"Pilfering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bitter jibes and lascivious verses merely to keep out of jail, as did Nash and Marlowe in England. In short, one must give due credit to the court chroniclers and ballad-singers of France as being something more than mere pilfering, ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... was, during the first month, by water; the canoes being dragged, or carried overland, in places where the current of the Columbia was too strong to be navigated. On these occasions, the travellers were exposed to much annoyance from the pilfering habits of the Indians; and their provisions were so scanty that they were obliged to subsist on dog's-flesh: a diet which, at first, was extremely loathsome to them, but to which they ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... in that miscellaneous camp emulated the children in riotous behaviour. Of course, in such an assemblage there were bad as well as good people, and some of the former, taking advantage of the unprotected state of things, went about the camp pilfering where opportunity offered. One of these was at last caught in the act, and the exasperated people at once proceeded to execute summary justice. The thief was a big, strong, sulky-looking fellow. He was well known as an incorrigible idler, who much preferred ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... rather troublesome; he had an inveterate habit of pilfering provisions at all times of the day. He set ridicule at utter defiance; and being without a particle of self-respect, he would never have given over his tricks, even if they had drawn upon him the scorn of the whole party. Now and then, indeed, something worse than ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... I've caught you pilfering again. What will Mrs McNab say when she finds all her good fruit disappearing like this? You'll have to bribe me not to carry tales. Better turn me into a confederate—eh? Are ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... 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
... back of the 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
... go And trace the hare i' 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
... as there has been an evolution in tools, in laws and in institutions, so has there been an evolution of the intellectual element in conscience. Thucydides tells us that the time was in Sparta when stealing was right. In that far-off time a boy was praised for exhibiting skill and dexterity in pilfering. Stealing was disgraceful and wrong only when it was found out, and, if the theft was large and skillfully done, it won honor—a condition of things that ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... without them, especially when he had once seen himself 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 ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... then. Yes, I went down to the doors of death, as people say, in my long illness. But that crude, corporal fever had a providential thievishness; and not content with stripping me of health and strength,—not satisfied with pilfering inventiveness and any strong hunger to create—why, that insatiable fever even robbed me of my insanity. I lived. I was only a broken instrument flung by because the god had wearied of playing. I would give forth no more heart-wringing music, for the musician had departed. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... order to bring any vessel into danger, are all declared to be capital felonies; in like manner as the destroying trees, steeples, or other stated seamarks, is punished by the statute 8 Eliz. c. 13. with a forfeiture of 200l. Moreover, by the statute of George II, pilfering any goods cast ashore is declared to be petty larceny; and many other salutary regulations are made, for the more effectually preserving ships of ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... ii.) are addressed, is rallied by Horace on his tendency to write love-poems, but apparently his efforts came to nothing. CELSUS ALBINOVANUS was, like Florus, a friend of Tiberius, to whom he acted as private secretary for some time; [82] he was given to pilfering ideas and Horace deals ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... the horny-footed nanny sprinkle my altar with blood; for which honours Priapus is bound in return to do everything [which lies in his duty], and to keep strict guard over the little garden and vineyard of his master. Wherefore, abstain, O lads, from your evil pilfering here. Our next neighbour is rich and his Priapus is negligent. Take from him; this path then will lead you ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... in my presence. He has been losing small sums, he declares, by pilfering. We suspected one ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... done. He was ignominiously dismissed like a lackey caught pilfering. But there was black wrath in his heart as he picked himself up, and turning to the others, ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... Captain Riley. Said says the people rob us desperately when they make our bread. We usually buy the wheat and have it ground and made into bread at the same time. I tell Said we must expect this sort of pilfering where there are ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... 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
... within two or three stones cast of their Ikenield-street, where it 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, devoured ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... 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 had perished ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... the same day and practically at the same hour Carpenter gave instructions looking to the pilfering of the French private diplomatic cipher, Marston began to lay plans to test Carpenter's venality, and Madeline Spencer betook herself to Union Station to meet the man-in-the-case, whose face she had never seen, and whose ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... 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
... painful 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. ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... this man 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 ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... 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 ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... 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, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... great abuse among us is, that under the notion of cleaning our shoes, above ten thousand wicked, idle, pilfering vagrants are permitted to patrol about our city and suburbs. These are called the black-guard, who black your honour's shoes, and incorporate themselves under the title of the Worshipful Company ...
— Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business • Daniel Defoe
... do not hear of much pilfering and stealing in Norway, yet they will, with a quiet conscience, buy things at a price which must convince them they were stolen. I had an opportunity of knowing that two or three reputable people had purchased some articles of vagrants, who were detected. ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... there was no want of those of a different stamp; and as we had yet some venereal complaints on board, I took all possible care to prevent the disorder being communicated to them. On most occasions they shewed a strong propensity to pilfering; in which they were full as expert as ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... are not in correct fighting costume. Nor would their toilet betoken them on the "war-trail." But the Texan Indian does not always dress warrior-fashion, when he goes forth upon a predatory excursion. More rarely when on a mere pilfering maraud, directed against some frontier settlement, or travelling party of whites. On such occasions he does not intend fighting, but rather shuns it. And, as thieving is more congenial to him, he can steal ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... some vices charged upon these people, or a portion of them, and truth requires that nothing be withheld. There is said to be a good deal of petty pilfering among them, although they are faithful to trusts. This is the natural growth of the old system, and is quite likely to accompany the transition-state. Besides, the present disturbed and unorganized condition of things is not favorable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... not Badman's 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 ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... 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. ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... of the small, 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 sly nook up ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... 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
... however, for out of about twenty coins which he laid on the counter she had filched at least three, which her brown nimble fingers, though they seemingly scarcely touched the gold, contrived to convey up her sleeves. This kind of pilfering is called by the English Gypsies cauring, and by the Spanish ustilar pastesas, or stealing with the fingers. The word caur seems to be connected with the English cower, and the Hebrew kara, a word of frequent occurrence in the historical part of the Old Testament, and signifying to ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... 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 ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... that hope seemed to die, and those to whom a church home was more than a church, left us; those of that mind that didn't leave voluntarily were lured away by ministers who had a building. The amount of ecclesiastical pilfering that goes on in a small city like New Haven is surprising. Conversion is a lost art or a lost experience, and the average minister whose reputation and salary depend upon the number of people he can corral, usually has two fields of action: one is the Sunday School and the other is the loose membership ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... pretty shade of plum. "Weener, youre a thief, a petty, cadging, sly, larcenous, pilfering, bloody thief. You take the Daily Intelligencer's honest dollars without a qualm, aye, with a smirk on your imbecile face, proposing with the cool impudence of the born embezzler to return no value for ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... 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 pretended to get her bread by selling laces, cabbage-nets, ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... return," he said, "were cut before you found your man. We have a much more important case for you than some petty pilfering Controller. We are ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... the peddler, stretching forth his meager, bony fingers, "have spent years in toil, but not a moment in pilfering." ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... the mountains, and in the course of a few centuries so many aqueducts were built that Rome had theoretically a better supply of water than any modern city enjoys. Practically, however, the Romans suffered from a peculiar kind of water pilfering. Instead of 400,000,000 gallons daily which the springs furnished, the city received only 208,000,000 gallons. This immense loss, says a careful paper by the Austrian engineer, E. H. d'Avidor, arose partly through neglect of the necessary repairs ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... middle-class 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 ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... 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 ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... to rid the soil? Why wake you to the morning's care, Why with new arts correct the year, Why glows the peach with crimson hue, And why the plum's inviting blue; 20 Were they to feast his taste design'd, That vermin of voracious kind? Crush then the slow, the pilfering race; So purge thy garden from disgrace.' 'What arrogance!' the snail replied; 'How insolent is upstart pride! Hadst thou not thus with insult vain, Provoked my patience to complain, I had concealed thy meaner birth, Nor traced thee to the scum of earth. 30 For scarce nine ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... plenty of work 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
... like the first Bonaparte, the second also aims to be emperor. But that which somewhat impairs the force of the comparison is, that there is perhaps, a slight difference between conquering an empire and pilfering it. ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... 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 ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... Soames: "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
... refer to the keeping the family stores under the immediate care of the housekeeper. It is nothing to the discredit of servants that this is said. More people are honest through circumstances than is generally supposed. Many a servant is tempted into habits of pilfering by the free and unquestioned access she has to the family stores. I have before used the case of a man carrying on a business and having employes under him, to illustrate my subject. Suppose a merchant or a bank should allow all their clerks free access to the safe or till, they ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 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 pitfalls, then, To catch the pilfering birds, not men. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... flying a little above and in advance of her, and uttering now and then his husky, discordant note. As I tossed a lump of earth up at them, the frightened mother bird dropped her mortar, and the pair scurried away, much put out. Later they avenged themselves by pilfering my cherries. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... taking them off bent the wires back into their original form, with this difference, that they placed the end which is carried in the hand in the middle. This was the first instance I had experienced of their pilfering anything and I did not chuse to proceed to extremities. I gave the native a blanket and some biscuits and the mate gave him ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... 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
... spite of all pledges of friendship and of the lifting up of hands towards the sun which the Eskimos renewed every morning, they no sooner saw iron than they must perforce seize upon it. To stop their pilfering, Davis was compelled to fire off a cannon among them, whereat the savages made off in wild terror. But in a few hours they came flocking back again, holding up their hands to the sun and begging to be friends. 'When ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... in Pauline and Victor Boche. The whole great house resounded with the most extraordinary noises—the thumps of children falling downstairs, little feet tearing up one staircase and down another and bursting out on the sidewalk like a band of pilfering, impudent sparrows. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... middle like the bottoms of bottles. Against the plaster wall, diagonally crossed by black joists, a meager pear-tree sometimes leans, and the ground floors have at their door a small swing-gate, to keep out the chicks that come pilfering crumbs of bread steeped in cider on the threshold. But the courtyards grow narrower, the houses closer together, and the fences disappear; a bundle of ferns swings under a window from the end of a broomstick; there is a blacksmith's forge and then a wheelwright's, with two or three ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... taking away our guns, the robbers! When all was silent except the groans of the dying men, I crept out of my hiding place. Would you believe it, Monsieur, I was the only one able to stand up; the Versaillais had taken all those who had not run away or were not wounded; I saw them, the pilfering thieves, making off towards Vitry, as fast as ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... a new home elsewhere: older than others which had somehow 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 ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... [A clever pilfering servant.] Upon my departure from Daraga I took with me a lively little boy, who had a taste for the calling of a naturalist. In Libmanan he was suddenly lost, and with him, at the same time, a bundle of keys; and we looked for him in vain. The ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... tell the dwarf's story, which amounted to this. In his foolish curiosity, or, as he partly confessed, with some thoughts of pilfering, Nectabanus had strayed into the tent of Conrade, which had been deserted by his attendants, some of whom had left the encampment to carry the news of his defeat to his brother, and others were availing themselves of the means which Saladin had supplied for revelling. ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... the ruins of an establishment, which the traders had been compelled to abandon, in consequence of the intractable{25} conduct and pilfering habits of the Assineboine{26} or Stone Indians; and we learned that all the residents at a post on the south branch, had been cut off{27} by the same tribe some years ago. We travelled twelve miles to-day. ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... 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 in Malacca, is now used as the Treasury, Post Office, and Government ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... modified the accounts which were published in the voyages of La Perouse. The origin of the quarrel was not with the party who went on shore in the boats. A native who was out at the ship was roughly dealt with, for some real or supposed case of pilfering. He was fired at and mortally wounded, and when taken on shore bleeding and dying, his enraged friends roused all on the spot to seek instant revenge. Hence the deadly attack on the party in the boats at the beach, in which the stones flew like bullets and ended in the death of M. ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... eagle, we can easily fancy that the appearance of these two must have been rather splendid and imposing. Quite the reverse, however, as regarded the third savage, who in a recent foray into the white settlements, having contrived to get his pilfering hands on a new broadcloth coat, with bright metal buttons, and a ruffled shirt, had added these two pieces of civilized finery to his Indian gear—thus imparting to his whole appearance, which had else been wild, at least, and picturesque, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... "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
... this occasion he was particularly delighted, since the Edinburgh, in reviewing the book, innocently selected for special approbation the very passages which he had stolen. It is singular that so original a writer should have descended to pilfering. But Beyle was nothing if not inconsistent. With all his Classicism he detested Racine; with all his love of music he could see nothing in Beethoven; he adored Italy, and, so soon as he was given his Italian consulate, he was usually to be found in Paris. As his life ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... pilfering from the writings of Francis Audaine, since in the happenings which now concern us he plays but a subsidiary part. The Captain had an utter faith in decorum, and therefore it was, as he records, an earth-staggering shock when the following day, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... Rogue—harlot—thief—that live to future ages; Through many a labor'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 Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... 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 ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... graft—Johnny would be helpless, caged there under the roof of their jail while Bland made free with his property. It did not occur to him that that he could call the law to his aid and have the airplane stored safe from Bland's pilfering fingers. That little gleam of brightness could not penetrate his gloom; for, once Johnny's indomitable optimism failed him, he fell deep indeed into ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... night-watchman at the road-up. Notterbitterfit. Thieves, my boy. Wouldn't think they'd venture into a place the size of ours, perhaps? Don't they, though? And, my word, if I catch 'em at it! Not big burglars, of course, but the small pilfering lot. Get in during the day they do, and hide behind bales and in odd corners. Then they come out when it's dark and nose around, and their little fingers, in spite of their Catechism, start right away at picking and stealing.... Funny lot, ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... despite her slovenly ways, her sour disposition and her addiction to drink, was married to a good hardworking man, while Salome, endowed with excellent gifts of industriousness and sweet temper, had wound up by going to live with an outcast who made his way by swindling, pilfering and browbeating and who had given her two children. Her humble or servile spirit, confronted with this wild, independent nature, made Salome adore her man, and she deceived herself into considering him a tremendous, ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... 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 from the fire. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... traditional hospitality of the Oriental, even among the very poor people, practised in every sense of the word; whilst in the latter you will be exploite (there is no English word that signifies as well what I mean) to the last degree, even to the pilfering of ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... contracted an unconquerable habit of indolence, and a rooted aversion to business; in this frame of mind, the army became his last resource, into which he entered as a common soldier, but after a short time his itch for pilfering returning, he could not refrain from making free with some money with which he was intrusted by his officer; being detected, he was punished with that rigorous severity with which thefts in the army usually are, and being afterwards thrown into the Savoy prison, to ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... was ever ill. Nanon was, in fact, one of the family; she laughed when Grandet laughed, felt gloomy or chilly, warmed herself, and toiled as he did. What pleasant compensations there were in such equality! Never did the master have occasion to find fault with the servant for pilfering the grapes, nor for the plums and nectarines eaten under the trees. "Come, fall-to, Nanon!" he would say in years when the branches bent under the fruit and the farmers were obliged to give ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... extended to the Congo, and, so far from showing chagrin, the agents declared that without the "coffin squadron," negroes would have been a mere drug in the market. The only deplaisir is that which I had already found in a Gaboon factory, the excessive prevalence of petty pilfering. The Moleques or house-boys steal like magpies, even what is utterly useless to them; these young clerks of St. Nicholas will scream and writhe, and confess and beg pardon under the lash, and repeat the offence within ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... of mind, are instantly wrenched open; the strong chests are unlocked; the parchments, those securities of treble interest, on which this avaricious monster lent his money, tumbled out; and the bags of gold, which had long been hoarded, with griping care, now exposed to the pilfering hands of those about him. To explain every little mark of usury and covetousness, such as the mortgages, bonds, indentures, &c. the piece of candle stuck on a save-all, on the mantle-piece; the rotten furniture of the room, and the miserable contents of ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... 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 ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... except due payment of the wages by supply-and-demand. 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 thousand pounds ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... 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
... 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 thoughts ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... Swede. He came to me under exactly the same circumstances as you arrived, and he received exactly the same instructions as you have received, which unfortunately he did not carry out to the letter. I caught him pilfering from me—a few trinkets of no great value—and, instead of the foolish fellow repenting, he blurted out the one fact which I did not wish him to know, and incidentally which I did not wish anybody ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... "He has been pilfering. Also he was insolent. I suppose he could not help remembering that I lived at the smithy once—the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... have they enterprise enough either to use them advantageously against the animals of the forest, or offensively against the tribes near them, who owe their safety more to the timidity than the forbearance of the Chinooks. We had heard instances of pilfering while we were among them, and therefore gave a general order excluding them from our encampment, so that whenever an Indian wished to visit us, he began by calling out 'No Chinook.' It is not improbable that this first impression may have left a prejudice against them, since, when we were ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... of 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 ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... weighed much less in England that it did when it was inspected and weighed in the colony. There were reports that the stevedores were supplying certain patrons in England with tobacco of superior quality obtained by pilfering. An agent in England was certainly not apt to look after a planter's crop as ...
— Tobacco in Colonial Virginia - "The Sovereign Remedy" • Melvin Herndon
... 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 his ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... chief blame for this attached to the Greek deputies, Orlando and Luriottis, who had been sent to England to raise the money and to see that it was properly expended, but who, as was well known, had sought only their own advantage and enjoyment, and, pilfering themselves, had allowed others to pilfer without restraint. He urged that the innocent holders of the Greek stock ought not to suffer on this account, and showed also, that, if there had been great abuse of the loan, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... thrifty Saxon, but prefer to be hangers-on at the castle of the Hungarian noble: they call themselves by his name, and profess to hold the same faith, be it Catholic or Protestant. Notwithstanding that, the gipsy has an incurable habit of pilfering here as elsewhere; yet they can be trusted as messengers and carriers—indeed I do not know what people would do without them, for they are as good as a general "parcels-delivery company" any day; and certainly they are ubiquitous, for never is a door left unlocked but a gipsy will steal in, ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... how he had been discovered by his uncle standing before the half-emptied basket of fruit. Could it be that the old gentleman suspected him of pilfering? Would he dare accuse him of ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... had a chance gave rise to some amusing incidents before our peasant neighbors knew that he "painted portraits of dumb beasts, as well as of Christians." Some farmers' wives, alarmed at the sight of odd pennies in the pockets of their offspring, accused them of pilfering, but on being told that the "gros sous" had been given them by "le pere anglais," came to our house to ascertain how and why; for, unlike the people of the South, they would not have tolerated begging. They were quieted by the assurance that ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... 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 and an occasional threat. ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... 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
... he was nearly knocked down by a horse, urged at some speed through the crowds. By a rope from the collar, three dead bodies were drawn along the ground, dusty and disfigured by bumping against stone and clod. They were those of slaves, hanged the preceding day, perhaps for pilfering, perhaps for a mere whim, since every baron had ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... year is that many parents are obliged to work all day, and the children run the risk of getting into all sorts of crime. As an instance, not long since I found a little girl in our department who had been frequently caught pilfering. At last we thought it necessary to send for the mother. She burst into tears and said: "What am I to do? My children are alone after school hours until I return, and I do not know what they are doing." I asked if the children had tickets for the reading-room, and here found ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... Grodman, with an amused smile. "Well, it's only petty pilfering, after all. What's put salt on ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill |
