"Urchin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that in some way its structure is such that it contains the starfish potentially. The relation of its parts and the forces therein are such that, when placed under proper conditions, it develops into a starfish. Another egg placed under identical conditions will develop into a sea urchin, and another into an oyster. If these three eggs have the power of developing into three different animals under identical conditions, it is evident that they must have corresponding differences in spite of the ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... leading business men, wondering why the great centre of learning seemed so little a part of the city. To him the University seemed something entirely apart, not in tune with its surrounding. It was like an expensive ornament worn on the soiled hand of a street urchin. He did ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... the Lyric Theatre and have that poor little hungry urchin haunting me all through the show. I don't believe he's had anything to eat all day. Just see how he looks in that window, it's pathetic. Poor little fellow, he may be starving for all we know. I'm going to give him twenty-five cents; ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... was halfway down the stair, and a row of boys were standing in expectation with their backs to the forbidden place. Then, passing swiftly along, he swept off half a dozen caps and threw them over, and suddenly seizing a tempting urchin landed him on the bed of caps which had been duly prepared. Without turning his head one-eighth of an inch, far less condescending to look over, Bulldog as he passed made a mental note of the prisoner's name, and ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... the particles that were worn off during the day and replace them by night, on the soles of shoes, on the elbows of coats, and on the knees of pantaloons? If the clothes never wore out, it is fair to suppose that they remained absolutely unchanged. Imagine a toddling urchin, two years old at the exodus from Egypt, wearing the same rig when he grew up to manhood! Justin, however, says that the clothes grew with their growth. Some Jewish rabbis hold that angels acted as tailors ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... century before, Daniel Herbert, then a country urchin tending cattle on the hillside where now stood his turreted stone mansion, had decided that some day when he should be rich he would return and buy that hillside and the great reach of flat river-bottom ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... slave, In banquet or in battle, might exclaim, "For you, ye hinds, your father sold his country?" Or, would you have them live, that no man's daughter Would stoop so low as call your sons her husband? Would you behold them hooted, hissed at, Oft, as they crossed the street, by every urchin? Would ye your sons—your noble sons—met this, Eather than die for Scotland? If ye do love them, Love them ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... Love? Nay, but of lovers. Love's a lean And impecunious urchin; lovers mean Gifts, worship, triumph—Money! The Golden Apple is the fruit to witch Our modern Atalantas. To be rich, Live ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... High-street. The solitary adjuncts of the deserted promenade may be comprised in the loitering waiter at the Bugle, amusing himself with his watch-chain, and anxiously listening for the roll of some welcome carriage—the sullen urchin, reluctantly wending ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... horse away from that bucket," he directed. It was the voice of authority commanding the urchin on the curb; of seasoned seniority chiding the heedlessness ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... trade-unions were first starting, when the caricaturists lived upon Mr. GLADSTONE'S collars and the Irish Question was very much in the same state as it is to-day. We watch the hero, John Allday, developing from a Sunday-school urchin to flourishing owner of his own business and prospective alderman. Of course I admit that this synopsis does not sound peculiarly thrilling; also that as a tale it is by now considerably more than twice told. But I can only repeat that, for those with a taste for such stories, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... the river, where wine was sold, And thy mother, I trow, hight Claudena. That a wild-fire bren thee, Celestina! CEL. But thy mother was as old a whore as I. Come hither, thou little fool, let me see thee: Ah, it is even he, by our blessed lady! What, little urchin, hast forgotten me? When thou layest at my bed's-feet, how merry were we! PAR. Ah, thou old matron,[54] it were alms thou were dead! How wouldest thou pluck me up to thy bed's head, And embrace me hard unto thy belly! And ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... night, while gentle sleep The urchin eyelids kiss'd, Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn, Through the cold and heavy mist; And Eugene Aram walk'd between, With ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... on your guard, if necessity brings you, after nightfall, to this unhallowed ground. Danger hovers over, under, round your footsteps. If an urchin plays a trick on you at a street corner, heed him not. Try and catch him, he will disappear to return with a reinforcement of roughs, prepared to avenge his pretended wrongs by violence to your person and ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... in the character of wolf, at the little listener. That this was the correct "business" in Scotch nurseries is borne out by a sentence in Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland: "The old nurse's imitation of the gnash, gnash, which she played off upon the youngest urchin lying ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... of the village streets were continued on the ocean. Fish supplanted marbles as objects of prime importance in the urchin's mind. The smallest fishing village would have two or three boats out on the banks, and the larger town several hundred. Between the crews of these vessels existed always the keenest rivalry, which had abundant opportunity for its exhibition, since the ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... small black boys learned on their back little brothers equally inky, and, gravely depositing them, shook hands. Never had I seen human beings so clad, or rather so unclad, in such amazing squalid-ness and destitution of garments. I recall one small urchin without a rag of clothing save the basque waist of a lady's dress, bristling with whalebones, and worn wrong side before, beneath which his smooth ebony legs emerged like those of an ostrich from its plumage. How weak is imagination, how cold is memory, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... to reach the Neufchatel road without actually retracing our steps was at length extracted, and, after a prolonged study of the plan, my sister gave the word to proceed. Save that we twice mounted the pavement, grazed a waggon, and literally brushed an urchin out of the way, our emergence from Abbeville was accomplished without ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... with his joyous laugh, The urchin blind and bare, But Love, with spectacles and staff, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... from the train at a sleepy country station next day I was promptly waylaid by a black-eyed urchin who informed me that Mrs. Ashley had sent him with an express wagon for my luggage, and that "Miss Gussie" was waiting with the carriage at the store, pointing down to a small building before whose door a girl was trying to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a sucking sea-urchin! Hang it, if I had known you hadn't seen one, I'd have brought ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... sure enough, a small urchin with a little bundle upon his shoulder, toiling slowly up the hill. When he reached the crest I saw the ragged uncouth figure outlined for an instant against the cold blue sky. He looked round him with a furtive and stealthy air, as one ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... that urchin made his appearance from the inside of the cart, "you stand by the cattle while I put ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... conductor of a singular school for young children. Among its many peculiarities was that of carrying "moral suasion" to such lengths, as a solitary means of discipline, that the master occasionally publicly submitted to the castigation earned by a refractory urchin, probably by way of reaching the latter's moral sense through shame or pity. This was, doubtless, rather interesting to the pupils, whether or not it was corrective. Mr. Alcott's peculiarities did not stop here, however, and Boston parents, when he began to publish the Colloquies on the Gospels ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... spritsail-yard, and look round to see if there were any sharks in the neighbourhood; but all around was deep, clear, green water. He kept hold of the cable, however, and seemed determined not to put himself in harm's way, until a little, wicked urchin, who used to wait on the warrant-officers' mess, a small meddling snipe of a creature, who got flogged in well behaved weeks only once, began to taunt my ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... (God-a-mercy, what aileth the boy?) Sith we have but one, 'tis not difficult to answer—his most sacred Majesty King Edward the Sixth—whom God preserve! Yea, and a dear and gracious little urchin is he, too; and whether he be mad or no—and they say he mendeth daily —his praises are on all men's lips; and all bless him, likewise, and offer prayers that he may be spared to reign long in England; for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fell out of the window again, and stuck out her tongue like an impudent urchin. "A pair of smarties," she scoffed. "Come home and fret our ears with your ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... stage. There is more heat in her ashes than in your fire, Kate Clive! Ah! here comes her messenger," continued he, as an ancient man appeared with a letter in his hand. This letter Mrs. Woffington snatched and read, and at the same instant in bounced the call-boy. "Epilogue called," said this urchin, in the tone of command which these small fry of Parnassus adopt; and, obedient to his high behest, Mrs. Woffington moved to the door, with the Bracegirdle missive in her hand, but not before she had delivered its general contents: "The great actress will be ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... against Descartes. The outraged plain facts had to be defended against sweeping and arbitrary theories. There were no innate ideas or maxims: children were not born murmuring that things equal to the same thing were equal to one another: and an urchin knew that pain was caused by the paternal slipper before he reflected philosophically that everything must have a cause. Again, extension was not the essence of matter, which must be solid as well, to be distinguishable from ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... again, this time with a bowl of water and a towel! Very severely and thoroughly, as though I were a dirty urchin, she scrubs my face and hands. She even brushes my hair. I watch her do the same for other patients, some of whom are Colonels and old enough to be her father. She's evidently in no mood for proposals of marriage at this early hour, for her technique is impartially severe to everybody, ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... brief note instead, and did, asking her friend if he could come and give her his help about a matter—say at four o'clock that afternoon. The note was dispatched, not by old Moses this time, but by the hand of an urchin in a blue uniform, who was deep in "Lady Helen, the Fair Ghoul," as he bicycled, but apparently reached his ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... gave a sudden start. He had altogether forgotten his nephew's presence. He went on:—"People are as proud as if they were all of blood royal. Even the poorest women, one sees pass in the afternoon with perambulators in which sleeps some little urchin who, mayhap, is brought up nearly all on the charity of ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... — N. bad man, wrongdoer, worker of iniquity; evildoer &c. 913; sinner; the wicked &c. 945; bad example. villain, rascal, scoundrel, miscreant, budmash[obs3], caitiff|!; wretch, reptile, viper, serpent, cockatrice, basilisk, urchin; tiger|!, monster; devil &c. (demon) 980; devil incarnate; demon in human shape, Nana Sahib; hellhound, hellcat; rakehell[obs3]. bad woman, jade, Jezebel. scamp, scapegrace, rip, runagate, ne'er-do-well, reprobate, scalawag, scallawag. rou[French], rake; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... which this twelve-year-old urchin got off the speech had a telling effect. His air of importance brought a burst of laughter, but it could scarcely hide the blushes that played hide-and-seek on the girl's face—which fact fortunately escaped the notice ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... the chamber, leading in Uctred. He had been discovered on removing some of the huge piles of timber again from the hill, where, under a curiously-supported covering of beams and other rude materials, he lay, seemingly asleep. The urchin looked as malicious and froward as ever, even when standing ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... all ages—even those—certain few boys who insisted upon being children; whereas the girls were docile to the adult ideal. Art, for example, had no little girls. There was always Cupid, and there were the prosperous urchin-angels of the painters; the one who is hauling up his little brother by the hand in the "Last Communion of St. Jerome" might be called Tommy. But there were no "little radiant girls." Now and then an "Education of the Virgin" is the exception, ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... he miscarry, brother! God forbid! God blesse mine Nephew, that thine eyes may see Thy childrens children with prosperity! I had rather see the little urchin hang'd [To the people. Then he should live ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... and I therefore determined to show my employer that nothing was beyond the capacity of his Greek cook. Eh bien, mon maitre, all was going on remarkably well, and I felt almost reconciled to my new situation when who should rush into the kitchen but le fils de la maison, my young master, an ugly urchin of thirteen years, or thereabouts. He bore in his hand a manchet of bread, which, after prying about for a moment, he proceeded to dip in the pan where some delicate woodcocks were in the course of preparation. You know, mon maitre, how sensitive I am on certain points, for ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... that the dirty little urchin was on the further side of Molly, who was quite clean, and that her own dainty garments could not be ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... mouth of some little river, or rather mere brook. We brought from home the provisions furnished us by our gardens, to which we added those supplied us by the sea in abundant variety. We caught on these shores the mullet, the roach, and the sea-urchin, lobsters, shrimps, crabs, oysters, and all other kinds of shell-fish. In this way, we often enjoyed the most tranquil pleasures in situations the most terrific. Sometimes, seated upon a rock, under the shade of the velvet sunflower-tree, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... so greedy, uak,—'urchin.' Remember Those Above," she said; and Shyuote, imitating the example of Okoya, crossly muttered a prayer, and scattered crumbs before him. Then ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... With rich romance; but these, though privateers, Or secret knights on Gloriana's quest, Recked not if round the glowing magic door Of every inn the townsfolk grouped to hear The storm-scarred seamen toasting Francis Drake, Nor heeded what blithe urchin faces pressed On each red-curtained magic casement, bright With wild reflection of the fires within, The fires, the glasses, and the singing lips Lifting defiance to ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... around sharply, feeling justly incensed. Of course, he knew what it was—some good-for-nothing urchin finding a vent for his excited feelings. His parlor-maid, who was never in any hurry to open the door,—she had once kept him waiting ten minutes when he had forgotten his latch-key,—would certainly take no notice of this unseemly noise, but he, James Tapster, would ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... and, whatever his deeds, Rouen had learned to say, with a chuckle, that it was "only Crailey Gray again." But his followers were not so privileged. Thus, when Mr. Gray, who in his libations sometimes developed the humor of an urchin, went to the Pound at three in the morning of New Year's Day, hung sleigh-bells about the necks of the cattle and drove them up and down the streets, himself hideously blowing a bass horn from ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... pride in love affairs, to resist the slightest interference, or the best advice, from the best friends. What! love upon compulsion! No—Jupiter is not more tenacious of his thunderbolt than Cupid is of his arrows. Blind as he is, none may presume to direct the hand of that little urchin." ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... 1815; natural daughter of the Comte de Montcornet, marshal of France; married, first Marneffe, an employe in the War Office, with whom she broke faith by agreement with the clerk; and second, Celestin Crevel. She bore Marneffe a child, a stunted, scrawny urchin named Stanislas. An intimate friend of Lisbeth Fischer who utilized Valerie's irresistible attractions for the satisfying of her hatred towards her rich relatives. At this time Mme. Marneffe belonged jointly to Marneffe, to the Brazilian Montes, to Steinbock the Pole, to Celestin Crevel and to ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... of his house which was the store, traded a quart of thick molasses for a coonskin and a cake of beeswax, to an old dame in linsey-woolsey, put his letter away, an went into the kitchen. His wife was there, constructing some dried apple pies; a slovenly urchin of ten was dreaming over a rude weather-vane of his own contriving; his small sister, close upon four years of age, was sopping corn-bread in some gravy left in the bottom of a frying-pan and trying ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... She did not dare look round lest he should think she encouraged him, but she knew all the same that he was keeping on her heels. Along Fleet Street he kept close to her and on Ludgate Bridge where the traffic was blocked by the crowd gazing into the Fleet river at some urchin's paddling in the muddy stream he spoke to her. She hadn't the least idea what he said, she was ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... Boer (who is still in the field, fighting for his freedom and right) was lodging with one of her relations, when, two days later, after she had given birth to a baby boy, she was visited by seven warriors, or so-called Tommy Atkins; the young urchin was taken away from its mother by its two legs, by the so-called noble British, and his head battered in against the bed-post until it had breathed its last, and thereupon thrown out by the door as if it was the carcase of a cat or dog. Then these damn wretches began their play with this poor ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... boy does not gain much when he exchanges the tyranny of the home for the tyranny of the school. The schoolmaster is naturally a despot, but he is a despot, limited. To make up for any advantages accruing from the master's limitations, the urchin has to put up with the bullying of the big boy. Possibly there are teachers who have human feelings, as far as the small boy is concerned. We read of such persons in books like "Tom Brown's Schooldays," but it must not be forgotten that these books are works of fiction. The lad who wrote that ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... she continued, after a slight pause, "what an unhappy mother I am. It is many years since I lost the loveliest infant ever seen, while my poor Stephen was left to be the mockery of every urchin ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... prone to forget. Whether he had run away, or his father had turned him out, I never fathomed; but about the age of twelve, he was thrown upon his own resources. A travelling tin-type photographer picked him up, like a haw out of a hedgerow, on a wayside in New Jersey; took a fancy to the urchin; carried him on with him in his wandering life; taught him all he knew himself—to take tin-types (as well as I can make out) and doubt the Scriptures; and died at last in Ohio at the corner of a road. "He was a grand specimen," ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... been to go home by the nearest way, and not pass through the Square. The villagers had feared this, and had forestalled her; at the turning where she would have left the main road, she found waiting for her the swiftest-footed urchin in all St. Mary's, little Pierre Michaud. The readiest witted, too, and of the freest tongue, and he was charged to bring Aunt Hibba by the way of the Square, but by no means ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... stuff to De Foe before they fire it. Last July, when the war was making its preliminary bow, and Hemphill was thundering those editorials of his that warned the Old Lion he would have to wake up and clean the jungle, Hemphill was simply the errand urchin. There's the man who wrote "To Arms, England!" one day after the Austrian note to Serbia. Hemphill got the credit and the money—but ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... fashioned by happy Japanese fingers into braided hats to cover lovely heads in Picadilly or Valparaiso or Montreal: or woven into a cord which will fly a kite for some tousle-headed boy in Michigan or for a slant-eyed urchin on the banks of the Yang-Tse Kiang: or, somewhere, it may be looped into ugliest knot by a grim figure standing on a ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... sort of pear, Apple or plum, is neatly laid (As if it was a tribute paid) By the round urchin; some mixt wheat The which the ant did taste, not eat; Deaf nuts, soft Jews'-ears, and some thin Chippings, the mice filched from the bin Of the gray farmer, and to these The scraps of lentils, chitted ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... two feet long may be called a toy ship, but it is a toy that can teach much to an Admiral, and I should not like to have as my comrade on a voyage the man of forty who can pass the Serpentine without a glance at the little ragged urchin there, who is half in the water himself while he reaches with a twig his tiny lugger after its long voyage across the lake among ducks, and row-boats, and ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... of bread, and stood about munching it, little crumbs gathering upon her lips. You could see how thin she was when her arm was raised. Yet she made a few little dancing steps as she ate, and her face was not without a comical air of mischief. She was an urchin, and she looked it. She was unscrupulous, and a liar; but she knew a great deal for her years, and she never shrank from knowledge, because she was athirst for it. Knowledge which could be turned to account was her preoccupation. She stood looking at her mother, weighing her up, and in the midst ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... two children's voices, as Violet and Peony wrought together with one happy consent. Violet still seemed to be the guiding spirit, while Peony acted rather as a laborer, and brought her the snow from far and near. And yet the little urchin evidently had a proper understanding of the ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... garden stuff and grain. Towards evening I come home to my supper of leeks and pulse and fritters, served by my three slave-boys on a white marble slab, which holds besides two drinking cups and ladle, a saltcellar shaped like a sea-urchin, an oil flask, and a saucer of cheap Campanian ware; and so at last I go to bed, not harassed by the thought that I need rise at day-break." Sometimes, to his great annoyance, he would be roused early to become sponsor in the law courts for a friend; ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... breeze sets stirring. That woman's gaze toils worn from remote years, Yet forward yearns through the bright spacious noon, Beyond the farthest isle, whose filmy shape Floats faint on the sea-line. I, scooping grains up with the frail half-shell Pale green and white-lined of sea-urchin, knew What her eyes sought as often children know Of grief or sin they could not name or think of Yet sooth or shrink from, so I saw and longed To heal her tender wound and yet said naught. The energy of bygone joy and pain Had left her listless figure charged with magic That caught and held my ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... of their endeavours, they failed to make both ends meet. Hence they gladly accepted the offer of an elderly and well-to-do townsman to send the lad to school and keep him with him. It was the generous freak of an eccentric amateur of painting, who had been struck by the little figures that the urchin had often daubed. And thus for seven years Claude had remained in the South, at first boarding at the college, and afterwards living with his protector. The latter, however, was found dead in his bed one morning. He left the lad a thousand francs a ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Tom Bois l'Hery, as they call him here, had desired to have a jest with this uncouth creature of an Irishman, who had replied to a bit of Parisian urchin's banter with a terrible Belfast blow of his fist right ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... needs no rivals apprehend. Her sex, with universal voice, Must laugh at her capricious choice. Cadenus many things had writ: Vanessa much esteem'd his wit, And call'd for his poetic works: Meantime the boy in secret lurks; And, while the book was in her hand, The urchin from his private stand Took aim, and shot with all his strength A dart of such prodigious length, It pierced the feeble volume through, And deep transfix'd her bosom too. Some lines, more moving than the rest, Stuck to the point that pierced her breast, And, borne directly to the heart, With pains ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... are cased in this heavy armour of reason; Cupid himself may strain his bow, and exhaust his quiver upon you in vain. But have a care—you cannot live in armour all your life—lay it aside but for a moment, and the little bold urchin will make it his prize. Remember, in one of Raphael's pictures, Cupid creeping into the armour of the conqueror of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... perhaps of shyness, and now, as he stood in the center of the prim, old-fashioned room, a thin, eager youngster not too warmly clad for the bite of the New England wind, Abner Sawyer felt with a sense of shock that this city urchin whom Judith had promised to "Christmas," detracted, in some ridiculous manner, from the respectability of the room. He was an inharmonious note in its staid preciseness. Moreover, it was evident from the frank ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple
... the violence of the waves into the cavity, was deposited there, so that the entrance, which, according to tradition was once wide and sufficiently lofty for a person to walk upright, was now dwindled into a narrow and insignificant-looking hole, scarcely big enough to admit an urchin. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... either call or send a cheque, was found; it directed him to miserable lodgings in one of the poorest streets of Paris; on his enquiring for Madame Rose, a woman told him she was gone; she had been very ill and he could gain further information from Father Lefroy, and she directed a little urchin to go and show the gentleman the priest's house; Trevalyon putting a sovereign into her hand, thanked her and followed the boy. They soon reached their destination, a small, white, many-gabled old-fashioned windowed house, with bright flowers ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... has been already said, was a robust and combative urchin, and at the age of four began to struggle against the yoke and authority of his nurse. That functionary was a good-hearted, tearful, scatter-brained girl, lately taken by Tom's mother, Madam Brown, as she was called, from the village school to be trained as nurserymaid. Madam ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... eight years old. Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure, 'Twas not for nothing—the good bellyful, The warm serge and the rope that goes all round, And day-long blessed idleness beside! 105 "Let's see what the urchin's fit for"—that came next. Not overmuch their way, I must confess. Such a to-do! They tried me with their books; Lord, they'd have taught me Latin in pure waste! Flower o' the clove, 110 All the Latin I construe is "amo," I love! But, mind you, when a boy starves ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... satisfied. He assisted her to arise from her tombstone, bundled the clerical love-tokens back into the bag, duly placed Captain Jack's letter in the inner pocket, and was about to present her with his arm to conduct her homewards, when he caught sight of a little ragged urchin peeping through the bars of the gate, and seemingly in the very act of making a mysterious signal in the direction of ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... not know her alphabet, and we thought it a very strange thing." It is a great satisfaction to a stranger who does not know the language to be sure that if he shows a name on his guide-book to the first street-urchin he meets, the boy will understand it and will try to direct ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... cliffs with a load of implements, shouldering rake and spade, and dangling tiny buckets from their arms. One little group makes straight for its sand-hole of yesterday, and is soon busy with huge heaps and mounds which are to take the form of a castle. A crowing little urchin beside is already waving the Union Jack which is ready to crown the edifice, if the Fates ever suffer it to be crowned. Engineers of less military taste are busy near the water's edge with an elaborate system of reservoirs and canals, and greeting with shouts of triumph the ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... before, but a coarse fustian jacket was thrown on the back of a chair, and a clay-pipe and a paper of tobacco stood on the table. While he was examining these objects with some attention, a very ragged urchin, of some ten or eleven years, entered the room with a furtive step, and stood watching him. From this fellow, all that he could hear was that Miss Betty was gone away, and that Peter was at the Kilbeggan Market, and though he tried various ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... for a Saxon pock-pudding,—who, with stout arguments and stouter blows, stood forth my defender?—why, Alan Fairford. Who beat me soundly when I brought the arrogance of an only son, and of course a spoiled urchin, to the forms of the little republic?—why, Alan. And who taught me to smoke a cobbler, pin a losen, head a bicker, and hold the bannets?—[Break a window, head a skirmish with stones, and hold the bonnet, or handkerchief, which used to divide High School boys when fighting.] Alan, once more. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... a vision with me Of a home upon a hill; And my heart is sad with longing And my eyes with tear-drops fill. I would be the care-free urchin That I was so long ago When across the sun-lit meadows Rover with me used to go Yonder where the graceful lindens Threw their shadows far and cool, And the waters waited for me ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... the wagon seat, and immediately they began to pop off. Their horse gave a bound; smoke and sparks flew, and after a moment the girl jumped clear of the wagon and landed nimbly on her feet two yards away! She looked very wild, indeed, and did not relish the joke; for an urchin in the crowd, attempting to follow it up by covertly dropping a lighted cracker near her feet, was instantly detected and received such a box on the ear as ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... effect, for every urchin on the ground went industriously to work to wring the necks of the wounded birds. Judge Temple retired toward his dwelling with that kind of feeling that many a man has experienced before him, who discovers, after the excitement of the ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... is the Sea-urchin, a round prickly creature rather like the burr of the sweet-chestnut tree. This mass of prickles is not a vegetable; he is very much alive. Nature has given many plants and animals these prickles, like fixed bayonets, for a defence against ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith
... The mimic took his usual station, And squeak'd with general approbation; Again "Encore! encore!" they cry— "'Tis quite the thing, 'tis very high." Old Grouse conceal'd, amidst this racket, A real pig beneath his jacket— Then forth he came, and with his nail He pinch'd the urchin by the tail. The tortured pig, from out his throat, Produced the genuine nat'ral note. All bellow'd out 'twas very sad! Sure never stuff was half so bad. "That like a pig!" each cried in scoff; "Pshaw! nonsense! blockhead! off! off! off!" The mimic was extoll'd, and Grouse Was hiss'd, and ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... conditions of life are similar for the two sexes, the male and the female are often like one another. Thus it is very difficult to distinguish a male starfish from a female starfish, or a male sea-urchin from a female sea-urchin. It becomes abundantly clear that degeneration in active function, whether it be that of the male or the female, is the inevitable nemesis of parasitism. The males and females in the cases we ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... heels," cried Swinton, laughing; "he has fallen into an ant-eater's hole, depend upon it; that mischievous little urchin might have caused ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... dirty; dust, oil, and grime plentifully distributed,—but dirt is picturesque, even if objectionable. Character is expressed in dirt; the bright and shining school-boy face is devoid of interest, an artificial product, quite unnatural; the smutty street urchin is an actor on life's stage, every daub, spot, and line an essential part of ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... Meanwhile the nets are brought on shore glittering with the fry of sardines, which are cooked like whitebait, with cuttlefish—amorphous objects stretching shiny feelers on the hot dry sand—and prickly purple eggs of the sea-urchin. Women go about their labour through the throng, some carrying stones upon their heads, or unloading boats and bearing planks of wood in single file, two marching side by side beneath one load of lime, others scarcely visible under a stack of oats, another with her baby ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Only intuitive, subtle suggestions gleaned here and there, shadowy finger-posts which pointed to Monohan as a deadly hater and with a score chalked up against Fyfe to which she had unconsciously added. He had desired her, and twice Fyfe had treated him like an urchin caught in mischief. She recalled how Monohan sprang at him like a tiger that day on the lake shore. She realized how bitter a humiliation it must have been to suffer that sardonic cuffing at Fyfe's hands. Monohan wasn't the type of man who would ever forget or forgive ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... peeps a laughing face. An urchin of surpassing impishness, one who has come too late to hear our password, ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... tremendous, and the frequent repetitions demanded soon filled the treasury of the theater. Everybody was happy, the composer most of all. The melodies were played on every piano in Germany and whistled by every street urchin. Its fame spread like lightning over Europe, and quickly reached England. In London the whole atmosphere seemed to vibrate with its melodies. In Paris, however, it did not please on first hearing, perhaps because it ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... when the ice had been well broken, kneeling down and pulling it out in pieces with his mitten, the small boy felt something cold and smooth, and then he poked his finger into a human eye. It was a dead man. No sooner had the urchin found this out than he bellowed out at the top of his voice, running and falling as he ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... fossils broken to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds. And the cases had in some instances been bodily removed—by the Morlocks as I judged. The place was very silent. The thick dust deadened our footsteps. Weena, who had been rolling a sea urchin down the sloping glass of a case, presently came, as I stared about me, and very quietly took my hand and ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... stories unfolded itself, step by step, the ragged street urchin whose father had been a poor tailor, attained to great heights—to wealth and success and power. Johnnie gloried in it all, seeing such results as future possibilities of his own, and not forgetting to remark how kind, through all the upward trending of fortune, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... Nestor's home. Have I passed by the black-tail and the 'thrush', The sea-merle and the shadow of the sea? Best to Corcyra go for cuttlefish, For the acarne and the fat sea-skull The purple-fish, the little murex too, Mice of the sea and the sea-urchin sweet. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... light and shade, and they are always interesting as the means by which Nature carries light into her shadows, and shade into her lights, an art of which we shall have more to say hereafter, in speaking of composition. Fig. 5. is a rough sketch of a fossil sea-urchin, in which the projections of the shell are of black flint, coming through a chalky surface. These projections form dark spots in the light; and their sides, rising out of the shadow, form smaller whitish spots in the dark. You may take such scattered lights as these out with the penknife, provided ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... concluded, sleeping, and just awakened by the tramp of our horses, crawled out of the tent to have a look at us. It was a perfect scene of Indian domestic life. Near the chief, his wife sat on the ground playing with her child, a fat little urchin; a second woman was busy chopping wood; a third was coming in, axe in hand, with a huge bundle of sticks on her back, and a child clinging round her neck while a dog was too busy gnawing a bone to turn round and bark ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... Suddenly one dusky urchin rose with a whoop of delight, bearing aloft the torn paper with several lumps of sweet stuff, discolored with dirt, sticking to it. With one accord the little mob broke. The triumphant child fled away to the bluff pursued by the rest of her howling companions. The ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... brought to a sudden stop by the frantic yell of the juvenile pledge of their affections, whose years had not yet reached two figures; a compact little iron-bound box had fallen on his toe, and the poor little urchin's pilliloo, pilliloo, was pitiful. Mamma began hugging and kissing, while papa offered that handy consolation of, "Never mind, that's a good boy; don't cry." In the meantime, the Jacks had profited by the squall, and, when it ceased, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... money; it dropped down into de sewer hole!" sobbed the ragged urchin. "Every cent of ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... certainly been washed and re-washed for a summer or two, and gray trousers a good deal worn,—a dress, in short, which an American mother in middle station would have thought too shabby for her darling school-boy's ordinary wear. This urchin's face was rather pale (as those of English children are apt to be, quite as often as our own), but he had pleasant eyes, an intelligent look, and an agreeable, boyish manner. It was Lord Sunderland, grandson of the present Duke, and heir—though not, I think, in the direct line—of the blood ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... says he, "old Cotton's instructions, by which I hoped to qualify myself for the gentle society of anglers, are not worth a farthing for this meridian. I learned this by mere accident, after I had waited four mortal hours. I shall never forget an impudent urchin, a cowherd, about twelve years old, without either brogue or bonnet, barelegged, with a very indifferent pair of breeches,—how the villain grinned in scorn at my landing-net, my plummet, and the gorgeous jury of flies which I had assembled to destroy all the ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... country, but immediately returned into the covert, for he saw a lot of boys before him, who had assembled with the object of looking at the hunt, but with the very probable effect of spoiling it; for, as much as a fox hates a dog, he fears the human race more, and will run from an urchin with a stick into the jaws of his much ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... babe, baby, babe in arms; nurseling, suckling, yearling, weanling; papoose, bambino; kid; vagitus. child, bairn, little one, brat, chit, pickaninny, urchin; bantling, bratling[obs3]; elf. youth, boy, lad, stripling, youngster, youngun, younker[obs3], callant[obs3], whipster[obs3], whippersnapper, whiffet [obs3][U.S.], schoolboy, hobbledehoy, hopeful, cadet, minor, master. scion; sap, seedling; tendril, olive branch, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... over the parlour window-blind at the disappointment of his would-be visitors. The annoyance of the husband at the inhospitable answer, and the fatigue of his fine wife, are cleverly managed; while the mischievous pranks of the urchin family among the borders of the flower-garden remind us of the pleasant "Inconveniences of a Convenient Distance." The colouring is most objectionable; though the flowers and fine clothes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... Slight differences of pronunciation are noticeable in different parts of the country: the people of Seibo are inclined to use the vowel "i" instead of the consonant "r" and say "poique" instead of "porque," somewhat as the New York street urchin says "boid" for "bird"; the people of Santiago sometimes drop the "r" entirely and say "poque," as the Southern negro in the United States says "fo" for "four"; the peasants of Puerto Plata show a tendency to use the "u" instead of "o" and say "tudu" instead of "todo," like some of ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... pleased with the present that I gave them a holiday. The receipt of cash in so easy a manner was so agreeable to me, that I feigned illness for some days; my pupils made an offering as usual, and were allowed to play. On the tenth day the cunning urchin who had planned the scheme came into my chamber, as customary, with an offering of faloose. I happened then to have before me a boiled egg, which, upon seeing him enter, I clapped into my mouth, supposing, that if he perceived me well enough to eat he might not give me the money. He, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... August, the village was honored by repeated visits from the little ragged population of "Barlow's Settlement," on the "Barrens," with quantities of whortleberries for sale. "Want any huckleberries to-day?" was heard all over. You couldn't stir abroad without some urchin with a smirched face—a tattered coat, whose skirts swept the dust, showing, evidently, its paternal descent, and pantaloons patched in the most conspicuous places, more picturesque than decent—thrusting a basket of the rich fruit into your very face, with an impudent yell of "huckleberries, sir?" ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... them any how," said the urchin, as he disengaged himself from his wet saddle, and stood upon the ground; "and it is not my fault that the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... room, and he took a calm survey of it, in all its details. Then he marched up to a small urchin who, with much effort, was rocking a large chair to and fro, his chubby legs just reaching to the ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... Saturday the sound of the bombardment of Luatuanu'u kept us uneasy. To-day again the big guns have been sounding further along the coast. One delicious circumstance must not be forgotten. Our blessed President of the Council—a kind of hoary-headed urchin, with the dim, timid eyes of extreme childhood and a kind of beautiful simplicity that endears him to me beyond words—has taken the head of the army—honour to him for it, for his place is really there—and gone up the coast in the congenial ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The small urchin, Tommy, had apparently not suffered seriously from his immersion in the waters of Sunrise Lake. Perhaps he was to some extent accustomed to tumbling overboard; though this time the consequences might have been most serious only for the ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... speaking of Cromwell, and says, "I wonder how Sir Samuel Luke and he should clash, for they are both cubs of the same ugly litter. This Urchin is as ill carved as that Goblin painted. The grandam bear sure had blistered her tongue, and so left him unlicked. He looks like a snail with his house upon his back, or the Spirit of the Militia with a natural snapsack, and may serve both for tinker and budget too. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... didn't like his little charge to look too poor. Later he used to say "Well, if we're poor, why, after all, shouldn't we look it?" and he consoled himself with thinking there was something rather elderly and gentlemanly in Morgan's disrepair—it differed from the untidiness of the urchin who plays and spoils his things. He could trace perfectly the degrees by which, in proportion as her little son confined himself to his tutor for society, Mrs. Moreen shrewdly forbore to renew his garments. She did nothing that didn't show, neglected him because he escaped notice, ...
— The Pupil • Henry James |
