"Urchin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upwards he was "tipped" regularly by the old gentleman at Christmas: and on going back to school, he remembered perfectly well being thrashed by Joseph Sedley, when the latter was a big, swaggering hobbadyhoy, and George an impudent urchin of ten years old. In a word, George was as familiar with the family as such daily acts of kindness and intercourse could ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rushed out most ferociously at Nero, and would, I believe, have torn him to pieces, but for the large hunting-whip with which I managed to keep them at bay. There was with me a young Maltese boy, of Irish parentage—a most amusing character this urchin was. He wanted me to take him into the interior as my interpreter. "Take me wid you, sir," was his eloquent appeal; "give me pound a month, sir; tell Arabs you brother of Queen Victoria, sir; Arabs great fools, sir; know ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... ragged urchin asked him the time, and that casual touch of communalism made him feel more at home. He took out his watch—it was already five minutes past eight: over those high narrow streets, with their thin strip of sky, the big clock of Parliament had boomed the hour and he ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... sought the spangled bowers, To cull a wreath of matin flowers, Where many an early rose was weeping, I found the urchin Cupid sleeping, I caught the boy, a goblet's tide Was richly mantling by my side, I caught him by his downy wing, And whelmed him in the racy spring. Then drank I down the poisoned bowl, And love now ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... village. Why did Mother Muggins of the shop let the goody side of her scales of justice drop the lower by one lollipop for Bill than for any other lad, and exempt him by unwonted smiles from her general anathema on the urchin race? There were other honest boys in the parish who paid for their treacle-sticks in sterling copper of the realm! The very roughs of the village were proud of him, and would have showed their good ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... to be. That's whom I am now—or just as soon as I change clothes with some unfortunate. It's in a book. 'Ben Blunt, the Newsboy; or, From Rags to Riches.' He run off because his cruel stepmother beat him black and blue, and he become a mere street urchin, though his father, Mr. Blunt, was a gentleman in good circumstances; and while he was a mere street urchin he sold papers and blacked boots, and he was an honest, manly lad and become adopted by a kind, rich old ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... he shared by turns with his purchased brother, and a little slave-child whom he had also purchased and employed in looking after the general wardrobe, and in cooking his porridge dinner, or fetching water and gathering sticks. On the line of march the little urchin carried Bombay's sleeping-hide ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... stepped from the train at a sleepy country station next day I was promptly waylaid by a black-eyed urchin who informed me that Mrs. Ashley had sent him with an express wagon for my luggage, and that "Miss Gussie" was waiting with the carriage at the store, pointing down to a small building before whose door a girl was trying to soothe her ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... straightened up from his agricultural labors, and stared at this lone intruder on his family privacy. He was a tall, rakish-looking fowl, whose erect carriage and lack of tail-feathers made him look like a spindle-shanked urchin as he towered there among the ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... various ways learned the nature of his charity. For a while he would stand alone, gazing like any idler upon an ever-fascinating scene. On the evening in question, a policeman passing saluted him as "captain," in a friendly way. An urchin who had frequently seen him before, stopped to gaze. All others took him for nothing out of the ordinary, save in the matter of dress, and conceived of him as a stranger whistling and idling ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... and Harris stood that afternoon in the public square, while the girl gazed enraptured at an equestrian statue of Simon Bolivar, a ragged little urchin approached and begged them to buy an afternoon paper. Harris humored him and bade ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... 'Tammy'—a very round and chubby urchin, as unlike a denizen of the slums as could well be imagined—were sitting at tea by the cosy hearth, and there was a warm welcome and a cup for the ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... knowledge. In a few minutes the boy came back and told her what she wanted to know; the friar had disappeared within the doors of a little church by the sea-shore, not many yards distant, a church under the charge of an austere religious, Father Hieronymus. Delighted, Lysidice gave the urchin his piece of silver ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... As an urchin Jeff had taken things as they came without understanding causes. Thoughts had come to him in flashes, without any orderly sequence, often illogically. As a gangling boy he still took for granted the hard knocks of a world he ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... built him of stones gather'd up as they lay, They built him and christen'd him all in one day, An Urchin both vigorous and hale; And so without scruple they call'd him Ralph Jones. Now Ralph is renown'd for the length of his bones; The Magog of ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... was, in fact, Miette, who had climbed like an urchin up one of the mulberry-trees, which even nowadays still border the boundary of the Jas-Meiffren. In a couple of leaps she reached the tombstone, half buried in the corner at the end of the lane. Silvere watched her descend with delight and surprise, without even thinking of helping her. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... city as the congregation poured precipitately out of the Cathedral, to escape a band of destroying and furious Calvinists. Yet when the shock had a little subsided, it was discovered that a small urchin was the cause of the whole tumult. Having been bathing in the Scheldt, he had returned by way of the church with a couple of bladders under his arm. He had struck these against the door of the Cathedral, partly to dry them, partly from a love of mischief. Thus a great uproar, in the course of which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to our seat, looking, good man, faintly stern and sad, like a good parent who has had, regretfully, to chastise an erring urchin. ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... entered and passed on to the little breakfast-parlour on the left. The furniture was the same as before, but a coarse fustian jacket was thrown on the back of a chair, and a clay-pipe and a paper of tobacco stood on the table. While he was examining these objects with some attention, a very ragged urchin, of some ten or eleven years, entered the room with a furtive step, and stood watching him. From this fellow, all that he could hear was that Miss Betty was gone away, and that Peter was at the Kilbeggan Market, and ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... on vacation, until I was astounded by some self-possessed remark on Jamaica dyewoods. We stopped in the same hotel. One morning he descended the stairs, a sort of dressing-case in hand, and yelled to an urchin ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... Even though you're wearing a mask or goggles, take along a gig or some slender stick and feel your way along so you don't fall into a hole you can't see in the deceptive near-tropical waters. If, despite precautions, you get a sea urchin's needlelike spine broken off in your skin, soak the wound in vinegar which will dissolve the fragments and stop the pain ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company
... over her head at the young sailor, Sarah Trevarthen's boy Tom, home from his Baltic voyage in the Virtuous Lady. Yes, it was Tom Trevarthen, now a man grown. Rosewarne remembered him as a child in frocks, tumbling about the roadway; as an urchin straddling a stick; as a lad home (with this same parrot) from his first voyage. Who, in a world moving at such a pace, could have ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... words my father said, When I was an urchin vain;— God rest his soul, in his narrow bed These ten long years he hath lain. When I think one drop of the blood he bore This faint heart surely must hold, It may be my fancy and nothing more, But the faint ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... the urchin love abide? Whence does he point his dart? Say, does he with the doves reside? Or dwells he ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... earnest but indistinct hum of the two children's voices, as Violet and Peony wrought together with one happy consent. Violet still seemed to be the guiding spirit; while Peony acted rather as a laborer and brought her the snow from far and near. And yet the little urchin evidently had a proper understanding of ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... harvesters tossing their sheaves; The robin darts out from his bower of leaves; The wren peereth forth from the moss-covered eaves; And the rain-spattered urchin now gladly perceives That the beautiful ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... dodge I am! The cats who dart Tin-kettled through the streets in wild surprise Assail judicious ears not otherwise; And yet no critics praise the urchin's 'art', Who to the wretched creature's caudal part Its foolish empty-jingling ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... when a mere child, hardly into his first trousers, he went one day to catch a colt in one of his father's fields bordering on the Contoocook. The colt declined to be caught and after a sharp scamper took to the river and swam across. Nothing daunted, the plucky little urchin threw off his jacket, plunged into the swift current, and safely breasting it, was soon in hot pursuit on the other side; and after a long chase and hard tussle made out to catch the spirited animal and bring him home in triumph. Always passionately fond ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... To the chance summer visitor the seclusion and the rest seem entrancing. The glamour of mountain scenery and trout effectually obliterates the brave signs of poverty and struggle from before the irresponsive eyes of the man of city leisure. He carelessly gives the urchin, mutely pleading in front of the unpainted farm-house, a few cents for his corrugated cake of maple-sugar, and asks the name of a distant peak. If he should notice, how would he know the meaning of the scant crops ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... behind apprised the loyal champion that a very ragged auditory, who for some time past had not well understood the gist of his eloquence, had at length comprehended enough to be angry. Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute, certainly, in an Irish row. "The merest urchin may light the train; one handful of mud often ignites a shindy that ends in a most ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... how," said the urchin, as he disengaged himself from his wet saddle, and stood upon the ground; "and it is not my fault that the coach is ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... that he was safe in his old home; but where were his brothers and sisters? With a beating heart he crept to the other end of the bed; and there lay the prodigal, but with no haggard cheeks or sunken eyes, no grey locks or miserable rags, but a rosy yellow-haired urchin fast asleep, with his head upon his arm. 'I took his ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... holiday. The receipt of cash in so easy a manner was so agreeable to me, that I feigned illness for some days; my pupils made an offering as usual, and were allowed to play. On the tenth day the cunning urchin who had planned the scheme came into my chamber, as customary, with an offering of faloose. I happened then to have before me a boiled egg, which, upon seeing him enter, I clapped into my mouth, supposing, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... a bad urchin," he observed, "as sisters go. We're staying here along with the de Vignes. Ever met 'em? Lady Grace is a holy terror. Her husband is a horrible stuck-up bore of an Anglo-Indian,—thinks himself everybody, and tells the most awful howlers. Rose—that's the ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... whether you were looking after the right person or not, when you were here!" Nattie said, with a smiling face and sparkling eyes turned in the direction of an urchin,' flattening his nose against her window-glass, who immediately fled, overwhelmed with astonishment, at being, as he ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... sort of un-Christmas tree with fishing-pole branches, from which dangled articulated figures, bodied like men, but with heads of foxes, tortoises, and other less likelybeasts, —bewitching objects in impossible evolution to a bald-pated urchin who stood gazing at it with all his soul. The peddler sat with his eyes riveted on the boy, visions of a possible catch chasing themselves through his brain. I watched him, while the crowd behind stared at me. We made quite a tail of curiosity. The opiate was having its effect; ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... did not seem disposed to quit it. She never spoke at table, ate rapidly, reading all the while a small book, treating of some protestant propaganda. She gave a copy of it to everybody. The cure himself had received no less than four copies, conveyed by an urchin to whom she had paid two sous' commission. She said sometimes to our hostess, abruptly, without preparing her in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... turned into the dark lane which led to the churchyard—a nice, gloomy, mournful place into which the towns-people did not care to go except in broad daylight, consequently he was not a little indignant to hear a young urchin roaring out some jolly song about a Merry Christmas. Gabriel waited until the boy came up, then rapped him over the head with his lantern five or six times to teach him to modulate his voice. And as the boy hurried away, with his hand to his head, Gabriel Grubb chuckled to himself and entered ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... Griggs, "thee's at na sarvice o'mine. I'll give na room in my house to the likes o' thee"; and he made as though he would have shut the door in the face of the little urchin. ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... children. Among its many peculiarities was that of carrying "moral suasion" to such lengths, as a solitary means of discipline, that the master occasionally publicly submitted to the castigation earned by a refractory urchin, probably by way of reaching the latter's moral sense through shame or pity. This was, doubtless, rather interesting to the pupils, whether or not it was corrective. Mr. Alcott's peculiarities did not stop here, however, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... party—turned towards Lady Gorgon and Sir George in a most unholy triumph. Sir George (who always stood during prayers, like a military man) fairly sank down among the hassocks, and Lady Gorgon was heard to sob as audibly as ever did little beadle-belaboured urchin. ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... note from Father Fabian, sir," said the urchin, who gave him the note, and rushed out of the office, while his laughter, unsuppressed, made the street echo with ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... a bed Of roses laid his weary head; Luckless urchin! not to see Within the leaves a slumbering bee. The bee awak'd—with anger wild The bee awak'd, and stung the child. Loud and piteous are his cries; To Venus quick he runs, he flies; "Oh mother! I am wounded through— "I die with pain—in sooth I do! "Stung by some little angry ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... most sordid youth, the gift of expectancy. There were fairies and ogres and pirates and Indians in costumes that needed only the proper imagination to make them convincing. If by any chance a wistful urchin arrived in his rags alone, Mr. Demry promptly evolved a cocked hat from a newspaper, and a sword from a box top, and transformed him into a ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... dar," shouted the biggest boy, a woolly-heady urchin, with nothing on but a big pair of trousers that came up under his arms and were fastened over his shoulders by two bits of string, "jist you come on dis side and jump down, an' ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... minutes Patrolman Dennis Patrick Murphy, who was standing on post on Washington Street in front of Nasheen Zereik's Embroidery Bazaar talking to Sardi Babu, saw a red-headed, pug-nosed urchin come flying round ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... older sister Margaret had gone to Coeymans with her husband, Kronk, that my mother married the elderly Dominie Mauverensen. When he was so untowardly killed, fifteen years later, she was left with eight children, of whom I, a toddling urchin, was among the youngest. She had no money save the pittance from Stone Arabia, no means of livelihood, nor even a roof of her own over her head, since the new dominie made harsh remarks about her keeping him out of his own every time he ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... and falling like a wind in the upper regions of the night; but they did not see him. Fortunately, there was a side door in the railing, seldom used, of which the key hung in the porter's room. By this door Alec let himself out, and relocked it. But the moment he turned to go home, he heard an urchin, who had peeped round a corner, screech to the ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... side of that brimming Loddon river. 'Do not expect us before six o'clock,' said I, as I left the house; 'Six at soonest!' added my charming companion; and off we drove in our little pony chaise, drawn by our old mare, and with the good humoured urchin, Henry's successor, a sort of younger Scrub, who takes care of horse and chaise, and cow and ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... bending over the fire,—was an old woman, so wild and shrivelled in her appearance that a much less superstitious urchin than Jacky might have believed her to be a witch. Her clothing may be described as a bundle of rags, with the exception of a shepherd's-plaid on her shoulders, the spotless purity of which contrasted strangely with the dirtiness ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... as ragged and wild as if they belonged to nobody. His son Rip, an urchin begotten in his own likeness, promised to inherit the habits, with the old clothes of his father. He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother's heels, equipped in a pair of his father's cast-off galligaskins, which he had much ado to hold up with one hand, as a fine lady does ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... a detachment of the infant population of the quarters busily crabbing; all of whom, save two little Indians who fished stoically on, scrambled to their feet, and pulled a forelock. The overseer touched one urchin upon the shoulder with the butt end ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... urchin, [15] With bare feet soiled or sore, Share God's most tender mercies,— Find items ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... old. Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure, 'Twas not for nothing—the good bellyful, The warm serge and the rope that goes all round, And day-long blessed idleness beside! 105 "Let's see what the urchin's fit for"—that came next. Not overmuch their way, I must confess. Such a to-do! They tried me with their books; Lord, they'd have taught me Latin in pure waste! Flower o' the clove, 110 All the Latin I construe is ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... the many instances of the ingratitude of human nature; I confided those boots to the boy whom you must have seen come with me to fetch yours and the other gentlemen's shoes or clothes for brushing, etc. Well, sir, that young urchin is a protege of mine; I took him, sir, from the lowest obscurity and made him what he is; I taught him my profession, I endowed him with all the benefit of my experience, and with respect to blacking shoes, I have initiated him into all the little ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... said, was a robust and combative urchin, and at the age of four began to struggle against the yoke and authority of his nurse. That functionary was a good-hearted, tearful, scatter-brained girl, lately taken by Tom's mother, Madam Brown, as she was called, from the village school to be trained as nurserymaid. Madam Brown was a ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... my reply, she caught up a shawl, threw it over her head, and followed the urchin, who was in a state of great excitement, out into ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... get it when you wanted it; but now it is pertinaciously in your way when you do not want it. You almost break your neck tripping over a long, firm cord, which proves to be a pair of reins left hanging on a chair by some careless urchin. The carpet and furniture are strewed with long, straggling pieces of packthread. You find a white end dangling conspicuously from your waistcoat pocket. As you walk the streets you see twine flying from fences, ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... ear; then he put him down upon a straw, where he sat as merry as you please. The two strangers were all this time looking on, and did not know what to say for wonder. At last one took the other aside and said, "That little urchin will make our fortune if we can get him, and carry him about from town to town as a show; we must buy him." So they went to the woodman and asked him what he would take for the little man: "He will be better off," said they, "with us than with you." ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... stare at me. A wisp of smoke stole from a stone chimney, and the smell that corn-pone and bacon leave was in the air. A bolt was slammed back, a door creaked and stuck, was flung open, and with a "Va t'en, mechant!" a cotton-clad urchin was cast out of the house, and fled into the dusty street. Breathing the morning air in the doorway, stood a young woman in a cotton gown, a saucepan in hand. She had inquisitive eyes, a pointed, prying nose, and I knew her to be the village gossip, the wife of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "Turn you round, and give me a look at those coat-tails of yours. Ha!" she exclaimed, as Archelaus, by habit obedient to the word of command, faced about towards the balustrade. "There was a coat-tail missing yesterday, if I remember, when you crept out from the bushes like a whipped urchin, and now there's two: and you'll be telling me that these fine stitches were put in by Jane Treacher, who is like most soldier's wives, and ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the birling had drawn close to the boat; and Murray, shaking hands with his uncle and aunt, exclaimed to Wallace, "That urchin is such a monopolizer, I see you have not a greeting for any one else." On this Edwin raised his face, and turned to the affectionate welcomes of Lord Mar. Wallace stretched out his hand to the ever-gay Lord Andrew; and, inviting him into the boat, soon learned, that on the portentous ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... in the door. His dishevelled hair made him look like a sea-urchin; his face was quite disfigured with black marks of violence; behind his bleeding left ear still stuck the cigarette. His swollen upper lip was drawn sideways and gave him the expression of a ghastly smile. His eyes looked out helpless, ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... arm to be caressed, and join with him and a little terrier in all their noisy rompings on the lawn. The same animal daily bore its young master to school; and, though its heels and teeth were ready for every other urchin, yet so attached was it to this boy, that it would wait hours for him in his sports by the way, and even walk alone from the stable in town to the school room, which was fully half a mile distant, and wait, ...
— Minnie's Pet Horse • Madeline Leslie
... Hull.—There was some time since the singular custom in Hull, of whipping all the dogs that were found running about the streets on October 10; and some thirty years since, when I was a boy, so common was the practice, that every little urchin considered it his duty to prepare a whip for any unlucky dog that might be seen in the streets on this day. This custom is now obsolete, those "putters down" of all boys' play in the streets—the new police—having effectually stopped this cruel pastime of the ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... from the pond and elevated high in the air so everybody could see her. A wild yell went up from the crowd, and an impudent urchin cried: ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... is awfully hard to fill a letter home unless you have somebody to talk about. Yes, by the way, there is one little fellow, an ensign, just joined, who says he remembers us at school. He can't be more than eighteen or nineteen, and was an urchin in the lower school, I suppose, when we were leaving. I don't remember his face, but it's a very good one, and he is a bright gentlemanly youngster as you would wish to see. His name is Jones. Do you remember ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... this youngster had been lighting match after match, making believe to set the hay afire. As he held the matches as close to the dried hay as he dared, this urchin on the ground called to the two babies above that he would "burn ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... gulls, who fly inland when they foresee a storm; of dolphins, which seek the shallower waters; of the edible sea-urchin, 'that honey of flesh, that dainty of the deep,' who anchors himself to a little pebble to prevent being dashed about by the waves; of birds, who change their dwellings when winter draws nigh; of beasts, who adapt their lair to the time of ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... they could not change to meet a change in the flora upon which the creature fed. Of course we shall never know what narrow escapes our race had from extinction in the remote past; some forms have ended in a blind alley, like the sea-urchin and the oyster. Arthropoda have continued to evolve and have reached their high-water mark of intelligence in bees and ants. The vertebrates went forward and have culminated in man. Bergson thinks that in the vertebrates intelligence has been developed ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... be precise, was four o'clock in the afternoon—no invitation could have been more unwelcome to Captain Dieppe. He had received his note from the hands of a ragged urchin as he strolled by the river an hour before: its purport rather excited than alarmed him; but the rendezvous mentioned was so ill-chosen, from his point of view, that it caused him dismay. And he had in vain tried to catch sight of the Countess ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... yawned and scowled upon me as a disturber of his peace. However the trader also awoke in him and he went behind his counter. I had not yet spoken a word. Words were not necessary, for the country store-keeper knows without being told what the small urchin with one hand clutched tightly wants of him. He took down a glass jar with a bright brass cover full of sticks of candy. There was only one short question to be asked and answered, "what color"? The boy, savage that he ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... load of implements, shouldering rake and spade, and dangling tiny buckets from their arms. One little group makes straight for its sand-hole of yesterday, and is soon busy with huge heaps and mounds which are to take the form of a castle. A crowing little urchin beside is already waving the Union Jack which is ready to crown the edifice, if the Fates ever suffer it to be crowned. Engineers of less military taste are busy near the water's edge with an elaborate system of reservoirs and canals, and greeting with shouts of triumph the admission ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... was satisfied. He assisted her to arise from her tombstone, bundled the clerical love-tokens back into the bag, duly placed Captain Jack's letter in the inner pocket, and was about to present her with his arm to conduct her homewards, when he caught sight of a little ragged urchin peeping through the bars of the gate, and seemingly in the very act of making a mysterious signal in the direction of ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... other such vermin, not worth the trouble of mentioning. As I chanced to pass by a cottage I heard a great squalling inside. I looked in; and, when I came to examine, what do you think it was? Why, an infant—a plump and ruddy urchin—lying on the floor under a table which was just beginning to burn. Poor little wretch! said I, you will be cold there, and with that I ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... and the Negress continuing to enjoin me to silence by putting her finger to her Lips. Then clapping her little hands together (I mean that the Lady did, for the Black Woman's were sad Paws), in tumbles from a little door at the side of the Divan a Negro Urchin about eight years of age, very richly clad, who at her command brings Pipes and Coffee; and, signs being made to me, I sat down on a couple of Pillows on the Ground, smoked a Chibook, emptied a Cup, not much bigger ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... wheels is no fit abode for a student. This boarding system operates badly in many ways. The nature of the blue nose is still leavened with that dislike of coercive measures inherited from their former countrymen, the Yankees. It extends to their children, and each little black-eyed urchin, on his wooden bench and dog-eared dilworth in hand, must be treated by his teacher as a free enlightened citizen. But even without this, where is there in any country a schoolmaster daring enough to use a ratan, or birch rod, to that unruly darling from whose mother he knows his evening reception ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... and now, as he stood in the center of the prim, old-fashioned room, a thin, eager youngster not too warmly clad for the bite of the New England wind, Abner Sawyer felt with a sense of shock that this city urchin whom Judith had promised to "Christmas," detracted, in some ridiculous manner, from the respectability of the room. He was an inharmonious note in its staid preciseness. Moreover, it was evident ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple
... boy was so well dressed, so gently bred, so luxuriously lodged and fed. Earl himself realized his importance, and had at times the loftiness of a young prince in his manner. Occasionally, some independent urchin would bristle with democratic spirit, and tell him to his face that he was "stuck up," and that he hadn't so much more to be proud of than other folks; that his grandfather wasn't ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... misery; and it was this side which she determined to portray. Murillo's happy beggar boys were her ideal; Hogarth's work also commanded her admiration. Following in the footsteps of these great predecessors, she sought for her models "the merry, reckless, happy-go-lucky urchin; the tomboy girl; and the plump, untidy mother, dancing and tossing ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... that cardinal's election. If he becomes Pope some day, if they themselves help him to the throne, they enter the great pontifical family in his train. It was related that Sanguinetti had once already extricated Santobono from a nasty difficulty: the priest having one day caught a marauding urchin in the act of climbing his wall, had beaten the little fellow with such severity that he had ultimately died of it. However, to Santobono's credit it must be added that his fanatical devotion to the Cardinal was largely based upon the hope that he would ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... turned around sharply, feeling justly incensed. Of course, he knew what it was—some good-for-nothing urchin finding a vent for his excited feelings. His parlor-maid, who was never in any hurry to open the door,—she had once kept him waiting ten minutes when he had forgotten his latch-key,—would certainly take no notice of this unseemly noise, but he, James Tapster, would himself hurry out and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... hunter and said what a shame it was that Lubotshka, could not run as fast as Katenka, and what fun it would be if we could see Grisha's chains, and so forth; but of the impending separation we said not a word. Our chatter was interrupted by the sound of the carriage driving up, with a village urchin perched on each of its springs. Behind the carriage rode the huntsmen with the hounds, and they, again, were followed by the groom Ignat on the steed intended for Woloda, with my old horse trotting alongside. After running to the garden fence ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... Isfahan there are mountains to the south, the Urchin range, and also to the east, very rugged and with sharply defined edges. To the north-east stand distant elevations, but nothing can be seen due north. We go through a great many ruins on leaving the ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... happiness a regular fruit of the summer. The Fresh-Water Sun-Fish, Bream, or Ruff, Pomotis vulgaris, as it were, without ancestry, without posterity, still represents the Fresh-Water Sun-Fish in nature. It is the most common of all, and seen on every urchin's string; a simple and inoffensive fish, whose nests are visible all along the shore, hollowed in the sand, over which it is steadily poised through the summer hours on waving fin. Sometimes there are twenty ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... are going into the salting-house, we observe a little urchin running by the side of them, and hitting their edges with a long cane, in a constant succession of smart strokes, until they are fairly carried through the gate, when he quickly returns to perform the same office for ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... of a new and unbelievably beautiful world. Forty thousand persons were gathered in the Square of St. Mark and in front of the Palace, and I recall a pretty incident in which the gracious Queen and a little street urchin figured. The small, ragged boy had crept as close to the royal balcony as he dared, and then, unobserved, had climbed up one of its pillars. At the moment when a sudden hush had fallen on the crowd this infant, overcome by patriotism and a glimpse of the royal ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... a necklace rowed with pearl, is not the first taste, even in girls, that we should wish to cultivate; but the poet's principle is good, notwithstanding. Bid your child do things that are agreeable to him, and you may be sure of his obedience. Bid a hungry boy eat apple pye; order a shivering urchin to warm himself at a good fire; desire him to go to bed when you see him yawn with fatigue, and by such seasonable commands you will soon form associations of pleasure in his mind, with the voice and tone of authority. This tone should never be ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... to Hugh, who was still standing on the steps, and turned away to buy a box of matches from a passing urchin. Then he turned up his fur collar, and proceeded ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... tempted to give a snapping pull at the apron-strings and make for sweet liberty—a thing he was in the habit of doing about once a week, when the keenest switching and the liveliest dancing that one could wish to witness would follow, sure as fate. To do our urchin hero justice, however, he rarely yielded to the temptation without making some considerable effort to resist it; efforts such as older transgressors are apt to set down largely to their own credit in their private accounts between self and conscience, vaguely ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... this one thing more before I've done:—your way of punishing the boy for his behavior in church is, in my opinion, about as bad and dangerous a one as could possibly be devised. Why not give him a thrashing, if you must punish the miserable little urchin for what's his misfortune as much as his fault? Why not stop his pudding, or something of that sort? Here you are associating verses in the Bible, in his mind, with the idea of punishment and being locked up in the cold! You may make ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... his ragged handkerchief, the corners of which he was proceeding to tie together when the terrier again attracted attention with unmistakable signs of a "find." For a few brief minutes sport was keenly exciting, but at last all the "urchin" family, with the exception of one member, were captured, and the boy, now thoroughly happy, his pockets and handkerchief heavy with spoil, turned homewards through the darkness. Next morning, the slain hedgehogs, baked in ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... he went into the passage. "Halloa, here, what's to pay out here? Here, you all—Mammy, Jimmy, Polly, Sukey—glad to see Mas'r?" he said, as he went shaking hands from one to another. "Look out for the babies!" he added, as he stumbled over a sooty little urchin, who was crawling upon all fours. "If I step upon anybody, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... switch of the hunter fell upon the outstretched legs of the dozer, who cringed and groaned, but did not start. Another and another, and yet another, fell with the quickness and force of a pedagogue's rod on the legs of an offending urchin, till the aroused, maddened and enraged victim of the seeming cruelty leaped to his feet, and, with doubled fists, rushed upon the assailant, who darted off into the snow and led his pursuer a doubling race ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... for that snub-nosed, freckled-faced urchin with the ragged pants, as he seems to be displaying a fine amount of ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery
... battle, might exclaim, "For you, ye hinds, your father sold his country?" Or, would you have them live, that no man's daughter Would stoop so low as call your sons her husband? Would you behold them hooted, hissed at, Oft, as they crossed the street, by every urchin? Would ye your sons—your noble sons—met this, Eather than die for Scotland? If ye do love them, Love them as ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... day, a pensive urchin, with my hands behind my back and my face turned to the sun. The dazzling splendor fascinates me. I am the Moth attracted by the light of the lamp. With what am I enjoying the glorious radiance: with my mouth or my eyes? That is the question put by my budding scientific curiosity. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... evening after a digestion-racking meal prepared by Mrs. Buttershaw he went to the cottage armed with toys and weird and injudicious food for little Jean and demanded an account of the precious infant's doings during the day. Gradually Jean recovered of his congestion, being a sturdy urchin, and, to Aristide's delight, resumed the ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... body immediately designated three young persons whose conduct had been irreproachable to an exceptional degree. He then applied a more delicate test. "Point out to me," said he, "the worst boy." All the children remained motionless, and made no sign; but one little urchin came forward, with a pitiful air, and said, in a very low tone, "It is me." Such were the public sentiment and sense of honor, even in a reform school. This frankness in the lad was followed by reformation; and he became in after years a good ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... I became aware that he had another listener in the shape of a little urchin, clad in a brightly coloured gown, which reached to the ground, and who wore, perched on his closely-shaven head, a small tarboosh. He had appeared from some corner of the shop, and now sidled up to Halil, his bright black eyes ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... life. Suddenly, close by the massive post which marks the centre of every Hindoo tank, a huge scaly snout slowly and almost imperceptibly rose to the surface, then a broad, flat, forbidding forehead, topped by two grey fishy eyes with warty-looking callosities for eyebrows. Just then an eager urchin who had been squatted by me for hours, pointed to the brute. It was enough. Down sank the loathsome creature, and we had to resume our attitude of expectation and patient waiting. Another hour passed slowly. It was the middle of ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... a bed Of roses laid his weary head; Luckless urchin, not to see Within the leaves a slumbering bee. The bee awak'd—with anger wild The bee awak'd, and stung the child. Loud and piteous are his cries; To Venus quick he runs, he flies; "Oh, Mother! I am wounded through— I die with pain—in sooth I do! Stung by some little angry thing, ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... two children, but he did not adore them. The fond father had hoped to delight in them, and he had been disappointed. Instead of the son he had dreamed of—a regular boy, a mischievous little urchin, one of those handsome little dare-devils with whom an old soldier could live over again his own youth and hear once more, as it were, the sound of gunpowder—M. Mauperin had to do with a most rational sort of a child, ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... not be concluded that the Gavroche is superior to Pascal. I confess that I at times feel humiliated to think that it cost me five or six years of arduous research, and the study of Hebrew, the Semitic languages, Gesenius, and Ewald to arrive at the result which this urchin achieves in a twinkling. These pilings of Pelion upon Ossa seem to me, when looked at in this light, a mere waste of time. But Pere Hardouin observed that he had not got up at four o'clock every morning for forty years to think as all the world thought. ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... convinced, that for my bantling I desire neither rattle nor bells; neither the lullaby of praise, nor the pap of patronage, nor the hobby-horse of honour. 'Tis a plain-palated, home-bred, and I may add independent urchin, who laughs at sugar plums, and from its little heart disdains gilded gingerbread. If you like it—so; if not—why so; yet, without being mischievous, it would fain be amusing; therefore, if its gambols be pleasant, and your gravities permit, laugh; if not, e'en turn aside your heads, and let ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... tent, and reached out some platters and spoons. Maggie trembled a little, and was afraid the tears would come into her eyes. Meanwhile the tall girl gave a shrill cry, and presently came running up the boy whom Maggie had passed as he was sleeping,—a rough urchin about the age of Tom. He stared at Maggie, and there ensued much incomprehensible chattering. She felt very lonely, and was quite sure she should begin to cry before long; the gypsies didn't seem to mind her ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... urchin. His trousers evidently belonged to an older brother, as the legs had been rolled over and over in an effort to make them short enough so that he might walk without treading upon them. His blouse ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... romance fled, Even as a vision of the morning! Its rites foredone, its guardians dead, Its priestesses, bereft of dread, Waking the veriest urchin's scorning! Gone like the Indian wizard's yell And fire-dance round the magic rock, Forgotten like the Druid's spell At moonrise by his holy oak! No more along the shadowy glen Glide the dim ghosts of murdered men; No more the unquiet churchyard dead Glimpse upward from ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... years, Yet forward yearns through the bright spacious noon, Beyond the farthest isle, whose filmy shape Floats faint on the sea-line. I, scooping grains up with the frail half-shell Pale green and white-lined of sea-urchin, knew What her eyes sought as often children know Of grief or sin they could not name or think of Yet sooth or shrink from, so I saw and longed To heal her tender wound and yet said naught. The energy ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... blythe as the urchin at holiday play, And meek as the matron in mantle of gray, And trim as the lady of gentle degree, Is the maid of Llanwellyn who smiles ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... he asked, in the peremptory tone peculiar to him, of an old peasant woman who was standing on the threshold of her hut. Leaning against the doorpost as though dozing, the old woman stared in the direction of the tavern. A white-headed urchin in a print smock, with a cypress-wood cross on his little bare breast, was sitting with little outstretched legs, and little clenched fists between her bast slippers; a chicken close by was chipping at a stale crust ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... carried him back to the Dark Vaults, where he had heard the Dead Man catechise his little son, and he recollected that the urchin had, on that occasion, made the same reply to a similar question. By referring to the sixth chapter of this work, the reader will find the questions and ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... till the evening life of the city had begun with lamp-lighting and the return of white-robed clerks and subordinates from the Government offices. He stared dizzily in all directions, but none looked at him save a Hindu urchin in a dirty turban and Isabella-coloured clothes. Suddenly he bowed his head ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... youth's face, which was soiled like that of a weeping urchin. He frequently, with a nervous movement, wiped his eyes with his coat sleeve. His mouth was still a ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... of Love! Urchin of spite, and play! Deserter, oft, from saffron Hymen's quarters; His torch bedimming, as thou runn'st away, Till half his Votaries become ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... on the hard wooden bench and accepted the worn hymn-book that a small urchin presented him, with an amused stare which finally bloomed into a full grin ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... person that seemed to render him unsuited to such an office; and more than once was Captain Erskine, who followed immediately behind him at the head of his company, compelled to call sharply to the urchin, threatening him with a week's drill unless he mended his feeble and unequal pace, and kept from under the feet of his men. The remaining gun brought up the rear of the detachment, who marched with fixed bayonets and two balls in each ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... him guilty without waiting for the summing-up, and hanged him without benefit of clergy. Thus Baby Charles, and the Twelfth-night Queen of Hearts, and the overgrown schoolboy Cottington, and that little urchin Laud—who would reduce a verdict of 'guilty, death,' by famine, if it were impregnable by composition—all impannelled against poor Archy for presenting them bitter physic the last ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... fell out of the window again, and stuck out her tongue like an impudent urchin. "A pair of smarties," she scoffed. "Come home and fret our ears with your college ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... sleeping, and just awakened by the tramp of our horses, crawled out of the tent to have a look at us. It was a perfect scene of Indian domestic life. Near the chief, his wife sat on the ground playing with her child, a fat little urchin; a second woman was busy chopping wood; a third was coming in, axe in hand, with a huge bundle of sticks on her back, and a child clinging round her neck while a dog was too busy gnawing a bone to turn round and bark ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... Grief and Wrinkles. They grinned in a pleased, urchin-like manner. "Say, who do you suppose she is? Somebody he met this summer, no doubt. Would you ever think old Billie would get into that sort of a thing? Well, ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... good reason. And I NEVER part with any of it, unless I am to receive some benefit from the expenditure. Now, what earthly good could I get from your three by six school library? None whatever. But I shall make you a fair offer. I have heard from my housekeeper's urchin of a son that you are a 'master hand' to tell stories. Tell me one, here and now. I shall pay you in proportion to the entertainment you afford me. Come now, ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... are of genre subjects principally, and are in private collections. "'The Sea Urchin,'" Miss Cameron writes, "is in one of the public collections of Germany. I cannot remember which." She also says: "Except for my diploma R. S. W. and having my drawings sometimes in places of honor, usually on the line, and often reproduced in magazines, ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... in all some two dozen buildings—was very unlovely in slumber. It sprawled in the lap of the prairies, a grimy-faced urchin, with the lines of dismal sophistication writ deep. Yet where in all the "health resorts" of the East did air sweep from the clean hill-country with such revivifying power? It seemed a glad world of abiding youth. Surely "Town" was but a dreary illusion, ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... station and the curious assembled group, as apparently they slowly receded. The last thing they saw was the alien figure of an Indian in rancher's garb, gazing motionless after them; and by his side, in baiting pantomime, one gawky urchin engaged in the labour of scalping a mate. The last sound that reached their ears was the ironic note of a war ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... He could have handled these implements to better purpose and with better grace had not his arms been firmly held by three laughing girls, who pulled not wisely, but too well. He was further incommoded by the presence of a small urchin who lay on the dusty ground beneath his feet, fastening an upward clutch on ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... all right. Don't go so fast," remarked Gershom, as they ascended the steps. "It ain't going to run away from you." Bending down he picked up a crying urchin from the steps. "Lost your ball, have you? Well, I expect if you dig deep enough in my pocket, you can find it again. Hello! You've got a punch, ain't you, sonny? A regular John L., I reckon." Putting the child down, he continued sheepishly ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... to me one of the greatest of pleasures, and with great delight (though, I fear, imperfectly) I have executed the commission you gave me. It should have been done much sooner had not the storms been so bad in the sea near this that, until three days ago, I was not able to procure a living sea-urchin from which to make the drawings required. . .You have made all the geologists glacier-mad here, and they are turning Great Britain into an ice-house. Some amusing and very absurd attempts at opposition to your views have been made by one or two pseudo-geologists; among others, ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... parallel to the one-thousand-foot wall of Horn Bluff meeting several boulders stranded on the ice, as well as the fragile shell of a tiny sea-urchin. The promontory was domed with snow and ice, more than one thousand two hundred feet above sea-level. From it streamed a blue glacier overflowing through a rift in the face. Five miles on our way, the sledge passed from frictionless ice to rippled snow and with a march of seven ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... red-shirted sailor rose a moment later with the boy in his arms. Chucking the urchin into the boat he swam to the pier-head with the smooth facility and speed of an otter, climbed the wooden piles with the ease of an athlete, walked rapidly along the pier, and arrived at the head of the harbour almost as ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... could not warm the imagination quite enough. He says, in speaking of the Carnival, "For my part, though I pretended to take no interest in the matter, I could have bandied confetti and nosegays as readily and riotously as any urchin there." These few words explain his magnetism. The decorous pretense of his observant calm could not make us forget the bursts of mirth and vigorous abandon which now and then revealed the flame of unstinted life in his heart. And I, watching constantly as I did, saw a riotous throw ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... quarter-master, whose real name or nickname (I forget which) was Billy Magnus, appeared over the gangway hammocks, holding the missing urchin in his immense paw, where it squealed and twisted itself about, like Gulliver between the finger and thumb of the Brobdingnag farmer. The mother had just strength enough left to snatch her offspring from Billy, when she sank down flat on the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Mr. Aston declared he was a changeling and not the thin little urchin he had first encountered by the mile-stone on the Great Road. They never alluded to his life before that, though they all knew of it, and made their own private ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... knocker contended for recognition. Alike rusty as these were, it became a problem as to which would best secure communication with the interior. While the matter still seemed indefinite, it was set at rest by the advice of an obliging street-urchin, who volunteered his information with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... tremendous, and the frequent repetitions demanded soon filled the treasury of the theater. Everybody was happy, the composer most of all. The melodies were played on every piano in Germany and whistled by every street urchin. Its fame spread like lightning over Europe, and quickly reached England. In London the whole atmosphere seemed to vibrate with its melodies. In Paris, however, it did not please on first hearing, perhaps because it was so thoroughly German. But somewhat later, ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... tracked the strange sound along an eccentric course to its haunt, finding nothing more than the empty shell of a huge sea urchin, which in accord with a whim of the sea had floated and was now held aloft slantwise to the lips of the wind, firm in the branching tines of stag's-horn coral. A rustic pipe—giving forth a sonorous moan, now cooing and crooning, now bold and confident, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... or his father had turned him out, I never fathomed; but about the age of twelve he was thrown upon his own resources. A travelling tin-type photographer picked him up, like a haw out of a hedgerow, on a wayside in New Jersey; took a fancy to the urchin; carried him on with him in his wandering life; taught him all he knew himself—to take tin-types (as well as I can make out) and doubt the Scriptures; and died at last in Ohio at the corner of a road. "He was a grand ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rich, mamma," Jansoulet, when he was a mere urchin, used to say to his mother whom he adored, "I'll give you ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... when the war was making its preliminary bow, and Hemphill was thundering those editorials of his that warned the Old Lion he would have to wake up and clean the jungle, Hemphill was simply the errand urchin. There's the man who wrote "To Arms, England!" one day after the Austrian note to Serbia. Hemphill got the credit and the money—but Laurence De Foe ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... on again with such vigour that the horse forgot altogether to shy at the urchin that ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... scowled at a stable-boy until the terrified urchin hung his head in awe, respect, and admiration. The great militaire was not superior to humanity, and even this triumph elated him. He set forth, therefore, on ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... the office, I hastened back to my home, generally laden with a basket of provisions and various household necessities. Milk was brought to us daily from the above-mentioned cottage by a little toddler who seemed just able to carry the small tin bucket which held a lacteal pint. If the urchin had been the child of rich parents, as Euphemia sometimes observed, he would have been in his nurse's arms—but being poor, he was scarcely weaned before he began to carry milk around ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... never relaxing the slapping stride of our loose gallop, we go straight ahead, never turning aside, except for a laugh at those who flounder in the swamps we sneer at. But we confess honestly, we fear the little, brother, the small urchin who, with nankeen trousers and three rows of buttons, performs the part of Cupid. He strikes real terror into our heart; he it is who, with a cunning wink or sly smile, seems to confirm the soft nonsense we are weaving; by some slight gesture he seems to check ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... The urchin had found out that when once Cherry's crutch was out of her reach she could not get at him; and he had ridden off upon it so often, before committing any of his worst misdemeanours, that Cherry always lay down on it to secure it. After all, he was a ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... eyes, with a great towzled mass of chestnut hair, which (off the stage) was as often as not half tumbled over her shoulder. But a quicker little baggage at mimicry (she would play any part, from an urchin of ten to a crone of fourscore), or a livelier at dancing of Brantles or the single Coranto never was, I do think, and as merry as a grig. Of Ned Herring I need only here say that he was the most tearing villain imaginable on the stage, and off it the most civil-spoken, honest-seeming ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... how handsomely he was built; and squeezed his hand again, saying,—"D— ye, you dog, I suppose you don't value such an old crazy son of a b— as me a rope's end. You have forgot how I was wont to dandle you on my knee, when you was a little urchin no bigger than a davit, and played a thousand tricks upon me, burning my 'bacco-pouches and poisoning my rumbo. O! d— ye, you can grin fast enough I see; I warrant you have learnt more things than writing and the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... one day, encountered a small urchin loaded with a too heavy package of grocery. It caused him to tremble and stop. Charles inquired where he was going, took (although weak) the load upon his own shoulder, and managed to carry it to Islington, the place of destination. Finding ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... over my eyes.—Well, then consider your position. For fifteen years you have been tossing in the literary world; you are no longer young, you have padded the hoof till your soles are worn through!—Yes, my boy, you turn your socks under like a street urchin to hide the holes, so that the legs cover the heels! In short, the joke is too stale. Your excuses are more familiar than a ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... the Gods, and of mortals, and with thee he of varied plume, that darts about on swiftest wing; and flies over the earth and over the loud-resounding briny ocean; and Love charms to subjection, on whose maddened heart the winged urchin come gleaming with gold, the race of the mountain whelps, and of those that inhabit the sea, and as many things as the earth nourisheth, which the sun doth behold scorched [with its rays,] and men: but over all these things thou, Venus, alone ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... avenue outdid the square in popularity. The latter was barely able to hold its own by means of a very tall greased pole with a ten-dollar bill sticking on top of it, which was to be had by any boy climbing the pole. The crowd yelled itself hoarse as urchin after urchin slid back to defeat. Finally a little fellow, who had surreptitiously smeared the inside of his breeches with pitch, reached the top and seized the prize. The crowd went wild, threw its hats high in the air over this performance, then, with the fickleness of ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris |
