Vulgar words in Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son (Page 1)

This book at a glance

ass x 3
cuss x 22
dick x 1
jackass x 1
jimmy x 1
            

Page 1

~   ~   ~   Sentence 67   ~   ~   ~

You could take these men and soak their heads overnight in a pailful of ideas, and they wouldn't absorb anything but the few loose cuss-words that you'd mixed in for flavoring.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 69   ~   ~   ~

When an ass gets the run of the pasture he finds thistles.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 80   ~   ~   ~

A broad-gauged merchant is a good deal like our friend Doc Graver, who'd cut out the washerwoman's appendix for five dollars, but would charge a thousand for showing me mine--he wants all the money that's coming to him, but he really doesn't give a cuss how much it is, just so he gets the appendix.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 231   ~   ~   ~

Absalom Magoffin, who had had all the post-mortem trade of the town for forty years, was a queer old cuss, and he had some mighty aggravating ways.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 362   ~   ~   ~

Then, too, I never saw such a cuss for system.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 372   ~   ~   ~

I didn't dare send Sol to the machine-shop, because I knew he wouldn't have been there a week before he'd have had the shop running on Götterdämmerung or one of those other cuss-word operas of Wagner's.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 515   ~   ~   ~

Of course, I didn't let on that I knew anything about a quarrel, but I gradually steered the conversation around to you, and while I don't want to hurt your feelings, I am violating no confidence when I tell you that the mention of your name aroused about the same sort of enthusiasm that Bill Bryan's does in Wall Street--only Helen is a lady and so she couldn't cuss.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 569   ~   ~   ~

And when there's a cuss in the family and it comes down to betting which, on general principles the man always carries my money.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 625   ~   ~   ~

While I don't mean to say that the average wedding present carries a curse instead of a blessing, it could usually repeat a few cuss-words if it had a retentive memory.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 641   ~   ~   ~

Naturally, Percy had hardly got the pap-rag out of his mouth before he learned to smoke cigarettes, and he could cuss like a little gentleman before he went into long pants.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 886   ~   ~   ~

It's a mighty good thing to understand French if you can use it to some real purpose, but when all the good it does a fellow is to help him understand the foreign cuss-words in a novel, or to read a story which is so tough that it would make the Queen's English or any other ladylike language blush, he'd better learn hog-Latin!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 893   ~   ~   ~

Rob a miser's safe and he's broke; but you can't break a big merchant with a jimmy and a stick of dynamite.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 977   ~   ~   ~

When Buck himself had used up all the cuss-words in Missouri on his conduct, she had sense enough to know that his stock of trouble was full, and that if she wanted to get a hold on him she mustn't show him stripes, but something in cheerful checks.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,010   ~   ~   ~

Of course, this is all very right and proper if you can keep it up, but I've known a good many men who would kiss their wives on the honeymoon between swallows of coffee and look like an ass a year later when she chirruped out at the breakfast-table, "Do you love me, darling?"

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,040   ~   ~   ~

Curious old cuss, the Doc.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,071   ~   ~   ~

Well, sir, I'm hanged if that fellow, whom I'd raised from the time he was old enough to poke a barrel along the runways with a pointed stick, didn't blow a cloud of cigar smoke in my face to show that he was just as big as I was, and start tight in to regularly cuss me out.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,191   ~   ~   ~

One bad boy in a Sunday-school picnic can turn it into a rough-house outfit for looting orchards, and one little cuss in your office can demoralize your kids faster than you can fire them.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,212   ~   ~   ~

He was a solemn little cuss, but I didn't get much chance to size him up, because his ma started right in to explain how he'd been raised--no whipping, no--but I cut it short there, and asked her to get down to brass tacks, as I was very busy trying to see that 70,000,000 people were supplied with their daily pork.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,258   ~   ~   ~

he'll sit in a small game with a large cigar, breathing a blend of light-blue cigarette smoke and dark-blue cuss-words, and next day, when his heart beats four and skips two, and he has that queer, hopping sensation in the knees, he'll complain bitterly to the other clerks that this confining office work is killing him.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,361   ~   ~   ~

Was a mighty particular cuss.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,421   ~   ~   ~

That's why I've never had any Honest Old Toms, or Good Old Dicks, or Faithful Old Harrys handling my good money week-days and presiding over the Sabbath-school Sundays for twenty years, and leaving the old man short a hundred thousand, and the little ones short a superintendent, during the twenty-first year.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,441   ~   ~   ~

For when a fellow's given to that, his men secretly won't care a cuss whether he's pleased or not.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,525   ~   ~   ~

Almost looked to Thorn as if he might have to go to work for a living, but he was a tenacious cuss, and stuck it out till one day when Jim came back to Leadville from a near-by camp, where he'd been looking at some played-out claims.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,572   ~   ~   ~

She's jest the cutest little cuss ever you see.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,651   ~   ~   ~

But if we haven't anything to sell, we ain't doing anything to shove the world along; and we ought to make room on it for some coarse, commercial cuss with a sample-case.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,653   ~   ~   ~

All books and no business makes Jack a jack-in-the-box, with springs and wheels in his head; all play and no work makes Jack a jackass, with bosh in his skull.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,668   ~   ~   ~

But you take the average boy who's been loaded up with this sort of stuff, and dig into him, and his mind is simply a cemetery of useless dates from the tombstones of those tough and sporty old kings, with here and there the jaw-bone of an ass who made a living by killing every one in sight and unsettling business for honest men.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,686   ~   ~   ~

A boy doesn't pick up cuss-words when his mother's around or learn cussedness from his father.

Page 1