"Street arab" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... well have tried to hang on to a fish as to hold that slippery little street Arab. She broke away and ran. I was after her, but it was no use. She knew the ins and outs of the alleys like a rat and I lost her. You see, I didn't know my girl's last name. When I asked her, she said: 'Call me Marta.' I didn't care about knowing her last name then, because ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... little experience of this delightful class of street arab, of which Toto Chupin was so favorable a specimen, and knew their ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... was very small, and of the daintiest proportions you can imagine in a donkey. And so, sure enough, you had only to look at him to see he had never worked. There was something too roguish and wanton in his face, a look too like that of a schoolboy or a street Arab, to have survived much cudgelling. It was plain that these feet had kicked off sportive children oftener than they had plodded with a freight through miry lanes. He was altogether a fine-weather, holiday sort of donkey; and though he was just then somewhat solemnised and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thought of the aristocrats who visited her mother-in-law. She was amusing when she joked and made parodies on the women she styled "the old Countesses." She had a great deal of natural wit, a liveliness peculiar to the native of the faubourgs, all the impudence of the street arab, and a veritable talent of mimicry. She was a good housewife, active, industrious and most clever in turning everything to account. With a mere nothing she could improvise a dress or a hat and give it a certain ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... which he was formerly unacquainted—the brave charity of the poor in their misery. The courage of the poor girl who had worked herself to death weaving wreaths to keep her child; the generosity of the poor cripple in adopting the orphan, and above all, the intelligent goodness of the little street Arab in protecting the child who was still smaller than himself—all this touched M. Godefroy deeply and set him reflecting. For the thought had occurred to him that there were other cripples who needed to be looked after as ...
— The Lost Child - 1894 • Francois Edouard Joachim Coppee
... that might be turned to endless uses; in the conscript drawn from the populace of the provinces there was almost always a knowledge of self-help, and often of some trade, coupled with habits of diligence; in the soldier made from the street Arab of Paris there were always inconceivable intelligence, rapidity of wit, and plastic vivacity; in the adventurers come, like himself, from higher grades of society, and burying a broken career under the shelter of ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... said my uncle, with a transient dash of cheerfulness at my mistake; "I object to the publicity of the whole thing. It's not nice. To bring the street arab into the affair, to subject yourself to the impertinent congratulations and presents of every aspirant to your intimacy, to be patted on the back in the local newspapers as though you were going to do something clever. Confound them! It's not their affair. And I'm too old to be a blushing bridegroom. ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... such things. This day everything seemed to go against him, and in despair he threw himself down in the dark alley, with his papers by his side. A few boys gathered around the poor lad, and asked in a kind way (for a street Arab): "Say, Johnny, why don't you go to the lodges?" (The lodge was a place where almost all the boys stayed at night, costing but a few cents.) But the poor little lad could only murmur that he could not stir, and called the boys about him, saying: ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... bring him to dances, when we were young girls. She didn't like it particularly, but she had to do it because he was her father's ward and had gone to live with them. He was uncouth—aggressive. Wasn't he a foundling, or a street Arab, or something like that? He certainly seemed so. He wasn't a bit—civilized. And once he—he said something—he almost insulted me. You wouldn't take ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King |
