"Waif" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Seeing that the little waif was friendless and alone, and none of us didn't know whether he had kith or kin in the world, I offered to take him and bring him up as if he were my own son, and the rest of the boys they agreed to it. Although he has always been known around these diggin's as 'Ezra Norton's kid,' he aint ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... about her. She was just one instance of heartbreak, the heart-break of a whole nation which loves home as no other people have ever loved it, and yet are doomed, as it seems inevitably, to leave it. She was just one more waif thrown into the whirlpool of the great world to toil and struggle, succeed barrenly or pitifully fail; but through it all, through even the possible loss of faith and ultimate degradation, fated to cling to a love for the gray ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... disturbances in Brazil. Like all passengers on board a ship, he could find but little or nothing to do to pass away the time, and being a married man and a father, his sympathies and good feelings were powerfully excited and strongly attracted towards this "waif of the sea," their new passenger. The boy, on the other hand, to a very handsome face added a mild and amiable disposition, and, like all New-England boys, an education vastly superior to boys of the same age and standing in Great ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... the walks of the cemetery; for all his song, no blue-water sailor-man, but a boisterous denizen of the great river, a raftsman or a keel-boatman, who had somehow found himself in the burial ground and now was beating aimlessly about. How this rollicking waif of the grog shop came to wander so far from the convivial haunts of his kind and to choose this spot for a ramble, can only be explained by ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... world 'mid double danger, groans, and tears; The toy, the sport, the waif and stray of ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... so doing earned their ill-will, and brought upon himself their persecution. Indeed, so uncomfortable did his new home prove through the malignity of his fellow-pensioners, that the health of the poor waif gave way, and it was found necessary to remove him to the Hotel Dieu of Paris. Here he was noticed by the Abbe de l'Epee, who was attracted by his quiet and aristocratic manners and gentle demeanour, and who at the same time considered that, by reason of his intelligence, he was likely ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... as the door closed upon the shivering little waif who scratched and whined at the door of his lost Paradise, Jimsy's face, sharpened by disappointment, seemed suddenly thinner and less boyish. Bent upon making the best of things, he ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple
... regard to the Log-Book may not be inappropriate. It seems to be a mere waif that has floated on the current, and among a thousand things that have perished, to have been, as it were by accident, preserved. A portion of the volume seems to be a kind of a private journal kept by my grandfather, for a few weeks in 1778. He does not appear to have valued it greatly, as ...
— Log-book of Timothy Boardman • Samuel W Boardman
... to help the good-natured couple in the care of the homeless waif, albeit somewhat doubtful of their religious methods, the schoolmaster said he would be delighted to number her among his little flock. Had ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... To-night it is much worse! Wishing to obtain a glimpse of popular manners, I went to the Strada di Porto, where I now am. All about me animated throngs of people crowd and press before the eating-places; and I float like a waif among these living surges, which, even while they submerge you, still caress. For this Neopolitan people has, in its very vivacity, something indescribably gentle and polite. I am not roughly jostled, I am merely swayed about; and I think that by dint of thus rocking me ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... mirth. But the sight of her self-appointed chaperon set her off into peals of laughter in spite of herself. Every time she looked at Johnnie she went off into renewed chirrups. He was so homely and so deadly earnest. The little waif was staring at her in perplexed surprise, mouth open and chin fallen. He could see no occasion for gayety at his suggestion. There was nothing subtle about the Runt. In his social code wealth did not figure. A forty-dollar-a-month bronco buster was ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... mute appeal of this wee waif alone and unloved in the midst of the horrors of the savage jungle. It was this thought more than any other that had sent her mother's heart out to the innocent babe, while still she suffered from disappointment that she had ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... not know who he was nor whence he came—he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood, seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and mothered this waif about whom there was such a mystery—a charming waif, by the way, who could play the banjo better than anyone else in ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... loving, to his father. And with a peculiar trust and tenderness, John's heart turned to his eldest son, the heir of his name, his successor at Enderley Mills. For, in order that Guy might at once take his natural place, and feel no longer a waif and stray upon the world, already a plan had been started, that the firm of Halifax and Sons should become Halifax Brothers. Perhaps, ere very long—only the mother said privately, rather anxiously too, that she did not wish this part of the scheme to be mentioned to Guy just ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... sort you may see any day at a fair, jigging outside a booth in red bodice and spangles, a waif, a little who-knows-who, suppose her pretty to death—what is she even then but an iridescent bubble, as one might say, thrown up by some standing pool of vice, as filmy, very nearly as fleeting, and quite as poisonous? It struck him as he watched—not the girl in particular, but a ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... it be an act of spite against Aurora Googe? Was it a final answer to any expectations of her nephew, Champney Googe, her husband's namesake and favorite? Was this little alien waif to be made a catspaw for her revenge? She was capable of such a thing, was Almeda Champney. He knew her; none better! Had not her will, thus far in her life, bent everything with which it had come in contact; crushed whatever had opposed it; broken irrevocably whosoever ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... swept into my path, as a stray waif, that man who would in one little moment change my whole life! It is always so. Our life sweeps onward like a river, brushing in here a little sand, there a few rushes, till the accumulated drift-wood chokes the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... fiercely and he continued to bark in a shrill tone, which could not be allowed to continue, as it excited and disturbed the sick. I am a lover of dogs, and now offered to take charge of this little waif. His master was unwilling to part with him, but there was no alternative, so I carried him off down-stairs, where, installed in comfortable quarters and petted by everybody, the ungrateful little dog seemed ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... to be some way to reach a case like this, and there is, I am sure. From what you say, it is more than probable that this poor little waif may have drifted out of some pleasant home, where love would bless it with the tenderest care, into this hell of neglect and cruelty. It should be rescued on the instant. It is my duty—it is yours—to see that it is done, and that without delay. I will ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... A waif two years of age was taken from a benevolent institution in Boston, and given to a childless sailor, on his way from a voyage to his home in Maine on the Penobscot River. The sailor knew not from what institution the child was taken, nor whence he came. He carried it home, ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... traveller had tangible evidence that trouble had fallen to the lot of some who had preceded him. A stray ox was feeding on his track: the mate of which, he afterwards learned, was killed, and this one turned adrift as useless. He coaxed this waif to be the companion of his journey, taking care to stop where he could provide himself with the needful sustenance. He had not travelled far before he found a mate for his ox, and ere long a wagon, which had given way in some of its parts, and been abandoned by its rightful ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... simplicity transcendent. By the aid of a microscope, a 'gillyflower' was seen protecting a chrysalis. Warm leaves cherished it, dainty juices aided its digestion, wholesome offshoots nourished it to maturity. Eking out a scant existence between two granite flags, this insignificant waif reared a caterpillar. What man are you, who can say ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... now lame Tim has driven the cows home; and the dew is falling, the stars are creeping out, and the little crickets and frogs have commenced their evening concert, and still little pet hasn't come! Where is the little stray waif? ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... as destitute, as desolate as any waif in all that great city. He had been cared for all his life, and now that he was suddenly thrown upon his own resources, he felt helpless, like a rudderless bark on a ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... days after I heard that the birdie was adopted in the pantry, and was being fed "in the intervals of business." When a few days later I was definitely informed that the birdie waif was a starling, then I confess I did begin to long for another little friend such as my former "Dick" had been, and it ended in my receiving Richard the Second, as we called him for distinction, into my own ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... scandalously seduced punts and dinghies from the respectable precincts of Brammo Bay, and having philandered with them for a while, cynically abandoned them with a bump on the mainland beach, and only once has he sent a punt in return—a poor, soiled, tar-besmirched, disorderly waif that was reported to the police ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... the struggle for Wingo of the Cree tribe, a waif among the Athabascas, whose father had been slain as they travelled, by a wandering tribe of Blackfeet. Never was there a braver rivalry, although the odds were with the Indian—in lightness, in brutal strength. With the mikonaree, however, were skill, and that ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... of sinners, to dare put it on written record, thinking it hardly a safe story to expose to the quarrying of men's conclusions? But it doesn't matter much: the tale must be a true one. Only—to think of just this one story, of tenderest righteousness, floating about like a holy waif through the world of letters!—a sweet gray dove of promise that can find no rest for the sole of his foot! Just this one story of all stories a kind of outcast! and yet as a wanderer, oh, how welcome! Some manuscripts, I understand, have granted it a sort ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... inspired by fond imaginings that the pinto might have stopped to graze, Sundown stalked down the road. Waif of chance and devotee of the goddess "Maybeso," he rose sublimely superior to the predicament in which he found himself. "The only reason I'm goin' east is because I ain't goin' west," he told himself, ignoring, with ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... beneath me. The two men at the oars of the principal's boat, without any order from Mr. Parasyte,—for he knew not what to do,—backed water. I could swim like a fish; and as the Splash sank beneath me, I struck out from the wreck, and was left like a waif floating upon the glassy ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... both in material and design. I felt assured that the dog's owner must be a woman, and hastily removed the ribbon, expecting to find embroidered upon it some such name as "Amelie" or "Leontine." But my examination proved futile, the silver ribbon afforded me no clue to the antecedents of my canine waif. And indeed, as I stood contemplating him in some perplexity, the conviction forced itself on my mind that he was not exactly the kind of animal that Amelie or Leontine would be likely to select for a pet. He was a poodle certainly, but of an ill-bred and ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... alone taking precedence of it. It is to the duc de Morny that Deauville owes the existence of its "hippodrome," but the choice of this bit of sandy beach, that seemed to have been thrown up and abandoned by the sea like a waif, cannot be called a happy one. It may be, however, that the duke's selection of the site was determined by its proximity to the luxuriant valley of the Auge, so famous for its excellent pasturage and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... Kara no longer cared for what in the past would have given her happiness. At one time she had been glad to feel that Westhaven did not regard her merely as a little waif who had been left upon their bounty and brought up at the "Gray House." She was the ward of the entire village. Now this was of no ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... her there had sprung up on the ruins of one night's folly a tower of comradeship. Its foundations were not of sand. Even Cuckoo, despite her ceaseless jealously, felt that. But, after all, she had only come into his life as a desolate waif drifts into a settled community. She was neither of his class, his understanding, or his education. She was in the gutter; in the gutter to an extent that no man, as women feel at present, can ever be. And ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... proclaimed the tenderness of its youth. Fearing that the little thing could not be reared by hand, as it refused all our proffered tidbits, and chirped continually for its parents, I persuaded the lad to give it its freedom. A mother wren living on our premises seemed inclined to adopt the little waif, and we decided to put it under her care. No sooner was the youngling let out of the cage than it flew to the side of the house and began to scramble up the brick wall. It had a hard tug, but at length succeeded in reaching a resting place on a window-shutter of ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... I beheld on the platform Captain John A. Sutter. Memories both painful and grateful were evoked. It was he who had first sent food to the starving travellers in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It was he who had laid his hand on my head, when a forlorn little waif at the Fort, tenderly saying, "Poor little girl, I wish I could give back what you ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... a silly, triumphant laugh, and thrust the child forward against the carriage step. The poor waif, drenched, dazed, tottering without his crutch, caught at the plated handle for support. Honoria gazed down on him with eyes which took slow and pitiless account of the deformed little body, the ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... than herself; finally, after his arguments and admonitions, he laid his hand on her bowed head as if silently giving a patriarchal blessing; and Mavis watched and admired, and loved him for his noble generosity in taking so much trouble about the poor little waif that had no ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... Illinois, and should chance to be in that neighborhood, you will stop at Tony's news stand to buy your home-town paper. Don't mistake the nature of this story. There is nothing of the shivering-newsboy-waif about Tony. He has the voice of a fog-horn, the purple-striped shirt of a sport, the diamond scarf-pin of a racetrack tout, and the savoir faire of the gutter-bred. You'd never pick him for a newsboy if it weren't ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... journey. At every station at which we stopped he came to the window to see how I was getting on, and whether I was in want of anything, and was altogether so kind to me that I was quite sorry to part from him when the train reached Eastbury, and left me, a minute later, standing, a solitary waif, on ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... of the waif's helplessness was repugnance to her conquered. She had no other redeeming quality. In a certain sense she was fearsome; she required unremitting attention and care; her whimpering fits, in beast-like ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... deceased lady's scant leavings, was one who had in her own palmetto hut an empty cradle scarcely cold, and therefore a necessity at her breast, if not a place in her heart, for the unfortunate Lufki-Humma; and thus it was that this little waif came to be tossed, a droll hypothesis of flesh, blood, nerve and brain, into the hands of wild nature with carte blanche as to the disposal of it. And now, since this was Agricola's most boasted ancestor—since it appears the darkness of ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... was talking she was laying in the fire quickly and deftly. Mrs. Perry watched her interestedly. She felt the comfort of having someone cheerful to speak to; and when she remembered that but for this little stray waif she would have been alone now, and her hen-house robbed, her heart was ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... in to the fire, and the hot coffee; you are frozen with the wind and snow. Glory be, that I am still here to make comfortable for the waif on my doorstep." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... ask all about," said his mother, "if any one has lost their child. There must be sore hearts somewhere, I'm afraid," and she lifted the tiny waif for Robin to kiss her ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... me safe— I am, immediate, Of one that lives; I am no waif That haggard waters toss and chafe, But of ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... him out of the church; and he said to the bystanders that he was well, and had never been ill: he, the heavily afflicted, the waif cast forth upon the world, remembered nothing of his sufferings. And the Lord our Creator is wise and full of loving-kindness—who ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... word is one of the smallest, completely satisfying bits of isolated "meaning" into which the sentence resolves itself. It cannot be cut into without a disturbance of meaning, one or the other or both of the severed parts remaining as a helpless waif on our hands. In practice this unpretentious criterion does better service than might be supposed. In such a sentence as It is unthinkable, it is simply impossible to group the elements into any other and smaller "words" than the three indicated. ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... proved a bloody knave; my visionary lands and riches all had vanished; instead of silk attire and sword, I wore a rifle-shirt and skinning-knife; and out of the dawn-born glory of the hills had stepped no silken damsel of romance to pause and worship me—only a slender, ragged, grey-eyed waif who came indifferent as the chilly wind in spring; who went as April shadows go, leaving no ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... two men could have known that the steel box was in that satchel this story might never have been told. But it never entered their heads that the pallid little waif had sense enough to conceal a button to her ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... am a lonely wight, a wanderer in wild places, a waif, a stray, puffed hither and ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... how quickly the girls in our Home learn to help each other. Mercedes had been in the Home but ten days when Francesca came—a bit of a waif who had never worn shoes in all her life, nor seen a bed before. Of course she knew nothing about undressing and sleeping between clean, white sheets. She tried to do like the others, but got into bed with her precious new shoes and stockings on. Mercedes watched her, and when ready herself, ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... her place. "Oh you incredible little waif!" She brought it out with a wail of violence; after which, with another convulsion, she ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... that it will receive its due as trustfully as these little mosses sit among the clouds and find a spring to feed them even in the rock. Now I will make a speedy end of this, pleasant as it is to sit here feeling myself no longer a solitary waif. I shall spare you the stormy scenes I passed through with Ottila, because I do not care to think of my Cleopatra while I hold 'my fine spirit Ariel' in my arms. She had done her best, but had I been still heart-free I never could have married her. She is one of those ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... and gazed for a little space Down on his pallid and careworn face, And a smile of scorn went round the band As they touched alternate with foot and hand This mortal waif, that the outer space Of dim mysterious sky and sand Flung with so little of Christian grace Down on ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... that we would love to be, nay, all that His infinite wisdom, power and love will delight to accomplish in us. It is the clay yielding itself to the potter's hands that it may be shaped into a vessel of honor, and meet for the Master's use. It is the poor street waif consenting to become the child of a prince that he may be educated and provided for, that he may be prepared to inherit all ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... the young waif would have shuddered had he known of the callous-handed and desperate murders which had shocked Vienna just before Hugo Landor, a talented and handsome young chemist, disappeared forever in flight, lost under a cloud of scandal caused by drink and a maddening devotion to a baby-faced devil ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... more defined by any of these formulas than by the agnostic x; but the mere assurance that my powers, such as they are, are not irrelevant to it, but pertinent; that it speaks to them and will in some way recognize their reply; that I can be a match for it if I will, and not a footless waif,—suffices to make it rational to my feeling in the sense given above. Nothing could be more absurd than to hope for the definitive triumph of any philosophy which should refuse to legitimate, and to legitimate in an emphatic ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... nose thoughtfully. A girl down and out, a waif in a city ward, in her delirium calling upon Peter Champneys for help, didn't sound at all good to him. In connection with that penciled slip which seemed to imply that she had a right to expect help, it smacked of possible heart-interest—sob-stuff—so ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... truthful books that win and charm the reader, and I did not put it down until I had finished it—honest! And I am sure that every one, young or old, who reads will be proud and happy to make the acquaintance of the delicious waif. ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... advantageous alliance; that she would in all probability have accepted him had he offered himself to her in his brother's lifetime. Since his thirtieth birthday he had begun to feel himself something of a waif and stray. There had been mistakes in his life, errors he would be very glad to forget in an utterly new existence. It was pleasant to know himself beloved by a proud and virtuous woman, a woman whose love was neither to be ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... main at some distance. Disgusted with her selfishness, I vouchsafed her no further notice at the time, and her crooning went on during the whole period of the bitter death-struggle of that poor sufferer, whose name I never knew, but whose little, deformed waif, the orphan of ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... baith gowd and gear, Wi' thee I ne'er gat nane; I got thee as a waif woman, I'll leave thee ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... given the little stranger shelter, and had in time grown so fond of her that she could not bear the thought of parting. Hence, after the first unsuccessful effort, no further attempt had been made to discover the parentage of the little waif. She called herself Daisy, in her lisping fashion, and her lovely disposition had won for her the poetical title of "Daisy of ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... Like the waif, he spoke Shainsan, and spoke it with a better accent than any nonhuman I had ever known—so well that I looked again to be certain. I wasn't too dazed to answer in the same tongue, but I couldn't keep ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... farm, he found it dull and slow, He drifted to the great North-west where all the rovers go. 'He's gone so long,' the old man said, 'he's dropped right out of mind, But if you'd write a line to him I'd take it very kind; He's shearing here and fencing there, a kind of waif and stray, He's droving now with Conroy's sheep ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... refer to his sympathy for outcast children, and he quotes the saying of Jesus, "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." He then refers to himself as having been a waif and robbed of the love that was his due, "the lawful, legal heritage of every child, sent without its consent into a world of struggle and strife, where only love makes ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... He became a waif and stray, austerely, from conviction, as others do through drink, from vice, from some weakness of character—with deliberation, as others do in despair. This, stripped of its facts, had been Heyst's life up to that disturbing night. Next day, when he saw the girl called ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... an extraordinary scene of explanation, in which, seconding one another's efforts, striving to hit upon simpler analogies, plainer terms, Paul the doctor, and Miss Ludington sought to make clear to this waif from eternity, so strangely stranded on the shores of Time, the conditions and circumstances under which she ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... age, down to the time of her Butlers and her Marcys, her Van Burens and Hoyts, poltroonery and corruption have with her ruled the hour. Nature has her freaks, and in one of them she gave a great man, John Jay, to New York. Hamilton was a waif from the West Indies on her spirit- barren strand, and Rufus King from Massachusetts. No doubt, among her millions, she has many wise and good, but the day when they begin to impress any fit influence ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... the darkness of the night. Then sent I speech to thee in verses such as burn The heart; reproach therein was none nor yet unright; Yet with perfidiousness (sure Fortune's self as thou Ne'er so perfidious was) my love thou didst requite And deemedst me a waif, a homeless good-for-nought, A slave-begotten brat, a ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... new-born mouths long dead Those ninefold nipples fed, Dim face with deathless eyes and withered hair, Fostress of obscure lands, Whose multiplying hands Wove the world's web with divers races fair And cast it waif-wise on the stream, The waters of the centuries, where thou ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... darted off through the open door, and the Editor stood for a moment looking regretfully after him. He liked his little protege ever since that unfortunate child—a waif from a Chinese wash-house—was impounded by some indignant miners for bringing home a highly imperfect and insufficient washing, and kept as hostage for a more proper return of the garments. Unfortunately, another gang of miners, equally aggrieved, had at the same ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... touched. But the impulse was lost in the thrill of seeing the dining-room door thrown open and a great bulk of a man cross the floor of the office and stand beside Bland's chair. At his side was a thin waif who had not unjustly been termed ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... would ordinarily be looked upon as altogether prohibitory. She was the wife of a poor minister and school-teacher. To eke out the family income she took boarders. She had five children of her own, who were too young to be of any material assistance, and, in addition, she occasionally harbored a waif that besought her protection when fleeing from slavery. Necessarily the most of her time was spent in the kitchen. There, surrounded by meats and vegetables and cooking appliances, with just enough of the common deal table cleared away to give space for her ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... Achille Paganini. And as if mystery should still enshroud his memory and this, true to his nature, should be carried out in his last will, there are those who maintain that Achille Paganini was not his son at all—only a waif he had adopted. Yet Achille always stoutly maintained the distinction—but what boots it, since he could not play his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... eyes of the boy detected a shade on Jack's face. However, all conversation was suddenly checked by the entrance of Mike, who, in a manner more forcible than ceremonious, dispossessed Bull-dog of his chair and pipe. The little waif soon took his departure, but it was some time before the cloud on Jack's brow ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... under his skilfully shaped and padded clothes the man was a mere waif of a man—as unbelievably slight as if he were the victim of a wasting disease. Ste. Marie held the body in his arms as if it had been a child, and carried it across and laid it on the bed; but it was many months before he forgot the horror of that awful ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... found my way—perhaps half an hour's ride on the electric car from Dover Street. I grew an inch taller and broader between the corner of Cedar Street and Mr. Tetlow's house, such was the charm of the clean, green suburb on a cramped waif from the slums. My faded calico dress, my rusty straw sailor hat, the color of my skin and all bespoke the waif. But never a bit daunted was I. I went up the steps to the porch, rang the bell, and asked for the great man with as much assurance ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... the Anniversary of Eddy's Death. Extracts from her Journal. Little Susy's Six Teachers. The Teachers' Meeting. A New York Waif. Summer in the Country. Letters. Little Susy's Little Servants. Extracts from her ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... ask for verse from me, the feeble prey Of this self-seeking world, a waif and stray With none to whom to cling; From me—unhappy, purblind, hopeless devil! Who e'en in what is good see only ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... directions named, but he was not without talents. He could wash and wipe dishes and, incredible as it may seem, he was also literary. Like attracts like, by some law past understanding. To me it still seems a wonderful thing that this little waif of a man with a taste for Tolstoy and a passion for long words should have just ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... across China that presently arose from his flea-ridden bed of sickness, and began to make a languid personal introspection. I had developed a new sensitiveness, the sensitiveness of an alien in an alien land, in the hands of new-made, faithful friends. Without them I should have been a waif of all the world, helpless in the midst of unconquerable surroundings, leading to an inevitable destiny of death. I seemed declimatized, denationalized, a luckless victim ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... in return she had opened her heart, naked and bleeding, to his eyes. What she had told him was not a voluntary confidence; it was a confession wrung from her by the rack of his questionings—the confession that she was a waif-child, that Pierre was not her brother, and that the man at Fort o' God was not her father. He had gone to the very depths of that which was sacred to herself and ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... jumping with excitement also, for the boat Carette had sighted was evidently astray, and, moreover, it was, as they could easily see even at that distance, no Island boat, but a stranger, a waif, and so lawful prey and treasure-trove if they ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... you, but—but there must have been a child on board after all.' He held a little box of toys, carefully packed as if by a mother's hand,—common toys, for she was only the captain's wife, and the schooner a small one; the little waif had floated ashore by itself, and Fog had seen and ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... beginning of wisdom. It means caution, independence, honesty and veracity. Faith means negligence, serfdom, insincerity and deception. The man who never doubts never thinks. He is like a straw in the wind or a waif on the sea. He is one of the helpless, docile, unquestioning millions, who keep the world in a state of stagnation, and serve as a fulcrum for the lever of despotism. The stupidity of the people, says Whitman, is always inviting ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... of a tenement waif who rose by his own ingenuity to the office of mayor of his native city. His experiences while "climbing," make a most interesting example of the possibilities of human ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... to his own study, where, with a little sigh, he put away his chess-men, and heartily hoped that it might not be his favorite adversary who was coming before him to be sent to jail. For although the good rector had a warm regard, and even affection, for Robin Lyth, as a waif cast into his care, and then a pupil wonderfully apt (which breeds love in the teacher), and after that a most gallant and highly distinguished young parishioner—with all this it was a difficulty for him to be ignorant that the law ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... are far from good," Miss Barnes said; "but little Edna Conway, who is a dear child, seems to have taken a fancy to this poor little waif." And Miss Barnes told of Edna's trust in bringing Maggie to the Home, of Maggie's love for the little kitten, and all that she knew of the child from ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... interesting relic would be promptly and reverently deposited among the other Vestiges of Creation, in the Royal Cabinet. In the course of years, some historian would probably have occasion to turn over these curiosities, and would presently light on the scorched but still legible waif. "Why," says he, in astonishment, "I thought the earth was burnt on the 15th of May! To be sure, it was in the night, and nobody saw it go, [think of that, conceited Worldling!] but it was missed by somebody the day after. But here we have ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... cared, was of less than no account; it made a small paragraph in the newspapers—it had caused some little commotion on the pier—just a little hurry at the work-house, and then it was forgotten. What was such a little waif and stray—such a small, fair, tender little creature ...
— The Tragedy of the Chain Pier - Everyday Life Library No. 3 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... flight from Italy he had been as a leaf whirled upon a winter torrent. Plain enough it had long been to him that he would not be able to govern the wild forces of a reaction which, if it had prevailed, would have brought back a more cruel tyranny than Sylla's. He was now flung as a waif on the shore of a foreign land; and if Providence on each occasion proportioned the penalties of misdoing to the magnitude of the fault, it might have been considered that adequate retribution had been inflicted on him. But the consequences of the actions of men live when ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... over. I'm ready to. I'm not sure that it wouldn't be a relief to get out of this rotten life. I'm all on edge. I could jump out of that window as easily as not. But it wasn't the girl's fault. She's a poor little waif of a thing. You must look after her and keep me from seeing her again, but she's not bad—only—only—Oh, ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... may have been the first and only occasion in Mr. Hampton's audacious career, he realized his utter helplessness. This mere slip of a red-headed girl, this little nameless waif of the frontier, condemned him so completely, and without waste of words, as to leave him weaponless. Not that he greatly cared; oh, no! still, it was an entirely new experience; the arrow went deeper than he would have willingly admitted. Men of middle ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... orders and with the permission of government. The more and more avowed materialistic theories revolted his shrewd and sensible mind; without caring to go to the bottom of his thought and contemplate its consequences, he clung to the notion of Providence as to a waif in the great shipwreck of positive creeds; he could ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... glance was kind. "Sure you'll marry her," he said. "You saved her life. And, boy, you'll be a big man of the U. P. some day. Chief engineer or superintendent of maintenance of way or some other big job. What could be finer? Romance, boy. The little waif of the caravan—you'll send her back to Omaha to school; she'll grow into a beautiful woman! She'll have a host of admirers, but you'll be the ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... from time to time added to their number" in 1893, Mr. Balfour says: "The reference to Odin [Fable XVII] perhaps is due to his reading of the Sagas, which led him to attempt a tale in the same style, called 'The Waif Woman.'" ...
— The Waif Woman • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mist. Now he is himself paternal and these about him might be his sons. Who can say? The wise father knows his own child. He thinks of a drizzling night in Hatch street, hard by the bonded stores there, the first. Together (she is a poor waif, a child of shame, yours and mine and of all for a bare shilling and her luckpenny), together they hear the heavy tread of the watch as two raincaped shadows pass the new royal university. Bridie! Bridie Kelly! He will never ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... understand in some degree what could induce a little waif like me to accept such an offer as yours. I think no one in all God's earth is more desolate than I. In my heart I bear always that unforgotten love in my life. I have only a barren waste to show. It is as if I had started from a lovely, radiant garden ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... would be the first American girl she had ever met; but she knew how an English girl would feel about being introduced to a vague waif picked up by a brother in a dressmaker's showroom on shipboard. It would have been ungracious to refuse the offered introduction so well meant, but the fifth dryad was not looking forward to it with ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... What he claims he freely allows. The Saviour had no tinge of that jealousy of rival teaching—as if truth could be two, and could avoid being one—which makes so many of his followers grasp at any waif of false argument. He knew that all good is of God, and not of the devil. All were with him who destroyed ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... he was affectionately dubbed by the boys, "the Kid," was a waif who had drifted in among them some months before. Except that his mother was in the hospital, nothing was known about him, which was regular and according to the rule of the house. Not as much was known about most of its ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms in the great Limberlost Swamp; the manner in which everyone who meets him succumbs to the charm of his engaging personality; and his love-story with "The Angel" ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... none other, to scrape acquaintance, where, how, and with whom he could. Many a long dull talk he held upon the benches or the grass; many a strange waif he came to know; many strange things he heard, and saw some that were abominable. It was to one of these last that he owed his deliverance from the Domain. For some time the rain had been merciless; one ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... demon-spell, that fearful moan. She knew that somewhere in the green abyss His body swung in curves of watery force, Now in a circle slow revolved, and now Swaying like wind-swung bell, when surface waves Sank their roots deep enough to reach the waif, Hither and thither, idly to and fro, Wandering unheeding through the heedless sea. A kind of fascination seized her brain, And drew her onward to the ridgy rocks That ran a little way into the deep, Like questions asked of Fate by longing hearts, Bound which the eternal ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... there was a strap around its loins to which a stout cord was attached, running to the Root of All Evil. The pavement was hot, but there with its bare and tender feet on the hot concrete, the sad-eyed little waif painfully moved about, peering far up into the faces of passers-by for sympathy, but all the time furtively and shrinkingly watching its tormentor. Every now and then the hairy old tramp would jerk ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... excited and voluble over the possibilities of the country. Now the investment broker found a land of desolation and ruin, and the printer in sorry plight, living in a crude, bare shack, clad like some waif of the streets in the clothes donated by ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... to find it out some other way, so I steered for a cafe near the harbor, where the pilots and long-shore captains go to play at dominoes. I was in hopes of picking up some stray waif of information, and, sooth to say, I ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... to strike him as conclusive proof of her irrelevance. "I wish I had never heard of the money! But to whom would you have me give it back? I tell you she was a waif out of the gutter. I don't believe any one knew her real name—I don't ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... waif, the big house was a very wonderful place. The fine old furniture, the silver plate of which Uncle Rufus took such loving care, the happy, merry girls, benevolent Mrs. MacCall and her odd sayings, even Aunt Sarah with ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... barked at a slinking cat, But stood in the square where the wind blew raw, With a drooping ear, and a trembling paw, And a mournful look in his pleading eye, And a plaintive sniff at the passer-by That begged as plain as a tongue could sue, "Oh, Mister, please may I follow you?" A lorn, wee waif of a tawny brown Adrift in the roar of a heedless town. Oh, the saddest of sights in a world of sin Is a little lost pup with his tail ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... years ago. Not so long a time as has elapsed since you met a waif of the streets and chastised him for some petty annoyance. But both events, the great and the little, have been well remembered here in Shelby; and when Mrs. Scoville came amongst us a month or so ago, with her late but substantial ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... party he supported those of Registrar to the Court of Chancery in the Island of Barbadoes, a sinecure done by deputy, Surveyor of the Crown Lands, and Paymaster to the Board of Works. The wits of White's added the title of 'Receiver-General of Waif and Stray Jokes.' It is said that his hostility to Sheridan arose from the latter having lost him the office in the Works in 1782, when Burke's Bill for reducing the Civil List came into operation; but ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... was when he was a member of the household of the Comte d'Artois, in the capacity of physician to the Stables. From these love affairs, historically proved, with a great lady, he had retained this sheet. As a waif or a souvenir. At his death, as this was the only linen of any fineness which he had in his house, they buried him in it. Some old women had shrouded him for the tomb in that swaddling-band in which the tragic Friend of the people had enjoyed voluptuousness. Bruneseau passed on. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... materially added to his difficulties—and now he had been commanded, with a certain peremptoriness in the summons, to wait upon the Sovereign Pontiff in a private audience, bringing with him the boy who could, or would give no further account of himself than that of a world's waif and stray. Prepared for this visit and arrayed in all the splendour befitting his rank in the Church, the gentle old man looked paler and more fragile than ever, and the vague trouble he felt at the express injunction laid upon ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... part from a man who had not scrupled to seize me in distress, as he would a waif on a beach. By manning me, the prize-crew would have fallen into the hands of the enemy; and, making a merit of necessity, Mons. Gallois was disposed to be civil to those whom he could not rob. Odd as it may seem, I felt the influence of this manner, to ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... of my father. It was communicated to my mother, by the messenger who brought it, without precaution. That night, one hour after, I was ushered into an orphaned existence and my mother took her departure from the world. Think of me, Adele, thus thrown a waif upon the shore of life. Yet, though born in the shadow of a great sorrow, sunlight struck ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... gone away; a waif about the land—a feather on the world, driven about, as destiny impels, without fixed intentions; yet buoyant with the ardor of youth, and happy in the excess of youthful hopes, dreamy and wild adventures. He has tasted the savage love of woods and wilds, and the nature—which was born ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Leonard, as a remembrance somewhat more personal, accept this, which I have worn many a year when time was a thing of importance to me, and nobler fates than mine hung on a moment. We missed the moment, or abused it; and here I am a waif on a foreign shore. Methinks I have done ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... passed it round the slip of wood that was his salvation, girding himself to it as firmly as he was able. In this condition, plus a swoon from exhaustion, he was descried by the helmsman of the Pretty Mary, a few miles from Cape Surville, at daylight next morning. Blunt, with a wild hope that this waif and stray might be the lover of Sarah Purfoy, dead, lowered a boat and picked him up. Nearly bisected by the belt, gorged with salt water, frozen with cold, and having two ribs broken, the victim of Vetch's murderous quickness retained sufficient life to survive Blunt's remedies for nearly ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... dress that had seemed very nice back at Miller's Notch, but very funny when contrasted with the pretty, simple serge dresses that the other girls at Highacres wore. Perhaps they had all thought she was a "charity girl," a waif brought here by Uncle Johnny. To be sure, her schoolmates had welcomed her into all their activities, but perhaps they had felt sorry for her and, anyway, it had been after Uncle Johnny had given her the ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... somehow got separated, at which time the mustang had been shut up for four days in the cellar of a ruined convent with no other food than stones and mortar! How Twidget came by his name is not clear. Perhaps it was some waif of ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... that his love hadn't worked the miracle he expected. Jo had been a little more quiet since his return, but he gave no signs of pining away, and maybe if nothing revived his interest, it might die a natural death. The story Jo had told him of the little waif had made a deep impression ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... at that, and looked at his watch quickly. "Not late yet, but I'll walk along. Where are you going, waif? Aren't you ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... Imperial Hotel," disappeared from the columns of the newspapers, as the remembrance of that ghastly enigma faded from the minds of their readers, and solicitude about it ceased to occupy the police. The tide of life, rolling that poor waif amid its waters, had swept on. Yes; but I, the son? How should I ever forget the old woman's story that had filled my childhood with tragic horror? How should I ever cease to see the pale face of the murdered man, with its fixed, open eyes? How should I not say: ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... miles of cross country is reckoned a sufficient justification for the establishment of an independent company, who, without any consultation with the proprietors of the main line, or enquiry as to their ultimate intentions, seize upon the vacant ground as a waif, and throw themselves confidently upon the public. If the matter does not end in a lease, the unfortunate public will be the losers, since it is manifestly impossible that a little Lilliput line can ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... so well clothed and shod for the winter, passed heedlessly before the unknown child. One of them, the son of one of the principal men in the village, looked at the waif with an expression in which no pity could ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... obtain any information; but, after I was old enough to understand the matter better, he confessed that he did not wish to discover the friends of the child. After he had taken care of it for a few months, he became so attached to it that he was only afraid of losing the little waif. ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... boy had picked up with Cyril, a little waif in rags, the bastard child of a woman who had gone away and left him in infancy to the mercy of others. He had been reared in the hovel of a poor gaucho on the de la Rosa land, but the poor orphan, although the dirtiest, ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... beauty, stillness: not a waif of a cloud From gray-blue east sheer to the yellow west— No film of mist the utmost slopes ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... vagrant from Heaven! It wandered away from the fold, And its weakness and danger endowed it With value more precious than gold. Oh happy the day when it came, And my heart learned its beautiful name! Oh happy the hour when I fed This waif of the angels with bread! And the lamb that the Shepherd had missed Was sheltered and nourished ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... to her father and his inmost soul responded. But aloud he exclaimed in a horrified tone, "Good God!" Then in a moment, turning almost fiercely to the priest, "Why did she give away her child and let it be thought a foundling? For if the story is true she has been little better than a waif, a ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas |
