"Vagrant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time when 'neath the stairs the pages their heads raise! The term of "pure brightness" is the meetest time this thing to make! The vagrant silk it snaps, and slack, without tension it strays! The East wind don't begrudge because its ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... country-minstrels, men who doctor kine, Or graft, and, out of scions ten, save nine; 400 Creatures of genius they, but never meant To keep step with the civic regiment, These Ezra welcomed, feeling in his mind Perhaps some motions of the vagrant kind; These paid no money, yet for them he drew Special Jamaica from a tap they knew, And, for their feelings, chalked behind the door With solemn face a visionary score. This thawed to life in Uncle Reuben's throat A torpid shoal of jest and anecdote, 410 Like those queer fish that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... no servile passions Seek to charm thy vagrant mind; Well I know thy inclinations, Wav'ring as ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... first great impulse to the mind of genius. Mendelssohn received this from the companion of his misery and his studies, a man of congenial but maturer powers. He was a Polish Jew, expelled from the communion of the orthodox, and the calumniated student was now a vagrant, with more sensibility than fortitude. But this vagrant was a philosopher, a poet, a naturalist, and a mathematician. Mendelssohn, at a distant day, never alluded to him without tears. Thrown together ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... course of your reading, to mark down any passage to that end: as where any great houses of nobility were situated; or in what street any memorable event happened. I fear the subject will not furnish much till later times, as our princes kept their courts up and down the country in such a vagrant manner. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... directed that the new State officials be entrusted with the unhampered control of civil affairs, and this was more than enough to revive the bulldozing methods that had characterized the beginning of Hamilton's administration. Oppressive legislation in the shape of certain apprentice and vagrant laws quickly followed, developing a policy of gross injustice toward the colored people on the part of the courts, and a reign of lawlessness and disorder ensued which, throughout the remote districts of the State ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... shivering and hungry, yet refusing to come in and get warmed up with a decent breakfast. Foster, he thought, must certainly be scared of his wife, if he daren't show himself in this little rube town. For the first time Bud had a vagrant suspicion that Foster had not told quite all there was to tell about this trip. Bud wondered now if Foster was not going to meet a "Jane" somewhere in the South. That terrifying Mann Act would account for his caution much better than would the business deal of which Foster ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... any faithless minion,[1] And flies me (as he flies me ever),[2] Do I pursue him? never, never! No, let the false deserter go, For who would court his direst foe? But when I feel my lightened mind No more by grovelling gold confined, Then loose I all such clinging cares, And cast them to the vagrant airs. Then feel I, too, the Muse's spell, And wake to life the dulcet shell, Which, roused once more, to beauty sings, While love ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... affair begun when it ended; it was all over in an instant. The two who had escaped injury leaped back aboard the Drab. Those who needed assistance were helped back. The Drab drifted away, her vagrant course unheeded at first, for it looked as though all aboard had taken part ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... where, from earliest Spring until the grapes were gathered colour and light were caught and imprisoned within the web. At the bend in the river, where the rushes grew thickly, the river-god kept his harp, which answered with shy, musical murmurings to every vagrant wind. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... successful required first of all to command the confidence of the community in his honesty. The ballot and the jury-box were regarded as sacred as the sacrament itself, and the criminal courts had usually little to do beyond the cases of vagrant offenders. Business was conducted as a rule without the formality of contracts, and those whose lives justly provoked scandal were shunned on every side. This community possessed the only real wealth the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the most probable ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Darcy knew so much that it was needful to confide fully in him; and he gave Richard some satisfaction by a promise to watch over his brother as far as was possible with a man of such uncertain vagrant habits; and he likewise engaged to let him know, even in the Holy Land, of any change in the beggar's condition; and this, considering the wide-spread connections of the Order, and that some of its members were ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a wild day in Manila. Far over near the Escolta somebody shot at a vagrant dog lapping water from a little pool under one of the many hydrants. The soldier police essayed an arrest; the culprit broke and ran; the guard fired; a lot of coolies, taking alarm, fled jabbering to the river ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... me but do my work from day to day, In field or forest, at the desk or loom, In roaring market-place or tranquil room; Let me but find it in my heart to say, When vagrant wishes beckon me astray, "This is my work; my blessing, not my doom; "Of all who live, I am the one by whom "This work can best be done in ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke
... authority.—"As the Father gave Me commandment, even so I do." Every soul must have a supreme source of authority in its life, if it is to have peace. Its own whim, the suggestion of passion, the vagrant impulse of the moment, are inconsistent with tranquillity. There must be for each of us one voice which is imperative, one command which is indisputable, one authority which admits of no gainsaying. If you will search your heart you will see that this is so. Compare the restlessness of ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... been procured had sufficient time been allowed for another journey into Warwickshire. That of Shakspeare is known already in the signature to his will, but deformed by sickness; that of Sir Thomas Lucy is extant at the bottom of a commitment of a female vagrant, for having a sucking child in her arms on the public road; that of Silas Gough is affixed to the register of births and marriages, during several years, in the parishes of Hampton Lucy and Charlecote, and certifies ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... gulch, far above the head of Sunrise Canon, a fire was burning, its thin smoke streamer riding on a vagrant breeze. Near by lay a dun-colored horse on its side, tied fast. A man ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... the onus of proof should surely lie on the other side. It is for those who would assert the theory to bring forward positive proof of it. There is, however, one point in Mr. Darwin's view of domesticated animals which tells against his theory. The cat remains unchanged, because from its vagrant habits man has no control over its pairing [Footnote: Darwin's "Animals and Plants," vol. ii. p. 236.]. Now considering the variety of conditions under which cats exist, here is surely a great opening for natural selection. But it has ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... health of the spirit. He was an American and down deep within himself was the moral fervor that is American and that had become so strangely perverted in himself and others. As so often happened with him, when he was deeply stirred, an army of vagrant thoughts ran through his head. The thoughts had taken the place of the perpetual scheming and planning of his days as a man of affairs, but as yet all his thinking had brought him to nothing and had only left him more shaken ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... this woman freedom. He would devote himself to restoring her to the air and sunshine. What nobler ambition! He was an idler, he had never done anything for anybody. He was only a killer of time, a vagrant, but now was his opportunity—he would do for this beautiful soul what no one else on earth could do. She was slipping away as it was—the world would soon lose her. Was there ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... been trying to meet Terry, but he is as elusive as any vagrant sunbeam. I feel it would do me a world of good to have a long heart-to-heart talk with him. If I could only see him once a week and have him sympathise with me in a brotherly fashion and hear him say, in his ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... the loose ice; to the eastward and southward as far as he could see stretched the unbroken ice of the great field; to the westward and two miles distant was the black water of the open sea, dotted here and there by vagrant pans of ice which glistened white in the bright sunlight as they rose and ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... little boat, and slowly working his new wings in the sunlight, as if to try them out before essaying flight. It is a moment of great peril. A passing ripple may swamp his tiny craft and shipwreck him to become the prey of any passing fish or vagrant frog. A swallow sweeping close to the water's surface may gobble him down. Some ruthless city employe may have flooded the surface of the pond with kerosene, the merest touch of which means death to a mosquito. Escaping all of the thousand and one accidents that may befall, ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... who watch and listen, lie in wait, Seeing the cloudy cavalcades blow past,— Happy if some bright vagrant, soon or late, May venture near the snares of sound, at last— Most fortunate captor if, from time to time, One may be taken, trembling, ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... finding him merely ethical and he was eager that she should see that his grasp on life was larger than she might imagine. His taste was fine and fastidious; it was also disciplined and gracefully vagrant; she must see that in the few but perfect pictures and mezzotints on his walls; the collection of old white Chinese porcelain standing about the room on black carved stands; in his wonderful black lacquer cabinets and in all the charming medley of the ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... footprints were discovered which were immediately attributed to the murderer, who was so badly shod that the big toe of his right foot protruded from his boot. Monsieur Delorme proceeds along the trail; he obtains a piece of evidence that encourages him, and he declares that the murderer is a vagrant. I say this is a mistake. The murderer is not a vagrant. Now the house in which the crime was committed is an isolated house, and we know that within a radius of six to ten miles there was no tramp begging before the crime. So this tramp, if there was one, would have eaten and ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... mistake again! if you do I will make you suffer severely for it! And you, shameless girl! if you presume to set foot on these premises but once again, I will have you sent to the work-house as a troublesome vagrant." ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... for our lady's loyal sake This vagrant tale of mine, Where Cavalier and Roundhead break A reed for Right Divine, A tale it pleasured me to make, And most to ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... grim-visaged justice did—the curmudgeon, you called him, Eusebius, that would, were they now on earth, and sleeping all lovely with their pearly arms together, locked in leafy bower, have Cupid and Psyche taken up under the Vagrant Act, or have them lodged in a "Union House" to be disunited. You thought the superstition of the world as it was, far above the knowledge it now brags of. You admired the Saxons and Danes in their veneration of the predictions of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... Vagrant impressions and associations of this childhood strayed with quaint inconsequence across the field of his preoccupied mind. The peculiar odour of the ancient book-shop on the floor below remained like snuff in his nostrils. Somewhere underneath, or in the wainscoting ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... The idiot! Will you heed him? I believe he's more likely to become a vagrant and have to beg his bread, than to become a burgomaster. Dear Antonius! you mustn't pay attention to him, and you mustn't lose the affection you have for ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... own growing repute in the world of letters gathered about him a circle of friends—Southey, Wordsworth, Hazlitt, Manning, Barton, and the rest—more congenial, and certainly more profitable, than the vagrant intimados, "to the world's eye a ragged regiment," who had wasted his substance and his leisure in ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... plain? No, no! You are not vain. Whence comes this vagary?—well, we shall all know in good time. Were I to be with you, I should talk—perhaps maliciously—on purpose to see how your features would unsettle and shift themselves to the vagrant humour, that though one would know another from habit, and their old acquaintanceship, the painter would never be able to keep them steadily together. I should laugh to see every lineament "going ahead," and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... be luminous, the material on the positive pole, B, commences to phosphoresce, increasing in intensity until the tube refuses to conduct, its greatest brilliancy being just short of this degree of exhaustion. The probable explanation is that the vagrant molecules I introduce in the next experiment, happening to come within the sphere of influence of the positive pole, rush violently to it, and excite phosphorescence in the yttria, while losing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... April. In 1885, Prjevalsky had found the Lob-nor an immense lake; four years later Prince Henri d'Orleans saw it greatly reduced in size, and Dr. Sven Hedin discovered but pools of water. In the meantime, since 1885, the northern (Chinese) Lob-nor has gradually filled up, so the lake is somewhat vagrant. Dr. Sven Hedin says that from his observations he can assert that Prjevalsky's lake is ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... life on the other. From the long casement windows, opened to the mild air of the night, came the murmur of music. The orchestra was playing Strauss, the dreamy waltzes from The Queen's Lace Handkerchief. Bright uniforms and handsome gowns flashed by the opened windows. Sometimes a vagrant puff of air would find its way in, and suddenly the ball-room dimmed and the dancers moved like phantoms. The flames of the candles would struggle and, with many a flicker, right themselves, and the radiant colors and ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... bit of a poem I ran across in an old magazine somewhere. It was one of those vagrant, orphan poems with fine family lineaments that find their way unfathered into odd corners of papers. It told about a man riding on horseback through a bit of timber land in one of the cotton states ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... he was a great man, lay still in that fine, silent manhood, which would only break into fluent speech as you sat with him by the bright wood fire in winter, while the good wife went on with her knitting, putting it swiftly down a score of times in an hour, to pound a vagrant spark which had snapped on the carpet, or as we sat under the trees in the summer twilight. Then James Mott would open his heart to those he loved, and touch you with wonder at the depth and beauty of his thoughts; or tell you stories of the city where when a young man he lived, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... must be made aware of his presence, then he hoped for an opportunity to explain, but he would not seek it yet. So he made his way to the village, stopped to give pennies to small white-haired children, patted the shaggy dusty heads of vagrant dogs, and finally came to anchor on the seat beside the ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... in Transylvania and adjacent countries, where my mother's family were rich and honored, and took their seat among the dignitaries of the land. The French officers I have alluded to, without capacity for anything so dignified as a deep passion, but merely in pursuit of a vagrant fancy that would, on the next day, have given place to another equally fleeting, had dared to insult my mother with proposals the most licentious—proposals as much below her rank and birth, as, at any rate, they ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... thee the woodland pours Its wildly warbling song, And balmy from the bank of flowers The zephyr breathes along; Let no rude sound invade from far, No vagrant foot be nigh, No ray from Grandeur's gilded car, Flash ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... better than himself how luridly wicked Boston was, and that there was probably not a soul in it more helplessly anxious to get out of it. He thought it hard to be talked to as if it were his fault; as if he wished to become a vagrant and a beggar. He sat there an hour or two longer, and then he took the officer's advice so far as concerned his going to the station for a bed, swallowing his pride as he must. He must do that, or he must go to Mr. Sewell. It was easier to accept humiliation at the hands of ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... birthday in Munich. A short time before he had gone to Bayreuth to hear the Wagnerian operas, and now in the capital of Bavaria he attended the theater of the Residence, where the Mozart festival was celebrated. Jaime was not a melomaniac, but his vagrant existence forced him with the crowd, and his accomplishment as an amateur pianist had led him to make his musical pilgrimage for two ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... good man," and the piper tapped him gently on the shoulder, in the fashion of a professional philanthropist when he remonstrates with a professional vagrant; "don't you see you are not giving your soul any room to grow in? A great deal of joy might have reached the world across your open palm. Instead, you have crushed it in a hard, tight fist. You must pay now for all ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... cylinders, whizzing wheels, Rend and ravel and tear and pick; What can resist these hooks of steel, Sharp as the claws of the ancient Nick? Cast-off mantle of millionaire, Pestilent vagrant's vesture chill, Rags of miser or beggar bare, All are 'grist' for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... exclamation of Drusilla's vagrant lord. The others looked up, interested. "Say, everybody, Lady Agnes and I have hit upon a ripping scheme. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... will never see it. Another class will hail the prospect of emancipation, but will deprecate the length of time. They will feel that it gives too little to the now living slaves. But it really gives them much. It saves them from the vagrant destitution which must largely attend immediate emancipation in localities where their numbers are very great, and it gives the inspiring assurance that their posterity shall be free forever. The plan leaves to each State ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... off without the words; and so are you," added Agatha candidly, relinquishing the wheel and strolling with languid grace about the room, hands on her hips, timing her vagrant steps to the ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... devouring little children raw. Though he was hardly thirty years old, he looked fifty. Amidst his bushy beard and the locks of hair which hung over his face in poodle fashion, one could only distinguish the gleam of his brown eyes, the furtive sorrowful glance of a man of vagrant instincts, rendered vicious by wine and a pariah life. Although no crimes had actually been brought home to him, no theft or murder was ever perpetrated in the district without suspicion at once ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... and rest. He gazed earnestly at the house. Nothing stirred there save the open doors swinging idly in every vagrant wind. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... for to take me into Custody; they took me before the justice; Justice Oldmixon put me in the parish Stocks for a vagrant. ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... specimen is becoming very rare. The old family servant who, born and reared in the dwelling of his master, identified himself with the welfare of those whom it was his lot to serve, is giving place in every direction to that vagrant class which has sprung up within the last thirty years, and whose members roam through the country unfettered by principles, and uninfluenced by attachments. For it is one of the curses of slavery, ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... somebody is comin'; he don't act as if 't were a vagrant kind o' noise; must really be somebody in our lane." And Mrs. Dallett smoothed her apron and gave an anxious housekeeper's glance round the kitchen. None of her state visitors, the minister or the deacons, ever came in the morning. ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... a neat and appropriate speech. Noggs was at the first ballot elected Sergeant-at-Arms and door-keeper in general, the duty of which offices he promised to fill to the very best of his abilities. A vagrant-opinion was rife that Monsieur Souley would have filled the office of door-keeper much better, himself being so easily opened and shut. However, as Noggs had been voted the office, we all reconciled ourselves to the selection, each member providing himself with a gin-sling, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... he wandered on for close upon an hour, moving from one street to another with steps that were listless or rapid, as inclination prompted; then, still acting with vagrant aimlessness, he stopped in his wanderings and ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... sister on her duty stand; Some twelve years old, demure, affected, sly, Prepared the force of early powers to try; Sudden a look of languor he descries, And well-feigned apprehension in her eyes; Train'd but yet savage in her speaking face, He mark'd the features of her vagrant race; When a light laugh and roguish leer express'd The vice implanted in her youthful breast: Forth from the tent her elder brother came, Who seem'd offended, yet forbore to blame The young designer, but could only trace ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... be considered by him as a fair discharge of the obligation of the Government to him for his services. Lord Liverpool was not disposed to prostitute such favours upon a mercenary and intriguing vagrant, and referred him to the Government of Lower Canada, then in charge of Sir George Prevost, who had succeeded Sir James Craig. Henry knew the little estimate that was placed upon his services in Canada; he therefore betook himself back ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... chapter has been dealt with; firstly, because in this are enunciated those radical conceptions which he afterwards argues not to, but from; and secondly, because it has been the writer's desire, avoiding all vagrant and indecisive criticism, to have a fair grapple, and come to some clear result,—like that of a wrestler, who frankly proffers himself to throw or be thrown. It only remains to indicate, so far as may be, a comprehensive estimate of Mr. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and adoring self. Without his basal firmness and strength, woman, in whom the centrifugal force is stronger, remains a weak, vacillating, impulsive creature, feebly swayed by the tides of emotion, lacking self-poise, and aimless and vagrant. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... commencement, an affair of pomp and ceremony held in Hastings's Theater, was not less than shocking. It had seemed so to the principal, but he knew Phil; and knowing Phil he laughed when the English teacher protested that it would compromise her professional dignity to allow a student to discuss the vagrant canines of Main Street in a commencement essay. She had expected Phil to prepare a thesis on "What the Poets Have Meant to Me," and for this "The Dogs of Main Street" was no proper substitute. The superintendent of schools, scanning ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... was like one luminous ghost: and buttercup, daisy, snowdrop, primrose gathered Margaret, vagrant, flighty, light to the winds that wafted her as fluff, and tossed them suddenly aloft, and back they came to be tangled in her bare hair; and now she was a tipsy ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... of the trim and sprightly Parisienne was a pleasant little excitement when we met with it in its own domain; but our allegiance never wandered from our brown-haired girls at home, and our hearts were less vagrant than our fancies. This was in the old time, and when English girls were content to be what God and nature had made them. Of late years we have changed the pattern, and have given to the world a race of women as utterly unlike the old insular ideal as if we had ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... useful page; In vain! for giddy pleasure calls, And shews the marbles, tops, and balls. What's learning to the charms of play? The indulgent tutor must give way. A heedless wilful dunce, and wild, The parents' fondness spoil'd the child; The youth in vagrant courses ran; Now abject, stooping, old, and wan, Their fondling is ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... hours. Let our pulpits and press rebuke crime among us as well as away from us. Let us organize and encourage good citizenship committees in all our churches and in every community. Let us draw the line between the idle and industrious among us. Let us urge vagrant laws upon that set of men who will not work but form the criminal class in all our cities. Let us more than ever show ourselves ready to help rid the community of objectionable persons and places. Let us not say less—if well said—for right ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... is to be vagrant born? A waif is only a waif. And so, For another idle hour I sit, In large content ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... marine parade of solemn lines of geese, were spread with brown nets. On May mornings, if the take was good, long lines of carts rattled down the road carrying the fish to the railway at Clifden, and the place bore for a while the appearance of vitality. A vagrant Englishman discovered that lobsters could be had almost for the asking in Carrowkeel. The commercial instincts of his race ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... befall 'idle persons and vagabonds, such as wake on the night and sleep on the day, and haunt customable taverns and ale-houses, and routs about; and no man wot from whence they come ne whither they go,' is a brief period of hard labour under the provisions of the Vagrant Act. Under this comprehensive statute are swept together as into one common net a vast variety of petty offenders, of whom some are deemed 'idle and disorderly persons,' other 'rogues and vagabonds,' and others again 'incorrigible ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... Dorothea was asleep. Her book slid to the floor, I shaded her face with my green umbrella, pulled down her muslin frock over her pretty ankles, and gave myself up to vagrant thoughts ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... if it shows how much individuals may perform, shows likewise how much society is to be desired. Though the perseverance and address of the Indian excite our admiration, they nevertheless cannot procure him the conveniencies which are enjoyed by the vagrant beggar of a civilized country: he hunts like a wild beast to satisfy his hunger; and when he lies down to rest after a successful chase, cannot pronounce himself secure against the danger of perishing in a few days: he is, perhaps, content with his condition, because he knows not that a better ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... thought they could tell her. Nat was into one scrape after another—nothing especially wicked; but a compound of the bubbling mischief in a too ardent life—robbed orchards, broken windows, practical jokes, Halloween jinks, vagrant whimsies ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... into a wider meaning; in which it becomes true also for our historical experience. Csar and Rome have flourished and expired together. The illimitable attributes of the Roman prince, boundless and comprehensive as the universal air,—like that also bright and apprehensible to the most vagrant eye, yet in parts (and those not far removed) unfathomable as outer darkness, (for no chamber in a dungeon could shroud in more impenetrable concealment a deed of murder than the upper chambers of the air,)—these attributes, so impressive to ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... far as Miss Unity was concerned; she had seldom spent such an afternoon in her life. She had been taken out for a walk in the mud, with rain threatening; she had talked in the open High Street, under the very eye of the dean, with a little vagrant out of Anchor and Hope Alley; she had of her own accord, unadvised and unassisted, formed an original plan, and not only formed it, but taken the first step towards carrying it out. Miss Unity hardly knew herself and felt ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... served the limited time duly and faithfully, they should be entitled to a certificate, as is practised at present in the wool-combing trade; nor should any person hire a servant without a certificate or other proper security. A servant without a certificate should be deemed a vagrant; and a master or mistress ought to assign very good reasons indeed when they object against giving a servant his ...
— Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business • Daniel Defoe
... soyle is very fruitfull) it is all vnhabited, sauing that vpon the riuer Volgha on the Westside, the Emperour hath some fewe Castels with garisons in them. This happeneth by meanes of the Crimme Tartar, that will neither himselfe plant Townes to dwel there, (liuing a wild and vagrant life) nor suffer the Russe (that is farre off with the strength of his Countrey) to people those parts. From Vologda (whieh lieth almost 1700. verst from the port of S. Nicholas) downe towards Mosco, and so towards the South part that bordereth vpon the Crimme, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... constantly increase their horizontal diameter. Coconuts are frequently seen floating upon the sea in these regions, some of which are no doubt thrown upon the shores of the new created lands; from which accidental circumstance this fruit is there propagated. Vagrant birds unconsciously deposit the germs of various other productions of the vegetable kingdom, which in due season spring up and clothe their surfaces with verdure; and the natural accumulation of dead and putrid vegetation serves to assist in the formation of a rich and ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... glorious afternoon. The sea lay dappled with light and shade as the sun and vagrant breezes played with it, while for miles along the coast the great cliffs were wrapt in a soft, quivering haze so that the lines and curves of their vari-coloured strata, and the bleak, sheer menace of their height, as they overhung the blue water lapping on the ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... woke the drowsy flowers, And vagrant odours thronged the breeze, And bluebirds wrangled in the bowers, And daisies flashed along the leas, And faint arbutus strove among Dead winter's leaf-strewn wreck to rise, And nature's sweetly jubilant song Went murmuring up the sunny skies, ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... a high branch for his final jump—a bit of pure bravado because he felt nervous inside—discovered, with mingled terror and joy, that his vagrant foot had narrowly shaved Aunt Jane's neat hard summer hat: Aunt Jane—of all people—at such a moment, when you couldn't properly explain. He half wished he had kicked the fierce little feather and ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... embarkation to visit Solomon,—the whole properly toned down with amber varnish;—imagine the first consternation, and final wrath, of these cognoscenti, at being asked to contemplate, deliberately, and to the last rent of her ragged gown, and for principal object in a finished picture, a vagrant who ought at once to have been sent to the workhouse; and some really green grass and blue flowers, as they actually may any day be seen ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... believe it, chance led them to discovering the murderer. A vagrant who had been many times convicted, notorious for his vicious life, was seen selling for drink a snuff-box and watch that had belonged to the doctor. When he was questioned he was confused, and answered with an obvious lie. A search was ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... like a canker into my means, now menace me with a dungeon—a threat which they dared not mutter, far less attempt to execute, were it not that they see me an outcast, unprotected by the natural head of my family, and regard me rather as they would some unfriended vagrant, than as a descendant of ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Londoners understand the Guildhall pigeons have as much right to the place as the aldermen, they look upon the seabirds by London Bridge as vagrant strangers. They do not know where their city ends on the east side. Their River descends from Oxford in more than one sense. It has little history worth mentioning below Westminster. To the poets, the River becomes flat and songless where at ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... not implied that this girl cared for him, but vice versa: either supposition, however, was as absurd as the other. As if Lanyard could love a woman who loved another! As if the name of love meant aught to him but the memory of a sweetness like a vagrant air of Spring that had breathed fitfully for a season upon the Winter of ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... had faithfully tried all those formulas which in the past were supposed to have served the turns of those seeking adventure in a great city. There was the trick of bestowing a thousand-dollar bill upon a chance vagrant and then trailing after the recipient to note what happened to him, in his efforts to change the bill. Heretofore, in fiction at least, the following of this plan had invariably brought forth most beautiful results. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... little green loops or bends on the banks of Corriewater, mouldered walls, and a few stunted wild plum-trees and vagrant roses, still point out the site of a cottage and garden. A well of pure spring- water leaps out from an old tree-root before the door; and here the shepherds, shading themselves in summer from the influence of the sun, tell to their children the wild tale of Elphin Irving and his sister Phemie; ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... air? But the majority of men take their way through Paris in the same manner as they live and eat, that is, without thinking about it. There are very few skillful musicians, very few practiced physiognomists who can recognize the key in which these vagrant notes are set, the passion that prompts these floating words. Ah! to wander over Paris! What an adorable and delightful existence is that! To saunter is a science; it is the gastronomy of the eye. To take a walk is to vegetate; ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... tribe—not even for his beloved Meriem. While he waited among the branches and foliage of a near-by tree he searched the village constantly with his keen eyes, and twice he circled it, sniffing the vagrant breezes which puffed erratically from first one point of the compass and then another. Among the various stenches peculiar to a native village the ape-man's sensitive nostrils were finally rewarded by cognizance of the delicate aroma which marked ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... some higher principle than that of contract. The same generous spirit, no doubt, dictated the enactment prohibiting farm labourers from bringing up their children to trades, lest hands should be withdrawn from the land-owner's service. Connected with the Statutes of Labourers, are those bloody vagrant laws, in which whipping, branding, hanging are ordained as the punishment of vagrancy by lawgivers, many of whom were themselves among the idlest and most noxious vagabonds in the country, and the authors of senseless wars which generated a mass of vagrancy, by filling ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... bundle on his back, and went, He knew not whither, nor for what intent; So stole our vagrant from his warm retreat, To rove a prowler, and be ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... decrepit through Age, Distempers, Accidents, or some Infirmities; for where there is a numerous Family of poor Children the Vestry takes Care to bind them out Apprentices, till they are able to maintain themselves by their own Labour; by which Means they are never tormented with Vagrant, and Vagabond Beggars, there being a Reward for taking up Run-aways, that are at a small Distance from their Home; if they are not known, or are without a Pass from their Master, and can give no good Account of themselves, ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... contemptible in their eyes, for all things have a meaning, and they both walk in august reasonableness before all men, conscious of the workings of God yet free from all terror of mendicant priest or vagrant miracle-worker. But the parallel ends here. For the one stands aloof from the world-storm of sleet and hail, his eyes fixed on distant and sunlit heights, loving knowledge for the sake of knowledge and ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... and were enervated in the ease so propitious to vices. At last the eldest of those who shared the name of Grep, wishing to regulate and steady his promiscuous wantonness, ventured to seek a haven for his vagrant amours in the love of the king's sister. Yet he did amiss. For though it was right that his vagabond and straying delights should be bridled by modesty, yet it was audacious for a man of the people to covet the child of a king. She, much ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... holding "kangaroo" court in the New Orleans jail. Every vagrant picked up by the police was tried and sentenced and shipped out to a chain-gang camp. Nearly every man tried was convicted. And there were plenty of camp bosses ready to "buy" every vagrant the officers could run in. My bunch down at the flop house was in deadly terror of being "kangarooed" ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... head when he observed his antagonist backing a few paces, which he well knew was the customary preparation for a charge. "Reculez pour mieux sauter" was well exemplified when in another moment the vagrant elephant dashed forward at great speed to the attack, trumpeting and screaming with mad fury. In the meantime Moota Gutche coolly advanced at a moderate pace. The shock of the encounter was tremendous. The spear ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the country, Robert," said Mr. Massey to his coachman, and so away they started at a leisurely pace, since the complacent horses refused any other. Sometimes vagrant chickens wandered into the road, exhibiting a daring that enthralled Peter. His opinion of chickens rose when, the fat horses almost upon their tail ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... said Lord Dunseveric. "In time you will perhaps learn courtesy. But I did not come here to-night to teach manners to vagrant Yankees. I came to tell Mr. Ward that he has been denounced to the Government as a seditious person, and that I received orders ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... could I? I went straight to St. Ives, but everyone had forgotten my mother, and her people were dead. You see, I looked like a vagrant, my clothes were weather-stained, my boots were worn out, I had no money, and no one wanted me. More than once I thought I ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... of the Serious Call, who also denounced the stage. The sentiment was, in fact, that of the respectable middle classes in general. The effect was to strengthen the prejudice which held that playgoing was immoral in itself, and that an actor deserved to be treated as a 'vagrant'—the class to which he legally belonged. During the next half-century, at least, that was the prevailing opinion among the ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... which he astonished the ignorant, and confounded the vulgar. But he was not, it seems, so successful in his practice when out of London: not long before his death, he was committed by the Mayor of Shrewsbury to the common House of Correction in that town, as a vagrant and impostor. When or how ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... warm days that fell at the end of the apple harvest, when such vagrant labourers as had collected to help the farmers were loitering at liberty, Smith held his first and last public meeting in the place where his boyhood had been passed. It was near the cross-roads on the ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... Decidedly I find it does not agree with me to prosecute the search of the picturesque in a carriage; a waggon, a spring-cart, even a post-chaise might do, but the carriage upsets everything. I longed to slip out unseen, and to run away by myself in amongst the hills and dales. Erratic and vagrant instincts tormented me, and these I was obliged to control, or rather, suppress, for fear of growing in any degree enthusiastic, and thus drawing attention to the "lioness," the authoress, the artist. Sir J. K. Shuttleworth is a man of ability ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... essays: he never sent them in on the right day, and might generally be seen on the Monday pondering over essays which every one else had sent in on the Friday night." These traits, however, as it proved later, were the index not of a vagrant mind, but of independence of thought and of preoccupation with weightier matters. To quote again from the tribute of a fellow-student: "On everything he said or wrote there was stamped the impress of a forcible individuality, a mind that thought for itself, and whose thoughts had ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... no Idler who hath no particular calling, or vagrant Person under pretence of a calling, be suffered to perform worship in Families, to or for the same: Seeing persons tainted with errours or aiming at division, may be ready (after that manner) to creep into houses and lead captive ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... him one night on their return from Mosman, playing in front of a public-house to an audience of three loafers. The streets had soon dragged him to their level. Unkempt and half starved, he wore the look of the vagrant who sleeps in his clothes for want of bedding. Grown childish in his distress, he had forgotten his lifelong habits of neatness and precision, going to pieces like a man who ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... in which the en cas de nuit was brought into use, for the sake of one Poquelin alias Moliere;—how often has it been described and admired? This Poquelin, though king's valet-de-chambre, was by profession a vagrant; and as such, looked coldly on by the great lords of the palace, who refused to eat with him. Majesty hearing of this, ordered his en cas de nuit to be placed on the table, and positively cut off a wing with his own knife and fork for Poquelin's use. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wall from the door to the garden gate is only one small high window. But time and nature have done much to beautify the spot. In the cracks of the roof, thatched or tiled, whichever it may be, many a vagrant seed has found lodgment. The weeds have grown up in profusion to cover the bare little place with leaf and flower. Indeed, there is here a genuine roof garden of the prettiest sort, and it extends along the stone wall separating the dooryard from the garden. Some ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... rejected; outcasts by traditionary law, and children of hereditary disgrace:—all these walk with Our Lady of Sighs. She also carries a key; but she needs it little. For her kingdom is chiefly amongst the tents of Shem, and the houseless vagrant of every clime. Yet in the very highest ranks of man she finds chapels of her own; and even in glorious England there are some that, to the world, carry their heads as proudly as the reindeer, who yet secretly have received her ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... ghosts, of these gods, and the sweet and tearful face of Mercy becomes livid with eternal hate. Heaven's golden gates are shut, and you, with an infinite curse ringing in your ears, with the brand of infamy upon your brow, commence your endless wanderings in the lurid gloom of hell—an immortal vagrant—an eternal ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... and never so much as offer to hand one of them! Those were not good manners, my master, when I was a young maid—but seeing how things be changed now o' days, maybe that has gone along with them. Come hither at once, thou vagrant, and give thine hand to thy mother, like a dutiful son as thou shouldest be, ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... they please in their reports to their societies, they make no converts to their faith, except the pretended ones of vagrant and vagabond drunkards, who are outcasts from ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... to Lancaster County he had a vagrant idea of what the South Carolina mountains are like. He would have told you that the trees there all murmur the name of Amanda, that the birds sing her name, the waterfalls cry it aloud! During his two weeks of absence from her his conviction was affirmed—he knew without a shadow ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... ye Hills, we come: The vagrant Fox shall hear: his doom, And dread our jovial train. The shrill Horn sounds, the courser flies, While every Sportsman joyful cries, 'There's ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... dirty street we turned into another and broader one. By this time not a soul was to be seen, only a vagrant dog or two lying asleep in the road. In this portion of the town gas lamps were at a discount, consequently more than half the streets lay in deep shadow. Our guide walked ahead, we followed half-a-dozen paces or so behind him. I remember noticing a Greek cognomen upon a sign board, and ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... haughty Frontenac, His great heart torn with pride and pain, His clear eye dimming as it swept The land he might not see again, This infant world, this strange New France Dropped down as by some vagrant wind Upon the New World's vast expanse, Threatened yet safe! Through storm and stress Time's ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... are the eternal humorist The eternal enemy of the absolute, Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist With your air indifferent and imperious At a stroke our mad poetics to confute—" And—"Are we ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot
... monarch sate discoursing with the Duke of Buckingham, being sore heated, he threw open the windows of his coach, from whence he occasionally obtruded his wise head for a survey, and a visit from some vagrant and silly breeze, if any were abroad. The roads admitted not of aught but the gentlest paces, and the great clamour and cloud about the procession made the dust and heat excessively annoying; whereupon ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... door. "Ah, Dr. Manthis, I believe. I have heard so much about your work." His hoarse yet ringing voice made the little man start violently and caused June to shake her head in annoyance as the sound interfered with the humming of the vagrant wave. "Sorry I could not come earlier." Solinski advanced into the laboratory, giving the effect of driving the chemist before him. "Trying to revive one of the sufferers, I see. May God aid you in this ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... Kenelm Digby Opened" is a cook book. It is due you to know this at once, otherwise your thoughts—if your nature be vagrant—would drift towards family skeletons. Or maybe the domestic traits prevail and you would think of dress-clothes hanging in camphorated bags and a row of winter boots ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... as luck would have it, a vagrant gust of wind, perhaps an advance courier of the prospective storm, swooped down across the road. Before the boy who was stooping over could touch the paper that had attracted his attention it ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... my friend's wanderings and adventures as, springing out of his world of books, he flits and glides like a vagrant, swift- winged, irresponsible butterfly about the land, sipping the nectar from a thousand flowers and doing his hundred miles in a day and feeling all the better for it, for this was a man's book, and the wheel and its magic was never a necessity in man's life. But ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... watch, marching from the Marienthurn to the Frauenthor, gave her vagrant thoughts a new turn. The city guard was soon followed by a troop of horse, which probably ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... erect but for the slouching droop of shoulders that was more a matter of temperament than of age, one saw a tall man of massive build, whose keen glance and slightly grizzled hair belied his groping, ineffectual labor. The head, and face were finely modelled. Unless nature had fashioned them in some vagrant, prankish mood, such elegance of line betokened prior generations in which gentlemen and scholars had played some part—the vagabond scion of a good family, perhaps. A multitude of such had grafted on the pioneer stock of ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... to any amount, are to be had for the catching; and the opportunity is well improved. See that sombre, ashen-colored pewee on yonder branch. A true sportsman he, who never takes his game at rest, but always on the wing. You vagrant fly, you purblind moth, beware how you come within his range! Observe his attitude, the curious movement of his head, his "eye in a fine frenzy rolling, glancing from heaven to earth, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... over the apartment, but the shyer boy dared not seat himself upon any of those handsome satin-covered chairs. He slunk behind Molly, casting his eyes down and nervously twirling his cap. For, little vagrant though he was, his street life had already taught him that it was the correct thing for lads and men to bare the head in the presence of ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... "Zounds!" he stormed. "I have had enough impudence to contend with to-night. Begone; or up you go for a vagrant." ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... Saturday nights, outside a house of general refreshment (familiarly termed a wine vaults) at Battle-bridge. The singer is a young gentleman who can scarcely have numbered nineteen summers, and who before his last visit to the treadmill, where he was erroneously incarcerated for six months as a vagrant (being unfortunately mistaken for another gentleman), had a very melodious and plaintive tone of voice, which, though it is now somewhat impaired by gruel and such a getting up stairs for so long a period, I ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray
... might be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an undutiful child, whom his parents had given over to the civil authority, was to be corrected at the whipping-post. It might be, that an Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist was to be scourged out of the town, or an idle and vagrant Indian, whom the white man's fire-water had made riotous about the streets, was to be driven with stripes into the shadow of the forest. It might be, too, that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bitter-tempered widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the gallows. In either case, there ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rendered so by the laws of the Commonwealth, but many imaginary. We do not doubt that the state of society among them is low and degraded, comparatively speaking, but what contributes to keep them in this situation we are unable to say, unless it be, that the plantation has been a resort of the vagrant, the indolent, and those whom refined society would not allow among them. If this is the case, and we believe it has been, something should be done, either among the Indians, or by the Legislature, to remedy the evil. We have understood also, that certain individuals, ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... very good to get away once more and pick up the old and ever fresh business of the vagrant, loafing through new towns, learned in the manners of dogs, babies, and perambulators half the world over, and tracking the seasons by the up-growth of flowers in stranger-people's gardens. St. Paul, standing ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... earnings, I am not a rich man. I have not accepted wealth without accepting the personal responsibility for it. Sick men and women in more than one hospital lie in wards provided by Martin Renard and myself; and I am not dishonoured in my Institution at Poplar. Those vagrant wanderings with Andriaovsky have enabled me to know the poor and those who help the poor. My personal labours in the administration of the Institute are great, for outside the necessary routine I leave ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... morning while Tess was doing the simple chores around the shack, she had the door open to admit the vagrant breezes of the summer day. Andy, as his custom was on such occasions, lay quietly upon the attic floor, secure from the observation of any chance passer-by. Stepping to the door to shake her dust rag, Tess saw Jake ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... straight for two miles, fenced from the fields in many parts by low stone walls without mortar, abhorrent to the eye of Cosmo; in other parts by walls of earth, called dykes, which delighted his very soul. These were covered with grass for the vagrant cow, sprinkled with loveliest little wild flowers for the poet-peasant, burrowed in by wild bees for the adventurous delight of the honey-drawn school-boy. Glad I am they had not quite vanished from Scotland before I was sent thither, but remained to help ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... highnesses might deem reasonable. The kings were then occupied in other affairs, so that my messengers spoke with their secretaries, who said they needed not to trouble the kings on that business, as they would provide me twelve fit persons; but that there were several vagrant people about the town who would be willing enough to go, yet were very unfit for my purpose, as they would only consume victuals, and of whom the Dutch made use without making any request on the matter, and it was not known ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... own: a thing as yet only half understood, and held secret in his heart out of dread of hearing it mocked or of finding it something common to all men. While, then, the words "Premier of Russia" still echoed through his head, there rose upon his inner ear a sudden note of melody, vagrant, sweet and melancholy as the songs of the Steppes. Known song it was not, however; but something unique, as were all the airs that came to him unbidden. Under its influence it was natural that his face should change, and soften. But Michael, imagining ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... a glorious, sun-illumined spring morning, and every crevice in the rough flanks of Ben Slioch was mirrored in the unwrinkled surface of the noble loch. Ben Eay had a bright covering of Nature's whitest, softest lawn. No sounds were heard except the low droning of a vagrant bee, the whizzing of a sea-mew's pinions, or a bark from this croft answered by a bark from that other a mile away. Suddenly the repose of the morning, in which a pedestrian could hear the echo of his own feet, was startled ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... town an hour's walk lives the mother of Basilio and Crispin. The wife of a heartless man, she struggles to live for her sons, while her husband is a vagrant gamester with whom her interviews are rare but always painful. He has gradually stripped her of her few jewels to pay the cost of his vices, and when the suffering Sisa no longer had anything that he might take to satisfy his whims, he had begun ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... become much more delicate since 1800: and it is not surprising to find—as we do find—that between the text of the "Lyrical Ballads" of 1800, and that of 1802, there are many important variations. This is seen, for example, in the way in which he dealt with 'The Female Vagrant', which is altered throughout. Its early redundance is pruned away; and, in many instances, the final text, sanctioned in 1845, had been adopted in 1803. Without going into further detail, it is sufficient to remark that in the year 1803 ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... counted as individuals. They ran about in panic-stricken groups like vagrant dogs. Those in uniform looked on indifferently, or gave sharp orders turning strangers back from this road or that, this gate or that. A chauffeur in uniform might turn back ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... facetious low comedian'. His good voice was serviceable in ballad opera and farce. On account of his 'natural timidity', according to Davies, he was selected by Highmore, the patentee, in order to test the status of an actor, to be the victim of legal proceedings taken under the Vagrant Act, 12 Queen Anne, and on 12 Nov. 1733 he was committed to Bridewell as a vagabond. On 20 Nov. he came before the chief justice of the Kings Bench. It was pleaded on his behalf that he paid his debts, was well esteemed by persons of condition, was a freeholder ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... attitude of the dentist, the conventional solemnity of the schoolteacher and of the immobile Swede, the shaking, quavering terror of Mrs. Ducharme, mumbling to herself the words of the service. Why should the old woman be so upset, he wondered. But his vagrant thoughts always came back to the woman near the coffin, the woman he loved. How could she summon up such peace! Was hers one of those mighty souls that never doubted? That ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... light work. No child of less than 12 is allowed to work more than 66 hours in any one week. An able-bodied parent who does not work when he has the opportunity, unless "idle under strike orders, or lock-outs,'' and who hires out his minor children, is declared a vagrant and may be fined $500 and imprisoned or sentenced to hard labour for not more than six ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the rest—as Ned would, if he were here," she said, still half fainting. She got the window open hard by, and a vagrant gust of the cold air stung her face as with a lash. But she was out of the direct course of the blast as it came shrilly fluttering from over the roof, and she could maintain her position, although she could scarcely breathe in the keen frigidity. Snow had fallen, ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... to make me lenient. The man's family had served my own for as many generations as the rooks had builded in our yews, and so, on one side at least, he inherited blind loyalty to my name. I say on one side, for his blood was mixed; his father had married a vagrant, a half-gypsy Irish girl who begged among the villages. It was the union of a stolid ox and a wildcat, and I had much amusement watching the two breeds fight for the mastery in the huge Pierre. The cat was quicker of wit, but the ox was of more use to me in the long run, so I tried ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... expected. Still, he was not so loose as to have lost his finer instincts altogether, for he had some. He read a good deal, mostly fiction, played the organ, and actually conducted the musical part of a service every Sunday, heathen as he was. His vagrant life of excitement begot in him a love of liquor, which he took merely to quiet him, but unfortunately the dose required strengthening every now and then. He was mostly in debt; prided himself on not dishonouring virtuous women—a boast, nevertheless, not entirely justifiable; and through his ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... famous through the country for his charming and curing of diseases in men and beasts, and turned a vagrant fellow like a jockie,[73] gaining meal, and flesh, and money by his charms, such was the ignorance of many at that time. Whatever house he came to none durst refuse Hatteraick an alms, rather for his ill ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... you little vagrant joy. Brush me from your delicate mimic world. Nothing of you now can e'er annoy, Since your beauty has ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... of clothes in vagrant wards and hospitals for infectious diseases, on the contrary, a continued heat is necessary, and in this case the accumulation of reserve heat, which takes place slowly in a jacketed oven, becomes of value, as the gas can be turned low or out, and the ventilators closed, insuring a more complete ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various |
