"Truant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... times. Why had it entered so persistently into her dreams? Why had the flush risen to her cheeks at the thought? At another time she would have refused to listen to the voice which answered; but now, as the object of her thoughts lay dying on her pillow, her mind would not play truant to her heart. Sometimes the approach of love is so imperceptible that it does not provoke analysis. We wake suddenly to find it in our hearts, so strong and splendid that we submit without question.... All, all her dreams ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... neighbor, Luigi Carfarone, who works on the railroad. The boy's been bad—truant—street gamin—all that sort of thing, and his mother, who comes in to clean for me sometimes, has been awfully anxious about him. But it seems he has a passion for tools—maybe his ancestors were mediaeval craftsmen. Anyhow, he's been working ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... girl's mouth disappeared slowly as she passed a small brown hand across her forehead and replaced a truant lock. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... was very dark, as Audrey and her squire passed along Third Avenue to the front. They did not converse—they were both too shy, too impressed by the peculiarity of the predicament. They simply peered. They peered everywhere for the truant form of Musa balanced on one side by a bag and on the other by a fiddle case. From the trim houses, each without exception new, twinkled discreet lights, with glimpses of surpassingly correct domesticity, and the wind rustled loudly through the foliage of the prim gardens, ruffling them as ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... were summoned to Florence by the government of the city for no other purpose than the revival of painting in their midst, since the art was not so much debased as altogether lost. In this way Cimabue made a beginning in the art which attracted him, for he often played the truant and spent the whole day in watching the masters work. Thus it came about that his father and the artists considered him so fitted to be a painter that if he devoted himself to the profession he might look for honourable success in it, and to his great satisfaction ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... Goliardi wrote about than who the writers were, and what they felt and thought than by what names they were baptised. The mass of their literature, as it is at present known to us, divides into two broad classes. The one division includes poems on the themes of vagabond existence, the truant life of these capricious students; on spring-time and its rural pleasure; on love in many phases and for divers kinds of women; lastly, on wine and on the dice-box. The other division is devoted ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... it? I'm distress'd. From home I must play truant, lest I meet my brother. My father too, perhaps, ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... word, this is most provoking," he interrupted. "I really ought not to stay. But I certainly mean to hear this." He turned irritably to the servant. "Tell the hansom to wait," he commanded, and, with an air of a boy who is playing truant, ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... especially of the faithful Rose, who, regardless of the risk of personal harm, fluttered around her mistress's place of confinement, like a bird robbed of her nestlings around the cage in which the truant urchin has imprisoned them. Precaution was necessary to remove the stone, lest falling inwards it might do ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... old man was angry with them for playing truant. He said slowly, "N—no. She didn't exactly send us; but I don't think she'll mind our having come if we get back in time for supper. Mamma never forbid our going ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... late now, and all feeling of responsibility vanished. As soon as the decorous swish of Sunday silks had ceased in the corridor outside, she caught up a book and a cushion, and, creeping down by the side stairs, set gaily out across the sunlit lawn, with the deliciously guilty thrill of a truant little boy who ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... o' the Latin prose I cam up to speak aboot the college, and ye thocht Geordie hed been playing truant." ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... playin' truant maybe. A' mind gettin' ma paiks for birdnestin' masel. I'll wager ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... the true reason down in the record book. And there it will stay always. My nice little boy was a truant-player. And we shall all be so ashamed. What will your father say? And he was so afraid last night that you ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... nice rather young Quaker ladies in Walnut Street. It was just opposite a very quaint old-fashioned collection of many little dwellings in one (modelled after the Fuggerei of Augsburg?) known as the Quaker Almshouse. One morning I played truant, and became so fearfully weary and bored lounging about, that I longed for the society of school, and never stayed from study any more. Here I was learning to read, and I can remember "The History of Little Jack," and discussing with a comrade the question ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... convinced that he would never amount to as much in the world as his brothers, because he was not near so steady and sober-minded as they were." At school, he "excelled only in spelling"; outside of school he was the prototype of his own Huckleberry Finn, mischievous and prankish, playing truant whenever the opportunity afforded. "Often his father would start him off to school," his mother once said, "and in a little while would follow him to ascertain his whereabouts. There was a large stump on the way to the schoolhouse, and Sam would take his position behind that, and as his father ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... Mrs. Pig hadn't been able to stay awake. Her eyes would close, in spite of all she could do. Though she slept, she dreamed about the truant Grunty. Now and then she cried aloud in the darkness, when some terrible creature seemed to be chasing him. But Mrs. ...
— The Tale of Grunty Pig - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... interested in the hopeless moral condition of children born in the economic condition which they did not attempt to improve. They were great on the fact that crime was a disease; and carried on their criminological studies so successfully as to open the reformatory for little boys who played truant; there was no reformatory for reformers. I need not pause to explain that crime is not a disease. It is criminology that ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... ulili, also called by the descriptive name kolili—to wave or flutter, as a pennant—was a hula that was not at all times confined to the tabu restrictions of the halau. Like a truant schoolboy, it delighted to break loose from restraint and join the informal pleasurings of the people. Imagine an assembly of men and women in the picturesque illumination given by flaring kukui torches, the men on one side, the women on the other. Husbands and wives, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... to hug the honey to its heart; While in the barnyard, under shed and cart, Brood-hens have housed.—But I, who scorned thy power, Barometer of birds,—like August there,— Beneath a beech, dripping from foot to hair, Like some drenched truant, cower. ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... placed behind the door, that the worthy dame soon afterwards repaired to that corner of the room, the more knowing of the scholars were apt to draw certain conclusions as to the somnulent condition of their instructress and the easy terms upon which a truant boy could get off by going that little errand! But the limited means placed at the disposal of those engaged in the education of children then, compared with our millions of Government grant of to-day, do not allow us to ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... thing," said Gunson, as we drew near our resting-place; and I believe now he said it to try and cheer me on. "Perhaps while we have been away the truant ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... of the guns, the common people came out along the road with fowling-pieces and pitchforks, in hopes to catch the truant. The gendarmes seemed very anxious to be on the look-out for him too. The price of a deserter was fifty crowns to those ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... proper that boys should learn to swim, when with Papa or some kind friend, but not as these boys have. I feel just sure they have played the truant—as I see the village school-master, with his little dog, coming over the rustic bridge ...
— The Royal Picture Alphabet • Luke Limner
... there," said George, self-defensively. "I played moocher," he continued,—by which he meant truant,—"and then they whopped I, and a went home to mother, and she kept un at ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... truant husband should return, and say. "My dear, I was the first who came away." Don Juan, ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... other emotion to lively apprehensions for her safety, but he soon saw her run back, and, on observing him coming to meet her, assume an untroubled countenance. "Has this serene night," said she, "made you too a truant with your pillow? I have, of late, been little disposed to sleep, and enjoy a moon-light walk amazingly."—"Do not those dogs annoy you," inquired Sedley, with more of moody displeasure than tenderness; "I should think they would form but a harsh response to your soliloquies." ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... (Ah, joy!) our singer For his truant string Feels with disconcerted finger, What does cricket else but fling Fiery heart forth, sound the note Wanted by ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... himself entered the room, and told Valentine the welcome news of his friend Proteus' arrival. Valentine said: 'If I had wished a thing, it would have been to have seen him here!' And then he highly praised Proteus to the duke, saying: 'My lord, though I have been a truant of my time, yet hath my friend made use and fair advantage of his days, and is complete in person and in mind, in all good grace ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... usually termed the generation of vipers. Conversing with others, he was grave and sententious, not without a cast of severity. But he is said never to have been observed to give way to violent passion, excepting upon one occasion, when a mischievous truant-boy defaced with a stone the nose of a cherub's face, which the old man was engaged in retouching. I am in general a sparer of the rod, notwithstanding the maxim of Solomon, for which school-boys have little reason to thank his memory; but ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... throwing down the novel which had occupied the moments intervening the completion of the extravagant toilet and the arrival of an admirer. "I feel very much inclined to impose severe punishment upon you. Is it becoming a suitor to play truant when he wishes to hear favorably from his ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... is the way; here is the gate, This little creaking wicket; Here robin calls his truant mate From out the lilac-thicket. The walks are bordered all with box,— Oh! come this way a minute; The snowball-bush, beyond the phlox, Has chippy's nest hid in it. Look at this mound of blooming pinks, This balm, these mountain daisies; ...
— The Nursery, No. 107, November, 1875, Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. He stared at each familiar object in the room as though he were trying to recall a truant mind. Finally his eyes came around to Helene, and with a quick smile and the old toss of the head with which he was wont to throw off a mood, he brought himself back to ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... Ah, truant, thou art here again, I see! For in a season of such wretched weather I thought that thou hadst left us altogether, Although I could not choose but fancy thee Skulking about the hill-tops, whence the glee Of thy blue laughter peeped at times, or rather Thy bashful awkwardness, as doubtful ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... waywardness of a child is in truancy from school, which, if it cannot be handled by the teacher, is turned over to the local truant officer. In many cases the truant officer is appointed because of his availability for such work rather than his special competency, and the enforcement of the truancy law is handled in a most perfunctory manner, whereas an intelligent investigation of home conditions and an effort ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... Florinda; while a sympathetic tear trembled for a moment beneath those long eyelashes, proving the poet's words, "that beauty's tears are lovelier than her smiles." Carlton saw and marked the truant jewel as it glided down ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... will be admitted into it, it is especially a school for boys, as you will understand when you learn that it is a Truant School. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 32, June 17, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... a long, long time; and never a word from the truant since the day she had left the village. Martha had waited, at first impatiently, then anxiously, and finally with a pathetic hopefulness that was more than half assumed. It was she who had insisted that Tony must go to the office every day, ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... stuck fast in the bare branches of an ancient lilac bush which some worshiper of former time had planted by the church door. Galusha rose and limped over to rescue his truant property. ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... into the air, and deposited it over a wall or a fence, and Will Locke was not half so quick as Dulcie in tracing the region of its flight, neither was he so active, however willing, in recovering the truant. Why, Dulcie found his own hat for him, and put it on his head to boot one day. He had deposited it on a stone, that he might the better look in the face a dripping rock, shaded with plumes of fern and tufts of grass, and formed into mosaic by tiny sprays of geranium faded into crimson and gold. ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... from arrow-shots, he had a golden shield pierced with little holes to look through, that he held before his face. One day he came into this turret when they who worked the guns in Orleans were all at their meat. But it so chanced that two boys, playing truant from school, went into a niche of the wall, where was a cannon loaded and aimed at Les Tourelles. They, seeing the gleam of the golden shield at the window of the turret, set match to the touch-hole of the cannon, and, as Heaven would have ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... not until he had searched for and caught Connie's truant gaze. "Aren't we?" he asked of Miss Fowler, his eyes ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... sons," by which name we are universally distinguished, have our own crosses as well. It is generally agreed that much ought to be expected of us and little obtained. Let one of us play truant from school, or use a naughty word in play, or make marbles a source of revenue, or fight on the common when provoked, or steal a cherry, and the fact travels our town over like a telegram. We once suffer greatly in repute by selling our neighbor's old iron and brass to ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... Romance,' and have got L150 more than I expected to receive. It will come in good time, too; for my drafts have been pretty heavy of late, in consequence of buying an estate!!! and fitting up my house. What a truant you are from the Corner! I wish, before leaving London, you would obtain for me copies of any English editions of my writings not already in my possession. I have Routledge's edition of 'The Scarlet Letter,' the 'Mosses,' and 'Twice-Told Tales'; Bohn's ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... the Reverend F. Bromby, of Hull, a cousin of Mrs. Flinders. Malay Road. Pombasso's Island, after the chief of the Malay praus. Cotton's Island, after Captain Cotton of the East India Company's Directorate. English Company Islands, after the East India Company. Wigram Island. Truant Island, "from its lying away from the rest." Inglis Island. Bosanquet Island. Astell Island. Mallison Island. Point Arrowsmith, after the map-publisher. Cape Newbald, Newbald Island—After Henrietta Newbald, nee Flinders, who introduced him to Pasley. Arnhem Bay. Wessell Islands, name found on a ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... bows; and so he would sit and drink a tankard of sack with his neighbours, very slow and dignified, as befitted the greatest clothier of the town, and looking benevolently upon the company. But at times he would frown, if he saw a truant monk from the abbey stolen out for a drink in spite of all the prohibitions of bishop and abbot, shaking his head, perhaps, and complaining that religion was not what it had been in the good old days; but not meaning much ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off long ago to Megara or Boeotia—by the dog they would, if they had been moved only by their own idea of what was best, and if I had not chosen the better and nobler part, instead of playing truant and running away, of enduring any punishment which the state inflicts. There is surely a strange confusion of causes and conditions in all this. It may be said, indeed, that without bones and muscles and the other parts of the body I cannot execute my purposes. But to ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... harshness and had set herself to make amends. The sparkle came back to Celia's eyes and the lilt to her voice. The children who had been models of deportment while the cold lasted, developed a frisky unruliness, resulting in Malcolm's playing truant and Algie's coming home with a black eye, trophy of his first fight. Persis was too thankful over being able to raise every window in the house and have the sweet spring air flooding in upon her, to take these enormities very much to heart. Indeed, she ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... Mr. Burnet, sheltered by his umbrella, sat the truant girl, while young Leonard was giving Roberts instructions in the art ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... questions put in as it were for conscience' sake, to satisfy the obligation of questioning, or to rouse the flagging attention of a child, but this is too great a sacrifice. It is artistically a fault to jar the whole movement of a good narrative for the sake of running after one truant mind. It is also artistically wrong and jarring to go abruptly from the climax of a story, or narrative, or lecture which has stirred some deep thought or emotion, and call with a sudden change of tone for recapitulation, or summary, or discussion. ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... so well, that he does not know himself. Two excellent well-dones have undone him, and he is guilty of it that first commended him to madness. He is now become his own book, which he pores on continually, yet like a truant reader skips over the harsh places, and surveys only that which is pleasant. In the speculation of his own good parts, his eyes, like a drunkard's, see all double, and his fancy, like an old man's spectacles, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... barren cliffs the ravenous vulture dwells, Who never fattens on the prey which from afar he smells; But, patient, watching hour on hour upon a lofty rock, He singles out some truant lamb, a victim, from ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... evening Joel ate and relished his first hearty meal since he had arrived at Hillton. The exercise had brought back a naturally good appetite, which had been playing truant. ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Cyprus' heavenly queen, Thus Helen's brethren, stars of brightest sheen, Guide thee! May the Sire of wind Each truant gale, save only Zephyr, bind! So do thou, fair ship, that ow'st Virgil, thy precious freight, to Attic coast, Safe restore thy loan and whole, And save from death the partner of my soul! Oak and brass of triple fold Encompass'd sure that heart, which first made bold To the raging ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... government should be a model for the other municipal governments of the Nation, in all such matters as supervision of the housing of the poor, the creation of small parks in the districts inhabited by the poor, in laws affecting labor, in laws providing for the taking care of the children, in truant laws, and in ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... a message from the schoolmaster that the boy was absent too often. The message was repeated. Ditte could not understand it. She had a long talk with the boy, and got out of him that he often played truant. He made a pretense of going to school, hung about anywhere all day long, and only returned home when school-time was over. She said nothing of this to Lars Peter—it would only ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... gone to Drury Lane "to shave the Sultan in the New Entertainment." On the other hand, the Ghost of Queen Common-Sense appears before she is killed, and is with some difficulty persuaded that her action is premature. Part of "the Mob" play truant to see a show in the park; Law, straying without the playhouse passage is snapped up by a Lord Chief- Justice's Warrant; and a Jew carries off one of the Maids of Honour. These little incidents, together ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... they require to be fastened in order to keep them, and if they are not fastened they will play truant and run away. ...
— Meno • Plato
... me up, and when I first struck the water, which I did upon the summit of a wave, I bounded off again and ricochetted several times from one wave to another, like the shot fired from a gun along the surface of the sea, or the oyster-shell skimmed over the lake by the truant child. The last bound that I gave, pitched me into the rigging of a small vessel on her beam ends, and I hardly had time to fetch my breath before she turned over. I scrambled up her bends, and fixed ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... matter with you?" said Mrs. Jarley, as she made several ineffectual attempts to get his truant locks into shape. "Have ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... Wildeve's. A cream-coloured courser had used to visit this hill, a bird so rare that not more than a dozen have ever been seen in England; but a barbarian rested neither night nor day till he had shot the African truant, and after that event cream-coloured coursers thought fit ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... know perfectly well that she sent Dromio to you to bid you come to dinner;" and Adriana said, "Come, come; I have been made a fool of long enough. My truant husband shall dine with me and confess his silly ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... not answer. Her pride would not allow her to admit that she was glad to see him, relieved to be overtaken like a truant from school. And Bill did not seem to expect a reply. He slung his rifle into the crook ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of letters with the merest shadow of an education. But they say it is always a good thing to have taken pains, and that success is its own reward, whatever be its nature; so that, perhaps, even upon this I should plume myself, that no one ever played the truant with more deliberate care, and none ever had more certificates for less education. One consequence, however, of my system is that I have much less to say of Professor Blackie than I had of Professor Kelland; and as he is still alive, and will long, I hope, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... longer than the others, besides Timothy was the baby and, for one reason and another like these, his mother hated to put the rough little shoes upon him. For a long time Timothy had gone his own way, which was rarely the right way. At last he played truant from school so often and was late to dinner so many times, that his mother said she could bear it no longer, he must wear the fairy shoes. So she had them freshly blackened and the copper tips newly polished and, one morning, she brought ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie
... through the waves, bound from Kirton to San Francisco, with liberty to touch at several South American ports. A thick-set, short man, shipped at the last moment as cook's mate, in substitution for a truant, was lying on his back, smoking a cigarette, looking up at the bright stars, and ever and again gently pressing his hand on a little lump inside his shirt. He seemed at peace with all the world, though he was ready to be at war, if need be, and his knife, burnished and ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... fast the stragglers join the throng, From stall and work-shop gathered; The lively barber skips along And leaves a chin half-lathered; The smith has flung his hammer down, The horse-shoe still is glowing, The truant tapster at the Crown Has left a beer-cask flowing; The coopers' boys have dropped the adze, And trot behind their master; Up run the tarry ship-yard lads;— The crowd is hurrying faster. Out from the mill-pond's purlieus gush, ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... a glorious morning, haven't we, Bob?" said the Governor. "I feel like a boy again, a boy playing truant, a boy who has ran away from his big school of politicians at Ottawa, just to get a few days' fishing and—and—oh, well, get away ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... eager and intense that he almost, but not quite, exposed himself to the suspicion of a passing gendarme. He now expected Cheditafa, for the reason that the manner of the younger negro indicated that he was playing truant. It was likely that the elder man would go after him, and this was ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... discipline and trammels of school-boy life; and one day he threw down his Euclid and Caesar and vanished as completely as if the earth had swallowed him. Every street, court, and alley was searched in vain for the truant; advertisements and handbills offering a reward for his recovery were equally futile. Not a trace of the runaway was to be ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... countenance of the mirza lightens up a little, as though infected by the khan's overflowing merriment and the mudbake's rough handling of the young goat. They know each other thoroughly—as thoroughly as orchard-looting, truant-playing, teacher-deceiving school-boys—these three hopeful aspirants to the favor of Allah; they are an amusing trio, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... be enjoying a quick and merry reaction from the doleful domestic dumps in which the voyage was begun. Old and young behaved this afternoon like a lot of truant boys on a lark. When we came to a pond fenced off from the main channel by a moraine dam, John went ashore to seek a shot at ducks. Creeping up behind the dam, he killed a mallard fifty or sixty feet from the shore and attempted to wave it ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... He should have come ere this: The promised hour is past: he is not here! I love him—yes, my maiden heart is his; I sigh—I languish when he is not near. The truant! Wherefore tarries he? His love, Were it like mine, would woo him to my side— Or does he—dares he—merely seek to prove The doubted passion of his promised bride? Do I not love him? But does he love me? He swore so yester-eve, when last we met Down in the dell by our old trysting-tree: Can he ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Miss Betham,—Not my will, but accident and necessity made me a truant from my promise. I was to have left Merton, in Surrey, at half-past eight on Tuesday morning with a Mr. Hall, who would have driven me in his chaise to town by ten; but having walked an unusual distance on the Monday, and talked and exerted myself in spirits ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... C! The rest of the song is D: That is all my lore. I came late yesterday, I played truant by my fay! I am a foul sinner. Good master, after ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... holding back were tugged forward by the scruff of the neck. Others were still in hiding. The men searched among the mounds and bushes. Every now and then the crack of a whip and the yelp of a dog announced the finding of a truant. Two trackers on large snowshoes had already gone ahead to break the trail. It was easy to follow their tracks though the woods were still in darkness and remained so for several hours. At dawn Oo-koo-hoo and our little outfit parted company with the Dog Brigade. Already the packet was many miles ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... very little indeed. Pen, who was plunged in his shame and grief in London, and torn with great remorse for thinking of his mother's sorrow, would have wondered, had he seen how easily she bore the calamity. Indeed, calamity is welcome to women if they think it will bring truant affection home again: and if you have reduced your mistress to a crust, depend upon it that she won't repine, and only take a very little bit of it for herself, provided you will eat ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not to get his holiday so easily. There came a shout from the forest, and a boy on a brown moor pony went racing off after the truant beast, while a lady and a young girl looked on laughing. It was a very pretty chase, but at last Roger came back in triumph and tethered the donkey, repentant and lop-eared, ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... fiction and have a human richness of feeling and imagination rare in our oversophisticated literature. I refer to the fables of Seumas O'Brien. At first one is struck with their utter absence of form, and then one realizes that this is a conscious art that wanders truant over life and imagination. In Seumas O'Brien I believe that America has found a new humorist of popular sympathies, a rare observer and philosopher whose very absurdities have a persuasive ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... had it put out, except as a picturesque and imaginative way of rubbing her altruism into its nearest victim. Unless, indeed, it was done in order that the darkened window should seem to announce to the returning truant that she had gone to bed, and to lull his mind to unconsciousness of ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... his blunt, indifferent reply, but before she could frame another question, Miss Murch appeared from an inner office, at the same moment that Miss Keith stepped through the doorway from behind them in search of her truant patient; and Peace suffered herself to be led docilely away. So absorbed was she in her new discovery that even her pleasure in her ability to walk again ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... me now, For this inheritance is worth a struggle. 260 And though I am not the man to yield without one, Neither are they who now rise up between me And my desire. The boy, they say, 's a bold one; But he hath played the truant in some hour Of freakish folly, leaving fortune to Champion his claims. That's well. The father, whom For years I've tracked, as does the blood-hound, never In sight, but constantly in scent, had put me To fault; but here ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... secretly away to share his daily meal with this affectionate participator in his childish sports: or, when fatigued with romping together, would retire to the well-kept kennel, and recruit his limbs in a refreshing sleep, while reclining upon the body of the faithful dog. If the little truant should now be missed by those having him in charge, the most natural question to ask was, "Where is Rolla?" knowing full well that wherever this honest brute was, there might his young master be found also. On ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... said a thousand times to every truant, and it would have very little effect, because he thinks that he will be an exception. He never sees beyond his own boyish smartness. Few men and women realize how true it is that these smart rascally fellows, who persist in remaining in ignorance, are to be the vicious, ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... of the first swallows flitting and twittering across it, of the keen yet delicate fragrance escaping from every sap-swollen bud, and of the sweetly persuasive piping of the frogs from the water meadow. She had no thought at that moment but to find the truant cow and get her safely ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... an allusion to the Greek fleet sent out under Agamemnon and Menelaus to bring back the truant wife from Troy. The idea of a supremely valuable pearl is also apparent in the lines embraced in Othello's last words before his self-immolation as an expiation of the murder of Desdemona, ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... of the idler, the dissipated, and even of the unfortunate in society. The youthful adventurer affectionately offered a free admission to the dear Pocquelins. They rejected their entrees with horror, and sent their genealogical tree, drawn afresh, to shame the truant who had wantoned into the luxuriance of genius. To save the honour of the parental upholsterers Pocquelin concealed himself under ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... though he would have died before he admitted it to Dora. Now that the exhilaration of truant delights had died away, his conscience was beginning to give him salutary twinges. After all, perhaps it would have been better to have gone to Sunday School and church. Mrs. Lynde might be bossy; but there was always a box of cookies in her kitchen ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... smoke into his lungs that it stopped his growth. The boys used to call him Little Jacket. Jacky, however, though small in size, was big in wit, being an uncommonly smart lad, though he did play truant sometimes, and seldom knew well his school-lessons. But some boys learn faster out of school than in school, and this was the case with Little Jacket. Before he was ten years old, he knew every rope in a ship, and ...
— The Last of the Huggermuggers • Christopher Pierce Cranch
... rode, she played lawn-tennis, and, when at the seaside, golf; when all failed, she walked resolutely four or five miles on the high-road, swinging along at a healthy pace, and never pausing save to counsel an old woman or rebuke a truant urchin. On such occasions her manner (for we may not suppose that her physique aided the impression) suggested the benevolent yet stern policeman, and the vicar acknowledged in her an invaluable assistant. ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... or be nagged to death. And if he ventured to slip into some synagogue of an afternoon and read a page or two he would be in danger of being caught red-handed, so to say, for, indeed, she often shadowed him to make sure that he did not play truant. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... getting ready his supper, and wondering what's become of him, and torturing herself with hopes that break one by one; and to-night when she goes up to his empty room, having tried to persuade herself that the truant's come back and ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... flowers and fruit do not stand forever upright without help, the weaver gave probability to his abundant mass by tying it here and there with a knot of ribbon and letting the ribbon flaunt itself as ribbons have ever done to the delight of the eye that loves a truant. ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... slower and slower, and curving its journey less and less, until at last its motion in remote obscurity is again so sluggish, that the sun's attraction is once more predominant, and able to recall the truant towards its realms of light. Such is the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... discomposed by the prolonged absence of this the only member of his family. It was unjustifiable, as he remarked twenty times a day, unfeeling, unheard-of, unaccountable. He rang for the servants at his private residence every quarter of an hour or so to learn if the truant had returned. He questioned the boy at the office sharply and repeatedly as to orders left with him by Mr. Ryfe before he went away, only to gather from the answers of this urchin, who would, indeed, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... not accept this view. He gave Twyning, from the first, the impression of considering himself as working alongside Mr. Fortune instead of beneath him; and he was cold to and refused to participate in the truant schoolboy air which Twyning adopted when they were together. Twyning called this "sidey." He was anxious to show Sabre, when Sabre first came to the firm, the best places to lunch in Tidborough, but Sabre was frequently lunching with one of the School housemasters ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... some consolation until he found that it was stereotyped. Within a few hours it was despatched to another firm of publishers, taken at random from the advertisement columns of the Times. An hour or two afterwards Alfred arrived, with no label around his neck, but a veritable truant. Of the two he was the more self-possessed as he greeted his ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... children shall be removed from them and placed under better influences till the claim of the parents shall be re-established by continued sobriety, industry, and general good conduct." They secured the passage of the Truant Act, and the appointment of Truant Officers. Mr. Lewis Tappan was not only the auditor for the organization, but gave effective help by suggestions that led to the establishment of the first Home for the Friendless, of which ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... fell from the latter's lips as the truant returned to his post. A tender gracious smile was the only sign of displeasure that ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... Peter's, and her companions try in vain to keep up with her. Soon her clear voice is heard as she sings, keeping time with the strokes of the axe she uses so skilfully. A peal of laughter rouses the old woman, her mother, who goes to bring the truant home, but she is gone, and when she returns, in time to see the red sun fade away in the bright horizon, she tells her mother that she went out with two or three other girls, to assist the hunters in bringing in the deer they had killed. And her mother for once does not scold, for she remembers ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... in the babe, a toothless tender nursling; Beauty is boldness in the boy, a curly rosy truant; Beauty is modesty and grace in fair retiring girlhood; Beauty is openness and strength in pure high-minded youth; Man, the noble and intelligent, gladdeneth earth in beauty, And woman's beauty sunneth him, as with a ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... till now, how oft soe'er the task Of truant verse hath lightened graver care, From Muse or Sylvan was he wont to ask, In phrase poetic, inspiration fair; Careless he gave his numbers to the air, They came unsought for, if applauses came: Nor for himself prefers he now the prayer; Let but his verse befit ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... debauchery? O thou frail soul! how hast thou quenched the heavenly essence within thee! ... why wilt thou be thus self-disgraced and all inglorious? Sah-luma! Sah- luma!"—and he shook him violently by the arm—"Up,—up, thou truant to the faith of Art! I will not let thee drowse the hours away in such unseemliness, . . wake! for the night is almost past,— the morning is at hand, and danger threatens thee,—wouldst thou be found here drunk ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... long trail from Las Vegas down. The face of a strong and self-repressed man is difficult to read. It does not change lightly under any passing emotion. Tom Osby's face perhaps looked even harder than usual, as he sat there listening, his unlit pipe clenched hard between his hands. Truant to his trusts, forgetful of the box of candy which regularly he brought down from Vegas to the Littlest Girl, Curly's wife; forgetful of many messages, commercial and social,—forgetful even of us, his sworn cronies,—Tom Osby sat and ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... whipped for playing truant,' she said; 'and I should also punish thee for tearing ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... undergraduate, and warned him of the prevalent university sins, and explained to him the many and great differences between university and school life, till the twilight changed into darkness, and they heard the truant servants stealing in by the ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... dearest and most intimate friend. He informed Waverley that on his return from abroad he had found both Sir Everard and his brother in custody on account of Edward's reported treason. He had, therefore, immediately started for Scotland to endeavour to bring back the truant. He had seen Colonel Gardiner, and had found him, after having made a less hasty inquiry into the mutiny of Edward's troop, much softened toward the young man. All would have come right, concluded Colonel Talbot, had it not been ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... wait until you come to me? The once fleet mornings linger by the way, Their sunny smiles touched with malicious glee At my unrest; they seem to pause, and play Like truant children, while I sigh and say, How can ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... seemed about to be realised, as the truant emerged from the thicket and entered upon an open plain clothed with low heath,—the Erica vestila, loaded ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... longing to see you when you can get up to town. Everyone's all right," said Fanny comfortably. "Lu's been in mischief again, though. She and some of the girls from her school played truant t'other day and went to see a County cricket-match. You know cricket's the craze this term, and they got their money stolen and couldn't get home, and Lu didn't land up till ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... was invariably expressed by Mr. Pump, whenever the company paraded generally in some such terms as these, which were uttered with that sort of meekness that a native of the island of our forefathers is apt to assume when he condescends to praise the customs or character of her truant progeny: ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... man was angry with them for playing truant. He said, slowly, "N—no. She didn't exactly send us; but I don't think she'll mind our having come if we get back in time for supper. Mamma never forbid our going ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... educational interests of his kingdom as he was with every other interest. He sought to teach first the priests and nobles, and after that the masses of his people. He introduced the practice of compulsory education for all children, and decreed that truant children be first deprived of food as punishment, and if that did not suffice, that they ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... prejudiced story direct, and from the Manor House and the Vicarage reports had percolated, as such reports will percolate, to the draper's assistants, and the man in the street, down and down to the truant cook herself. ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... successful picture of Beatrice herself. The artist resided at Teddington. Wilfrid was due for a sitting this Wednesday morning, and he went down into the country, intending to be back for lunch and the House of Commons. But the weather was magnificent, and, the sitting over, truant thoughts began to assail the young legislator. Bushey Park was at hand, with its chestnut avenue leading to Hampton Court. A ramble of indefinite duration was, in his present frame of mind, much more attractive than the eloquence of independent members. He determined ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... truant for three days before the grown-ups discovered that I had not returned to school. They treated me with that extraordinary consideration that they always extended to our great crimes and never to our little sins of thoughtlessness or high spirits. The doctor saw me. ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... "Ah, little truant, who has told you that you are safe?" Pablo cried in agony. "For Don Mike shall not come ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... to take for granted that his advice has been acted upon, even though experience should teach him that this is seldom the case. I had sagely counseled Bagster to go to the New Hampshire woods, in order to recuperate after his multifarious labors. I was therefore surprised to find him playing truant in Rome. ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... beware of making marriage a mere convenience. There may be folly in calling each truant inclination that deep sentiment and secret sympathy which firmly knits heart to heart, and doubtless a common fortune may bind the worldly-minded together; but this is not the holy union which keeps noble ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... taking advantage of such questioning to give vent to his displeasure he would smile contentedly and stroke his chin, once so round, but then so peaked, and those who thought that the Court apothecary would diminish his legacy to his truant son, learned to know better, for the old man bequeathed in an elaborate will, the whole of his valuable possessions to Melchior, leaving only to the widow Vorkel, who had served him faithfully as housekeeper after the death of his wife, and to Schimmel, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... You must all come in, and bow 'way down to the ground, and say, 'O, respected teacher, grant us knowledge.' They are very polite in India.—All but Prudy, she may stay behind and play truant." ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... later Genevieve brought the little truant home. Mrs. Lee carried her off for a warm bath and bed, while Nora, her eyes very red with weeping, fixed her a bowl ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... minutes her head was covered with tiny close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... hero of a brilliant and wicked romance; and listened for the step of the truant Lovelace who was to fulfil her idea ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... very small school, for many boys were away helping to collect the sheep for the schooner, which was coming in, and some were playing truant. The sheep were carted down to the shore and the men were ready for embarking, when the ship moved out, and so all their labour was again in vain. The sea was "making up," and to-night is stormy. It is rather late in the year for ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... oft in glee Came a truant boy like me, Who loved to lean and listen to your lilting melody, Till the gurgle and refrain Of your music in his brain Wrought a happiness as keen ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... Miliktrisa Kirbitievna; on another the city of Jerusalem. There are usually but few purchasers of these productions, but gazers are many. Some truant lackey probably yawns in front of them, holding in his hand the dishes containing dinner from the cook-shop for his master, who will not get his soup very hot. Before them, too, will most likely be standing ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Beresheim had not even the benefit of such schooling as there was to be had. He did not go to school, and nobody cared. There was indeed a law directing that every child should go, and a corps of truant officers to catch him if he did not; but the law had been a dead letter for a quarter of a century. There was no census to tell which children ought to be in school, and no place but a jail to put those in who shirked. ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... Or, as just then, in the gorgeous October coloring of the whole landscape that lies below, across the farm, which stretches on through an intervale of beautiful meadows and pastures to the woods that skirt the valley of the little truant river, ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... walk through the gaily-crowded streets was sweet to him as a lazy truant ramble in the woods during church-time. Everything that he looked at delighted him—the richness of shop-windows, showing all the expensive useless goods that no sensible person ever wants; the liveries worn by pampered servants ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... she found the French window leading into the garden open; but Honor was well round the corner, and running fast towards the cricket field. Vivian was very much disturbed and distressed. She scarcely knew what she ought to do. She ventured a little way into the grounds, but not a trace of any truant was to be seen, so she thought it useless to search far. One of the girls must have gone out; on that point she was ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... been like a truant's escapade for Jane Dardenne; it was a delightful and unexpected holiday, and as she was an actress at heart, she played her part seriously, and threw herself into her character, and enjoyed herself more than she ever enjoyed herself in her most ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... have joined the truant set, and, at the first commotion, up went his great back, and down went his ears, with a single lash out behind that meant mischief, but Mr. Sponge was on the alert, and just gave him such a dig with his spurs as restored order, without exposing anything that anybody ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... a truant schoolboy approaching a severe master than he cared to confess even to himself, as he moved through the crowded room toward Richard Lincoln. But when they met there was nothing in the manner of either to indicate any ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... first impulse was to run towards the house, calling his father and the mill-hands as he went. His second, and the one upon which he acted, was to mend the broken boom and capture the truant logs himself. "There is no need of troubling father, and I can do it alone better than any number of those clumsy mill-hands," he thought. "Besides, there is no time to spare; for if the boom once lets go of that snag, we shall lose ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe |
