"Truant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... devotees deluded, then as now, By astronomical, selfish fakirs, Who pretend claim to heavenly agency And power over human souls divine. Poor bamboozled man; know God never yet Empowered any one of his truant tribe To ride with a creed rod, image of Himself; And thou, oh Sol, giver of light and heat, Speed the hour when man, out of superstition Shall leap into the light of pure reason, Only ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... whole day's exemption from school, the customary half-holiday not being long enough for our picnic. Somehow, we couldn't work it; but fortune arranged it for us. I may say here, that, whatever else I did, I never played truant ("hookey" we called it) ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... cheeks, and gazed fixedly into the green waters, the laughing, dancing, purling waters, green, and, where the sun reached them, shot with seams and cleavages of light, like fluorspar. In the sun-flecked, shadow-dappled grass near by, violets tried to hide themselves, but were betrayed by their truant sweetness. The waters purled, a light breeze rustled the olive-leaves, and birds were singing loud and wild, as birds will ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... you are, I have been; All that you see, I have seen. Hopes that beamed around my way, Cast their light on yours to-day. All that you do, I have done; All your childish ways I've run, All your joys and pangs I've had— All that make you gay or sad; I have sported in the brook, Truant from my work or book; Chased the butterfly and bee, Robb'd the bird's nest on the tree; Damm'd the brook and built my mill; Flew my kite from hill to hill; Sported with my top and ball— Childish joys, I know them all. Childish sorrows, too I've felt— Anguish that ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... disagreeable sensation, after seeing Mademoiselle Reine Gobillot's fresh, chubby face, her figure prim beyond measure in a lilac-and-green plaid gingham dress, and carrying a basket on her arm, a necessary burden to maidens of a certain class who play truant. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... forgotten!" she said. "I forgot about your wife in Delhi." She half turned in the hammock, and after some searching, during which we were silent, succeeded in finding a truant piece of worsted work behind her. The wool was pulled out of the needle, and she held the steel instrument up against the light, as she doubled the worsted round the eye and pushed it back through the little ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... about than who the writers were, and what they felt and thought than by what names they were baptised. The mass of their literature, as it is at present known to us, divides into two broad classes. The one division includes poems on the themes of vagabond existence, the truant life of these capricious students; on spring-time and its rural pleasure; on love in many phases and for divers kinds of women; lastly, on wine and on the dice-box. The other division is devoted to graver topics; ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... ringing for petits pains and chocolate. A toilette was hastily made, without too much time being wasted on water; and Mademoiselle,—all in black and white this morning, like a jeune fille in second mourning,—hurried out to walk on the terrace at the fashionable hour. If she did not find the truant there, she said to herself, she would go into the Casino; for he was sure to be in one place or the other at this time of day, even ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... make up his sixpence for the hospital-cot collection at the children's service last Sunday. He had only fourpence halfpenny. I remember it all now. Oh, how stupid I've been, to be sure!' It was an intense relief to have chased successfully the truant halfpence. 'Now, Queenie,' went on Theo gleefully, 'in five minutes I shall be ready for you, and we are going to have a good time in the boat. Get ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... foot, and the entire body of truant warriors were brought back without bloodshed. One of them, a young warrior, came to Will's tent to beg for tobacco. The Indian—as all know who have made his acquaintance—has no difficulty in reconciling begging with ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... on admission. The School Boards in the country, and more especially the School Board of London, by enforcing compulsory attendance of all the children of the poor between the ages of five and thirteen, have swept into what are termed Truant Schools all the neglected and uncontrollable children who were formerly sent to certified industrial schools—these latter being now retained in a great measure for children who, besides being neglected and beyond the control of their parents, have either taken their first steps ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... gazed upon thee, ROSE, Across the pebbled way, And thought the very wealth of mirth Was thine that winter day; For while I saw the truant rays Within thy window glide, Remember'd beams reflected ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... The truant quarrier seemed rather inclined to stay where he was and finish the mug of ale, but Pierston quickened him, and he ascended the staircase. As soon as the lower room was empty Pierston leant with his elbows on the table, and covered his ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... Thou wert a stranger in these parts? Ah, truant, Some village beauty lured thee;—thou art now ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... all disconcerted by the tumble, which was only a variation of its method of progress, came over on its knees and rose at once to go ahead; but the delay had been sufficient. Steve caught up; and the next instant, the truant, feeling the ground removed from under it, hung helpless across the ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... noon—at twilight dim— Maria! thou hast heard my hymn; In joy and woe—in good and ill— Mother of God, be with me still! When the hours flew brightly by, And not a cloud obscured the sky, My soul, lest it should truant be, Thy grace did guide to thine and thee; Now, when storms of fate o'ercast Darkly my present and my past, Let my future radiant shine, With sweet hopes of thee ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... abtruennige Schwester! Wie du uns erschreckt hast! Wie es mich freut dich zu finden!" (Oh, my truant sister! What a scare you have given us! How glad I am to find ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... performed the work, and did him a good turn beside. The old Frenchman was slowly approaching, when a frolicsome wind whisked off his hat and sent it skimming along the beach. In spite of her late lecture, away went Debby, and caught the truant chapeau just as a wave was hurrying up to claim it. This restored her cheerfulness, and when she returned, she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... hear your enemy say so, Nor shall you do my ear that violence, To make it truster of your own report Against yourself: I know you are no truant. But what is your affair in Elsinore? We'll teach you to drink ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... he, half in jest and half in earnest, "gin I find ye playing truant, and reading a' sorts o' nonsense instead of minding the scholastic methods and proprieties, I'll just bring ye in a bill at the year's end o' twa guineas a week for lodgings and tuition, and tak' the law o' ye; so mind and read what I tell ye. Do ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... were so tired they had to rest. They sat down on a curbstone, with Toby between them, and were just beginning to discuss the reward when a heavy hand fell on Mick's shoulder. It was the school porter. In spite of their protests he insisted that Mick was playing truant, and marched him off to school. Jane, left alone with Toby, debated what she ought to do. The reward was to be got in a village three or four miles at the other side of Rowallan, so she would have to wait and go back with Andy. But there was still an hour and a half before he would call at Miss Courtney's ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... the adjoining grammar-school, called William and Mary College, of which I am an aspiring bachelor, and you were an ornament before your religious opinions caught from Fauquier drove you away like a truant school-boy. The shepherds were as usual very ridiculous, and I had no opportunity to whisper so much as a single word into my dear Belle-bouche's ear. Ah! how lovely she looked! By heaven, I'll go to-morrow and request her to designate some form of death for me to die—all ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... muddy, dusty, ragged, dishevelled, playing hide-and-seek, and crowned with corn-flowers. All of them are little ones who have made their escape from poor families. The outer boulevard is their breathing space; the suburbs belong to them. There they are eternally playing truant. There they innocently sing their repertory of dirty songs. There they are, or rather, there they exist, far from every eye, in the sweet light of May or June, kneeling round a hole in the ground, snapping marbles with their thumbs, quarrelling over half-farthings, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... The pasture was partly cleared, with here and there a pine stub left standing, and was of about twenty acres extent. We went up across it to the top of the hill, but could not find the colts. Then we walked around by the farther fence, but discovered no breach in it and no traces where truant hoofs had jumped over it. It was growing dark, and we at length went ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... said we would not wait, and his remark called my attention to the fact that there was one more place at the table than there were people assembled. I had barely noted this, when my host said, "Here's the truant," and, turning, I faced a lady who had just entered. Mr. Cullen said, "Madge, let me introduce Mr. Gordon to you." My bow was made to a girl of about twenty, with light brown hair, the bluest of ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... that Ben was a truant from home, as his dress would hardly class him among the homeless boys who ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... is the way; here is the gate, This little creaking wicket; Here robin calls his truant mate From out the lilac-thicket. The walks are bordered all with box,— Oh! come this way a minute; The snowball-bush, beyond the phlox, Has chippy's nest hid in it. Look at this mound of blooming pinks, This balm, these mountain daisies; And can you guess what ...
— The Nursery, No. 107, November, 1875, Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... fence that skirts the way, With blossom'd furze unprofitably gay, There, in his noisy mansion, skill'd to rule, 195 The village master taught his little school; A man severe he was, and stern to view; I knew him well, and every truant knew; Well had the boding tremblers learn'd to trace The day's disasters in his morning face; 200 Full well they laugh'd, with counterfeited glee, At all his jokes, for many a joke had he; Full well the busy whisper, circling round, Convey'd the dismal ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... thou shouldst be whipped for playing truant,' she said; 'and I should also punish thee ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... become of us all, suppose The sun, some morn, should say, as he rose, 'A truant I'll ...
— The Nursery, April 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 4 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... It was too late then to commit it to memory, and I felt ashamed to go to school without it, for I knew that I should be punished, and be obliged to remain in at recess to make up the lesson. I did not want to play truant, for I was fearful of detection, so I went to my father and feigned headache, and plead that I might remain at home that day. The wish was granted, and for a moment I felt relieved, but at breakfast or dinner, I was not allowed to eat anything; I ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... 22.—There was a very small school, for many boys were away helping to collect the sheep for the schooner, which was coming in, and some were playing truant. The sheep were carted down to the shore and the men were ready for embarking, when the ship moved out, and so all their labour was again in vain. The sea was "making up," and to-night is stormy. It is rather late in the year for a sailing-ship ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... reply, but stole up to the truant step by step cautiously, and gradually approached near enough to lay his hand on its shoulder; from its shoulder he worked to its neck and wound his arms ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... not agree with her. He played truant whenever he could, for he was a kindhearted boy, and could not bear to think of a master's time and labor being thrown away on a boy like himself—who did not wish to learn, only to find out—when there were so many worthy lads thirsting for instruction in geography and history and reading and ciphering, ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... Le Bourget they circled the 'drome once, noted the wind socks on the great hangars, and dropped as lightly to the field as two tardy, truant schoolboys seeking to gain entrance without ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... the Cherwell Drysdale was completely baked (he had played truant the day before and dined at the Weirs, were he had imbibed much dubious hock), but he from old habit managed to keep time. Tom and the other young oars got flurried, and quickened; the boat dragged, there was no life left in her, and, though they managed ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... their single note; And tend on new-fledged birds in every place, That duly they may get their tunes by rote; And oft, like echoes, answering remote, We hide in thickets from the feather'd throng, And strain in rivalship each throbbing throat, Singing in shrill responses all day long, Whilst the glad truant ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... the School Attendance Officer and a terror to every boy in the neighbourhood. He looks at the truant and says fiercely, "Where was you?" Then he wags a savage finger at him. "Yes, you was," he says, "you was, you know you was. I caught you in the hact." No boy has ever been ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... knew exactly what had happened, and had no doubt at all about whose duty it was to get the flock together again. All night long the shepherd sought in vain, not being able even to discover what direction either of the three flocks of truant lambs had taken; but in the morning he suddenly came upon his dog, guarding the whole flock—all the seven hundred brought back, and ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... time, and independence should have yielded to subservience—to the male, to him. With her vivid hair and eyes and her swift slenderness, Hazel had a fawn-like air as she traversed the wavering shadows. She passed his tree without seeing him, and stood listening. Then she began to plead with the truant. 'What for did you run away, Foxy, my dear? Where be you? Come back along with me, dear 'eart, for it ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... garden open; but Honor was well round the corner, and running fast towards the cricket field. Vivian was very much disturbed and distressed. She scarcely knew what she ought to do. She ventured a little way into the grounds, but not a trace of any truant was to be seen, so she thought it useless to search far. One of the girls must have gone out; on that ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... train Samson was surprised to discover that, after all, he had Mr. William Farbish for a traveling companion. That gentleman explained that he had found an opportunity to play truant from business for a day or two, and wished to see ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... there is seen no change of predilection. It sounds like heresy to say that Edison became an electrician by chance, but it is the sober fact that to this pre-eminent and brilliant leader in electrical achievement escape into the chemical domain still has the aspect of a delightful truant holiday. One of the earliest stories about his boyhood relates to the incident when he induced a lad employed in the family to swallow a large quantity of Seidlitz powders in the belief that the gases generated would ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... here, then, because the occasion offered, and if I pretermitted this, it might be the last, and I was unwilling that any friend or any child, who might lean upon me, who reckoned upon my counsel or advice, should know that I had been such a truant to the cause of religious liberty and humanity, as never to have ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... how often are saints found playing truant, and lurking like thieves in one hole or other. Now, in the guilt of backsliding by the power of this, and then in filth by the power of that corruption (Jer 2:26). Yea, and when found in such decayings, and under such revoltings from God, how commonly do they hide their sin with Adam, and David, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... my mother that her other son shall comfort her old age; For I was still a truant bird, that thought his home a cage. For my father was a soldier, and even as a child My heart leaped forth to hear him tell of struggles fierce and wild; And when he died, and left us to divide his scanty hoard, I let them take whate'er they would,—but kept my father's sword; ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... must once have pressed? It cannot be! A part of her possessions of Eden must have been spared to her with a part of her life. She must have refined the void air of the earth when she entered it, with a breath of the fragrant breezes, and gleam of the truant sunshine of her lost Paradise! They must have strengthened and brightened, and must now be strengthening and brightening with the slow lapse of mortal years, until, in the time when earth itself will be an Eden, they ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... go loafing through town with a truant school-girl you hardly know. I suppose it's my fault for introducing you to her. I want you to tell me how you managed this. Did you telephone her or write a note? Sit down here now and let's have ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... the fairy books," she said, "and all those wonderful and never-to-be-forgotten sensations of the truant, doesn't it? ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the credit or advantage to be gained by it; he makes what is allowed or approved a pretext for doing what would be opposed or condemned; a tricky schoolboy makes a pretense of doing an errand which he does not do, or he makes the actual doing of an errand a pretext for playing truant. A ruse is something (especially something slight or petty) employed to blind or deceive so as to mask an ulterior design, and enable a person to gain some end that he would not be allowed to approach directly. A pretension is a claim that is or may be contested; the ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... the old man was angry with them for playing truant. He said slowly, "N—no. She didn't exactly send us; but I don't think she'll mind our having come if we get back in time for supper. Mamma never forbid our ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... vexed these two ladies very little indeed. Pen, who was plunged in his shame and grief in London, and torn with great remorse for thinking of his mother's sorrow, would have wondered, had he seen how easily she bore the calamity. Indeed, calamity is welcome to women if they think it will bring truant affection home again: and if you have reduced your mistress to a crust, depend upon it that she won't repine, and only take a very little bit of it for herself, provided you will eat the ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... She had always been led to think her niece's faults the effect of their management; and she now imagined that there had been some encouragement of the child's discontent to make her run away; and that if they had been sufficiently shocked and concerned, the truant would have been brought home much sooner. It all came of her having allowed her niece to associate with those children at Bournemouth. She would be more ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Tennysonians still walked past him as primly as a young ladies' school—the Browningites still inked their eyebrows and minds in looking for the lost syntax of Browning; while Browning himself was away looking for God, rather in the spirit of a truant boy from their school looking for birds' nests. The nineteenth-century sceptics did not really shake the respectable world and alter it, as the eighteenth-century sceptics had done; but that was because ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... like truant schoolboys, with our hands on our knees. I didn't know where I was going and I didn't care. We seemed to be rumbling up the hill, and then I caught ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... I should note it; and now, why, there WAS a flaw in its lower margin, a flattening of the great red foot that before had been round and perfect. I turned my smarting eyes away a minute,—saw the seventh drop fall with a melodious tingle into the cup, then back again,—there was no mistake—the truant fire was a fraction less, it had shrunk a fraction behind the hill even since I looked, and thereon all my life ran back into its channels, the world danced before me, and "Heru!" I shouted hoarsely, ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... was one lady who would not bore him, and making his way to her, he inquired for Lady Elizabeth. Emma, on the other hand, asked after Violet; and it was curious that both questions were put and answered with constraint, as if each was conscious of being something like a truant. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she know of the late hours of harassing watching that, night after night, Pauline spent waiting the coming in of her truant husband; and less did she know of the agonized feelings of the young wife, as she read in the glassy eye and flushed brow of her husband, the meaning of that once insignificant word "wild," which now she was beginning to apprehend in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... as Chia Cheng caught sight of him, his eyes got quite red. Without even allowing himself any time to question him about his gadding about with actors, and the presents he gave them on the sly, during his absence from home; or about his playing the truant from school and lewdly importuning his mother's maid, during his stay at home, he simply shouted: "Gag his mouth and positively beat him till ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... should learn to swim, when with Papa or some kind friend, but not as these boys have. I feel just sure they have played the truant—as I see the village school-master, with his little dog, coming over the rustic bridge ...
— The Royal Picture Alphabet • Luke Limner
... they say, Rather a bad stick any way, Splintered all over with dodges and tricks, Known as "the worst of the Deacon's six;" I, the truant, saucy and bold, The one black sheep in my father's fold, "Once on a time," as the stories say, Went over the hill on a winter's day— Over ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... carries away a home relic with him, and dies with it on his breast. His nature is truant; in repose it longs for change: as on the journey it looks back for friends and quiet. He passes to-day in building an air castle for to-morrow, or in writing yesterday's elegy; and he would flyaway this hour, but that a cage, necessity, keeps him. What is the charm of his verse, of his style, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... not? So qualified to swear and lie, Will they not trust me for a spy? Dear Mullinix, your good advice I beg; you see the case is nice: O! were I equal in renown, Like thee to please this thankless town! Or blest with such engaging parts To win the truant schoolboys' hearts! Thy virtues meet their just reward, Attended by the sable guard. Charm'd by thy voice, the 'prentice drops The snow-ball destined at thy chops; Thy graceful steps, and colonel's air, Allure the cinder-picking fair. M. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... behint them, and twal o'clock chappit?" Then approaching the Master, he craved pardon for having permitted the rest of his people to go out to see the hunt, observing, that "They wad never think of his lordship coming back till mirk night, and that he dreaded they might play the truant." ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... the son of the district doctor, was a blue-eyed youngster in knickerbockers and a sailor blouse. He was playing truant, no doubt—Klaus had his lessons at home with a private tutor—and would certainly get a thrashing from his ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... his own occupation of stone-cutting was too laborious and too unprofitable an exercise. But this did not come to pass, because, although Giuliano went to a grammar-school for a little, his thoughts were never there, and in consequence he made no progress; nay, he played truant very often, and showed that he had his mind wholly set on sculpture, although at first he applied himself to the calling of joiner and also gave ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... there," said George, self-defensively. "I played moocher," he continued,—by which he meant truant,—"and then they whopped I, and a went home to mother, and she kept un at ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... time the truant boy and his companion approached the house, and he mounted the steps of the piazza with eager haste, pulling her after him, immediately upon the arrival of his father, Aunt Mary, and Cousin Bessie. Brief explanation was made, that the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... the depths of the wood there lived a terrible Ogre and Ogress, who kidnapped all children who strayed near their dwelling. Every morning the Ogre threw a big black bag over his shoulder, and stalked through the forest, making the ground shake as he walked. If he found any truant children he popped them into his bag, and when he got home his wife cooked ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... shape, which to Anglantes' peer Seemed his Angelica, beseeching aid. Seemed to Rogero Dordogne's lady dear. Who him a truant to himself had made: If with Gradasso, or with other near He spake, of those who through the palace strayed. To all of them the vision, seen apart, Seemed that which each ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... who worked his way to New York and back again to Chicago before he was quite fourteen years old, skilfully escaping the truant officers as well as the police and special railroad detectives. He told his story with great pride, but always modestly admitted that he could never have done it if his father had not been a locomotive engineer so that he had played around railroad tracks and "was ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... a strong desire to see their country, as well as to become a sailor. They had little to do, and enjoyed great liberty, going and coming much as they pleased. This idleness seemed, to me, to form the summit of human happiness. I did not often dare to play truant; and the school became odious to me. According to my recollections, this desire for a change must have existed near, or quite a twelvemonth; being constantly fed by the arrival and departure of vessels directly before my eyes, ere I set ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... occupations of the sons of Japanese peasants, such as grass-cutting and rice-weeding, were not to the taste of young Monkey-pine, as the villagers called him, and he spent his time in the streets, a keen-witted and reckless young truant, who feared and cared for no one, and lived by ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... him from writing home till he had secured himself a position in which he could maintain himself. When he did communicate with Thursley, it was through Mehetabel, because Simon had forbidden any allusion to the truant boy, and Mrs. Verstage was not herself much of a scholar, and did not desire unnecessarily to anger her husband by having letters in his handwriting come to ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... study,—the natural history of fishes,—you may take more interest than most men. It embodies, from observation, what may be regarded as THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FISHERMAN, and describes some curious scenes and appearances which I witnessed many years ago when engaged, during a truant boyhood, in prosecuting the herring fishery as an amateur. Many of my observations of natural phenomena date from this idle, and yet not wholly ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... who had lived in the country twenty, thirty years, were better qualified to judge than I was. For peace and quiet I pretended acquiescence, and my purpose thus acquired a taste of stealth. It was with the feelings of a kind of truant that I had set out at length without a word to anyone, and with the same adventurous feelings that I now drew near to Karameyn. Two soldiers, basking in the sunshine on a dust-heap, sprang up at my approach. One was the man I sought, the rogue Rashid. They led me to their captain's ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... disagreeable duty. When the cook had prepared the meat for roasting, he found that the dog which should have wrought the spit had disappeared. He attempted to employ another, but it bit his leg and fled. Soon after, however, the refractory dog entered the kitchen, driving before him the truant turnspit, which immediately, of its own accord, went into the wheel. A company of turnspits were assembled in the Abbey Church of Bath, where they remained very quietly. At one part of the service, however, the word "spit" was pronounced, rather loudly. This reminded the dogs of their ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... hath been more faithful, say. 'Tis all through me that Cino can display The sail of fame on life's unhappy stream." "Thee," quoth I, "root of all my woe I deem, I found what gall beneath thy sweetness lay." Then he: "Ah, traitorous and truant slave! Are these the thanks thou renderest, ingrate, For giving thee a maid without a peer?" "Thy left," cried I, "slew what thy right hand gave." "Not so," said he. The judge, "Your wrath abate. I must have time to give true ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... must have been somewhere in this neighbourhood. And now, Lovel, my good lad, be sincere with meWhat make you from Wittenberg?why have you left your own country and professional pursuits, for an idle residence in such a place as Fairport? A truant ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... address far up in the Bronx, ten miles away. They had not been home for a week, he said. Was he lying? What was to be done? Somewhere in the city their homes must be discovered. And the talk of the truant officer made Roger feel ramifications here which wound out through the police and the courts to reformatories, distant cells. He thought of that electric chair, and suddenly he felt oppressed by the ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... How fast the stragglers join the throng, From stall and work-shop gathered; The lively barber skips along And leaves a chin half-lathered; The smith has flung his hammer down, The horse-shoe still is glowing, The truant tapster at the Crown Has left a beer-cask flowing; The coopers' boys have dropped the adze, And trot behind their master; Up run the tarry ship-yard lads;— The crowd is hurrying faster. Out from the mill-pond's purlieus gush, The streams of white-faced millers, And down ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... Mrs. Hardcastle's mild assertion that it could equally well be viewed and studied at a more reasonable hour did not move Tamara, and while her friend slumbered comfortably in her bed at Mena House, she had set off, a self-conscious feeling of a truant schoolboy exalting and yet ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... a wild, uncontrolled boy, who spent most of his time in the street, played truant three days out of five, was a great boaster, and sneered at anything like goodness. He was vastly amusing, however, and generally was surrounded by a crowd of admiring lads who thought him quite a hero. He had completely fascinated Louis, who was blind to his faults ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... a-bloom once more. The lilac buds are bursting with the joy of the new spring. A veil of silver-gray floats over Moose Hillock. The idle brook, like a truant boy, dances in the sunshine, singing to itself as it leaps ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... brightest and most marked elements of his character—never failed to sustain him between the recurrences even of his most acute suffering; and the pursuit of his most beloved Art became every year more determined and independent. The first beginnings in landscape study were made in happy truant excursions, now fondly remembered, with the painter Haydon, then also a youth. This companionship was probably rather cemented by the energy than the delicacy of Haydon's sympathies. The two boys were directly opposed in their habits of application and modes of study. ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... in point of fact, I was alone in the world, dependent upon my own resources for whatever little truant ray of sunshine I might get from the golden flood that illuminated the world outside me, and forced by rigid, arbitrary circumstances to train my growing convictions into many a hazardous channel, left to myself to grope among the dawning mysteries of life, ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... nightingale modifies so greatly the timbre of the voice that, while a nightingale chorus at Fiesole may seem joyous, a nightingale chorus in the moist thickets along the banks of the Ouse may seem melancholy. Nay, more, as I once told Tennyson at Aldworth, I, when a truant boy wandering along the banks of the Ouse (where six nightingales’ nests have been found in the hedge of a single meadow), got so used to these matters that I had my own favourite individuals, and could easily distinguish one from another. That rich climacteric swell which is reached ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... words, "no, I will not 'give my requests the form of an order,' I will not 'fly to tears as a means of revenge,' I will not 'condemn the things I once approved without reservation,' I will not 'dog his footsteps with a prying eye'; if he plays truant, he shall not on his return 'see a scornful lip, whose kiss is an unanswerable command.' No, 'my silence shall not be a reproach nor my first word a quarrel.'—I will not be like every other woman!" she went on, laying on her table the little yellow paper volume which had already attracted ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... so, I yet might have retain'd My truant love. Each virtue that she hath With me's a vice—each charm, deformity. They are my foes, array'd against my power, And I must hate them, as ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... Hull, a cousin of Mrs. Flinders. Malay Road. Pombasso's Island, after the chief of the Malay praus. Cotton's Island, after Captain Cotton of the East India Company's Directorate. English Company Islands, after the East India Company. Wigram Island. Truant Island, "from its lying away from the rest." Inglis Island. Bosanquet Island. Astell Island. Mallison Island. Point Arrowsmith, after the map-publisher. Cape Newbald, Newbald Island—After Henrietta Newbald, nee Flinders, who introduced him to Pasley. Arnhem Bay. Wessell ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... Billy, after an hour's vain effort to imprison within notes a tantalizing melody, captured the truant and rain down to the studio to ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... played the truant, or have here Failed in my part, oh! Thou that art my dear, My mild, my loving tutor, Lord and God! Correct my errors gently with Thy rod. I know that faults will many here be found, But where sin swells ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... minutes her head was covered with tiny close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror, ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... the hearty wind was calling to me companionably from where he swung and bellowed in the tree-tops. "Take me for guide to-day," he seemed to plead. "Other holidays you have tramped it in the track of the stolid, unswerving sun; a belated truant, you have dragged a weary foot homeward with only a pale, expressionless moon for company. To-day why not I, the trickster, the hypocrite? I, who whip round corners and bluster, relapse and evade, then rally and pursue! I can lead you the best and rarest dance of any; for I am ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... sentiments was invariably expressed by Mr. Pump, whenever the company paraded generally in some such terms as these, which were uttered with that sort of meekness that a native of the island of our forefathers is apt to assume when he condescends to praise the customs or character of her truant progeny: ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... father has strongly urged on me the importance of the habit, and I accordingly practise it systematically. Whenever I find my mind wandering away from the subject on which I am engaged, I bring it back forcibly, just as if it were a truant, or a deserter from his colours. Some people can think of two things at the same moment; but my father says it is much better to think of one thing well at a time, as likewise to do one thing well; so, as you may have observed, I never attempt more. The consequence of this system is, that ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... understanding. Their terrible significance." He steals the Indian's fire-water. "What few can partake of. With impunity." Certainly not the Colonel. "Can this be he! This gibbering wreck!" He hides cigars in a hollow tree, and smokes on the sly. He plays truant. Lures other old gentlemen away from their lessons to join him. They are discovered in the woods, in a cave, ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... an incorrigible truant, a chip of the old block, as Tona put it, thinking of that loafer who had been responsible for her, and who also sat staring day in day out at the horizon like a good-for-nothing idiot, half awake. If Tona had had to depend on that girl for a living, ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... form of his wife soon called his thoughts back to misery. Health had wandered away, and the smiling truant strayed so long, that hope of her return had ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... waywardness of a child is in truancy from school, which, if it cannot be handled by the teacher, is turned over to the local truant officer. In many cases the truant officer is appointed because of his availability for such work rather than his special competency, and the enforcement of the truancy law is handled in a most perfunctory manner, whereas an intelligent ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... Philadelphian by birth, had returned by the train to London, as the porter had said, and then left the country under an assumed name, to escape that worst kind of widowhood—the misery of being wedded to a fickle, faithless, and truant husband? ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... begun; the horse had but warmed to his work; the hunter had but tasted of sweet triumph. Another hopeful of a buffalo mother, negligent in danger, truant from his brothers, stumbled and fell in the enmeshing loop. The hunter's vest, slipped over the calf's neck, served as danger signal to the wolves. Before the lumbering buffalo missed their loss, another red and black baby kicked helplessly on ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... theatrical performances. Girls are sometimes forbidden to sell newspapers or deliver messages for telegraph companies or others. Compulsory education is, of course, universal, and the machinery to bring it about is generally based upon a system of certificates or cards, with truant officers and ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... That was a good day in my life, and better ones followed. No, you and True must be friends. Truant is her name by rights, for her mother never could keep her indoors or at home. Now, Bobby, look ahead! Do you see those lights? We go through the town; and just outside is our home—a very tiny one at present, for we move about; but we'll find a ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... Colonel Talbot, his uncle's dearest and most intimate friend. He informed Waverley that on his return from abroad he had found both Sir Everard and his brother in custody on account of Edward's reported treason. He had, therefore, immediately started for Scotland to endeavour to bring back the truant. He had seen Colonel Gardiner, and had found him, after having made a less hasty inquiry into the mutiny of Edward's troop, much softened toward the young man. All would have come right, concluded Colonel Talbot, had it ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the "Tree Society." Do you not think it will make some odds to these children that they were brought up under the Maples? Hundreds of eyes are steadily drinking in this color, and by these teachers even the truants are caught and educated the moment they step abroad. Indeed, neither the truant nor the studious is at present taught color in the schools. These are instead of the bright colors in apothecaries' shops and city windows. It is a pity that we have no more Red Maples, and some Hickories, in our streets as ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... nagged to death. And if he ventured to slip into some synagogue of an afternoon and read a page or two he would be in danger of being caught red-handed, so to say, for, indeed, she often shadowed him to make sure that he did not play truant. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... home-coming than she had been at the marriage, and much searching went on before she was found. She was unearthed at last. The gardener had seen her shrink away into the shrubbery when the carriage-wheels were heard coming up the road, and he gave information to the cook, by whom the truant was tracked and brought to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... is to be built, there is a master; when the highways are repairing, there is a master; every little school has a master: the continent is a great school; the boys are numerous, and full of roguish tricks; and there is no master. The boys in this great school play truant, and there is no person to chastise ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Robert Burns Byron Goderich Kelvin Niagara Falls Autumn A Sunset Farewell By the Lake The Teacher Grace Darling The Indian Lines on the North-West Rebellion Louis Riel Ye Patriot Sons of Canada A Hero's Decision John and Jane The Truant Boy A Swain to his Sweetheart The Fisherman's Wife The Diamond and the Pebble Temptation Slander Woman Sympathy Love and Wine. How Nature's Beauties Should be Viewed To a Canary The School-Taught Youth A Dream A Snow Storm To Nova Scotia The Huntsman and His Hound The Maple Tree The ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... myself and some other lads played truant from school, and went towards the Humber to bathe, but the schoolmaster, Mr. Peacock, followed us closely. He ran and I ran, and I had just time to throw off my clothes and leap into the water, when he got to the bank. He ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... their bedchamber window when they got up in the morning. So naughty, frightened little Goldilocks jumped; and whether she broke her neck in the fall, or ran into the wood and was lost there, or found her way out of the wood and got whipped for being a bad girl and playing truant, no one can say. But the Three Bears never saw ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... for coming," he said in an outburst of gratitude.—"Oh, thank you for coming," and held out his hand. She took it and pressed it, and so they went on hand in hand until the village street was reached. Their high resolve to play truant at all costs had begotten a wonderful sense of fellowship. "I can't call you Miss Henderson," he said. "You know I can't. You know ... I ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... ridicule, when the duke himself entered the room, and told Valentine the welcome news of his friend Proteus' arrival. Valentine said: 'If I had wished a thing, it would have been to have seen him here!' And then he highly praised Proteus to the duke, saying: 'My lord, though I have been a truant of my time, yet hath my friend made use and fair advantage of his days, and is complete in person and in mind, in all good grace ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... well to quit the churchyard at once for some place where he was not likely to be seen; he had never played truant before, and for the next hour or two was thoroughly miserable as he slunk about the premises of a neighboring farm, and finally took refuge in a shed, and began to consider his position. He would remain hidden till nine ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... was the Tzarevna Miliktrisa Kirbitievna; on another the city of Jerusalem. There are usually but few purchasers of these productions, but gazers are many. Some truant lackey probably yawns in front of them, holding in his hand the dishes containing dinner from the cook-shop for his master, who will not get his soup very hot. Before them, too, will most likely be standing a soldier wrapped in his cloak, a dealer from the old-clothes mart, with a couple of penknives ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... characteristics of Addison's style are feebleness and inanity.' He was thus happily ridiculed by Person:—'Soon after the publication of Sir John's book, a parcel of Eton boys, not having the fear of God before their eyes, etc., instead of playing truant, robbing orchards, annoying poultry, or performing any other part of their school exercise, fell foul in print (see the Microcosm, No. 36) upon his Worship's censure of Addison's middling style.... But ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... put the true reason down in the record book. And there it will stay always. My nice little boy was a truant-player. And we shall all be so ashamed. What will your father say? And he was so afraid last ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... to such scraps and shreds of memories as were connected with it. The mummy room of the British Museum had been one of the chief delights of her childhood. That forbidding pile was the goal of her truant fancy, and she was sometimes taken there for a treat, as other children are taken to the theatre. It was long since Alexander had thought of any of these things, but now they came back to him quite fresh, and had a significance ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... company? It was Nym, you remember, who set Master Slender on to drinking. "And I be drunk again," quoth he, "I'll be drunk with those that have the fear of God, and not with drunken knaves." Or rather did not every separate squeak of the grocer's wagon cry out a truant disposition? After years of repression here was its chance at last. And with what a joyous rollic, with what a lively clatter, with what a hilarious reeling, as though in gay defiance of the law of ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... talk followed; and then, one of the lords rising to question some of the evidence, he said he must return to his committee and business,-very flatteringly saying, in quitting his post, "This is the first time I have played truant from the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... irregular line of laughing, jostling, shouting men, constantly renewed at the rear until the procession covered miles of roadway. They were of all races and all types; individually they were, many of them, like boys playing truant from school, not quite certain of themselves, smiling and yet uneasy, not entirely wicked in intent. But they were shepherded by men with cunning eyes, men who knew well that a mob is greater than the sum of its parts, more wicked than the individuals who compose it, ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... hurriedly, peeping under people's elbows, trying not to annoy others and yet to make a thorough hunt in a short time so as not to keep the others waiting. Then in the music room, or East Parlor, as it is often called, she found the truant, gazing with rapt eyes at the quaint old harpsichord which had belonged to ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... the latter's lips as the truant returned to his post. A tender gracious smile was the only sign of displeasure ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... stood in the park watching the game, which proved not so interesting as he had anticipated. "Shall we go to school?" he asked. "We shall have time to get there before it opens." "No," I replied; "you have persuaded me to come here, and now I shall stay." We both did. I never played truant again after this day. Did the schoolmaster become acquainted with this breach of discipline? No; or I am afraid he would not have given me such a testimonial as I ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... our Evils wou'd be remov'd, yet I am convinc'd, neither of these important Points will be minded, till we are forc'd to get better Notions of Things, by seeing the Nation ruin'd by the want of them, as often as a Boy at School is whipt for playing the Truant, before he ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... daughters could peaceably stitch and overcast a seam, instead of over-sewing and felling it. I know women who feel to this moment as if to sit down and read a book of a week-day, in the daytime, were playing truant to the needle, though all the sewing-machines on the one hand, and all the demand and supply of mental culture on the other, of this present changed and bettered time, ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... say, I'm sure, I shouldn't like to say Why I hear your voice, so fresh and pure, In the dash of the laughing spray. Nor why the wavelets that all the while, In many a diamond-glittering file, With truant sunbeams play, Should make me remember your rippling smile— I shouldn't like ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... It was a long, long time; and never a word from the truant since the day she had left the village. Martha had waited, at first impatiently, then anxiously, and finally with a pathetic hopefulness that was more than half assumed. It was she who had insisted that Tony must go to the office every day, and during those long years, every ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... indeed myself," answered Owen, smiling as he spoke. "Most grateful I am for the kind way in which you have received me, after I had played truant so many long years; but I could not have come back before, unless you had sent for me, and I have received no letters since ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... corner Sits greeting on a stool, And sair the laddie rues Playing truant frae the school; Then ye'll learn frae silly Sandy, Wha's gotten sic a fright, To do naething through the day That may gar ye greet ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... have been wrong, and left his house and family. He was sought and awaited in vain. Bertrande spent the first month in vainly expecting his return, then she betook herself to prayer; but Heaven appeared deaf to her supplications, the truant returned not. She wished to go in search of him, but the world is wide, and no single trace remained to guide her. What torture for a tender heart! What suffering for a soul thirsting for love! What sleepless nights! What restless ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a boy who had been playing truant and the Jews' harp at the same time, in a subdued and melancholy way under the window, and who had, doubtless, been bribed to undertake his present commission through some extraordinary means, entered the school-room, and laid on my desk a note from the auburn-haired fisherman. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... Senior, had been an Irish politician of considerable ability and some prominence on the East River side of the city. The boy's early education had been picked up in the streets (his father had got the truant officer his position) and it was thorough. Later he had received a more theoretical training in the University of New York, but I think it was his early education which stuck by him longest, and which, in the end, was probably the more useful of the two. ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... Austell, in Cornwall. Though poor, he contrived to send his two sons to a penny-a-week school in the neighbourhood. Jabez, the elder, took delight in learning, and made great progress in his lessons; but Samuel, the younger, was a dunce, notoriously given to mischief and playing truant. When about eight years old he was put to manual labour, earning three-halfpence a day as a buddle-boy at a tin mine. At ten he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and while in this employment he endured much hardship,— living, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... playin' truant maybe. A' mind gettin' ma paiks for birdnestin' masel. I'll wager ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... swallowed up in a hum of truant inattention, and as the heralded speaker made his appearance upon the platform Claire Robson, leaning ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... one day that several of his scholars are playing truant. The morning passes and they do not arrive. At last, in the afternoon, the truants turn up. The master has a strong suspicion where they have been: however, he asks, "Why were you not at school this morning?" "Please, sir, ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... how perfectly well able he was to do his own business without assistance. Hamilton missed him, and glanced down the table with a gaze of mingled disappointment and displeasure. A few words from him might have recalled Louis, but they were not spoken, and the only impression conveyed to the poor truant was, that the friend he most cared about, in common with the rest, considered him beneath ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... faintly return the pressure of that firm, muscular hand, only feebly smile his thanks and reassurance, and then he, too, seemed floating away somewhere into space, and he could not manage to connect what Webb had been saying with the next words that fastened on his truant senses. It must have been hours later, too, for darkness had settled on the valley. A little fire was burning under the shelter of the bank. A little group of soldiers were chatting in low tone, close at hand. Among them, his arm in a sling, stood a stocky little chap whose face, ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... represent the manhood and the intellect of the race. The widespread nature of the movement may be illustrated by the school strike of the spring of 1912, during which every boy and girl above the age of fourteen in most of the primary and secondary schools of Croatia, Dalmatia, and Bosnia played truant as a protest against the misgovernment of Croatia. On that occasion a crowd of 5000 school children paraded the streets of Agram shouting "Down with Cuvaj" (the Ban or Governor of Croatia), and cheering the police when they tried ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... call in the sunrise and the sunset, the rainbow and the autumn woods and the wild flowers, and the woodpecker and the purple finch and the squirrel and the jay and the butterfly, the November traveller and the truant boy, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... US ALL, AND FRIENDS, WHOM SHE WELCOMES AS HER OWN CHILDREN:—The older sons of our common parent who should have greeted you from this chair of office, being for different reasons absent, it has become my duty to half fill the place of these honored, but truant, children to the best of my ability—a most grateful office, so far as the expression of kind feeling is concerned; an undesired duty, if I look to the comparisons you must draw between the government of the association existing de jure, and ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Fanny went to school again; but Jack played truant, as he had done in the morning, and went down in the meadows, with the boys, whom he had told Frank he was ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton
... imperturbable countenance of the mirza lightens up a little, as though infected by the khan's overflowing merriment and the mudbake's rough handling of the young goat. They know each other thoroughly—as thoroughly as orchard-looting, truant-playing, teacher-deceiving school-boys—these three hopeful aspirants to the favor of Allah; they are an amusing trio, and not a ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... forward. We abused the press-censor roundly—we were extremely indignant with him. It was so like him to lose himself the day Ladysmith was relieved. "Confound him," we muttered, and grinned guiltily. We felt as we used to feel when we were playing truant from school. ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... is getting ready his supper, and wondering what's become of him, and torturing herself with hopes that break one by one; and to-night when she goes up to his empty room, having tried to persuade herself that the truant's come back and climbed in at ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... themselves so powerless to prevent it, that they decided to appeal to the Indian Council for assistance. For a time the stern commands of the Chief were listened to and obeyed. Then they neglected his words, and about as frequently as ever they were found playing truant from their ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... this story to justify the idea that the chief had lost his first wife, Kailiokalauokekoa, unless it be the fact that he is searching Hawaii for another beauty. Perhaps, like the heroine of Halemano, the truant wife returns to her husband through jealousy of her rival's attractions. A special relation seems to exist in Hawaiian story between Kauai and the distant Puna on Hawaii, at the two extremes of the island group: it is here that Halemano ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... which, in that woman-despising country, only boys could hope to excel. One day, when she was about fourteen years old, the Princess Woo was missing from the Nestorian mission-house, by the Yellow River. Her troubled guardian, in much anxiety, set out to find the truant; and, finally, in the course of his search, climbed the high bluff from which he saw the massive walls, the many gateways, the gleaming roofs, and porcelain towers of the Imperial city of Chang-an-the City of ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... respect and gratitude. Before doing so, however, and having said much in commendation, Captain Widdrington will perhaps permit us to offer him a slight and well-intended hint in the contrary sense. When next the truant-fit comes over him, and he favours us with the result of his researches and observations in Spain or any other country—and we hope it will not be long before he does thus favour us—may he be able to devote rather more time to the mere authorship part of the work, to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... discovered and prevented her scheme. Then followed her experiences as nursery-governess, her evening lessons under self-selected masters, and her ultimate rise to a higher grade among the teaching sisterhood. Next came another epoch. To the mansion in which she was engaged returned a truant son, between whom and the heroine an attachment sprang up. The master of the house was an ambitious gentleman just knighted, who, perceiving the state of their hearts, harshly dismissed the homeless ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... when Marguerite was announced, for an open book lay on a table beside her; but it seemed to the visitor that mayhap the young girl's thoughts had played truant from her work, for her pose was listless and apathetic, and there was a look of grave ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... there came a message from the schoolmaster that the boy was absent too often. The message was repeated. Ditte could not understand it. She had a long talk with the boy, and got out of him that he often played truant. He made a pretense of going to school, hung about anywhere all day long, and only returned home when school-time was over. She said nothing of this to Lars Peter—it would only ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... was fascinated, but not convinced; and it is probable that had Marie de Medicis at this moment sufficiently controlled her feelings to remain neuter, she might, for a time at least, have retained her truant husband under the spell of her own attractions. Such, however, was not the case; and between his suspicion of being deceived by his mistress, and his irritation at being openly taunted by his wife, the King, who shrank ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... course. It goes, however, slower and slower, and curving its journey less and less, until at last its motion in remote obscurity is again so sluggish, that the sun's attraction is once more predominant, and able to recall the truant towards its realms of light. Such is the history ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... ordered abroad as yet; and Captain Dobbin had not seen George. "He was with his sister, most likely," the Captain said. "Should he go and fetch the truant?" So she gave him her hand kindly and gratefully: and he crossed the square; and she waited and waited, but George ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... boy to a path which, in view of his character, seems singularly narrow. In book after book he indulges in the same practical jokes upon parents, teachers, and all those in authority; brags, fibs, fights, plays truant, learns to swear and smoke, with the same devices and consequences; suffers from the same agonies of shyness, the same indifference to the female sex, the same awkward inclination toward particular little girls. For the ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... when (Ah, joy!) our singer For his truant string Feels with disconcerted finger, What does cricket else but fling Fiery heart forth, sound the note Wanted ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... of refugee and "skedaddler" life abroad during the war ever published, its preservation may one day be useful in the socialistic archives of the South, to whose posterity slavery will seem almost a mythical thing. With as little bias in the second tale, I have etched the young Northern truant abroad during the secession. The closing tale, more recently written, in the midst of constant toil and travel, is an attempt to recall an old suburb, now nearly erased and illegible by the extension of a great city, and may be considered a home American picture ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... To scratch and write Upon a three-legged stool; Nor mourn the joys Of truant boys Who ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne |
