"Vagabond" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Romans, among whom eloquence always has been held in the greatest veneration, shall have a higher place in my regard than that of the Spartans and Athenians. It is not to be supposed that the founders of cities could have made a united people of a vagabond multitude without the charms of persuasive words, nor that law-givers, without extraordinary talent for speaking, could have forced men to bend their necks to the yoke of the laws. Even the precepts of moral life, tho engraved on our ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... sitting up all night and have a light in your window, the constable will ring the bell, but if you happen to be lying dead in somebody's area, you will be left alone. In this instance, as in many others, the alarm was raised by some kind of vagabond; I don't mean a common tramp, or a public-house loafer, but a gentleman, whose business or pleasure, or both, made him a spectator of the London streets at five o'clock in the morning. This individual was, as he said, 'going home,' it did not appear whence or whither, and ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... Vagabond.' Piozzi's Synonymy, ii. 358. Mme. D'Arblay (Memoirs of Dr. Burney, ii. 258) says,—'General Paoli diverted us all very much by begging leave of Mrs. Thrale to give one toast, and then, with smiling pomposity, pronouncing "The great Vagabond."' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... ridiculous are the details of the Plot as disclosed by Oates. Would the Jesuits, even if they had formed such plans, confide them to a penniless, friendless vagabond; a man of notoriously bad character, who was, while at St. Omers, the butt and laughing stock of the whole college? Such secrets are not usually revealed to any but tried men, and the Jesuits were the last of all conspirators to bestow their confidence rashly. Yet here was ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... I can never have anything in common with a woman as beautiful and as young as you. My only ambition—and this can offend no one—would have been to devote myself to you. But how to have such happiness? I, a vagabond, with nothing but my old sword, my old hat, and my pink hose! Ah! well, by a chance which I at first blessed, Colonel Rutler to-night mistook me for him they call your husband; this mistake might be useful to you. Judge of my joy—I could save the man ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... you keep us waiting in the rain for?" said Schwartz, as he walked in, throwing his umbrella in Gluck's face. "Ay! what for, indeed, you little vagabond?" said Hans, administering an educational box on the ear, as he followed his ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... people, will be necessitated either to emigrate, buy food, beg it, or starve. The negro has no means to buy, and begging will not avail him anything. He will then be compelled to emigrate, which, in his case, is usually equivalent to turning vagabond, or, induced by his necessities, resort to organized banding to steal, rob, and plunder. I am at a loss to know why the government has not adopted some system for the immediate relief and protection of this oppressed and suffering people, whose late social changes have ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... wife with great wealth and many children—the number of the latter being indicated by the next card to it; it also signifies a purse of gold—but where? Oh, where? Nine of diamonds indicates simply a vagabond, full of vexation and disappointment; eight of diamonds shows an enemy to marriage, who may, however, 'marry late,' and find himself in a terrible 'fix;' seven of diamonds is worse still, portending all the horrors of the divorce court and the bankruptcy court—conjugal ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... my food, captain, without chewing," returned the vagabond, with the low exultation of an accomplished villain, as he eagerly seized the silver. "Make this Mexican twenty, and I will ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... willingness with which some men revert to an aimless life can best be accounted for by the savage or barbarian instincts of our natures. The West has produced many types of the vagabond,—it might be excusable to say, won them from every condition of society. From the cultured East, with all the advantages which wealth and educational facilities can give to her sons, they flocked; from the South, with her pride of ancestry, they ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... this was something which had never come within the range of their limited gastronomical experience, they asked me for a piece to taste. Knowing well what the result would be, I gave the whole cucumber to the dirtiest, worst-looking vagabond in the party, and motioned to him to take a good bite. As he put it to his lips his comrades watched him with breathless curiosity to see how he liked it. For a moment his face wore an expression ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... pockets, the centuries behind, creation ahead. You do not know what it is to hunger after the power of understanding and the power of expression; to see the world as divine one minute and a mechanic hell the next; to feel the convictions of the vagabond; to grudge each sunbeam that falls unseen by you on some mouldering gate in some neglected city, each face of the living wherein possible life looks out untried by you, each picture that means a new curiosity. No, for, after all, you are material ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... laughing at us," said the townsmen to each other. "He is a born fool—or say rather a vagabond impostor and a drunkard. He has over-drunk himself with wine. It were a sin and a shame to give him so much as a crumb of ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... too) I dare say not; your vanity has certainly a better taste. And can then the censure of such critics move you?" And Warburton, who had probably been exasperated in the same way, called his History of England the nonsense of a vagabond Scot. ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... manner of diseases, that he might range over the world, and reform all distressed states and persons, as he would himself. He might reduce those wandering Tartars in order, that infest China on the one side, Muscovy, Poland, on the other; and tame the vagabond Arabians that rob and spoil those eastern countries, that they should never use more caravans, or janissaries to conduct them. He might root out barbarism out of America, and fully discover Terra Australis Incognita, find out the north-east ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... delicate sarcasm he narrated the last weeks, the patience with which Cronshaw bore the well-meaning clumsiness of the young student who had appointed himself his nurse, and the pitifulness of that divine vagabond in those hopelessly middle-class surroundings. Beauty from ashes, he quoted from Isaiah. It was a triumph of irony for that outcast poet to die amid the trappings of vulgar respectability; it reminded Leonard Upjohn of Christ among the Pharisees, and ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... he should be sober, and should be made acquainted with the nature of the offer made to his daughter. The only danger, she said, lay in the fellow she had formerly mentioned, who, though a beggar and a vagabond, had, by some means or other, she knew not what, procured himself tolerable cloaths, and past for a gentleman. "Now," says she, "as I have, for the sake of my cousin, made it my business to enquire after this fellow, I have luckily found out his lodgings;" with which she then acquainted his lordship. ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... town he was challenged by a soldier, who, having learned he had no passport, carried him before a magistrate, by whom he was forthwith condemned as a vagabond, and remitted to the custody of a recruiting sergeant. This worthy, in turn, introduced him to the commanding officer, who politely gave our traveller the choice of serving his Imperial and Apostolic ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... follow such a cowardly action. Had he not stolen the mare, I should have cared little about his running away, but I am short of riding horses and have a great deal for them to do during the time I am surveying and examining the country. The vagabond went off just as the heavy work was beginning, and it was principally for that work that I engaged him. He put on a pair of new boots, leaving those he had been wearing, evidently intending to push the mare ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... said, "Are not his brethren still with us?" It is true that it is still not real enough. The dresses are too beautiful—everything is conventional. We have here not the real Christ, the Jew, the outcast and the vagabond. For him we must wait till Vereschagin or some other realist painter may bring us reality. But even behind all the despisers of conventional Christian art, we have at least a sufficiently human figure to elicit ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... "The young vagabond! He has left the sheep. Of great worth are his promises! He would keep my flock. 'Come life—come death!' Dahvid! Let me once find him and I will give him something he will remember longer than he ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... which seemed in your behalf, was partly from the strange insanity of which I have spoken, and partly from the most meaningless caprice! That, if you remain here till to-morrow, you may see me in the arms of the man I really love, and that he may not be as careless of the fate of a vagabond rebel as I am. And now, Captain Crayton, or Dayton, or Peyton, or whatever you please, of somebody or other's light horse, go or stay, as you choose; you're as welcome as any other casual passer-by, ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... out and falling back to her side with automatic regularity, and still the little figure pranced, and gesticulated, and blew kisses to right and left, at one moment a merry Irish vagabond, at the next a French marionette—all smirks ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... accustomed to consider the Gypsy as a wandering outcast, incapable of appreciating the blessings of a settled and civilised life, or - if abandoning vagabond propensities, and becoming stationary - as one who never ascends higher than the condition of a low trafficker, will be surprised to learn, that amongst the Gypsies of Moscow there are not a few who inhabit stately houses, go abroad in elegant equipages, and are behind the ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... acute and singular book of physiognomy, hath made no mention of chiromancy: yet I believe the Egyptians, who were nearer addicted to those abstruse and mysti- cal sciences, had a knowledge therein: to which those vagabond and counterfeit Egyptians did after pretend, and perhaps retained a few corrupted principles, which sometimes might ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... he spoke to her, or begged of her, she'd be so frightened! There, he looked at her, and she gave such a start. You little vagabond! I'd like to—' ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... chiselled. He knew the mot juste, the happy figure, the pat allusion. His touch was light; his address could be almost courtly, so that, on suddenly looking up, you would feel a vague surprise to behold in the speaker, not a polished man of the world in his dress-suit, but this beery old one-eyed vagabond in tatters. It was strange to witness his transitions. At one moment he would be holding high discourse of Goethe, and translating illustrative passages into classic French; at the next, whining about la deche, and begging for a petite salete de vingt sous, ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... the open fire, at a point where she could easily reach the tongs for the adjusting of any vagabond stick, and Cap'n Oliver Drown, in the opposite angle, held dominion over the poker. No one else would Miss Letitia have admitted to partnership in the managing of her fire; but Cap'n Oliver wielded an undisputed privilege. The poker suited him because he had a way, in the heat of friendly ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... shared the flavor of that secret of the vagabond lady of long ago who had devised this ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... wicker flask from the wall, passed into her brother's bedroom, and came out with a flannel shirt, overalls, and a coarse Indian blanket, and, reopening the door, placed them before the astonished and delighted vagabond. His eye glistened; he began, "Glory be to God," but for once his habitual extravagance failed him. Nature triumphed with a more eloquent silence over his well-worn art. He hurriedly wiped his begrimed face and eyes with the shirt she had given him, and catching the sleeve of her ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the only reason she had even considered such an unusual bargain was her contempt for him. He was one who, when he might have remained respected and useful, had deliberately thrown away his chances to become a sot and vagabond. ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... seen a vagabond who really liked to roam All up and down the streets of the world and not to have a home: The tramp who slept in your barn last night and left at break of day Will wander only until he ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer
... need should arise. You know that in our good city there are plenty of handsome men. From amongst these choose one only, and be content to do with him whatever nature may incline you to do. At all events, I wish that in making your choice you should take particular care that he is not a vagabond, or dishonest, or disreputable person, for great dangers might arise from your acquaintance with such a person, inasmuch as he would, without ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... simple credulity of poor Concho that made him uneasy. Not that his moral consciousness was touched, but he feared that Concho's companions might, knowing Concho's simplicity, instantly suspect him of trading upon it. He rode on in a deep study. Was he reviewing his past life? A vagabond by birth and education, a swindler by profession, an outcast by reputation, without absolutely turning his back upon respectability, he had trembled on the perilous edge of criminality ever since his boyhood. He did not scruple to cheat these ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... The gallant vagabond, Ned Bannister, who enthralls the heroine's fancy, against her will, is reputed to be a lawless desperado of the worst type. Yet the reader joins with the wholly delightful young heroine in yielding him full sympathy. ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... associated with Blois is Francois Villon. A loafer and a vagabond he was, and a thief he may have been, yet by reason of his genius and for the beauty of his song this troubadour was welcomed to the literary court of Charles d'Orleans. That Villon received substantial ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... to her gate. You know my vagabond and restless habits. If I should prowl about the streets a long time, don't be uneasy; I shall reappear in the morning. You go ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... Having been guilty of one act of insubordination, she determined to be consistent, and throw off the yoke altogether. She declared that she would do no such thing; that her life and that all our lives were in danger; and that she would never stay another night under the same roof with that Papist vagabond. ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... some remarks on that great curious centre and secret of all the nomadic and vagabond life in England, THE ROMMANY, with comments on the fact, that of the many novel or story-writers who have described the "Travellers" of the Roads, very few have penetrated the real nature of their life. It gives several incidents illustrating the ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... thir Petition, then when th' ancient Pair 10 In Fables old, less ancient yet then these, Deucalion and chaste Pyrrha to restore The Race of Mankind drownd, before the Shrine Of Themis stood devout. To Heav'n thir prayers Flew up, nor missed the way, by envious windes Blow'n vagabond or frustrate: in they passd Dimentionless through Heav'nly dores; then clad With incense, where the Golden Altar fum'd, By thir great Intercessor, came in sight Before the Fathers Throne: Them the glad Son 20 Presenting, thus to intercede began. See Father, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... take up her journey and her duty: her holiday would be at its end. It was all the greater reason why this evening should be memorable. He should think of her afterward as he saw her to-night, and it pleased her that in the irresponsibility of the maskers she should appear to him in the garb of vagabond liberty, since in fact ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... child, and that I lounged about the streets, insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed. I know that, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... explored, is ever on some fresh trail, knows something important will happen a little farther on, gazes with the true wonder-seeing eyes, whatever the spot or whatever the road finds it good to be there,—in short, is just that happy, delicious, excursive vagabond that touches one at so many points, and whose human prototype in a companion robs miles and leagues of ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... language, and the multifarious significations of some of our words. A French gentleman, who dined in London, in company with the celebrated author of the Rambler, wishing to show him a mark of peculiar respect, drank Dr. Johnson's health in these words: "Your health, Mr. Vagabond." Assuredly no well-judging Englishman would undervalue the Frenchman's abilities, because he mistook the meaning of the words Vagabond and Rambler; he would recollect, that in old English and modern French authors, vagabond means wanderer: des eaux vagabondes ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... and necks, and for churned milke we gaue them bread and pomgranat peeles, wherewith they vse to tanne their goats skinnes which they churne withall. [Sidenote: The Arabian women weare golde rings in their nostrels.] Their haire, apparell, and colour are altogether like to those vagabond Egyptians, which heretofore haue gone about in England. Their women all without exception weare a great round ring in one of their nostrels, of golde, siluer, or yron, according to their ability, and about their armes and smalles of their legs they haue hoops of golde, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... sunset on Sunday. All work, all trading, all amusement, and all worldly conversation were absolutely prohibited during those hours. A thoughtless maid servant who for some earthly reason smiled in church was in danger of being banished as a vagabond. Robert Pike, a devout Puritan, thinking the sun had gone to rest, ventured forth on horseback one Sunday evening and was luckless enough to have a ray of light strike him through a rift in the clouds. The next day he was ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... vagabond red men of to-day, the Osages were of that character that a white man would much prefer not to meet them in a lonely place, unless help was present or within call. If they should come across the two boys, their treatment of them would ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... said. "Man, if you dare to cross the Border you will be whipped at a cart-tail and clapped into Bedlam as a crazy vagabond." ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... needed no help, that is, if you had beat us yesterday. And now the rascal pretends he was all the while proposing the King's service, and, for aught I know, the council will receive his pretext for current coin, for he knows how to make friends among them—and a dozen scores of poor vagabond fanatics will be shot, or hanged, while this cunning scoundrel lies hid under the double cloak of loyalty, well-lined with the ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... a Shanghai hospital. I was sitting beside an American newspaper friend who was at the head of the Chinese Information Bureau. He was a world-vagabond. Beside his bed sat a beautiful Chinese girl, who had been educated in England and whose mother was a Scotch woman. Her father ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... but little of the world if you do not know that such is the law. The vagabond who sins from circumstances may have in him the making of a saint, and his children may be saints; but with those who sin in spite of the good around them it is not so. For them and for their children is ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... the chief officers of the garrison, and a considerable convoy of Germans and Rascians. The emperor has several regiments of these people; but, to say the truth, they are rather plunderers than soldiers; having no pay, and being obliged to furnish their own arms and horses; they rather look like vagabond gypsies, or stout beggars, than regular troops. I cannot forbear speaking a word of this race of creatures, who are very numerous all over Hungary. They have a patriarch of their own at Grand Cairo, and are really of the Greek church; but ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... two work-houses. They may not be of great expense at ornamenting, but appropriate, substantial, fitted every way to their use. Then fill them with this vagabond population now floating back and forth between the establishments catering to vice and the jails. Give them really corrective sentences. Modify essentially this short-time-sentence system. If one's wrong habits are not corrected ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... de Nuit is a large stone building where pauper and vagabond may get a bed for a week, provided their papers are in order and they can persuade the friars in charge that they are workingmen. Captain Nichols noticed Strickland for his size and his singular appearance among ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... the night, until the sixth day after our departure from the ship. By that time we were both considerably changed in health and appearance. Our clothes were torn to rags, our feet and arms were torn and bleeding, and our vagabond air increased with every mile we covered. Of our looks, however, we thought nothing; but we were perforce obliged to think a good deal of our unfortunate stomachs, which had not been either filled or reasonably satisfied since we set foot in those regions. Hunger ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... sure, it had not always been so, but Paul had outlived his vagabond days and had become thoroughly domesticated; yet there had been a time in his youth when the wandering spirit had filled his soul, when the love of adventure had lent wings to his feet, and the glory of romance had lured him to the lights and shadows ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... ungracious and reserved. He was of medium height, rather thin and angular in figure, and when seated he seemed much taller than he really was.[9] He was very restless, and inherited from his native land, Dauphine, the mountaineer's passion for walking and climbing, and the love of a vagabond life, which remained with him nearly to his death.[10] He had an iron constitution, but he wrecked it by privation and excess, by his walks in the rain, and by sleeping out-of-doors in all weathers, even when there was snow ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... him, and also with the opportunity it would afford him of bringing about a marriage between Asenath and Joseph. But when he disclosed his plan to his daughter, she rejected it with indignation. "Why shouldst thou desire to see me united with a vagabond, a slave," she cried out, "one that does not even belong to our nation, but is the son of a Canaanitish herdsman, a fellow that attempted to violate the honor of his mistress, and in punishment for ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... "Vagabond! Do you think a sleeping potion will give peace to me? Speak again of Calchas, and ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... frankly said that he had come to Tahiti to preach the gospel of I. W. W.-ism and that he believed the fishermen had all the right on their side, he was sentenced as "a foreigner without visible means of support, a vagrant, miscreant, vagabond, and dangerous alien," to a month on the roads, and then to be deported to the United States, whence he ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... before you ask a blessing, "How much work have I done to-day for my dinner?" But the proper way to enforce that order on those below you, as well as on yourselves, is not to leave vagabonds and honest people to starve together, but very distinctly to discern and seize your vagabond; and shut your vagabond up out of honest people's way, and very sternly then see that, until he has worked, he does not eat. But the first thing is to be sure you have the food to give; and, therefore, to enforce the organization ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... Cassowary, whom his sister met clandestinely and kissed—the kiss rankled! And yet it was nothing against Cassowary that he had been following Hood about like an infatuated fool. Deering knew himself to be equally culpable on that score, and he was even now trudging after the hypnotic vagabond with a country calaboose as their common goal. The chauffeur's interview with Constance had evidently cheered him mightily, and he joined his voice to Hood's in a very fair rendering of "Ben Bolt." Deering swore under his breath, angry at Hood, and ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... "Pioneers of France." ] Brbeuf, from the first, turned his eyes towards the distant land of the Hurons,—a field of labor full of peril, but rich in hope and promise. Le Jeune's duties as Superior restrained him from wanderings so remote. His apostleship must be limited, for a time, to the vagabond hordes of Algonquins, who roamed the forests of the lower St. Lawrence, and of whose language he had been so sedulous a student. His difficulties had of late been increased by the absence of Pierre, who had run off as Lent drew near, standing in dread of that season ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... the North Pole with one of the expeditions. To do and be all of these he had to be a manly man. Not in a month's journey would you meet a truer thoroughbred, a more agreeable chap, a more polished vagabond, than Hollingsworth Chase, first lieutenant in Dame Fortune's army. Tall, good looking, rawboned, cheerful, gallant, he was the true comrade of those merry, reckless volunteers from all lands who find commissions in Fortune's army and serve her faithfully. He had ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... of human nature it was when the banker and the vagabond sat together in that little drawing-room, facing each other,—one in the armchair, one on the sofa! Darvil was still employed on some cold meat, and was making wry faces at the very indifferent brandy which he had frightened the formal old servant into buying ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not make him shudder, but it had made of him what he was in the eyes of respectable people, a man careless of common decencies, something between a clever vagabond and a disreputable doctor. But not all respectable people would have had the necessary delicacy of sentiment to understand with what trouble of mind and accuracy of vision Dr. Monygham, medical officer of the San Tome mine, remembered Father Beron, army chaplain, and once a secretary of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... beetles, "this fellow that we have received into our family is nothing but a complete vagabond. He has gone away and left his wife a burden ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... suffered enough already from having so much concerns with the rig'lars," replied the housekeeper. "He has lost his all, and made himself a vagabond through the land; and I have reason to rue the day I ever crossed the ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... lived so long in the Quarter he looks at life from the Parisian angle. His knowledge of literature is such that he might be a Professor, but he would rather be a vagabond of letters. We talk shop. We discuss the American short story, but MacBean vows they do these things better in France. He says that some of the contes printed every day in the Journal are worthy of Maupassant. After ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... yet, if he has no strong impulse towards civilization, no motive in his heart impelling him to be an industrious, self-supporting citizen—in short, if he has not a new heart looking to a new life as a citizen and a man, he will become a vagabond on the land granted him, and a skeptic in the school in which he is taught. The next few years will constitute a crisis in the rapidly changing condition of the Indian, and it is precisely at this point where the vital ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various
... had drunk water only for the first five-and-twenty years of his life; but now indulged himself in beastly crapulence with the dregs of society, and scarcely ever took off his clothes by day or night. After one year therefore spent at Bale, he resumed his former vagabond life, and, having passed through many vicissitudes, some of them of the most abject poverty, he died at the age ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... habit of industry. There would be all the difference between the listless and disgustful labour of enforced time-work, and a labour in part prompted by the hope of expediting the term of release. An idle vagabond might thus be disciplined and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... understood to-day; but if Dorothea submits to the rigorous discipline enforced upon her, she will make a woman of iron fibre who will flinch from no hardship and will leave no task undone. Happily she did submit to it. The alternative would have been to return to her half-vagabond father. Too much discipline or too little was her destiny. She preferred to take the medicine in excess, and in the end ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... him that he was only a lazy vagabond himself, for he never did hardly any work, and that since he had been made constable the place had not been big enough to hold him. But there, I can't stop talking here; I have got to get your tea. What am I to say to Martha about your ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... Friday, I think, that story was also made as clear as daylight to us; for being banished out of the town as a common thief and vagabond, down on the Musselburgh road, by order of a justice of the peace, it was the bounden duty of Daniel Search and Geordie Sharp to see her safe past the kennel, the length of Smeaton. They then tried to make her ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... hear the wind blowing; hear it knock at every man's door and shout down every man's chimney. Feel how it takes liberties with everything, having taken primary liberty for itself; feel that the wind is always a vagabond and sometimes almost a housebreaker. But remember that in the days when free men had charters, they held that the wind itself was wild by authority; and was only free because it had ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... benighted. But, sun, moon, and stars abstracted or concealed, the night-faring inhabitant had to fall back—we speak on the authority of old prints—upon stable lanthorns two storeys in height. Many holes, drilled in the conical turret-roof of this vagabond Pharos, let up spouts of dazzlement into the bearer's eyes; and as he paced forth in the ghostly darkness, carrying his own sun by a ring about his finger, day and night swung to and fro and up and down about his footsteps. Blackness haunted his path; he was beleaguered by goblins ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Faiter, vagabond, Fare, sb., ado, commotion, Faren, pp., treated, Faute, lack,; fauted, lacked, Fealty, oath of fidelity, Fear, frighten, Feute, trace, track, Feuter, set in rest, couch, Feutred, set in socket, Fiaunce, affiance, promise, Flang, flung,; ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... will place the shoe that is left in the fireplace, and to-night the Christ Child will put in a rod to whip you when you wake. And to-morrow you shall have nothing to eat but water and dry bread, and we shall see if the next time you will give away your shoe to the first vagabond that comes along." ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... ago my daughter the Dona Jovita picked you up, a wandering vagabond, in the streets of the Mission. (Aside.) He does not seem ashamed. (Aloud.) She—she—ahem! The ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... self-improvement, or any intelligent appreciation of the cardinal principles of morality. If the child is a boy, he leaves his parents almost as soon as he can earn his own support and only too often leads for years the life of a vagabond. All the worst impulses of his nature are further encouraged by this wandering and irresponsible existence. Is it strange that, under the operation of this influence alone, the number of black criminals in the Southern states is increased ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... took place during voyages between England and America, I dedicate this book to the Vagabond Club of London, and the Witenagemote Club of Detroit, in the hope that, if any one charges me with telling a previously told tale, the fifty members of each club will rise as one man and testify that they ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... five acts, by MM. Dennery and Marc Fournier, produced at the Gaiete in November, was one of the greatest hits during the latter part of 1850. The character of the conventional French mountebank, Paillasse, the vagabond juggler of fairs and streets, was regarded as one of the finest creations of Frederic Lemaitre, and in one of the Christmas revues a symbol of the piece passed before the eyes of the audience as one ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... Requiem Acquiesce Ambidextrous Inoculate Divulge Proper Appropriate Omnivorous Voracious Devour Escritoire Mordant Remorse Miser Hilarious Exhilarate Rudiment Erudite Mark Marquis Libel Libretto Vague Vagabond Extravagant ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Possessor; but, henceforth, no man must ever see or hear such a thing. And although any King, or Prince, should (which God I hope will not permit) cast, me into Prison, I would not, after the manner of Circumforanean Physicians [or Mountebanks] or Vagabond Impostors or of poor Alchimists, directly, or indirectly, discover the Art to them, but would rather suffer my self to be most cruelly wracked, tortured, or tormented with burning Fire, untill my ...
— The Golden Calf, Which the World Adores, and Desires • John Frederick Helvetius
... is amusing himself at the expense of our crony, the torconnier," said Louis XI. to his barber, a few days before the festival of All-Saints. "He says he has been robbed again, but he can't hang anybody this time unless he hangs himself. The old vagabond came and asked me if, by chance, I had carried off a string of rubies he wanted to sell me. 'Pasques-Dieu! I don't steal what I can take,' I ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... which Jupe clung to this consolation, rejecting the superior comfort of knowing on a sound arithmetical basis that her father was an unnatural vagabond, filled Mr. Gradgrind with pity. Yet, what was to be done? Mr. M'Choakumchild reported that she had a very dense head for figures; that, once possessed with a general idea of the globe, she took the smallest conceivable interest in its ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... don't say! My very choicest piece of property. Well-well! who will believe in religion, after that? He came to my sick chamber, the black vagabond did, and prayed as piously as a white man. And it went right to my heart; and I felt that if I died it would a' been the means o' savin my soul from all sorts of things infernal," says the recovering M'Fadden. He, the black preacher, is only a nigger after all; and his owner will ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales. Shakespeare's Sonnets. Locke's "Beloved Vagabond." Selections from R.L.S. Pater's "Marius the Epicurean." Alfred de Musset's "Premieres Poesies." Baedeker's "United States." Road ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... exaggerate their inanity; they themselves will make us sufficiently sensible of it, thanks to our sick wet-blanket mind, that puts us out of taste with them as with itself; it treats both itself and all it receives, one while better, and another worse, according to its insatiable, vagabond, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Rabisson, a vagabond tinker and knife-grinder. He was the only person who knew about "the gold-mine" left to the "miller of Grenoble." Rabisson was murdered for his secret by Eusebe Noel, the schoolmaster of Bout des Monde.—E. Stirling, The Gold Mine, or Miller of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... his studies. Only for a pained look which sometimes latterly shot into his eyes, as he worked at the bench, or as he walked alone in the street, one would have imagined that he was thoroughly enjoying the half-vagabond existence. ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... entered; but shortly afterwards they came on board in sufficient numbers; and I have sometimes ascribed the facility with which we got the ship manned, not a little to the attractive agency of the diverting vagabond, recently come from town, the fame of whose tricks soon extended over Portsea; such as catching hold of the end of the sail-maker's ball of twine, and paying the whole overboard, hand over hand, from a secure station in the rigging; ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... Eight years afterwards, namely, in July, 1846, this lawless vagabond waylaid and shot my brother James, having concealed ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... to his idle habits, and was never out of the streets from his companions. This course he followed till he was fifteen years old, without giving his mind to any useful pursuit, or the least reflection on what would become of him. In this situation, as he was one day playing with his vagabond associates, a stranger passing by stood to ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... have kept yourself in comfort to the end of your days; but it all went in drink and debauchery, and now you abuse the government for not looking after you. Howsumdever, Tom Fletcher, I'm very sorry for you, and if you'll knock off this sort of vagabond life, which brings disgrace on the name of a British sailor, I'll answer for it our good captain will exert his influence and get you a berth in Greenwich or elsewhere, for he has often spoken about you, and ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... "As for this vagabond being superintendent of a mining concession up in Bolivia," continued Landover, absentmindedly sticking Mr. Nicklestick's precious, box of matches into his own pocket, "that's all poppycock. He's an out-and-out adventurer. You can't fool me. I've handled too many men in my ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... again or turning round, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch went on his way. But the persistent vagabond did not leave him even now, though now, it is true, he did not chatter, and even respectfully kept his ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Dudden, and they were soon grumbling as usual, and all to the tune of "If only we could get that vagabond Donald O'Neary out of ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... vice. By the time I was twenty there was no better cow-hand in the entire country. I could, besides, speak Spanish and play the fiddle, and thought nothing of riding thirty miles to a dance. The vagabond temperament of the ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... growing impatient. 'A fit tale for ignorant peasants,' he declared. 'Me it doth not deceive. This is but another English vagabond sent hither by that old jackal Sir Thomas Bendish, their Ambassador at Constantinople, to dog my footsteps even here, and report my doings to him. I will not see her, were she ten times a witch, since she is of his nation and surely comes ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... another. He unbent enough to tell me that he had been an athlete, when he was a young man, a professional foot-racer in Eastern Canada. And then his disease had come upon him, and for a quarter of a century he had been a common tramp and vagabond, and he bragged of a personal acquaintance with more city prisons and county jails than any ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... still stood on or about the scaffolding, which was being removed by carpenters, telling how the Duke of Brunswick and the Margrave of Brandenburg had charged one another amid the sound of drums and of trumpets, and how Lord Walter the Vagabond had knocked the Knight of the Bear out of his saddle so violently that the splinters of the lances flew high into the air, while the tall, fair-haired King Max, standing among his courtiers upon the balcony, rubbed his hands for ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... knew his character," said Mr. Preston; "but are there not good boys enough in the neighborhood for you to associate with—boys that have always lived here and are well known—without your cultivating the acquaintance of every straggler and vagabond that comes along? I wish you would not make yourself so intimate with Tom, Dick, and Harry, before you know anything about them. I 've cautioned you against this a good many times, and now I hope ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... I would save thee from the life of an outlaw or vagabond, and foresaw that unless I renounced thee utterly, thy love would mar thy fortunes, and bring thee back ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... years of quarrelling, which culminated in personal violence on her husband's part, she obtained a judicial separation. For a long time the man had ceased to send her money, and indeed he was become a vagabond pauper, from whom nothing could be obtained; she depended upon her son, and on the kindness of Buncombe, who asked no rent. If she could earn a little money by work, she would be much happier, and with tremulous hope she had taken this step of ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... breakfast. And if he perished in a sudden brawl, it was at a time when everyone wore arms, and swords and daggers were readily drawn in the commonest quarrels. Nor should it be forgotten that he belonged to a "vagabond" class, half-outlawed and denounced by the clergy; that the drama was only then in its infancy; that it was difficult to earn bread by writing even immortal plays; and that irregularity of life was natural in a career whose penury was only diversified by haphazard successes. After all is said, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... Connel, but the natives called him Berry; he was born in the county of Clare, in Ireland; had run away from school when he was a little fellow, and after wandering about as a vagabond, was pressed into the army in the first Irish rebellion. At the time the French landed in Ireland, the regiment to which he was attached marched at once against the enemy, and soon arrived on the field of battle, where they were brought to the charge. The first thing he knew or heard, ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... "Who is he?" Often did his life hang upon his lip, and none lamented over him.)—"On the other hand, I reflect on the exultation of my rivals, saying, They will scoffingly sneer behind my back, and impute my zeal in behalf of my family to a want of humanity.—Do but behold that graceless vagabond who can never witness the face of good fortune. He will consult the ease of his own person and abandon to distress his wife and children.—And, as is known, I have some small skill in the science of accounts. If, through your respected interest, any office ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... surrounding a decrepit sun (and therefore it is to be hoped uninhabited), and that those planets had been reduced to vapor and sent spinning by the encounter, the second outburst of light being caused by an outlying planet of the system falling a prey to the vagabond destroyer? Or some may prefer the explanation, based on a theory of Wilsing's, that two great bodies, partially or wholly opaque and non-luminous at their surfaces, but liquid hot within, approached one another so closely that the tremendous strain of their tidal attraction burst their shells ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... he answered, emphatically, "for as proper a fellow as ever I met in all my vagabond days. Barring his primness he would have proved a gallant"—he was going to say "pirate," but paused in time and said "seaman." "God pardon him for a Puritan," he went on, "for he has in him the making of ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of fighting men. We must look like ruffians, but we are honest folk. If our faces do not inspire much confidence, it is simply because our stomachs are so empty. And no one more resembles a vagabond than a poor wretch who is dying with hunger. You will not know us again after we have had a few words with the pot which gave out such a ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... impostor! You beggar and vagabond! You do not possess an onza of gold," roared Garcia, bursting forth into a fit of vituperation. "Don't listen to him; don't heed him; it's a trick—a plan. I take possession. The money was to be paid this morning, and it is not paid, so I ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... into tolerance of the Judge's picturesque vices, while Miss Betty, lovely and capricious, is charmed into placing all her affairs, both material and sentimental, in the hands of this delightful old vagabond. ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... no artificial manner—as a rhythmical form is rehabilitated, or as a dilettante re-establishes for a moment the vogue of the roundel or the virelay—but quite naturally as the inevitable setting for a picture which has to include the actors and the observations of the author's vagabond life. To a clear and unprejudiced mind, observation of the life of the common folk and, above all, of the itinerant population and of their equivocal moral code, of necessity and invariably, compels resort to the form and ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... old man, is none of your business," said the vagabond; "his lordship following the custom of royalty to vassals, gives me a coat from his own back, and your duty as serf is not to ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... scrutiny over the young plants was a pleasant sight, in the author's eager interest and genial sympathy of the Judge." But alas! neither jurist nor novelist was a botanist, and the triumphantly expected melon vines basely proved after a few more days of tender nursing to be the leaves of "that vagabond weed, the wild-cucumber vine." Here too he gathered material for future books, and did much writing. Evening twilight often found him pacing the large hall, his hands behind him, his head doing active duty in decisive nods of yea and nay, and words spoken aloud for putting on paper ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... foreseen even by those who desired the greatest possible limitation of the franchise is doubtful; it is certain that many who supported it believed, in their ignorance of the practical working of electoral laws, that they were excluding from the franchise only the vagabond and worthless class which has no real place within the body politic. When the electoral lists drawn up in pursuance of the measure appeared, they astounded all parties alike. Three out of the ten millions of voters in France were disfranchised. Not only the inhabitants of whole ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... all the same it was Abbot's tacit endorsement or tolerance that enabled Hollins to hold a place among us as long as he has. If he has been sheltered under the shadow of Abbot's wing, and turns out to be a vagabond, so much the worse for the wing. All the same, I'm glad of Abbot's promotion. Wonder whose staff ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... way you may. So, all the tramps with carts or caravans—the gipsy tramp, the show tramp, the Cheap Jack—find it impossible to resist the temptations of the place, and all turn the horse loose when they come to it, and boil the pot. Bless the place, I love the ashes of the vagabond fires that have ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... among her books then, a vagabond little collection of them. Textbooks, in many cases her initials and graduating year printed in lead pencil along the edges. Rolfe's complete edition of Shakespeare. A large illustrated edition of Omar Khayyam. Several gift volumes of English poets. Complete ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... accent of her voice smote him as the edge of a sword. "Drive on, Johnson!" she sharply cried. "These vagabond people must face the General himself." Then came the insane self-sacrifice of his reckless downfall, but he had spared ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... at the period now in question usually coached or crammed the statesman at the head of the Circumlocution Office, when that noble or right honourable individual sat a little uneasily in his saddle by reason of some vagabond making a tilt at him in a newspaper, was more flush of blood than money. As a Barnacle he had his place, which was a snug thing enough; and as a Barnacle he had of course put in his son Barnacle Junior ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... first observ'd the former of these Insects, or Mites, I began to conjecture, that certainly I had found out the vagabond Parents of those Mites we find in Cheeses, Meal, Corn, Seeds, musty Barrels, musty Leather, &c. these little Creatures, wandring to and fro every whither, might perhaps, as they were invited hither and thither by the musty steams of several putrifying bodies, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... gentleman drew twenty thousand dollars in a lottery; bought more tickets, and drew again; bought more—drew more largely; then rushed down headlong until he was pronounced by the select men of the village a vagabond, and his children were picked up from the street ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... you, Lichonin," he said squeamishly. "We have gathered together in our own close company, yet you must needs drag in some vagabond. The ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... entertainment suit you? You're richer than he is, I suppose, and used to dining better! As I hope the guardian spirit of this house will be on my side, I'd have stopped his bleating long ago if I'd been sitting next to him. He's a peach, he is, laughing at others; some vagabond or other from who-knows-where, some night-pad who's not worth his own piss: just let me piss a ring around him and he wouldn't know where to run to! I ain't easy riled, no, by Hercules, I ain't, but worms breed in tender flesh. Look at him laugh! What the hell's he ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... you talk to me in this way?" yelled Mrs. Maroney. "I know my business! You know why I am living here, and supporting you and your worthless, good for nothing vagabond of a husband. He could never earn a living for himself, to say nothing of taking care of a family. All I want you to do is to obey me and keep your mouths shut, and I will pay you well for it; Josh. is ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... the way in which God usually speaks to men. He asked Adam a question, and Adam hid himself; he asked Cain a question, and Cain became a vagabond in ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... This course he followed till he was fifteen years old, without giving his mind to any useful pursuit, or the least reflection on what would become of him. In this situation, as he was one day playing according to custom in the street, with his vagabond associates, a stranger passing ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... was in all respects very desirable; and but for the depravity of the white man it might have continued uninterrupted for generations. But profligate and vagabond adventurers from the settlements defrauded the Indians, insulted their women, and often committed wanton murder. But it would seem that the majority of the traders were honest men. Ramsay, in his Annals of Tennessee, writes, in ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... disbelief in the virtues of kinship in the abstract, and a philosophical resignation to its effects upon her personally. Believing that her father and uncle fairly represented the fraternal principle, she was quite prepared for the early defection and distrust of her vagabond and dissipated brother Stephen, and accepted it calmly. True to an odd standard of justice, which she had erected from the crumbling ruins of her own domestic life, she was tolerant of everything but human perfection. This quality, however fatal to her higher growth, had given her a peculiar ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... which lasted a few hours, an influential personage generously offered to receive the eager subscriptions of the assembled thousands. Even the boys subscribed, and ere six hours had passed since his arrival as a coatless vagabond in this liberal city, Captain Popanilla found himself a person ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... was the sole professional criminal of the town,—a weak, good-natured, knock-kneed vagabond, who stole hens, and spent every winter in the House of Correction as an ...
— The Village Convict - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... of these two vagabond white men cannot be given in this place with any web of detail. They had gone through their apprenticeship amongst these African inlands as officers of the Congo Free State; they had been divorced from that service with something of suddenness; and a purist might ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... two miles from the schoolhouse. The influence of my schoolmate's mother was pure as the diamond dew he brushed from the bending grass in barefoot days. But he left the country home and the last time I saw him he was a vagabond, begging bread from negro cabin doors. Ah! mother, ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... it, my being in this condition!—I who fluttered my wings so much more than you, I whose imagination was so vagabond! My sins have been greater than yours, and I am the more severely punished. I have bidden farewell to my dreams: I am Madame la Presidente in all my glory, and I resign myself to giving my arm for forty years to my big awkward Roulandiere, to living meanly in every way, and ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... plutocrat? Let it go to the devil across lots! D—n a flag beneath which a competent and industrious mechanic cannot make a living. Anarchy? Is anarchy worse than starvation? When conditions become such that a workingman is half the time an ill-fed serf, and the other half a wretched vagabond, he's ready for a change of any kind—by any means. I am supposed to be entitled to 'Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.' I have Liberty—to starve—and I can pursue Happiness—or rainbows—to my heart's content. There's absolutely no law prohibiting my using the horns of the moon for ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... position in society. Now," continued he, "tho' I don't choose to do any of these things, yet I love the freedom, now and then, of doing just all of them if I choose, without human accountability. The truth is, that it is natural as well as necessary for every man to be a vagabond occasionally, to throw off the restraints imposed upon him by the necessities and conventionalities of civilization, and turn savage for a season,—and what place is left for such transformation, save ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... question to ask what a suspected man gains by his crime. And, if we put that question, we find that Robert Redmayne gained nothing whatever by killing Michael Pendean—nothing, that is, but the satisfaction of a sudden, overpowering lust to do so. Pendean's murder made Redmayne a vagabond, deprived him of his income and resources, set every man's hand against him and left him a wanderer haunted by the gallows. Yet, while he evaded the law in a manner that can only be called miraculous, he made no attempt to avert suspicion from himself. On the contrary he ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... Forest, I fell in with an outcast Englishman, almost as great a vagabond as myself. He was under the ban of the law for writing his father's name without license. He did not tell me that, or perhaps even I might have despised him, for I never was dishonest. But one great bond there was between us—we ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore |
