"Gamin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hall, an actress singin' the Marseillaise in a flag, and a Roosian hussy dancin' in boots. And Mr. O'Neill, God save him for a pleasant gentleman though a bit wild in the eye, took my Dinny up to be a gamin. Gay-min. I thought myself he said a 'gay mon' and Dinny's a bit young; but I found he meant him to peddle cigarettes ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... that he might work longer without interruption. His father intended him for an engineer, but he was determined from the first to be an artist. He was of a gay and jovial disposition, given to pranks and practical jokes, and of an athletic temperament. Theophile Gautier afterward called him a "gamin de genie." In 1847, when he was fifteen years old, being in Paris with his parents, he called upon Phillippon, the publisher, and showed him some of his sketches. M. Phillippon looked at them, and sent a letter to Dore's ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... little modification terms not only from classical antiquity, but from all modern languages—Indian, African, Chinese, Mongolian—according to its needs, its adopted children far outnumbering those of its own blood. It absorbs at its will the slang of the street gamin, the cant of thieves and beggars; is actually creative in the baby talk of mothers and nurses; drops, forgets, and actually invents new words with no pedigree like those of ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... adjust his treatment of that essentially national "hero" to the "Exodus from Houndsditch." "Luther" might have been an apter theme; but there too it would have been a strain to steer clear of theological controversy, of which he had had enough. Napoleon was at heart too much of a gamin for his taste. Looking over Europe in more recent times, he concluded that the Prussian monarchy had been the main centre of modern stability, and that it had been made so by its virtual creator, Friedrich II., called the Great. Once entertained, the subject seized him as with the eye of Coleridge's ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... lyric verse consist merely of prose, cut into lines of different length, in imitation of the unrhymed measures of the Greek poet, Pindar. The Bishop of Derry, commenting on these rhythmic novelties, likens them to the sound of a stick drawn by a city gamin sharply across the area railings,—a not inapt comparison. That they were not always successful, witness the following stanza ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... hardly believe his eyes" were exceedingly droll. After a while he saw through their little game, and took to watching, and when a sparrow appeared too much interested in his operations, he made a feint of going for him, which warned the gamin that he would ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... pathetic and humorous observations on the world she looks down upon every evening of her thirty nights' circuit have already become classic in half-a-dozen languages. The little girl who came to kiss the hen and beg her pardon; the ragged street gamin who died upon the throne of France; the Hindoo maiden who burned her lamp upon the banks of the Ganges in order to see if her lover was alive; the little maid who was penitent because she laughed at the lame duckling with a red rag around its leg—who does not know the whole inimitable ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... ejaculation and looked at him. He, entirely unabashed, returned my gaze—a funny little ruffian! On the end of his spinal column he teetered, all four feet in the air, the cock of his head irresistibly suggesting the tilt of a gamin's cap. His tongue hung waggishly out of his mouth, and a sort of loose, dissipated, tough, cynical humour pervaded his person, from the squint of his little eyes to the absurd post of his hind legs. There was less of the immature bear about him than of the miniature ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... and there was something in the fine flame of girlhood beside him that he felt was incompatible with those shadows and that dust. And also they were lovers and very deeply in love. It was amazing how swiftly that draggled shameful London sparrow-gamin, Eros, took heart from Amanda, and became wonderful, beautiful, glowing, life-giving, confident, clear-eyed; how he changed from flesh to sweet fire, and grew until he filled the sky. So that you see they went to Switzerland and Italy at last very ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... went on. "You see, the street gamin loves nothing better in the way of diversion than throwing things at somebody, particularly if that somebody is what is known to his vernacular as a Willie-boy. As between eating an over-ripe peach and throwing it at the pot-hat of ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... where our birds will not live at all, and a pair of them will lie down in the gutter and fight like dogs. Compared with this miniature John Bull, the voice and manners of our common sparrow are gentle and retiring. The English sparrow is a street gamin, our bird a ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... smile at John Galbraith and an expectant expression, waiting for his next command, which reminded Rose of the look of a terrier alert for the stick his master means to throw for him. Her speech was unaffectedly that of a Milwaukee Avenue gamin, and it served adequately and admirably as a vehicle for the expression of her ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... fell very still. So still that the shrill voice of a street-gamin, a boy from the Via Sacra, was audible throughout the vast enclosure from gallery to gallery. He yelled in his cutting falsetto: ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... there The rector, long-robed, who was reading a prayer. "Provide for the fatherless children," said he "The widowed, the helpless, the bond and the free." The rector stops praying—his face wears a frown; A ragged young gamin is pulling his gown. "I knowed you would come," said the boy, half in fright— "I knowed you would come—I was watchin' all night. Say! what are ye goin' t'give mother an' me? Le'me see what 'tis, Santa Claus—please le'me see!" The rector looked down into Joe's honest face, And a great wave of feeling ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... Towsley's age would have been puzzled how to escape from the well-locked and bolted mansion; but the keen-witted gamin of the city's streets had little difficulty. True, the great front door did open rather slowly to his puny grasp, but that was on account ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... actuates this girl in her endeavour to elevate this boy in the world? What the mystery that brought to the gamin this guardian angel in the form of a variety actress who mingles bright sayings with lack of grammar, who tells Rabelaisian anecdotes in one minute and philosophizes in slang about the issues of life ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... found herself next Alfred de Musset. She invited him to call on her, and when Lelia was published she sent him a copy, with the following dedication written in the first volume: A Monsieur mon gamin d'Allred; and in the second volume: A Monsieur le vicomte Allred de Musset, hommage respectueux de son devoue serviteur George Sand. Musset replied by giving his opinion of the new book. Among the letters which ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic |
