"Urchin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the front of the peninsula, I looked for "sea-urchin," but none fell in my way. I had often wished to get a good specimen of this curious shell, but without success. Some of them turned up now and then upon the beach near our village, but they were not allowed to lie long. As they made a pretty ornament ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... their hearts to—all at eight years old. Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure, 'Twas not for nothing—the good bellyful, The warm serge and the rope that goes all round, And day-long blessed idleness beside! 105 "Let's see what the urchin's fit for"—that came next. Not overmuch their way, I must confess. Such a to-do! They tried me with their books; Lord, they'd have taught me Latin in pure waste! Flower o' the clove, 110 All the Latin I construe is "amo," I love! But, mind ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... The party crossed Barnes Common in the small hours of the Monday morning, and dossed on Banstead Downs that night. Next day they joined the great stream of traffic rolling out of London Epsomward. Young Joe, whose strength lay in his powers of sympathetic intuition, let Monkey drive. And the urchin took his place with pride in that vast stream of char-a-bancs, 'buses, hansoms, and drags rolling southward; and no four-in-hand coachman of them all held up his hand to stay the following traffic, or twiddled his whip with lordlier ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... face, which was soiled like that of a weeping urchin. He frequently, with a nervous movement, wiped his eyes with his coat sleeve. His mouth was still ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... are abundant, and turn white in winter like those of Norway. The wolverine or carcajou is called by the hunters beaver-eater, and somewhat resembles a badger; the skin is soft and handsome. A species of porcupine or urchin is found to the northward, and supplies the Indians with quills about four inches long, which, when dyed, are worked into showy ornaments. Squirrels[194] and various other small quadrupeds with fine furs are abundant in the forests. The animals of the cat kind are the cougar or American lion, the ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... sentence, "suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not," several of those little volumes with gay bindings, and marvellous contents of fay and giant, which delight the hearth-spelled urchin, and which were "the source of golden hours" to the old man's grandchildren, in their respite from ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... grimace which was more like the impishly derisive grin of a street urchin than a respectful smile, ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... happened that when he was a little boy, his mother had taken him down to the side of a river where she had some washing to do, and while she was not looking the urchin waded in, and a crocodile made a snap at him. Fortunately it failed to catch him, but its sharp teeth grazed his thigh, and left a mark which ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... upon a bed Of roses laid his weary head; Luckless urchin, not to see Within the leaves a slumbering bee. The bee awak'd—with anger wild The bee awak'd, and stung the child. Loud and piteous are his cries; To Venus quick he runs, he flies; "Oh, Mother! I am wounded through— I die with pain—in sooth I do! Stung by some little angry thing, Some serpent ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... had we escaped the dangers of city life. Winnie and Bobsey, in their rambles after strawberries, had met two other children, and, early in the acquaintance, fortunately brought them to the house. The moment I saw the strange girl, I recognized a rural type of Melissa Daggett, while the urchin of Bobsey's age did not scruple to use vile language in my hearing. I doubt whether the poor little savage had any better vernacular. I told them kindly but firmly that they must not come on the place ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... as she adopted this view-point of her surly host. Being warmed, and having much to say, words came of themselves. Surely it would do no harm to tell the story to this queer urchin, who might be able to throw some light on the ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... strangely from the urchin I remember on Winchester meads; and in the sobering he has grown exalted. A man might almost say," mused my father, "that the imp in him had shed itself off and taken flesh in that Master Fett I left snoring with his head on my dining-table. An earthy spirit, that Master Fett; earthy ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... their judgment shine; Polite in carriage are, in body strong, Graceful in mien, and elegant in tongue. But if perchance an offspring prove but weak, Him they revile, laugh at, defraud and cheat. Such is the wretched world's curs'd way; and yet Sometimes this urchin whom despis'd we see, Through unforeseen events doth honour get, And fortune bring to ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... the street she wanted. At the corner she came suddenly to a standstill, and putting her two first fingers into her mouth blew a shrill whistle, after the fashion of street boys. A moment later a shock-headed urchin about ten years old made his appearance from a dark alley and came towards us. The woman said something to him, which I did not catch, and then turning sharply to her left hand beckoned ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... head; so-so,—that's right." Philip's sallow cheek and long hair were now tenderly lapped on the soliloquist's bosom. "Poor wretch! he smiles; perhaps he is thinking of home, and the butterflies he ran after when he was an urchin—they never come back, those days;—never—never—never! I think the wind veers to the east; he may catch cold;"—and with that, the man, sliding the head for a moment, and with the tenderness of a woman, from his breast to his ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that an enemy of unpleasant habits had recently been in the place. Few inhabitants were abroad, with the exception of the crowd of dirty, ragged children watching the engineers at their work, but nothing short of a bomb would upset the average Arab urchin. ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... thing finer or more moving! Your sensibility will not be quite so much affected by a story I heard t'other day of Sir Fletcher Norton. He has a mother—yes, a mother: perhaps you thought that, like that tender urchin Love, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... built him of stones gather'd up as they lay, They built him and christen'd him all in one day, An Urchin both vigorous and hale; And so without scruple they call'd him Ralph Jones. Now Ralph is renown'd for the length of his bones; The Magog of ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... he had left it but yesterday, I was disposed to set him down as a queer public-school boy on vacation, until I was astounded by some self-possessed remark on Jamaica dyewoods. We stopped in the same hotel. One morning he descended the stairs, a sort of dressing-case in hand, and yelled to an urchin at ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... attention to the Committee whatever. The Committee were lost in admiration for a few moments, when they recovered, and asked one of Honest Old Abe's boys whose boy he was? "I'm my parent's boy," shouted the urchin, which burst of wit so convulsed the Committee that they came very near "gin'in eout" completely. In a few moments Honest Ole Abe finished his task, and received the news with perfect self-possession. He ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... instant a huge quarter-master, whose real name or nickname (I forget which) was Billy Magnus, appeared over the gangway hammocks, holding the missing urchin in his immense paw, where it squealed and twisted itself about, like Gulliver between the finger and thumb of the Brobdingnag farmer. The mother had just strength enough left to snatch her offspring from Billy, when she sank down flat on the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... placed the animal in his ragged handkerchief, the corners of which he was proceeding to tie together when the terrier again attracted attention with unmistakable signs of a "find." For a few brief minutes sport was keenly exciting, but at last all the "urchin" family, with the exception of one member, were captured, and the boy, now thoroughly happy, his pockets and handkerchief heavy with spoil, turned homewards through the darkness. Next morning, the slain hedgehogs, baked in clay among the hot ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... matter," said the blacksmith: "if I don't serve him so now, he'll be worse off in his old age. He'll come to the gallows, as sure as his name is Bill—-never mind what his name is." And so saying, he gave the urchin another cut; which elicited, of course, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Don't ever forget to wear some kind of shoes in the water. Even though you're wearing a mask or goggles, take along a gig or some slender stick and feel your way along so you don't fall into a hole you can't see in the deceptive near-tropical waters. If, despite precautions, you get a sea urchin's needlelike spine broken off in your skin, soak the wound in vinegar which will dissolve the fragments and stop the pain in a ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company
... the crowd disperses. The absence of piggy is unnoticed till the red-headed urchin whose playmate it is looks around for the loved companion, of his childish sports, and finds it not. Great research, amid loud outcries, is made, resulting only in the conviction that the pet of the family is ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... Old Country, after many in foreign climes, was not an unqualified success. On the morning of Christmas Eve I went for a walk and lost myself. After wading through bog systems and bramble entanglements for some hours I came out behind a spinney and there spied a small urchin with red cheeks and a red woollen muffler standing beneath a holly-tree. On sighting me he gave vent to a loud and piteous howl. I asked him where his pain was, and he replied that he wanted some holly for decorations, but was too short to reach it. I thereupon swarmed the shrub, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... opened. There before him lay a narrow whitewashed yard, at the end of which they could see a street, evidently pretty much like the rest of the streets in that district. But in the yard a pale-cheeked, sharp-eyed urchin was feeding a couple of rabbits in a wire-faced soap-box, ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... the little urchin, stoutly, "I won't be a priest." He found in his pocket a roast chestnut Mariuccia had given him, and began to ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... minutes Patrolman Dennis Patrick Murphy, who was standing on post on Washington Street in front of Nasheen Zereik's Embroidery Bazaar talking to Sardi Babu, saw a red-headed, pug-nosed urchin come flying round ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... The urchin stuck it between his teeth, nodded his thanks, lowered himself gently into the water so as not to wet it, and swam cautiously to the breakwater, holding his head ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... fortune came would be more welcome if there were an heir to whom to leave it. What was the good of being rich, if the money went to collateral relatives? There was his nephew Savinien, a disagreeable urchin whom he looked on with indifference; and he was biased regarding his brother, who had all but failed several times in business, and to whose aid he had come to save the honor of the name. The mistress had not hesitated to help him, and had prevented ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... was an exceedingly fat woman, a native of Valladolid, in Old Castile. "Have you any other family," I demanded, "besides these daughters?" "Two sons," she replied; "one of them an officer in the army, father of this urchin," pointing to a wicked but clever looking boy of about twelve, who at that moment bounded into the room; "the other is the most celebrated national in Madrid: he is a tailor by trade, and his name is Baltasar. He has much influence ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... most unholy triumph. Sir George (who always stood during prayers, like a military man) fairly sank down among the hassocks, and Lady Gorgon was heard to sob as audibly as ever did little beadle-belaboured urchin. ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... feelings. She directed a furtive glance toward the party behind, and perceived Arthur engaged in what in these days would be called an active flirtation with her rival, Joan Bates: under these circumstances she determined not to relinquish her brother's arm; but that perverse urchin, whom she had so entirely loved and petted from his cradle, with the usual ingratitude of a spoiled child, took the earliest opportunity of breaking from her, and joining a boisterous company of boys of his own age. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... o' harm it will do him to be hungry, thin!" says the culprit's mother, with an angry voice, but with visible signs of relenting in her handsome eyes. "Be off wid ye now, I tell ye." This is the last burst of the storm. As the urchin creeps crestfallen towards the doorway her rage dies, its death being as sudden as its birth. "Come back here!" she cries, inconsistently. "What d'ye mane be takin' me at me word like that? Come back, I tell ye, an' go an' ate something, ye crathur. How dare ye behave as if ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... with his joyous laugh, The urchin blind and bare, But Love, with spectacles and staff, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... indeed is the rage for them, chapel or church in, You see them about you, and each little urchin Finding a sixpence, with transport beside his hope, Runs to the tin-man and ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... gratings outside. 'Who is there?' I asked; but no reply. The striking stopped. Again I closed my eyes and again the same strokes were repeated. This time I nearly lost my temper; I thought it was some urchin of the neighbourhood in a mischievous mood. 'Who is there?' I again shouted—again no reply. The striking however stopped. But after a time it commenced afresh. This time I lost my temper completely and opened the window, determined to thrash anybody whom I found ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... digestion-racking meal prepared by Mrs. Buttershaw he went to the cottage armed with toys and weird and injudicious food for little Jean and demanded an account of the precious infant's doings during the day. Gradually Jean recovered of his congestion, being a sturdy urchin, and, to Aristide's delight, resumed the ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... manner "that he could pull my hair without stopping his razor or dropping his shaving-brush." This is a depressing picture; and there are plenty more like it. Dr. Butler, the master of Harrow, meeting the poor little draggletail urchin in the yard, desired to know, in awful accents, how so dirty a boy dared to show himself near the school! "He must have known me, had he seen me as he was wont to see me, for he was in the habit of flogging me constantly. Perhaps," adds his victim, "he did not recognize me by my face!" ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... stepped from the train at a sleepy country station next day I was promptly waylaid by a black-eyed urchin who informed me that Mrs. Ashley had sent him with an express wagon for my luggage, and that "Miss Gussie" was waiting with the carriage at the store, pointing down to a small building before whose door a girl was trying to soothe her ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... family ever came out from her garden door weighted with suspicious baskets, which might contain smuggled vegetables. Only yesterday morning she had hurried forth with a dangerous smile to intercept a laden urchin, with inquiries as to what was in "that nice basket." On that occasion that nice basket had proved to contain a strawberry net which was being sent for repair to the gardener's wife; so there was nothing more to be done except verify its return. This she did from a side window of the garden-room ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... the forest from which it had sprung, and to repose in death in its native valley. From one of its masts, a long, loose, solitary shroud was pendant, having at its end a large double block attached to it, on which a boy was seated, and swung backward and forward. He was a little saucy urchin, of about twelve years of age, dressed in striped homespun, and had on his head a red yarn clackmutch, that resembled a cap of liberty. He seemed quite happy, and sung a verse of a French song with an air of conscious pride and defiance as his mother, stick ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... cheap dodge I am! The cats who dart Tin-kettled through the streets in wild surprise Assail judicious ears not otherwise; And yet no critics praise the urchin's 'art,' Who to the wretched creature's caudal part ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... the miller's evidence; it was all he knew: and the next witness called was the boy David Ripper, popularly styled in the neighbourhood young Rip, in contradistinction to his father, a day-labourer. He was an urchin of ten or twelve, with a red, round face; quite ludicrous from its present expression of terrified consternation. The coroner sharply inquired what he was frightened at; and the boy burst into a roar by way of answer. ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... lower you descend in the scale of human attainment the greater the hopes you may conceive of what humanity may be permitted to attain. The poor drab, the world's hire for the price of a rush-light, the lurking thief, the beggar at the church door, the naked urchin of the gutter—these, though they live with swine and are of them, have the souls of children new and clean from God. Neither malice nor forethought of evil, nor craft, nor hatred, nor clamour, nor ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... tenth or twelfth years; Lindsey took full advantage of this opportunity and became very skillful at marble-shooting. It was here that he first learned to utilize his talents profitably. 'Massa Overtree' discovered the ability of Lindsey and another urchin to shoot marbles, and began taking them into town to compete with the little slaves of other owners. There would be betting ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Crow!" shouted out the young urchin, in a mimicking voice, and running up close to him as he was returning ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... the nightcap?' sang out a shrill voice from below, as a boy with a basket on his arm went down the street. He drew back from the window, realising that he was a sight for all admirers. Tossing the end of his cigarette in the direction of the cheeky urchin, he settled himself again in the arm-chair before ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... pedagogue sometimes throws off, for the consolation of a recently-caned boy; and that Sterne's vanity, either then or afterwards (for it remained juvenile all his life), translated it into a serious prophecy. In itself, however, the urchin's freak was only too unhappily characteristic of the man. The trick of befouling what was clean (and because it was clean) clung to him most tenaciously all his days; and many a fair white surface—of humour, of fancy, or of sentiment—was to be ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... the modern bell-pull and the antique brass knocker contended for recognition. Alike rusty as these were, it became a problem as to which would best secure communication with the interior. While the matter still seemed indefinite, it was set at rest by the advice of an obliging street-urchin, who volunteered his information with appropriate ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... and renewed mystery on the following day. Astonishing-looking packages were smuggled from one room to another. Ned created a succession of panics, and at last the ubiquitous and garrulous little urchin had to be tied into a chair. Johnnie and Alf were in the seventh heaven of anticipation, and when Webb brought Amy a check for fifty dollars, and told her that it was the proceeds of his first crop from his ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... liberty," said the affectionate mamma; "but poor Charley has cut himself very much, and he would not be pacified till I consented to take him with us. He has promised to be very good. There, don't cry any more, darling!" and, accordingly, the urchin roared with tenfold vigor. There were no particular manifestations of joy at this arrival; and it is just possible, although nothing was uttered to that effect, that there did exist a general and cordial wish that young Master Snodgrass were sprawling at the bottom ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... For you might pause, in some business perplexity, in the midst of the city traffic, and perhaps catch the eye of a shepherd as he sat down to breathe upon a heathery shoulder of the Pentlands; or perhaps some urchin, clambering in a country elm, would put aside the leaves and show you his flushed and rustic visage; or as a fisher racing seaward, with the tiller under his elbow, and the sail sounding in the wind, would fling you a salutation from between Anst'er ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Hope, in this series of historical portraits, is one of the most beautiful in Spenser: and the triumph of Cupid at the mischief he has made, is worthy of the malicious urchin deity. In reading these descriptions, one can hardly avoid being reminded of Rubens's allegorical pictures; but the account of Satyrane taming the lion's whelps and lugging the bear's cubs along in his arms while yet an infant, whom his mother so naturally advises to "go seek some other ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... and which showed itself thus early, got the better even of his fear of her; and when Mrs. Byron, who was a short and corpulent person, and rolled considerably in her gait, would, in a rage, endeavour to catch him, for the purpose of inflicting punishment, the young urchin, proud of being able to out-strip her, notwithstanding his lameness, would run round the room, laughing like a little Puck, and mocking at all her menaces. In a few anecdotes of his early life which he related ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... he was absent, and left below with the porter, who gave them to him on his return. The following morning the tailleur called while Colton was still in bed, for the cash; he was shown into the bedroom by the miserable little urchin who attended daily to light the fire, &c., and demanded in payment twenty sous; this was resisted on the part of Colton as exorbitant, and the tailleur, vexed at having parted with his work before payment, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... frantic mother, as she rushed into the chamber, leading in Uctred. He had been discovered on removing some of the huge piles of timber again from the hill, where, under a curiously-supported covering of beams and other rude materials, he lay, seemingly asleep. The urchin looked as malicious and froward as ever, even when ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... already said, was a robust and combative urchin, and at the age of four began to struggle against the yoke and authority of his nurse. That functionary was a good-hearted, tearful, scatter-brained girl, lately taken by Tom's mother, Madam Brown, as she was called, from ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... is chilly and rather dispiriting work, especially if the fish are shy. They certainly were shy that afternoon, for the individual in question had angled long and bagged nothing, as I gleaned from the answers to the direct interrogatories put by my urchin during the few minutes I stood paternally ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... furtive glance of the urchin, I perceived that he recognised me; he spoke a couple of words to his father, who, turning his head in the direction where I stood, muttered an interjectional "Ugh!" and resumed his previous calm attitude, contrasting oddly with the insouciant ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... have not the mythological bandage over my eyes.—Well, then consider your position. For fifteen years you have been tossing in the literary world; you are no longer young, you have padded the hoof till your soles are worn through!—Yes, my boy, you turn your socks under like a street urchin to hide the holes, so that the legs cover the heels! In short, the joke is too stale. Your excuses are more ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... my daughter playing; come inside with me." The hand of the great man reached out, and the urchin clutched at it as if it were something he had ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... filled now and then by some inspired little creature like Mistress Mary, with enough potential maternity to mother an orphan asylum; too busy, too absorbed, too radiantly absent-minded to see a husband in any man, but claiming every child in the universe as her very own. There was never anywhere an urchin so dirty, so ragged, so naughty, that it could not climb into Mistress Mary's lap, and from thence into her heart. The neophytes partook of her zeal in greater or less degree, and, forsaking all probability of lovers (though every one of them was young and pretty), they tied ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... means in it, unless called in—was an odd-job-man, an occasional porter and messenger, who served as the live sign of the house. He was never absent during business hours, unless upon an errand, and then he was represented by his son: a grisly urchin of twelve, who was his express image. People understood that Tellson's, in a stately way, tolerated the odd-job-man. The house had always tolerated some person in that capacity, and time and tide had drifted this person to ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... were instants when Dutton would have abjectly held out his hand if he had been told to do it. He had been invited to witness the evolutions of the graduating class in history and oratory, and the moisture gathered in his honest blue eyes when a panic-stricken urchin ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... semisuicide was unconscious of any pain)—thereafter his neck was quickly strapped with diaculum plaister,—and to this day a slight scar may be found on the left side of a silvery beard! Was not this a providential escape? Again—a lively little urchin in his holiday recklessness ran his head pell-mell blindly against a certain cannon post in Swallow Passage, leading from Princes Street, Hanover Square, to Oxford Street, and was so damaged as to have been carried home insensible to Burlington Street: a little more, the ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the avenue outdid the square in popularity. The latter was barely able to hold its own by means of a very tall greased pole with a ten-dollar bill sticking on top of it, which was to be had by any boy climbing the pole. The crowd yelled itself hoarse as urchin after urchin slid back to defeat. Finally a little fellow, who had surreptitiously smeared the inside of his breeches with pitch, reached the top and seized the prize. The crowd went wild, threw ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... An urchin, directly below them, stood rubbing his eyes with two grimy fists. His whines were audible above ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... Some pinched me with their fingers, some buffeted me, whilst others pricked me with pins or the points of compasses. These arguments were not without effect. I sprang from my seat, and endeavoured to escape along a double line of benches, thronged with boys of all ages, from the urchin of six or seven, to the nondescript of sixteen or seventeen. It was like running the gauntlet; every one, great or small, pinching, kicking, or otherwise maltreating me as ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... capacity and love of out-door life. And now John Broom's troubles began. By fair means or foul, with here an hour's weeding and there a day's bird scaring, and with errands perpetual, the farm-bailiff contrived to "get some work out of" the idle little urchin. His speckled hat and grim face seemed to be everywhere, and always to pop up when John Broom began ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... Lee Villa sat watching the resplendent sunset from the front piazza, when a ragged, barefoot urchin came up the road turning somersaults with surprising agility. He righted himself up at the gate, then entered and sidled rather doubtfully ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... a disappointed sigh, "I always thought as how you were more knowing about it than you owns. Dear, dear, I shall never forgit the night when Judith brought the poor cretur here,—you knows she had been some months in my house afore ever I see'd the urchin; and when she brought it, she looked so pale and ghostly that I had not the heart to say a word, so I stared at the brat, and it stretched out its wee little hands to me. And the mother frowned at it, and ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... exclaimed Madame de Villefort, snatching the mutilated book from the urchin's grasp, "you are positively past bearing; you really disturb the conversation; go, leave us, and join your sister Valentine in dear ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... continued, after a slight pause, "what an unhappy mother I am. It is many years since I lost the loveliest infant ever seen, while my poor Stephen was left to be the mockery of every urchin ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... to emphasise is that the examination for these valuable positions is either classical or mathematical, and there it ends. The greatest biologist in the world would have as much chance of a Fellowship as the ragged urchin in the street unless he could "settle Hoti's business" or elucidate [Greek: P] or do other things of that kind. It is a luminous example of what was—must we say is?—thought of science in certain academic circles. ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... bend over the coils, rose in his bench and, clacking noiselessly the fingers of his right hand, began to call with the voice of a slobbering urchin. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... all gazed upon him. They wondered and marvelled. "Come, boys!" cried Folloman, Conchobar's son, [2]"the urchin insults us.[2] Throw yourselves all on yon fellow, and his death shall come at my hands; for it is geis among you for any youth to come into your game, without first entrusting his safety to you. And do you all attack him together, for we know that yon wight is some one ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... his country?" Or, would you have them live, that no man's daughter Would stoop so low as call your sons her husband? Would you behold them hooted, hissed at, Oft, as they crossed the street, by every urchin? Would ye your sons—your noble sons—met this, Eather than die for Scotland? If ye do love them, Love them ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... little more than a boy in years was in fancy altogether a boy again, a shivering, quivering slip of a boy that stood on the gusty high-road and knuckled his eyelids to keep his eyes from crying. How long ago it seemed, that time twelve years ago when a mutinous urchin fled from a truculent uncle to seek his fortune as Heaven might please to guide! Heaven guided an itinerant mime and mountebank that tramped France with his doxy to a wet hedge-side where a famished, foot-sore scrap of a lad lay like a tired dog, trying ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the officer who was conducting us. We then turned round and changed our views with regard to the cupola—the fire of one side being bad enough, but preferable to that of both sides. A small boy of twelve years was riding with us at the time: this urchin took a diabolical interest in the bursting of the shells, and screamed with delight when he saw them take effect. I never saw this boy again, or found out who he was. The road at Gettysburg was lined with Yankee dead, ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... old Russian Jew, with a smirk that seemed just to have concluded a bargain to its satisfaction, intrusted himself and us devoutly to that boy. Yet the boy was patently fallacious; and for that matter a most unsympathetic urchin, raised apparently on gingerbread. He was bent on his own pleasure, nothing else; and Kelmar followed him to his ruin, with the same shrewd smirk. If the boy said there was "a hole there in the hill"—a hole, pure and simple, neither more nor less—Kelmar ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... infant, babe, baby, babe in arms; nurseling, suckling, yearling, weanling; papoose, bambino; kid; vagitus. child, bairn [Scot.], little one, brat, chit, pickaninny, urchin; bantling, bratling^; elf. youth, boy, lad, stripling, youngster, youngun, younker^, callant^, whipster^, whippersnapper, whiffet [U.S.], schoolboy, hobbledehoy, hopeful, cadet, minor, master. scion; sap, seedling; tendril, olive branch, nestling, chicken, larva, chrysalis, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... he, as that urchin made his appearance from the inside of the cart, "you stand by the cattle while I put the ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... declared he was a changeling and not the thin little urchin he had first encountered by the mile-stone on the Great Road. They never alluded to his life before that, though they all knew of it, and made their ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... these questions were very simply settled," he reflected. "Every urchin who was caught smoking was thrashed. The cowardly and faint-hearted did actually give up smoking, any who were somewhat more plucky and intelligent, after the thrashing took to carrying tobacco in the legs of their boots, and smoking in the barn. ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... one of the white-coated officers had planted himself in the Piazza in front of the tower, and was gazing at it earnestly, lost in admiration of its perfect beauty. "Si svita, signore," said a little street urchin, coming up behind him—"It unscrews, sir!" As much as to say, "Wouldn't you like just to take it off bodily and carry it away?" But, as I said, to apprehend the aptitude of the gamin's sneer, one must have oneself looked on the absolute perfection of proportion and harmony of its every part, ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... snow would not stick anywhere except on his shoulders, and when it got into his neck he cried with the cold; but they were so anxious to carry out their project, that they begged him to bear it "just a little longer"; and the urchin who had devised the original idea wiped the child's eyes with his handkerchief, and (with that hopefulness which is so easy over other people's matters) "dared say that when all the snow was on, he wouldn't feel ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... he? A rough little runaway urchin from an Orphans' Home! We know nothing whatever about ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... urchin and an abnormally kindly farmer. The urchin resolutely turns his back on the farmer's melon patch, though there is no end of opportunity. But the farmer catches him, brings him in by the ear, makes him choose a big one, and leaves him there, the ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... limb in a tree at the side of the road, his pockets bulging with stones, which he was hurling with unpleasant accuracy at every one who came within range. Several youngsters were howling from having served as targets to the urchin up the tree, and as soon as Mr. Pangborn saw how things were going he shouted to Dewey to stop his sport. The boy replied by advising the teacher to go to the hottest region named in works on theology, and, descending the tree, led several young scamps in an attack upon the instructor. There ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... clattering her doleful song on the flying clapboards and crazy casements. A feeble, struggling light from within showed the inmates were stirring as the man in the overcoat gave a loud, careless thump on the trembling door, which was opened by a pale, gaunt-looking urchin, clad in garments bearing patches of ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... Dexter drove them off with words, until at last, an unlucky urchin striking his elbow and making him mar his sketch, he laid down his sketching-box, and, clubbing his campstool, made a rush at the crowd. They fled before him, in their hurry tumbling one over the other, and then, scrambling to their feet, were soon out of sight. Returning to his sketch, he was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the charm, the juvenile pontiff spat on poor Thammuz, till a torrent of blood, or what seemed such, "ran purple" over the urchin's fingers. ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various
... was brought to a sudden stop by the frantic yell of the juvenile pledge of their affections, whose years had not yet reached two figures; a compact little iron-bound box had fallen on his toe, and the poor little urchin's pilliloo, pilliloo, was pitiful. Mamma began hugging and kissing, while papa offered that handy consolation of, "Never mind, that's a good boy; don't cry." In the meantime, the Jacks had profited by the squall, and, when it ceased, the happy ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... urchin, Tommy, had apparently not suffered seriously from his immersion in the waters of Sunrise Lake. Perhaps he was to some extent accustomed to tumbling overboard; though this time the consequences might have been most serious only for the lucky ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... Bridge to Chelsea,[47] after the usual oratory of infants, to get me for a plaything. The mother out of pure indulgence took me up, and put me towards the child, who presently seized me by the middle and got my head in its mouth, where I roared so loud that the urchin was frighted, and let me drop, and I should infallibly have broke my neck if the mother had not held her apron under me. The nurse, to quiet her babe, made use of a rattle, which was a kind of hollow vessel filled with great stones, and fastened by a cable to the child's ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... wagons, "prairie schooners," and witnessed their departure for California. The great excitement over the gold discoveries was thus felt in Milan, and these wagons, laden with all the worldly possessions of their owners, were watched out of sight on their long journey by this fascinated urchin, whose own discoveries in later years were to tempt many other argonauts into the auriferous realms ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... but a flesh-wound in the flank, and no vital part was touched. It was enough for me, however, poor Urchin,—enough to make me tumble down in a dead faint; and when I came to myself, I found that I had been removed to the bar-room down-stairs, where I made one of nineteen Blacks, all prisoners to the King for stealing his Deer, and all bound hand and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... urchin started off at once. He found one of the jumpers, namely, Otaheitan Sally, nursing Polly Young, while she delivered an oracular discourse to Charlie Christian, who sat at her feet, meekly receiving and believing the most outrageous nonsense that ever was heard. It ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... to dispatch more troops to crush the "rebels"; and that very act took the contest from the realm of opinion. As John Adams said: "Facts are stubborn things." Opinions were unseen, but marching soldiers were visible to the veriest street urchin. "Now," said Gouverneur Morris, "the sheep, simple as they are, cannot be gulled as heretofore." It was too late to talk about the excellence of the British constitution. If any one is bewildered by the controversies of modern historians ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... formalities; he had a wag of the tail for every boy who wore the image of the venerable schoolmaster upon his cap; but if he met him bare-headed, or, by any chance, in an indistinctive head-gear, he would cut that boy dead, were he never so much the same urchin from whose hand he had yesterday eaten a cheese-cake. That was his official rebuke for the irregularity. By day, Borth would bask in some sunny corner of our quarters; at night, he has been known to venture on a nearer intimacy where ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... ain't exactly lost!" exclaimed the urchin, with a grin. "I live just down the road a piece, and it's only a mile to Bakersville. That's a good town. They got a movin' picture show ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... from the little ragged population of "Barlow's Settlement," on the "Barrens," with quantities of whortleberries for sale. "Want any huckleberries to-day?" was heard all over. You couldn't stir abroad without some urchin with a smirched face—a tattered coat, whose skirts swept the dust, showing, evidently, its paternal descent, and pantaloons patched in the most conspicuous places, more picturesque than decent—thrusting a basket of the rich fruit into your very face, with an impudent yell of "huckleberries, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... not been restricted by his narrow means, he would have purchased another glass for the urchin. It would have been a very cheap "treat." But our young adventurer reflected that he had but twenty-two cents left, ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... face of the aged saint. It does not seem a part of the scene. You see the picture through it. A step further on there is a Holy Family, which seems to me the ultimate effort of the early manner. A Jewish carpenter holds his fair-haired child between his knees. The urchin holds up a bird to attract the attention of a little white dog on the floor. The mother, a dark-haired peasant woman, looks on the scene with quiet amusement. The picture is absolutely perfect in detail. It seems to be the consigne among critics to say it lacks "style." They say it is a ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... urchin." Edna had rolled her sleeves to the shoulder and was plunging her arm into the water. She brought out a ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... housekeeper, with "Master's out," while the host himself is peeping over the parlour window-blind at the disappointment of his would-be visitors. The annoyance of the husband at the inhospitable answer, and the fatigue of his fine wife, are cleverly managed; while the mischievous pranks of the urchin family among the borders of the flower-garden remind us of the pleasant "Inconveniences of a Convenient Distance." The colouring is most objectionable; though the flowers and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... the crumpled and grass-stained object Mark flung it over his shoulder and, followed by the urchin and one or two other boys, started away from the field and was soon out of sight ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... that bucket," he directed. It was the voice of authority commanding the urchin on the curb; of seasoned seniority chiding the heedlessness of ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... met on the sea-shore, at the mouth of some little river, or rather mere brook. We brought from home the provisions furnished us by our gardens, to which we added those supplied us by the sea in abundant variety. We caught on these shores the mullet, the roach, and the sea-urchin, lobsters, shrimps, crabs, oysters, and all other kinds of shell-fish. In this way, we often enjoyed the most tranquil pleasures in situations the most terrific. Sometimes, seated upon a rock, under the shade of the velvet ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... infections that the sun sucks up From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him By inch-meal a disease! His spirits hear me, And yet I needs must curse. But they'll nor pinch, Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i' the mire, Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark Out of my way, unless he bid 'em; but For every trifle are they set upon me: Sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me, And ...
— The Tempest • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... with plenty of money?" asked a seven-year-old urchin, on one of these occasions, looking solemnly up into his face with a pair of very round, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... ate rapidly, reading all the while a small book, treating of some protestant propaganda. She gave a copy of it to everybody. The cure himself had received no less than four copies, conveyed by an urchin to whom she had paid two sous' commission. She said sometimes to our hostess, abruptly, without preparing her in the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... said Matilda, timidly, as her sister moved to the door. For Maria's courage gave out. But at that question the young urchin addressed set up a roar of hoarse laughter, throwing himself down and rolling over on the floor. His mother shoved him out of her way with a push that was very like a kick, and his sister, seizing a wringing wet piece of clothes from the wash-tub, dropped it spitefully ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... in the little coffee-house. In one circle of yellow light two bearded Sheiks were playing dominoes with imperturbable gravity; the other lamp flickered over an empty table beneath which the thin, flea-bitten legs of a ragged urchin were showing in the oblivion of his tired sleep. In the shadow beyond sat a young American with a keen, impatient face, and a one-eyed Arab shrouded in a ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... having given Mtesa a rifle, the king, after examining the weapon, loaded it and told a page to go out and shoot some one, to ascertain if it would kill well. In a moment a report was heard, and the urchin came back grinning with delight at his achievement, just like a schoolboy who has shot his first sparrow. Nothing was heard about the unfortunate wretch who had served as a target, the murder of a man being by far too common an incident ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... to the boy they found him a barefooted urchin, with tattered coarse clothes and densely thick, uncovered black hair growing down almost to his fiery young eyes, which stared at them proudly. There was a wild look in those eyes never to be found in the eyes of a dweller in cities, a wild grace in his figure, and a complete ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... places where he might be likely to be found, and hinting that there was more silver to be forthcoming when he should bring her an answer to the note. With a minute description of David the keen-eyed urchin set out, while Kate betook herself to her room to dress for David's coming. She felt sure he would be found, and confident that he would come ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... gives me full time to hear particulars about the boy whom I left in your care—a wilful, petted urchin, ten years of ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... back little brothers equally inky, and, gravely depositing them, shook hands. Never had I seen human beings so clad, or rather so unclad, in such amazing squalid-ness and destitution of garments. I recall one small urchin without a rag of clothing save the basque waist of a lady's dress, bristling with whalebones, and worn wrong side before, beneath which his smooth ebony legs emerged like those of an ostrich from its plumage. ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... shrieked the smaller boys, with an impetuosity that made Mr. Grimshaw smile in spite of himself. One luckless urchin said, "Chucked it," for which happy expression he was kept in ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... regular fruit of the summer. The Fresh-Water Sun-Fish, Bream, or Ruff, Pomotis vulgaris, as it were, without ancestry, without posterity, still represents the Fresh-Water Sun-Fish in nature. It is the most common of all, and seen on every urchin's string; a simple and inoffensive fish, whose nests are visible all along the shore, hollowed in the sand, over which it is steadily poised through the summer hours on waving fin. Sometimes there are twenty or thirty nests in the space of a few ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... story of Tod Lapraik in Catriona, are grotesque imaginations of the school of Tam o' Shanter rather than of the school of Shakespeare, who deals in no comedy ghosts. They are turnip-lanterns swayed by a laughing urchin, proud of the fears he can awaken. Even The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the story of The Bottle Imp are manufactured bogeys, that work on the nerves and not on the heart, whatever may be said by those ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... were encamped on it. I could not help taking possession of it, as there were none besides, to our knowledge; and our bullocks and horses were fatigued by a long stage. I, therefore, rode up to it alone; the gins had decamped, but a little urchin remained, who was probably asleep when his mother went. He cried bitterly, as he made his way through the high grass, probably in search for his mother. Thinking it prudent to tie an iron ring to his neck, ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... a long pause. Suddenly one dusky urchin rose with a whoop of delight, bearing aloft the torn paper with several lumps of sweet stuff, discolored with dirt, sticking to it. With one accord the little mob broke. The triumphant child fled away to the bluff pursued by the rest of her howling companions. The man ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... seeks to improve the occasion by a lecture. The skipper, chastened by suffering and disappointment, stuck his right hand in his pocket, after a lengthened search for it, and gently bidding the blanketed urchin in front of him ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... was James Whitcher. He was born in the Franconia Valley of northern New Hampshire, and his whole life had been passed there. He had always fished; he could not remember when or how he learned the art. From the days when, a tiny, bare-legged urchin in ragged frock, he had dropped his piece of string with its bent pin at the end into the narrow, shallow brooklet behind his father's house, through early boyhood's season of roaming along Gale River, wading Black Brook, rowing a leaky boat on Streeter or Mink Pond, ...
— Fishin' Jimmy • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... expressed it, they were a "street urchin of a regiment." They had no armory, no place to drill except in the open and no place where more than a single company at a time could meet. In his post-war observations, the Colonel has noted that when the regiment returned to these shores and was feasted and entertained by the people ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... instance, when, in the course of an inoffensive promenade, I am addressed by an underbred street-urchin as a "blooming blacky," and cannot induce a policeman to compel my aggressor to furnish me with his name and address or that of his parents, or even to offer the ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... Aunt Horsingham remarking that the "weather was dull" and the "crops looking very unpromising;" Aunt Deborah with her eyes fixed on a portrait of the late Mr. David Jones as a boy, opposite which she invariably took her place, and on which, though representing an insignificant urchin in a high frill and blue jacket, she gazed intently during the whole repast; Cousin Amelia looking at herself in the silver dish-covers, and when those were removed relapsing into a state of irritable torpor; and as for poor me, all I could do was to think over the ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... sunshine. Little fat, ragged, smiling children are clambering about the rocks, and sitting on mossy doorsteps, tending other children yet smaller, fatter, and more dirty. "Stop till I get you a posy" (pronounced pawawawsee), cries one urchin to another. "Tell me who is it ye love, Jooly," exclaims another, cuddling a red-faced infant with a very dirty nose. More of the same race are perched about the summerhouse, and two wenches with large purple feet are flapping some carpets in the air. It is a wonder the carpets will bear this ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... three months have expired do they venture to return to it; and when Tsaddik and the other disciples seek the cave where their master lies, they find him, to their astonishment, alive. Then Tsaddik remembers that even children urged their offering upon him, and concludes that some urchin or other contrived to make it "stick;" and he anxiously disclaims any share in the "foisting" this crude fragment of existence on the course of so great a life. Hereupon the Rabbi opens his eyes, and turns upon the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... retracing our steps was at length extracted, and, after a prolonged study of the plan, my sister gave the word to proceed. Save that we twice mounted the pavement, grazed a waggon, and literally brushed an urchin out of the way, our emergence from Abbeville was accomplished ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... the kind man cleared the way through the crowd for his young companion, and conducted him within a few yards of the spot where William Tell stood, than the urchin drew his hand away from his new friend, and running to his father, flung his little arms about his knees, sobbing, "Father, dear father, pray forgive me this once, and I will never disobey ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... of some, and the too evident ridicule of others, the disagreeable surprise of all, were too palpable for him not to see it, and to be hurt by it, and it was still worse when a street urchin said to him in a jeering voice, as he danced ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Cupid shot a shaft [urchin] That play'd a dame a shavie; [trick] The fiddler rak'd her fore and aft, Behint the chicken cavie. [hencoop] Her lord, a wight of Homer's craft, Tho' limpin' wi' the spavie, [spavin] He hirpl'd up, an' lap like daft, [hobbled, leapt] And shor'd them Dainty Davie [yielded them as lovers] ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... queer a place before. He was a lively, active city boy, but the closest he had ever seen an airship was a distance away and five hundred feet up in the air. Now, with big wonder eyes he stared at the strange appearing machine. His fingers moved restlessly, like a street-urchin surveying an automobile and longing to blow ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... that he was safe in his old home; but where were his brothers and sisters? With a beating heart he crept to the other end of the bed; and there lay the prodigal, but with no haggard cheeks or sunken eyes, no grey locks or miserable rags, but a rosy yellow-haired urchin fast asleep, with his head upon his arm. 'I took his ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of children knelt on the brick floor at her feet, busily stripping the fruit from the stems, and negresses, hard by, strained with sinewy hands the crimson juice from the pulpy mass into jars of earthenware. To this group suddenly entered a breathless urchin. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... at night Can wake more fright Than lions at midday. An urchin small Torments us all Who ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... but yesterday, A merry urchin blithe and gay, Whose joyous shout came ringing out Unchecked ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... house with bad news in some form or other. Some rock or snowball he had cast with the most innocent of intentions had gone through a window or a milk wagon or somebody's silk hat. Or he had pulled a small girl's hair, or taken the skates away from a helpless urchin. He had bad luck too in picking victims ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes |
