too, takes the gilding off the gingerbread; And makes me ask myself the reason why On earth I have so many fish to fry? The fact is, what I touch must have a risk ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
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... nothing but bare facts. He is always hard up, poor fellow, and it would be a real boon to him to take me for three months and stick at it hard with me, and by the end of that time I ought to be able to take my place in some artist's school in Paris without feeling myself to be an absolute duffer among a lot of fellows younger than myself. By Jove, this news is like a breeze on the east coast in summer—a little sharp, perhaps, but splendidly bracing and healthy, just the thing to set a fellow up and make a man of him. I will ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
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... a long stop, you would be more and more pursuaded that I had at least, played for my county. Well, I have played for my county, but as the county I played for was Berwickshire, there is perhaps nothing to be so very proud of in that distinction. But this I will say for the Cricketing Duffer; he is your true enthusiast. When I go to Lord's on a summer day, which of my contemporaries do I meet there? Not the men who played for the University, not the KENNYS and MITCHELLS and BUTLERS, but ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 27, 1892 • Various
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... the mule-skinner's person for evidence of hardware. Observing none, he said fiercely "You mutton- headed duffer!" and for the first time within the memory of the citizens of San Pasqual he had recourse to his hands. He clasped Mr. O'Rourke fondly around the neck and choked him until his eyes threatened to pop out, the while he shook O'Rourke as a terrier shakes a rat. Then, after two prodigious ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
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... become of that duffer?" said Tom Holtum, when the Laulie arrived at the geo and no Yaspard appeared ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
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... he's given it to the old duffer for a birthday present—hundredth anniversary!" he scoffed. "That would be taking his turn at doing knight-errands. Let's go right on and not disturb the ...
— Three Young Knights • Annie Hamilton Donnell
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... interested me. It was not the letter of a duffer or a swindler—the sort of thing you can tell by its ornate pompousness; and it just caught me when I was somewhat bored by things, so that I rather welcomed it as an excitement. I expected to find you lodging in some miserable cottage—a Chatterton in a garret. I came to ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
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... front of the saloon door, "We 've got them fellers roped and tied, gents, and they simply won't be ace-high with the ladies of this camp after our fandango is over with. We're a holdin' the hand this game, an' it simply sweeps the board clean. That duffer McNeil's the sickest looking duck I 've seen in a year, an' the whole blame bunch of cow-punchers is corralled so tight there can't a steer among 'em get a ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
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... round at Frank, whose head was nodding forward in an uncomfortable attitude, and whose deep breathing showed him to be asleep. "If only he warn't sich a duffer," said Barney to himself, "we might do it easy," then seeing that his partner was in danger of falling, he moved nearer to him, and placed the boy's head gently against his own shoulder so that he might rest easily. Meanwhile the old gentleman's pen went scribbling on at quite ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
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... if I catch my death of cold; I've got to go on a Christmas dance when I deposit you on your doorstep," grumbled Sidney. "Catch! There, you duffer! It's gone into the mud. Sure you won't jump in? Plenty of room. Addie can sit on my knee. Well, ta, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
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... is not worth taking,' said Ernest. 'I'm a regular duffer at painting and sketching. You should ask Lord Connemara. He knows all about art and that sort ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
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... dooant care where, Its her fault aw've to suffer;" Just then a whisper in his ear Said, "Johnny, thar't a duffer," He luk'd, an' thear cloise to him stuck Wor Jenny, burst wi' lafter; "A'a, John," shoo says, "Aw've tried thi pluck, Aw'st think ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
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... "You duffer of a Cranajour! Go along with you! You're the man for my money, old fellow! Here's something for a glass—but come with me for five minutes: I want to interview you and make a jolly good article out ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
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... attended our search in the Mount Margaret district, and we shared the opinion of everybody there that it was a "duffer," and after events had proved what that opinion was worth. Travelling and prospecting as we went, we at last succeeded in finding a reef which we thought was ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
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... department in which he has been brought up to consult his own honor. As a Sportsman (and war is fundamentally the sport of hunting and fighting the most dangerous of the beasts of prey) he feels free. He will tell you himself that the true sportsman is never a snob, a coward, a duffer, a cheat, a thief, or a liar. Curious, is it not, that he has not the same confidence in other sorts ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
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... Grigsby severely, "you are a duffer. I see the solution at a glance. Here you are! These two jump on their ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
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... Mr. DUFF, M.P., to be Governor of New South Wales is a "positive" good, seeing that they might have appointed "a comparative Duffer." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, March 4, 1893 • Various
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... that if a function is continuous it can always be differentiated. A comparatively unphilosophical mind may let such plausible assertions pass unexamined, but a more philosophical mind will say to itself, when it comes across them, 'You great duffer, aren't you going to ask Why?' Suppose that, by way of experiment, I assume that the fourth angle of my quadrilateral will be acute, or again obtuse, will the body of conclusions I can now deduce from my set of postulates be free from contradictions ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
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... stock quite a while ago, an' counted on givin' Snip a chance to run in the park. The poor little duffer don't have much fun down at ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis
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... such a duffer. It was awful. With all the millions of interesting things that there are to say at other times, and I couldn't think of one. At last I said, 'Do ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
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... I mean—for Von Holzen is clever. He is a cold, calculating man, who rules all who come near him. Your brother has only to do with the money part of it. They are making a great fortune. I am told that financially it is splendidly managed. I am a duffer at such things, but I understand better now how it has all been done, and I see how clever it is. They produce the stuff for almost nothing, they sell it at a great price, and they have a monopoly. And the world thinks it is a charity. It is not; ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
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... Do as you're told. And don't look at me like that, you old duffer. It's a mean advantage to take of a sick man. Steady now, steady! Go slow! You mustn't slam a creaking gate. It's bad ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
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... "Keep your eyes sharp for footprints. Wynne must have struck off here into the Fens, it's the most direct course. He wouldn't have been such a duffer as to walk too far out of his way—if he was bent upon going there at all.... Hello! Here's the squelchy mark of a man's ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
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... of this business, an' don't speak to me again till after I'm dead. Do ye mind that, ye big duffer?" ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
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... does not concern you personally. You both know all about the will and its mysterious disappearance, so I need not recapitulate that. Well, I have been to Ireland and seen the lawyers—Burrows and Fagan. I could not make much of Burrows, who is a duffer; but Fagan has his wits about. He had never had to do with that branch of the business, but now the credit of the firm was at stake he busied himself in making searching and pertinent inquiry. A sharpish boy-clerk was certain that the will was left at the office, and kept ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
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... course they are not all exactly like Levick," said Philip, who was a little ashamed of himself for having frightened his little brother; "but I was only joking when I said that about the policeman in Borsham, Dan. What a little duffer you are!" ...
— The Gap in the Fence • Frederica J. Turle
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... matters that most apprentices ignore. One night Jones heard them rotting about 'Great Circle sailing,' and 'ice to the south'ard of the Horn,' and subjects like that, when, properly, they ought to be criticising their Old Man, and saying what an utter duffer of a Second Mate they had. Jones was wonderfully indignant at such talk, and couldn't sleep at night for thinking of all the fine sarcastic remarks he might have made, if he had thought ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
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... out again. "I'll go t'ump hell outa deh mug what did her deh harm. I'll kill 'im! He t'inks he kin scrap, but when he gits me a-chasin' 'im he'll fin' out where he's wrong, deh damned duffer. I'll wipe up ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
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... the metaphysician. I haven't the remotest notion what his jargon means. From Aristotle to William James, I have dipped into quite a lot of them—Descartes, Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer (the thrice besotted Teutonic ass who said that women weren't beautiful), for I hate to be thought an ignorant duffer—and I have never come across in them anything worth knowing, thinking, or doing that I was not taught at my mother's knee. And as for her, dear, simple soul, if you had asked her what was the Categorical Imperative (having explained beforehand the meaning of the words), she would ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
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... see Davy as strong," said Jim, "though he is paying his debts. But Dick certainly is getting to be a conceited duffer. The ayes," he sighed, "seem to have it. The next question is ways and means. Old Bixby's method in St. X looks good to me. A conditional contribution—what do ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
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... here bloomin' Republick is too rediklus for anythink. Look at the kiddish kick-up along o' the visit of the Hempress! Why, if we 'ad that duffer, DEROULEDE, on Newmarket 'Eath, we should just duck him in a 'orsepond, like a copped Welsher. Here they washup him, or else knuckle under to him, like a skeery Coster's missus when her old man's on the mawl, and feels round arter her ribs with his bloomin' high-lows. That's yer high-polite ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
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... rushing of floods in their courses, The rattle of rain on the roofs Recalled the fierce rush of the horses, The thunder of galloping hoofs. And soon one broke out: 'I can suffer No longer the life of a slug, The man that don't race is a duffer, Let's have one more run ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
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... he replied; "it's a shop all right, or if it isn't exactly a shop that old duffer will be glad to get a little good money for one of ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
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... naval authority of his time was the target of snobs, and that, but for his strong personality and the fact that he was always ready to fight them in the open, he would have been superseded, and a gallant duffer might have taken his place, to the detriment of our imperial interests. It is a dangerous experiment to put a man into high office if he has not the instinct of judging the calibre of other men. This applies to every department of ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
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... uneasy resemblance to Colihan's own think-machine. Wilson, the oldest employee of General Products, had been the operator of the maintenance Brain. He had been a nice old duffer, Wilson, always ready to do Colihan a favor. Now that he had been swept out in Colihan's own purge, the Personnel Manager had to deal with a ...
— The Success Machine • Henry Slesar
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... as much as possible of his body were seeking to escape that all-devouring tension in relapse. How familiar it all was! Even during those months at camp the picture would recur and Joe would laugh softly to himself. Poor old duffer! He was a product of the plant just as much as ploughs and tillage implements were. How soon would he begin ...
— Stubble • George Looms
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... muffed a chance. Now and then, perhaps, a miraculously fortunate girl has two victims on the mat simultaneously, and has to lose one. But they are seldom, if ever, both good chances; one is nearly always a duffer, thrown in in the telling to make the ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
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... "Poor old duffer! I'll bet he was disappointed," came sympathetically from Christopher. "Think of his having to stay at home and miss the fun of seeing ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
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