"Pickpocket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... among the chips and fragments of decayed wood, like a part of themselves. Indeed, it took a sharp eye to distinguish him. Not till I had pulled him forth by one wing, rather rudely, did he abandon his trick of simulated sleep or death. Then, like a detected pickpocket, he was suddenly transformed into another creature. His eyes flew wide open, his talons clutched my finger, his ears were depressed, and every motion and look said, "Hands off, at your peril." Finding this game did not work, he soon began to "play 'possum" again. I put a cover over ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... And who began using hard words? You came here and made me out a pickpocket, just because I use a few tasty little posters which sell my goods, and all the while you're trying on the sly to take a poor old man's daughter away from ...
— Plays of Near & Far • Lord Dunsany
... [U.S.], jackleg [U.S.], kidnaper, rustler, cattle rustler, sandbagger, sea king, skin [Slang], sneak thief, spieler^, strong-arm man [U.S.]. highwayman, Dick Turpin, Claude Duval, Macheath, footpad, sturdy beggar. cut purse, pick purse; pickpocket, light-fingered gentry; sharper; card sharper, skittle sharper; thimblerigger; rook [Slang], Greek, blackleg, leg, welsher [Slang]; defaulter; Autolycus^, Jeremy Diddler^, Robert Macaire, artful dodger, trickster; swell mob [Slang], chevalier ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... her husband hanging on the opposite wall; they looked at the likeness with the hard and cruel brightness of the eyes of a bird of prey. "Red is your taste in your old age is it?" she said to the portrait. "Red hair, and a scrofulous complexion, and a padded figure, a ballet-girl's walk, and a pickpocket's light fingers. Miss Gwilt! Miss, with those eyes, and that walk!" She turned her head suddenly on the pillow, and burst into a harsh, jeering laugh. "Miss!" she repeated over and over again, with the venomously pointed emphasis of the most merciless ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... not know how, under such a home government, I ever became a decent fellow. I do not know why I am not now a pirate, a freebooter, a pickpocket, or a nuisance to myself and the world in some other capacity. I have come to believe since that my inherited good qualities saved me under such an utter neglect of all home influences. It is a marvel to me that I was not ruined before I was twenty-one; ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... misrepresentations of these be made, by giving one side only of a subject, and that, too, in such exaggerated and indecent terms as could scarcely be applied to a Nero, a notorious defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket. But enough of this, I have already gone further in the expression of my ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... liked such a piece of filigree work? or that Michael Angelo would have spent his time in twisting these stems of roses in and out? Or, of modern handicraftsmen, do you think a burglar, or a brute, or a pickpocket could have carved it? Could Bill Sykes have done it? or the Dodger, dexterous with finger and tool? You will find in the end, that no man could have done it but exactly the man who did it; and by looking close at it, you may, if ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... men are thieves, begging-letter writers, pickpockets, bookmakers' touts, totters (rag and bone men), and trouncers (men paid by costermongers to shout their wares), and bullies. The women add to their common degradation—which may be imagined—the art of the pickpocket, the beggar, the ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... the account of a whole nation exerting itself to floor the government-house. Yet time shall come, when some Botany Bay Tacitus shall record the crimes of an emperor lineally descended from a London pickpocket."[63] ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... this," said Bruce. "You are a liar, a forger, a thief, a dirty pickpocket, a coward, a seller of secrets to Foreign Powers," and, ere the astounded soldier could speak, John Bruce sprang at him and tried to knock him out. "Take that you greasy cad—and fight me if you dare," he shouted as the other dodged ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... here, this moment; and let me have no more of your prating. Now then, be gone out of my house, you sworn pickpocket, ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... of battle, address their soldiery in a harangue which would do credit to a President of the Speculative Society. In certain positions, eloquence is not only thrown away, but is felt to be rank impertinence. No need of rhetorical artifice to persuade the mob to the pumping of a pickpocket, or, in case of a general row, to the assault of an intoxicated policeman. Such things come quite naturally to their hands without exhortation, and it is dangerous to interfere with instinct. The Homeric heroes are, of any thing, a little too ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... of each other, then presently advanced, Clive approaching her own front door with the stealthy glide of a pickpocket, April tip-toeing behind her. The idea was to get indoors without being seen, listen in the hall to discover whether the visitors were agreeable ones, and if not, to take refuge in the kitchen until they had departed. Unfortunately one of them came out of the front door ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... and in his sanctum he keeps young crocodiles in sundry watering-pots, and other crawling things in unexpected places. You never quite know where the next surprise is coming from. I always feel doubtful about his pockets. I shouldn't recommend a pickpocket to try them, unless he really doesn't mind running against a casual rattlesnake. Tyrrell is the sort of man who is quite likely to produce something from his cap and say: "By-the-bye, this is a promising ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... big, open-faced, silver watch which was connected to his vest in pickpocket-proof fashion with a braided leather thong. When it told him nine thirty had arrived, he got up, his telescope in his hand, and ambled heavily down the corridor. He poked his head in at an open door, and called, amiably, "Kin anybody tell me ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... That is precisely what the profession is always observing. No sooner do they return from one circuit than they start off on another. Are you aware, Mr. Bumpkin, that we pay a judge five thousand a-year to try a pickpocket?" ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... dozen newly hatched chickens, and with much pride and satisfaction feels them all safely tucked away in her feathers. In the morning she is walking about disconsolately, attended by only two or three of all that pretty brood. What has happened? Where are they gone? That pickpocket, Sir Mephitis, could solve the mystery. Quietly has he approached, under cover of darkness, and one by one relieved her of her precious charge. Look closely, and you will see their little yellow legs and beaks, or part of a mangled form, lying about on the ground. Or, ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... Repubs. object to her mention of wom. suff., learns "male" is to be put in Fed. Constit. and starts eastward, speaking at Atchison, St. Joseph, Chillicothe and Macon City, 248; in old slave church at St. Louis, "soul-sharks," catches wom. pickpocket, visits board of trade in Chicago, stops at many places, maps out plan of campn. with Mrs. Stn., 249; starts on thirty years' work, makes first demand for cong. action, 250; speaks at Concord, Mrs. Emerson agrees with her as do the "sages of Concord," untiring ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... higher): "I suppose if you dared you would call me a liar. Our engagement is ended, sir—yes, on the spot; You're a brute, and a monster, and—I don't know what." I mildly suggested the words Hottentot, Pickpocket, and cannibal, Tartar, and thief, As gentle expletives which might give relief: But this only proved as a spark to the powder, And the storm I had raised came faster and louder; It blew, and it rained, thundered, lightened, and hailed Interjections, verbs, pronouns, till language quite failed ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Physiognomy fizionomio. Physiology fiziologio. Piano fortepiano. Piaster piastro. Pick (choose) elekti. Pick (implement) pikfosilo. Pickaxe pikfosilo. Picket (military) pikedo. Pickle (to salt) pekli. Pickle (liquid) peklakvo. Pickpocket fripono. Picnic kampfesteno. Picquet (cards) pikedo. Pictorial ilustrita. Picture pentrajxo. Picturesque pentrinda. Pie pastecxo. Piebald multkolora. Piece (to patch) fliki. Piece ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Or that a pickpocket, for instance, is safe, though caught with his hand in one's pocket, if he's gloved, say: because no court in the land would regard a gloved hand in the same way in which a bare hand ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... said his companion, with the air of one who presents his credentials, "I want you to understand that I am a crook. Out West I am known as Rowdy the Dude. Pickpocket, supper man, second-story man, yeggman, boxman, all-round burglar, cardsharp and slickest con man west of the Twenty-third Street ferry landing—that's my history. That's to show I'm on the square—with you. My ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... said to my father: "It is in our very blood. It may be only a pin, but I cannot help taking it, although I am quite ready to give it back to its owner." The pickpocket Bor... confessed that at the age of twelve he had begun to steal in the streets and at school, to the extent of taking things from under his schoolfellows' pillows, and that it was impossible for him to resist stealing, even when ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... development for their delicate craft; for the learned Tobias Salander, the travelling companion of Paul Hentzner, finding himself at a Lord Mayor's Show, was eased of his purse, containing nine crowns, as skilfully as the feat could have been done by the best pickpocket of the nineteenth century, much ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... incarceration, terrified by his murderous experience of the last night at the cafe, red-eyed and restless, the dive-keeper was pacing up and down his cell. A pickpocket whom he knew and who, through his own political pull was serving a term as a trusty, brought the information to him scrawled on a bit of cigarette paper which, with a little warning whistle, he dropped through the bars of the ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... would rise above the level of their King. The English, when asked why they do not assert their rights, granted not only to them, but to thirteen other governments, reply that if they did they would be accused of "ulterior motives." What ulterior motives? If you pursue a pickpocket and recover your watch from him, are your motives in doing so ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... there where it's lighter." Whereupon he gathered the bags up and literally fled across the waiting-room, Steve at his heels. In his new location, out of sight of the suspected youth, he said hoarsely: "I reckon he was a pickpocket, ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... chosen pursuit. There is no longer any occasion to steal boys; for boys flock in crowds to bind themselves. The romance of the trade has fled, and the chimney-sweeper of the present day, is no more like unto him of thirty years ago, than is a Fleet-street pickpocket to a Spanish brigand, or ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... reputation. To be exact it is a low haunt. I always go there and have a cup of coffee in a glass when I am wondering what to do next and feeling it is about time something was happening. One of my acquaintances came and sat down at my table. To confess the truth he has once been a pickpocket, the sort of professional who followed the trade in the old dull days of peace for the excitement it furnished. He has since served in the Foreign Legion, and says that now he cannot bring himself to ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... despite the vigorous protests of the principal figure in the case. The newspapers went into the history of the Cronk boys, from childhood up, devoting considerable space to the excellent reputation of the cripple and the unsavory record of the noted pickpocket. In summing up the case, there seemed to be no question of the innocence of the cripple, although it was stated that the district attorney intended to put him on trial for complicity in the crime. The men, held without bail, were ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... father's appellation and estates I cannot accommodate you, for the reason that a mystery attaches to his identity. As for my mother, let it suffice to say that she was a vivacious brunette of a large acquaintance, and generally known to the public as Black Moll O'Reilly. I began life as a pickpocket. Since then I have so far improved my natural gifts that the police are flattering enough to value my person at several hundred pounds. My rank in society, as you perceive, is not exalted; yet, if my luck by any chance should fail, I do ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... had the appearance of "Pluto's diet-drink, that witches tipple out of dead men's skulls;" and the company included "a silly fop and a worshipful justice, a griping rook and a grave citizen, a worthy lawyer and an errant pickpocket, a reverend non-conformist and a canting mountebank, all blended together to compose an oglio of impertinence." There is a delightful sketch of one named "Captain All-man-sir," as big a boaster as Falstaff, and a more delicately etched portrait ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... speak. A wild resentment against the duplicity of Ed. Mason arose for a moment in her heart, but it speedily sank as she viewed her own conduct in the light of this astounding revelation. She had abused an unknown gentleman like a pickpocket, and had finally gone off with his canoe, leaving him marooned, as it were, to whose courtesy she was indebted for being there at all. Overcome by the thoughts that crowded so quickly upon her, she buried her face in her ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... up a rebellion against what I say, if you find everything in my sayings is not exactly new. You can't possibly mistake a man who means to be honest for a literary pickpocket. I once read an introductory lecture that looked to me too learned for its latitude. On examination, I found all its erudition was taken ready-made from D'Israeli. If I had been ill-natured, I should have shown up the Professor, who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... coming down the Haymarket, just as the masquerade was breaking up, the noise of a pickpocket was announced, upon which Buffoonery fell upon Wit, and mangled him most piteously. Invention stood Wit's friend, and help-ed him to make his escape to those Sciences. Now it happened that night, Lady Fashion had lost her lap-dog, which Wit found, and brought to these his companions, ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... know you as the most expert pickpocket in the country. I've been on your track a long time. Now you can just pony up and go on with your flirtin'; otherwise you and the girl will ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... the police are bound to take notice, are: Attempts to pick a pocket, especially where the thief is a known pickpocket; cruel usage of animals in public places; interfering with the telegraph wires; selling or carrying a slingshot; aiding in any way in a prize fight, dog fight, or cock fight; destroying fences, trees, or lamps, or defacing property; aiding ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... with another grin. "That's a new one on me. But she changes so often there's no keeping track of her. She may be Margery Anderson now, but the one I'm after is Sal Jordan, better known as 'Light Fingered Sal', the slickest pickpocket and shoplifter between New York ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... was an extraordinary play of emotion in his features: he looked ferociously at the pickpocket, and, more than once, somewhat suspiciously at myself; at last his countenance cleared, and, with a good grace, he said, 'Well, you have done me a great service, and you have my consent to let him go; ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... had dropped on his knees, rose panting, left the lid of his strong box open, hurried up to the child, who had been standing at the window all the while, and bending over her from behind pressed a kiss on her curly head, saying with a laugh: "There, little pickpocket, that is my interest. But look out still, till I call you again." He nimbly trotted back on his short little legs, wiping his eyes; took from the strong box a little bag of gold, which contained rather more than the desired sum, locked the chest again, looking at Mary with a mixture of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... it seemed to me I lived a year. I had no time to think—no time to realize that if I failed nothing could save my appearance at Bow Street on the following morning as a common pickpocket. I gripped the pocketbook from his hand and, without changing a muscle, dropped it into the yawning overcoat pocket ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in male attire, was an adroit fencer, a bold rider, and a staunch royalist; she once took two hundred gold jacobuses from the Parliamentary General Fairfax on Hounslow Heath. She is the chief character in Middleton's play of the "Roaring Girl"; and after a varied life as a thief, cutpurse, pickpocket, highwayman, trainer of animals, and keeper of a thieves' fence, she died in peace at the age of seventy. To return to the inns, Fyner Morrison, a traveler in 1617, sustains all that Harrison says of the inns as the best and cheapest in the world, where the guest shall ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... from sea he and I stuck together like hot pitch and oakum. One day we were sittin' out in the front yard of his house—it's mine, now—watchin' a hoptoad catch flies. You've seen a toad catch flies, haven't you, Mr. Fosdick? Mr. Toad sits there, lookin' half asleep and as pious and demure as a pickpocket at camp-meetin', until a fly comes along and gets too near. Then, Zip! out shoots about six inches of toad tongue and that fly's been asked in to dinner. Well, granddad and I sat lookin' at our particular toad when along came a bumble-bee and lighted on a honeysuckle ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... "Crowd chasing a pickpocket, I imagine," said Trencher indifferently. Then putting a touch of impatience in his ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... crimes when they have succeeded. It is much to be questioned whether the greatest criminals are to be found within the walls of prisons. Dishonesty on a small scale nearly always finds its punishment. Dishonesty on a gigantic scale continually escapes. The pickpocket and the burglar seldom fail to meet with their merited punishment, but in the management of companies, in the great fields of industrial enterprise and speculation, gigantic fortunes are acquired by the ruin of multitudes and by methods which, though they evade legal penalties, ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... a most accomplished, prepossessing villain, my dear Q.M. Your upper class villains are always prepossessing. Manners are as necessary to them as a small hand to a pickpocket." ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... and usurer and against the workers; who is for the purse-proud prelate and against the people; who is for the boodle politician and against the happiness of the many; who is for the white exploiter and against the simple colored man; who is for the rich profiteer and against the petty burglar and pickpocket. ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... rifle pits and picket station, we soon turn off from the Shell road, and pass through what was formerly a handsome forest of pines, but which now has been cleared by the soldier's axe, and rejoices in the title of 'pickpocket tract.' Few of the plantations lie on the main road, and many of them, like the one we are now seeking, are approached only by going over several cross roads and by lanes. Our last turn takes us ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... for political power? Ask the wretched rich man who indirectly buys the seat, and hear his record of dull misery if he is inclined to be confidential. He does not like to leave Parliament, and yet he knows he is merely a mark for the licensed pickpocket; he is not regarded as a politician—he is a donor of sundry subscriptions, and nothing more. The men in manufacturing centres will return a poor politician and pay his expenses; but the people in some quiet towns ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... first place," began Miss Jennings, "we will consider the girl. I know her well. You need not describe her. What I know about her is this: She is the daughter of a criminal. Her father was a pickpocket, he died in prison. Now I ask you, Faith, what can you expect from this girl? According to your Bible are not 'the iniquities' of the fathers visited upon the children, and are the innocents to blame for their undesirable ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... this animal makes a very cunning and interesting pet, being easily tamed to follow its master, and when dainties are in view becomes a most adroit pickpocket. Its food is extensive in variety, thus making it quite an easy matter to keep the creature in confinement. Nuts and fruits of all kinds it eagerly devours, as well as bread, cake and potatoes. It manifests no hesitation at a meal of rabbit, rat, squirrel, or bird, and rather likes ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... the way," interrupted M. Gillenormand, "you really have not a penny then? You are dressed like a pickpocket." ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... day long? Merciful heaven! what property can stand against such a depredation? The kangaroos—your aborigines—do they keep their primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted, with those little short forepuds, looking like a lesson framed by nature to the pickpocket! Marry, for diving into fobs they are rather lamely provided a priori; but if the hue and cry were once up, they would show as fair a pair of hind-shifters as the expertest ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... execution vastly as a spectator. He was, I think, capable of a greater degree of depravity than any of his accomplices. Atzerott might have made a sneak thief, Booth a forger, but Harold was not far from a professional pickpocket. He was keen-eyed, insolent, idle, and, by a small experience in Houston street, would have been qualified for a first-class "knuck." He had not, like the rest, any political suggestion for the murder of the heads of the nation; and upon the gallows, ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... in the direction of the meadow, in the midst of which they presently showed themselves, their horses clearing the deep ditches with wonderful alacrity. 'That's Gypsy Will and his gang,' lisped a Hebrew pickpocket; 'we shall have another fight.' The word Gypsy was always sufficient to excite my curiosity, and I looked attentively ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... your miscellany. Dennis, the critic, has said, and I know not how many others after him, that a punster is no better than a pickpocket, and with truth, for how dare any quibbling varlet attempt to rob his neighbour of any portion of that delightful inflexibility, the very taciturnity of which bespeaks what wisdom may lie ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... pockets picked, when getting out of the cars, since he made his appearance, we began to watch him. We have got no evidence against him yet; but yesterday I pointed him out to a New York policeman, who happened to be here, and he says he knows him well. It seems he is a regular pickpocket by profession, and has served a term at Blackwell's Island. [1] He was liberated last month, and came on here to follow the business where he isn't known. But we keep a sharp eye on him, and as we have noticed that your son is quite intimate with him, I thought it my duty to inform you of it. ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... Bunyan's time, hanging to the girdle, or slung over the shoulder, as they now are in some parts of Germany. A pickpocket was then ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "from the moment he came aboard—d'ye remember—that night in Bombay? Been bullying all that softy crowd—cheeked the old man—we had to go fooling all over a half-drowned ship to save him. Dam' nigh a mutiny all for him—and now the mate abused me like a pickpocket for forgetting to dab a lump of grease on them planks. So I did, but you ought to have known better, too, than to leave a nail sticking ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... in one thing thou hast blundered: the gods created thee a pickpocket, and thou hast become a demon. That is ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... generally called "Master Bates," one of Fagin's "pupils," training to be a pickpocket. He is always laughing uproariously, and is almost equal in artifice and adroitness to "The Artful Dodger" ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... resolved to stick to our Prize unless we got Ransom, which they presently agreed to. At eight o'clock the next morning we stood into the Port, close to the Town, and spied a Boat coming off, which proved to be the Deputy Governor, a Spanish Don with as many names as an English pickpocket has Aliases, and one Mr. Harbottle, that was English Vice-Consul. They brought us Wine, Figs, Grapes, Hogs, and other Necessaries, as Ransom in Kind for the Bark; and accordingly we restored her, as also the Prisoners, with as much as we could find of ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... pickpocket, highwayman—anything he could turn his dishonest hand to," replied the old gentleman; "and he was run to earth in this house one Christmas week some eighty years ago. He took his last supper in this very room, and after he had gone up to bed a couple of Bow Street runners, ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... had just gone out. As to M. Saint Pavin, I found him at the office of his paper, 'The Financial Pilot.' He is a coarse and vulgar personage, and received me like a pickpocket. I had ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... another is that pickpocket My Diocleides. He bought t'other day Six fleeces at seven drachms, his last exploit. What were they? scraps of worn-out pedlar's-bags, Sheer trash.—But put your cloak and mantle on; And we'll to Ptolemy's, the sumptuous king, To see the Adonis. As I hear, ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... flag among a number of small flags with which she was decorated. De Gery was greatly excited, thinking for a moment that he was pursued and that on going ashore he might have a scuffle with the Italian police like a common pickpocket. But no, the yacht was lying quietly at anchor, her crew were scrubbing the deck and repainting the red mermaid that formed her figurehead as if some personage of importance were expected on board. Paul had no curiosity to ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... out for the office of Messrs Spenlow and Jorkins, in Doctors' Commons. My aunt, who had this other general opinion in reference to London, that every man she saw was a pickpocket, gave me her purse to carry for her, which had ten guineas in ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... could never be clearly defined and established. To the magic word "reporter," accompanied by the flourish of a pencil and a roll of paper, the three policemen smiled obsequiously, and unbarred the way. Seeing how well this plan worked, two gentlemen of inelegant leisure, and at least one pickpocket, provided themselves with rolls of paper and pencils, and, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... given you any cause of offence, Jack, why don't you pitch into him?" suggested a half-drunken fellow who bore the enviable reputation of being a most expert pickpocket. ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... was entirely logical for The Eel to steal the wallet—he is a pickpocket. Second, that the theft of the wallet is not of trivial importance to Goldie's destiny and to his—they are "broke" and they must get away; the money solves all their problems. And third, note that while The Eel's possession of the wallet is a surprise, the wallet itself ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... was pretty clearly understood that Murphy had been in pursuit of the pickpocket, and Tom immediately ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... hardly refrain from laughing at the pirate chief going on in this way about being taken in. As he whispered to Tom, when he had the chance, it reminded him of the pickpocket who had stolen a watch, complaining of being hardly used because the article turned ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... the nicest place in the world for so pretty a girl to be out. Connie, too, was known by several people, and although in her old clothes, and with her hair fastened round her head, she did not look nearly so striking as when Mammy Warren had used her as a decoy-duck in order to pursue her pickpocket propensities, yet still her little face was altogether on a different plane from ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... into voluntary action from motives of mere worldly wisdom. Every one does so who places some object before himself, and cultivates his powers with a special view to attain perfection therein. The pickpocket, the gambler, the housebreaker, must do it before they can attain skill in their depravity. The worldling does it who follows an honorable profession with all his heart and soul and mind and strength, seeking only such rewards as Mammon bestows upon his votaries. Whether ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... her a hardened little sinner! I abused her like a pickpocket, and called her an ungrateful serpent! Bring some sackcloth and ashes, somebody, quickly! I shall go in mourning for the ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and the two letters into the vast pocket of his huge frock-coat with a dexterity and a rapidity which would have excited the envy of an accomplished pickpocket. It was high time; for the women who were bending over the bed of the young girl were exhibiting signs of intense excitement. One of them said she was sure the body had trembled under her hand, and the others insisted upon it that she was mistaken. The ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... of his men, who is a very skilful pickpocket, to steal the major's memorandum-book just at the moment when he was entering ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... Courteous, and, from all I could see, free from treachery, only that they are thieves to a man, and would steal but everything that came in their way, and that with such dexterity as would shame the most noted Pickpocket in Europe. They are very cleanly people, both in their persons and diet, always washing their hands and Mouth immediately before and after their Meals, and wash or Bathe themselves in fresh Water 3 times a day, morning, ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... and, turning, fled away down the passage. Clubfoot laughed noisily, but I reflected mournfully that in my present sorry plight, unwashed and unshaven, in filthy clothes, haled along like a common pickpocket, even my own mother ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... pickpocket, I'll lay my life," commented Collins, as he squared himself for an encounter and made ready to leap on the man when he came within gripping distance. "Here! get out of the way, madmazelly. Business before pleasure. And, besides, you're like to get ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... caning at school, whether certain parts of me were not sore, leading to an investigating touch. I put his hand aside shyly, but did not resent the action. Presently he was for exploring my trousers pockets and I began to think him a pickpocket; repulsed in that direction, he returned, to rubbing my back. The sensation was pleasant. I now took him for a pimp who wished to take me to a prostitute, and as at that time I had begun to realize that such pleasures were ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... wrapping soap in the factories and showing finery in the big stores, dreamed that perhaps in the spectacular excitement of this winter they might obtain for themselves the coveted male—as in a muddled carnival crowd an inefficient pickpocket may consider his chances increased. And the chimneys commenced to smoke and the subway's foulness was freshened. And the actresses came out in new plays and the publishers came out with new books and the Castles ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... by-laws we now present to the reader. Composed of men of all classes and grades in society, from the priest at the altar, the judge on the bench, the lawyer at the bar, down to the most common felon and street thief or pickpocket, all bound together by a solemn oath, they laboured for the general cause of secret plunder, to the enriching of themselves at the expense of the mass. But having previously shown how I procured ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... among other notorious localities, to have those streets pointed out to him which were appropriated to the slaughter of countrymen; and was quite disappointed to find, after half-an-hour's walking, that he hadn't had his pocket picked. But on John Westlock's inventing a pickpocket for his gratification, and pointing out a highly respectable stranger as one of that ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... country with which the appointment was connected. He was likewise aware that he was not altogether deficient in courage and in propriety of behaviour. He knew that his appearance was not particularly against him; his face not being like that of a convicted pickpocket, nor his gait resembling that of a fox who has lost his tail; yet he never believed himself adapted for the appointment, being aware that he had no aptitude for the doing of dirty work, if called to do it, nor pliancy which would enable him to submit to scurvy ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... That's what Jim Duffy told me. He went to York last spring. But I guess Jim was keerless or he wouldn't have been robbed. It would take a smart pickpocket ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... in the bits of pickpocket argot that floated across to us, expressions like "crossing the mit," "nipping a slang," a "mouthpiece," "making a holler" and innumerable other choice bits as unintelligible to ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... and finely dressed, ma'am," was the woman's careful answer, "but I don't make friends with strange nurses and I don't think much of hers. She's a young dawdler who sits novel reading and if Master Donal were a young pickpocket with the measles, the child would be playing with him just the same as far as I can see. The young woman sits under a tree and reads and the pretty little thing may do what she likes. I keep my eye on them, however, and they're in no mischief. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... letter to my wife, and asked me to put my name to a paper which he said wanted a witness, and he could not find any man just then who could sign his name. He was one of the Lord Mayor's men, but notwithstanding by this time had become a pretty smart hand. He had been a pickpocket or something of that sort it the streets of London, and always spoke of himself as being a gentleman, and was ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... indeed, touching the hard pan of humiliation. I went my way, idly strolling about, mingling affably with all orders, for my watch was at home. Vacuus viator cantabit. As I stood by a fence, I heard a gentlemanly-looking young man, who was evidently a superior pickpocket, or "a regular fly ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... abuse me like a pickpocket, and I should return it, and then there would be a scolding match. I always have kept out of her way, and I think I ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... safety-valve to let off all the bad feelings and malignant passions floating through the country, without any dread of the horsewhip. Hence it is the commonest thing in the world to hear one editor abusing, like a pickpocket, an opposition brother; calling him a reptile—a crawling thing—a calumniator—a hired vendor of lies; and his paper a smut-machine—a vile engine of corruption, as base and degraded as the proprietor, &c. Of this description was the paper I now held in my hand, which had ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... I understood! He said, 'If you will give anything for the whisper, it will be gratefully received.' There are notices all over the church forbidding fees, and I felt that the man was a beggar at best—more properly a pickpocket. ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... of royalty have no high opinion of souls or principles. Think of these taxes on exports needed by neighbors. The minds that invented them had the genius of a pickpocket." ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... I've exposed you to the world as a commercial pickpocket, as a looter of the public domain—after Congress has appropriated your fabulous coal claims—will you nail up the door of this little ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... I'd scorn to take a cent from that old man to use for my benefit! I would not touch his diamonds if they lay here at my feet! But if I can make him suffer anything like as my poor father suffered through him, then I am ready to turn robber—yes, pickpocket, if you will!" ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... 'em best; just like a cowardly pickpocket, or a bloody highwayman, knock a man down first, and then tell him ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... nature. Never perhaps was there so comprehensive a talent for characterization as Shakspeare. It not only grasps every diversity of rank, age, and sex, down to the lispings of infancy; not only do the king and the beggar, the hero and the pickpocket, the sage and the idiot, speak and act with equal truthfulness; not only does he transport himself to distant ages and foreign nations, and portray with the greatest accuracy (a few apparent violations of costume excepted) the spirit of the ancient Romans, of the French in the wars with the English, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... man who pretends to be deaf and dumb went about then, and was known as the dummerer. The burglar was then the housebreaker. Burglary was formerly a far worse crime than it is now, because the people for the most part kept all their money in their houses, and a robbery might ruin them. The pickpocket plied his trade, only he was then a cutpurse. The footpad lay in wait on the lonely country road or among the bushes of the open fields at the back of Lincoln's Inn. The punishments, which seem so mild under the Plantagenets, ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... finding your companion out. All disguises will fall away from him. As his pores open his character is laid bare. His deepest and most private self will come to the top. It matters little with whom you ride, so he be not a pickpocket; for both of you will, very likely, settle down closer and firmer in your reserve, shaken down like a measure of corn by the jolting as the journey proceeds. But walking is a more vital copartnership; the relation is a closer and more ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... criminals have gathered at the end of their day's wanderings to drink the very rags from their backs and wallow in shameless incontinence. An old soldier and a quondam "daughter of the regiment," a mountebank and his tinker sweetheart, a female pickpocket whose Highland bandit lover has been hanged, a fiddler at fairs who aspires to comfort her but is outdone by a tinker, a lame ballad-singer and his three wives, one of whom consoles the fiddler in the face of her husband—such is the choice ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... fact is, Graham, I served an apprenticeship as a pickpocket, and flatter myself I still have some dexterity ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... a pickpocket had drawn his pocketbook from his pocket and was running away with it, and he awoke with a sudden start, his ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... better still, of money, invariably escaped the punishment his crime deserved. The very police themselves were, in many cases, in league with the thieves and shared in the "swag" of the successful burglar, expert counterfeiter, adroit pickpocket, villainous sneak and panel thief, or daring and accomplished forger; hence crime, from being in a measure "protected," increased, criminals multiplied and prisons ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... us as we pulled by, and seemed to be watching us narrowly. I felt almost sure that he suspected something was wrong; but probably he had got a habit of scrutinising everything which approached him, as a London pickpocket does when he knows that the police are aware of his course of life. As we dropped past the brig's quarter, I got a better view of his countenance, and I felt sure that I had seen it before. It was that of a man I supposed to have ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... this, ye Havana cigarette smokers! and when next you indulge in a whiff from your favourite luxury, remember that a pickpocket has had ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... is false, but the thief's face true. Of a promiscuous crowd, taken almost anywhere, the pickpocket in it is the smartest man present, in all probability. According to Ecclesiasticus, it is "the heart of man that changeth his countenance"; and it does seem that it is to his education, and not to his heart, that man does violence in stealing. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... poisonous one. There is something positively awful about the potentialities that are in human nature. The Archbishop of Canterbury might have grown up under influences which would have made him a bloodthirsty pirate or a sneaking pickpocket. The pirate or the pickpocket, taken at the right time, and trained in the right way, might have been made a pious, exemplary man. You remember that good divine, two hundred years since, who, standing in the market-place of a certain town, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... general. He was probably the only officer in the place who did that, he knew; the others treated the alien general as though he were a criminal. Worse, they treated him as though he were a petty thief or a common pickpocket—criminal, yes, but of a definitely inferior type. General Tallis, as always, stood and returned the salute. "Cut mawnik, Cunnel MacMaine," he said. The Kerothi language lacked many of the voiced consonants of English and Russian, ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... street thinking of the story of Hero and Leander and imagining himself to be swimming the Hellespont, he threw wide his arms as though breasting the waves. Unfortunately, his hand struck the pocket of a passer-by and knocked out a purse. The outer deed was that of a pickpocket and could have sent the youth to jail. The inner motive was that of an imaginative youth deeply impressed by the story he was translating from the Greek, and that inner motive made the owner of the purse his friend and ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Lavengro would appear to be autobiographical up to the period of Borrow's coming to London. After this he begins to indulge somewhat in the dramatic. The meeting with the pickpocket as a thimble-rigger at Greenwich might pass muster were it not for the rencontre with the apple-woman's son near Salisbury. The Dingle episode may be accepted, for Mr John Sampson has verified even the famous thunder-storm by means of the local press. Isopel Berners ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... of Assessors comes with poor grace from those whose endeavors for the common good are confined to academic essays on good government. It savors too much of the adroit pickpocket, who, finding himself hard pressed, joins in the chase, shouting as lustily as any of the unthinking ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... me your instructions then, and we will agree upon my share of the spoils. It should be something handsome, for I have the vanity to believe that no one would come and disturb a fellow of my calibre for any insignificant piece of business. But after all I am weary of playing the thief and pickpocket—it is beneath me—and I mean to devote all my energies in future to the noble art of assassination; it is more worthy of my undisputed prowess. I would rather be a grand, man-slaying lion than any meaner beast of prey. If this is a question of ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... him?" asked the policeman politely. "Maybe that's different then. That pickpocket stole a lady's purse, and here's the empty bag he left in the kid's hands. We thought they were together—using the boy to cover up ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White
... that, in a country which boasts of its laws and of the execution of its laws, such an impostor as was this widow should be able to lay her dirty, grasping fingers on so great an amount of property, and that there should be no means of punishing her. That Lizzie Eustace had stolen the diamonds, as a pickpocket steals a watch, was a fact as to which Mr. Camperdown had in his mind no shadow of a doubt. And, as the reader knows, he was right. She had stolen them. Mr. Camperdown knew that she had stolen them, and was a wretched man. From the first moment of the late Sir Florian's infatuation about this woman, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... his cane against the hall tree, and followed his host into the jollified apartment. He did not overlook the swift glide of Shine's hand into each of his overcoat pockets in the brief interval. Here was a skilful "dip"—Shirley, however, had taken care that the pickpocket would find nothing to worry him in ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... wealth in gold dust is protected only by ragged canvas walls, but thefts and robbery are seldom heard of. The rich returns of honest labor render harmless temptations which would prove an overmatch for the average virtue of New England. The cut-purse and pickpocket in California find their occupation useless, and become chevaliers of industry, in a better sense than the term has ever before admitted of. It will appear natural," says our author, "that California ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... teens was Curlie. Slender, dark, with coal-black eyes, with curls of the same hue clinging tightly to his well-shaped head, he had the strong profile and the smooth tapering fingers that might belong to an artist, a pickpocket or a detective. ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... clapped one hand on his coat-pocket, and raised up his cane in the other, for he was quite sure it was a pickpocket at his coat. But when he turned, he saw the breathless little flower-girl, and he looked rather sternly ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... lounge or loiter on the main thoroughfares, which are always too much crowded to permit such obstructions. Details are made for places of amusement and public resort. If the patrolman on duty at one of these places sees a known thief or pickpocket enter, he orders him to leave the premises. If the fellow refuses to obey, he is arrested and locked up in the station house for the night. By this means respectable persons, at public resorts, are saved heavy losses at the hands of the ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... except his purse? And, that too, she is now taking. In the indulgence of an agreeable self-conceit which supplies for him the want of imagination he sees Ireland to-day as a species of "sturdy beggar," half mendicant, half pickpocket—making off with the proceeds of his hard day's work. The past slips from him as a dream. Has he not for years now, well, for thirty years certainly, a generation, a life time, done all in his power to meet the demands of this incessant country that more ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement |
