"Urchin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eyes, and made her inattentive to what was going on around her, and partly in that habit of talking to herself which has already been referred to. I had won her confidence and friendship from the time when I rescued her "pricky-back urchin" from being kicked to death by the farm boys, who declared that hedgehogs always made their way into the byres and milked the cows. Since then we had had many talks together, but this was the first time that I had accompanied her when she ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... unfolded itself, step by step, the ragged street urchin whose father had been a poor tailor, attained to great heights—to wealth and success and power. Johnnie gloried in it all, seeing such results as future possibilities of his own, and not forgetting to remark how kind, through all the upward trending of fortune, Aladdin had been to his mother ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... have wheedled Uncle Pyke with drops of gin. As it was, Uncle Pyke was merely boorish or torpidly savage towards Aunt Belle and Aunt Belle's way with him—as with all combative men—was to rally him with a kind of boisterous chaff and to discharge it at him as an urchin with an armful of snowballs fearfully discharges them at an old gentleman in a silk hat: backing away, that is to say, before an advance and advancing before a retreat. Uncle Pyke usually retreated, ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... two old fifty-niners would mooch round and sit on their heels on the sunny mullock heaps and break clay lumps between their hands, and lay plans for the putting down of shafts, and smoke, till an urchin was sent to "look for his father and Mr So-and-so, and tell 'em to ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... cottage armed with toys and weird and injudicious food for little Jean and demanded an account of the precious infant's doings during the day. Gradually Jean recovered of his congestion, being a sturdy urchin, and, to Aristide's delight, resumed ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... were like the color they are studying, and show them some of the more familiar kinds; also speak of the action of the sun in making certain fruits red,—the raspberries and strawberries, for instance. Some rosy-faced little urchin in the class may be chosen and asked how he keeps such red cheeks, and from this the idea of red as the color of warmth and life may be developed. We may proceed with blue and yellow, then with violet, orange, and green, in like manner, constantly ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Duff was an urchin of ten years old. He was the son of Mrs. Duff, linen-draper-in-ordinary to Deerham—a lady popularly spoken of as "Mother Duff," both behind her back and before her face. Nancy darted out at the laundry-door and waylaid the ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... public-school boy on vacation, until I was astounded by some self-possessed remark on Jamaica dyewoods. We stopped in the same hotel. One morning he descended the stairs, a sort of dressing-case in hand, and yelled to an urchin ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... God forbid! God blesse mine Nephew, that thine eyes may see Thy childrens children with prosperity! I had rather see the little urchin hang'd [To the people. Then he should live and I forgoe ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... Whether he had run away, or his father had turned him out, I never fathomed; but about the age of twelve he was thrown upon his own resources. A travelling tin-type photographer picked him up, like a haw out of a hedgerow, on a wayside in New Jersey; took a fancy to the urchin; carried him on with him in his wandering life; taught him all he knew himself—to take tin-types (as well as I can make out) and doubt the Scriptures; and died at last in Ohio at the corner of a road. "He was a grand specimen," cried Pinkerton; "I wish you could have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tale of Thrawn Janet, and Black Andy's story of Tod Lapraik in Catriona, are grotesque imaginations of the school of Tam o' Shanter rather than of the school of Shakespeare, who deals in no comedy ghosts. They are turnip-lanterns swayed by a laughing urchin, proud of the fears he can awaken. Even The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the story of The Bottle Imp are manufactured bogeys, that work on the nerves and not on the heart, whatever may be said by those who insist on seeing allegory in what is only dream-fantasy. ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... wood attic, a little room divided from the main garret by wooden bars, in which a quantity of split firewood and more finely chopped fir sticks, smelling fresh and dry, are piled up in obliquely arranged heaps, a little urchin with tightly closed mouth and obstinate expression has, for more than two hours, been bearing his punishment ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... to shift his head; so-so,—that's right." Philip's sallow cheek and long hair were now tenderly lapped on the soliloquist's bosom. "Poor wretch! he smiles; perhaps he is thinking of home, and the butterflies he ran after when he was an urchin—they never come back, those days;—never—never—never! I think the wind veers to the east; he may catch cold;"—and with that, the man, sliding the head for a moment, and with the tenderness of a woman, from his breast to his shoulder, unbuttoned his coat (as he replaced the weight, no longer ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... could follow like a trail, had never seen or heard of Pee-wee Harris, scout of the first class (if ever there was one) and mascot of the Raven Patrol. He had indeed heard his father speak of "cuffing a sassy little city urchin on the ear," but how should he know that this same sassy little urchin had thrown away two hundred ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... And balance them 'gainst that which gold outweighs— Against this love—and you shall see how light The most supreme of them are in the poise! I speak by book and history; for love Slights my high fortunes. Under cloth of state The urchin cowers from pompous etiquette, Waiving his function at the scowl of power, And seeks the rustic cot to stretch his limbs In homely freedom. I fulfil a doom. We who are topmost on this heap of life Are nearer to heaven's hand than you below; ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... rare fossils broken to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds. And the cases had in some instances been bodily removed—by the Morlocks as I judged. The place was very silent. The thick dust deadened our footsteps. Weena, who had been rolling a sea urchin down the sloping glass of a case, presently came, as I stared about me, and very quietly took my hand and stood ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... nearest way, and not pass through the Square. The villagers had feared this, and had forestalled her; at the turning where she would have left the main road, she found waiting for her the swiftest-footed urchin in all St. Mary's, little Pierre Michaud. The readiest witted, too, and of the freest tongue, and he was charged to bring Aunt Hibba by the way of the Square, but by no means to ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... surprised had they seen their general surrounded by ponderous volumes, gravely investigating the teaching of departed commentators, or joining with quiet fervour in the family devotions. But had they seen him running down the stairs with an urchin on his shoulders, laughing like a schoolboy, they would have refused to credit the evidence of ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... me clean, that same He bolted, and took to himself whate'er I'd managed to scrape together, or spare, Leaving me naught but the urchin there. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... shouts and answering cries and laughter. Here, flying round in graceful curves, a dexterous skater cut his name in the ice; there, bands of noisy boys were playing tag, and on the ringing steel pursuing the chase; while every once in a while down would tumble some lubberly urchin, or unskillful performer, or new beginner, coming into harder contact with the frozen element than was pleasant, and seeing stars in the daytime, while bursts of laughter and ironical invitations to ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... have a vision with me Of a home upon a hill; And my heart is sad with longing And my eyes with tear-drops fill. I would be the care-free urchin That I was so long ago When across the sun-lit meadows Rover with me used to go Yonder where the graceful lindens Threw their shadows far and cool, And the waters waited for me In ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... Mother Muggins of the shop let the goody side of her scales of justice drop the lower by one lollipop for Bill than for any other lad, and exempt him by unwonted smiles from her general anathema on the urchin race? There were other honest boys in the parish who paid for their treacle-sticks in sterling copper of the realm! The very roughs of the village were proud of him, and would have showed their good nature ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... glass rises a little winged urchin, who cannot certainly be called an angel child, for there is goblin blood in his veins, and he has the spirit of a goblin—not wishing to hurt or harm you, indeed, but very ready to play off tricks upon you. He'll sit at your ear and whisper merry thoughts to you; he'll creep into your heart and ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... out most ferociously at Nero, and would, I believe, have torn him to pieces, but for the large hunting-whip with which I managed to keep them at bay. There was with me a young Maltese boy, of Irish parentage—a most amusing character this urchin was. He wanted me to take him into the interior as my interpreter. "Take me wid you, sir," was his eloquent appeal; "give me pound a month, sir; tell Arabs you brother of Queen Victoria, sir; Arabs great fools, sir; know no ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... nepre. uniform : uniformo; unuforma. unit : unuo. unite : unu'igxi, -igi; kun'igxi, -igi. universe : universo. unless : esceptinte ke, se ne. up : supre. upholster : remburi. upright : vertikala, rekta; honesta. upset : renversi. upstairs : supre. urchin : bubo. urgent : urgxa. use : uzi, utiligi,("—up") eluzi. useful : utila, ("be—") utili. usual : ordinara, kutima. usurp : uzurpi. usury : ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... sufficient degree of simplicity to make it intelligible to very young children, and rather choosing to be diffuse than obscure." With these objects in mind, we can understand small Tommy's embellishment of his demand for the return of his ball by addressing the ragged urchin ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... for that snub-nosed, freckled-faced urchin with the ragged pants, as he seems to be displaying a fine amount of shins at ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery
... half- decayed trunks of former monarchs of the forest that filled its bed—a ditch covered with a superstratum of slimy, green water, lank weeds, and rank vegetation; and wherein, at flood time, urchin anglers could fish for eels and sticklebats, and, at ebb, the village ducks ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... prate against wedlock! how did he strut about as a wit and a smart! and what a wit and a smart did all the boys and girls of our family (myself among the rest, then an urchin) think him, for the airs he gave himself?—Marry! No, not for the world; what man of sense would bear the insolences, the petulances, the expensiveness of a wife! He could not for the heart of him think it tolerable, that a woman of equal rank and fortune, and, as it might happen, superior talents ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... the creatures they produced. It would seem however that there were very few things that spoke shellfish except the shellfish themselves. Still, the porpoises grew a little more hopeful when they discovered a very old sea-urchin (a funny, ball-like, little fellow with long whiskers all over him) who said he could not speak pure shellfish, but he used to understand starfish—enough to get along—when he was young. This was coming nearer, even if it wasn't anything ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... The urchin's dirty and unpleasant face screwed itself up in anxious perplexity over this strange query. Then it cleared as he thought he grasped the idea, and the rat-eyes he lifted to her gleamed with the fell acuteness ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... curious to see how an urchin, whose whole stock and property consist in a board and a knife, will carry about a water-melon, or a half roasted gourd, collect a troup of children round him, set down his board, and proceed to divide the fruit into small ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... like mad to make up lost time. As she panted up the steps into the dimness of the cool hall, she stumbled over a trembling figure crouching in the darkest corner by the stairway, and drew back with a startled cry, which was echoed by her victim, a frail, ragged, young urchin with a thatch of jet black curls and ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... are going into the salting-house, we observe a little urchin running by the side of them, and hitting their edges with a long cane, in a constant succession of smart strokes, until they are fairly carried through the gate, when he quickly returns to perform the same office ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... of active pursuits. She hunted, she rode, she played lawn-tennis, and, when at the seaside, golf; when all failed, she walked resolutely four or five miles on the high-road, swinging along at a healthy pace, and never pausing save to counsel an old woman or rebuke a truant urchin. On such occasions her manner (for we may not suppose that her physique aided the impression) suggested the benevolent yet stern policeman, and the vicar acknowledged in her an invaluable assistant. By a strange coincidence she seemed to suit ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... of the Gods, and of mortals, and with thee he of varied plume, that darts about on swiftest wing; and flies over the earth and over the loud-resounding briny ocean; and Love charms to subjection, on whose maddened heart the winged urchin come gleaming with gold, the race of the mountain whelps, and of those that inhabit the sea, and as many things as the earth nourisheth, which the sun doth behold scorched [with its rays,] and men: but over all these things thou, ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... provinces live opposite, keeps him constantly before my window, hoping baiocchi. Within, the three pet dogs of my landlady, bereft of their walk, unable to employ their miserable legs and eyes, exercise themselves by a continual barking, which is answered by all the dogs in the neighborhood. An urchin returning from the laundress, delighted with the symphony, lays down his white bundle in the gutter, seats himself on the curb-stone, and attempts an imitation of the music of cats as a tribute to the concert. The door-bell ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... strong. Your mere puny stripling, that winced at the least flourish of the rod, was passed by with indulgence; but the claims of justice were satisfied by inflicting a double portion on some little tough wrong-headed, broad-skirted Dutch urchin, who sulked and swelled and grew dogged and sullen beneath the birch. All this he called "doing his duty by their parents;" and he never inflicted a chastisement without following it by the assurance, so consolatory to the smarting urchin, that "he ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... The black velvet band about her white hair had slipped down and now crossed her brow transversely a little above one bushy eyebrow, giving an inconceivably rakish appearance to her face. She held a small urchin, evidently from the Grassmarket or the Cowgate, firmly by the cuff of his ragged jacket. She was threatening him ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... failed, but not her cheerful spirits. She travelled to Colorado, and wrote a book in praise of it. Everywhere she made lasting friends. Her German landlady in Munich thought her the kindest person in the world. The newsboy, the little urchin on the street with a basket full of wares, the guides over the mountain passes, all remembered her cheery voice and helpful words. She used to say, "She is only half mother who does not see her own child in every child. Oh, if the world could only stop long enough for one generation of mothers ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... attention to the Committee whatever. The Committee were lost in admiration for a few moments, when they recovered, and asked one of Honest Old Abe's boys whose boy he was? "I'm my parent's boy," shouted the urchin, which burst of wit so convulsed the Committee that they came very near "gin'in eout" completely. In a few moments Honest Ole Abe finished his task, and received the news with perfect self-possession. He then asked them up to the house, where he received ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... Ould Crow!" shouted out the young urchin, in a mimicking voice, and running up close to him as he was returning to ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... de hurry-up wagon!" exclaimed another urchin. "A feller in a white suit—dem's doctors. I know, cause me fadder ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... of some, and the too evident ridicule of others, the disagreeable surprise of all, were too palpable for him not to see it, and to be hurt by it, and it was still worse when a street urchin said to him in a jeering voice, as he danced ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... sigh, "that is one of the many instances of the ingratitude of human nature; I confided those boots to the boy whom you must have seen come with me to fetch yours and the other gentlemen's shoes or clothes for brushing, etc. Well, sir, that young urchin is a protege of mine; I took him, sir, from the lowest obscurity and made him what he is; I taught him my profession, I endowed him with all the benefit of my experience, and with respect to blacking shoes, I have initiated him into all the little mysteries ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... the same time; but, he explains, the future Tusitala,—"the lover of children, the teller of tales, giver of counsel, and dreams, a wonder, a world's delight,"—and he did not meet there, for Louis was "but a little whey-faced urchin, the despicable member of some lower class," when his future brother author was "an elderly boy of seventeen." The pity was that the cosseted only son never rubbed against his compatriot children in the discipline ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... and Paul, putting the unfinished letter in his pocket, went round to see Pash in his Chancery Lane office. He was stopped in the outer room by a saucy urchin with an impudent face and a bold manner. "Mr. Pash is engaged," said this official, "so you'll ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... Osbalderston, and called Laud "the little great man," for this he, in 1639, was fined L5,000 to the King, and L3,000 to the Archbishop. Osbalderston in his letters had spoken of the "great Leviathan" and the "little Urchin," and was fined L5,000, to the King, and the same to the Archbishop, and sentenced also to stand in the pillory with his ears nailed ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... warmed a little as she adopted this view-point of her surly host. Being warmed, and having much to say, words came of themselves. Surely it would do no harm to tell the story to this queer urchin, who might be able to throw some light on the ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... out of the window again, and stuck out her tongue like an impudent urchin. "A pair of smarties," she scoffed. "Come home and fret our ears with your college slang. How ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... A chubby urchin made little hills of dust, using a well worn slipper for a trowel, and Dobbin kicked and stamped impatiently, occasionally taking another drink, and still ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... abnormally virtuous urchin and an abnormally kindly farmer. The urchin resolutely turns his back on the farmer's melon patch, though there is no end of opportunity. But the farmer catches him, brings him in by the ear, makes him choose a big one, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... An urchin came by, bawling oranges. They looked small and sour, but, for sheer lack of anything better to do, Alec went out of the car to buy a couple. He was just stepping in again to present them when, to his surprise, he became aware that one of the various people on the platform was Eliza ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... nobody you knew here, except the convict sergeant, and it is awfully hard to fill a letter home unless you have somebody to talk about. Yes, by the way, there is one little fellow, an ensign, just joined, who says he remembers us at school. He can't be more than eighteen or nineteen, and was an urchin in the lower school, I suppose, when we were leaving. I don't remember his face, but it's a very good one, and he is a bright gentlemanly youngster as you would wish to see. His name is Jones. Do you remember him? He will be a godsend ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... bring their big stuff to De Foe before they fire it. Last July, when the war was making its preliminary bow, and Hemphill was thundering those editorials of his that warned the Old Lion he would have to wake up and clean the jungle, Hemphill was simply the errand urchin. There's the man who wrote "To Arms, England!" one day after the Austrian note to Serbia. Hemphill got the credit and the money—but Laurence ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... with his stone-bruised feet and his tousled shock of hair; For the king can hear but the cry of hate or the sickly sound of praise, And lost to him are the voices sweet that called in his boyhood days. Far better than ruler, with pomp and power and riches, is it to be The urchin gay in his tattered clothes that is climbing ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... that bucket," he directed. It was the voice of authority commanding the urchin on the curb; of seasoned seniority chiding the heedlessness of ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... you were looking after the right person or not, when you were here!" Nattie said, with a smiling face and sparkling eyes turned in the direction of an urchin,' flattening his nose against her window-glass, who immediately fled, overwhelmed with astonishment, at being, as he ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... possessed, but which others possessed also. George Eliot or Thackeray could have described the weakness of Pip. Exactly what George Eliot and Thackeray could not have described was the vigour of Trabb's boy. There would have been admirable humour and observation in their accounts of that intolerable urchin. Thackeray would have given us little light touches of Trabb's boy, absolutely true to the quality and colour of the humour, just as in his novels of the eighteenth century, the glimpses of Steele or ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... at once, as pat to their uncle's words as an echo to the sound. Whereupon the old gentleman's spectacles shone with a lustre that was charming to see. In a moment after, however, Bryce, the pugnacious urchin of ten, expressed himself a little disappointed that they had had so much building of forts, and digging and cutting of roads, and so much scouting and marching, and so much getting ready to fight, and yet withal so ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... up from his agricultural labors, and stared at this lone intruder on his family privacy. He was a tall, rakish-looking fowl, whose erect carriage and lack of tail-feathers made him look like a spindle-shanked urchin as he towered there among ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... the sun sucks up From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him By inch-meal a disease! His spirits hear me, And yet I needs must curse. But they'll nor pinch, Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i' the mire, 5 Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark Out of my way, unless he bid 'em: but For every trifle are they set upon me; Sometime like apes, that mow and chatter at me, And after bite me; then like hedgehogs, which 10 Lie tumbling in my barefoot ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... other three men who had been left in the boat. They told us that the boat had been cleared; all the provisions, stores, sails, &c. had been taken out of her;—a proof that she had been gutted and then cut adrift;—that all our bundles were down in the captain's cabin, and that the ill-looking urchin, his son, had overhauled them, one after another, and handed to his father all the money that he had found; that they had been searched very carefully; and that they had heard the captain say that we were all to be sent up, one ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... the surprise into which we were suddenly thrown. They were about five inches in length, and exactly such as would have been made by a barefooted urchin of six years old. There appeared to be two sets of them, as if two children had passed, following one another on the same trail. What could it mean? After all, were there human beings in the valley besides ourselves? Could these be the footprints of two young Indians? All at once I ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... of this difficulty, by speaking for the third time that day; and this third remark of the sage was as much to the point as the two first. "Ask somebody!" propounded Mumbudget, and after hobbling miserably along for some time, this somebody turned up in the person of a very small, ragged, dirty urchin; and under the guidance of this contemptible little snipe did our prodigies of wisdom arrive at last at the abode of Science ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... coming!" responded a voice from the bottom of one of the long mugs at a street breakfast stall, which the fog almost concealed from their view, and presently an urchin in a drab coat and blue collar came towing a wretched, ewe-necked, hungry-looking, roan rosinante along from where he had been regaling himself with a mug of undeniable bohea, sweetened with a composition ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... "She ain't a bad urchin," he observed, "as sisters go. We're staying here along with the de Vignes. Ever met 'em? Lady Grace is a holy terror. Her husband is a horrible stuck-up bore of an Anglo-Indian,—thinks himself everybody, and tells the most awful howlers. Rose—that's the daughter—is by way of being very ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... "it is not so very uncommon for a dark child to be born of fair parents, or vice versa. I once saw an urchin that was like neither father nor mother, but the image of his father's grandfather, that died eighty years before he was born. They used to hold ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... into Silverstein's shop one hot Saturday afternoon to cool himself with ice-cream soda. She had not noticed his entrance, being busy with one other customer, an urchin of six or seven who gravely analyzed his desires before the show-case wherein truly generous and marvellous candy creations reposed under a cardboard announcement, "Five ...
— The Game • Jack London
... relationship between the two young creatures who alone belonged to each other. Lucy almost forgot her present self as she talked, and they moved about together, the tall boy clinging to her arm as the little urchin had done, altogether dependent, yet always with a curious leadership, suggesting a thousand things that would ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... a laughing face. An urchin of surpassing impishness, one who has come too late to hear our password, ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... idea of the warmth of family feeling among the Corsicans. At the foot of the descent, a mile from the town, the diligence suddenly stopped. By the road-side a group, of all ages and both sexes, was waiting its arrival. What fond greetings! what tender embraces! A young urchin seized his brother's sword, almost as long as himself; the mother and sisters clung to his side. Leaving him to walk to the town thus happily escorted, we are set down on the quay. The only access ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... solo, to salvos of applause, Mademoiselle Klosking took the second part with this urchin, the citizens and all the musical people who haunt a cathedral were on the tiptoe of expectation. The boy amazed them, and the rich contralto that supported him and rose and swelled with him in ravishing harmony enchanted them. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... still concealed art. Her vitality was equal to the vitality of Rejane; it is differently expressed, that is all. With Rejane the vitality is direct; it is the appeal of Gavroche, the sharp, impudent urchin of the streets; Sarah Bernhardt's vitality is electrical, and shoots its currents through all manner of winding ways. In form it belongs to an earlier period, just as the writing of Dumas fils belongs to an earlier period than the writing of Meilhac. It comes to us with the tradition ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... Getting still nearer, another Indian, who had been, I concluded, sleeping, and just awakened by the tramp of our horses, crawled out of the tent to have a look at us. It was a perfect scene of Indian domestic life. Near the chief, his wife sat on the ground playing with her child, a fat little urchin; a second woman was busy chopping wood; a third was coming in, axe in hand, with a huge bundle of sticks on her back, and a child clinging round her neck while a dog was too busy gnawing a bone to turn ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... sweet. You catch them large and good off Nestor's home. Have I passed by the black-tail and the 'thrush', The sea-merle and the shadow of the sea? Best to Corcyra go for cuttlefish, For the acarne and the fat sea-skull The purple-fish, the little murex too, Mice of the sea and the sea-urchin sweet. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... whole body immediately designated three young persons whose conduct had been irreproachable to an exceptional degree. He then applied a more delicate test. "Point out to me," said he, "the worst boy." All the children remained motionless, and made no sign; but one little urchin came forward, with a pitiful air, and said, in a very low tone, "It is me." Such were the public sentiment and sense of honor, even in a reform school. This frankness in the lad was followed by reformation; and he became in after years a good soldier,—the life anticipated ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... are admirably described by Sir Charles Lyell. He speaks of the frequency with which geologists find in the chalk a fossilized sea-urchin, to which is attached the lower valve of a Crania. This is a kind of shell-fish, with a shell composed of two pieces, of which, as in the oyster, one is fixed and ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... notice a few of the details. The three guards are foremost in the picture, and in merit; the struggle in their countenances between discipline and a sense of the ludicrous scene before them is admirably represented; as well as the little urchin with his tin sword. The centre figure of the High Sheriff, with his tattered and faded finery of office, is equally clever; but the skill with which the artist has contrived to express his forced mirth, and mopstick bravado, is still more forcible. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... he tenderly pressed the little urchin's head to his breast and murmured: "Ah! he is my very grandson, my own flesh ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... the men-at-arms exchanged glances at first pitying, and then sterner, as the longest-booted man said, "Beware, my noble lord; the urchin doth but feign madness to escape from our clutches. Shall we not ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... the small solemn-eyed urchin who had strayed in from the kitchen and now stood in the door hitching at a diminutive pair of trousers and eying Elliott absorbedly. "Gone!" he announced suddenly; ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... young folk were babies no longer, and that they were able to feed themselves. I was interested to see his manner of intimating to his young hopefuls that they had reached their majority. When one begged of him, in his gentle way, the parent turned suddenly and gave him a slight push. The urchin understood, and moved a little farther off; but perhaps the next time he asked he would be fed. They learned the lesson, however, and in less than two days from the first hint they ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... waiting for my reply, she caught up a shawl, threw it over her head, and followed the urchin, who was in a state of great ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... love-tokens back into the bag, duly placed Captain Jack's letter in the inner pocket, and was about to present her with his arm to conduct her homewards, when he caught sight of a little ragged urchin peeping through the bars of the gate, and seemingly in the very act of making a mysterious signal in the direction of ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... came back and told her what she wanted to know; the friar had disappeared within the doors of a little church by the sea-shore, not many yards distant, a church under the charge of an austere religious, Father Hieronymus. Delighted, Lysidice gave the urchin his piece of silver and ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... time in contemplation before a statue whose head was perfectly black with mould, and one of whose hips was missing. Near the basin there was a bourgeois forty years of age, with a prominent stomach, who was holding by the hand a little urchin of five, and saying to him: "Shun excess, my son, keep at an equal distance from despotism and from anarchy." Marius listened to this bourgeois. Then he made the circuit of the basin once more. At last he directed his course ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... second-childhood. These lads are to be sent to Cambridge and educated for the learned professions. Old Master Cheever had lived so long, and seen so many generations of school-boys grow up to be men, that now he can almost prophesy what sort of a man each boy will be. One urchin shall hereafter be a doctor, and administer pills and potions, and stalk gravely through life, perfumed with assafoetida. Another shall wrangle at the bar, and fight his way to wealth and honors and, in his declining age, ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... had the bark cut and detached. He then prepared it for launching by puddling up its ends, and putting it into the water, placed his lubra and an infant child in it, and giving her a rude spear as a paddle pushed her away from the bank. She was immediately followed by a little urchin who was sitting on the bank, the canoe being too fragile to receive him; but he evidently doubted his ability to gain the opposite bank of the river, and it was most interesting to mark the anxiety of both parents as the little fellow struck ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... hung on the walls, while books filled the shelves, and papers and periodicals strewed the tables. The furnishings spoke of comfort and a modest dignity. Obliquely in his line of vision he could see two children, seated at a table and poring over a picture-book The boy, a manly urchin, might have been fourteen, the girl a year or two younger. Her curls fell over the hand and arm supporting her cheek, so that Ford could only guess at the blue eyes concealed behind them. Now and ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... them any how," said the urchin, as he disengaged himself from his wet saddle, and stood upon the ground; "and it is not my fault that the coach ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... urchin said: 'Why, Judge, after the battle yesterday, we couldn't get those women out of the village till they'd seen every fellow had at least a dozen fried cakes and all the coffee or chocolate he could pile in. We just had to drag 'em out—for the boys love 'em too much ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... at the street she wanted. At the corner she came suddenly to a standstill, and putting her two first fingers into her mouth blew a shrill whistle, after the fashion of street boys. A moment later a shock-headed urchin about ten years old made his appearance from a dark alley and came towards us. The woman said something to him, which I did not catch, and then turning sharply to her left hand beckoned to me to ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... small hours of the Monday morning, and dossed on Banstead Downs that night. Next day they joined the great stream of traffic rolling out of London Epsomward. Young Joe, whose strength lay in his powers of sympathetic intuition, let Monkey drive. And the urchin took his place with pride in that vast stream of char-a-bancs, 'buses, hansoms, and drags rolling southward; and no four-in-hand coachman of them all held up his hand to stay the following traffic, or twiddled his whip with lordlier dignity than the dark lad who sat on ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... looked hard at the baby, to see if it was like Mortimer, but I could not make it out; those young things are like nothing. I tried if it would talk, for I wanted sadly to make it call Mrs Delvile grandmama; however, the little urchin could say nothing to be understood. O what a rage would Mrs Delvile have been in! I suppose this whole castle would hardly have been thought heavy enough to crush such an insolent brat, though it were to have fallen upon it all ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... dropped off the logs, brought up the peevy, and ran away, dripping. The men laughed, and not knowing his name, called him "the peevy-boy." Afterward, when they had found out his mother, they named the urchin "Young Moll's Peevy." This sobriquet clung to him even after he had reached manhood and worked with the gang, particularly among the older men who remembered the circumstance. But his mother called him Lotte. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... for following the details of this important process of impregnation. We can, in this case, easily and successfully accomplish artificial impregnation, and follow the formation of the stem-cell step by step within the space of ten minutes. If we put ripe ova of the star-fish or sea-urchin in a watch glass with sea-water and add a drop of ripe sperm-fluid, we find each ovum impregnated within five minutes. Thousands of the fine, mobile ciliated cells, which we have described as "sperm-threads" (Figure 1.20), make their way to ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... come hither," 'gan Florice call; And the urchin left his fun; So from the hall of poor Sir Paul Retreats the baffled dun; So Ellen parts from the village ball, Where she leaves ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... had been boys together at Catskill. They were neither intimates nor equals, although of the same age; for young Croswell had the advantage of position and education given him by his father, then publisher of the Recorder. To Weed, only such work came as a bare-footed, ragged urchin of eleven was supposed to be capable of doing. This was in 1808. The two boys did not meet again for twenty years, and then only to separate as Hamilton and Burr had parted, on the road to White Plains, in the memorable retreat from Manhattan in September, 1776. But Croswell, retaining ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... N. infant, babe, baby, babe in arms; nurseling, suckling, yearling, weanling; papoose, bambino; kid; vagitus. child, bairn, little one, brat, chit, pickaninny, urchin; bantling, bratling[obs3]; elf. youth, boy, lad, stripling, youngster, youngun, younker[obs3], callant[obs3], whipster[obs3], whippersnapper, whiffet [obs3][U.S.], schoolboy, hobbledehoy, hopeful, cadet, minor, master. scion; sap, seedling; tendril, olive branch, nestling, chicken, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... speed, all unwitting that four disconsolate maidens were marooned on the farther side of the river, waiting for some faerie boat to ferry them across. For a long time no knight-errant arrived for their relief, but at last, as chance would have it, an urchin came down on to the wharf, with a string and a bent pin, intent on fishing. He was at least a link with the outer world, and they yelled hopefully to him across the water. He stopped and stared, then took to his heels and ran, but whether in terror or to fetch help they were uncertain. ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... our baggage-train has been seen, where our camp is pitched. No one knows, no one cares; until at last a ragged, smiling urchin, one of those blessed, ubiquitous boys who always know everything that happens in a town, offers to guide us. He trots ahead, full of importance, dodging through the narrow alleys, making the complete circuit of the castle-hill and leading us to the upper end of the ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... communications had always come—without bridging the way that lay between them, without furnishing him with a clue through the method employed for their transmission that would avail him anything, or supply him with any means of reaching her. It had been thrust into his hand by a street urchin, as he had entered the door of Bristol Bob's that half an hour before. He had not even questioned the urchin—it would have been useless, futile, barren of results. A hundred previous experiences had ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... ragged and wild as if they belonged to nobody. His son Rip, an urchin begotten in his own likeness, promised to inherit the habits, with the old clothes of his father. He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother's heels, equipped in a pair of his father's cast-off galligaskins, which he had much ado to hold up with ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... that I never recovered from. Soon after the arrival of the suit I donned it, and put off for Cincinnati on horseback. While I was riding along a street of that city, imagining that every one was looking at me, with a feeling akin to mine when I first saw General Scott, a little urchin, bareheaded, footed, with dirty and ragged pants held up by bare a single gallows—that's what suspenders were called then—and a shirt that had not seen a wash-tub for weeks, turned to me and cried: "Soldier! will you work? No, sir—ee; I'll ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... he? A rough little runaway urchin from an Orphans' Home! We know nothing whatever about ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... the window again. Professor Biggleswade suddenly remembered the popular story of the great scientist's antecedents, and reflected that as McCurdie had once run, a barefoot urchin, through the Glasgow mud, he was likely to have little kith or kin. He himself envied McCurdie. He was always praying to be delivered from his sisters and nephews and nieces, whose embarrassing demands no calculated ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... not many of my readers who cannot tell a starfish or a sea-urchin at sight, that is to say, a grown-up starfish or urchin; but to distinguish between them, or even to recognise them at all, in the days of their infancy is a very different matter. Indeed, only those who devote their lives to the study of these creatures are able to do this, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... though which good Mother Gossip sent him were such, and so interminable, that a relation of half of them would alone make a library of fiction. But fortune had consecrated this mean and smutty urchin. He stood now worshipped in the awful glory of his millions, pedestalled on his money-bags, gilded from head to heel; and what could the proudest noblesse upon earth do but forget and forgive the rags and hunger of his infancy, and come together, from the east and ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... said, "that you fed the angel-fish with sea-urchin. I don't see how they can eat it with their tiny mouths, I should think the spines would ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... flame in Cupids of threescore. These in their turn, with appetites as keen, Deserting fifty, fasten on fifteen, 20 Miss, not yet full fifteen, with fire uncommon, Flings down her sampler, and takes up the woman: The little urchin smiles, and spreads her lure, And tries to kill, ere she's got power to cure. Thus 'tis with all — their chief and constant care 25 Is to seem everything but what they are. Yon broad, bold, angry spark, I fix my eye on, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... seemed clattering her doleful song on the flying clapboards and crazy casements. A feeble, struggling light from within showed the inmates were stirring as the man in the overcoat gave a loud, careless thump on the trembling door, which was opened by a pale, gaunt-looking urchin, clad in garments bearing patches of ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... was James Whitcher. He was born in the Franconia Valley of northern New Hampshire, and his whole life had been passed there. He had always fished; he could not remember when or how he learned the art. From the days when, a tiny, bare-legged urchin in ragged frock, he had dropped his piece of string with its bent pin at the end into the narrow, shallow brooklet behind his father's house, through early boyhood's season of roaming along Gale River, wading Black ...
— Fishin' Jimmy • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... of migratory lanthorns in a world of extinction, came the era of oil-lights, hard to kindle, easy to extinguish, pale and wavering in the hour of their endurance. Rudely puffed the winds of heaven; roguishly clomb up the all-destructive urchin; and, lo! in a moment night re-established her void empire, and the cit groped along the wall, suppered but bedless, occult from guidance, and sorrily wading in the kennels. As if gamesome winds and gamesome ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an exceedingly fat woman, a native of Valladolid, in Old Castile. "Have you any other family," I demanded, "besides these daughters?" "Two sons," she replied; "one of them an officer in the army, father of this urchin," pointing to a wicked but clever looking boy of about twelve, who at that moment bounded into the room; "the other is the most celebrated national in Madrid: he is a tailor by trade, and his name is Baltasar. He has much influence with ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... around sharply, feeling justly incensed. Of course, he knew what it was—some good-for-nothing urchin finding a vent for his excited feelings. His parlor-maid, who was never in any hurry to open the door,—she had once kept him waiting ten minutes when he had forgotten his latch-key,—would certainly take no notice of this unseemly noise, but he, James ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... a century before, Daniel Herbert, then a country urchin tending cattle on the hillside where now stood his turreted stone mansion, had decided that some day when he should be rich he would return and buy that hillside and the great reach of flat river-bottom that ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... sight of that wheel chair recalled to the boy's mind the reports of his friends, Skinny and Chuck. Perhaps it was something in the man himself that appealed to the unerring instincts of the child. The doubt and hesitation in the urchin's freckled face suddenly gave way to a look of reckless daring and he marched forward with the swaggering air of an infant bravado. ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... Liza used to tell me when I was very little that if I fought with those who were smaller than myself, I was fighting the wards of the Father in heaven, and it was a lot better to get a broken head from some sturdy urchin who was big enough to look out for himself. And I have always thought that old Liza was about as close to the Ruler of Events as any one of us is likely to get. Anyway I doubted not that if the good God rode in the Hills, He was far ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... with some?" I replied; and only too pleased, she squalled to an urchin who was distributing the squares plus a safety-pin. I was such a well-poised "rail-sitter" that I was entitled to wear both colours; and as this one was being ostentatiously fastened to the lapel of my over-jacket, I remembered ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... gloomy aspect, well suited for a necromancer. It was at different times a brazier's shop and a magazine for lint, and in my younger days was employed for the latter use; but no family would inhabit the haunted walls as a residence; and bold was the urchin from the High School who dared approach the gloomy ruin at the risk of seeing the Major's enchanted staff parading through the old apartments, or hearing the hum of the necromantic wheel, which procured for his sister such a character as a spinner. At the time I am ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... rich, mamma," Jansoulet, when he was a mere urchin, used to say to his mother whom he adored, "I'll give ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the baffled North-wind calls. But soft! a sultry morning breaks; The ground-pines wash their rusty green, The maple-tops their crimson tint, On the soft path each track is seen, The girl's foot leaves its neater print. The pebble loosened from the frost Asks of the urchin to be tost. In flint and marble beats a heart, The kind Earth takes her children's part, The green lane is the school-boy's friend, Low leaves his quarrel apprehend, The fresh ground loves his top and ball, The air rings jocund to his call, The ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... in one of quite a third-rate sort that the urchin at length ceased his trot, and drew up at the door of a baker's shop—a divided door, opening in the middle by a latch of bright brass. But the child did not lift the latch—only raised himself on tiptoe by the help of its handle, to look ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... his heels," cried Swinton, laughing; "he has fallen into an ant-eater's hole, depend upon it; that mischievous little urchin might ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... in their eyes that gift of nature to the most sordid youth, the gift of expectancy. There were fairies and ogres and pirates and Indians in costumes that needed only the proper imagination to make them convincing. If by any chance a wistful urchin arrived in his rags alone, Mr. Demry promptly evolved a cocked hat from a newspaper, and a sword from a box top, and transformed ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... footpath in April lies the Mole, disembowelled by the peasant's spade; at the foot of the hedge the pitiless urchin has stoned to death the Lizard, who was about to don his green, pearl-embellished costume. The passer-by has thought it a meritorious deed to crush beneath his heel the chance-met Adder; and a gust of wind has thrown a tiny unfeathered bird from its nest. What will become of ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... gentle sleep The urchin eyelids kiss'd, Two stern-fac'd men set out from Lynn, Through the cold and heavy mist; And Eugene Aram walked between, With gyves upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 340, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... how about getting married? Being alone is odious, it is deadly, and it is cruel also for those who love you. All your letters are unhappy and grip my heart. Haven't you any woman whom you love or by whom you would be loved with pleasure? Take her to live with you. Isn't there anywhere a little urchin whose father you can believe you are? Bring him up. Make yourself his slave, ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... The urchin rubbed the raspberry-jam off his mouth, and said, "It don't matter, sir, for I've got ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lodgings in one of the poorest streets of Paris; on his enquiring for Madame Rose, a woman told him she was gone; she had been very ill and he could gain further information from Father Lefroy, and she directed a little urchin to go and show the gentleman the priest's house; Trevalyon putting a sovereign into her hand, thanked her and followed the boy. They soon reached their destination, a small, white, many-gabled old-fashioned windowed house, with bright flowers in boxes attached to the window-sill. ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... every flag that moved. Ruth wore no slogan of any sort. She carried one symbol only—the American flag. She was not walking. Ruth rode, regally, magnificently. We were hunting for her in the rank and file, and then some little urchin called out, "Gee! ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... across the room and seized the cringing urchin by the collar as the others scampered out of the hall and down the steps. The tissues rustled up in the draught, floated softly in the air blue scrawls and under the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce |
