"Burglar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appearance of my window-blind. I saw, in fact, that my room was illuminated. Remembering that I had been careful to put out my lamp before I left, I feared, as I opened the hall door, a troublesome encounter with a mad housebreaker. Mad, for no room such as mine could attract a burglar who has even the slightest ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... our houses. War asked for the simplest gifts from men, physical strength, uncomplaining endurance and courage. The war's ended, and if those same gifts are to continue to secure social advancement, every policeman who captures a burglar ought to be made a bank-president. When I demand that a man shall have traditions to be my friend, I ask no more than when I refuse to buy ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... door an inch and peeped at us as we lay, looking, indeed, more like a jumble sale than anything. Mawson wore a Burglar cap tied under his chin, and a collection of khaki mufflers, looking equipped for a Channel crossing. Miss Brindley's head was tied up in a bandana handkerchief; Jo's in a purple oilsilk hood; others shared mackintosh sheets and blankets; West pulled ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... story-tellers, and Aretino. In all ages the moll, the prostitute, the heroine of so many old-world romances, has been the protectress, companion, and comfort of the sharper, the thief, the pickpocket, the area-sneak, and the burglar. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... me, of all people in the world, of climbing in through the study window? Sybil must have been dreaming. She's an idiot of a girl. She'd imagine anything from a ghost to a burglar. What are we going to do about it? I wish to goodness they would tell Miss Mitchell! I'd rather she knew. I've a jolly good mind to go and tell her myself. Then I should have first innings and she'd hear our side of it. Hello! ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... perhaps it was a burglar! Euphrasia, undaunted, ran through the darkened front hall to where the graceful banister ended in a curve at the foot of the stairs, and there, on the bottom step, sat a man with his head in his hands. Euphrasia shrieked. He looked up, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of Abigail reposed much silver and gold and ivory, wrought by clever artisans into articles of great beauty and some utility; but with scarce a glance the burglar passed them by, directing his course straight across the room to a small wall safe cleverly hidden by a ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... all the time, day and night! You let a burglar come sneaking in, or a tramp or someone—wow! Grabs 'em ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... Lucy had sent me my trunk, and I had to convey it somehow. I didn't sleep at all the first night. There was a fire-escape immediately outside my open window, and there was not a sign of a lock on the door. On Monday I bought a screw-eye and hook for fifteen cents, and put nails in the sash for burglar stops. ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... a Yankee at Dieppe and winged him for saying through his confounded nose that Old England was played out; been a controlling voice already in his shipping firm; drunk five other of the best men in London under the table; broken his neck steeple-chasing; shot a burglar in the legs; been nearly drowned, for a bet; killed snipe in Chelsea; been to Court for his sins; stared a ghost out of countenance; and travelled with a lady of Spain. If this young pup had done the last, it would be all he had; and yet, no doubt, he would ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to the desired object meets his eyes; or as when the mother, with the baby upstairs very much on her mind, imagines she hears him crying when the cat yowls or the next-door neighbors start their phonograph. The ghost-seeing and burglar-hearing illusions belong here as well. The mental set facilitates responses that are congruous ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... see my dogs? These are greyhounds, those are dachshunde. 2. They[1] are good dogs. 3. I hear a[2] noise; it[1] is burglars. 4. It was a burglar, but it[3] seemed to me a little late to go down. 5. I want to learn that one[4] of the sciences which is most difficult. 6. These soldiers are better fed than those of Napoleon. 7. That makes no difference.[5] 8. That's all right but look at this! 9. It[3] would be difficult to ...
— French Conversation and Composition • Harry Vincent Wann
... placed at the head of a looted government on the sharp edge of a crisis that had not been properly upholstered. The Buchanan cabinet had left little except a burglar's tool or two here and there to mark its operations, and, with the aged and infirm General Scott at the head of a little army, and no encouragement except from the Abolitionists, many of whom had never seen a colored man outside of a minstrel performance, the President ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... function all the feelings are pure and moral, those whose action is most earthly and animal and selfish uniting themselves at their highest with the spiritual, for performance whose compass reaches beyond an individual, momentary good. A burglar or a murderer may exhibit courage; but here, a manly quality backing baseness and brutality for selfish, short-sighted ends, there is an introverted and bounded action, no expansive upward tendency, and thence no poetry. But courage, when ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... ears rang with that awful, smothered cry of his young mistress, of the tortured voice of the doctor, helplessly choking, "Oh, my girl! My daughter!" But by this time Buck was three steps from the bottom, and the back of the burglar was toward him as he crouched over the struggling girl, choking the screams in her delicate throat. Like a vampire, Buck sprang from the third stair, landing on the man's back, his legs worked inside the man's elbows, pinioning the scoundrel's ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... chuckle that Mac was "a little bewildered, like a hen with a red rag on her tail—divided in his mind like. As for Dad, he still thinks me a burglar ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... burglar Miss Molloy came in a stealthy manner at irregular intervals to the back-door of the house, and swept the press of its contents, made them up into a bundle of enormous size, and carried them off on the shoulders of an appropriately disreputable blackguard boy—as Shank called him—whom she ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... can hardly be got to bear witness against their unhappy prisoner. Povareto anca lu! There is no work and no money; people must do something; so they steal. Ci vuol pazienza! Bear witness against an ill-fated fellow- sufferer? God forbid! Stop a thief? I think a burglar might run from Rialto to San Marco, and not one compassionate soul in the Merceria would do aught to arrest him—povareto! Thieves came to the house of a friend of mine at noonday, when his servant was out. They tied their ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... typical runt of a Paris bull eyed us. The older saluted him with infinite respect, the respect of a shabby rube deacon for a well-dressed burglar. They exchanged a few well-chosen words, in French of course. "What ya got there?"—"An American."—"What's wrong with him?"—"H-mmm" mysterious shrug of the shoulders followed by a whisper in the ear of the city thug. The latter ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... hope so; I most devoutly hope he felt it! He was most tenderly solicitous for my health; and if he had really shot me there in the garden it would have had an ugly look. Armitage, the false baron, would have been identified as a daring burglar, shot while trying to burglarize the Claiborne mansion! But I wouldn't take the Claiborne plate for ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... own slowly. She did not attempt to go back to the outer office, but waited by the closed door. She recalled the night, the terror of that unknown presence in her darkened flat, and shuddered. Then Beale, surprisingly sober, had come in and he and the "burglar" had ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... these implements, where they lay with his old converted flintlock gun on the rack above the still glowing stove. Sh! The child on the settle muttered something in her sleep, and the old man, rigid as an ice block, stood listening to her breathing, as if he were a burglar robbing a rich man's bedroom, in which the owner himself lay sleeping. But she quieted down again, and once more ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... of a burglar nowadays is attended by various compulsory expenses. A successful burglar should be able to purchase skeleton-keys and "jemmies" of the most exquisite and delicate quality. Moreover, he should be able to entertain largely, and to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... the era of Charles Peace, no less than of John Bull—on Sundays and Saint's days a churchwarden, who carried the plate; on week days a burglar who lifted it. Truly, as John Mitchel said on his convict hulk: "On English felony the sun never sets." May it set ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... long holes drilled by these beetles that the Aye-Aye searches with his long fingers, one of which, on the fore-hand, is specially thin, slender, and skeleton-like. It looks like the tool of some lock-picker. Our large-eyed little friend, like the burglar, comes out at night and finds these holes on the trees where he slept during the day. His sensitive thin ears, made to hear every scratch, can detect the rasping of the retired grub, feasting in apparent security below. Naturalists ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... done, the transformation accomplished; his inability to refrain from interfering had encompassed his downfall, had changed a peaceable and law-abiding alien within British shores into a busybody, a trespasser, a misdemeanant, a—yes, for all he knew to the contrary, in the estimation of the Law, a burglar, prime candidate for a ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... to be a burglar," he said placidly, "and I have no doubt I should have been if I hadn't happened to be born in that nice house next door. I can't see any harm in ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... eloquent language, you have the 'slight disadvantage' of being off your head. You see a total stranger in a public street; you choose to start certain theories about his eyebrows. You then treat him as a burglar because he enters an honest man's door. The thing is too monstrous. Admit that it is, Basil, and come home with me. Though these people are still having tea, yet with the distance we have to go, we shall be ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... he said, "this is an education. In my innocence I thought that a burglar shoved his swag in a sack and then pushed off, and did the rest in the back parlour of a beer-house in Notting Dale. As it is, my only wonder is that you didn't bring a brazier and ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... here!" the girl was saying excitedly. "Where do you s'pose it came from? Oh, it's just like one my sister had that was stolen by a burglar last winter—why!" as the back of the pin was disclosed, "it is hers! There's the 'B' I scratched one day, and Tip gave me an awful scolding for it! I was going to scratch my whole name, but she caught me too quick—my, didn't ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... midnight hour. No voice broke the stillness of the night. The watchman scarcely heard his own footsteps in the newly fallen snow as he slowly made his way along Middle Street,[37] with his lantern and staff. He was not expecting to encounter a burglar, breaking and entering a shop, store, or residence. He heard the clock strike once more, and was just pursing his lips to cry, "Two o'clock, and all's well," when he caught a glimpse of a figure in front of Theophilus Lillie's store.[38] Was it a burglar? The man was standing stock-still, as ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... There's a man, a burglar in the garden! And Walter is throttling him! They are fighting dreadfully! They'll kill ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... horse sense. Most women are always hearing burglars. Probably one in a thousand turns out to be a real, live housebreaker. Whenever the wise woman hears one fussing with the lock on the front door or trying to squeeze into the pantry window, she just says: "Same old burglar. He'll be gone in the morning," and he always is. That's a heap better plan than arousing the household and suffering the unmerciful torture that a family given to ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... Fire Department. Not long ago, a company of firemen, returning from a fire, beheld a man trying to break into a house. The company immediately comprehended that it was its duty to arrest that man. And so the Head Man he blew his horn, and away they went, "apparatus" and all, after the burglar, who had now taken to his heels. The bells rang, the men shouted; and amid cries of "Sock her down, boys! Roll her, boys, roll her! Hi! yi! yi!" the novel chase went on. But, as they could not overtake the fleet-footed thief, a stream of water was played upon him, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... you tell me that my assertion is a mere quibble—that it matters not whether we call a man unselfish or wisely selfish—you fail to see that, when we understand this truth, there is no longer any sin. 'Sin' is then seen to be but a mistaken notion of what brings happiness. Last night's burglar and your bishop differ not morally but intellectually—one knowing surer ways of achieving his own happiness, being more sensitive to that oneness of the race which thrills us all in varying degrees. When you know this—that ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... or thimble-rigging on bush race-courses, had spent the intervening time in gaol. Pinkerton, who was an American of a somewhat similar type to Cheyne, but of a more villainous nature, was an expert burglar, and a very fitting companion to the astute and well-educated Forreste, ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... ambition of Keturah's life to see a burglar. The second of the memorable nights referred to crowned this ambition by not only one burglar, but two. She it was who discovered them, she who frightened them away, and nobody but she ever saw them. She confesses to a natural ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... thought of the substitution of some other body. It might be done, of course; indeed, she had a dim remembrance of having read of such a case somewhere, but there could be no object attained in this affair. Frederick dead, apparently killed by a burglar in his own apartments, was quite understandable: but kidnapped and still alive, another body substituted for his, resembling him sufficiently to be unrecognised as a fraud, would be a perfectly senseless procedure. ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... lawlessness would be orders from ME. And all that you have done this morning is only the assertion of MY legal right to this house. If I disavow your act, as I might, I leave you as helpless as any tramp that was ever kicked from a doorstep,—as any burglar that was ever collared on the fence by ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... you for some inconvenience. I don't see why you should be suspected. You will be supposed to be fast asleep on your virtuous couch, while some bad burglar is robbing your worthy employer. Of course you will be thunderstruck when in the morning the appalling discovery is made. I'll tell you what will be ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... laughed Old King Brady. "You must know, sir, that we are engaged upon very important business. Some time ago we saw you come out of that house, and thinking you were a burglar we followed you ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... wealth, if the diabolism of intemperance are to be curbed, it is universal suffrage which must hold the reins. Talk of taking the ballot out of the hand of the poor citizen! As well fling the revolver out of window when the burglar is in the house. One of the keenest critics of American life has said: "Corruption does not so much rot the masses; it poisons Congress. Credit mobilier and money rings are not housed under thatched roofs; they flaunt at the capital." ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... inventor got in rather late, and after a visit to the aeroplane shed, to see that all was right there, he went to bed, first connecting up the burglar-alarm wires that guarded the doors and ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... "Now, only that Burglar Bill and Company aren't such fools as to come out on such a night as this, here's their chance. Why, they might burgle every house on one side of the street while the whole division was on the other. Blest if I ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... a draught—might wake up one of these birds. And there you are. That's the one rule of politeness for a burglar, Terry. Close the doors ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... said Trent; 'just to oblige you, Murch, especially as I know you don't believe a word of it. First: no traces of any kind left by your burglar or burglars, and the window found fastened in the morning, according to Martin. Not much force in that, I allow. Next: nobody in the house hears anything of this stampede through the library, nor hears any ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... how, on 8 Dec., 1900, a number of Nelson relics in the Painted Hall, at Greenwich Hospital, were stolen, during the night, by a burglar, who escaped; and may like to know the story of Nelson's coat. The Times of 9 July, copies the following ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... but absolutely without ornamental devices of any kind. In fact, the silver can be limited to forks and spoons, and the rest Sheffield or prince's plate. Silver is not expensive, but plate is considered quite smart, and it has the advantage of being utterly valueless from the burglar's point of view. ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... peculiar to himself, as for instance—'Yeats, the other night I was arrested by a policeman—was walking round Regent's Park barefooted to keep the flesh under—good sort of thing to do—I was carrying my boots in my hand and he thought I was a burglar; and even when I explained and gave him half a crown, he would not let me go till I had promised to put on my boots before I ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... am sorry to say, of the way in which a naturally amiable and considerate householder might be expected to listen to the arguments of an adroit and accomplished burglar showing cause why he should be locked into the plate-closet to protect him from ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... case Roland Reed was not likely to appear again, and his story would be disbelieved. It was a strange one, he could not help admitting to himself. Yet he could not believe that the mysterious stranger was a burglar. If he were, it seemed very improbable that he would have left his booty within half a mile of the bank, in the very village where the theft had been committed. It was all very queer, and he could not see ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... conspirators had managed, by means of a false key, and by disconnecting the burglar alarm, to enter the airship shed. They were about to proceed with their work of destruction when Koku ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... sent off for some of General Darrington's friends, and also notified the coroner; and he did not leave the room again until the inquest was held. The window on the front piazza was open, and witness had searched the piazza and the grounds for tracks, but discovered no traces of the burglar and murderer, who had escaped before the rain ceased, otherwise the tracks would have been found. Witness was positive that the prisoner was the same person whom he had seen coming out of the bed-room, and with ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... and hardened female, uttering the wild screams of intoxication, or pouring forth from her dark, filthy place of confinement torrents of polluted mirth; the juvenile pickpocket, ripe in all the ribald wit and traditional slang of his profession; the ruffian burglar, with strong animal frame, dark eyebrows, low forehead, and face full of coarseness and brutality; the open robber, reckless and jocular, indifferent to consequences, and holding his life only in ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... before the burglar had so neatly effected his entrance, the men left the smoking room for the drawing-room—all excepting Lord Turfleigh, who had taken a soda and brandy with his cigar, and deemed it prudent to indulge in a little ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... said, though he does not like to own that he was taken in to so gross a degree, that he had been actually introducing to his fellow-townsfolk and conferring familiarly with a regular jail-bird,—perhaps a burglar. How lucky for that poor, soft-headed, excellent Jos Hartopp, whom it is positively as inhuman to take in as it would be to defraud a born natural, that the lady you saw arrived in time to expose the snares laid for ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... No burglar will go near it. It will drive away rate-collectors and poor relations. One client has already used it on his mother-in-law with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... say and do odd things. I heard of one that once frightened away a burglar, by screaming out, 'The Campbells are coming;' so, Miss Wolston, perhaps ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... was that Selby, the stout little man whose special job was to act as intermediary between the company and its more criminal enterprises, received his instructions to speed up. Selby was the receiver of letters. A burglar or a pickpocket who acquired in the course of his activities documents and letters which had hitherto been worthless found a ready market through Selby. Eighty letters out of every hundred were absolutely ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... a woman who, being mistaken for a burglar, was shot by her husband with a 44-caliber bullet. The missile entered the second and third ribs an inch from the sternum, passed through the right lung, and escaped at the inferior angle of the scapula, about three inches below the spine; after leaving her body it went through ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... being arrested ...'" That meant that if she plunged into the fray she might be mistaken for a woman burglar, and arrested with the guilty. Even if she lurked where she was, a prowling policeman might suppose she sought concealment, and bag her as ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... This young fellow, although evidently not a tramp or a burglar, had caused her some moments of distinct uneasiness, and she ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and he was so afraid of the banks that he would not deposit with them, but would sit up nights with sword and pistol by him to guard his idol hoard. When his health gave way from anxiety and watching he built an underground treasure-chamber, so arranged that if any burglar ever entered, he would step upon a spring which would precipitate him into a subterranean river, where he could neither escape nor be heard. One night the miser went to his chest to see that all was right, when his foot touched ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... up Darnley: Mr. and Mrs. Manning, as they sate at meat with their destined victim over his ready-made grave, may have argued themselves into self-approval of the crowning rite with which their hospitalities were to terminate: any scampish apprentice with designs upon his master's till, any burglar plotting an entry into a goldsmith's shop, may become convinced of his rectitude of purpose, and even take credit for public-spirited zeal, in seeking to appropriate to his own use part of another's wealth, which he may fairly suppose would be productive ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... an instinct of justice had survived the wreck of his ignorance of law was retained for the defence of a burglar whom the police had taken after a desperate struggle with someone not in custody. In consultation with his client the ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... for such people would be well and even remuneratively spent. The kitchens, my informant—who has spent many years among them—added, are generally the turning point between honesty and crime. The discharged soldier or mechanic out of work is there herded with the professional thief or burglar, and learns his trade and gets ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... becoming perilous near home, the culprits had taken their several ways to New York,—most fit choice for such a pilgrimage! This too was fathomed and forgiven. O unwise clemency! O base requital! Violence upon discovery? No doubt. Loaded pistol constantly in the house since the last burglar scare. At this Mrs. Bowers recollected shots in the night; Seneca had said "Campaign fireworks"; but she knew better; shots, of course. Dreadful thing to happen at one's very door. An immediate separation naturally. By all the laws ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... fool, I guess, but I'll trust you. [Puts revolver in pocket.] Sit down, ma'am. It must be cold for you. This is a queer kind of layout for a burglar. [Sits opposite her.] You heard that racket I made ...
— The Second-Story Man • Upton Sinclair
... cares," said Mr. Devins, looking after him with contracted brow. "He has spent two Christmas days of twenty-three out of jail. He is a burglar, or was. His daughter has brought him round. She is a seamstress. For three months, now, she has been keeping him and the home, working nights. If I could only get him a job! He won't stay honest long without it; but who wants a burglar for a watchman? And ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... rapping sharply on the window-pane. "I've come for that child! Bring her out to me at once—at once, I say! How dare you come to my house and steal a baby? You're no better than a common burglar. Give ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... if the will is there, a burglar stole it. And if the will is not there, some one interested in the disposition of the property walked away with ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... he rides well enough for one, but many men ride besides bushmen. I know neither he nor his partner have any practical bush experience. I know that. Just as I know the man who went through the town to-night is a burglar who learned his craft in one of the big cities of the world. The way that hotel door was opened was one of the finest pieces of expert burglary I've ever seen, and there are some pretty smart men at the ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... of instilling right principles into the mind, from the first dawn of reason, cannot be too strongly enforced. Many a wretched midnight burglar commenced his career of vice and folly by stealing fruit, followed by thieving anything that he could HANDSOMELY. Pilfering, unless severely checked, is a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the policeman kept guard," said Philip. "I was there only as a burglar. I came to rob. But I was a coward, or else I had a conscience, or else I knew my own unworthiness." There was a long pause. As both of them, whenever they heard the tune afterward, always remembered, the Hungarian band, with rare inconsequence, was playing the ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... in forest lairs—and through it all had kept his secret safe save Lee Sing... and now, Dave Slotter. It was the latter's discovery of both his selves that frightened him. In spite of the counter fright he had given the burglar, the latter might talk. And even if he did not, sooner or later he would be found out by some ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... advocate,—he never condescended to bully anybody. To his own witnesses he was simple and courteous, as are barristers generally. But to adverse witnesses he was more courteous, though no doubt less simple. Even to some perjured comrade of an habitual burglar he would be studiously civil: but to a woman such as Euphemia Caldigate, alias Smith, it was certain that he would be so smooth as to make her feel almost pleased with ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... the time when 'the Boneless One gnaws his foot by his fireless hearth in his cheerless house'; to cut one's nails is 'to sever the withered from the quick upon that which has five branches'; similarly the burglar is the 'day-sleeper', and the serpent is the 'hairless one'. Very similar is his reference to seasons through what happens or is done in that season: 'when the House-carrier, fleeing the Pleiades, climbs up the plants from the earth', is the season for harvesting; ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... tar out of a symphony on the piano, but she can mop the dew off the grass with a burglar, and knock out a dude's eyes at sixty ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... "I am neither a burglar nor a murderer; that's all you need to know; the rest is no concern of yours. Have you writing materials ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a man whose courage would not respond to the spur of some huge burglar would die rather than be beaten by a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... were a private gallery of valuable paintings and antique furniture to poison with envy the mind of any collector, and housed into the bargain a small museum of rare books, manuscripts, and articles of exquisite workmanship whose individuality, aside from intrinsic worth, rendered them priceless. A burglar of discrimination might have carried off in one coat-pocket loot enough to foot the bill for a twelve-month of profligate existence. But nothing had been removed, nothing at least that was apparent in the first tour of inspection; which, if sweeping, ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... consideration it was decided to set the burglar alarms in every building of the Swift plant. Some time previous, when he had been working on a number of valuable inventions, unscrupulous men had tried to steal his ideas and models. To prevent this Tom had arranged a system of burglar alarms, and had also ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... as a burglar, and detained as a measure of precaution under the charge of organizing a nocturnal ambush, with armed force, was kept in sight. The sentry, who was relieved every two hours, marched up and down in ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... house till there was no longer any danger of being discovered. Quickening his pace, he soon reached the pier, and with the skiff boarded the Greyhound. The night was certainly favorable for the execution of dark deeds. The midnight assassin, the incendiary, or the burglar would have rejoiced in its darkness, its dense black clouds, and its ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... have lately set up 'pessimist,' which certainly has a threatening appearance. They don't know its meaning, and in their mouths it merely signifies that what a man says snakes them feel personally uncomfortable. The word has become a dusty rag of slang. The arrested burglar very likely calls the policeman a pessimist; and, speaking reverently and with no intention to shock you, the scribes and Pharisees would undoubtedly have called Christ a pessimist when He called them hypocrites, had they been ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... the whole, it might be better to leave the cartridges out. If somebody did break in, all you need do would be to pretend you were asleep. Everybody in the neighborhood knows where my office is and an intelligent burglar begins at the safe. There's no money in ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... burglar, depredator, despoiler, footpad, filibuster, forager, desperado, corsair, freebooter, highwayman, picaroon, marauder, pillager, pirate, plunderer, raider, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Audrey ought certainly to have telegraphed to her father's solicitor at Chelmsford at once. In the alternative she ought to have hired a safe-opening expert or a burglar from Colchester. She had accomplished neither of these downright things. With absolute power, she had done nothing but postpone. She wondered at herself, for up to her father's death she had been a great critic of ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... been that day when he set out! Rafael burned with shame as he crept like a burglar in his stockings and on tip-toe, through the room where his mother received the orchard-folk and adjusted all accounts pertaining to the tilling of the land. He groped his way along guided by the light that came in through the chinks in the closed windows. ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Church began again, a hundred years ago, to enter the great heathen world, it had to use pick and axe, jimmy and chisel. It seemed like using burglar's tools. Certainly it was working in the dark, with only the burglar's dark-lantern to show the way. But now the heathen door is wide open. Instead of our knocking at their door, the heathen world ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... bought some exactly the same size that were not in a lethargy; he then, at the risk of breaking his neck or being taken for a burglar, scaled the balcony, and substituted them for the defunct. Next morning, when he called to inquire after his patients, he found ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... for this extravagant adventure seized him. He thought that it must be good to be a burglar. Then, as he heard the motor re-started and the car move off, a sudden qualm of disquiet came; for it was tantamount to ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... at the table with a further announcement: "I have the pleasure of offering for your perusal, young ladies, the third and last sequel in the great Stanthrope-Pond-McKay mystery. And I hereby take the opportunity of apologizing to Mr. Stanthrope for my unworthy suspicions. He is not a burglar, nor a detective, nor a murderer, nor even a lawyer, but just a poor young man with ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... the multitude which surrounds the court-house, sounds like the murmur of the sea, till suddenly it is raised to a sort of shout. John West, the terror of the surrounding country, the sheep-stealer and burglar, had been ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... be able to enter the latter unknown and unobserved. He had thought of attempting this during the afternoon, but realized that he could not hope to accomplish it, in broad daylight, without being seen by the occupants of the neighboring buildings, and perhaps arrested as a burglar ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... by some of our boldest young truth-seekers, that the eye of a burglar beyond the back-garden wall could hardly be caught and hypnotized by a fork that is insulated in a locked box under the butler's bed. They have thrown down the gauntlet to American science on this point. They declare ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... article on the use an' abuse of tiaras—poor things! It isn't fair to overwork the family tiara. I suggest that you get a good-sized trunk an' lock it up with the other jewels for a vacation. If necessary your house could be visited by a burglar—that is, if you wanted to save the ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... a corporal that was an ex-burglar," he said, plunging into the new subject with alacrity. "First-rate fellow, too. Last I heard of him, he had a position as chauffeur with a rich old lady who lived alone up in Detroit. She had two burglar-alarm systems, but the joke of it was she ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... suppose you would think that, Millicent, if a burglar, who had taken one shot at you and was about to finish you with another, was cut short in the operation by a shot from my pistol. I believe that your relief and thankfulness would be so great that the idea that ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... finger in every unsavoury pie. The bank robber discharged from gaol did not ask Colonel Boundary to finance him in the purchase of a new kit of tools—an up-to date burglar's kit costs something over two hundred pounds—but there were people who would lend the money, which eventually came out of the colonel's pocket. Some of the businesses he financed were on the border line of respectability. Some into which his money was sunk were frankly infamous. But it was a popular ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... life just what she wants." He lifted his hand in protest against anticipated interruption. "I know that you have got to line up with your royal relatives. I know the utter impossibility of what I want—but I'm going to win. If you regard me as a burglar, you may turn me out, ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... the older burglar, with an oath: then there was a few moments' silence, and the two crept back. They sat down under the shelter of some large shrubs, with their backs to John, who could only just make them out from his hiding-place, for it was now getting quite dark. A little while, and they rose, and passed very ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... speak, here in the church itself, and the parishioners come and get some for themselves according to their need for it. Some come every day, some only once a year, some perhaps never between their baptism and their funeral. But they all have a right here, the professional burglar every whit as much as the speckless saint. The only stipulation is that they oughtn't to come under false pretences: the burglar is in honor bound not to pass himself off to his priest as the saint. But that is merely a moral obligation, established in the burglar's ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... action, assuming that you are a man of ordinary common sense, and that you have established this hypothesis to your own satisfaction, will very likely be to go off for the police, and set them on the track of the burglar, with the view to the recovery of your property. But just as you are starting with this object, some person comes in, and on learning what you are about, says, "My good friend, you are going on a great deal too fast. ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... she took me for—a repentant burglar, perhaps; for when I wanted to pay her for the milk and tendered a sovereign which was the smallest coin I had, she shook her head and said something about 'giving it to them that had a right to it'. At this I protested so strongly that I think she believed ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... money in any bank to know the difference, and as for my humble dwelling in Hillsborough, who would take the trouble to rifle it when Geoffrey's palace is within an easy walk. Besides, I haven't anything worth the attention of a respectable burglar like this one." ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... was disappointed. She had expected that the safe would have to be blown open in the most approved burglar fashion, and was wondering what bill for ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... A professional burglar of long experience could not have gotten that huge oak door open more quickly and silently than Nick Carter did, and Handsome gave him an approving pat ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... ran, 'I am so sorry not to be with you this evening. Unfortunately Miss Aleyn has got one of her particularly fidgety nervous attacks, and I don't like to leave her. She found a cross chalked on the gate-post this afternoon, and imagines it is a burglar's mark! She won't listen to reason, and absolutely refuses to come home with me, so the house is now being barricaded in preparation for the attack Miss ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... the wind, which had veered more to the eastwardly, rose considerably, drowning the clanging knell of the Spit buoy bell and rattling the windows and doors, like some desperate burglar on thoughts of plunder bent trying to effect a ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Miss Eunice an army of men who were being punished for all the crimes in the calendar. Each individual here had been caged because he was either a highwayman, or a forger, or a burglar, or a ruffian, or a thief, or a murderer. The unclean and frightful tide bore down upon our terrified missionary, shrieking and whooping. Every prisoner thrust out his hand over the head of the one in front of him, and the foremost plucked at ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... forward and examine her work. He approached with all the stealth of a gentlemanly burglar. He expected to see some trees and hills and mayhap a brook, or some cows standing in a stream, or some children picking daisies. He had a sister, and was reasonably familiar with the kind of subjects chosen by ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... perverse circumstance and unaccountable accident. Though mostly men of fair ability, they are not generally successful. Considering the number of thieves, there are but few great ones. In this "Rogues' Gallery" of the New York Police Commissioners we find the face of a "first-rate" burglar among the ablest of the eighty of whom he is one. He is a German, and has passed twenty years in the prisons of his native land: has that leonine aspect sometimes esteemed a physiognomical attribute ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... is no objection to a burglary scene in a picture so long as there is no actual demonstration of the act of burglarizing; for instance, the burglar may be shown entering through an open window, but must not be shown in the act of "jimmying" the window. He may be shown with his back to the audience, opening a safe and extracting therefrom money or papers, but he must not be shown opening ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... detected the milkman winking at the maid with a diabolical suggestion that I was returning from a carouse, and Roundsman 9999 has once or twice followed me a block or two with the evident impression that I was a burglar returning from a successful evening out. Nevertheless, these various indiscretions have brought me into contact with a kind of character and phenomena whose existence I ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... of an accidental one. I don't believe I ever sat down to sardines on toast at a restaurant without looking under the toast for my bugbear, though as I lifted it I felt rather like the old woman who always looks under the bed for a burglar. Ah, but since the accident this foolishly small thing HAS made me suffer! I cannot say: 'Simpson, are you sure there is not a fly in this soup?' Simpson would say: 'No—sir; no fly—sir,' and would cough behind his hand, and I could never ask ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... the room; it could not have been a burglar. The night lamp was burning dimly behind its heavy shade; on the table were the fragments of Miss Arthur's lunch; and Mr. and Mrs. Arthur had found easy access through the closed, ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... anything in the night?" went on the detective. "Any queer noise? It's mighty funny if there was murder done and no robbery. But of course she might have heard a noise if you didn't, and she might have come down to find out what it was about. She might have caught a burglar at work, and he may have killed her to get away. But if it was a burglar it's funny you didn't hear any noise—like a fall, or something. How about that, ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... obtained by Science are won by no mystical faculties, by no mental processes other than those which are practised by every one of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones. Nor does that process of induction and deduction by which a lady, finding a stain of ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... in the shadows, wondering what course he ought to pursue. Before he could make up his mind, the first burglar had disappeared, and a second was being helped through the window. Two of the burglars—there were four or five of them, as Badger could see—were to wait outside, while their pals on the inside made their ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... names on his books. To every one who has ever been touched by the love of a quest, his title-pages will appeal: The Great White Wall, a tale of "magic adventure, of war and death"; Merchants from Cathay (1913), The Falconer of God (1914), The Burglar of the Zodiac (1917). His verses surge with vitality, as in The Boast of the Tides. He is at his best in long, swinging, passionate rhythms. Unfortunately in the same measures he is also at his worst. His most potent temptation is the love of noise, which makes ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... and crooks just live their lives in terror, afraid of their own shadows. They've got to be sweet and kind on the outside, and so they take out their crossness and irritation on the help. I'd rather be keeper in an asylum than cook to a burglar. But Mrs. Markham was fine—and no airs and no softness. If the spirit ever hallowed a face, it's hers. I know you don't like her, and you can't be blamed—her keeping your little girl from you! But you must have noticed her voice, how pretty it is if ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... mean theft is reported from West Ealing. Not content with stealing the loose silver a burglar is reported to have stolen the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... did. I don't want to wake up some night and find a burglar going off with my treasures. What did you ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... of the theater is by no means rare, even among older boys. Thirteen young lads were brought into the Municipal Court in Chicago during the first week that "Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman" was upon the stage, each one with an outfit of burglar's tools in his possession, and each one shamefacedly admitting that the gentlemanly burglar in the play had suggested to him a career ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... was at the head of the stairs; saw a man whom I did not recognize on the last step but one. I struck a heavy blow on his chest, saying, "Go down, sir," and down he tumbled all the way, his boots clanking along by themselves. Then the door opened, my burglar disappeared, and I went down and locked the back door as I had promised father I would. I felt less proud of my physical prowess and real courage when my attention was called to a full account of my assault in the college papers of the day. The young man was not rooming at our ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... occurred while the investigating committee of Congress was at its work. The principal actors in the case were Mr. Harrington, secretary of the local government and one of Mr. Shepherd's assistants, the chief of police, and a burglar. Harrington produced an anonymous letter, warning him that an attempt would be made in the course of a certain night to purloin from the safe in which they were kept, certain government papers, which the prosecutors of the case against Shepherd were anxious to get hold of. He ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... work as a contractor had left a permanent and unmistakable mark upon Binchester, became imbued with a hazy idea that Mr. Chalk had invented a new process of making large diamonds. Mr. Jasper Tredgold, on the other hand, arrived at the conclusion that a highly respectable burglar was offering for some reason to share his loot with him. A conversation between Messrs. Stobell and Tredgold in the High Street only made ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... of the adventures and misadventures of a woman who builds a cottage on Cape Ann promontory for five hundred dollars, and settles down to a joyful existence without any need of aid or comfort from living man except as a purveyor and burglar-alarm. Every one likes to know the price of things, and it is pleasing to understand exactly what may be done with five hundred dollars. "The cottage," as described by Miss Phelps, "contained five rooms and a kitchen. The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... tile, the sign of chieftainship, but that being a "boy" he must grow older before he could wear it. The inner room can be closed with a strong door and a padlock; as even the window-hole is not admitted, the burglar would at once be detected. Except where goods are concerned, the Mpongwe have little respect for privacy; the women, in the presence of their husbands, never failed to preside at my simple toilette, and the girls of the villages would sit upon the bedside where lay an Utangani in almost the last ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... indenting his pock-marked cheek that might have been made by a sabre cut—was, probably, for it takes a brave man to be a warden; a massive head set on big shoulders; a square chin, the jaw hinged like a burglar's jimmy; and two keen, ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... about him, didn't show that there was something weighing on the conscience of his precious Snitcheys (if he had a conscience), that wouldn't bear the light? Did anybody but his Snitcheys come to festive entertainments like a burglar? - which, by the way, was hardly a clear illustration of the case, as he had walked in very mildly at the door. And would he still assert to her at noon-day (it being nearly midnight), that his Snitcheys were to be justified through thick and thin, against ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... advantage, ma'am," the shopkeeper declared suavely. "That service can be left right out in plain sight, and no burglar ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee world-wide from God? Miserable man! Oh! most contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling among the shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas. So disordered, self-condemning is his look, that had there been policemen in those days, Jonah, on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had been arrested ere he touched a ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... laughed the colonel. "Black Donald, the mail robber, burglar, outlaw, the subject ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... is, any safe of the kind used at that time—twelve or fourteen years ago. So you see. I doubt if he would be so successful with the new models, with all their improvements, but then—! You know he would have made an ideal burglar, that chap. Now, Senor, who lives here in ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... loudly. "Well, that's one on me! I must say you're a nervy young party. So you thought I was a burglar, did you?" ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... the effrontery to offer such a resolution will surprise no one, and that the Senate could entertain it without blushing and pass it without shame will surprise no one. We are now reminded of a note which we have received from the notorious burglar Murphy, in which he finds fault with a statement of ours to the effect that he had served one term in the penitentiary and also one in the U. S. Senate. He says, 'The latter statement is untrue and does me great injustice.' After an ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... looked this way, and then he looked that way, to be sure that no one saw him, for what he was planning to do was a very dreadful thing, and he knew it. Happy Jack was going to turn burglar. A burglar, you know, is one who breaks into another's house or barn to steal, which is a very, very dreadful thing to do. Yet this is just what Happy Jack Squirrel was planning to do. He was going to get into that old ...
— Happy Jack • Thornton Burgess
... seem to be anything," says Tedcastle, "except gunpowder, or rather the unpleasant remains of it. The burglar has ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... at ten o'clock in the morning, Leon Renault, emaciated, dejected and scarcely recognizable, was at the feet of Clementine Sambucco in her aunt's parlor. There were flowers on the mantel and flowers in all the vases. Two great burglar sunbeams broke through the open windows. A million of little bluish atoms were playing in the light, crossing each other and getting fantastically mixed up, like the ideas in a volume of M. Alfred Houssaye. In the garden, the apples were falling, ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... art. De Quincey wrote an essay on the subject. If you'd read it, you'd know better than to mix up artistic murder with the commonplace assassinations of the ordinary burglar. You might just as well say that Beethoven is the same sort of person as the Italian organ-grinder who plays abominable tunes under your window, in the hope of your giving ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... unselfish, to care for those who called him master. He felt now very fully, what he had felt vaguely and dimly at Talbot Court, that he was not the sort of person who ought to do anything mean and dishonorable, such as being a burglar, and climbing in at pantry windows; that when he grew up he would be expected to look after his servants and laborers, and all the men and women whom he would have under him—that their happiness and well-being would be his charge. And the thought swelled his heart, and ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... his reticule and his umbrella and opened cautiously the door. Outside all was silent. Johnny stealthily descended; in the passage paused again. Voices sounded from the basement. Feeling like an escaped burglar, Johnny slipped the latch of the big door and peeped out. A policeman, pasting, turned and looked at him. Johnny hastily drew back and closed the door again. Somebody was ascending from the kitchen. Johnny, caught between ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... incident which he was keeping in reserve; but he did not yield even when St. John carefully led up to the point through the sensation of his guests, by recounting the evidences of the supposed visit of a burglar, and then made his effect by suddenly turning upon Hewson, and saying with his broad guffaw: "And here you have the burglar in person. He has owned his crime to me, and I've let him off the penalty on condition that he tells you all about it." The humor was not too rank for the horsey people whom ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... Mr. Van to me. 'Do we need a burglar's kit, and some nitroglycerin, or does that class ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... dear!" cried Phoebe, wringing her hands. "Didn't I say I heard a noise—I told you I heard a burglar, Rebecca," she went on, hysterically, turning ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... downstairs people don't lock themselves in. It's really never done at all. Bill, for instance, has never locked himself into the dining-room in order to be alone with the sherry. On the other hand, all women, and particularly servants, have a horror of burglars. And if a burglar gets in by the window, they like to limit his activities to that particular room. So they keep the, keys on the outside of the doors, and lock the doors when they go to bed." He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and added, "At least, my mother ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne |
