"Truant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... affections and my moody defiance of life's most salutary law. With these upon my lips I roamed, an absurd pathetic figure, amid the haunts of the Scholar Gipsy, and the wayward upland breezes conspired with my truant moods. And while I sat by my lamp late into the night, I turned the pages of pessimists and cynics, for no principles are dearer to a man than those which allow him to profess contempt for the ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... there," said George, self-defensively. "I played moocher," he continued,—by which he meant truant,—"and then they whopped I, and a went home to mother, and she kept un at home, ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Habit, meanwhile, and that still-existing old aunt, who seemed resolved to live to a hundred, kept her as before at Burleigh: and, seeing that a few months after the captain's departure she had presented the world, not to say her truant lord, with twins, she had always found something to do in the way of, what she considered, education, and other juvenile amusement: that is to say, when the gayeties of a circle of fifteen miles in radius left her any time ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... professional in the Isle of Man. In due course we all went to the little village school; but I fear, from all that I can remember, and from what I have been told, that knowledge had little attraction for me in those days, and I know that I very often played truant, sometimes for three weeks at a stretch. Consequently my old schoolmaster, Mr. Boomer, had no particular reason to be proud of me at that time, as he seems to have become since. He never enjoys a holiday ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Moore Robert Burns Byron Goderich Kelvin Niagara Falls Autumn A Sunset Farewell By the Lake The Teacher Grace Darling The Indian Lines on the North-West Rebellion Louis Riel Ye Patriot Sons of Canada A Hero's Decision John and Jane The Truant Boy A Swain to his Sweetheart The Fisherman's Wife The Diamond and the Pebble Temptation Slander Woman Sympathy Love and Wine. How Nature's Beauties Should be Viewed To a Canary The School-Taught Youth ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... blades of grass Where the truant had to pass; And they wriggled through the rushes And the reeds of the morass, Where they danced, in rapture sweet, O'er the leaves that laid a street Of undulant mosaic for ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... exactness and Spartan severity, and the most vexatious and grievous fact of all is, that the strong arm of the law of the land loses its power when it comes our turn to receive justice. The law either plays truant, or openly acknowledges that it has no power to defend us. But the God of law and {pg 199} justice, who broke down one form of slavery, will break down this, too. Still, there is a part for us to do. On this line, as on others, the man who needs help must help ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various
... little pebbles which had been washed clean by the rain, while Robert walked on reading his book. At last, John, calling after his brother, said, "I do not see what is the use of going to school this fine morning; let us play truant." ...
— Child's New Story Book; - Tales and Dialogues for Little Folks • Anonymous
... old man was angry with them for playing truant. He said slowly, "N—no. She didn't exactly send us; but I don't think she'll mind our having come if we get back in time for supper. Mamma never forbid our ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... not at all disconcerted by the tumble, which was only a variation of its method of progress, came over on its knees and rose at once to go ahead; but the delay had been sufficient. Steve caught up; and the next instant, the truant, feeling the ground removed from under it, hung helpless across the hand ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... except next door?" mademoiselle questioned; "and when I went to ask, Monsieur Dubois was seated with his sons having supper, and no signs of the truant. He had seen or heard nothing of ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... more, no intention of playing the truant or traitor, and does his duty bravely and successfully. But the new King has a niece and the Count himself has a mother, who, motherlike, is convinced that her son's mysterious love is a very bad person, if not an actual maufes or devil, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... shall some day know. What is more, I am satisfied that the larger one has more than an ordinary interest in Stephens. She has twice already saved his life; and I should not be surprised if she were now to lay him once more under the obligation. Ha, truant," he said, turning to one of his staff who had come from a nigh tree-clump, where he had been writing, "you should have been here to see the beautiful Metis maiden. She was in disguise, but her beauty was not less divine than that of your own Iena. Fancy the feelings of Stephens, when his own ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... he spoke, the stout traveller picked him up by the collar, and dropped him like a puppy dog into Ulick's arms, just as the train was getting into motion; and a head protruded from every window to see the truant, who was pommelling Ulick in a violent fury, and roaring, 'Let me go; I ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the American is to educate children. This is carried to the extent of making it an offense not to send those above a certain age to school, while State or town officers, called "truant police," are on the alert to arrest all such children who are not in school. The following was told me by a Government official in Washington, who had obtained it from a well-known literary man who witnessed the incident. The ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... bad boy to a path which, in view of his character, seems singularly narrow. In book after book he indulges in the same practical jokes upon parents, teachers, and all those in authority; brags, fibs, fights, plays truant, learns to swear and smoke, with the same devices and consequences; suffers from the same agonies of shyness, the same indifference to the female sex, the same awkward inclination toward particular little girls. For the most part, thanks to the formulas, he has been examined from the angle of ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... son of the district doctor, was a blue-eyed youngster in knickerbockers and a sailor blouse. He was playing truant, no doubt—Klaus had his lessons at home with a private tutor—and would certainly get a thrashing from his father when he ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... domestic difference, in which Bertrande owned herself to have been wrong, and left his house and family. He was sought and awaited in vain. Bertrande spent the first month in vainly expecting his return, then she betook herself to prayer; but Heaven appeared deaf to her supplications, the truant returned not. She wished to go in search of him, but the world is wide, and no single trace remained to guide her. What torture for a tender heart! What suffering for a soul thirsting for love! What sleepless nights! What restless vigils! Years passed thus; her son was growing up, yet ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... was no horse of their own left that was of the slightest use for pursuit of his swift little cob, and all he could do was to stare after those engaged in the pursuit in a hopeless way as the truant galloped on at full speed, swishing its tail, tossing its head, and apparently revelling ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... Turkil, seeing that I looked towards him, got free from his mother and ran to me, saying that he must go home, and that I must speak for him, as his mother was wroth with him for playing truant. ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... that he had looked upon as the friends of his youth, before life had opened to him the dark and blotted pages of suffering and sorrow. There, dimly shining to the right below him, was the transparent river in which he had taken many a truant plunge, and a little further on he could see without difficulty the white cascade tumbling down the precipice, and mark its dim scintillations, that looked, under the light of the moon, like masses of shivered ice, were it not that such a notion was contradicted by the soft dash ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... encourage Jacky's fondness for it, used to say, that he took so much salt air and tar smoke into his lungs that it stopped his growth. The boys used to call him Little Jacket. Jacky, however, though small in size, was big in wit, being an uncommonly smart lad, though he did play truant sometimes, and seldom knew well his school-lessons. But some boys learn faster out of school than in school, and this was the case with Little Jacket. Before he was ten years old, he knew every rope in a ship, and could manage a sail-boat or a ...
— The Last of the Huggermuggers • Christopher Pierce Cranch
... when Billy, after an hour's vain effort to imprison within notes a tantalizing melody, captured the truant and rain down to the studio to tell Bertram ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... which passed down through the domain, whereby there came to be a locality called Framley Cross. Here stood the "Lufton Arms," and here, at Framley Cross, the hounds occasionally would meet; for the Framley woods were drawn in spite of the young lord's truant disposition; and then, at the Cross also, lived the shoemaker, who kept ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... the settlement of all outstanding grievances between himself and his nurse, appeared to have quite changed his views as to his previously-cherished expedition; so that he was now as content and cheerful as possible, looking anything but like a disappointed truant. ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... stole up to the truant step by step cautiously, and gradually approached near enough to lay his hand on its shoulder; from its shoulder he worked to its neck and wound his ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... other; and we take leave both of the book and its accomplished author, with much respect and gratitude. Before doing so, however, and having said much in commendation, Captain Widdrington will perhaps permit us to offer him a slight and well-intended hint in the contrary sense. When next the truant-fit comes over him, and he favours us with the result of his researches and observations in Spain or any other country—and we hope it will not be long before he does thus favour us—may he be able to devote rather more time to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... directed to his father, informing him of the step he had been induced to take, was torn to atoms, and stamped upon with rage; and the bitter malediction of the parent was launched with dreadful vehemence upon the truant son, in the presence of the ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... under the green bowers. She delights too in calling him fondly by such names as Little Green, Pretty-Wood, Greenwood; after the little madcap's favourite haunts. He had hardly seen a thicket when he took to playing the truant.[3] ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... She was an incorrigible truant, a chip of the old block, as Tona put it, thinking of that loafer who had been responsible for her, and who also sat staring day in day out at the horizon like a good-for-nothing idiot, half awake. If Tona had had to depend on that girl for a living, a fine mess she would ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... very much with Roger. Still, I did make him square things with Fisher that day he played truant and went off with you," admitted Win with the ghost of a smile. "Mother only lectured him for bunking, but I persuaded him to apologize and to put in the next Wednesday doing the work ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... that we are de Soyecourts, you and I," he repeated, in a new voice. "After all, I cannot drag you to Noumaria by the scruff of your neck like a truant school-boy. Yes, let us recognize the fact that we are de Soyecourts, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... hundred yards in advance was a public house—"The Blue Anchor;" and here, of course, was a goodly knot of men, some inside drinking, some outside smoking, and all making a most disreputable noise. There were also one or two women in amongst the crowd, evidently searching for truant sons or husbands, and Harry feared their inquisitive eyes even more than he feared the men. For he remembered he was covered with dust and dirt from his scramble; his hair all rough; hatless, and generally untidy. Besides, what business had a boy of his age and station in life ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... was having his own way, and was not very strenuous in support of his own pugnacious views. When their plans were fully digested they left the island to prepare the stakes. Before noon they separated, and the truant returned ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... with corn-flowers. All of them are little ones who have made their escape from poor families. The outer boulevard is their breathing space; the suburbs belong to them. There they are eternally playing truant. There they innocently sing their repertory of dirty songs. There they are, or rather, there they exist, far from every eye, in the sweet light of May or June, kneeling round a hole in the ground, snapping marbles with their thumbs, quarrelling ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... times. Why had it entered so persistently into her dreams? Why had the flush risen to her cheeks at the thought? At another time she would have refused to listen to the voice which answered; but now, as the object of her thoughts lay dying on her pillow, her mind would not play truant to her heart. Sometimes the approach of love is so imperceptible that it does not provoke analysis. We wake suddenly to find it in our hearts, so strong and splendid that we submit without question.... All, all her dreams had vanished, the latest and the fairest. Across the azure of her ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... matters to fall back upon logic and common sense. There is the solid fact that youthful criminals abound in spite of education systems, and although there is a considerable leakage in respect to school-attendance, it does not follow that juvenile offenders are drawn from this truant class to a disproportionate extent. It must be remembered, on the contrary, that a great amount of non-attendance at school is due to the employment of children—especially in rural districts, where the members ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... possession of Gaston with the ready intimacy of one's equal in age, fresh at every point; and he experienced what it is the function of contemporary poetry to effect anew for sensitive youth in each succeeding generation. The truant and irregular poetry of his own nature, all in solution there, found an external and authorised mouthpiece, ranging itself rightfully, as the latest achievement of human soul in this matter, along with the consecrated poetic voices of ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... duty at the ferries and steamboat landings. Others are detailed to examine the steam boilers in use in the city. Others execute the orders of the Board of Health. Another detachment, nine in number, look after truant children. Others are detailed for duty at banks and other places. The Detectives will be ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... truant to peep into your literary seminary, he will venture to present you with the inclosed hastily written lines, as a peace offering; but shall not be irritated beyond measure, should you choose to convert it into a burnt offering, ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... to bed, blew out my taper, and composed myself to sleep. But sleep was playing truant from me. Long I lay there surveying the events of that day—the day in which I had embarked upon the discovery of myself; the most stirring day that I had yet lived; the day in which, although I scarcely realized it, if at all, I had at once ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... dogs changed every other emotion to lively apprehensions for her safety, but he soon saw her run back, and, on observing him coming to meet her, assume an untroubled countenance. "Has this serene night," said she, "made you too a truant with your pillow? I have, of late, been little disposed to sleep, and enjoy a moon-light walk amazingly."—"Do not those dogs annoy you," inquired Sedley, with more of moody displeasure than tenderness; "I should think they would form but ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... Here, too, was a miniature fair, the path being lined by itinerant temptations. There was brisk traffic in toffy, and gray peas and monkey-nuts, and the crowd was swollen by anxious parents seeing tiny or truant offspring safe within the school-gates. The women were bare-headed or be-shawled, with infants at their breasts and little ones toddling at their sides, the men were greasy, and musty, and squalid. Here a bright earnest little girl held her vagrant big brother ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... and finally came to a gateway that he remembered to have seen several times. It was a low, smooth arch, where it always smelled like ashes. Here, as a truant, he had taken that leap! He was with Franz Halleman, who had dared him to cut sacred studies and jump from the top of this arch. Walter did it just because little Franz ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... in the 'seventies. I was a small boy then, and I did him the honour of playing truant—"playing wag" we called it. I felt that the occasion demanded it. To have the god of my idolatry in my own little town and not to pay him my devotions—why, the idea was almost like blasphemy. A half-dozen, or even a dozen, from my easily infuriated master would be ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... and Antonia maid, Appeared like two poor harmless women, who Of goblins, but still more of men afraid, Had thought one man might be deterred by two, And therefore side by side were gently laid, Until the hours of absence should run through, And truant husband should return, and say, "My dear,—I was the first who ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... worked his way to New York and back again to Chicago before he was quite fourteen years old, skilfully escaping the truant officers as well as the police and special railroad detectives. He told his story with great pride, but always modestly admitted that he could never have done it if his father had not been a locomotive engineer so that he had played around ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... neither time nor pains with his pupil, who was about three years old when his learned education commenced; and at length he made such progress in language, as to be able to articulate no less than thirty words. It appears, however, that he was somewhat of a truant, and did not very willingly exert his talents, being rather pressed into the service of literature, and it was necessary that the words should be first pronounced to him each time before he spoke. The French Academicians who mention ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... picture of Beatrice herself. The artist resided at Teddington. Wilfrid was due for a sitting this Wednesday morning, and he went down into the country, intending to be back for lunch and the House of Commons. But the weather was magnificent, and, the sitting over, truant thoughts began to assail the young legislator. Bushey Park was at hand, with its chestnut avenue leading to Hampton Court. A ramble of indefinite duration was, in his present frame of mind, much more attractive ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... camp must have been somewhere in this neighbourhood. And now, Lovel, my good lad, be sincere with meWhat make you from Wittenberg?why have you left your own country and professional pursuits, for an idle residence in such a place as Fairport? A truant disposition, I fear." ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... afraid to go to school, apprehending the severe punishment he might get from the master. He therefore left home as usual, but played truant, hiding himself in the woods all day. He did the same the next morning, and so continued for several days. At last the master sent word to John Crockett, inquiring why his son David no longer came to school. The boy was called to an account, and the ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... If a man has left his city and fled, after him his wife has entered the house of another, if that man shall return and has seized his wife, because he hated his city and fled, the wife of the truant shall not return ...
— The Oldest Code of Laws in the World - The code of laws promulgated by Hammurabi, King of Babylon - B.C. 2285-2242 • Hammurabi, King of Babylon
... We crossed the country without obstacle, mounted on two powerful Mecklenburgers; and before noon, were deep in Brabant. The very rashness of the undertaking seemed to restore to Don John his forgotten hilarity of old! He was like a truant schoolboy, that has cheated his pedagogue of a day's bird-nesting; and eyes more discerning than those of the stultified natives of these sluggish provinces, had been puzzled to detect under the huge patch that blinded ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... not now be found. The fact is, the wretched man, who had been working in the vegetable-garden, had been watching all morning for an opportunity to steal away and get a drink. Finding the coast clear, when Mrs. Ashton and Allie had gone in with Mamie, he, like a truant child stealing away from its parents, glided out on to the sidewalk, and hastily made his way ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... while we linger on the coast, My truant fancy homeward flies, And when the view is almost lost, Unmanly tears ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... by the roaring waves and was floating in the trough of the sea, just beyond their reach. None of the number being acquainted with the process of sculling, they considered it imperative to secure the truant tool, unless they wished to perish floating about unseen; and having weighed the expediency of rigging Helen into a jury-mast, they were now using their endeavors to regain the oar,—Mary Purcell whirling them about like a maelstroem with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... year," the four women said by way of response. "But all through those good looks of his, our old mistress cherishes him so fondly that from his youth up, he has been wayward to the extreme, and that he now daily plays the truant. But our master and mistress as well don't keep any ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... SHE WELCOMES AS HER OWN CHILDREN:—The older sons of our common parent who should have greeted you from this chair of office, being for different reasons absent, it has become my duty to half fill the place of these honored, but truant, children to the best of my ability—a most grateful office, so far as the expression of kind feeling is concerned; an undesired duty, if I look to the comparisons you must draw between the government ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... achieve an indirect purpose and at the same time keep his peace with his conscience. It is when he already has a certain fear of lying, and is not yet thoroughly sincere and truth-loving, that he will come home from the truant fishing party and ingeniously tell you that a "friend of Harry's" caught the fish, instead of saying that he himself did it. His conscience is quite satisfied with the reflection that he is a friend ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... Too gen'rous maid! O! had my truant, and ungrateful heart Her merit justly priz'd, I might this day, In honour, as in virtue have been happy, Not thus a wretched outcast of the world— I pray return it with a thousand blessings— Heart-rending ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... thickness. To her maiden fancy something of his strong virility had escaped even to this wayward little lock of hair. She had wondered then how the Senorita Valdes could keep from loving this splendid fellow if he cared for her. All the more she wondered now, for her truant heart was going out to him with the swift ardent passion of her race. It was as a sort of god she looked upon him, as a hero of romance far above her humble hopes. She found herself longing for chances to wait ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... lifted in her pale cheek. She looked at the dusty road, her hand pressed to her bosom as if to make certain that the truant heart had come back to her like a dove to its cote out of the storm. She looked up presently, and smiled a bit; looked down again, the hot blood writing a ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... witnessed a startling spectacle. Rabbinical students, playing truant, resorted thither to read Mapu's novel in secret. Luxuriously they lived the ancient days over again. The elevated love celebrated in the book touched all hearts, and many an artless romance ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... for some kingly match in Town, To give the scene its fitting ode, Sir! Could Pindar fire the athletic lyre, A truant from his bright abode, Sir, How would he chant the Chief heroic, The trundler's hope become zeroic, The drives from liberal shoulders poured, The changing history of the Board! Long may the champion's pith be scored In figures leaping on ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... some news of the truant lover. The fact is, this young lady was as intelligent as she was inexperienced; and she had asked Jacintha to tell Dard to talk to every soldier that passed through the village, and ask him if he knew anything about Captain Dujardin of the 17th regiment. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... been reading "Robinson Crusoe" but a day or two previous, and that charming story had made a great impression on his mind. Under its weird influence his vivid imagination conjured up possible scenes of adventure in which he was to emulate the courage and sagacity of that celebrated truant, and eventually come home, as Robinson did, a man full of knowledge with which to astonish the family, and with wealth to lavish on brothers and sisters, and make comfortable the declining years of his ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... till now, how oft soe'er the task Of truant verse hath lightened graver care, From Muse or Sylvan was he wont to ask, In phrase poetic, inspiration fair; Careless he gave his numbers to the air, They came unsought for, if applauses came: Nor for himself prefers ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... bank, crushes the banker, and swamps thousands in an hour. But the bank which holds the treasures of the barefooted boy never breaks. With his satchel and his books he hies away to school in the morning, but his truant feet carry him the other way, to the mill pond "a-fishin'." And there he sits the livelong day under the shade of the tree, with sapling pole and pin hook, and fishes, and fishes, and fishes, and waits ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... the truant?" asked Gaston. "Who but you would have thought of going after him? Well did I know you would never prosper without me ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Sidney. They had sent to the place whither he had been despatched; he had never arrived there. Mr. Morton grew alarmed; and, when Mr. Spencer came to dinner, his host was gone in search of the truant. He did not return till three. Doomed that day to be belated both at breakfast and dinner, this decided him to part with Sidney whenever he should be found. Mrs. Morton was persuaded that the child only sulked, and would come back fast enough when he was hungry. Mr. Spencer tried to ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "Ah, ha! little truant!" cried Mere Dubray, with a sharp glance at the child, "where hast thou been all the afternoon, while weeds ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... of each, it was impossible to consider them upon their merits in the lurid light which at the moment enveloped all the plans of the "uplifters." Thus the building of smaller schoolrooms, such as in New York mechanically avoid overcrowding, the extension of the truant rooms so successfully inaugurated, the multiplication of school playgrounds, and many another cherished plan was thrown out ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... Nation, in all such matters as supervision of the housing of the poor, the creation of small parks in the districts inhabited by the poor, in laws affecting labor, in laws providing for the taking care of the children, in truant laws, and in ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... had been like a truant's escapade for Jane Dardenne; it was a delightful and unexpected holiday, and as she was an actress at heart, she played her part seriously, and threw herself into her character, and enjoyed herself more than she ever enjoyed herself ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... she was apparently bent this afternoon. Mary Elsmere, shyly amused, held aloof, while Meynell and Miss Fox-Wilton talked across the stream. Meynell's peremptory voice reached her now and then, and she could not help hearing a sharp final demand that the truant should transfer herself at once to ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Miss Betham,—Not my will, but accident and necessity made me a truant from my promise. I was to have left Merton, in Surrey, at half-past eight on Tuesday morning with a Mr. Hall, who would have driven me in his chaise to town by ten; but having walked an unusual distance on the Monday, and talked and exerted myself in spirits that have been long unknown to me, on ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... turned to me with a vexed toss of his shoulder. "It's a hopeless task to look for a pagan's backbone," said he. "Come, I'll confess. I dare not hint at my truant thought to Auchinbreac or before any of these fiery officers of mine, who fear perhaps more than they love me. At the black tale of my weakness they would make no allowance for my courage as ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... show you a person whose imagination plays no truant pranks like this," replied Mr. Allison. "And this shall be at least one ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... ladies may have an effect in preventing the use of very intemperate language; and though it is maliciously said that some of the younger members speak more for the galleries than the house, and though some gallant individual may occasionally step up stairs to restore a truant handkerchief or boa to the fair owner, the distractions caused by their presence are very inconsiderable, and the arrangements for their comfort are a great reflection upon the miserable latticed hole to which lady listeners are ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... lots of it," she said. "We're thirsty...." She came back into the room. "The postman's just come," she said with a nod and a smile to Esther. "Lydia will bring our letters up if there are any." She turned again to Micky. "Well, truant! And what have you been doing? ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... Ah, truant, thou art here again, I see! For in a season of such wretched weather I thought that thou hadst left us altogether, Although I could not choose but fancy thee Skulking about the hill-tops, whence the glee Of thy blue laughter peeped at times, or rather ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... all. Some consolation might have been got out of a report of Benny's short interview with Grayson, had Benny thought to give it, but he had, on reaching home, promptly feigned headache, and gone to bed; so such of the boys as did not determine to play truant, and so postpone the evil day, thought bitterly of the morrow as they dispersed to their ...
— Harper's Young People, October 5, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... like a couple of schoolboys playing truant, and then they disappeared under the doorway of a dilapidated house, whilst I was left wondering how two such elegant gentlemen dared be abroad in Lyons these days, seeing that every man, woman and child who was dressed in anything but threadbare clothes ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... to Newfoundland, unless my little matter here is settled at once. Gloriana don't know it, and sha'n't till I'm off. She'd send me to the Tower, I think, if she caught me playing truant. I could hardly get leave to come hither; but I must out, and try my fortune. I am over ears in debt already, and sick of courts and courtiers. Humphrey must go next spring and take possession of his kingdom beyond seas, or his patent expires; and with ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... represent the manhood and the intellect of the race. The widespread nature of the movement may be illustrated by the school strike of the spring of 1912, during which every boy and girl above the age of fourteen in most of the primary and secondary schools of Croatia, Dalmatia, and Bosnia played truant as a protest against the misgovernment of Croatia. On that occasion a crowd of 5000 school children paraded the streets of Agram shouting "Down with Cuvaj" (the Ban or Governor of Croatia), and cheering the police when they tried ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... If the truant appetite "came back," however, it could not have stayed; for the man ate but little. He frowned, too, as he saw how little the boy ate. He sat silent while his son cleared the food and dishes away, and he was still silent when, with the boy, he passed out of the house and walked to ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... than never," exclaimed two of the girls. Nan said, "Why, what has made you play truant, Dick?" in a slightly injured voice. But Mrs. Challoner merely smiled at him, and said nothing; young men were her natural enemies, and she knew it. She was civil to them and endured their ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... see the expression of Reed's face when he came upon a new book really after his mind, or, still better, an old book, "Anything fifteenth century or early sixteenth," he used to say; any relic or scrap from Caxton's or De Worde's Press; any specimen of a "truant type" on the page of an early book; or a Caslon, or a Baskerville in good condition; or one of the beauties from Mr Morris's modern Press. Charles Lamb himself could not have looked more radiant or more happy in the ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... The truant quarrier seemed rather inclined to stay where he was and finish the mug of ale, but Pierston quickened him, and he ascended the staircase. As soon as the lower room was empty Pierston leant with his elbows on the table, and covered his ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... up from the valley by Wildeve's. A cream-coloured courser had used to visit this hill, a bird so rare that not more than a dozen have ever been seen in England; but a barbarian rested neither night nor day till he had shot the African truant, and after that event cream-coloured coursers thought fit to enter ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... LEGISLATION. One of the results of all this legislation has been to throw, during the past quarter of a century, an entirely new burden on schools everywhere. Such legislation has brought into the schools not only the truant and the incorrigible, who under former conditions either left early or were expelled, but also many children who have no aptitude for book learning, and many of inferior mental qualities who do not profit ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... Wie du uns erschreckt hast! Wie es mich freut dich zu finden!" (Oh, my truant sister! What a scare you have given us! How glad I am ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... a handkerchief and mopped his brow. He stared at each familiar object in the room as though he were trying to recall a truant mind. Finally his eyes came around to Helene, and with a quick smile and the old toss of the head with which he was wont to throw off a mood, he brought himself ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... swallowed up in a hum of truant inattention, and as the heralded speaker made his appearance upon the platform Claire Robson, leaning forward, said to ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... his love of the supernatural; he could believe anything, if it was only wonderful enough—except Geoffrey of Monmouth's History. But I must confine myself to one story—the story of the boy in Gower who (as the root of learning is bitter) played truant and found two little men of pigmy stature, and went with them to their country under the earth, and played games with golden balls with the fairy prince. These little folk were very small—of fair complexion, and long luxuriant hair; and they had horses and dogs to suit their size. They hated nothing ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... the outdoor air very fresh and sweet after the closeness of the school-house. It had just that same odor in his boyhood, and as he escaped he had a delightful sense of playing truant or of having an unexpected holiday. It was easier to think of himself as a boy, and to slip back into boyish thoughts, than to bear the familiar burden of his manhood. He climbed the tumble-down stone wall ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... deliver messages for telegraph companies or others. Compulsory education is, of course, universal, and the machinery to bring it about is generally based upon a system of certificates or cards, with truant officers and ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... the managing editor had instructed his subordinates to inform Gallegher, when he condescended to return, that his services were no longer needed. Gallegher had played truant once too often. Unconscious of this, he remained with his new friend until late the same evening, and started the next afternoon toward the ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... display his energies for the benefit of old mas'r. This done, she orders the servant to show him his bed in one of the "yard houses;" bids the old man an affectionate good night, retires to her room, and watches the return of her truant swain. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... teaching long remained. His other teachers, however famous and highly gifted, did not attain to such success with him. And because of this non-success they blamed him, as is usual. He was fond of playing truant—declared, indeed, that he was about as methodic a truant as ever could have existed. He much loved to go on long wanderings by himself on the Pentland Hills and read about the Covenanters, and while yet a youth of sixteen he wrote The ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... especially of the faithful Rose, who, regardless of the risk of personal harm, fluttered around her mistress's place of confinement, like a bird robbed of her nestlings around the cage in which the truant urchin has imprisoned them. Precaution was necessary to remove the stone, lest falling inwards it might ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... almost reached the Captain's gate when they saw Wing Fan approaching on horseback, leading the truant Caliph. Chicken Little was immensely relieved to find, as they came near, that neither saddle nor bridle had ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... a duke's title, but there are also Japanese, Turkish and Persian noblemen, who are therefore not yet a match for a pretty cultured English maiden. So without any mental scruples, with the calm conviction of the Englishman that his actions are perfectly justified, Harry Truant came between us two with a stanch, even, steady wooing. And what immediately struck me with distressing clearness was the greater ease with which Emmy and Harry understood each other. They were at home in each other's world and immediately understood each other's ways, each other's ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... vain to keep up with her. Soon her clear voice is heard as she sings, keeping time with the strokes of the axe she uses so skilfully. A peal of laughter rouses the old woman, her mother, who goes to bring the truant home, but she is gone, and when she returns, in time to see the red sun fade away in the bright horizon, she tells her mother that she went out with two or three other girls, to assist the hunters in bringing in the deer they had killed. And ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... within the last half-hour, Has ceased to hug the honey to its heart; While in the barnyard, under shed and cart, Brood-hens have housed.—But I, who scorned thy power, Barometer of the birds,—like August there,— Beneath a beech, dripping from foot to hair, Like some drenched truant, cower. ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... his own business without assistance. Hamilton missed him, and glanced down the table with a gaze of mingled disappointment and displeasure. A few words from him might have recalled Louis, but they were not spoken, and the only impression conveyed to the poor truant was, that the friend he most cared about, in common with the rest, considered him ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... Mademoiselle Reine Gobillot's fresh, chubby face, her figure prim beyond measure in a lilac-and-green plaid gingham dress, and carrying a basket on her arm, a necessary burden to maidens of a certain class who play truant. ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... hostilities; when pop went a third gun, followed as before with a yell. After this, for nearly two hours nothing occurred worthy of comment, save some straggling shouts from the hillside, sounding like the halloos of a parcel of truant boys who had ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... Bourget they circled the 'drome once, noted the wind socks on the great hangars, and dropped as lightly to the field as two tardy, truant schoolboys seeking to gain ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... singularly beautiful face, on which the man at her side gazed with open admiration. The close-fitting cap, with its bright red bow, indicated that the girl had not yet reached her eighteenth year. Here and there peeped out little truant locks of the glossy black hair, whose richness and abundance the close covering could not entirely conceal or fetter. The broad, intellectual brow; the delicate, pencilled lashes, from the shadow of which shone forth lustrous ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... caught sight of him, his eyes got quite red. Without even allowing himself any time to question him about his gadding about with actors, and the presents he gave them on the sly, during his absence from home; or about his playing the truant from school and lewdly importuning his mother's maid, during his stay at home, he simply shouted: "Gag his mouth and positively beat ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... like a child playing truant," said Lucy, a flush of excitement tinting her cheek. "You see, my aunt wouldn't like my being here any more than Mar—than ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... drear solitudes and frowsy cells, Where Infamy with sad Repentance dwells; Where turnkeys make the jealous portal fast, And deal from iron hands the spare repast; Where truant 'prentices, yet young in sin, Blush at the curious stranger peeping in; Where strumpets, relics of the drunken roar, Resolve to drink, nay, half, to whore, no more; Where tiny thieves not destin'd yet to swing, Beat hemp for others, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... no change of predilection. It sounds like heresy to say that Edison became an electrician by chance, but it is the sober fact that to this pre-eminent and brilliant leader in electrical achievement escape into the chemical domain still has the aspect of a delightful truant holiday. One of the earliest stories about his boyhood relates to the incident when he induced a lad employed in the family to swallow a large quantity of Seidlitz powders in the belief that the gases generated would enable him to fly. The agonies of the victim attracted attention, and Edison's ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... my dutiful acknowledgement, which I beseech you to present, when you shall call a convocation, about some matter of greater moment. Because their letter was in Latin, methought it did enforce me not to show myself a truant, by attempting the like, with a pen out of practice: which yet I hope they will excuse with a kind construction of my meaning. And to the intent they may perceive that my good will is as forward to perform as to promise, and that I ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... fancy," said the minstrel, with another half-sigh. "It was not indeed wholly, but in great part the hope of the poet's fame that made me a truant in the way to that which destiny, and such few gifts as Nature conceded to me, marked out for my proper and only goal. But what a strange, delusive Will-o'-the-Wisp the love of verse-making is! How rarely a man of good sense deceives himself as to other ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the verra nicht o' the Latin prose I cam up to speak aboot the college, and ye thocht Geordie hed been playing truant." ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... wait until you come to me? The once fleet mornings linger by the way, Their sunny smiles touched with malicious glee At my unrest; they seem to pause, and play Like truant children, while I sigh and say, How ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Sandy in the corner Sits greeting on a stool, And sair the laddie rues Playing truant frae the school; Then ye'll learn frae silly Sandy, Wha's gotten sic a fright, To do naething through the day That may ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... in review, and missing the fox was informed of the sly way in which he had eluded his authority, he dispatched great and powerful fish on the errand of enticing the truant into the water. The fox walking along the shore espied the large number of fish, and he exclaimed, "How happy he who may always satisfy his hunger with the flesh of such as these." The fish told him, if he would but follow them, his appetite could easily be ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... of them gave an address far up in the Bronx, ten miles away. They had not been home for a week, he said. Was he lying? What was to be done? Somewhere in the city their homes must be discovered. And the talk of the truant officer made Roger feel ramifications here which wound out through the police and the courts to reformatories, distant cells. He thought of that electric chair, and suddenly he felt oppressed by the heavy complexity ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... roses? You have the prettiest shade of colour,—just enough; not a hue too much. And there is Sir Miles's valet gone to the rectory, and the fat footman puffing away towards the village, and I, like a faithful warden, from my post at the castle, all looking out for the truant." ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fifty ducks there. We ran on and saw a drake flying at the hawk and pecking at its wings, and the duck, quacking in the utmost alarm, tried to get all her little ducklings under her wings; but, alas! one little truant ran into the weeds, and the hawk caught it in his claws, and, in spite of all the efforts of the poor drake, flew away ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... thou! Methought Thou wert a stranger in these parts? Ah, truant, Some village beauty lured ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton |
