"Boyish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a lamppost, and Jurgis got a glimpse of the other. He was a young fellow—not much over eighteen, with a handsome boyish face. He wore a silk hat and a rich soft overcoat with a fur collar; and he smiled at Jurgis with benignant sympathy. "I'm hard up, too, my goo' fren'," he said. "I've got cruel parents, or I'd ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... earl entered with almost boyish animation into the gayety of which he was the center. With the priests and ladies he was an especial favorite, having won the former by the outward respect which he paid to their religion, and by the deference he exhibited ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... it was never broken. Henry VIII sent his friend's son to the scaffold, accused as a lover of Anne Boleyn; he went to the block protesting his innocence, and there was nothing to prove him guilty; his last words were a defence of the queen. His son, a baby when his boyish father was executed, married the daughter of Sir Thomas Arundell. Sir Thomas had suffered for treason, so that husband and wife were the children of parents who had been sent to the block. They entertained ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... heartily. I will be as honest as you, and confess that you might have done so—easily enough at one time. Indeed I am only half honest after all: I loved you once—after a boyish fashion.' ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... traveller has come back from that land to relate his discovery. Human nature has its proper bounds, and so also has the individual. We will give each other mutual comfort respecting the former: Raphael will concede this to the boyish age of his Julius. I am poor in conceptions, a stranger in many branches of knowledge which are thought to be essential in inquiries of this nature. I have not belonged to any philosophical school, nor have I read many printed ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... more than ever at the remarkable change which had come over him. He was as keen as ever to perform his duties, but the quick, bright smile, the joyous laugh, the old boyish merriment had vanished. ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... myself how many people it was likely to have killed in its day. I had before this handled other swords—including Sir William's—but never such a one as this. Nor had I ever before seen a soldier who seemed to my boyish eyes so like what ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... look for it in vain. There is the same arrogance, the same materialistic mode of thought, which reckons the strength and value of a country by the amount of its crops rather than by the depth of political principle which inspires its people, the same boyish conceit on which even defeat wastes its lesson. Here is a clear case for the interference of authority. The people have done their part by settling the fact that we have a government; and it is for the government now to ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... merely human nature may be. But he was drunk now, with a debasing passion, and was not himself. There is nothing in his previous history that is in character with the Shelley of this letter. He had done boyish things, foolish things, even crazy things, but never a thing to be ashamed of. He had done things which one might laugh at, but the privilege of laughing was limited always to the thing itself; you could not laugh at the motive back of it—that was high, that was noble. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... world, uncle? [He closes the inner door.] Snow, the divine white snow—— [Perceiving the visitor with amaze] Miss Revendal here! [He removes his hat and looks at her with boyish reverence and wonder.] ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... first ripe early pear for her, and the delicious, sweet July apple; he took her when he went fishing on the creek, but she always felt sorry for the poor fish so cruelly caught, it seemed to her. He taught her to ride bareback behind him, and some boyish tricks ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... but his young blood was soon in circulation again. He crawled out on the slope. It was quite steep, but considerable earth had been jarred and washed from it so that it was no worse than going up the peaked roof of a house, and Andy and his brother had often done this in carrying out some of their boyish pranks. ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... my dear Cinq-Mars?" cried De Thou; "and I knew not of your arrival in the camp! Yes, it is indeed you; I recognize you, although you are very pale. Have you been ill, my dear friend? I have often written to you; for my boyish friendship has always ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... cheeks as cheer after cheer, rolling from one end of the amphitheatre to the other, rent the air. He sat in the front row on the centre aisle, and about him clustered Chester A. Arthur, Levi P. Morton, Benjamin F. Tracy, Edwards Pierrepont, George H. Sharpe, and the boyish figure of Charles E. Cornell, a pale, sandy, undersized youth, the son of the Governor, who was represented by ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... continued, leading me to the smoking-room, where she introduced a number of very young gentlemen reading magazines and knocking about gutturally together. They, too, seemed proud of their position as boarders, proud of the Maverick Deep-Sea Hotel. They were nice, boyish young fellows, who might have been ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... that the common charge brought against laughter, of being something babyish, or childish, or boyish—something properly appertaining to early life—is unfounded. But we of course must not be understood to speak of what is technically called giggling, which proceeds more from a looseness of the structures than from any sensation of amusement. Many young persons ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... minor points of costume, the open shirt-collar, the single-breasted coat, the old-fashioned half-boots and ribbed stockings; and you will find in Mr. Bentham's general appearance a singular mixture of boyish simplicity and of the venerableness of age. In a word, our celebrated jurist presents a striking illustration of the difference between the philosophical and the regal look; that is, between the merely abstracted and the merely ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... the Grand Monarque,—that sovereign whom his priests in their liturgy styled "the chief work of the Divine hands," and of whom Mazarin said, more honestly, that there was material enough in him for four kings and one honest man. The "Moi-meme" of his boyish resolution became the "L'etat, c'est moi" of his maturer egotism; Spain yielded to France the mastery of the land, as she had already yielded to Holland and England the sea; Turenne fell at Sassbach, Conde sheathed his sword at Chantilly; Bossuet and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... away and hide herself for a little, coming back with a pleasant face and a smooth temper. Why should she scold them, poor lambs? They were all she had to love, or that loved her. And they did love her, with all their boyish hearts. ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... me that it was only yesterday that I heard his nasal twang above the roar of the machinery: "Sa-ay, you fellers want to git out o' that!" The little bridge had lost much of its color and most of its impressiveness, for I remembered when to my boyish fancy it seemed a greater triumph of engineering than the Victoria bridge at Montreal. And the same old thrill went through me as I started to run—just as I did when a boy—and felt the planks loosen and creak under my feet. Here was ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... and my grandfather were not given to overmuch talk at the best of times, and all my boyish questionings concerning my father left me only the bare knowledge that, like many another Island man in those times—ay, and in all times—he had gone down to the sea and ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... made no protest. If his country needed him, if war had to be.... On our way back to Rome across the Campagna we saw a huge silver fish swimming lazily in the misty blue sky—one of Italy's new dirigibles exercising. There were soldiers everywhere in their new gray linen clothes—tanned, boyish faces, many of them fine large fellows, scooped up from villages and towns all over Italy. The night was broken by the sound of marching feet, for troop movements were usually made at night. The ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... by that, no doubt: Clemens's violent methods, for one thing, his sudden, savage impulses, which sometimes worked injustice and hardship for others, though he was first to discover the wrong and to repair it only too fully. Then, too, Howells may have meant his boyish teasing tendency to disturb Mrs. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... to be a holiday for all of us," declared Walter with boyish enthusiasm. "For one day let's all be just like the Indians, get our food with out guns and not even ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... soul, Dud went; his countenance enlivened at one and the same time with a blush of boyish bashfulness and a malicious grin. As he drew near, and saw Vinnie embarrassed with the windlass, which seemed determined to let the bucket down too fast (as if animated with a genuine Peakslow spite toward her), the grin predominated; but when she turned upon him a ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... Gershom a great deal. He was useful to me once, and I recognize my debt; but the fact remains, that I don't owe him or any other man the shirt on my back!" As he met Stephen's glance he lowered his voice, and added in a tone of boyish candour that was very winning in spite of his colloquial speech: "I like your face, and I'm going to talk frankly ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... the nearest army post every week to tell his father that the boy was all right. The boy always wrote brilliantly of his travels in the wild western country. His father considered with much pride reserved all these boyish letters which are masterpieces of landscape and scenic description. Copies of these letters are still on file in the war libraries and are set aside ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... gurgling of the river. And we talked—oh, about a million things far removed from our asylum. I made him throw away the idea that he is a scientist, and pretend to be a boy. You will scarcely credit the assertion, but he succeeded—more or less. He did pull off one or two really boyish pranks. Sandy is not yet out of his thirties and, mercy! that is too early ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... immediately refused. The duke particularly disliked his wife's family; but the fact is, he had no wish that his son should ever marry. He meant to perpetuate his race himself, and was at this moment, in the midst of his orgies, meditating a second alliance, which should compensate him for his boyish blunder. In this state of affairs, Montacute, at length stung to resistance, inspired by the most powerful of passions, and acted upon by a stronger volition than his own, was planning a marriage in spite of his father (love, a cottage by an Irish ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... few years, after his habits and character were in a great measure formed. The taste for gambling he had acquired whilst he was a child; but, as it was then confined to trifles, it had been passed over, as a thing of no consequence, a boyish folly, that would never grow up with him: his father used to see him, day after day, playing with eagerness at games of chance, with his negroes, or with the sons of neighbouring planters; yet he was never alarmed: ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... that. He says men just tie those fins on top to make 'em look funny. Did God do it, Aunt Eileen? What did He do it for?—Oh, is this your car, Aunt Eileen? Billy knows how to start a car so you better not let him in it by himself." Then as the small boyish shoulders assumed the dreadful hunch, she cried excitedly, "Oh, no, he can't either, honest he can't. He doesn't know what to turn, nor anything. I was joking. You ain't mad at me, ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... and saw me off by The Baron. I felt a strange "serrement de coeur" as I left him standing there, so firm, as if he had been put "au piquet" by M. Dumollard! and so thin and tall and slender—and his boyish face so grave. Good heavens! How much alone he seemed, who was so little built ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... springtide of love, which the poet cries for in his distress, the son of Monnica knew well was come for him. How he must have listened to the musical and melancholy counsellor who told his pain to the leaves of the book! What stimulant and what food for his boyish longings and dreams! And what a divine chorus of beauties the great love-heroines of ancient epic and elegy, Helen, Medea, Ariadne, Phaedra, formed and re-formed continually in his dazzled memory! When we of to-day ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... they played on their teacher, their fights, football, and other games, and while they talked I bestowed some special care upon my revolver. Job sat smoking his pipe, listening with a merry light in his gleaming, black eyes, and Gilbert lounged on the opposite side of the fire with open-mouthed boyish attention. ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... most heartrending tales. Already Sir James had been in mourning for more than one strange and terrible death. One of his sons had died by poison. One of his daughters had poniarded her bridegroom on the wedding night. One of his grandsons had in boyish sport been slain by another. Savage libellers asserted, and some of the superstitious vulgar believed, that calamities so portentous were the consequences of some connection between the unhappy race and the powers of darkness. Sir James had a wry neck; and he was reproached with ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Rokeby, where her eyes could follow his gestures, John Benham was talking in his pleasant subdued voice to Patty Vetch, who looked, in her frock of scarlet tulle, as if she had just alighted from the chorus of a musical comedy. Her boyish dark head was bent over a fan of scarlet feathers, a toy which appeared ridiculously large beside her small figure. It was evident that the girl was trying to cover an uncomfortable shyness with an air ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... o'clock. A midshipman or two were always of the party; and I have known him send during the middle watch[36] to invite the little fellows to breakfast with him, when relieved. At table with them, he would enter into their boyish jokes, and be the most youthful of the party. At dinner he invariably had every officer of the ship in their turn, and was both a polite and hospitable host. The whole ordinary business of the fleet was invariably despatched, as it had been by Earl St. Vincent, before eight ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy—an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... there," she said. "And all my friends, of course." He found out later, quite by accident, that this boyish, but strangely appealing person belonged to some sort of Motor Service League, and drove an automobile, every day, from eight to six, up and down and round and about New York, working like a man in the service of the country. He never would ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... be shot," thought Ralph, pausing before the door he had knocked at heedlessly a thousand times during his boyish life; "I wonder what she'll think of it, so coarse and rude to present myself in this fashion after her first sweet sleep. Dear, ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... the time," went on the thick, boyish voice. "Yet as things seem to have gone rather well for us, I cannot blame you, especially as I see that you hold fast her who has usurped ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... truly observed, all the recompense which he had to expect for a life of exertion was to dispose of the fruits of his labour according to his own will. This he felt, and he considered it unreasonable that what he supposed a boyish attachment on the part of Newton was to overthrow all his preconcerted arrangements. Had Mr Forster been able to duly appreciate the feelings of his nephew, he probably would not have been so decided; but Love had never been able to establish himself as an inmate of his breast. His life had been ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... manhood with Cartwright's sons and his earliest memories were of boyish good times at the old gentleman's home. With James Greenfield, Mr. Cartwright had been one of his father's oldest and warmest friends. The engineer listened with amazed interest as Greenfield told him that his old friend was spending the winter on the coast, and ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... eyes of his were held by the last figure of all in that austere procession—a tall, gaunt young man, whose copper-coloured skin and hawk-featured face proclaimed his Moorish blood. Instantly, maliciously, it flashed through the prince's boyish mind how he might make of this man an instrument to humble the pride of that insolent clergy. He raised his hand, and beckoned the cleric ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... Hannah," he replied, with boyish frankness, as he took his seat and spread out his hands before the cheerful blaze. "No end to the livelier. Why, Hannah, it is always lively where there's nature, and always dull where there's not! Up yonder now there's too much art; high art indeed—but still art! ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... any other Englishman, I couldn't stand his airs of historic erudition about my native land, but Jack is so human and boyish in his joy of "fagging up things," and so broad-mindedly pleased that we beat his wrong-headed ancestors in our Revolution, that I don't grudge him the crumbs he's gathered. Of course, I pretend to have crumbs in my cupboard, too, ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... sweetness and peace, when he comes to us so; and though the maiden blushes at his speaking, she would not stop the ears of her heart against him for all the world; and although the boy trembles and turn pale, and forgets to be boyish when, the fit is on him, nevertheless he goes near and worships, and loses his heart in learning a new language. So kind and soft is love, so tender and sweet-spoken, that you would think he would not so much as ruffle the leaf of ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... making words—for he talks almost incessantly—or else contracting and expanding with smiles and joyous laughter. His cap is jauntily set, and his fine brown curls, hanging against the rich roseate skin of his cheeks, give to his countenance an expression of extreme health and boyish beauty. His merry laugh and free air tell you he is not the boy for books. He is not much of a hunter either. In fact, he is not particularly given to anything—one of those easy natures who take the world as it comes, look upon the ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... proposals began to be a matter of daily occurrence, so that whenever I saw the fifth footman or the third butler stealthily approaching me I knew that he was concealing a billet doux. Sometimes they were very flattering. Here is one, written in the big boyish hand of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... this pulsating recognition of his manhood there was mingled with an emotion half-maternal the memory of her own guardianship of his stunted childhood. To a woman at once rashly spirited and profoundly feminine the pathos of his boyish struggle appealed no less forcibly than did the virility of his manhood. She might have loved him less had her thought of him been ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... people came for miles to hear, were gaining an undue weight in his life, held, to be plain, all the fairy-land of which his childhood had been cheated, all fierce beauty, aspiration, passionate strength to insult Fate, which his life had never known, he kept the knowledge to himself. It was boyish weakness. He choked it out of thought on Sundays as sacrilege: how could he talk of the Gurney house and Lizzy to that almighty, infinite Vagueness he worshipped? Stalking to and fro, in the outskirts of the churchyard, he used to watch the flutter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... but with you, and I confess to a fancy that that might almost prove a recommendation to you. But I suppose you will at least allow it desirable that a man should love the girl he marries? If my preference for you be a mere boyish fancy, as probably my mother is at this moment trying to persuade my father, at what age do you suppose it will please God to give me the heart of a man? My mother is sure to prefer somebody not fit to stand in your dingiest cotton frock. ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... a laugh of boyish delight; and indeed any young man in the quarter might have been proud to own a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... did not hear. In the cabin the body of little Montagu was lying on a table. He would never get his frigate now. How small and frail and boyish looked the Honorable Giles to-day! Why did they send children like that to war? Had he no mother?—poor lad! Moved by a sudden impulse, she stooped and kissed him, as she had done an hour before. No throb of the proud little heart answered ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... first notable poem, written in college days, was the "Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity," a chant of victory and praise such as Pindar might have written had he known the meaning of Christmas. In this boyish work one may find the dominant characteristic of all Milton's poetry; namely, a blending of learning with piety, a devotion of all the treasures of classic culture to the ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... laughed outright, with a boyish zest which dispelled the oppressive formality of her manner. He was completely at his ease again, and while he ran his hand impatiently through his hair, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... him of talking about himself, and made him talk about her own merits. Mrs. Hauksbee acted otherwise, and won his confidence, till he mentioned his engagement to the girl at Home, speaking of it in a high and mighty way as a "piece of boyish folly." This was when he was taking tea with her one afternoon, and discoursing in what he considered a ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... well remember as a boy taking country rambles with Livingstone when he was studying at Ongar. Mr. Cecil had several missionary students, but Livingstone was the only one whose personality made any impression on my boyish imagination. I might sum up my impression of him in two words—simplicity and resolution. Now, after nearly forty years, I remember his step, the characteristic forward tread, firm, simple, resolute, neither fast ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... school—so long the distinguishing feature of Newgate Street—where "blue-coat boys" passed the most importantly formative period of their lives. Handicapped somewhat by a stuttering speech Charles Lamb did not perhaps join in all the boyish sports of his fellows, though there are many testimonies to the regard in which he was held by his school-mates, and the fact is stressed that though the only one of his surname at Christ's Hospital, he was never "Lamb" but always "Charles Lamb," as though there were something of an endearment ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... profile to the barrister, who quietly studied the retreating forehead and the ill-formed jaw, the latter plainly discernible to a practised eye, in spite of the round cheeks. The barrister was a little mad on the subject of degeneracy, and knew that an unnaturally boyish look in a grown man is one of the signs of it. In the course of a long experience at the bar he had appeared in defence of several 'high-class criminals.' By way of comparing Mr. Feist with a perfectly healthy specimen of humanity, he turned to ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... although almost amounting to weakness, were yet insufficient to prevent her from feeling that his conduct, even after making due allowance for the provocation he had received, could not be wholly excused as mere boyish impetuosity and love of mischievous fun. She knew that his father would feel it his duty, not only to reprimand him, but to inflict some chastisement; and this thought was the more painful to her from the consciousness, that but for her own weak compliance with Mrs. ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... of his scholarship there was something boyish about Joseph. He painted his eyes, dressed his hair carefully, and walked with a mincing step. These foibles of youth were not so deplorable as his habit of bringing evil reports of his brethren to ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... might Heard of Telemachus, approaching quick His father, thus, humane, he interposed. Hold, harm not with the vengeful faulchion's edge This blameless man; and we will also spare Medon the herald, who hath ever been A watchful guardian of my boyish years, Unless Philoetius have already slain him, Or else Eumaeus, or thyself, perchance, Unconscious, in the tumult of our foes. 420 He spake, whom Medon hearing (for he lay Beneath a throne, and in a new-stript ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... his straight broad shoulders with a boyish gesture of impatience, as though he would like to jump ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... a knight," I said, and my voice sounded very hoarse and boyish, so that I hardly recognized it as my own, "you must give me your colors to wear on my lance, and if any other knight thinks his colors fairer, or the lady who gave them more lovely than you, I shall ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... sure that the other side of my nature—the natural, healthy, boyish side—did not develop equally with these timid and morbid tendencies, which are not so very uncommon in childhood. Certainly the natural, boyish side was more in evidence on the surface. I was as good a sport ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... generally very sincere with his friends, and the boyish expression in his eyes was not altogether deceptive, for despite his wide knowledge of certain aspects of life, not wholly admirable, there was really something of the simplicity of a child—of a child that could be very naughty—in his disposition. But if he could ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... touching and amusing to see Emile eager to teach Sophy everything he knows, without asking whether she wants to learn it or whether it is suitable for her. He talks about all sorts of things and explains them to her with boyish eagerness; he thinks he has only to speak and she will understand; he looks forward to arguing, and discussing philosophy with her; everything he cannot display before her is so much useless learning; he is quite ashamed of knowing more ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... prolonging the festivities on their own account. Adeline wrote to me in despair, and I have come to see if I can be of any use. My sister," he added, turning to Mrs. Beale with his bright, almost boyish smile, which was like his nephew Diavolo's, and made them both irresistible—"my sister flatters herself that I have some influence with the children, and as it is quite certain that nobody else has, I am careful not to dispel ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... came to a sudden end just there, for by the time Jamie had been fished out of a hogshead, the steamer hove in sight and everything else was forgotten. As it swung slowly around to enter the dock, a boyish voice shouted, "There she is! I see her and Uncle and Phebe! Hooray for Cousin Rose!" And three small cheers were given with a will by Jamie as he stood on a post waving his arms like a windmill while his brother held onto ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... flaw; the flag which was "fair as the sun, clear as the moon," and to the oppressors of the earth "terrible as an army with banners,"—he yet remembered how, as this emblem of liberty was thus apostrophized and saluted, the tears had rushed to his boyish eyes, and his voice had said, for his heart, "Thank God, ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... is a delightful surprise to me to have heard from you at last. The years that I have been thinking and dreaming of you and wishing for news of you are over, and now I have at last found the idol of my boyish admiration. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... bore marked family resemblances in their big frames, dark eyes and well-shaped heads, but there was a distinct line drawn between their personalities. Phares Eby at sixteen was grave, studious and dignified; his cousin, David, two years younger, was a cheery, laughing, sociable boy, fond of boyish sports, delighting in teasing his schoolmates and enjoying their retaliation, preferring a tramp through the woods to the ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... themselves. Many who recall these from their publication in The Westminster Gazette will be glad to meet them again. Those who knew the writer only as the poet of 1914 will perhaps wonder to find him the whimsical and smiling young adventurer who moves with such boyish enjoyment through these pages. There is holiday humour in them, even in the occasional statistics—holiday tasks, these latter; and everywhere the freshness of an unclouded vision. "Only just in time," one thinks, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... around you to know the exact degree of disappointment that swelled in Linda's heart when she answered the telephone early Saturday morning and heard Donald Whiting's strained voice speaking into it. He was talking breathlessly in eager, boyish fashion. ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... enviable position for herself very easily, and she was nothing if not ambitious. The traits in Canby which so frequently antagonized her, his arrogance, his selfish egotism and disregard of others' rights and feelings, to-day were not in evidence. He was spontaneous, genial, boyish almost, and she never had felt so kindly disposed toward him nor so tolerant of ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... without firmness, and hated constraint. This caused it to be feared that he was not supple enough for a younger son, and, indeed, in his early youth he could not understand that there was any difference between him and his eldest brother, and his boyish quarrels often ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... that fill his boyish mind, And agitate and fire his youthful breast, Oh, why should fortune oft' be so unkind, And real life appear in sombre colors drest, And dash to earth bright hopes, and give so much unrest? Oh, why should ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... were serious and the Fool were imagined as a grown man, we may still insist that he must also be imagined as a timid, delicate and frail being, who on that account and from the expression of his face has a boyish look.[178] He pines away when Cordelia goes to France. Though he takes great liberties with his master he is frightened by Goneril, and becomes quite silent when the quarrel rises high. In the terrible scene ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... was a saint, with that firm grasp of truth, and tender mysticism, whose combination is the charm of Scottish piety, and her face was troubled. While the minister was speaking in his boyish complacency, her thoughts were in a room where they had both stood, five years before, by the ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... from the Indian princess. But it ceased suddenly. For the door was thrown open with such violence that it made Jane Cody's wax flowers shake apprehensively under their glass bell, and a figure stalked out such as might haunt a dream—long, gaunt, awkward, inescapably boyish, yet absurdly feminine, now that the dark calico wrapper flapped at its big, awkward heels and bound and ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... blisses, With true-love-knots and kisses, With rings and rosy fetters, And sugared vows and letters;— He holds them out With boyish flout, And ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... Adrien's handwriting, although his head was swimming after the toasts that had been drunk in his honor; probably, he thought, the letter merely contained a request to gratify some boyish whim, so he left it unopened on the table. The next morning, when the fumes of champagne had passed off, he took it up and began ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... strengthen between them. They were the only children of twin sisters, and bore a remarkable resemblance in person, character and disposition. Both had dark, curling, chestnut hair, hazel eyes, and an active muscular organization that made them leaders in boyish pastimes and sports. If there was any perceptible difference between the two, it was that Elwood Brandon was a little more daring and impetuous than his companion; he was apt to follow out his first impulses and venture ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... silence, looking at him. He saw the boyish loveliness he remembered so well altered into the stronger and fuller beauty of the man. He saw that life had gone softly, smoothly, joyously, with this weak and feminine nature; and that, in the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... fields to a lane where Jean waited with the car. Henri took a plunge into the canal when he had removed his French uniform, and producing a towel from under a bush rubbed himself dry. His lean boyish body gleamed, arms and legs brown from much swimming under peaceful summer suns. On his chest he showed two scars, still pink. Shrapnel bites, he called them. But he had, it is to be feared, a certain young ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... continued she, in an affected banter, "it was highly ridiculous in a man of so grave a deportment as the Count to play such boyish tricks? Can you really believe that, shortly after your departure, a message came from him, to announce his intention of surprising you by his attendance ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... the matter of his feeling towards Mabel Manderson were the insane suddenness of its uprising in full strength and its extravagant hopelessness. Before it came, he had been much disposed to laugh at the permanence of unrequited passion as a generous boyish delusion. He knew now that he had been wrong, and he was living bitterly in ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... ran, stepping high and delicately splashing merry drops against the morning sunlight, leaped over one or two that would have "tilled" him to the knee (to use an old boyish phrase learnt at Carwithiel where he had learnt to swim), and came to the shelf beyond which the first tall comber boomed towards him, more than head high, hissing along its ridge. There, as it overarched him, he launched his body forward and ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... trundle-bed, And one long ray of lamplight shed Athwart the boyish faces there, In sleep so pitiful and fair; I saw on Jamie's rough, red cheek, A tear undried. Ere John could speak, "He's but a baby, too," said I, And kissed him as we ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... of love even more as an escape from the gloomy relations of his life than as matrimonial strategy. Paula's juxtaposition had the attribute of making him forget everything in his own history. She was a magic alterative; and the most foolish boyish shape into which he could throw his feelings for her was in this respect to be aimed at as the act ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... The boyish Italian instantly looked grave. Then he led Uncle John away from the others, although doubtless he was the only officer present able to speak or understand English, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... the sombre light, and the rapidity with which I was riding, prevented me from noting anything more. The lad shouted after me, uttering some words, which were drowned by the hoof-strokes of my horse. I deemed it some expression of boyish esprit, and, ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... to be out in the soft March night, to feel once more the free streets, which alone carry the atmosphere of unprivileged humanity. The mood of the evening was doubtless foolish, boyish, but it was none the less keen and convincing. He had never before had the inner, unknown elements of his nature so stirred; had never felt this blind, raging protest. It was a muddle of impressions: the picture of the poor ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... had come back to the place he started from. He had renewed old acquaintances, laughed over the ancient jokes, and said he was sorry for those who had had misfortune. When he met Irene Straley he hardly recalled his love, except to smile at it as a boyish whim. He had forgotten the pangs of that as one forgets almost all his yester aches. He had forgotten the pains he had seen others suffer, even more easily than ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... doubtless, many who still cherish that boyish dream of the poet. He still stalks through the popular imagination with his Spanish hat and cloak, his amaranthine locks, his finely-frenzied eyes, and his Alastor-like forgetfulness of his meals. But only, it is to be feared, for a little time. For the latter-day poet is doing his best to dissipate ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... doing her ordinary work that day in the school; and on their way between the Palace of the Kings and The Paddock, Jasper had the pleasure of giving Leucha a piece of his mind. He did it with all his boyish wrath. ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... taken off his great-coat and was standing with his back to the hearth. He loomed up very big in the demure room, a slender, boyish figure, still too slim for his shoulder-width and height, clad in a ragged uniform, a pistol bulging from one hip at his belt. He looked about him at the bright hangings, with a wandering gaze that reverted to a spot of sunlight on Marjorie's hair ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... into the uplifted, boyish face, with his hand on the slender shoulder, "it came out all right that time, but don't you ever play under my window again in a January blizzard. If you do, I'll kick you out into ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... shoulder as to a boyish petulance, for he thought it an idle boast. "To-morrow? Then come and pray with me in the cathedral, and after that we will cast up accounts—to-morrow," he said, with a poignant and exultant malice. A moment afterwards he was gone, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... breath of war swept over a foul, decaying quagmire of the whole land, before which such passing deeds as these were blown as vapor. It called men of all rank and condition to battle for a nation's life, and among the first to respond were those into whose boyish hands had been placed the nation's honor. It returned the epaulets to Poindexter's shoulder with the addition of a double star, carried him triumphantly to the front, and left him, at the end of a summer's day and a hard-won ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... Tiny," he at last announced, "if you an' Mr. Spence really want me to, I should be delighted to stay with you a few days. The fact is," he added with boyish frankness, "my suit case is down behind the rose bushes this minute. Having sent most of my luggage home, and not knowing what I should do, I brought it ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... and into his arms, a slim, boyish figure in her snug leather jacket and breeches. Together they were flung violently against the partition by a heavy ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... wistfully over the wide expanse of waters. "Methinks that I have already hinted to thee how the foolish passion which he had conceived for a maiden of low degree and obscure birth, compelled me, in accordance with his nearest and best interest, to consign the object of his boyish love to the convent of the Carmelites? Yes, and it was with surprise and dismay incredible that I heard, ere I was torn away from Florence by the villain Stephano, how that convent was sacked and destroyed ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... is the more sincere, as I was compelled repeatedly to doubt of your perseverance. What sense was there in that boyish remorse, and those idle self-reproaches, in which you frequently employed yourself? No, Rinaldo, a man ought never to enter upon an heroical and arduous undertaking without being perfectly composed, and absolutely sure of himself. What a pitiful figure ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... head to hide the flash of boyish satisfaction which shone out of his eyes. It was that he wanted—to go among this people, from their own hearth to judge them, and to probe down into the ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... established its citizenship in our vocabulary; it is, at least, domiciled in our dictionaries[2]; but when I found it repeated by Frederic Myers, in Science and a Future Life, to avoid the use of 'scientist', the French word forced itself on me, and I found myself reviving a boyish memory of a passage in Abbott's Life of Napoleon dealing with Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt and narrating the attacks of the Mamelukes, when the order was given to form squares with 'savans ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... was petite, with a still unformed girlish figure, perhaps a little too flat across the back, and with possibly a too great tendency to a boyish stride in walking. Her brow, covered by blue-black hair, was low and frank and honest; her eyes, a very dark hazel, were not particularly large, but rather heavily freighted in their melancholy lids with sleeping passion; her ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... the pretty, animated, boyish face looking up at him from under the coquettish straw hat, and he wished that he had the courage to tell her in her own language that she was just too sweet for anything. But he feared above all things lest he should offend her, and ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and as she spoke a boyish look that had long been absent from Villon's face came back to it for ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... true, she would have to tell him so; and then he would say a word to her that should tear her heart, if her heart was to be reached. But he would never let her know that she had torn his own to rags! That was the pride of his manliness; and yet he was so boyish as not to know that it should have been for him to make those overtures for a renewal of love, which he hoped that Marie would make to him. He had gone over to Granpere, and the reader will perhaps again remember what had passed then between ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... said the woman, with the silver bands of gray encircling her shapely head, "I knew him for my own man. He was tall and dark, with a boyish laugh that I loved, and a way of suddenly becoming very serious in the middle of his fun—a sort of clouding over of his face as if the sun had gone under for ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... used to enjoy telling the following story, based on one of his boyish experiences: "His father had been trying to buy a pari of cattle from Mr. Harper, in Sackville. They could not agree on the price, and Mr. Oulton had come away without purchasing. The next day he decided to send Cyrus over to get the oxen, with instructions to offer ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... etymology is evidently from the German genug, from the verb genugen, to suffice, to be enough, to content, to satisfy. The Anglo-Saxon is genog. I remember the burden of an old song which I frequently heard in my boyish days: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... her head a little; her eyebrows had come nearer together under the close cluster of her hair; uneasiness passed into her eyes. She was used to the boyish mimicry of infatuated men. But this woman was not for me! She dealt me the blow of an unfeeling laugh, and disappearing, shut ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... Lord had met her there. It was indeed a trouble to her sometimes that she loved Anthony so much; and to her mind it was a less worthy kind of love altogether; it was kindled and quickened by such little external details, by the sight of his boyish hand brown with the sun, and scarred by small sporting accidents, such as the stroke of his bird's beak or talons, or by the very outline of the pillow where his curly head had rested only an hour or two ago. Whereas her love for Christ was a ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... days' rest. In talking to the men one feels the influence on them of a curious sort of fatalism—they have been lucky so far and will come through all right. One sees and feels everywhere the spirit of a great game. The strain of football a thousand times magnified. The joy of winning and boyish pleasure in getting ahead of the other fellows side by side with the stronger passions of hatred and anger and the sight ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... himself on the floor beside the prostrate form, which he had already recognized as that of his father. He was chafing his hands, and calling out in boyish agony, while Jack and Bobolink looked ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... remembered a tall, straight young savage, as handsome as a figure done in bronze, who used sometimes to meet me in the lonelier forest wilds when I was out a-hunting; remembered how at first I was afraid of him; how once I would have shot him in a fit of boyish race antipathy and sudden fright had he not flung away his firelock and stood ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... waiting for the coming of my adversary, for fear has always been foreign to my family, but a sort of secret elation. For that day, if I survived, though the down upon my lip was as yet imperceptible, I could take my place as a man among men. No longer would my boyish face keep me out of the councils of my elders, but I would have the right to take my stand and ruffle it with the best of them all. I was there to win my spurs as a man and a duellist, and to show to all the world that I had ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... hale, with the zest of a juicy old apple, slightly withered but still sappy. It should be mentioned that he had a dimple in his cheek which flashed unexpectedly when he smiled. It gave him a roguish—almost boyish—effect most appealing to the beholder. Especially the feminine beholder. Much of his spoiling at the hands of Ma Minick had doubtless been due to this mere depression ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... From his earliest years his superiority was perceived and acknowledged[152]. He was from the beginning [Greek: anax andron], a king of men. His schoolfellow, Mr. Hector, has obligingly furnished me with many particulars of his boyish days[153]: and assured me that he never knew him corrected at school, but for talking and diverting other boys from their business. He seemed to learn by intuition; for though indolence and procrastination were inherent in his constitution, whenever he made an exertion he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Stockholm, that Summer, which C.N. David was anxious to see. As he did not care to go alone, he took me in his son's place. It was my first journey to a foreign capital, and as such both enjoyable and profitable. I no longer, it is true, had the same intense boyish impressionability as when I was in Sweden for the first time, seven years before. The most trifling thing then had been an experience. In Goeteborg I had stayed with a friend of my mother's, whose twelve-year-old daughter, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... "You are so young, so boyish, so buoyant, Reginald. What would your future constituents have said had they seen you creeping up the ivy? They are a grave people who take themselves seriously. Egad, this would be a lovely story for ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... concoction. It was a flour and water mixture, plus salt and baking powder, cooked against a hot rock. It was smoked black and cooked so hard it nearly broke my teeth, besides, it had a granite finish from association with the rock oven. But I ate it with boyish relish in spite of its flaws. My imagination expanded as I watched ghostly shadow-figures dance upon the face of the cliff. The shifting flame, the wood smoke, the silent, starry night swelled my heart to pride in my great adventure. I ignored the incident of ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills |
