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Updated: June 12, 2025
"Of all the idiots," said the boy "of all the miserable, shortsighted, thick-headed, addle-pated duffers and asses we are the worst! We took pains to find a way into a fiendish maze of tunnels, pits, and caverns, occupied by vampires and enveloped in darkness, in search of a thing that was never there." "As what?" "Look there!" and the boy pointed down.
Tom's evil genius did not lead him into the dens of any of those preparers of cannibalic pastry, who are represented in many standard country legends as doing a lively retail business in the Metropolis; nor did it mark him out as the prey of ring-droppers, pea and thimble-riggers, duffers, touters, or any of those bloodless sharpers, who are, perhaps, a little better known to the Police.
They were very deft and tender in their handling, and Tom bit his lips to refrain from groaning over his acute pain; but for all that the job was a tedious and trying one, and when he was lashed into the sack Tom fainted again. "I must go up with him," said Harry; "those duffers might do some harm."
Newton was absorbed with other things, and Billy was thinking of nothing, and yet both he and Newton were duffers, which goes to prove that without care any one may belong to that class. How many men who have begun life as reputed "duffers" have turned out great men! but you will find that none of them ever did themselves any good till they had cured themselves of that fault.
"A set of duffers, those chaps," said the sergeant in charge of the party, a young fellow named Barton, of good parentage, and Kavanagh's particular friend off duty. "A regular Nile reis, with his crew of four natives, would never have stuck the nuggar there." "I wish we had them Canadian vogajaws, sergeant," said Corporal Adams. "Ay, they are first-rate," replied the sergeant.
She used to pull out his notes and criticize them like bills of lading. "'Say, you! she'd say. 'What do you call this letter to a Hardware Merchant from His Nephew on Learning that His Aunt Has Nettlerash? You Eastern duffers know as much about writing love letters as a Kansas grasshopper does about tugboats.
There was no end to his superstitions, and, whether by reason of them or in spite of them, he certainly prospered. When he died, ten or twelve years ago, he left fifteen thousand pounds. 'I have to thank him for my own good luck. "Look here," he said to me, "it's only duffers that go on quill-driving at a quid a week. A fellow like you ought to be doing better." "Show me the way," I said.
"Are you bound for Mrs. Wilson's too?" "Yes," was the answer. "I had a note last night." "Well," Wynne said gayly, as they mounted the steps, "if the inside of the house is as splendid as the outside, we two poor duffers will be out of place enough in it." Ashe smiled. "You may be a duffer if you like," he retorted, "but I'm not." "Here comes somebody," was the reply.
He knew now how it hindered men to run with the herd even to have friends. It wasted time and strength. And these people were no good anyhow. Howard was one of these dissipated duffers who later on would settle down as a miraculously respectable and incapable G.P. The rest were vague, rattle-brained eccentrics who would fizzle out, no one would know how or care.
A tradition existed, during the seventeenth century, concerning an ancestor of the noble family of Duffers, who, "walking abroad in the fields near to his own house, was suddenly carried away, and found the next day at Paris, in the French king's cellar, with a silver cup in his hand. It is said the king gave him a cup which was found in his hand, and dismissed him."
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