"Pilfering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nosegays before 'em; Both cover their faces with mobs and all that, But the judge bids them, angrily, take off their hat. When uncover'd, a buzz of inquiry runs round, 'Pray what are their crimes?'... 'They've been pilfering found.' 'But, pray, who have they pilfer'd?'... 'A doctor, I hear.' 'What, yon solemn-faced, odd-looking man that stands near?' 'The same.'... 'What a pity! how does it surprise one, Two handsomer culprits I never set eyes ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... hath not intrusted thee with the least dram of his saving grace, nor will he, because thou art a hypocrite: and as for what thou hast, thou hast stolen it, even every man of you from his neighbour; still pilfering out of their profession, even as Judas did out of the bag. Thou comest like a thief into thy profession, and like a thief thou shalt go out of the same. Jesus Christ hath not counted thee faithful to commit to thee any of his jewels to keep, because ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... I, may not this pilfering disposition be implanted in authors for wise purposes? may it not be the way in which Providence has taken care that the seeds of knowledge and wisdom shall be preserved from age to age, in spite of the inevitable decay of the works in which they were first ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... suddenly that this might be the truth. There had been something friendly in Tomas Castro's desire not to compromise me before the people on board the ship. Obviously he had been acting a part, with a visible contempt for the pilfering that he could not prevent. He had been sent merely to bring me to ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... injustice to them? Did he exhort them to "render to all their dues" by keeping back their own? Did he teach them that "the laborer was worthy of his hire" by robbing them of theirs? Did he beget in them a reverence for the eighth commandment by pilfering all their time and labor? Did he teach them "not to defraud" others "in any matter" by denying them "what was just and equal?" If each of Abraham's pupils under such a catechism did not become a very Aristides in justice, then an illustrious example, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the order and peace of society are said not to be numerous. Theft amongst themselves is almost unknown, being strictly honest in their dealings with each other; but when discovered the offender is made answerable for double the value of the goods stolen. Pilfering indeed from strangers, when not restrained by the laws of hospitality, they are expert at, and think no moral offence; because they do not perceive that any ill results from it. Open robbery and murder are punishable ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... this whole universe is Brahma. From the mouth of Brahma sprung the Brahmanas; from his arms, sprung the Kshatriyas; from his navel, the Vaisya; and from his feet, the Sudras. All the orders, (having sprung in this way) should not be regarded as pilfering from one another. Impelled by Ignorance, all men meet with death and attain, O king, to birth that is the cause of acts.[1675] Divested of Knowledge, all orders of men, dragged by terrible Ignorance, fall into varied orders of being due to the principles that flow from Prakriti. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Latymer Foundation, in Great Church Lane, is the Female Philanthropic Society. The object is for the reformation of young women convicted for a first offence or addicted to petty pilfering. ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... when I boarded and took the Renummy. Let my pistols, cutlass, and pocket-compass be laid in the coffin along with me. Let me be carried to the grave by my own men, rigged in the black caps and white shirts which my barge's crew were wont to wear; and they must keep a good look out, that none of your pilfering rascallions may come and heave me up again, for the lucre of what they can get, until the carcase is belayed by a tombstone. As for the motto, or what you call it, I leave that to you and Mr. Jolter, who are scholars; but I do desire, that it may not be engraved in the Greek or Latin lingos, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... painful affair, Burr junior. I wanted to disbelieve in your guilt, I wanted to feel that there was no young gentleman in my establishment who could stoop to such a piece of base pilfering; but the truth is so circumstantially brought home through the despicable meanness of a boy of whose actions I feel the utmost abhorrence, that I am bound to say to you that there is nothing left but for you to own frankly that you have been led into temptation—to say that you bitterly repent ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... more than he can steal from us at the worst. I will lock up the gold in the chest with my documents. It is strong and could only be opened with a crow-bar. Besides the fellow will have left off stealing at any rate at first, for his late master was none of the mildest and had cured him of his pilfering I should think, once for all. It is lucky that in selling such rascals we should be compelled to state what their faults are; if the seller fails to do so compensation maybe claimed from him by the next owner ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "the peasant girl which in all men's eyes I seemed to be? Halbert and I had then spent our life peacefully in his native glen, undisturbed by the phantoms either of fear or of ambition. His greatest pride had then been to show the fairest herd in the Halidome; his greatest danger to repel some pilfering snatcher from the Border; and the utmost distance which would have divided us, would have been the chase of some outlying deer. But, alas! what avails the blood which Halbert has shed, and the dangers which he encounters, to support a name and rank, dear to him because he has it from me, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... perfect a community that the survivor always succeeded his dead partner to any property he may have had. They behave to each other with the greatest justness and openness of heart. It is a crime to keep anything hidden. On the other hand, the least pilfering is unpardonable, and punished by death. And indeed there can be no great temptation to steal when it is reckoned a point of honour never to refuse a neighbour what he wants; and when there is so little property of value it is impossible there should ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... though my frame be delicate,' the wee rat expostulated, 'my devices are unlimited, my talk is glib and my designs deep and farseeing; and I feel convinced that, on this errand, I shall be more ingenious in pilfering than any of them.' 'How could you be more ingenious than they?' the whole company of rats asked. 'I won't,' explained the young rat, 'follow their example, and go straight to work and steal, but by simply shaking my body, and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... slowly on, keeping under the shore and sneaking in and out among the shipping by back-alleys of water, in a pilfering way that seemed to be their boatman's normal manner of progression, all the objects among which they crept were so huge in contrast with their wretched boat, as to threaten to crush it. Not a ship's hull, with its rusty iron links ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... crimes are expiated. The devil in that jar is dispossessed, and with Simon's last gasp has returned unto his own place. The murderer is dead, and has thereby laid the ghost of his mate in sin, the murdered victim; while that victim has long ago paid by blood for her many years of mean domestic pilfering. ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Rogue—harlot—thief—that live to future ages; Through many a labour'd tome, Rankly embalm'd in thy too natural pages. Faith, friend De Foe, thou art quite at home! Not one of thy great offspring thou dost lack, From pirate Singleton to pilfering Jack. Here Flandrian Moll her brazen incest brags; Vice-stript Roxana, penitent in rags, There points to Amy, treading equal chimes, The faithful handmaid ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... judged them to be a race between the people of Tanna and the Friendly Isles; or between those of Tanna and the New Zealanders; or all three. Their language is in some respects a mixture of them all. In their disposition they are courteous and obliging; and they are not in the least addicted to pilfering, which is more than can be asserted concerning any other nation in ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... of revenge for the box on the ear which Alec Forbes had given him. The information had been yielded to the inquisition of the parent, who said with truth that he had never missed anything before; although I suspect that a course of petty and cautious pilfering had at length passed the narrow bounds within which it could be concealed from the lynx eyes inherited from the kingly general. Possibly a bilious attack, which confined the elder boy to the house for two or three days, may have had something to do with the theft; but if Bruce had any suspicions ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... presents me with a continual spectacle. I have a table spread for me in every street, and thousands of waiters ready to fly at my bidding. When my servants have waited upon me I pay them, discharge them, and there's an end; I have no fears of their wronging or pilfering me when my back is turned. Upon the whole, said the old gentleman with a smile of infinite good humor, when I think upon the various risks I have run, and the manner in which I have escaped them; when I recollect all that I have suffered, and consider all that I at present ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... answer that we have to this question is the theory of Pee-wee Harris, wearer of the stalking badge, and, as his very nickname shows, the friend of birds. He claimed that a wren, or one of the mischievous, pilfering birds of that group had carried the locket to its nest in the old windmill. It is true that certain birds carry such glittering trifles to their nests and it is well known that wrens forage in old buildings and often build ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... many of them from diarrhea. There was not left a single bed-pan for this battalion of bed-ridden, suffering humanity, nor any well men to nurse the sick. There was not even left any to cook food for them. Those left by the 9th Infantry had to bribe marauding, pilfering Cubans, with a part of their rations, to carry food to the camp of the 13th, where there were a few less ill, to ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... and Eurekas," reeled off the Girl with her eye upon Billy Jackrabbit, who had quietly come in and was sneaking about in an endeavour to find something worth pilfering. ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... gone to pieces when the rancher died or went to the penitentiary under the stigma of a long sentence as a cattle thief. There were many such, for the Sawtooth, powerful and stern against outlawry, tolerated no pilfering from their thousands. ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... detected, convicted, and sent out of the country every session, we cannot perceive any dimunition of the numbers of such characters; but that others seem always to supply their places?" The foregoing instance of the systematized instruction of young delinquents by old adepts in the art of pilfering, affords, I think, a satisfactory ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... petty charges mostly: pilfering, fraud, theft, occasionally arson or manslaughter. One man, however, was arraigned for murder with highway robbery, and a woman for the most ignoble traffic, which evil feminine ingenuity ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... is selected from among those employed on the beach during the fishing season, who is denominated the Sea-side Mayor, his office being to inflict certain punishments and penalties on such fishermen as are found guilty of pilfering ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... his first poems, the 'Pastorals' and 'Windsor Forest', harmless as Hervey's own verses, and tells how even then critics like Dennis fell foul of him. Rival authors hated him, too, especially such pilfering bards as Philips. This he could endure, but the coldness and even jealousy of such a man as Addison—and here appears the famous portrait of Atticus—was another matter, serious enough to draw tears from all ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... of cards between Jonathan Wild, of pilfering propensities, and a professional gambler, says: "Such was the power of habit over the minds of these illustrious persons, that Mr. Wild could not keep his hands out of the count's pockets, though he knew they were empty; nor could the count abstain from palming a card, though he was well aware ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... was the wife of poaching Giles. There seemed to be a conspiracy in Giles' whole family to maintain themselves by tricks and pilfering. Regular labor and honest industry did not suit their idle habits. They had a sort of genius at finding out every unlawful means to support a vagabond life. Rachel travelled the country with a basket on her arm. She ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... divides the counties of Warwick and Worcester, but is too extensive for that people, being about thirty acres: I know none of their camps more than four, some much less; it must, therefore, have been the work of those pilfering vermin the Danes, better acquainted with other peoples property than their own; who first swarmed on the shores, then over-ran the interior parts of the kingdom, and, in two hundred years, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... prisoners taken at High Bridge, unarmed, trophies of the first victory of the Jacobites. The Camerons were reputed to be as active and strong and as well skilled in the use of arms as any of the clans of Scotland, and as little addicted to pilfering as any Highlanders at that time could be; for Lochiel had taken infinite pains to make them honest, and had administered justice among them with no little severity. "He thought," says a writer of the time, "his authority sufficient to keep his clan in ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... be a little sordid, pilfering rogue, who would purloin from every body, and beg every body's bread and butter from him; while, as I have heard a reptile brag, he would in a winter-morning spit upon his thumbs, and spread his own with it, that he might keep it ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... only fault. He took to pilfering and stealing. He robbed his neighbours' orchards. He picked up money if he found it lying about. Especially, Mr. Wiseman notes that he hated Sundays. 'Reading Scriptures, godly conferences, repeating of sermons and prayers, ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... "good things" of life for their owners. They also tempt outsiders. Honey-pot owners fear pilfering by their servants; fear sponging by their relatives, friends, neighbors; fear robbers and kidnappers; fear migrating hordes on the lookout for plunder. Defense is a necessary aspect of each rich household, neighborhood, ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... breed a Mutiny or Disturbance, or strike his Fellow, or shall Game with Cards or Dice for Money, or any Thing of Value, or shall sell any strong Liquors on board, during the Voyage, he or they shall be fined as the Captain and Officers shall direct. And if any of the Company be found pilfering or stealing any Money or Goods of what kind soever, belonging to the said Privateer or Company, he or they shall forfeit his or their Share or Shares of the Prize-Money or Effects then and afterwards taken by the said Brigantine, during the whole Cruize, ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... extremes to sustain life; and, to speak what experience has taught me, crime is more increased than reduced by this wretched system. There seems to be little distinction among the prisoners, and no means to observe it, except in what is called Mount Rascal on the third story. Pilfering is so common, that you cannot leave your room without locking your door. The jailer is a good, kind-hearted old man, very often giving from his own table to relieve the wants of debtors, many of whom repay him with ingratitude. I have suffered many privations from ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... between school hours, certain of the younger boys were sent round the town to beg flowers, and then, later on, followed what, as we should have said, the present hypercritical generation would call, at the very least, "dishonest pilfering." After retiring to rest, and when the final visit of the Assistant Master had been made to the dormitories, all became excitement; boots and caps had been carefully concealed under the beds. The elder boys were quickly re-clothed, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... showed that it was a bear. This was an old enemy of the bee-hunter, who often encountered the animal, endeavoring to get at the honey, and he had on divers occasions been obliged to deal with these plunderers, before he could succeed in his own plans of pilfering. The bear now seen continued in sight but an instant; the height to which he had clambered being so great, most probably, as to weary him with the effort, and to compel him to fall back again. All this was favorable ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... the young beginner Practice little pilfering ways, Till grown up a hardened sinner, Then the gallows ends ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... juncos, which dwelt all winter in northeastern Kansas, let the weather be never so lowering. Always active and alert, flitting from bush to weed, and from the snow-carpeted ground to the gnarled oak saplings, now pilfering a dinner of wild berries and now a luncheon of weed seeds, they seemed to generate enough warmth in their trig little bodies to defy old Boreas to do his best. Water flowing from melting snow must be ice-cold, ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... persuasive, manly, but fascinating voice which had aroused Jasper's ready compassion and had secured Freya's sympathy! Who could ever have supposed such an end in store for the impossible, gentle Schultz, with his idiosyncrasy of naive pilfering, so absurdly straightforward that, even in the people who had suffered from it, it aroused nothing more than a sort of amused exasperation? He was really impossible. His lot evidently should have been a half-starved, mysterious, but by no means tragic existence as a mild-eyed, ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... and their offspring are vicious and unmanageable. I think that I never saw vice and crime so legibly stamped upon the countenances of children as upon those in this school. The teachers find it extremely difficult to preserve discipline at all; and the pilfering habits of the pupils are almost incorrigible. They each receive a pint of excellent soup and an unlimited quantity of bread for dinner; but they ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... brown fingers Gleaning them one by one, With the partridge drumming near her In the forest bare and dun, And the jet-black squirrel, winking His saucy, jealous eye At those tiny, pilfering fingers, From his ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... and my unrelaxed solicitude for the maintenance of the right principles of conduct, I find I can read without tears of the retired Colonels who forge cheques, and the ladies of unexceptionable position who are caught pilfering furs in shops. Somehow the sudden lapses of respected people, odd indecorums, backbitings, bigamies, embezzlements, and attempted chastities—the surprising leaps they make now and then out of propriety ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... accomplished, and they had come to see in themselves the successors and living representatives of Israel. But the Greek, rising on the swell of Homer's roll and boom, had need of no such transformation. The uplift was all for him; his by hereditary right; and no pilfering necessary, from alien creed or race. We have seen in Homer an inspired Race-patriot, a mighty poet saddened and embittered by the conditions he saw and his own impotence to change them.—Yes, he had heard the golden-snooded sing; but Greeks were pygmies, compared with the giants who fought at Ilion! ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... cannot resist pilfering. 'I must bear my testimony,' says Cook, 'that the people of this country, of all ranks, men and women, are the arrantest thieves upon the face of the earth; but,' he adds, 'we must not hastily conclude that theft ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... in the glass with one tied on in a splendid bow, appeared impossible. Even this paltry temptation, working upon his vanity, at length prevailed with a boy whose integrity had long been corrupted by the habits of petty pilfering and daily falsehood. It was agreed that, the first time his mistress sent him out on a message, he should carry the key of the house door to his cousin's, and deliver it into the hands of one of the gang, who were there in waiting for it. Such was ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... Tanner's Narrative, which every man who has a vote on this subject ought to read. Here we find the traders sometimes taking by force, from an Indian, the produce of a whole year's hunt, without making him any return, sometimes pilfering a portion while buying the remainder, and still oftener wresting from the poor wretches, while in a state of intoxication, a valuable property, for an inadequate remuneration. In one place, our author tells of an Indian ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... pick and purloin many a gallant beast, and having transformed by their dexterous scissors, impose him again upon his rightful master for a high price, - such provinces, where, moreover, provisions were hard to be obtained, even by pilfering hands, could scarcely be supposed to offer strong temptations to these roving visitors to settle down in, or to vex and harass ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... disposition of the Coaita is mild in the extreme— it has none of the painful, restless vivacity of its kindred, the Cebi, and no trace of the surly, untameable temper of its still nearer relatives, the Mycetes, or howling monkeys. It is, however, an arrant thief, and shows considerable cunning in pilfering small articles of clothing, which it conceals in its sleeping place. The natives of the Upper Amazons procure the Coaita, when full grown, by shooting it with the blowpipe and poisoned darts, and restoring life by putting a little salt (the antidote to the Urari poison with which the darts ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... the nearest house or town, which he did, directing us to a house about two miles distant; but our feet were so raw and blistered by the sun that it was long before we could get this short journey over; and then, the owners of the house, concluding from our garb that we came with a pilfering design, presented a fowling-piece, charging us to stand. The first of our number, who could speak the language of the country, mildly endeavored to undeceive him, saying, we were a company of poor creatures, whom the wonderful providence of God had rescued from the slavery ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... not think that Venetian servants are, as a class, given to pilfering; but knowing ourselves subject by nature to pillage, we cannot repress a feeling of gratitude to G. that she does not prey upon us. She strictly accounts for all money given her at the close of each week, and to this end keeps a ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... mean to maintain that there was no looting, in the Winter Palace. Both after and before the Winter Palace fell, there was considerable pilfering. The statement of the Socialist Revolutionary paper Narod, and of members of the City Duma, to the effect that precious objects to the value of 500,000,000 rubles had been stolen, was, however, a ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... chosen by the government for its agents, and, under new titles, resuming their old positions. At the head of the armed force is Gen. Bonnard, who is accompanied by a prostitute and who passes his time in orgies, pilfering wherever he can, and so shameless in his thievery as to be condemned, six months later, to three months in irons.[5136] On arriving at Blois, he organizes "a paid guard, composed of all the most abject Jacobins."—Elsewhere, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... best companies. They are generally well and handsomely dressed, so that you take them to be persons of rank; as indeed may sometimes be the case: persons who by extravagance and excesses have reduced themselves to want, and find themselves obliged at last to have recourse to pilfering and thieving. ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... man, unarmed—oh, yes, I know. Demetrios talked freely, because the son of Miramon Lluagor has good and ancient reasons to trust me. Besides, it was not for nothing that Pressina was my mother, and I know many things, pilfering light from the past to shed it upon the future. Come now with me to Brunbelois. I am too deeply in your debt, my Perion. For the sake of that boy who is dead—as you tell me—you may honourably accept of me a horse, arms, and a ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... condition of life is in direct contradiction to what you suppose every man's life in England must be. "I was born in the open air," said a Gipsy to me a few days since; "and put me down anywhere, in the fields or woods, I can always support myself." Understand me, he did not mean by pilfering, since it was of America that we were speaking, and of living in the lonely forests. We pity with tears many of the poor among us, whose life is one of luxury compared to that which the Gipsy, who despises them, enjoys with a zest ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... sold three hundred papers at ten cents each. So it went on until Port Huron was reached. Then I transferred my remaining stock to the wagon, which always waited for me there, hired a small boy to sit on the pile of papers in the back, so as to prevent any pilfering, and sold out every paper I had at a quarter of a dollar or more per copy. I remember I passed a church full of worshippers, and stopped to yell out my news. In ten seconds there was not a soul ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... reflections throughout life, which will cost him nothing." He recommended fireproof brick houses, warm clothing, and abundant, varied food. Customary plenty in meat and vegetables, he said, would not only remove occasions for pilfering, but would give the master effective power to discourage it; for upon discovering the loss of any goods by theft he might put his whole force of slaves upon a limited diet for a time and thus suggest to the thief that on any future occasion his fellows would be under pressure to inform on him ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... and the way that the town is most thoroughly under martial law, the pilfering still goes on. The wreck is a gold mine for pilferers. A Hungarian woman fished out a trunk down in Cambria City yesterday, and on breaking it open found $7,500 in it. Another woman found a jewel box containing several rings and a gold watch. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... whose face did not attract her. Just why she ran, she did not know. It was of no use to appeal to ole missus, who would not know whether she belonged to her or some one else. Miss Dory was her only hope. With promises of future good behavior and abstinence from pilfering and lying, and badness generally, she might enlist her sympathy and protection till Jake came home, when all would be right. So she sped on like a deer, glancing back occasionally to see the stranger following her with rapid strides which, however, did not avail to overtake ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... qualities, she hath no reputation either for virtue, honesty, truth, or manners; and it is no wonder, considering what her education hath been. Scolding and cursing are her common conversation. To sum up all; she is poor and beggarly, and gets a sorry maintenance by pilfering wherever she comes. As for this gentleman who is now so fond of her, she still beareth him an invincible hatred; revileth him to his face, and raileth at him in all companies. Her house is frequented ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... reaction the communal lands were declared (August 24, 1794) the States domains, and, together with the lands confiscated from the nobility, were put up for sale, and pilfered by the bandes noires of the small bourgeoisie. True that a stop to this pilfering was put next year (law of 2 Prairial, An V), and the preceding law was abrogated; but then the village Communities were simply abolished, and cantonal councils were introduced instead. Only seven years later (9 Prairial, An XII), i.e. in 1801, the village ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... came to pass that the next morning Dame Kah-kah-gooch, the Crow, [Footnote: Kah-kah-gooch, Micmac, Kah-kah-goos, Passamaquoddy. The Crow is represented in several stories as always peeping, spying, begging, pilfering, and tale-bearing about a town. The Passamaquoddy Indians hare peculiar superstitions as regards killing the crow.] observed that Marten was drying meat on his wigwam. And this she spread abroad. But when the people learned that the child had done this, a great fear came upon them all, and they ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... secure any advantage in the fight. Presently the French gave way, and with a cheer the English ran forward to claim the field, the ruder spirits among them at once beginning to plunder the wounded. A cry for quarter drew Fairfax with a bound to the place whence it came, and, dashing aside a pilfering soldier, he bent above a slight form that lay extended on the earth: the young officer whose strange conduct had so surprised him. In another moment he recognized his mother's ring on one of the slender hands. It was Gabrielle. Her father ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... Irving says: this pilfering disposition which some of us have may be implanted in us for a good reason. Maybe through us pilferers or borrowers, Heaven takes care of the seeds of knowledge and wisdom from age to age. The worthwhile ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... went into camp up the road, but a short distance from the Ruthven home. The coming of the soldiers filled the whole neighborhood with alarm, but it was soon evident that Colonel Stanton was a strict disciplinarian and did not countenance any pilfering, and then the inhabitants became more quiet. In the meanwhile the Confederate troops had departed for parts unknown. But another battle was ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... forty-two years, or even the half of it; and so, for the sake of getting a shabby advantage of the heirs of about one Scott or Burns or Milton in a hundred years, the lawmakers of the "Great" Republic are content to leave that poor little pilfering edict upon the statute-books. It is like an emperor lying in wait to rob a Phenix's nest, and waiting the necessary century to get ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... later, and wrote on the pane of his bedroom window the scandalous epigram on Inveraray so often quoted. The present Duke (who has perpetrated a fair amount of poetry himself) would give much of his odd cash to recover that pane, which was cut out some years ago by a pilfering visitor.[31] ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... For long years I saw in my grandfather only a coarse, violent old man, niggardly and censorious. And to him there was doubtless something unwholesome and repellent in the most innocent of my tastes; I could not even sin roundly, like other boys, by pilfering or truantry, but must display an exotic passion for reading forbidden books, an abhorred dexterity at caricature. I think we were equally headstrong and unreasonable, I in my young way, he in his old one; and as I trudged along the quiet homeward paths, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... to permit a Slave State to remain in the Union? Would it not be the acme of effrontery for a man, in amicable alliance with fifteen pickpockets, to profess scruples of conscience in regard to admitting another pilfering rogue to the fraternity? "Thou that sayest, A man should not steal, dost thou steal," or consent, in any instance, to stealing? "If the Lord be God, serve Him; but if Baal, then serve him." The South may well laugh to ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... destiny. And there are other old friends whom it is pleasant enough to recognise at so long a distance. 'Certain smooth-haired, sleek-faced fellows—insolent where their lords would permit them; inquisitive and pert, living but to eat and drink, and pilfering the good things, to convey them stealthily to their friends outside the castle wall.' The thing that hath been, that shall be again. When Homer wrote, the type had settled into its long enduring form. 'Such are they,' he adds, in ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... carried on at the tent by Mr. Peckover the gunner. Moannah likewise resided there as a guard over his countrymen; but though it appeared to be the wish of all the chiefs that we should remain unmolested it was not possible entirely to prevent them from pilfering. ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... her illness I had sundry bright visions of warm rooms and coal fires, a friend with whom I could converse upon Chaucer, and a tutor for my son who would teach him other arts than those of picking pockets and pilfering larders. Nevertheless, I was a little ashamed of my own thoughts; and I do not know whether they would have been yet put into practice, but for a trifling circumstance which converted doubt ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to a Conjurer but I'll find this Pol-cat, This pilfering Whore: a plague of Vails, I cry, And covers for the impudence of Women, Their sanctity in show will deceive Devils, It is my evil Angel, ...
— Rule a Wife, and Have a Wife - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... fires." Every fire which had happened for several years past, is there ascribed to the machinations of the Jesuits, who purposed, as Bedloe said, by such attempts, to find an opportunity for the general massacre of the Protestants; and, in the mean time, were well pleased to enrich themselves by pilfering goods ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... and though she accepted all gifts, whether in kind or in money, she never asked for anything and she even appeared to prefer paying herself after her own fashion, by stealing. All she seemed to care about as her reward was pilfering, and a crown put into her hand, gave her less pleasure than a halfpenny which she had stolen. Neither was it any use to dream of ruling her as the sole male, or as the proud master of the hen roost, for which of them, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... little services, and have been rewarded with tobacco. This has given them confidence to a certain degree. But we must expect to meet with others that are equally wild, and who will be very mischievous; attempting to drive off our cattle, and watching in ambush all round our caravan, ready for any pilfering that they can successfully accomplish; and then we shall discover that we are in their haunts without even ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... those marches,[14] gracious sovereign, Shall be a wall sufficient to defend Our inland from the pilfering borderers. Therefore to France, my liege. Divide your happy England into four; Whereof take you one quarter into France, And you withal shall make all Gallia shake. If we, with thrice that power left at home, Cannot defend our own door from the dog, Let us be worried, and our nation lose ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... "the Inspector? They sent him round from Stanhope Gate, that's all I know. That 'nonconformist' of Uncle Jolyon's has been pilfering, I ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... think that the child's concepts of property rights and of fair dealing are without importance. Habits of pilfering are permitted to develop and success in cheating wins admiration. Low standards are accepted and religion is divorced from moral questions. The family attitude practically assumes that all persons cheat more or less ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... journey.—Of course, so Madeleine wound up the story, she had never expected Heinz to behave like a normal mortal, and to take leave of his friends in the ordinary way, and she was also grateful to him for not pilfering her umbrella, which was silvertopped. All the same, there was something indecent about his behaviour. It showed how little he had, at heart, cared for any of them. Only a person who thoroughly despised others, would treat them in this way, playing with them ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Blank's workers are perpetually getting into mutiny, into broils and coils: every six months, we suppose, Blank has a strike; every one month, every day and every hour, they are fretting and obstructing the shortsighted Blank; pilfering from him, wasting and idling for him, omitting and committing for him. "I would not," says Friend Prudence, "exchange my workers for his with seven ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... divine of a weak and confused intellect, in which Popery was mixed up with Jacobitism? The present writer remembers perfectly well, on reading some extracts from it at the time in a newspaper, on the top of a coach, exclaiming—"Why, the simpleton has been pilfering ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... feelings of his family in his excuse, and tried every means to get the man off. I have read also in the confessions of a celebrated philosopher, that in his youth he committed some act of pilfering, and accused a young servant-girl of his own theft, who was condemned and dismissed for it, pardoning her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... before going to his task, "in order that he might confess, and receive the holy communion at the coming Easter, without scruples of conscience." He likewise begged the Prince of Parma to obtain for him absolution from his Holiness for this crime of pilfering—the more so "as he was about to keep company for some time with heretics and atheists, and in some sort to conform himself ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... into a couple of rooms and living on poorer and less regular food than he could ordinarily rustle for himself. In fact, he never went home except at periods when he was unfortunate in procuring his own food. Petty pilfering and begging along the streets and docks, a trip or two to sea as mess-boy, a few trips more as coal-trimmer, and then a full-fledged fireman, he had reached the top of ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... are, to some extent," Bethune carelessly agreed. "That kind of thing is hard to stop anywhere, and these folks are very smart at petty pilfering. Anyway, you might get yourself into trouble by interfering and any small theft you stopped probably wouldn't pay for the time you'd have to spend on the job. Leave it alone, and take matters as you find them, ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... themselves, and have no quarrels with the whites. They have a well-arranged police system, with a chief, lieutenants and sergeants, embracing sixteen men in all, and directly responsible to the agent. No liquor is allowed on the reservation. They have no pilfering, and the few locks and bolts are rarely needed. In case of trespass or disagreement the parties come or are summoned before the agent, who examines the case on its merits, weighs the facts and the equities, decides; and there ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... They did not altogether discontinue their visits in summer, but they generally came after spending the night in feasting and revelling, too drowsy to support a conversation, or intent only upon hearing some news, or on begging or purloining whatever might strike their fancy. Their pilfering habits made their visits not a little troublesome to the Brethren, but the latter did not wish to frighten them away; and were content for the present, that they came at all, especially as a few of them discovered a satisfaction in being present at the evening meetings, though held ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... course, whilst there was danger of his breaking out in this way; and after he came to that hut in the valley, he did not remember ever going out with any of the people when they went their rounds of begging, and pilfering, and buying rags; telling fortunes meanwhile, as ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... of captive sunshine. He knew now that what had been only a possibility was an assured fact. Never before had he cursed his father's friends, but he did so now, silently and earnestly; for their pilfering fingers and their plausible lies had robbed his father's son of a fine inheritance. Money. Never had he desired it so keenly. A few weeks ago it had meant the wherewithal to pay his club-dues and to support a decent table when he traveled. Now ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... inaccessible desert—quitting the tilt-yard, where I was ever ready among my compeers to splinter a lance, either for the love of honour, or for the honour of love, in order to couch my knightly spear against base and pilfering besognios and marauders—exchanging the lighted halls, wherein I used nimbly to pace the swift coranto, or to move with a loftier grace in the stately galliard, for this rugged and decayed dungeon of rusty-coloured stone—quitting the gay theatre, for the solitary chimney-nook of ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... Nor heed such centinels that never move. Let then your birds lie prostrate on the earth, In dying posture, and with wings stretch'd forth; Shift them at eve or morn from place to place, And death shall terrify the pilfering race; In the mid air, while circling round and round, They call their lifeless comrades from the ground; With quick'ning wing, and notes of loud alarm, Warn the whole flock to ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... respectable citizen and admirable novelist, it must also plead guilty to having been the residence of that not very reputable personage, Mr. John Eyre, who, although worth, as it was said, some L20,000, was transported on November 1, 1771 (George III.) for systematic pilfering of paper from the alderman's chamber, in the justice room, Guildhall. This man, led away by the thirst for money, had an uncle who made two wills, one leaving Eyre all his money, except a legacy of L500 to a clergyman; another leaving the bulk to the clergyman, and L500 only to his ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... inhabitants of nearly all the Polynesian Islands manifest toward each other, is in striking contrast with the thieving propensities some of them evince in their intercourse with foreigners. It would almost seem that, according to their peculiar code of morals, the pilfering of a hatchet or a wrought nail from a European, is looked upon as a praiseworthy action. Or rather, it may be presumed, that bearing in mind the wholesale forays made upon them by their nautical visitors, they consider the property of the latter as a fair object of reprisal. ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... board, and for four or five hours that we were subsequently among them on shore (on both which occasions the temptation to steal from us was perhaps stronger than we can well imagine, and the opportunity of doing so by no means wanting), not a single instance occurred, to my knowledge, of their pilfering the most trifling article. It is pleasing to record a fact no less singular in itself than honourable ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... Sometimes it is romantic treasure hunting that the official has to deal with; sometimes it is adventurous robbery with violence; sometimes it is the taking advantage of chance discoveries; sometimes it is the pilfering of objects found in authorised excavations; and sometimes it is the stealing of fragments smashed from the walls of the ancient monuments. All these forms of robbery, except the last, may call for the sympathy of every reader of these lines who happens not ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... villains; and is this mercy, forsooth, to turn them into a way in which they must lose their lives,—for where they are thrown upon the world, void of property and connections, they cannot get their living but by pilfering. What is to be done for compensation? Will Virginia set all her negroes free? Will they give up the money they cost them, and to whom? When this practice comes to be tried there, the sound of liberty will lose those charms which make it grateful ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... was but a tissue of falsehoods, a veritable cesspool of rottenness. His transformation appears to have been almost as sudden as that of Saul of Tarsus—or that of Judas Iscariot. I have no objection to his leaving the Catholic priesthood—his bishop stopped his pay. Like the servant maid caught pilfering, he "gave notice, with the missus a pintin' at the door." If Slattery believes that the Protestant Through Line runs more comfortable cars to the great hereafter, he's welcome to take his ticket over that route; but I would have thought better of him had he ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the son of a corn-chandler near the corn-market of this capital, and was a shopman to his father in 1789. Having committed some pilfering, he was turned out of the parental dwelling, and therefore lodged himself as an inmate of the Jacobin Club. In 1792, he entered, as a soldier, in a regiment of the army marching against the county of Nice; and, in 1793, he served before Toulon, where he became acquainted with Bonaparte, whom he, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... in a voice unlike his own; for a horrified amazement was creeping upon him and supplanting the contemptuous anger which the discovery of this beautiful girl engaged in pilfering his poor belongings ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... purchase of a slave, the insurance or risk on his life, his clothing and diet, expenses in his sickness and loss of time, loss by his neglect of business (neglect is natural to the man who is not to be benefited by his own care or diligence), expense of a driver to keep him at work, and his pilfering from time to time, almost every slave being by nature a thief, and compare the whole amount with the wages of a manufacturer of iron or wool in England, you will see that labor is much cheaper there than it ever can be by Negroes here. Why then will ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... charge on the authority of mere gossip from the late Will S. Hays, that Foster did not compose his own music, but that he had obtained a collection of unpublished manuscripts by an unnamed old 'German musician and thus dishonestly, by pilfering and suppression' palmed off upon the public themes and compositions which he could not himself have originated. Something like this has been said about every composer and writer, big and little, whose personality and habits did ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... clamp in a fourth place, about the sugar-estates, regardless of the serious injury which he caused to working buildings; and when he had gathered a sufficient pile, hidden safely away behind his neighbour's house, the new hut rose as if by magic. This continual pilfering, I was assured, was a serious tax on the cultivation of the estates around. But I was told, too, frankly enough, by the very gentleman who complained, that this habit was simply an heirloom from the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... old trade of pilfering. I must unto my lady, and bear her this intelligence. Thus will I rouse the woman in her, and urge her ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... reassured upon discovering it was the gipsy queen, and no spectre whom he beheld. "Stand still, Bess—stand, lass. What dost thou here, mother of darkness? Art gathering mandrakes for thy poisonous messes, or pilfering flesh from the dead? Meddle not with their bones, or I will drive thee hence. What dost thou here, I say, old dam ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... with the warm silence, departed lingeringly. Belated insects still buzzed in the wayside foliage. A bee, overtaken in his busy pilfering by the obliterating dusk, hung on a nodding mountain flower, unfearful above the canon's emptiness. An occasional bird ventured a boldly questioning note that lingered unfinished in the silence of indecision. Across the road ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the expenses of a family. Economy is not the mean "penny wise and pound foolish" policy which some suppose it to be; it is the art of calculation joined to the habit of order, and the power of proportioning our wishes to the means of gratifying them. The little pilfering temper of a wife is despicable and odious to every man of sense; but there is a judicious, graceful species of economy, which has no connexion with an avaricious temper, and which, as it depends upon the understanding, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... event which occurred was the flight of Bunda Selim, who had been punished for pilfering rations. The men sent after him were seized and imprisoned by the Sultana of Simbamwenni, and, though ultimately liberated by the interference of an Arab sheikh, nothing could be found of the missing cook. Shaw also fell ill, and left the task ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... his pitiable misdemeanours he slunk through life in terror of that strength which never hesitates at violence. In his petty pilfering he died a hundred deaths for every trapped mink or otter he filched; he heard the game protector's tread as he slunk from the bagged trout brook or crawled away, belly dragging, and pockets ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... cases he will probably recognise the reality of a racial fault, while admitting that it may be largely a racial misfortune. That is to say, the drifting and detached condition may be largely the cause of Jewish usury or gipsy pilfering; but it is not common sense to contradict the general experience of gipsy pilfering or Jewish usury. The comparison helps us to clear away some of the cloudy evasions by which modern men have tried to escape from that experience. It is absurd to say that ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... them down as Egyptians, and makes them out to be the descendants of those vagabond votaries of Isis, who appear to have exercised, in ancient Rome, pretty much the same profession as that followed by the present Gypsies, viz: fortune-telling, strolling up and down, and pilfering. ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... formerly the residence of the Dutch Governor, and which has enough of solitude and faded stateliness to be fearsome, or at the least eerie, to a solitary guest like myself, to whose imagination, in the long, dark nights, creeping Malays or pilfering Chinamen are far more likely to present themselves than the stiff beauties and formal splendors of the heyday of Dutch ascendancy. The Stadthaus, which stands on the slope of the hill, and is the most prominent building ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... with a large number of other birds, builds a nest open at the top. The eggs, therefore, are often more or less exposed to the Crow, the pilfering Jay, and the egg-stealing red squirrel. This necessitates a very close and careful watch on the part of the owners. At times it may seem that the birds are not in sight, and that the eggs are deserted; but let the observer ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... you don't say so? Another case of pilfering! this is getting serious: I will call Lawless—I say, Lawless!" "Well, what's the row?" was the reply. "Have the French landed? or is the kitchen chimney on fire? eh! What do I behold! Fairlegh, lightly and elegantly attired in nothing but his shirt, and Thomas standing like Niobe, the picture ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Secretary of War, but he, who had taken the articles. The fact that they were being issued without any return being made, did not interest them. They passed cheerfully over the fact that the articles had been stolen, and were indignant, not because I had accused a Japanese general of pilfering, but because I had accused the wrong general. The letter was so insolent that I went to the General Staff Office and explained that the officer who wrote it, must withdraw it, and apologize for it. Both of which things he did. In case the gentlemen whose inventions were "borrowed" might, ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... out o' thy worthless carcase. Hast any pilfering companions about thee? I do smell a savoury refection—victuals are cooking, or my nose ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... are due, sir; and as for the rest of it, I publicly charge you with pilfering my note from Mr. Burgess and substituting a copy of it signed with your own name. There is no other way by which you could have gotten hold of the test-remark; I alone, of living men, possessed the secret ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the Western meaning of the term there was none. The worthy Rad el Moussa transacted affairs on the floor of his general sitting-room, and stored his merchandise in the bed-chambers, or wherever it would be out of reach of pilfering fingers. But he received the little sailor with fine protestations of regard, and (after some giggles and shuffling as the women withdrew) inducted him to the dark interior of his house, and set before him delicious coffee and ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... general corruption, he alone has every virtue, except the force to defend his acquisitions. He needs no aid from the state, but its protection; and is often in himself its most intelligent and respectable member. Even in China, we are informed, where pilfering, fraud, and corruption, are the reigning practice with all the other orders of men, the great merchant is ready to give, and to procure confidence: while his countrymen act on the plans, and under the restrictions, of a police adjusted to knaves, he acts on the reasons of trade, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... corresponding with the number of rooms. In these the students and tutors stored their liquors, sometimes in no inconsiderable quantities. Frequent entries are met with in the records of the Faculty, in which the students are charged with pilfering wine, brandy, or eatables ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... was anything to be got out of you; but it would only be throwing good money away after bad. Get you gone to the ditch where you'll die! You guzzling, muzzling fool, to leave my house without a shilling after all your pilfering!" ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... spirit of the viper is apparent in every line of it. Yet it is in perfect keeping with the storm of abuse and falsehood which has been heaped on these 'contraband' missionaries, teachers, and nurses, since they went their way. They have been accused of pilfering, of lying, of doing nothing, of corrupting the blacks, of going out only to speculate, and, as might have been expected, we have at last the unfailing resort of the lying coward—a dirty hint as to breaking the seventh commandment—all ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... the provinces, but that most offices anticipate these casualties by compounding for a certain annual sum which is paid regularly to the leader of the gang. For this blackmail the robbers of the district not only agree to abstain from pilfering themselves, but also to keep all others from doing so too. The arrangement suits the local officials admirably, as they escape those pains and penalties which would be exacted if it came to be known that their rule was too weak, and their example powerless ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... looming large on his horizon, was not interested in the philosophical aspects of petty pilfering. ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... is no great loss without some small gain," said one man. "We are quit of Big Pete, that's certain, and it is a good riddance of bad rubbish. He was the worst man in this bailiwick, and I am thinking that more than one job of pilfering might safely be ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... instant got in a couple of pilfering rogues to have stollen our wine; but while they fell a scuffling among some silver vessels that stood upon the table, they broke the earthen pot that held the wine, and overthrew the table, with the plate on it, and at the ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... to share the protection of the tapu which Ruatara had placed upon their settlement. Barren as Te Puna might be, it was a safe refuge, and so long as the missionaries stayed there they suffered nothing worse from the natives than a little pilfering ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... attention to stealing in every age; and at the present time, the ruler there may be said to be not so much the head man of the land as the head thief. Travellers report that that country is divided into departments upon a basis of abstraction, and that the interests of each department, in pilfering respects, are under the supervision of a Chief of Thieves. The Chief of Thieves is responsible to the government, and to him all those who steal professionally must give in their names, and must also keep him informed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... suddenly, and without the smallest provocation, turned round and murdered them, or turned them out of their houses with hardly a rag upon them, destroyed their property, and walked over to the enemy." Hardly a man who speaks of them, that does not complain of their pilfering propensities; the farmers grievously as regards ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... laws of the kingdom afforded him no security—in such a case, the wonder would be, not that the stranger was robbed of any part of his riches, but that any part was left for a second depredator.[AJ] Such, on sober reflection, is the judgment I have formed concerning the pilfering disposition of ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... would glare at his wife and children for a whole week, picking a quarrel for nothing, although he was, as yet, ashamed to confess the real cause of his irritations. On the next pay-day, however, he would station himself on the watch, and as soon as he had succeeded in pilfering the youngster's earnings, he disappeared for ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... to do here, looking after all these scoundrels, having to keep my eyes open as much as possible in order to prevent wholesale robbery as far as I could, although it was utterly impossible to prevent petty pilfering of the ore on its way from the mine to Puerto Cabello, its general port for transhipment to Europe, to swell the treasure ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... indignant at finding that these gentry, after denouncing him for years as a quack, were pilfering his system, yet still reviling him. He went in a towering passion, and hashed them by tongue and pen: told them they were his subtractors now as well as detractors, asked them how it happened that in countries where there ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... in my tent, and above what my bales contained. Calculating one hundred and forty pagazis at 25 doti each, I supposed I had enough, yet, though I had been trying to teach the young Hindi that the Musungu was not a fool, nor blind to his pilfering tricks, though the 3,500 doti were all spent; though I had only obtained one hundred and thirty pagazis at 25 doti each, which in the aggregate amounted to 3,200 doti: Soor Hadji Palloo's bill was $1,400 cash extra. His ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... were not," Cyril said to himself, "that Tom is clearly too nervous and timid to venture upon an act of dishonesty, I should say that he had been pilfering something; but I feel sure that he would not attempt such a thing as that, though I am by no means certain that Robert Ashford, with his foxy face and cross eyes, would not steal his master's goods or any one else's did he get the chance. Unless he were caught in the act, he could ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... of the civil war was the influx of crowds of the newly freed slaves to Washington, in search of food and shelter. With a little training they made fair servants if only their pilfering propensities could be restrained. But religious fervor did not ensure obedience to the eighth commandment. "The good Lord ain't goin' to be hard on a poor darky just for takin' a chicken now and then," said a wench to a preacher who had asked her how she could reconcile ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... its contingencies, and, since the great uprising, with no anticipation of easy work. The North was hurried into a war for which it had no preparation, to which it had never looked as a serious probability, and for which it had been stripped in a great measure, through the pilfering policy of the South, of the ordinary means at its command. A peaceable and highly civilized people, among whom actual war upon its own soil had been unknown for nearly fifty years, and among whom the spirit of war, always so rife at the South, was opposed and neutralized ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... fondness shown by some unbidden guests for our food, of the trickery of the mouse, or of the cricket's habit of tumbling into the milk, while taking unlawful sips. But a plea can be found even for the most despised of creatures. Cheese is a dainty to the pilfering mouse, but the eggs of the cockroach are a still daintier morsel. The cricket is a scavenger, and besides cheering us by his sprightly song, rids the floor of tiny atoms of insanitary dust, and the house-spider preys on the clothes-moth. One lesson at least is taught by ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... that on the face of it is a dishonourable aspiration; if he robs some one, I do not in the faintest degree try to palliate his crime—he is a responsible being, or ought to be one, and he has no excuse for pilfering. I should never aid any man who suffered through betting, and I would not advise any one else to do so. My appeal to the selfish instincts of the gudgeons who are hooked by the bookmakers is made only for the sake of the helpless creatures ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... companions were going to deceive the old gentleman, by not going to work at all. The Dodger had a vicious propensity, too, of pulling the caps from the heads of small boys and tossing them down areas; while Charley Bates exhibited some very loose notions concerning the rights of property, by pilfering divers apples and onions from the stalls at the kennel sides, and thrusting them into pockets which were so surprisingly capacious, that they seemed to undermine his whole suit of clothes in every direction. These things looked so bad, that Oliver was on the point of declaring ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... sleep, and then had the dishes cleaned up and the silver things locked away before taking their departure from the cave for "a long, long time," by which, no doubt, she indicated the period spent on a pilfering expedition. But on this particular occasion, she added, while the naughty men were seated at the feast, one of their number from their ship came hastily in and said something, she could not tell what, which caused them at once to leap up and rush out of the cave, and they ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... at the back, where a spacious veranda opened upon a flower-bordered lawn, terminating in shady acacia walks, and a grove which screened from sight the peasant cottages on the opposite bank of the river. A hedge concealed the vegetable garden, where the village urchins were in the habit of pilfering their beloved cucumbers with perfect impunity, since a wholesome spanking, even though administered by the Elder of the Commune, might result in the spanker's exile to Siberia. Another instance of the manner in which the peasants are protected by the law, in their ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... ought to warn her," he replied, after some thought. "You ought to tell Betsy Butterfly that she must stop pilfering." ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... steep stairs, and arrive at the lacquered threshold. Here they place aside their wooden clogs, throw a few coins into a huge box standing on the floor. It is covered with a wooden grating so constructed as to prevent pilfering hands afterward removing the coin. Then they pull a thick rope attached to a big brass bell like an exaggerated sheep-bell, hanging from the ceiling, but which gives forth but a feeble, tinkling sound. To insure the god's attention, this is supplemented with three distinct ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... Joe proceeded to distinguish himself by forging opera-tickets, and even documents of various kinds, indiscriminate pilfering and swindling, interpreting visions, conjuring, and finally, it is declared, a touch of ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... he. "It's a light matter, I suppose, prowling around private grounds and pilfering? I ought to be taking it as a joke, eh? Don't ye know, you two, I could have you taken in charge ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... "That thief has been pilfering and plundering the whole city, and by his means the king's archers were defeated; why, then, at my request, should our most ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... them in a different way. I found no time that afternoon even to do up my hair; I hurriedly tied it into a loose knot, and went and worried everybody, fussing about the store-room. The stores seemed short, and pilfering must have been going on of late, but I could not muster up the courage to take any particular person to task— for might not the thought have crossed somebody's mind: "Where were ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... was Bertie, who belonged to the second engineer, but he was caught pilfering the skipper's private supply of fresh butter, which he kept in a jar in his bunk and was very jealous of, so Bertie had to be made away with. He walked the plank at daybreak one grey stormy morning just off the Nethermost Ruff of the Dogger. The second ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... consignees engaging to place on board of each prow one or two men of confidence, to see that the goods are safely delivered on board of the ship, to prevent pilfering, which is often practiced by ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... O my lov'd masters heir, and his next joy, I came not here on such a trivial toy As a stray'd Ewe, or to pursue the stealth Of pilfering Woolf, not all the fleecy wealth That doth enrich these Downs, is worth a thought To this my errand, and the care it brought. But O my Virgin Lady, where is she? How chance she is not ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... are forged out of his own thoughts, link by link, blow for blow, with glowing enthusiasm: we see the genuine ore melted in the furnace of fervid feeling, and moulded into stately and ideal forms; and this is so far better than peeping into an old iron shop, or pilfering from a dealer in marine stores! There is one drawback, however, attending this mode of proceeding, which attaches generally, indeed, to all originality of composition; namely, that it has a tendency to a certain degree of monotony. ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... and the garage for another half hour, until he was sure that the Smith family were not coming back. Then he went more cheerfully about his work, now and then glancing, perhaps, at the truck which had been driven into the rear of the garage where it was very much in his way, but was safe from pilfering fingers. It was not such a bad truck, give it new tires. Casey had already figured the price at which he could probably sell it, on an easy payment plan, to the man who hauled water for Patmos. It was more ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... He afterwards came up with the old man and the stranger, proposing that the three should go in and examine it; but I positively refused to let them enter the tent together, for a bull in a china-shop were no hyperbole compared to pilfering savages in a tent among barometers, sextants ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... indifferent. Every kind that is possible. If the group only learns that it can obtain enough and much more even than before - much greater wealth and much more happiness and content - by no longer pilfering one another and squandering, but by intelligent mutual agreement and by restriction of personal boundless liberty for the sake of ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... sugar-water in sprinkling the bees when the hive is first opened, the smell will be almost certain to entice marauders from other hives to attempt to take possession of treasures which do not belong to them, and when they once commence such a pilfering course of life, they will be very loth to lay it aside. When the honey harvest is abundant, (and this is the very time for forcing swarms,) bees, with proper precautions, are seldom inclined to rob. I have sometimes found it ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... She is only wicked. She is a Gypsy, a sort of Vagabond, whose sole occupation is to run about the country telling lyes, and pilfering from those who come by their money honestly. Out upon such Vermin! If I were King of Spain, every one of them should be burnt alive who was found in my dominions after the next ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... th' treacherous snow: Thy witty wiles to draw, and get The lark into the trammel net: Thou hast thy cockrood, and thy glade To take the precious pheasant made: Thy lime-twigs, snares, and pit-falls then To catch the pilfering birds, not men. ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick |
