"Ne'er-do-well" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is played in various ways. There are "holes" and "bank" and "caps." But every game finishes up in the same way. One boy loses, another wins. And, as always, he who wins is a clever fellow, a smart fellow, a good fellow. And he who loses is a good-for-nothing, a fool and a ne'er-do-well; just as it happens in the big cities, at the clubs, where people sit playing cards ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... Ganef! Nebich!" by which, in smiting mother tongue, he branded his offspring with attributes of apostate and ne'er-do-well, of idiot and thief. ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... enemy, picking off his sentinels, holding the woods, from which not a Prussian was to emerge alive; while the truth of the matter was that they had made themselves the terror of the peasantry, whom they failed utterly to protect and whose fields they devastated. Every ne'er-do-well who hated the restraints of the regular service made haste to join their ranks, well pleased with the chance that exempted him from discipline and enabled him to lead the life of a tramp, tippling in pothouses and sleeping by the roadside at his own sweet will. Some of ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... Villon, Master of Arts, rhymer at his best, vagabond at his worst, ne'er-do-well at all seasons, and scapegrace ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... pallor was spreading beneath the glow on the younger Fenley's perspiring face. He was obviously shocked beyond measure. Grief and horror had imparted a certain strength to somewhat sullen features. He might be a ne'er-do-well, a loose liver, a good deal of a fool, perhaps, but he was learning one of life's sharpest lessons; in time, it might bring out what was best in his character. The detectives understood now why the butler, who knew the boy even better than his own father, deemed it impossible that ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... its hollows and tumbling down hidden precipices, whose voice God only heard, and God only could still. This daughter might, though from her face I did not think it, have gone away against her father's will. That son might have been a ne'er-do-well at home—how could I tell? The woman might be looking for the lover that had forsaken her—I could not divine. I would speak no words of my own. The Son of God had spoken words of comfort to his mourning friends, when he was the present God and they were the forefront of humanity; I ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... truth he is a sort of ne'er-do-well," the merchant laughed. "I grant that he has not had much chance. His father died when he was a child, and his mother soon married again. There is no doubt that he was badly treated at home, and when he was ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... Chatham in former days would have welcomed Cal Whitson, the official village souse, to his home as readily as he would have admitted the ne'er-do-well Link Ferris to that sanctuary. But of late he had noted the growing improvement in Link's fortunes, as evidenced by his larger store trade, his invariable cash payments and the frequent money orders which went in his name to the ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... sexual crisis at the age of 13, not long after menstruation had become established, and when she had just recovered from an attack of chorea. Her old nurse, who had remained in the service of the family, had a ne'er-do-well son who had disappeared for some years and had just now suddenly returned and thrown himself, crying and sobbing, at the knees of his mother, who thrust him away. The young girl accidentally witnessed this scene. The cries ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... "Smartness," rather, is the preferred epithet of derogation; or, to rise a little in the scale of valuation, it is the word "cleverness," used with that lurking contempt for cleverness which is truly English and which long survived in the dialect of New England, where the village ne'er-do-well or Jack-of-all-trades used to be pronounced a "clever" fellow. The variety of employments to which the American pioneers were obliged to betake themselves has done something, no doubt, to produce a national versatility, a ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... seven children, only three of whom were living: Mary, a prosperous, big matron whose husband, Joe Cunningham, had some exalted position on the Brooklyn police force; Ralph, who was a priest in California; and George, the youngest, a handsome ne'er-do-well of about twenty-five, who was a "heart scald." George floated about his own and neighbouring cities, only coming to see his mother when no ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... Smith, because when, in after years, Tanner Savery occasionally told this story he always called the stealer of his hides 'John Smith' in order to disguise his identity; so we will speak of John Smith too. 'A ne'er-do-well' was the character people gave him. They spoke of him as a man who was his own worst enemy, sadly too fond of his glass, and always quarrelling with his neighbours. Only William Savery refused to believe that any man could ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... strong our affection for the ingratiating ne'er-do-well, there are certain charges against the poet which we cannot ignore. It is a serious thing to have an alleged madman, inebriate, and experimenter in crime running loose in society. But there comes a time when our patience with his indefatigable accusers ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... been children of a little "smock-frock" farmer, and had not been entirely without breeding; but Molly had been the eldest, and had looked after the babies, and done much of the work of the farm, till she plunged into an early and most foolish marriage with the ne'er-do-well member of the old sawyer's family, and had been going deeper into the mire ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 'I wish to goodness you would take your wretched son away and put him in a school for saints, since you think he is so good. As for me, he plagues my life out, and, if you keep him here with his ne'er-do-well ways, you'll come home some ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... where its significance cannot fail to be impressed upon the spectators. For example, a certain Selig release was entitled "Through Another Man's Eyes." Before the next to the last scene, which showed the ne'er-do-well lover peering in at the window, while his former friend bends over to kiss his wife—who might have been the wife of the wayward young man, had he been made of ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... profession, but careless of personal success, and much addicted to port wine, and bearing a striking personal resemblance to the young French noble. These persons, and others, being drawn to Paris by various strong inducements, Darnay is condemned to death as a ci-devant noble, and the ne'er-do-well barrister, out of the great pure love he bears to Darnay's wife, succeeds in dying for him. That is the tale's bare outline; and if any one says of the book that it is in parts melodramatic, one may fitly answer that never was any portion of the world's ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... distinction as a soldier on many a battlefield. It was to her father, profligate and spendthrift, who, after squandering his patrimony, had found himself lodged in jail, that Francoise owed the ignominy of her birthplace, for her mother had insisted on sharing the captivity of her ne'er-do-well husband. ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... waist bound with a girdle. In one hand she held a bow and arrows and in the other a bared blade, and she asked him, "Art thou Ibrahim, son of al-Khasib, lord of Egypt?" "He I am," answered the Prince; and she said, "What ne'er-do-well art thou, who comes to debauch the daughters of Kings? Come: speak with the Sultan."[FN334] "Therewith" (quoth Ibrahim) "I fell down in a swoon and the sailors died[FN335] in their skins for fear; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... nae? They'd gae to the North Pole to see it, if necessary, and they'd gae farrer still to see the murtherer weel hanggit! Ay, your grace, and what will make it a' the mair exciting, is the rumor whilk goes round to the effect that the ne'er-do-well, hizzie, Rose Cameron, hae turnit Crown's evidence to save her ain life, and will gie up all her accomplices. Sae we are a' fain to hear the mystery of the ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... used to meeting death at every turn. Whether Achmet the merchant lived or died was a thing as light as air to me, but at the talk about the treasure my heart turned to it, and I thought of what I might do in the old country with it, and how my folk would stare when they saw their ne'er-do-well coming back with his pockets full of gold moidores. I had, therefore, already made up my mind. Abdullah Khan, however, thinking that I hesitated, pressed ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... some readily declared, or a desire to "be different," but from inability to acquire the point of view from which the most ordinary actions are done. She took no money on Sunday, and this becoming known to her ne'er-do-well neighbours, they made a point of forgetting to come ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... convinced that the book would not make the universal appeal. Yet I should have written the story, even if it had been destined only to have a hundred readers. It had to be written. I wanted to write what was in me, and that invasion of a little secluded French-Canadian society by a ne'er-do-well of the over-sea aristocracy had a psychological interest, which I could not resist. I thought it ought to be worked out and recorded, and particularly as the time chosen—1837—marked a large collision between the British and the French interests in French Canada, or rather of French political ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... reptile, viper, serpent, cockatrice, basilisk, urchin; tiger^, monster; devil &c (demon) 980; devil incarnate; demon in human shape, Nana Sahib; hellhound, hellcat; rakehell^. bad woman, jade, Jezebel. scamp, scapegrace, rip, runagate, ne'er-do-well, reprobate, scalawag, scallawag. roue [Fr.], rake; Sadist; skeesicks [Slang], skeezix [U.S.]; limb; one who has sold himself to the devil, fallen angel, ame damnee [Fr.], vaurien^, mauvais sujet [Fr.], loose fish, sad dog; rounder ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... that you had a ne'er-do-well brother in Australia, who might at any moment appear and disgrace ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... was supposed to be in love with the daughter of the rector, Miriam Ainsley. I thought it was going to be a match, but they were both poor, and the girl suddenly married a young nobleman, a man I disliked very much, a wastrel and a ne'er-do-well. But there were stories about this other young man who was supposed to be in love with her, and perhaps they came to her ears, and drove her to the other man, though it was a case of out of the frying-pan into the fire. The young engineer left the place suddenly, and disappeared, and ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... ask you, for I have not a single bribe to offer. I merely intend to marry you. I am a ne'er-do-well, a debauchee, a tippler, a compendium of all the vices you care to mention. I am not a bit in love with you, and as any woman will forewarn you, I am sure to make you a vile husband. Your solitary chance is to bully me into temperance and propriety and common-sense, with precisely seven ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... returned to his home in Virginia to find it in ruins, his slaves freed and his fields mortgaged. He had pulled himself together for another start, and had practiced law in the little town where his family had lived for generations. Of his two sons, one was a ne'er-do-well. He was one of those brilliant fellows of whom much is expected that never develops. He had a taste for low company, married beneath him, and, after a career that was a continual mortification and humiliation to his father, was killed in a drunken brawl ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... had a pretty fine-looking farm here thirty years or so ago," I continued, "when he brought his wife to it. This barn was new then. But he was a ne'er-do-well, with nothing to be said in his favor, unless you admit his fame as a practical joker. Strange how the ne'er-do-well is often equipped with an extravagant sense of humor! Turner had a considerable retinue among the riffraff boys of the neighborhood, ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... want to love it, too. And I will love it! I'll find his mine if it takes me all the rest of my life. And I'll show the people back home that he was right, that he did know that the gold was here, and that he wasn't just a visionary and a ne'er-do-well!" ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... You hadn't come yet. Of course, I knew you'd be along some day. I kept it to drink to your very good health, Mr. Ellsworth—the health of the man who told me not to come around his house—told me I was an unsettled ne'er-do-well, and not suitable company for his—why, I don't think I have any corkscrew at all." His voice was slow, ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... and eclipse must move Each Cause and Man, dear to the stars and Jove; Nor always can the wisest tell Deferred fulfillment from the hopeless knell— The struggler from the floundering ne'er-do-well. A pall-cloth on the Seven Days fell, Mcclellan— Unprosperously heroical! Who ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... "is it not annoying? that dreadful man with the wooden leg is here, and collecting a crowd round the place. Good morning, Mr Gordon. It is the poor woman's ne'er-do-well husband. She is herself so decent and respectable, that she will be greatly harassed. What can we do, Mr Whittlestaff? Can't we get a policeman?" In this way the conversation was led away to the affairs of Sergeant and Mrs Baggett, ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... son, who was an assistant in a draper's shop in a neighbouring town. She was full of indignation against want of steadiness, though not willing to direct her indignation against the right object—her ne'er-do-well darling. While she was thus charged with anger (for her brother justly defended her son's master and companions from her attacks), she saw Ruth standing with a lover, far away from home, at such a time in the evening, and she boiled over with ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... sheep-herder in a small way during the summer, and an untiring hunter and trapper in winter; Ben Hastings, whose father, an officer of rank in the regular army, was stationed at the fort fifty miles away; and myself, Carlos Burton, a ne'er-do-well, who—but I will say no more on that point, as perhaps you will find out what sort of a fellow I am as my story progresses. We were comfortably sheltered in our valley home, but we heard all the noise of the tempest and felt a good deal of its force; and accustomed as I had become to such things ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... hardly think otherwise. Besides, had not her own cousin,—though a remote and distant one to be sure, the black sheep, the harum-scarum, the ne'er-do-well,—had not he come down out of that weird North country with a hundred thousand in yellow dust, to say nothing of a half-ownership in the ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... cloud of insufficient magnitude to place them behind prison bars, feeling their disgrace, took flight for Texas. Instead of placing the conventional P.P.C. on their cards the letters G.T.T. were used, meaning that the self-expatriated ne'er-do-well had "gone to Texas." I have always understood that in Great Britain the transgressor sought the Continent, where he was often enabled to pass into oblivion. In this manner both countries were relieved of patriots who "left their country ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... a tall, handsome, white-haired, fresh coloured man, proud and attractive in appearance and bearing. His family consisted of a vulgar, irritable wife, who wrangled with him continually over every petty detail, a son, a ne'er-do-well, spendthrift and roue—yet a "gentleman," according to his father's code, two daughters, of whom the elder had married well, and was living in St. Petersburg; and the younger, Lisa—his favourite, who had disappeared from home a year before. Only a short while ago he had ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... sit at home doing naught? Go to the market and buy us an ass and ply thy work with it." Accordingly, he went to the market and stopped by the ass-stand, where behold, he saw his own ass for sale. So he went up to it and clapping his mouth to its ear, said to it, "Woe to thee, thou ne'er-do-well! Doubtless thou hast been getting drunk again and beating thy mother! But, by Allah, I will never buy thee more."[FN120] and he left it and went away. And they ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... the surrounding towns, he had passed a village "lock-up," as the town prisons were then called—a small, square, gray building with long iron-barred windows, and he had seen, at one of these rather depressing apertures on the second floor, a none too prepossessing drunkard or town ne'er-do-well who looked down on him with bleary eyes, unkempt hair, and a sodden, waxy, pallid face, and called—for it was summer and the jail ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... confidence of course, that the doom of the Internal Navigation had just been settled, and that it would be necessary to place in other offices those young men who could in any way be regarded as worth their salt, and, after considerable manoeuvring, had it so arranged that the ne'er-do-well young navvy should recommence his official life under ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... lad but once, when he was a bairn. But I've kept eyes on him. He has nothing, and since I came to London I hear that he has gone gyte, I mean—ye'll not understand me—he is plighted to a long-legged shop-lass, the daughter of a ne'er-do-well Australian land-louper, a doctor. This must not be. Now I'll speak plain to you, plainer than to Tod and Brock, my doers—ye call them lawyers. They did not make ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... at him with a suspicion that was akin to hostility. His son had been a ne'er-do-well. In his heart Wadley was not sure he had not been worse. But he was ready to fight at the drop of the hat any man who dared suggest it. He did not want to listen to any evidence that would lead him to believe ill of the son ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... self-made soapmaker. The first—with Sue, the pretty waitress—is thwarted by a very persistent and unpleasant clerk; the second—with Virginia, a girl of birth and breeding—is threatened by the intrusion of the girl's cousin, a queerly morbid ne'er-do-well. There is no action to speak of, so one can't speak of it. I can only say that the interest of the shrewd analysis held me, and that if my guess as to the sex of the writer be sound it is noteworthy that more pains and skill are bestowed upon the characters of the men than of the two girls, ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917 • Various
... sweet Lady, Saint Mary, worketh miracles at Walsingham, never was poor woman so be-plagued as I, with an ill, ne'er-do-well, good-for-nought, thankless hussy, picked up out of the mire in the gutter! Where be thy wits, thou gadabout? Didst leave them at the Cross yester-morrow? Go thither and seek for them! for ne'er a barley crust shalt thou break ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... fortunate. He had been a little cross with his father, and perhaps a little cross with all the Whartons generally, who did not, he thought, make quite enough of him. In the event of "anything happening" to that ne'er-do-well nephew, he himself would be the heir; and he reflected not unfrequently that something very probably might happen to the nephew. He did not often see this particular cousin, but he always heard of him as being drunk, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... ne'er-do-well, ran away from home, leaving his parents to die of grief. For being kind to a sick "old woman" he was given a magic violin. Soon after, he was arrested for climbing into a house at night. When he was about to be hanged ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... Cousin Martin ("Marty" everybody called the gangling, grinning, idle ne'er-do-well of fourteen), Janice was inclined to be utterly hopeless about him from the start. If he was a specimen of the Poketown boys, she told herself, she had no desire to meet any ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... a man abandons his business or job and complacently leaves the clothing of his children to wife or neighbors in order to drink flip and talk politics, ordinary folk are content to call him a lazy lout, ne'er-do-well, worthless fellow, or scamp. Samuel Adams was not a scamp. He might have been no more than a ne'er-do-well, perhaps, if cosmic forces had not opportunely provided him with an occupation which his contemporaries and posterity could regard as a high service to humanity. In his ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... himself in a desperate predicament, financially ruined by the failure of all his enterprises, and discredited with the government, from which he vainly sought some reparation for the violence done to his journal; worst of all, he found himself without honor at home, where he was looked upon as a ne'er-do-well and a disgrace to the reputation of a fine old military family. As a last resort he applied for reinstatement in the army, it being a time when Prussia seemed to be girding herself for another struggle with Napoleon. But the attempt to borrow ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... to the real goodness at last; he dethrones a saint in order to humanise a scoundrel. This is one typical side of the real optimism of Browning. And there is indeed little danger that such optimism will become weak and sentimental and popular, the refuge of every idler, the excuse of every ne'er-do-well. There is little danger that men will desire to excuse their souls before God by presenting themselves before men as such snobs as Bishop Blougram, or such dastards as Sludge the Medium. There is no pessimism, however stern, that is so stern as this ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... years old, with no settled occupation, and with a wife and family to support. No doubt he seemed to his friends a ne'er-do-well. ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... he had been justified in doing in the endeavour, seeing that, as present occupier of the property, he was bound to provide for his own daughters, and that at his death every acre must go to this ne'er-do-well. The money had been allowed to flow like water for a twelvemonth, and had done no good whatever. There had then been no hope. The man was strong and likely to live,—and after a while married a wife, some woman that he took from the very streets. This ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... depressed by her words, and slunk back to his master like a dog with his tail between his legs. When the ogre saw him, he guessed at once what had happened. He gave Antonio a good scolding, and said, 'I don't know what prevents me smashing your head in, you useless ne'er-do-well! You blurt everything out, and your long tongue never ceases wagging for a moment. If you had remained silent in the inn this misfortune would never have overtaken you, so you have only yourself to blame for your ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... been she who had meant to steal my gold; and no matter how she had known some one meant to get at me, with wolves or anything else. It had been just Collins—and the sheer gall of it jammed my teeth—Collins and Dunn, two ne'er-do-well brats in our own mine. I had realized already that they had been missing from La Chance quite early enough for me to thank them for the boulder on my good road, and Collins——But I hastily revised my conviction that it was Collins I had heard the wolves chop ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... like you. You're unkind and you're harsh. Her husband is the sort of man—well, he's his own worst enemy. A weakling, a ne'er-do-well—he's spent all his money and hers too. She has a child. Do you think you can condemn her for leaving him? As a matter of fact she didn't leave ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... with a rifle; sharp practice in the east becomes highway robbery in the west; but at the same time negative good-nature becomes active self-sacrifice, and a general belief in virtue is translated into a prompt and determined war upon vice. The ne'er-do-well of a family who in one place has his debts paid a couple of times and is then forced to resign from his clubs and lead a cloudy but innocuous existence on a small pension, in the other abruptly finishes his career by being hung ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... of bullets and rescued the riddled flag. Who would have thought it of loutish Tom? The village alehouse one always deemed the goal of his endeavours. Chance comes to Tom and we find him out. To Harry the Fates were less kind. A ne'er-do-well was Harry—drank, knocked his wife about, they say. Bury him, we are well rid of him, he was good for ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... since Elizabeth had married James Sheldon in the face of the most decided opposition on the part of her family. Sheldon was a handsome, shiftless ne'er-do-well, without any violent bad habits, but also "without any backbone," as the Ingelows declared. "There is sometimes hope of a man who is actively bad," Charlotte Ingelow had said sententiously, "but who ever heard ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... recollection than the actual impromptu of a boy of nine. But another, in which, after a painful silence, he replied to the brutal enquiry of a ne'er-do-well relative as to when he meant to grow handsome, by saying that he would do so when the speaker grew good,—is characteristic of the easily-wounded spirit and 'exquisite sensibility of contempt' with which he was to enter upon ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... was the four room building, combined dwelling and shop of Mrs. Olive Edwards, widow of "Bill Edwards," once a promising young man, later town drunkard and ne'er-do-well, dead these five years, luckily for himself and luckier—in a way—for the wife who had stuck by him while he wasted her inheritance in a losing battle with John Barleycorn. At his death the fine old Seabury place had dwindled to a lone ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... wouldn't 'a' come to an out-o'-the-way place like this; we didn't never suit his style, ye see; so poor Ann Kenton— whose misfortun' made her Mrs. Ned Joselyn—cried an' wailed fer a day er two an' then crep' back to the city like a whipped dog. Funny how women'll care fer a wuthless, ne'er-do-well chap that happens to be good-lookin', ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... again next evening Lestrade was furnished with much information concerning our prisoner. His name, it appeared, was Beppo, second name unknown. He was a well-known ne'er-do-well among the Italian colony. He had once been a skilful sculptor and had earned an honest living, but he had taken to evil courses and had twice already been in gaol—once for a petty theft and once, as we had already heard, for ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... although our contemporary seems ignorant of the fact, he disclaimed any such intention, A press announcement was circulated by his eldest son, on his behalf, that the rascal was meant to be a sentimentalist and ne'er-do-well, who, whatever his opinions, would have come to a bad end. When the Commonwealth, therefore, talks of Lord Tennyson as "about right," it shows, in a rather vulgar way, the danger of incomplete information. Were we to copy its manners we ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... matter o' that it's easy to explain; but it wasn't my jump I was goin' to tell about; it was the jump o' a poor critter—a sort o' ne'er-do-well who jined a band o' us trappers the day before we arrived at this place, on our way through the mountains on a huntin' expedition. He was a miserable specimen o' human natur'—all the worse that he had a pretty stout ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... fellow had hardly got the words out of his mouth when the glitter of something bright he had dropped on the ground, caused me to stoop and to pick up a gold watch bracelet set in diamonds. The same instant I heard a man running on the road behind me, and who should come up but the very "ne'er-do-well" who helped me to wash down my car ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... delivered in their streets on a Sunday morning. It is one of their pre-occupations to send their children to Sunday School by roundabout roads, lest they should pick up abominable blasphemies. When the tills of the little shops are raided, or when the family ne'er-do-well levies on his women with more than usual brutality, they know, because they suffer, what principles are being put into practice. If these people could quietly be shown a quiet way out of it all, very many of them would call in their savings (they are richer than they look), ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... doing very good editorial work," she said mendaciously, "but, after all, you are only playing at journalism. The real journalist—as I know him—is a Bohemian; a font of cleverness running to waste; a reckless, tender-hearted, jolly, careless ne'er-do-well who works like a Trojan and plays like a child. He is very sophisticated at his desk and very artless when he dives into the underworld for rest and recreation. He lives at high tension, scintillates, burns his red fire without discrimination ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... standing to make mockery of its discomfited architect. The daily anxiety about Comus and his extravagant ways and intractable disposition had been gradually lulled by the prospect of his making an advantageous marriage, which would have transformed him from a ne'er-do-well and adventurer into a wealthy idler. He might even have been moulded, by the resourceful influence of an ambitious wife, into a man with some definite purpose in life. The prospect had vanished with cruel suddenness, ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... farmer's house where the farmer was sick, almost dying, with three little kids and a frail little woman trying to keep things up. He worked like ten men for more than a month on that farm, and when he went away he wouldn't take a cent. That's the sort of ne'er-do-well Thomas Jefferson was. ...
— Thomas Jefferson Brown • James Oliver Curwood
... came across in a piano-case," he answered, with a laugh, which made me remember that this was a man of station and some standing in Paris, while I was but a vagabond and ne'er-do-well. ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... that those whom he meets in Argentina are as noble and pure as those he left at home. Argentina offers to-day a splendid opening for the best of England's sons, but she does not want the loafer nor the ne'er-do-well. Can it be wondered at that England's prestige is seriously injured when so many of the "wasters," and worse, are sent from the country? It is but natural that from these, who go to foreign countries, England is judged. To my mind we should send abroad men who are bound to succeed, men ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... was a Christian. Old Uncle Tommy Lincoln, as his friends familiarly called him, was a good man. He was what might be called a ne'er-do-well. As the world counts success, Thomas Lincoln, the father of Abraham Lincoln, was not successful, but he was an honest man. He was a truthful man. He was a man of faith. He worshipped God. He belonged to ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... accordance with rules to be framed by the council. There was a great deal more said that night to the same effect, some of the statements being received with rapturous applause—chiefly by the lazy and ne'er-do-well members of the party; but I could see that although all hands had in the first instance jumped readily enough at the prospect of an easy and luxurious life, free—as they thought—from all restraint, in a land of ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... out by the door, when behold, the husband came bringing with him two of his familiars. So the wife met him at the entrance and said to him, "O Man, O miserablest of men, O thou disappointed, O thou dissatisfied,[FN487] thou hast brought to me a fellow which was a thief, a ne'er-do-well like unto thyself." "How so?" asked he, and she answered, "The man stole the two geese and stole away." Thereupon the husband went out and catching sight of the guest running off shouted to him, "Come back! Come back! even ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... was a quitter. Jones had once read a story in the Popular Magazine, in which a Railway Manager had cast scorn on a ne'er-do-well. "God does surely hate a quitter," said ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... husband. Fond, but, alas! fickle. A family black sheep, or if not black, at least striped. Likely not to plague you long, if he's sent on many more jobs like the last. Said to be good-tempered, but not docile. Kind, as men go, but a ne'er-do-well, a prodigal, a waster. Something whispers in my ear that he'll make a better friend than ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... that for the rest of their days their troubles had all ended. So he walked about and made plans, but still he did not tell them who he was. It was so good a joke that he intended to make the most of it. But he said that he had news of their Jozef, who was not so badly off for a ne'er-do-well. Before he left the next day, he promised, they should be told about their boy. And he laughed again and slapped his pocketful of gold and the two old folks sat blinking at him in awe, until he announced that he was hungry and confided to them that his friend Jozef had once told him ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... Woodcock, the Yeoman, a rich, sharp, forthright, crusty old fellow with a pretty daughter, Belinda, whom he is determined never to marry but to a substantial farmer of her own class: her suitor, a clever ne'er-do-well named Reynard, of course tricks the old gentleman by an intrigue and a disguise. It is Reynard's sister Hillaria, however, "a Railing, Mimicking Lady" with no money and no admitted scruples, but enough beauty and wit to match when and with whom she chooses, who dominates the play; ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... children to his trade. Each did his duty, or was adjured to do it, in the "state of life to which it had pleased God to call him." Migration to distant occupations or to foreign lands was but for the adventurous few. The ne'er-do-well blew, like seed before the wind, to distant places, but mankind at large stayed at home. Here and there exceptional industry or extraordinary capacity raised the artisan to wealth and turned the "man" into the "master." But for the most part even industry and endowment ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... invaders. On that occasion, all sorts and conditions of men were represented, from the religious enthusiast, to the ignorant bigot, and from the rich man who was sacrificing his all in the cause that he believed to be right, to the tramp and ne'er-do-well, who had allied himself with that cause ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... Glen and gone to school with Rilla. They had been good friends then, though Hannah had been three years the older. She had married very young and had gone to live in Millward. What with hard work and babies and a ne'er-do-well husband, her life had not been an easy one, and Hannah seldom revisited her old home. Rilla had visited her once soon after her marriage, but had not seen her or even heard of her for years; she knew, however, that she and Jims would find welcome and harbourage in ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the girl up to now?" he demanded, savagely. "She's doubtless met some ne'er-do-well unbeknown to Master Ogilvie. I must see Mistress Judith at once, on the very instant, and have ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... the question they had been expecting all day. It was in anticipation of this that messengers had been scouring the neighbourhood in search of that young ne'er-do-well, Tom Tufton, ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... a failure as a mechanic as well? Was I unfit for anything? The other fellows at the shop had a definite foothold in life, while I was a waif, a ne'er-do-well, nearly two years in America with nothing to show ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... alive? She was a widow? Paul Schlieben interrupted the vestryman, and drew a long breath as though of relief. Although he had never spoken of it, he had always had a secret fear of the father: if he turned out to be a drunkard or a ne'er-do-well? A load fell from his mind now—he was dead, he could not do any more harm. Or had he died of an illness after all, of a wasting disease that is handed down to children and children's children? He had been told that ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... spirits as he read over this letter, and he chuckled as he addressed it. He pictured himself in the rear room of the bar in the Rue Auber, relating, across the little marble-topped table, this American adventure, to the delight of that blithe, ne'er-do-well outcast of an exalted poor family, that gambler, blackmailer and merry rogue, Don Antonio Moliterno, comrade and teacher of this ductile Valentine since the later days of adolescence. They had been school-fellows in Rome, ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... the sea will no longer be regarded, to the same extent as in the past, as the refuge for the ne'er-do-well of the land-living populace; and this, more than perhaps anything else, will help to render travelling by the great ocean highways safe and comfortable. It is a common complaint on the part of owners that by far the larger part of maritime disasters are directly traceable ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... here," said Evan Lamotte, bitterly. "Evan, the ne'er-do-well, does not seek his friends when the sun shines. Eh, Conny? Don't go in," laying one hand upon her arm, as she was about to turn toward the house, "I—I came to ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... there the strife of it began. When he put detectives upon the lad's path, had him followed from Union Street to the caves and from the caves to his place of employment, the report came to him that he was interesting himself in a callous ne'er-do-well, the friend of rogues and vagabonds, the companion of sluts, the despair of the firm which employed him. He had expected something of the kind, but the seeming truth dismayed him. In a second interview with Boriskoff he used all his best powers of argument and entreaty to effect ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... Guard; 'I'd like to get in there along of him.' 'Get in with you, then,' says he (only we was jabbering that willainous tongue o' theirs), for he sees the name on my traps is the same as that on your traps—and in I get. Now, Mr. Cecil, let me say one word for all, and don't think I'm a insolent, ne'er-do-well for having been and gone and disobeyed you; but you was good to me when I was sore in want of it; you was even good to my dog—rest his soul, the poor beast! There never were a braver!—and stick to you I will till you kick me away like a cur. The ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... had been twice married, the second time to the widow West. She had brought with her to her new home a good-looking, long-legged, black-eyed, black-haired ne'er-do-well of a son, a year or so younger than Hiram. He was a shrewd, quick-witted lad, idle, shiftless, willful, ill-trained perhaps, but as bright and keen as a pin. He was the very opposite to poor, dull Hiram. Eleazer White had never loved his son; he was ashamed of the poor, slack-witted ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... old lady, drily; "but as I have some regard for the conventions, I will present to you, Miss Fairfield, my scape-grace and ne'er-do-well nephew, ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... ago. They only had a lease of the place they lived in, and I really cannot tell you anything whatever about them. There was a son, who would, I suppose, succeed to any property his father left; but he was a ne'er-do-well, and was seldom at home, and I have never seen or ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... where he asked to be made a member of the Calvinistic Church, and to be recognized as lawful husband of the woman with him; but in a short time the community discovered that the new convert was no good, and expelled him from the bosom of the Church of Calvin. Our ne'er-do-well having no more money, his wife left him, and he, not knowing what to do next, took the desperate step of going to Bressa, a town within the Venetian territory, where he sought the governor, telling him his name, the story of his flight, and his repentance, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... who, at forty, was generally regarded as a failure, a ne'er-do-well. But for the accident of war he would in all likelihood have ended his days "unwept, unhonored, and unsung." We have a picture of this middle-aged man, clerking for his younger brothers in a country store, at eight hundred dollars a year, and day ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... possibility of this murder having been committed by one of Mr. Glenthorpe's workmen with a grudge against him? Well, it's a very strange thing, but Queensmead was telling me this morning that one of Mr. Glenthorpe's workmen had a grudge against him. He's a chap named Hyson, the local ne'er-do-well, who was almost starving when Mr. Glenthorpe came to the district. Glenthorpe was warned against employing him, but the fellow got round him with a piteous tale, and he put him on. He proved to be just as ungrateful as the average ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... had forgiven his mother from the first. What she did must have been done with the best intentions. The poverty of her son and the dire distress of his father had tempted her to obtain possession of money by forgery. The bank had at once suspected the ne'er-do-well son. The son had been proclaimed dead, and the mother had ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... no allegiance to King George. I have always been a ne'er-do-well, despised and scouted by a hard father and a villainous brother or two, and life with these good fellows here is, after all, to my mind. There's independence in it, and I prefer to be independent; and danger, and I like danger. A wronged man wrongs others in his turn, mistress; and it ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... the narrator had been boss-of-the-board out beyond Bourke. He spoke as though well educated, and a gentleman—as drovers often are. Why, then, was he on the road? I put him down as a scapegrace, for he had all the winning pleasant manner of a ne'er-do-well. ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... shocked voice; she knew very well who was meant. Joe was the ne'er-do-well of a son-in-law whose iniquities had transformed the young and comely Priscilla into the meagre and colourless Mrs. Baxter. 'He has no right to trouble her!' she ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... want to seem unkind, Rowland, but my notion is, that an honest gentleman, such as you, educated, and a clergyman is good enough for any lady; and that a good, religious girl, who has saved my mother's life, is a great deal too good for a ne'er-do-well fellow like me. But I won't fall before I'm pushed, since I'm pretty sure she thinks so too. So, now, cheer up, old boy! and show the heiress what a sermon you can preach; and let her see you don't care a fig for her; and then, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... countries. Like the majority of other Germans who had emigrated before him, he was aiming for "the States," where, according to the popular idea in Europe, money can be had for nothing in the shape of any expenditure of labour, time, or trouble. Really, the ne'er-do-well and shiftless seem to regard America as a sort of Tom Tiddler's ground for the idle, the lazy, and the dissolute—although, mind you, Fritz was none of these, having made up his mind to work as hard in the New World as he would have been forced to do in the Old for the fortune he could ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... And though his Cora had been so much to him, had he not often felt, had he not been feeling all his days, that Fate had robbed him of the sweetest joy that is given to man, in that she had not come to him loving him with her early spring of love, as she had loved that poor ne'er-do-well? How infinite had been his regrets. How often had he told himself that, with all that Fortune had given him, still Fortune had been unjust to him because he had been robbed of that. Not to save his life could he have ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... man. This man was Gregory Novikh, known throughout the world under the name of Rasputin. A Siberian peasant by birth, immoral, filthy in person, untrained in mind, he had early received the nickname of Rasputin, which means "ne'er-do-well," on account of his habits. A drunkard, and a libertine always, he posed as a sort of saint and miracle worker, let his hair grow long, and tramped about the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish |
