"Pickpocket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was 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 ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... profligacy, of which he saw either the present exhibition or the unquestionable evidences. There was the lost and hardened female, uttering the wild screams of intoxication, or pouring forth from her dark, filthy place of confinement torrents of polluted mirth; the juvenile pickpocket, ripe in all the ribald wit and traditional slang of his profession; the ruffian burglar, with strong animal frame, dark eyebrows, low forehead, and face full of coarseness and brutality; the open robber, reckless and jocular, indifferent to consequences, and holding his life ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... labor by which society has been brought into such a state, by reading in the annals of Botany Bay, 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
... he takes, so to speak, your burglar, your pickpocket, or your forger off the shelf, carefully dusts his label, and dispatches him, carriage paid, with a neat parcels note, for conveyance to his ultimate destination by the old-established firm of transport agents in ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... 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 ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... and literature of the 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 treatment, whether he did dirty work ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... before;'-indeed? then it follows that in doing what is unworthy to be done, or what has been done before, no genius can be evinced; yet the picking of pockets is an unworthy act, pockets have been picked time immemorial, and Barrington, the pickpocket, in point of genius, would have thought hard of a comparison with William ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... again. The sound ran over the room like a scudding cloud across a meadow, and when the sheriff stood again to set his censorious eye upon someone responsible, the last ripple was on the farther rows. Nobody can catch a laugh in a crowd; it is as evasive as a pickpocket. Nobody can turn with watchful eye upon it and tell in what face the ribald gleam first breaks. It is as impossible as the identification of the first stalk shaken when a breeze assails a ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... price of four? What is a threadbare soldier who robs thee of thy clothes at the swords' point when compared with the lawyer who despoils thee of thy whole estate with the stroke of a quill, and against whom thou canst claim no recompense or remedy? What is a pickpocket who steals a five- pound in comparison to a dice-sharper who robs thee of a hundred pounds in the third part of a night? And what the swindler that deceives thee in a worthless old hack compared with the apothecary who swindles thee of thy money and life too, for ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... Horncastle, who occupied a bed in the next dormitory to that where Jack and I slept, had missed his collar-stud, which he described as "red coral," and complaining thereof to Mrs Nash, had been told by that lady that Smith and Batchelor had brought a young pickpocket into the house with them last night, and that being so, she was only surprised Mr Horncastle had not lost all the jewellery he possessed. Whereat, of course, Mr Horncastle was in a mighty state of wrath, and quite ready for poor Jack ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... outset in the colony, was an use of what is called the 'flash', or 'kiddy' language. In some of our early courts of justice an interpreter was frequently necessary to translate the deposition of the witness and the defence of the prisoner. This language has many dialects. The sly dexterity of the pickpocket, the brutal ferocity of the footpad, the more elevated career of the highwayman and the deadly purpose of the midnight ruffian is each strictly appropriate in the terms which distinguish and characterize it. I have ever been of opinion that an abolition of this ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... know that you couldn't do such a thing; but Kenrick declares I've spread it all over the school, and has just been abusing me like a pickpocket." Walter told him the circumstances of the case, and Power, displeased for Walter's sake, and sorry that two real friends should be separated by what he could not but regard as a venial error on Walter's part, advised him ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... healthful fruit-tree, or to be a 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... him, and he explained. You see, it would be out of his line. A forger only forges, a pickpocket only snatches chains and purses, and a burglar only burgles. Now, he couldn't burgle the place in which he was living ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... wound. The rain fell in torrents, and pebbles and stones loosened from the mountain sides came falling around them. Francesco, the driver, on foot, urged the tired horses onward with blows and the most powerful language he could bring to bear; he accused the off-horse of being a pickpocket and an arciprete, and a robber of a small family, of which Francesco assured him he knew he was the father. Then the mare Filomena came in for her share of vilifications, being called a 'giovinastra (naughty girl), a vecchierellaccia (vile old hag), a—' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 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 peco. Piecemeal ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... York. The government of this country authorized his statement; the news was bruited afar, wherever men read and write and invest money on the planet, and it appealed to every city editor and scandal-monger. Julian Hawthorne, son of the author of "The Scarlet Letter," a pickpocket. ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... 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
... 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 ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... can 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 had ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... is, as dark as a pickpocket." (Dotty raised her head and took a survey.) "Why, the moon can't get here, nor the sun. Is this down cellar? No, I didn't see any stairs. Where did I go to when I came? I walked right on the floor. What floor? Was it the ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... 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 ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... 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 not question that I shall, upon some subsequent ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... father and mother, best and dearest of friends, or enslave them to the fancies of the hour! Truly a tyrannical son is a blessing to his father and mother! When there is no more to be got out of them, he turns burglar or pickpocket, or robs a temple. Love overmasters the thoughts of his youth, and he becomes in sober reality the monster that he was sometimes in sleep. He waxes strong in all violence and lawlessness; and is ready for any deed of daring that will supply the ...
— The Republic • Plato
... 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 d'industrie [Fr.]; shoplifter. swindler, peculator; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... or consideration. His religion is a mummery, and his Gospel-walkings nothing but dancing a masquerade. He never wears his own person, but assumes a shape, as his master, the devil, does when he appears. He wears counterfeit hands (as the Italian pickpocket did), which are fastened to his breast as if he held them up to heaven, while his natural fingers are in his neighbour's pocket. The whole scope of all his actions appears to be directed, like an archer's arrow, at ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... a woman now as literature, no more. It has come to the end. Well, and what then? Everything comes to an end. When first I entered on this stage I had a feeling as if I had lost something; as if I had been favoured by the caresses of a pickpocket. Then I set to and felt myself about, to see if I could bear myself after this; if I could endure myself as I was now. Oh well, yes, why not? Not the same as before, of course, but it all passed off so noiselessly, but peacefully, ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... 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; but the rascal shall not escape with ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... slanders upon himself, the great Mully Ully Gue. And the fifty would soon be five hundred if any notice were taken of them. They call mankind to witness that science will not defend itself, though publicly attacked in terms which might sting a pickpocket into standing up for his character: science, in return, allows mankind to witness or not, at pleasure, that it does not defend itself, and yet receives no injury from centuries of assault. Demonstrative reason never raises the cry of Church in Danger! and it cannot have any Dictionary ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... criminal than to catch him. And thus he becomes a terror not to the evildoer but to the law-abiding citizen. It is his business to encourage crime, not to stamp it out. If there were no thieves, where would the stool-pigeon and detective find their profits? "W'y," said a pickpocket {*} in New York, "them coppers up there in the Tenderloin couldn't have any diamond rings if we didn't help to pay for 'em. No, they couldn't. They'd sit down in the street and actually cry—an' they're big men some of 'em—if we guns was run off the earth." In other words, the ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... 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 ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... Oliver understood the mystery of the handkerchiefs, the watches, the purses and the curious game he had learned at Fagin's. He knew then that the Artful Dodger was a pickpocket. He was so frightened that for a minute he lost his wits and ran off as fast as ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... had lost his handkerchief and a cigar-case, which he had stowed away in an inner pocket, and Mr. Christy had been relieved of one of his mamei seeds by some "lepero" who probably took it for a snuff-box. His feelings must have been like those of the English pickpocket in Paris, when he robbed the Frenchman of the article he had pocketed with so much care, and found it was a lump of sugar. And so relieved of further care for our worldly goods, we went through with the work of seeing monuments, till ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... 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 fond ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... pretty clearly understood that Murphy had been in pursuit of the pickpocket, and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... "Gibelin beamed. 'The old school has its good points, after all'" "'I know why you are thinking about that prison'" "She was just bending over it when Coquenil entered" "'Did you write this?'" "And when he could think no longer, he listened to the pickpocket" "'They all swore black and blue that Addison told the truth'" "A door was opened suddenly and he was pushed into a room" "'Stand still, I won't hurt you'" "'There!' he said with a hideous grin, and he handed Tignol the tooth" "'My dog, my dog!'" "The confessional box was empty—Alice was gone!" ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... dived through the opening and met the fiend as he was rising to his feet. Together they rolled among the wreckage. While no match for his antagonist in size, the pickpocket was tough and wiry and apparently uninjured. He fought viciously, with the violence ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... recover himself, but lay 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, ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... fraud given us in The Doctor's Dilemma is not too exaggerated for the purposes of a debating argument; but in his long essay on the subject he gives a far more reasonable statement of the case. He does not treat the doctor as a murderer, or a pickpocket, or a human vulture, or even a cold-blooded cynic; he explains what is likely to happen to the ordinary, moderately decent, normal man, without any special moral or intellectual equipment, who becomes a doctor. "As to the honour ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... asked no questions—"besides," and her voice became earnest, "I will not have him talking to you like that. The fact that one man is the father of another man doesn't give him the right to abuse him like a pickpocket. Also, if you are so good that you put up with it, I have myself to consider—that is, if we are all to live as a happy ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... familiar to my vision. I see grand principles of honour at work in the dirty ring which encompasses two combatants with fists, and principles of no less eternal justice in the tumultuous detectors of a pickpocket. The salutary astonishment with which an execution is surveyed, convinces me more forcibly than an hundred volumes of abstract polity, that the universal instinct of man, in all ages, has leaned to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... not to 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 ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... there so comprehensive a talent for the delineation of character as Shakespeare's. It not only grasps the diversities of rank, sex, and age, down to the dawnings 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 truth; not only does he transport himself to distant ages and foreign nations, and pourtray in the most accurate manner, with only a few apparent violations of costume, the spirit of the ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... sound from the throng. It was too beautiful for speech; the meaning was too laden with brotherly love and cheer for it to be mistaken. A sad-eyed girl smiled to herself and gazed with new hope in her face; a pickpocket took his hand out of his neighbor's bag that had opened like magic under his practised touch. Babies stretched out their arms to the glitter; grown men stared silently with unaccustomed tears wetting ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... first place," 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 ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... "A dip—pickpocket—and his girl, or gun-moll, as they call them," translated Kennedy. "One of their number has evidently been picked up by a detective and he looks to them for a good lawyer, ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... pickpocket said when the cop was gently persuadin' him to go to the Tombs, but the cop didn't see it. I want the pleasure of your society a minute or two. I hear you're in ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... 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 ...
— 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
... itself. The complaint is heard of the inequality of justice. That there is a law for the poor man and another law for the rich. The stage gives expression to the feeling, and modern literature voices it. The high-priced millionaire escapes and the low-browed pickpocket goes to prison. ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... so much of a modern utilitarian as to believe the poetry of life is without its correcting and useful influences. Your cold, naked utilitarian, holds a sword that bruises as well as cuts; and your sneaking, trading aristocrat, like the pickpocket who runs against you in the crowd before he commits his theft, one that cuts as well ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... adjusted, fully explained the wisdom displayed by the wearer in not deferring the brushing of his trousers and the donning of his "pats" to a later stage of the proceedings. For nothing, not even a pickpocket at his gilt watch-chain with its pendant "charms," could lower his chin a quarter of an inch till bed-time. But more was yet to come. There were cuffs to put on, which left one to guess what had become of Mr Booms's knuckles, and a light jaunty necktie to embellish the ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... and devotion to the emperor; that was shown when Napoleon created his nobility, and attempted to connect it with the ancients. To-day, the man who pays taxes to the amount of two hundred francs is virtuous; the talented man is the honest pickpocket: such truths ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... means of work after all. And if you ask me why I did not at once proceed to the next magistrate and denounce the criminal, I can only throw myself for excuse on the illustrious example of George the Fourth, head of Church and State, who once in society saw a pickpocket remove from a gentleman's fob his gold watch, winking at the king as he did so. "Of course I couldn't say anything," remarked the good-natured monarch, "for the rascal took me ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... how his coat pocket had been cut open and the money taken. This, he explained, had been done in a crowd. It was a strange place for a man to carry so large a sum, and, still stranger, the pocket was cut on the inside. Of course, a pickpocket in the rare event of cutting the pocket of an intended victim must of necessity cut the pocket from the outside. The countryman had fallen at Headquarters to the tender mercies of the two partners of Turtle. One glance at the pocket showed them there was a colored gentleman ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... 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 my information regarding these desperadoes, I ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... in Bunyan's time, hanging to the girdle, or slung over the shoulder, as they now are in some parts of Germany. A pickpocket ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... 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 his ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White
... with which the life of a beggar, of a pickpocket, of a pimp, is honorable—did Barere now descend. It was his constant practice, as often as he enrolled himself in a new party, to pay his footing with the heads of old friends. He was at first a Royalist; ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... has conveyed away and sold the best goose feathers of his landlady. What then, with his name ripe enough to drop from the tree of life, remains to Wiggins, but to subside into Smith? What hope was there for the well-known swindler, the posted pickpocket, the callous-hearted, slug-brained Tory? None: he was hooted, pelted at; all men stopped the nose at his approach. He was voted a nuisance, and turned forth into the world, with all his vices, like ulcers, upon him. Well, Tory adopts ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various
... murder; and Captain Singleton is a pirate of the genuine buccaneering school. Yet we should really doubt, but for their own confessions, whether they have villainy enough amongst them to furnish an average pickpocket. Roxana occasionally talks about a hell within, and even has unpleasant dreams concerning 'apparitions of devils and monsters, of falling into gulphs, and from off high and steep precipices.' She has, moreover, excellent reasons for her discomfort. Still, in spite ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... have 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 ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... Man, "I thought you got away. Never saw any more of you after you jumped through the French window. Never had time. The last thing I remember is her Ladyship screaming like a mad cockatoo, yes, and abusing me as though I were a pickpocket, with the drawing-room all on fire. Then something happened, and down I went among the broken china and hit my head against the leg of a table. Next came a kind of whirling blackness ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... pickpocket and housebreaker in London. He was Captain Roberts's lieutenant, and was afterwards given command of a prize, ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... 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
... No smoking.' They quote her in the lifts on the Tube. But then I'm not a pickpocket, and you are smoking. Besides, your picture knows mine very well. They've seen quite a lot of ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... Jay was burned in effigy; Hamilton was stoned at a public meeting; State legislatures declared the treaty unconstitutional. Washington was attacked so fiercely that he said the language used "could scarcely be applied to a Nero, to a notorious defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket." When Congress met in 1795 an effort was made to prevent the necessary appropriations for carrying out the treaty. It was only the great personal popularity of Washington that saved the country from a repudiation of the treaty ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... you know Artful Dick Cronk?" he demanded. "Why, Jacky, he's the slickest dip—that's short for pickpocket—in the United States. He's the king of all the glue- fingers, that boy is. My eye, 'ow he can do wot he does, I can't for the life of me see." He then went into a long dissertation on the astonishing accomplishments of ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... came dashing down the road 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 at the ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... 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 ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... are honest gamblers? The term is a contradiction. You might, with equal consistency, talk of truthful liars. To get your money, or any thing else, without rendering an equitable return, is the core of all dishonesty, whether in the gamester, the pickpocket, the man who cheats in trade, or the boy who robs orchards. And a conscience once debauched by dishonest aims, will not, as I said, long scruple ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... every kindness was shewn to unfortunate youths, notwithstanding that they had themselves proved unworthy of its benefits. He therefore came, determined to suffer whatever might be inflicted upon him, rather than go back to his wicked courses. We learned that he had been for several years a pickpocket, residing in a low lodging-house at 1s. 9d. a week; sometimes well off, sometimes otherwise, but always harassed by the terrors of punishment. According to his account of the boys who live in this manner, there are some who enjoy its freedom, and would not ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... man is still only too prone to prey upon his fellows, though hardly in the brutal manner of his ancestors. He preys upon inferior intelligence, upon weakness of character, upon the greed and upon the gambling instinct of mankind. In the grandest scale he is called a financier; in the meanest, a pickpocket. This predatory spirit is at once so ancient and so general, that the reader, who is, of course, wholly innocent of such reprehensible tendencies, must nevertheless make an effort to understand the delights of robbery ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... conduct, cleverness without goodness, are powers in their way, but they may be powers only for mischief. We may be instructed or amused by them; but it is sometimes as difficult to admire them as it would be to admire the dexterity of a pickpocket or ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... FORK. A pickpocket. Let us fork him; let us pick his pocket.—'The newest and most dexterous way, which is, to thrust the fingers strait, stiff, open, and very quick, into the pocket, and so closing them, hook what can be held between them.' N.B. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... and dis is de brudder of dat gal wot you see walkin' over dere. She is an innercent gal, which dat feller is a-tollin' of her off. He's a pickpocket, and I'm one wot kin swear to it. We want him arrested an' jugged. We'll see ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... looked slippery. Slipperiness was perhaps his ruling characteristic, a softness of movement suggesting a cat, and a habit of putting out and drawing back a long, supple, snake-like hand which made you think of a pickpocket. Eyes that looked at you steadily enough impressed you as untrustworthy chiefly because of a dropping of the pupil of ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... 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 ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... 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 return to his normal work, since by contrast it is so very tame. For a ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... idea how I was raised, Miss Harding," he went on. "Not that that's any excuse for the thing I did; but it does make it seem a wonder that I ever could have made a start even at being decent. I never was well acquainted with any human being that wasn't a thief, or a pickpocket, or a murderer—and they were all beasts, each in his own particular way, only they weren't ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in the regiment for a year, for when it was sent back to England the Colonel in command of it obtained young Haggart's discharge. These dates coincide with Borrow's presence in Edinburgh. Haggart's history for the next five or six years was in truth merely that of a wandering pickpocket, sometimes in Scotland, sometimes in England, and finally he became a notorious burglar. Incidentally he refers to a girl with whom he was in love. Her name was Mary Hill She belonged to Ecclefechan, which ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... excuse for so doing. Many have a notion that instruments are used in disencumbering the pockets: this is a false idea; the only instrument they use is a good pair of small scissors, and which will always be found on the person of a pickpocket when searched; these they use to cut the pocket and all off, when ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... her to go; ordered her to go; he seized her by the shoulder, shook her, and abused her like a pickpocket. She would not stir. He abandoned the effort, sat down, and knitted his brow again in profound and painful thought, working out his plan. Now and again his eyes flashed, once or twice they twinkled. Victoire watched his face with just the ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... because physiognomy 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. It is certainly in exact proportion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... when he'll dine, or when he'll breakfast, or when he'll be in, wandering in and out like a madman; and sits up all night, writing his nonsense. And she'll go down twice and three times a night in the cold, poor dear, to see if he's fallen asleep; and gets abused like a pickpocket for her pains (which was an exaggeration); and lies in bed all the morning, looking at the flies, and calls after her if his shoes want tying, or his finger aches; as helpless as the babe unborn; and will never do nothing useful himself, not even to hang a picture ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... workaday world that day, and everybody had his "envelop" in his pocket. It is a pleasant sensation to feel the stiff-cornered envelop tucked safely away in your vest pocket, or in the depths of your stocking, where Henrietta had hidden hers safe out of the reach of the wily pickpocket, who, she told me, was lurking at every corner and sneaking through every crowd on that Saturday evening, which was also ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... 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 shoplifter, ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... business, but wash myself of its odium. Bucket-shop! What snobbery! Yet it's human nature, too. The wholesale merchant looks down on the retailer, the big retailer on the little; the burglar despises the pickpocket; the financier, the small promoter; the man who works with his brain, the man who works with his hands. A silly lot we are—silly to look down, sillier to feel badly ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... and the raid was declared Hefflefinger slipped over the cross rails on which he had been lying, hung for an instant by his hands, and then dropped into the centre of the fighting mob on the floor. He was out of it in an instant with the agility of a pickpocket, was across the room and at Hade's throat like a dog. The murderer, for the moment, was the calmer man ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... successful trader; success must clearly imply obedience to the rules of the game. Taking all that one can grab without punishment is a reversion to barbarism; the unscrupulous magnate is morally no better than a pickpocket. And these men are, in general, responsive to public opinion; it has effected rapid improvement in some points in the past few years. Just so soon as the community conscience is aroused to the point of a general condemnation of industrial robbery, it will cease to flaunt ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... down beside the cot. Slowly and carefully, like some pickpocket, she inserted her fingers under the pillow. Amid a tenseness that affected even the actors working with her, Alice took out the papers, inch by inch, and began to ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... more good-humored crowd. If I encountered one policeman that night that was all I did see; and the police reports next morning, in a city of a million inhabitants let loose in the streets on a public holiday, reported the arrest of five drunk men and one pickpocket! ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... perfectly plain you not only don't care, But you do not believe me" (here the nose went still 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 ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... for the sign of a bookseller, rather than a real one; but instead of selling, deal as factors, and procure what the country divines and gentry send for; of whom each hath his book-factor, and, when wanting anything, writes to his bookseller and pays his bill. And it is wretched to consider what pickpocket work, with the help of the press, these demi-booksellers make. They crack their brains to find out selling subjects, and keep hirelings in garrets, at hard meat, to write and correct by the groat; and so puff ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... 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, ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... the heart till the blade of the knife broke in it. Then he searched Montefiore's pockets, took his wallet, money, everything. But though he had taken the Italian unawares, and had done the deed with lucid mind and the quickness of a pickpocket, Montefiore had time to cry "Murder! Help!" in a shrill and piercing voice which was fit to rouse every sleeper in the neighborhood. His last sighs were given ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... 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 have about as much sentiment or loyalty as they have knowledge; ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Sister Mary. She sat with her back partly to him, and discoursed with eagerness to her companion. The sailor knew many tricks of sleight-of-hand—he was, in short, a kind of Jack-of-all-trades, and the laudable profession of the professional pickpocket was by no means beneath his notice. He managed to help himself to Sister Mary's purse without her being at all aware of the fact. Her hands were clasped in her muff, which, though unprofessional, the cold night necessitated her wearing. She paid her tram fare with some loose ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... with my brother J——, for the reasons given by my brother M——." A prisoner once was given a practical specimen of his lordship's wit, and must have been rather distressed by it. He was passing sentence upon a pickpocket, and ordering a punishment common at that time. "You will be whipped from North Gate to South Gate," said the judge. "Bad luck to you, you old blackguard," said the prisoner. "—And back again," said the ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... League? The Ruffian League, the Burglar League, the Pickpocket League, the Murder League—that's what I always called it. A hole-and-corner way of carrying on the fight, which had been begun by MEN, but which the latest fashion of Irishmen have not the courage to canduct as men. The Fenian ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... convict servant—he had been a pickpocket of note in days gone by—left the clergyman to repose in a handsomely furnished drawing-room, whose sun blinds revealed a wealth of bright garden flecked with shadows, while he went in search of ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... at the door, listening to the cheers as they swelled again, then he stepped out and ran swiftly down the street. A fat policeman, taking him for a fleeing pickpocket, shouted to him to stop, but he flitted by ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... street; and untold 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
... ye Havana cigarette smokers! and when next you indulge in a whiff from your favourite luxury, remember that a pickpocket has had his hand on ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman |
