|
|
|
More "Truant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... meanwhile 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 ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... 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 ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... the primeval earth, Surely was with magic fraught That upon my pulses wrought: I too felt the air of June Humming with a merry tune, I too reckoned, like a boy, Less of Time and more of Joy: Till, as homeward I was wending, I perceived my back unbending, And before the mile was done Ran beside my truant son. ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... the nature of the country in which the sheep is straying; and also the nature of the sheep that is straying there. He knows the roughness of the mountain passes, and the silliness of the solitary truant sheep; he divines accordingly what track it will take. He conjectures beforehand, with a considerable measure of accuracy, the pit in which it will be found lying, or the thicket in which it will be seen struggling. He follows and finds the fugitive. ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... take children to school every morning, and to bring them home again in the evening. Each morning he called at the various houses, he led the children out, he carried the little ones, some on his back and some in his arms, he chastised with a stick those who were inclined to play truant, and he landed them all ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... was playing truant round the steps did Ben a service without knowing it, for a sudden puff blew a torn leaf to his feet, and seeing a picture he took it up. It evidently had fallen from some ill-used history, for the picture showed some queer ships at anchor, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... the truant set, and, at the first commotion, up went his great back, and down went his ears, with a single lash out behind that meant mischief, but Mr. Sponge was on the alert, and just gave him such a dig with his spurs as restored ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off long ago to Megara or Boeotia—by the dog they would, if they had been moved only by their own idea of what was best, and if I had not chosen the better and nobler part, instead of playing truant and running away, of enduring any punishment which the state inflicts. There is surely a strange confusion of causes and conditions in all this. It may be said, indeed, that without bones and muscles and the other parts of the body ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... and deeper into the seclusion, having by this time lost the deceitful track. No matter if he go astray; even were it after nightfall instead of noontime, a will-o'-the-wisp, or Puck himself, would not lead him into worse harm than to delude him into some mossy pool, the depths of which the truant schoolboys had known for ages. Nevertheless, some little time after his disappearance, there was the report of a shot that echoed sharp and loud, startling the pheasants from their boughs, and sending the hares and deer a-scampering ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Thou wert a stranger in these parts? Ah, truant, Some village beauty lured thee;—thou art ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... "Ah, playing truant," said Wilfred, self-consciously; his schoolmaster had often proved an alibi against him. "Then Denzil will ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... It was astonishing what a change in the morals of men army life occasioned. Someone has said, "A rogue in the army, a rogue at home;" but this I deny. Sometimes that same devilish, schoolboy spirit that actuates the truant to filch fruit or melons from orchards of others, while he had abundance at home, caused the soldier oftentimes to make "raids," as they called these nocturnal visits to the farm houses outlying the army's track. I have known men who at home was as honorable, honest, upright, and ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... of having done a foolish thing made Prosper appear like a frightened school-boy, accused by his teacher of playing truant. ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... gaily-crowded streets was sweet to him as a lazy truant ramble in the woods during church-time. Everything that he looked at delighted him—the richness of shop-windows, showing all the expensive useless goods that no sensible person ever wants; the liveries worn by ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... 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, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the certainty that both public and domestic scandal must soon arise from the inevitable revelation of his discontinuing his attendance at school without mentioning this important change of career at home. He had been truant a full fortnight, under brighter circumstances a matter for a lawless pride—now he had neither fear nor vainglory. There was no room in ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... at this time at once my true school and favourite play-ground; and if my master did wink at times harder than master ought, when I was playing truant among its woods or on its shores, it was, I believe, whether he thought so or no, all for the best. My uncle Sandy had, as I have already said, been bred a cartwright; but finding, on his return, after his seven years' service on board a man-of-war, that the place had cartwrights ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... is done wisely, is done well. Be bold 35 As thou art just. 'Tis like a truant child To fear that others know what thou hast done, Even from thine own strong consciousness, and thus Write on unsteady eyes and altered cheeks All thou wouldst hide. Be faithful to thyself, 40 And fear no other witness but thy fear. For if, as cannot be, some circumstance ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... 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,
... Manston, who was known to be a Philadelphian by birth, had returned by the train to London, as the porter had said, and then left the country under an assumed name, to escape that worst kind of widowhood—the misery of being wedded to a fickle, faithless, and truant husband? ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... not until he had searched for and caught Connie's truant gaze. "Aren't we?" he asked of Miss Fowler, his eyes ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... modern education, in its better efforts, really conveys to any of us that kind of idealising power, it does so (though dealing mainly, as its professed instruments, with the most select and ideal remains of ancient literature) oftenest by truant reading; and thus it happened also, long ago, with ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... ever truant daughter so whimsically circumstanced as I am? I have sent my intended husband to look after my lover—the man of my father's choice is gone to bring me the man of my own: but how dispiriting is this interval ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... eventide. The truth is, these girls have brought in a new life among us, and there is not one of us, except the children, that is not some years younger for their presence. Mr Grey deserts his business for them, like a school-boy; and Mr Rowland watches his opportunity to play truant in turn. Mrs Enderby gives dances, and looks quite disposed to lead off in person. Mrs Plumstead has grown quite giddy about sorting the letters, and her voice has not been heard further than three doors off since the arrival of the strangers. Dr Levitt is ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... affectation and disguise—no one else ever so well shewed how delicacy and timidity, when driven to extremity, grow romantic and extravagant; for the romance of his heroines (in which they abound) is only an excess of the habitual prejudices of their sex, scrupulous of being false to their vows, truant to their affections, and taught by the force of feeling when to forego the forms of propriety for the essence of it. His women were in this respect exquisite logicians; for there is nothing so logical as passion. They knew their own minds exactly; and only followed up ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... finally taken up his meaning, he had slipped about the table, touched Nance lightly but imperiously on the arm, and left the room. In face of the outbreak of his lordship's lamentations she made haste to follow the truant. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a moment, put in a hen from the aviary as call-bird, a few grains of hemp as bait, stand the cage on a box, or anything else, close to the bush, and watch from some point out of sight. In less than ten minutes we shall most likely have caught the truant ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the invasion did come whether he would stick at his post in London and dutifully forward the news to his paper, or play truant and as a war correspondent watch the news in the making. So the words of Mr. Clarkson's assistant did not sink in. But a few weeks later young Major Bellew recalled them. Bellew was giving a dinner on the terrace of the ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... house in a state of excitement and agitation which it would be impossible to describe. The old lady was dressed out in a brocaded gown, which had not seen the light for twenty years, saving and excepting such truant rays as had stolen through the chinks in the box in which it had been laid by, during the whole time. Mr. Trundle was in high feather and spirits, but a little nervous withal. The hearty old landlord was trying to look very cheerful and unconcerned, but failing signally in the ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... was alone in a big grass field, with strong notions that I should have to walk an unknown number of miles home. Judge of my delight as I paced slowly along—running was of no use—at seeing Frank G—— returning with my truant in hand. Such an action in the middle of a run deserves a Humane Society's medal. To struggle breathless into my seat; to go off at score, to find a lucky string of open gates, to come upon the hounds at a check, was my good fortune. But ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... how I long to be at home again and in my old place. In my dreams and in my waking hours, I am often back at the old homestead; my thoughts play truant while I pore over my books, and even while I listen to my teacher in the class-room. I would give so much to know what you are all doing—so much to feel that now and then I am in your thoughts, and that you do ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... some several-days-old papers we observe that the truant Mr. Bergdoll was discovered at Eberbach in Baden. Well, well, we meditate, Herr Bergdoll is not wholly devoid of sense, if he is rambling about that delicious valley of the Neckar. And if we were a foreign correspondent, anxious to send ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... friend; but beware of making marriage a mere convenience. There may be folly in calling each truant inclination that deep sentiment and secret sympathy which firmly knits heart to heart, and doubtless a common fortune may bind the worldly-minded together; but this is not the holy union which keeps noble qualities in a family, and which fortifies against the seductions of ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... hear or see; Whilst those you now would woo, The time-worn truant slight, Nor dream of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... a great deal to do with schools after his docile childhood. When he began to run wild with the other boys he preferred their savage freedom; and he got out of going to school by most of the devices they used. He had never quite the hardihood to play truant, but he was subject to sudden attacks of sickness, which came on about school-time and went off towards the middle of the forenoon or afternoon in a very strange manner. I suppose that such complaints are unknown at the present time, but the Young People's fathers can tell them how ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... come back," said the little truant, peeping up at her agitated friends' with some surprise; "thought I'd come ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... brown eyes grew full of laughter, and the next moment the little questioner had squeezed her way through a slightly open door, and was toddling down the broad stone stairs and across a landing to Hetty's room. The room-door was open, so the truant went in. A bed with the bed-clothes all tossed about, a half worn-out slipper on the floor, a very untidy dressing-table met her eyes, but ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... the newcomers and many questions were fired at them regarding "th' latest from th' Hills." Waffles made a rush for Hopalong, but fell over Big-foot's feet and all three were piled up in a heap. All were beaming with good nature, for they were as so many school boys playing truant. Prosaic cow-punching was relegated to the rear and they looked eagerly forward to their several missions. Frenchy told of the barb-wire fence war and of the new regulations of "Smith of Buffalo" regarding cow-punchers' ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... succeed very well if only he wants to learn. I have known many people who, as they said, "were no scholars," and yet they were not very far from the kingdom of Heaven. Brethren, some of us have never yet been to Christ's school. We have been playing truant, or altogether taken up with the lessons of that great, selfish, public-school—the world. I want you all to come to Christ's school to-day, old and young, clever and dull, and to hear some of the lessons which ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... 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, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... the Ritz Frohman discussed the play after his manner: "Do you know," he said, "I find the element of pity quite as strongly developed in these French farces as in the Ambigu melodramas. The truant husband leaves home, goes out for a good time, gets buffeted and bastinadoed for his pains, and when the compassionate audience says, 'He has had enough; let up,' he comes humbly home to the bosom of his family and is forgiven. Where ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... theory that, playing truant from the house while his father was engaged in work below stairs, he had been overwhelmed and perhaps wholly consumed by a detached fragment from the fiery visitant. This picturesque suggestion found many supporters until, on the afternoon of December fourteenth, ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... color 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
... governments of the 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 ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the main reception-room for the truant expedition. He was hoping against hope. Orders had been given that Popova, Kalora and the whole disobedient crew should be brought before him as soon as they arrived. His wrath had not cooled, but ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... that was all, and, deeply pained, Ellen retired to her own room, which she did not quit, even to see her favourite cousin decked for the ball. Emmeline sought her, however, and tried by kisses to recall the truant rose, the banished smile, but Mrs. Hamilton did not come to wish her good night, and Ellen's heart ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... about the body of the dead Grabritin, looking futilely down the river to where it made an abrupt curve to the west, a quarter of a mile below us, and was lost to sight, as though we expected to see the truant returning to us with our precious launch—the thing that meant life or death to us in ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of the matter was that Jose and Patch, who had gone a-hunting, had not returned when the party had left for Bell Hammer. It was possible that, during their absence, the dogs had come back, and Anthony did not like to think that truant Patch might be wandering around the house, seeking admission in vain. Consequently, after the car had been noiselessly bestowed—out of consideration for their employers' rest, the four had alighted before they left ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... the sweet lady and the angular man with the pained gait which spoke in loud tones of the unbroken store-shoe could belong in no other than a rural place. But the image of the New Hampshire village only flitted across my mind's film, for my truant senses seized on a message over memory's telephone: "Russell Sage has $100,000,000." One hundred millions, and I was back on earth again, but as I walked the thought was buzzing in my brain: "Is it possible that that countryman has ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... has gone out of fashion. After a long and| |honorable career as truant officer, he has finally | |been buried with his fathers. That is why twentieth | |century men and women don't attend church." Such was| |Dr. Amos Buckwin's explanation yesterday of the | ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... my first sight of the man. Little I knew at the time how big the moment was with destiny, or how often that face seen in the fitful moonlight would haunt my sleep and disturb my waking hours. But I mind yet the cold grue of terror I got from it, a terror which was surely more than the due of a few truant lads breaking the Sabbath with ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... am a truant there, for I do not answer aunt Julia's letters as punctually as I ought to do. I shall be down there for the hunting I suppose next month." Then dinner was announced; and as it was necessary that the Earl should take down Mrs. Bluestone ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... Stillicide a crime. But though I would not willingly part with such scraps of science, I do not set the same store by them as by certain other odds and ends that I came by in the open street while I was playing truant. This is not the moment to dilate on that mighty place of education, which was the favourite school of Dickens and of Balzac, and turns out yearly many inglorious masters in the Science of the Aspects ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... these are on 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 ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... shakes off his drowsihed, And 'gins to sprinkle on the earth below Those rays that from his shaken locks do flow; Meantime, by truant love of rambling led, I turn my back on thy detested walls, Proud City! and thy sons, I leave behind, A sordid, selfish, money-getting kind; Brute things, who shut ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... 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 so much in these days as when he comes over from Jersey to see me play for the ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... wrought on thee? Mak'st thou it good to me, now, Lord of men, That love which long ago before the gods Thou didst proclaim? Alas! Death will not come, Except at his appointed time to men, And therefore for a little I shall live, Whom thou hast lived to leave. Nay, 't is a jest! Ah, Truant, Runaway, enough thou play'st! Come forth, my Lord!—I am afraid! Come forth! Linger not, for I see—I spy thee there; Thou art within yon thicket! Why not speak One word, Nishadha? Nala, cruel Prince! Thou know'st me, lone, and comest not to calm My terrors, and be with me in my ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... him, and his good temper appeared immortal—his situation was more peculiar than pleasant. He was seated on a log, three hundred miles from any civilised habitation, smiling blandly at a broken axe (his only one), the half of which was tightly grasped in his right hand, pointing to the truant iron in the trunk of a huge tree, the first of a thriving forest of fifty acres he purposed felling; and, thus occupied, a solitary traveller passed our uncle Job Bucket, serene as the melting sunshine, and thoughtless as the wild insect ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... day that several of his scholars are playing truant. The morning passes and they do not arrive. At last, in the afternoon, the truants turn up. The master has a strong suspicion where they have been: however, he asks, "Why were you not at school this morning?" "Please, sir, mother kept me at home to mind the baby." "Indeed—let me ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... long while your friend and enemy; and if, like Beranger's your gaiety has run away from home and left open the door for sorrow to come in, of all covers in Europe, it is here you may expect to find the truant hid. With every hour you change. The air penetrates through your clothes, and nestles to your living body. You love exercise and slumber, long fasting and full meals. You forget all your scruples and live a while in peace and freedom, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of responsibility vanished. As soon as the decorous swish of Sunday silks had ceased in the corridor outside, she caught up a book and a cushion, and, creeping down by the side stairs, set gaily out across the sunlit lawn, with the deliciously guilty thrill of a truant little boy who has run away ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... Square, because she clung tenaciously to such scraps and shreds of memories as were connected with it. The mummy room of the British Museum had been one of the chief delights of her childhood. That forbidding pile was the goal of her truant fancy, and she was sometimes taken there for a treat, as other children are taken to the theatre. It was long since Alexander had thought of any of these things, but now they came back to him quite ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... were in the same state of mind. They also went along with Lieutenant Lawton. It was arranged that Miss Jenny Ann and Jeff should wait for the truant. They would then bring Madge and Tom to the hotel at Portsmouth where they ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... working conditions, a condition which affects both white and black labor alike, in many sections of the state. (Bibliography: Rev. John R. Cox (colored) Catlettsburg, Kentucky. Born 1852 (does not know day and month), Minister A.M.E. Church. First truant officer Catlettsburg, Kentucky. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... he may 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
... put the true reason down in the record book. And there it will stay always. My nice little boy was a truant-player. And we shall all be so ashamed. What will your father say? And he was so afraid last night that ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... and nearly deafened him, till he picked up his hat and fair ran away. And they'd tell tales in th' Sunday-school o' bad lads as had been thumped and brayed for bird-nesting o' Sundays and playin' truant o' week days, and how they took to wrestlin', dog-fightin', rabbit-runnin', and drinkin', till at last, as if 'twere a hepitaph on a gravestone, they damned him across th' moors wi', 'an' then he went and 'listed for a soldier,' an' they'd all fetch a deep breath, and throw ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... the School Attendance Officer and a terror to every boy in the neighbourhood. He looks at the truant and says fiercely, "Where was you?" Then he wags a savage finger at him. "Yes, you was," he says, "you was, you know you was. I caught you in the hact." No boy has ever been known ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... advantage to be gained by it; he makes what is allowed or approved a pretext for doing what would be opposed or condemned; a tricky schoolboy makes a pretense of doing an errand which he does not do, or he makes the actual doing of an errand a pretext for playing truant. A ruse is something (especially something slight or petty) employed to blind or deceive so as to mask an ulterior design, and enable a person to gain some end that he would not be allowed to approach directly. A pretension is a claim that is ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... "Ah, truant!" cried the fair maiden, as she caressed her little favourite, "how could you wander from me—how could you ever fancy yourself safe apart from Duty? I saw the hawk wheeling in the air, and I trembled for my beautiful pet; but he has found here a refuge and protector. ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... disagreeable sensation, after seeing 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. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... ground in the same great, blind, inexorable Governmental machine. 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 ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... those 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, riper for the string: From these dire ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... profound And serious heads, who guard the twin retreats Of British learning, give the studious boy His due indulgence. Let him range the field, Frequent the public walk, and freely pull The yielding oar. But mark the truant well, And if he turn aside to vice or folly, Show him the rod, and let him feel you prize The parent's ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells
... ingenious in their pursuit of benevolences, and their annual reports were the impersonal records of personal labors. They had started libraries, made little parks, inaugurated playgrounds, instituted exchanges for the sale of women's wares, secured women internes in hospitals, paid for truant officers, founded children's protective associations, installed branches of the Associated Charities, encouraged night schools, circulated art exhibits and traveling libraries; they had placed pictures in the public schools, founded kindergartens—the ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... Mass., built a very substantial house in the trees, and the truant officer claimed that the lads hid away there so that they could play "hookey" from school; but if this is true, and there seems to be some doubt about it, it must be remembered that the fault was probably with the schools and not the boys, for boys who ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... be admitted into it, it is especially a school for boys, as you will understand when you learn that it is a Truant School. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 32, June 17, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... With instant flash, life's inextinguished fires; Plunging along each tense limb poured the blood Hot with its years of sleeping-smothered flame. And in a dream I charged, and in a dream I smote resistless; foemen in my path Fell unregarded, like the wayside flowers Clipped by the truant's staff in daisied lanes. For over me burned lustrous the dear eyes Of my beloved; I strove as at a joust To gain at end the guerdon of her smile. And ever, as in the dense melee I dashed, Her name ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... was sent to a High School in the County town. He did not like it. His Cousin Matilda had longed to make a little gentleman of him, but he refused to be made. He would give a little contemptuous curve to his lip, and take on a shy, charity-boy grin, when refinement was thrust upon him. He played truant from the High School, sold his books, his cap with its badge, even his very scarf and pocket-handkerchief, to his school-fellows, and went raking off heaven knows where with the money. So he ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... called little things, to which you, do not attend, your handwriting is one, which is indeed shamefully bad and illiberal; it is neither the hand of a man of business, nor of a gentleman, but of a truant school-boy; as soon, therefore, as you have done with Abbe Nolet, pray get an excellent writing-master (since you think that you cannot teach yourself to write what hand you please), and let him teach you ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Captain Truant, was polite and correct in everything and toward me he was cordial and pleasant, but he could not quite hide that he looked upon me as an Italian, that is to say, a man of lower race and backward civilization. I realized that he would think ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... the beauty, throwing down the novel which had occupied the moments intervening the completion of the extravagant toilet and the arrival of an admirer. "I feel very much inclined to impose severe punishment upon you. Is it becoming a suitor to play truant when he wishes to hear favorably from his ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... truant! there's no true drop of blood in him, to be truly touched with love. If he ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... being as familiar with the educational interests of his kingdom as he was with every other interest. He sought to teach first the priests and nobles, and after that the masses of his people. He introduced the practice of compulsory education for all children, and decreed that truant children be first deprived of food as punishment, and if that did not suffice, that they be brought ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... sundowner, that's gone mad of heat and loneliness—like the old codger we met back yonder—he could sit by the lagoon in the cool of the evening and fish to his heart's content with a string and a bent pin, and dream he's playing truant from school and fishing in the brook near his native village in England about fifty years ago. It would seem more real than fishing in the dust as some mad ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... left to perish in the wilderness! It was famishing—expiring. I raised it to my breast, and its little arms twined feebly round my neck Florian! thou wert heaven's gracious instrument to reclaim a truant to his duties! Welcome! I cried to thee, young brother in adversity!—"thou art deserted by thy mortal parents, and my heavenly father has forsaken me!" From that moment I felt I had a motive left to cherish life, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... proper that boys should learn to swim, when with Papa or some kind friend, but not as these boys have. I feel just sure they have played the truant—as I see the village school-master, with his little dog, coming over the ...
— The Royal Picture Alphabet • Luke Limner
... what earthly happiness can last! How does the fairest purpose often fail? A truant schoolboy's wantonness could blast Their flattering hopes, and leave ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... about the girl's mouth disappeared slowly as she passed a small brown hand across her forehead and replaced a truant lock. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... dear. I was but jesting. If you have had an agreeable time, you are forgiven for playing truant. Where have you been ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... so, my dear! a dearly-bought, but invaluable lesson!" quoth Miss Briskett, blandly. So far from being incensed, she actually purred with satisfaction, for had not the truant returned home in a humble and tractable spirit, ready to acknowledge and apologise for her error? Her good humour was such that she bore the shock of hearing of Guest's role in ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... talk continued on the subject of the American War, without further reference to the truant who stood by them in the covert of the dusk, thrilling with happiness and ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was a very small school, for many boys were away helping to collect the sheep for the schooner, which was coming in, and some were playing truant. The sheep were carted down to the shore and the men were ready for embarking, when the ship moved out, and so all their labour was again in vain. The sea was "making up," and to-night is stormy. It is rather late in the year for ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... was the Tzarevna Miliktrisa Kirbitievna; on another the city of Jerusalem. There are usually but few purchasers of these productions, but gazers are many. Some truant lackey probably yawns in front of them, holding in his hand the dishes containing dinner from the cook-shop for his master, who will not get his soup very hot. Before them, too, will most likely be standing a soldier wrapped ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... and not made, as Walton says, but there is a deal of the poet in him, and he is to be judged no more harshly; he is the victim of his genius: those wild streams, how they haunt him! he will play truant to dull care, and flee to them; their waters impart somewhat of their own perpetual youth to him. My grandfather when he was eighty years old would take down his pole as eagerly as any boy, and step off with wonderful elasticity toward the beloved streams; ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... of fact, I was alone in the world, dependent upon my own resources for whatever little truant ray of sunshine I might get from the golden flood that illuminated the world outside me, and forced by rigid, arbitrary circumstances to train my growing convictions into many a hazardous channel, left to myself to grope among the dawning ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... guns, the common people came out along the road with fowling-pieces and pitchforks, in hopes to catch the truant. The gendarmes seemed very anxious to be on the look-out for him too. The price of a deserter was fifty crowns to those who ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... inhabitants of the invisible world there is one class which lives a particularly painful life, sometimes for a great many years, namely, the suicide who tried to play truant from the school of life. Yet it is not an angry God or a malevolent devil who administers punishment, but an immutable law which proportions the sufferings differently to each ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... a student at Hilton Seminary," Katherine replied, as she frankly gave him her hand, her color deepening as she did so. "I played truant from school for several months, as you know, and am now ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... said a thousand times to every truant, and it would have very little effect, because he thinks that he will be an exception. He never sees beyond his own boyish smartness. Few men and women realize how true it is that these smart rascally fellows, who ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... prospered. 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... not a word; and what he said was of no moment;—but they had met as lovers, and any of the family who had allowed themselves to imagine that even yet the match might be broken, now unconsciously abandoned that hope. "Was he always such a truant, Lady Fawn?"—Lizzie asked, when it seemed to her that no one else would speak ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... walk in the woods, that hardly an hour remains before the closing of the mail. I found such pretty, solitary paths, quite narrow, between the greening hazel and thorn-bushes, where only the thrush and the glede-kite were heard, and quite far off the bell of the church to which I was playing truant, that I could not find my way home again. Johanna is somewhat exhausted, in connection with her condition, or I should have had her in the woods, too, and perhaps we should still be there. * * * She has presented me ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... the sky is blue, and the sward is green, And the soft winds wake from the balmy west,— The leaves unfold in their gilded sheen, And the bird, in the tree top, builds its nest; The truant zephyr plumes her wings Once more, and quitting her perfumed bed, Soft calls on the sleeping flowers to wake, And sportive ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... expressed by Mr. Pump, whenever the company paraded generally in some such terms as these, which were uttered with that sort of meekness that a native of the island of our forefathers is apt to assume when he condescends to praise the customs or character of her truant progeny: ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... they were laid on but yesterday. Would that my old friend and master, Otho Venius, was here! At least I will carry back to Antwerp that in my coloring which shall prove to him that I have not played truant to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... must parry, Still a wayward truant prove: Where I love, I must not marry; Where I marry, can ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... chills of horror. If I had laughed at that moment I cannot think what that justice would have said! But it was a pleasure to have the old man read the deed, looking at me over his spectacles from time to time to make sure I was not playing truant. There are good and great words in a deed. One of them I brought away with me from the conference, a very fine, big one, which I love to have out now and again to remind me of the really serious things of life. It gives me a peculiar dry, legal feeling. If I am about to enter upon ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... their times. The immediate effect of their views was decidedly in favor of Rationalism, because they almost uniformly deny the absolute authority of the Scriptures. They grant too much to reason. While Kant would drive the truant mind back to self-contemplation, he terminates by giving to reason a value and dignity so great that it becomes entitled to decide upon matters of faith. Their theories, spun out at such length and concluding in so little satisfaction, make us rejoice that we have not ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... the woods, where he stayed until the children returned at night. He kept this up for several days, fearing to return to school and take the whipping he knew he must get from his teacher. In the end his father heard that he was playing truant, and tried to force the boy back to school. Davy refused to go, and when his father tried to punish him, ran away from home and engaged himself to a drover. He was fifteen years old before he returned to his home, and then he had ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... brief colloquy elicited the melancholy fact that the boy had been left behind at Potsdam. The tutor thereupon turned back in one of the carriages, whilst the rest proceeded to the next stopping-place. In the course of an hour he returned with the truant seated by his side, dusty and footsore, but otherwise as fresh as when he had started. He had, it appeared, strayed from the party at Potsdam, and returned to the starting-place in time to see the carriages disappearing in the distance enveloped in a cloud of dust. He began to ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... a glance who rules us as her own, Opening my breast my heart in hand to take, Thus said to me: "Of this no mention make." I saw her then, in alter'd air, alone, So that I recognised her not—O shame Be on my truant mind and faithless sight! And when the truth I told her in sore fright, She soon resumed her old accustom'd frame, While, desperate and half dead, a hard rock ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... Honor was well round the corner, and running fast towards the cricket field. Vivian was very much disturbed and distressed. She scarcely knew what she ought to do. She ventured a little way into the grounds, but not a trace of any truant was to be seen, so she thought it useless to search far. One of the girls must have gone out; on that point she was ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... morn—at noon—at twilight dim— Maria! thou hast heard my hymn; In joy and woe—in good and ill— Mother of God, be with me still! When the hours flew brightly by, And not a cloud obscured the sky, My soul, lest it should truant be, Thy grace did guide to thine and thee; Now, when storms of fate o'ercast Darkly my present and my past, Let my future radiant shine, With sweet hopes ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... one 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 ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... girl whose opinion was always received with respect. Ida went off obediently to fulfil her behests; and Constance, after searching in Maggie's room and wandering in different parts of the grounds, found the truant at last, comfortably established with a pile of new books and magazines in the library. The library was the most comfortable room in the house, and Maggie was leaning back luxuriously in an easy-chair, reading ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... must all come in, and bow 'way down to the ground, and say, 'O, respected teacher, grant us knowledge.' They are very polite in India.—All but Prudy, she may stay behind and play truant." ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... gems. Her dark hair, though drawn low upon the temples in acknowledgment of the prevailing mode, was bound in fashion of her own by a gem-clasped, golden fillet, under which it broke into a riot of lesser curls which swept over ears and temples. Here and there a gleaming jewel confined some such truant lock, so that she glittered, half-barbaric, as she walked, surmounted by a thousand trembling points of light. Ease, confidence, carelessness seemed spoken alike by the young woman's half haughty carriage and her ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... cried, with her usual buoyant air. "You truant! We've all been wondering what had become of you. Busy, of course! Always the same excuse! Find something fresh. You used it a fortnight ago to refuse my invitation to take pot-luck ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... the supposition, they talked about the hour they should get back that evening, and wondered if Mrs Ashford would have supper ready for them in her own parlour. And it was equally plain that, whatever their destination might be, they were not starting on a truant's expedition, for the said Mrs Ashford presently came out and handed them each a small parcel of sandwiches, and enjoined on them most particularly to keep well buttoned up, and not let their feet ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... in the stage, and has been playing truant here," he mused, lazily. "Looked as if he'd been up to some devilment, or more like as if he was primed for it. If he'd been a little older, I'd have bet he was in league with some road-agents to watch the coach. Just my luck to have him light ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... 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
... why should I whip him? Strange visitant, Has he been playing truant this long summer day? I listened a moment; more clear and more shrill Rang the voice of the bird, as he ...
— Ballads • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... parasol, and grasp the fishing rod. However it may be, whether the water queen below wished to compliment the earthly queen above,—we know that ladies are prone to be polite to each other—or that some truant fish remained behind to become an easy prey to the enemy, suffice it to say that Mistress Ulrica was generally fortunate; but she did not—as she might have done—make use of her advantage, as she herself would say, "to cause her husband ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... "that sometimes the old lady tires of her splendor, sends the maids away to visit their cousins, and turns in and works for a day or two like all possessed. She's been seen hanging out blankets on a windy day in the back yard, with a face as happy as that of a child playing truant." ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... brought the tea while Cerissa looked after her little charge. Cerissa sat on the kitchen porch sewing and expanding under the deep attention of the cook; they could see Middy a little way off on the tennis-court wiping the mud gravely from a truant ball he had found among the nasturtiums. All was as peaceful as the time of day and the season ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... 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
... the boys sat at his iron-barred window, wide awake. He was a Truant, and had never yet been in any place from which he could not run away. He felt that his school-fellows depended upon him to run away and bring them assistance, and he knew that his reputation as a Truant was at stake. His responsibility was so heavy that ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... they had to rest. They sat down on a curbstone, with Toby between them, and were just beginning to discuss the reward when a heavy hand fell on Mick's shoulder. It was the school porter. In spite of their protests he insisted that Mick was playing truant, and marched him off to school. Jane, left alone with Toby, debated what she ought to do. The reward was to be got in a village three or four miles at the other side of Rowallan, so she would have to wait and go back with ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... it was sharpened, and the man turned to me with, "Now, you little rascal, you've played truant! Scud to school, or you'll ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... indeed. Pen, who was plunged in his shame and grief in London, and torn with great remorse for thinking of his mother's sorrow, would have wondered, had he seen how easily she bore the calamity. Indeed, calamity is welcome to women if they think it will bring truant affection home again: and if you have reduced your mistress to a crust, depend upon it that she won't repine, and only take a very little bit of it for herself, provided you will eat the remainder in ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... person of this temper you repeat the hard maxims of workaday wisdom, he escapes from you with the smiling audacity of a truant boy. He is one who has awakened right early on a wonderful morning. There is a spectacle to be seen by those who have eyes for it. He is not willing out of respect for you to miss it. He hears the music, and he follows it. It is the music ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... said Gunson, as we drew near our resting-place; and I believe now he said it to try and cheer me on. "Perhaps while we have been away the truant may have returned." ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... barren cliffs the ravenous vulture dwells, Who never fattens on the prey which from afar he smells; But, patient, watching hour on hour upon a lofty rock, He singles out some truant lamb, ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... and had cheered, and then kicked Gus Elliot, and "laid for him" in the evening with the "boys." He was one of the upper graduates of Pushton street-corners, and having spent an idle, vicious boyhood, truant half the time from school, had now arrived at the dignity of clerk in a store, that thrived feebly on the scattering trade that filtered through and past Mr. Hard's larger establishment. He was one of the worst phases of the male gossip, and ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... and followed me home; I took him into the house and had him fed, intending to keep him until I could discover the owner. For this act of kindness the dog expressed thanks in the usual way. Rover, although used to play the truant, from the moment the little stranger entered the premises, never quitted us till he saw him fairly off. His manner towards us became more ingratiating than usual, and he seemed desirous, by his assiduities and attentions, to show us, that we stood ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... as if I were a truant, being away from Washington to-day, but I thought that perhaps if I were absent the Congress would have the more leisure to adjourn. I do not ordinarily open my office at Washington on Saturday. Being a schoolmaster, ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... we made our adieus and pursued our journey; but, tenacious of this comparative liberty and the enjoyment of pure air, we prevailed on our conductors to let us dine on the road, so that we lingered with the unwillingness of truant children, and did not reach Amiens until dark. When we arrived at the Hotel de Ville, one of the guards enquired how we were to be disposed of. Unfortunately for us, Dumont happened to be there himself, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... 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 him of an eye, and the slashed sleeve of his sad-coloured suit that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... occupations which a man is unwilling to perform, but let no one think that he is therefore in love with idleness; he turns to something which is more agreeable to his inclination, and doubtless more suited to his nature, but he is not in love with idleness. A boy may play the truant from school because he dislikes his books and study; but, depend upon it, he intends doing something the while—to go fishing, or perhaps to take a walk; and who knows but that from such excursions both his mind and body may derive more benefit than ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... in Cornwall. Though poor, he contrived to send his two sons to a penny-a-week school in the neighbourhood. Jabez, the elder, took delight in learning, and made great progress in his lessons; but Samuel, the younger, was a dunce, notoriously given to mischief and playing truant. When about eight years old he was put to manual labour, earning three-halfpence a day as a buddle-boy at a tin mine. At ten he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and while in this employment he endured much hardship,— living, as he used to say, "like a toad under a harrow." ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... playin' truant maybe. A' mind gettin' ma paiks for birdnestin' masel. I'll wager that's the ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... type have held the 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 ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... great stress on a painter's eye; what do you mean by that expression?' 'A painter's eye,' replied Gainsborough, 'is to him what the lawyer's eye is to you.' As a boy at the Grammar School of his native town, it is to be feared he loved to play truant. One day he went out to his usual sketching haunts to enjoy the nature which he loved heartily, previously presenting to his uncle, who was master of the school, the usual slip of paper, 'Give Tom ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... been busy talking about water turtles with Frank, noticed this, and struck out with his willow branch to bring the truant back, but it was too late; the boat had got beyond his reach, and was now floating swiftly down the middle of the stream ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and the moaning Pine. The broad old belt of short flowery turf at the base, the Violet, the Gilliflower, and the vermilion spotted Mignonette, on their breast, and the chaplet of wilding shrubs upon their brows, give them a charm in the most common-place observation. With me, truant as I have been to the Classic page, it seemed a natural process of my desultory mind, to revert from a contemplation of such pensive dreamy realities of waking enjoyment as I have described, to visions, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... reconciling mind. The world grows big enough to include within its scheme both the instructive political economist and the truant mechanic. But that trick of truly logical behavior seems harder to the man than to the child. For example, I climbed up to my den under the eaves last night—a sour, black sea-fog lying all about, and the December sleet crackling against ...
— Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry
... kindly towards the truant Margaret as now; and she was fully as anxious to find her, and be kind to her before Gerard's return, as Denys was; but she could not agree with him that anything was to be gained by leaving this neighbourhood to search for her. "She must have told somebody whither ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... must, but he carries away a home relic with him, and dies with it on his breast. His nature is truant; in repose it longs for change: as on the journey it looks back for friends and quiet. He passes to-day in building an air castle for to-morrow, or in writing yesterday's elegy; and he would flyaway this hour, but that a cage, necessity, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the human mind all these things are necessary. I suppose, that, in our callow days, it is proper that we should be birched and wear fetters upon our little, bandy, sausage-like legs. But let me, now that I have come to man's estate, flout my old pedagogues, and, playing truant at my will, dawdle or labor, walk, skip, or run, go to my middle in quagmires, or climb to the hill-tops, take liberties with the venerable, snub the respectable, and keep the company of the disreputable,—dismiss the Archbishop without reading his homily,—pass by a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... knelt; sighed; as had his voice By pleasure been o'erwhelmed, a while was silent; But soon came words, sweet as those most sweet kisses Which grateful Venus gave the swain whose care Brought back her truant doves!——So sweet, so sweet—— Distrust, herself, must have believed those words. Oh! and was all ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... the matter; and there not only hits the nail on the head, but with crushing force smites it home, and buries it.—On the other hand, let us be free to admit, he is the most unequal writer breathing. Often after some such feat, he will play truant for long pages, and go dawdling and dreaming, and mumbling and maundering the merest commonplaces, as if he were asleep with eyes open, which indeed ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... tree in the court; Dennet hastened in pursuit, but all the boys and children in the court rushing out after her, her blandishments had no chance, and "Goldspot" had fluttered on to the gateway. Stephen had by this time come out, and hastened to the gate, hoping to turn the truant back from escaping into Cheapside; but all in vain, it flew out while the market was in full career, and he could only call back to her that he would not lose ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the 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 ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... mischievous brown eyes grew full of laughter, and the next moment the little questioner had squeezed her way through a slightly open door, and was toddling down the broad stone stairs and across a landing to Hetty's room. The room-door was open, so the truant went in. A bed with the bed-clothes all tossed about, a half worn-out slipper on the floor, a very untidy dressing-table met her eyes, ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... them, and twal o'clock chappit?" Then approaching the Master, he craved pardon for having permitted the rest of his people to go out to see the hunt, observing, that "They wad never think of his lordship coming back till mirk night, and that he dreaded they might play the truant." ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... 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
... my playing truant to the Rectory a second time. Once, when he was expected, I took my nightshirt from my pillow, and followed by Rubens, presented myself before the Rector as he sat at breakfast, saying, "Mr. Carpenter ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... wilfully consent to be the victim of wine-bibbing and debauchery? O thou frail soul! how hast thou quenched the heavenly essence within thee! ... why wilt thou be thus self-disgraced and all inglorious? Sah-luma! Sah- luma!"—and he shook him violently by the arm—"Up,—up, thou truant to the faith of Art! I will not let thee drowse the hours away in such unseemliness, . . wake! for the night is almost past,— the morning is at hand, and danger threatens thee,—wouldst thou be ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... commonly called little things, to which you, do not attend, your handwriting is one, which is indeed shamefully bad and illiberal; it is neither the hand of a man of business, nor of a gentleman, but of a truant school-boy; as soon, therefore, as you have done with Abbe Nolet, pray get an excellent writing-master (since you think that you cannot teach yourself to write what hand you please), and let him teach you to write a genteel, legible, liberal ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... leaping heart, With instant flash, life's inextinguished fires; Plunging along each tense limb poured the blood Hot with its years of sleeping-smothered flame. And in a dream I charged, and in a dream I smote resistless; foemen in my path Fell unregarded, like the wayside flowers Clipped by the truant's staff in daisied lanes. For over me burned lustrous the dear eyes Of my beloved; I strove as at a joust To gain at end the guerdon of her smile. And ever, as in the dense melee I dashed, Her name burst from my lips, as lightning ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... At this the truant blood rushed back to Alric's cheeks. He attempted to say no, and to shake his head, but the tongue was still rebellious, and the head would not move—at least not in that way—so the poor boy glanced slightly aside, as if meditating ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... and quarrels every hour in the day, murders every now and then, ribaldry and obscenity, singing, dancing, laughing, swearing, cheating, and thieving without end. There many a man of quality seeks for his truant son, nor seeks in vain; and the youth feels as acutely the pain of being torn from that life of licence as though he were going to meet his death. But this joyous life has its bitters as well as its sweets. No one can lie down to sleep securely in Zahara, but ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... 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; ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... movements with fiery eyes at no great distance. A hollow tree, that once been the home of bees, having recently fallen, the mother with two more cubs was feasting on the dainty food that this accident had placed within her reach; while the first kept a jealous eye on the situation of its truant and reckless young. ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... seemed about to be realised, as the truant emerged from the thicket and entered upon an open plain clothed with low heath,—the Erica vestila, ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... efforts, really conveys to any of us that kind of idealising power, it does so (though dealing mainly, as its professed instruments, with the most select and ideal remains of ancient literature) oftenest by truant reading; and thus it happened also, long ago, with ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... morning, David was 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 ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... the French window leading into the garden open; but Honor was well round the corner, and running fast towards the cricket field. Vivian was very much disturbed and distressed. She scarcely knew what she ought to do. She ventured a little way into the grounds, but not a trace of any truant was to be seen, so she thought it useless to search far. One of the girls must have gone out; on that point she was ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... a coil of rich, dark hair, With sunlight sifted through, And a truant curl just here and there, And a knot of ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... way of escape, was about to obey this order, when the truant, Marmion, came in sight, trotting leisurely up the path, carrying in his mouth the rabbit, which he had succeeded in gnawing out of the log. He stopped short on discovering Pierre, dropped his game, and gathered himself for ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... 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
... shave the Sultan in the New Entertainment." On the other hand, the Ghost of Queen Common-Sense appears before she is killed, and is with some difficulty persuaded that her action is premature. Part of "the Mob" play truant to see a show in the park; Law, straying without the playhouse passage is snapped up by a Lord Chief- Justice's Warrant; and a Jew carries off one of the Maids of Honour. These little incidents, together with the unblushing realism of the Pots of Porter that are ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... noon—at twilight dim— Maria! thou hast heard my hymn! In joy and wo—in good and ill— Mother of God, be with me still! When the Hours flew brightly by, And not a cloud obscured the sky, My soul, lest it should truant be, Thy grace did guide to thine and thee Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast Darkly my Present and my Past, Let my future radiant shine With sweet hopes of ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... 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
... it well to quit the churchyard at once for some place where he was not likely to be seen; he had never played truant before, and for the next hour or two was thoroughly miserable as he slunk about the premises of a neighboring farm, and finally took refuge in a shed, and began to consider his position. He would remain hidden till nine o'clock, and then go home. If nothing were said, well and good; ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... of red men,—axe in hand,— Behold the guests advancing! How fast the stragglers join the throng, From stall and work-shop gathered; The lively barber skips along And leaves a chin half-lathered; The smith has flung his hammer down, The horse-shoe still is glowing, The truant tapster at the Crown Has left a beer-cask flowing; The coopers' boys have dropped the adze, And trot behind their master; Up run the tarry ship-yard lads;— The crowd is hurrying faster. Out from the mill-pond's purlieus gush, The streams of white-faced millers, ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... near the soeter, herding the goats and sheep, because one of the herd-boys had played truant and she had to do his work. It was a warm midday; she was sitting in the shade of a hillock overgrown with birch and underwood; she had thrown off her jacket and taken her knitting in her hand, and was expecting Inga. Something rustled behind her. "There she comes," thought Mildrid, ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... was that Jose and Patch, who had gone a-hunting, had not returned when the party had left for Bell Hammer. It was possible that, during their absence, the dogs had come back, and Anthony did not like to think that truant Patch might be wandering around the house, seeking admission in vain. Consequently, after the car had been noiselessly bestowed—out of consideration for their employers' rest, the four had alighted before they left the road and had man-handled a silent Ford ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... 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 face with ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... was out at elbows, or that our mutual funds came altogether from my pocket. It was enough for us that we sat on the same school-bench, conned our tasks from the same primer, fought each other's battles, screened each other's faults, fished, nutted, played truant, robbed orchards and birds' nests together, and spent every half-hour, authorised or stolen, in each other's society. It was a happy time; but it could not go on for ever. My father, being prosperous, ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... made by the big family Bible as Hannah deposited it on the table warned both him and the truant outside that prayer-time had come. Louie came in noisily when she was called, and both children lounged ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... penniless any more, having leaped to wealth and fame with an immensely successful musical comedy they have just written. And, like Nanki Poo, the musician isn't really a musician, but is the talented, rebellious nephew of the Cosmetic King, none other than Dick Benham himself, a truant from his tyrannical uncle's determination to make him into a rouge and talcum salesman. He falls in love with Sylvia, not knowing her as Sylvia, of course, but only as the girl up-stairs, a poor little wretch to whom in the ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... dishevelled, playing hide-and-seek, and crowned 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 over ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... township,—intimate in the families of oriole and grasshopper, pickerel and turtle,—quick of hand and eye,—in short, born for practical leadership and victory,—such a boy finds no provision for him in most of our seminaries, and must, by his constitution, be either truant or torment. The theory of the institution ignores such aptitudes as his, and recognizes no merits save those of some small sedentary linguist or mathematician,—a blessing to his teacher, but an object of watchful anxiety to the family physician, and whose ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... Laneway found 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 across the road, and went along a narrow path to ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... destined for his hair. He closed them with a disagreeable sensation, after seeing 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
... 'Hole-in-the-Wall,' but sought his alcoholic refreshments at a more aristocratic public-house in the neighbouring town. He often caroused at Stamford so long and so late, that his spouse got impatient at her lonely residence, and despatched one messenger after the other to bring her truant lord home. The policy of the wife, however, was defeated by her drunken husband. He made it a rule of keeping the envoys sent to him, and plying them with strong drink till they were more unable to report their own than his movements. ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... an allusion to the Greek fleet sent out under Agamemnon and Menelaus to bring back the truant wife from Troy. The idea of a supremely valuable pearl is also apparent in the lines embraced in Othello's last words before his self-immolation as an expiation of the murder of Desdemona, ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... be finer than the way in which this "milky steer," with Europa on his back, goes sailing over the brine, his "feet all oars." Meantime, she, the pretty truant, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... threw off his surly fit. The brilliant sunlight, the breeze stirring toward them from a background of drooping bamboos, the gabble of coolies, the faint aroma of the fermenting no-me cakes, began, after all, to give a truant sense of holiday. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... from the little white church as if the bell-ringing of two or three Sundays were concentrated in one. Much to the surprise of Mr. Somers; who, to speak truth, rather thought the bells were his personal property, and as such playing truant. But in two seconds the other bell chimed in; and all that could ever be known, was, that Phil Davids and Joe Deacon had been seen in closer attendance on the two churches than they were wont to be week days. Meantime the ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... a white sprinkling of wood anemones lay spread like a patch of linen bleaching in the sun. From a valley a lark cut a swift diagonal upward with a coloratura burst of song. A stream slipped its ice and took up its murmur where it had left off. A truant squelched his toes in the warm mud and let it ooze luxuriantly over ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... I would not hear your enemy say so, Nor shall you do my ear that violence, To make it truster of your own report Against yourself: I know you are no truant. But what is your affair in Elsinore? We'll teach you to drink deep ere ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... on thin ice, (she didn't venture till the other girls had tried it,) she would have broken through. Her caution, I must say, was of the right kind; it always preceded her undertaking. She had such a 'wholesome fear of consequences,' that she never played truant, as one whom I could mention did. Indeed, antecedents and consequents were always associated in her mind. She never risked any thing for herself or any one else.... Of course, she is still Miss Nancy, (I am 'Aunt Molly' to all my friends' children,) though it is said that she ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... were fired at them regarding "th' latest from th' Hills." Waffles made a rush for Hopalong, but fell over Big-foot's feet and all three were piled up in a heap. All were beaming with good nature, for they were as so many school boys playing truant. Prosaic cow-punching was relegated to the rear and they looked eagerly forward to their several missions. Frenchy told of the barb-wire fence war and of the new regulations of "Smith of Buffalo" regarding cow-punchers' guns, and from the caustic remarks explosively given it was plain to ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... added to a uniform and sedentary life, affected the system of her nerves, and contributed to debilitate her frame. She was prohibited by her physician, not merely from committing her thoughts to paper, but, had it been possible, from thinking at all. No truant, escaped from school, could receive more pleasure in eluding a severe master, than did Mrs. Robinson, when, the vigilance of her physician relaxing, she could once more resume her books and ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... 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 beneath ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... be 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 ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... than the revival of painting in their midst, since the art was not so much debased as altogether lost. In this way Cimabue made a beginning in the art which attracted him, for he often played the truant and spent the whole day in watching the masters work. Thus it came about that his father and the artists considered him so fitted to be a painter that if he devoted himself to the profession he might look for honourable success in it, and to his great satisfaction ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... Kinney and the young man with the real hat-band. Both were excited and disturbed. At the sight of the young man, Stumps turned appealingly to the golden-rod girl. He groaned aloud, and his expression was that of a boy who had been caught playing truant. ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... soon made his appearance, and was immediately pressed in the old people's arms. This son was a truant, long absent from his home. At length, grown weary at delay, quitting their abode near Edinburgh, they had travelled south, inquiring at every port for their lost son, and only that morning had they arrived by waggon at Poole, believing ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... hogs'-backs, was not depressing; and there is no doubt that her dream at starting was to win the heart of her mother-in-law, tell her whole history to that lady, enlist her on her side, and so gain back the truant. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... tractable now that he 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 home about ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... An unfrocked monk against us Leads rascal troops, a truant friar dares write Threats to us! Then 'tis time to tame the madman! Trubetskoy, set thou forth, and thou Basmanov; My zealous governors need help. Chernigov Already by the rebel is besieged; Rescue the ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... Absence.— N. absence; inexistence &c. 2[obs3]; nonresidence, absenteeism; nonattendance, alibi. emptiness &c. adj.; void, vacuum; vacuity, vacancy; tabula rasa[Lat]; exemption; hiatus &c. (interval) 198; lipotype|!. truant, absentee. nobody; nobody present, nobody on earth; not a soul; ame qui vive[Fr]. V. be absent &c. adj.; keep away, keep out of the way; play truant, absent oneself, stay away; keep aloof, hold aloof. withdraw, make oneself scarce, vacate; go away &c. 293. Adj. absent, not present, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... too much time being wasted on water; and Mademoiselle,—all in black and white this morning, like a jeune fille in second mourning,—hurried out to walk on the terrace at the fashionable hour. If she did not find the truant there, she said to herself, she would go into the Casino; for he was sure to be in one place or the other at this time of day, even though it ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... and did him a good turn beside. The old Frenchman was slowly approaching, when a frolicsome wind whisked off his hat and sent it skimming along the beach. In spite of her late lecture, away went Debby, and caught the truant chapeau just as a wave was hurrying up to claim it. This restored her cheerfulness, and when she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... 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, riper for the string: From these dire scenes my wretched ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... like vertues harbenger: Beare a faire presence, though your heart be tainted, Teach sinne the carriage of a holy Saint, Be secret false: what need she be acquainted? What simple thiefe brags of his owne attaine? 'Tis double wrong to truant with your bed, And let her read it in thy lookes at boord: Shame hath a bastard fame, well managed, Ill deeds is doubled with an euill word: Alas poore women, make vs not beleeue (Being compact of credit) ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... 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 him till ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Truant Bards! where are the Triumphal Odes and the Congratulatory Poems which should have greeted Mr. PUNCHINELLO, who, after deserting his beloved Italy, after a stormy voyage and unspeakable sea-sickness, has arrived here with a view of settling and ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... reported noticing one of the Briarcroft boarders in Mansfield Road on several successive evenings could give no account of the truant's personal appearance. It had been dusk at the time, and they had only seen a girl in a sailor hat with a blue-and-white striped band hurrying rapidly past, as if anxious to escape observation. They thought she had dark hair, and that she must ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... schoolmaster what happened when children were kept at home. He said that when a child had been absent a week he called twice on the parents in order to remonstrate. If there was no result he reported the matter to the village authorities, who administered two warnings. Failing the return of the truant a report was made by the village authorities to the county authorities. They summoned the father to appear before them. This meant loss of time and the cost of the journey. Should the parent choose to continue defiant he was fined 5 to 10 yen for disobedience ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... aback by this unexpected permission to play truant, and somehow it seemed to lessen his desire to go. He did not understand why, but Mrs. Jo did, and, knowing the natural perversity of the human mind, counted on it to help her now. She felt instinctively that the more the boy was restrained the more he ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... ones. I attended a subscription school several miles from home, riding back and forth on a pony. The studies were elementary, and though I never distinguished myself in my classes, I was always ready to race my pony, and never refused to play truant when the swimming was good. Evidently my father never intended any of his boys for a professional career, though it was an earnest hope of my mother that all of us should receive a college education. My elder brother and I early developed business instincts, buying calves and accompanying ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... but robust, with a pert face in which glittered the brightest of eyes, he had always been the turbulent member of the family, the one who caused the most anxiety. His childhood had been spent in playing truant in the woods of Janville, and he had afterwards made a mere pretence of studying in Paris, returning home full of health and spirits, but unable or unwilling to make up his mind with respect to any particular trade ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... only is the angler, like the poet, born and not made, as Walton says, but there is a deal of the poet in him, and he is to be judged no more harshly; he is the victim of his genius: those wild streams, how they haunt him! he will play truant to dull care, and flee to them; their waters impart somewhat of their own perpetual youth to him. My grandfather when he was eighty years old would take down his pole as eagerly as any boy, and step off with ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... A truant from the fields and rustic joy, In my changed thought that image even so Shut out the gods I worshipped as a boy And all the pure ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... spring from it? Senator Hanway had seen the gravest catastrophies grow from reasons small as mustard seed! A city is burned, and the conflagration has its start in a cow and a candle! Mrs. Hanway-Harley shall not put his hopes to jeopardy in squabbles over Dorothy and her truant love. Senator Hanway felt the hot anxiety of one who, bearing a priceless vase through the streets, is jostled by the inconsiderate crowd. Domestic politics and national politics had come ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... by stream and meadow, They searched 'neath hedge and tree; "Where," said the puzzled children, "Where can the truant be?" ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... of realistic painting. Nor are the accessories less effective. A wide-roofed kitchen chimney, a page-boy leaving the room by a flight of steps, which leads to the house door, and the table at which the truant monks are seated, complete a picture of homely Italian life. It may still be matched out of many an inn in ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... 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 ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... voice, one shape, which to Anglantes' peer Seemed his Angelica, beseeching aid. Seemed to Rogero Dordogne's lady dear. Who him a truant to himself had made: If with Gradasso, or with other near He spake, of those who through the palace strayed. To all of them the vision, seen apart, Seemed that which each had singly ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... not agree with her. He played truant whenever he could, for he was a kindhearted boy, and could not bear to think of a master's time and labor being thrown away on a boy like himself—who did not wish to learn, only to find out—when there were so many worthy lads thirsting for instruction in geography and history ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... was always counted, they say, Rather a bad stick any way, Splintered all over with dodges and tricks, Known as "the worst of the Deacon's six;" I, the truant, saucy and bold, The one black sheep in my father's fold, "Once on a time," as the stories say, Went over the hill on a winter's day— Over the ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... it will make some odds to these children that they were brought up under the Maples? Hundreds of eyes are steadily drinking in this color, and by these teachers even the truants are caught and educated the moment they step abroad. Indeed, neither the truant nor the studious is at present taught color in the schools. These are instead of the bright colors in apothecaries' shops and city windows. It is a pity that we have no more Red Maples, and some Hickories, in our streets as well. Our paint-box ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... school-boy life, With creaking stair and wind-swept hall, And, scarred by many a truant knife, Our old initials on the wall; Here rest—their keen vibrations mute— The shout of voices known so well, The ringing laugh, the wailing flute, The ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the children in this neighbourhood are supported by female labour. With the mother at work the children rapidly become neglected, the boys get out of control, they play truant, they learn to sleep out, and become known to the police while they are still ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... world and the profession of letters with the merest shadow of an education. But they say it is always a good thing to have taken pains, and that success is its own reward, whatever be its nature; so that, perhaps, even upon this I should plume myself, that no one ever played the truant with more deliberate care, and none ever had more certificates for less education. One consequence, however, of my system is that I have much less to say of Professor Blackie than I had of Professor Kelland; and as he is still alive, and will long, I hope, continue to be so, it will not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... colloquy elicited the melancholy fact that the boy had been left behind at Potsdam. The tutor thereupon turned back in one of the carriages, whilst the rest proceeded to the next stopping-place. In the course of an hour he returned with the truant seated by his side, dusty and footsore, but otherwise as fresh as when he had started. He had, it appeared, strayed from the party at Potsdam, and returned to the starting-place in time to see the ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... train Samson was surprised to discover that, after all, he had Mr. William Farbish for a traveling companion. That gentleman explained that he had found an opportunity to play truant from business for a day or two, and wished to see ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... his mother were standing together by the window now on the lookout, for the truant. "Don't be such a weakling, mother," the young man replied teasingly. "If you really wish Betty to go to Europe with you and father say so and let that settle the matter, but I am not so sure this new scheme of hers is a bad one. Betty sent me a night telegram at bedtime last night (telephoned ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... rather our Ben, for he was not so very old, after all—who considered himself master of the little craft which he was mooring in the cove, had aided and abetted this truant disposition in the young people, after a fashion that Mr. Harrington might not have approved; and all that day there was a queer sort of smile upon his features, that meant more than a host of words would have conveyed in another person. ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... change it? I'm distress'd. From home I must play truant, lest I meet my brother. My father too, perhaps, is come ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... try calling the rooster back, when he starts to play truant, with all that mouthful of words?" ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... not left me to perish? Stumbling and straying on the dark mountains, away from the Shepherd's eye and the Shepherd's fold, shall He not leave the erring wanderer to the fruit of his own ways, and his truant heart to go hopelessly onward in its career of guilty estrangement? "My thoughts," says God, "are not as your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways." Man would say, "Go, perish! ungrateful apostate!" God says, "Return, ye backsliding children!" ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... answered Owen, smiling as he spoke. "Most grateful I am for the kind way in which you have received me, after I had played truant so many long years; but I could not have come back before, unless you had sent for me, and I have received no letters since I ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... of one fled, as the truant fawn seeketh again the covers of the woods," said Content. "Our hunt was uncertain, and it might have been vain, so many feet have lately crossed the forest, were it not that Providence hath cast our route on that of our friend, here, who hath ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... the matter in this way: Imagine that I am about to play truant (you may call the proceeding by any name which you like), and the laws and the government come and interrogate me: "Tell us, Socrates," they say; "what are you about? Are you going by an act of yours to overturn us—the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... 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 going ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... had worn the shoes longer than the others, besides Timothy was the baby and, for one reason and another like these, his mother hated to put the rough little shoes upon him. For a long time Timothy had gone his own way, which was rarely the right way. At last he played truant from school so often and was late to dinner so many times, that his mother said she could bear it no longer, he must wear the fairy shoes. So she had them freshly blackened and the copper tips newly polished and, one morning, she brought them out and told Timothy ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie
... with ivy. A form comes from the little door at an angle in the ruins,—a woman's form. Is it my mother? It is too tall, and the step is more bounding. It winds round the building, it turns to look back, and a sweet voice—a voice strange, yet familiar—calls, tender but chiding, to a truant that lags behind. Poor Juba! he is trailing his long ears on the ground; he is evidently much disturbed in his mind: now he stands still, his nose in the air. Poor Juba! I left thee so slim and ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... followed her; a loud barking of 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 a harsh response to your soliloquies." She ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... searched by stream and meadow, They searched 'neath hedge and tree; "Where," said the puzzled children, "Where can the truant be?" ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... laughter, and the next moment the little questioner had squeezed her way through a slightly open door, and was toddling down the broad stone stairs and across a landing to Hetty's room. The room-door was open, so the truant went in. A bed with the bed-clothes all tossed about, a half worn-out slipper on the floor, a very untidy dressing-table met her eyes, ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... Stability. I still remember that Emphyteusis is not a disease, nor Stillicide a crime. But though I would not willingly part with such scraps of science, I do not set the same store by them as by certain other odds and ends that I came by in the open street while I was playing truant. This is not the moment to dilate on that mighty place of education, which was the favourite school of Dickens and of Balzac, and turns out yearly many inglorious masters in the Science of the Aspects of Life. Suffice it to say this: if a lad does not learn in the streets, it is because ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Sin. If Ursula slapped Theresa across the face, even on a Sunday, that was not Sin, the everlasting. It was misbehaviour. If Billy played truant from Sunday school, he was bad, he was wicked, but ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... 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 by ordinary classroom procedure. Still more, they have brought ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... 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 ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... walk through the gaily-crowded streets was sweet to him as a lazy truant ramble in the woods during church-time. Everything that he looked at delighted him—the richness of shop-windows, showing all the expensive useless goods that no sensible person ever wants; the liveries worn ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... or seven miles from Newmarket) was ordained subdeacon in the Benedictine monastery of Bury St Edmunds in 1389[62], he was probably sent as a boy to a monastic school. At any rate, as he sketches his early escapades—apple-stealing, playing truant, &c.,—for us in his Testament[63], Ishall quote the youth's bit of the ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... Williamsons, Murrays and Hardins, The Beynroths, the Sherlays, the Hokes, the Haldermans, Harneys and Slaughters— All famed in Kentucky of old for prowess prodigious at farming. Now surged from their prosperous homes to join in the hunt for the truant. To ascertain where he was at, to help out the ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... at the coldness with which Mr. Webber listened to his explanation of what had taken place. The school principal fell back doggedly upon one fact. It would not have happened if Jeff had not been playing truant. Therefore he was to blame ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... been luxuriating and feasting for the past half hour while waiting for a truant ward. Jerome took pity upon me and fed me to keep me ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Boy and the Magpie, Little Frog, and Pretty Mouse, The Mouse and the Christmas Cake, Greedy Ben, Naughty Puppies, Truant Bunny. ...
— The Mouse and the Christmas Cake • Anonymous
... in our callow days, it is proper that we should be birched and wear fetters upon our little, bandy, sausage-like legs. But let me, now that I have come to man's estate, flout my old pedagogues, and, playing truant at my will, dawdle or labor, walk, skip, or run, go to my middle in quagmires, or climb to the hill-tops, take liberties with the venerable, snub the respectable, and keep the company of the disreputable,—dismiss the Archbishop without reading ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... arraignments of the lack of adaptability of the child's environment to his disposition and nature, and with home restraints once broken, the liabilities to every crime, especially theft, are enormously increased. The truant, although a cording to Kline's measurements slightly smaller than the average child, is more energetic and is generally capable of the greatest activity and usefulness in more out-of-door vocations. Truancy is augmented, too, just in proportion as legitimate and interesting ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... think that he is therefore in love with idleness; he turns to something which is more agreeable to his inclination, and doubtless more suited to his nature; but he is not in love with idleness. A boy may play the truant from school because he dislikes books and study; but, depend upon it, he intends doing something the while—to go fishing, or perhaps to take a walk; and who knows but that from such excursions both his mind and body may derive more benefit than from books and school? ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... derby was stuck fast in the bare branches of an ancient lilac bush which some worshiper of former time had planted by the church door. Galusha rose and limped over to rescue his truant property. ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to-day, i.e., net profit 1 1/2d. Has five boxes still. Has slept here every night for a month. Before that slept in Covent Garden Market or on doorsteps. Been sleeping out six months, since he left Feltham Industrial School. Was sent there for playing truant. Has had one bit of bread to-day; yesterday had only some gooseberries and cherries, i.e., bad ones that had been thrown away. Mother is alive. She "chucked him out" when he returned home on leaving Feltham because he could'nt ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... slowly walking around the bend of the broad, well kept road, winding down the mountain side. The younger of the two ladies picked up the advertisement, hurriedly scanned it, and then raised her eyes to discover the two young men as probable owners of the truant paper. ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... had forgotten!" she said. "I forgot about your wife in Delhi." She half turned in the hammock, and after some searching, during which we were silent, succeeded in finding a truant piece of worsted work behind her. The wool was pulled out of the needle, and she held the steel instrument up against the light, as she doubled the worsted round the eye and pushed it back through the little slit. I observed that Isaacs was apparently ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... beware of making marriage a mere convenience. There may be folly in calling each truant inclination that deep sentiment and secret sympathy which firmly knits heart to heart, and doubtless a common fortune may bind the worldly-minded together; but this is not the holy union which keeps noble qualities in a family, and which fortifies against the seductions ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... than the way in which this "milky steer," with Europa on his back, goes sailing over the brine, his "feet all oars." Meantime, she, the pretty truant, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... I long to be at home again and in my old place. In my dreams and in my waking hours, I am often back at the old homestead; my thoughts play truant while I pore over my books, and even while I listen to my teacher in the class-room. I would give so much to know what you are all doing—so much to feel that now and then I am in your thoughts, and that you do indeed miss me ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... floor as he answered, "My dear sister, I don't know, but boys have played truant before, and survived it; and I have strong hopes of our dear boy." Carroll's voice, though droll, was exceedingly soft and soothing. He put an arm again around his wife, drew her close to him, and pressed her head against his shoulder. "Dear, you ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the true reason down in the record book. And there it will stay always. My nice little boy was a truant-player. And we shall all be so ashamed. What will your father say? And he was so afraid last night that ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... pleased him to start early enough, he would walk there with his little daughter, her hand tucked within his arm. With her he was never savage, and rarely irritable; on these walks his mood would be playful and jocose, and they would incite each other to play the truant from office and school, and pretend they were off on a ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... rich, dark hair, With sunlight sifted through, And a truant curl just here and there, And a ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... apologies for the major, which were having their effect on the females, who, on discovering the nature of the accident, enjoyed the joke exceedingly, the husband of the lady, being informed of what had occurred by one of the waiters, who knew the truant's haunts at any hour, came rushing into the room, and without waiting for an explanation, set upon the major with the fury of a goaded tiger, and when he had belabored him with a cudgel until they all declared there was not life enough in him to last till day light, drew a knife, and had despatched ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... straight to the nearest of the rank of parked taxicabs. Its driver was nowhere in sight. A carriage starter for the cafe, in gorgeous livery, understood without being told what the tall muffled-up gentleman desired and blew a shrill blast on a whistle. At that the truant driver appeared, coming at a ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... felt so kindly towards the truant Margaret as now; and she was fully as anxious to find her, and be kind to her before Gerard's return, as Denys was; but she could not agree with him that anything was to be gained by leaving this neighbourhood to search for her. "She must have told somebody whither she was going. It is not as ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... no 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 ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... you were coming in, after playing truant on Friday afternoon, I was then going. You might have seen the letters in ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... to dream the old dreams over is a luxury divine— When my truant fancies wander with that ...
— An Old Sweetheart of Mine • James Whitcomb Riley
... take more interest than most men. It embodies, from observation, what may be regarded as THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FISHERMAN, and describes some curious scenes and appearances which I witnessed many years ago when engaged, during a truant boyhood, in prosecuting the herring fishery as an amateur. Many of my observations of natural phenomena date from this idle, and yet not wholly ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... 'm a bachelor, and a person—you're married, and an object I take off my hat, Nan, when I see a cobbler's stall Incapable of putting the screw upon weak excited nature It's a fool that hopes for peace anywhere Men do not play truant from home at sixty years of age No great harm done when you're silent Taking oath, as it were, by their lower nature Tears that dried as soon as they had served their end That beautiful trust which ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... on the first morning train—and with no baggage; like a schoolboy playing truant, running off with just the clothes he had on his back. The two days since Leonora left Alcira had been days of torture to him. The singer's flight was the talk of the town. People were scandalized at the amount of luggage she had. Counted over in the imagination ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Le 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
... the girl pushed him bodily through the doorway and entered herself, turning quickly to slip into place the oaken bar that secured the door from the inside. Constans swelled with indignation at this singular treatment. He was a man grown, not a truant child to be led away by the ear for punishment. Yet she would not abate one jot of her first advantage, and his anger melted under the quiet serenity of her gaze; in spite of himself he let her ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... than she had been at the marriage, and much searching went on before she was found. She was unearthed at last. The gardener had seen her shrink away into the shrubbery when the carriage-wheels were heard coming up the road, and he gave information to the cook, by whom the truant was tracked and brought ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... Mab, which sanctioned by high poetic authority the waste of my 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 benefits which he ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... 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 ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... murdered. They, who had lived in the country twenty, thirty years, were better qualified to judge than I was. For peace and quiet I pretended acquiescence, and my purpose thus acquired a taste of stealth. It was with the feelings of a kind of truant that I had set out at length without a word to anyone, and with the same adventurous feelings that I now drew near to Karameyn. Two soldiers, basking in the sunshine on a dust-heap, sprang up at my approach. One was the man I sought, the rogue ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... Owen, smiling as he spoke. "Most grateful I am for the kind way in which you have received me, after I had played truant so many long years; but I could not have come back before, unless you had sent for me, and I have received no letters since ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... four leaves. The day wet and rainy, though not uniformly so. No temptation, however, to play truant; so this will make some amends for a blank day yesterday. I am far in advance of the press, but it is necessary if I go to Drumlanrig on Wednesday as I intend, and to Lochore next week, which I also meditate. This will ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... porch, with woodbine green, —The broken millstone at the sill, —Though many a rood might stretch between, The truant child could see ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... aft, step by step, before the play of those wicked boarding-pikes. It would be hard to match a sea fight like this, amid the spray and the washing seas, on a deck that tipsily danced and staggered, with a truant gun smashing a good ship to bits and the wounded screaming as they saw this horror thundering at them. Captain Wellsby's men were at pains to drag their helpless comrades to safety but the pirates were ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... the girls there, and I've played truant, and—yes, I think I shall go back presently, when I have taken my fill of freedom and ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... off for school But loitered by the way, Until at last 'twas quite too late To go to school that day. Ah naughty, naughty, truant boys! But listen what befell! Close by a wicked ogress lived, Down in ...
— Careless Jane and Other Tales • Katharine Pyle
... as a rook's wing, but far away down the street burned a little light, like a red star truant from heaven. The Prince riding by descried it for a lanthorn, with an old ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the victim of her husband's guile, there was no question about the reality of her enjoyment during the evening. Ruff, when he remembered the flash of her eyes across the table, the touch of her fingers in the taxi, was almost content to believe her false to her truant lover. If only she had not been married to John Dory, he realised, with a little sigh, that he might have taught her to forget that such a person existed as Spencer Fitzgerald, might have induced her to become Mrs. ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... would fair have caught Some fresher fancy's gleam; My truant accents find, unsought, The ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... possibly, in their power; yet, when they considered the now unalterable facts, they refrained from violent retribution. Some six weeks passed, during which time Barbara's parents, though they keenly felt her loss, held no communication with the truant, either for reproach or condonation. They continued to think of the disgrace she had brought upon herself; for, though the young man was an honest fellow, and the son of an honest father, the latter had died so early, and his widow had had such struggles ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... Master, he craved pardon for having permitted the rest of his people to go out to see the hunt, observing, that "They wad never think of his lordship coming back till mirk night, and that he dreaded they might play the truant." ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... said we would not wait, and his remark called my attention to the fact that there was one more place at the table than there were people assembled. I had barely noted this, when my host said, "Here's the truant," and, turning, I faced a lady who had just entered. Mr. Cullen said, "Madge, let me introduce Mr. Gordon to you." My bow was made to a girl of about twenty, with light brown hair, the bluest of ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... He had never "skipped" school before, but the Zoo had him utterly. He was powerless against himself. Some bigger force, represented by a truant officer, was necessary to keep him away from those cages. His father got down to business and gave him a beating—much against that good man's heart. (Skag's father was a Northern European who kept a fruit-store ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... speak fair, become disloyalty; Apparel vice like virtue's harbinger; Bear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted; Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint; Be secret-false: what need she be acquainted? 15 What simple thief brags of his own attaint? 'Tis double wrong, to truant with your bed, And let her read it in thy looks at board: Shame hath a bastard fame, well managed; Ill deeds are doubled with an evil word. 20 Alas, poor women! make us but believe, Being compact of credit, that you ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... bedchamber window when they got up in the morning. So naughty, frightened little Goldilocks jumped; and whether she broke her neck in the fall, or ran into the wood and was lost there, or found her way out of the wood and got whipped for being a bad girl and playing truant, no one can say. But the Three Bears never saw ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... forgotten during life."—"The Inkyo[u] an hotoke; Iemon Dono and O'Hana are the husband and wife not present?" The question came from some one in the room. "O'Hana San is very ill. Her state is serious. Iemon does not leave her." Akiyama answered for the truant pair. ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... my neighbor, Luigi Carfarone, who works on the railroad. The boy's been bad—truant—street gamin—all that sort of thing, and his mother, who comes in to clean for me sometimes, has been awfully anxious about him. But it seems he has a passion for tools—maybe his ancestors were mediaeval craftsmen. ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... in the south of Ireland having lost a pet cat, and searched for it in vain, after four days was delighted to hear that it had returned. Hastening to welcome the truant with a wassail-bowl of warm milk in the kitchen, she observed another cat skulking with the timidity of an uninvited guest in an obscure corner. The pet cat received the caresses of its mistress with its usual pleasure, but, ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... in reform schools show that the history of many cases is as follows: The person, being of low mentality, could not get on well at school and therefore came to dislike school, and consequently became a truant. Truancy led to crime. Crime sent the person to the court, and the court sent the person to ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... 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 literary man was invited to visit a ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... a Lad of about fourteen. I find a mighty Pleasure in Learning. I have been at the Latin School four Years. I don't know I ever play'd [truant, [1]] or neglected any Task my Master set me in my Life. I think on what I read in School as I go home at noon and night, and so intently, that I have often gone half a mile out of my way, not minding whither I went. Our Maid tells me, she often hears me talk Latin in my sleep. And I dream two ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... only attempt one other,' said the truant—'the utter worthlessness of young ladies' letters, which is such as not to encourage their friends to make any ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... reception fall upon the poor old gentleman, and drive him to futile wrath, and to sending off many loud and desperate messages to his truant heir. However, to do him justice, the poor old soul is hospitality itself, and treats his guests, not only to the best food, drink, and fiddling in his power, but also to all his primest anecdotes. No less than ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Italian is quite common. At times in the day, when trade is very busy, the visitor may hear choice expletives in three or four languages at one time. He may not be able to interpret the peculiar noises and stern rebukes administered to idle help and truant boys, but he can generally guess pretty accurately the scope and object of the little speeches which are scattered around ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... she stood aside to make way for them, declared that the bell sounded as though it were within her bonnet. When they reached the school they found that many a child was absent who should have been there, and Mrs. Fenwick knew that the truant urchins were amusing themselves at the new building. And with those who were not truant the clang of the new bell distracted terribly that attention which was due to the collect. Mrs. Fenwick herself confessed afterwards that she hardly knew ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... the ancestral gods. The East Saxons drove out Mellitus, who, with Justus, retired to Gaul; and Archbishop Laurentius himself was minded to follow them. Then the Kentish king, admonished by a dream of the archbishop's, made submission, recalled the truant bishops, and restored Justus to Rochester. The Londoners, however, would not receive back Mellitus, "choosing rather to be under their idolatrous high-priests." Soon Laurentius died too, and Mellitus was called to take his place, ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... the streets of London, and subsequently, after diligent search, discovered her in the Queen's Arms inn at Romford. It turned out that her father Albert was brother to lord Woodville, and Wilford was his truant son, so that Bess was his cousin Queen Elizabeth sanctioned their nuptials, and took them under ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... ha' kept me 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 ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... gone to college," she used to insist, regretfully, summing up by implication his lack of advancement. At first he took a measure of comfort in her excuse; later he came to be irritated by it. And in moments of truant self-candor he admitted he could have made the grade with concessions to pride. There were plenty of youths who worked their way through. But he always had moved close to the edge of affluent circles, where he had caught the cold but disturbing glow of their standards. He left high school with pallid ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... Ma said: at Honolulu, for instance, on the road to 'Frisco and New York, where Pa had resolved to go, at all costs, come what might—it was one step nearer London!—at Honolulu—ten days there and such a success!—the child played truant in the gardens teeming with birds and fruit, climbed apple-trees, was caught one day and scampered off at full speed, pursued by Ma, who threatened to give her a sound smacking this time, the little thief! But Pa thought it ridiculous, for the sake ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... occasion the truant was found in the apple-loft, sitting in a corner upon a heap of straw, quite in the dark. She was discovered only by the munching of her little teeth; for she had found some wizened apples, and was busy devouring them. But my father actually did what ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... but 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 arms ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... green waters, the laughing, dancing, purling waters, green, and, where the sun reached them, shot with seams and cleavages of light, like fluorspar. In the sun-flecked, shadow-dappled grass near by, violets tried to hide themselves, but were betrayed by their truant sweetness. The waters purled, a light breeze rustled the olive-leaves, and birds were singing loud and wild, as ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... heard 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. Dard cross-examined ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... the pained gait which spoke in loud tones of the unbroken store-shoe could belong in no other than a rural place. But the image of the New Hampshire village only flitted across my mind's film, for my truant senses seized on a message over memory's telephone: "Russell Sage has $100,000,000." One hundred millions, and I was back on earth again, but as I walked the thought was buzzing in my brain: "Is it possible that that countryman has MADE one hundred million dollars, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... he was, and stern to view, I knew him well, and every truant knew— Yet he was kind, or if severe in aught, The love he bore for learning was ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... 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 upon him, to do little services that would draw the approving ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... long day, and all to myself. What do you think of Harry playing truant?'" (Here we may imagine, what they call in France, or what they used to call, when men dared to speak or citizens ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pangs, however, assailed her presently, the pangs of hunger; and no one offered to take her in to supper. The idea of taking herself in was revolting; she preferred starvation. But where could Uncle John have hidden himself? She sought the elderly truant with all the suppressed annoyance of a chaperon seeking an inconsiderate flirt of a girl. And it happened that a spirit in her feet led her to the door of a small room in which Milly and Lady Augusta had been wont to transact their business. ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... curbstone, with Toby between them, and were just beginning to discuss the reward when a heavy hand fell on Mick's shoulder. It was the school porter. In spite of their protests he insisted that Mick was playing truant, and marched him off to school. Jane, left alone with Toby, debated what she ought to do. The reward was to be got in a village three or four miles at the other side of Rowallan, so she would have to wait and go back with ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... known many people who, as they said, "were no scholars," and yet they were not very far from the kingdom of Heaven. Brethren, some of us have never yet been to Christ's school. We have been playing truant, or altogether taken up with the lessons of that great, selfish, public-school—the world. I want you all to come to Christ's school to-day, old and young, clever and dull, and to hear some of the lessons which that ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... cruel parents," whined Hippy. "I am seriously contemplating wrapping a few little things in a handkerchief and leaving home forever. I remember once when I was very young and unsophisticated I decided upon this step. I was deeply incensed with Father because he had punished me for playing truant from school. I went upstairs to my room and packed three neckties, a boxing glove, two books, a baseball and a picture of myself in baseball clothes in a suit case. I carried the bat, and as a last precaution I took a toy pistol and my bank, which boasted of sixty-four ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... to be of the same truant description during the whole of his stay there;—"always," as he says himself, "cricketing, rebelling,[40] rowing, and in all manner of mischiefs." The "rebelling," of which he here speaks, (though it never, I believe, proceeded to any act of violence,) took place on ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... scene, and had cheered, and then kicked Gus Elliot, and "laid for him" in the evening with the "boys." He was one of the upper graduates of Pushton street-corners, and having spent an idle, vicious boyhood, truant half the time from school, had now arrived at the dignity of clerk in a store, that thrived feebly on the scattering trade that filtered through and past Mr. Hard's larger establishment. He was one of the worst phases of the male gossip, and had the ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... that, playing truant from the house while his father was engaged in work below stairs, he had been overwhelmed and perhaps wholly consumed by a detached fragment from the fiery visitant. This picturesque suggestion found many supporters until, on the afternoon of December fourteenth, ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... it took 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 ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... 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
... mother, up in the country, is getting ready his supper, and wondering what's become of him, and torturing herself with hopes that break one by one; and to-night when she goes up to his empty room, having tried to persuade herself that the truant's come back and climbed ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... was sent as a pupil to Westminster. It was not long before he rebelled against the discipline and trammels of school-boy life; and one day he threw down his Euclid and Caesar and vanished as completely as if the earth had swallowed him. Every street, court, and alley was searched in vain for the truant; advertisements and handbills offering a reward for his recovery were equally futile. Not a trace of the runaway ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... terror lest she might not return, her forebodings lest he should some day cease to love her, impressed him for a moment—only for a truant moment—with doubts as to a mystery. As he left the railway station, full of gratitude for the last glance of her loving eyes, he asked himself once ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... no means inclined to play knight-errant to children and attendant damsels, and he would probably have continued to watch the little scene without advancing, had not the girl, halting distressfully to call the truant, chanced to turn her face so that the strong morning light fell full upon it. Why, it was the violinist! Or was he deceived by some chance resemblance? Sydney did not think so, but it behoved him instantly to go ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... more deeply depressed by the certainty that both public and domestic scandal must soon arise from the inevitable revelation of his discontinuing his attendance at school without mentioning this important change of career at home. He had been truant a full fortnight, under brighter circumstances a matter for a lawless pride—now he had neither fear nor vainglory. There was no room in ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... and the local color tendency toward uniformity in type have held the 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 ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... calling the rooster back, when he starts to play truant, with all that mouthful of words?" queried ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... bran new uniform of pink muslin gowns with white bows in their caps, running about the house in a state of excitement and agitation which it would be impossible to describe. The old lady was dressed out in a brocaded gown, which had not seen the light for twenty years, saving and excepting such truant rays as had stolen through the chinks in the box in which it had been laid by, during the whole time. Mr. Trundle was in high feather and spirits, but a little nervous withal. The hearty old landlord was trying to look ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... regard to languages, antiquities, or the fine arts, though he himself could never find leisure to listen to him on these subjects when the conversation happened to turn on them. But if Emilius ever chanced to be in a more active mood, he might almost make sure that his truant friend would have caught cold the night before at some ball or sledge-party, and be forced to keep his bed; so that, with the liveliest, most restless, and most communicative of men for his companion, Emilius lived in the ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... admitted into it, it is especially a school for boys, as you will understand when you learn that it is a Truant School. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 32, June 17, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... was invariably expressed by Mr. Pump, whenever the company paraded generally in some such terms as these, which were uttered with that sort of meekness that a native of the island of our forefathers is apt to assume when he condescends to praise the customs or character of her truant progeny: ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... resolution he remained fixed, and in this frame of mind he received his truant sons on their return to Echanbroignes on the Sunday morning. They entered the village together with Chapeau, about nine in the morning, having been met about a mile from the town, by four or five friends, who escorted them back. Annot was not there, for ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... that he had left Duffield's Hotel," she said presently. "Mark is a dreadful truant. He never comes near me now! I suppose," she added, "he is a ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... upon the wound by Lady Mary's kind attendant, till the little girl, tired of hearing so much said about the bitten finger, gravely desired her maid to go in search of the cage, and catch the truant, which had effected its escape, and was clinging to the curtains of the bed. The cage was procured—a large wooden cage, with an outer and an inner chamber, a bar for the little fellow to swing himself on, and a drawer for his food, and a little dish for ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... 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 gar ye ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... hand,— Behold the guests advancing! How fast the stragglers join the throng, From stall and work-shop gathered; The lively barber skips along And leaves a chin half-lathered; The smith has flung his hammer down, The horse-shoe still is glowing, The truant tapster at the Crown Has left a beer-cask flowing; The coopers' boys have dropped the adze, And trot behind their master; Up run the tarry ship-yard lads;— The crowd is hurrying faster. Out from the mill-pond's purlieus gush, The streams of white-faced ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... 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, and is very anxious ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... And was it for this that you took fencing lessons, to run poor travellers through the body for the sake of a dollar, or stab women in the back? Go! go! You have played truant to your nurse because she shook ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... 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 her, ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... mother that her other sons shall comfort her old age, For I was aye a truant bird, that thought his home a cage. For my father was a soldier, and, even when a child, My heart leaped forth to hear him tell of struggles fierce and wild; And when he died, and left us to divide his scanty hoard, I let them take whate'er they would, but kept my father's sword; And with boyish ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... from objects 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 and ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... That was a good day in my life, and better ones followed. No, you and True must be friends. Truant is her name by rights, for her mother never could keep her indoors or at home. Now, Bobby, look ahead! Do you see those lights? We go through the town; and just outside is our home—a very tiny one at present, for we move about; but we'll find a ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... only thing to do was to go himself and summon home his truant child. Miss Lambart objected that it would mean hewing expensively a path through the wood wide enough to permit his passage, and it was improbable that the owner of the wood would allow it. Thereupon the baroness volunteered to go. Miss Lambart with infinite pleasure explained ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... it? But then who am I to condemn? When I see the gods to hurl thunderbolts upon those who flout them, it will be time enough for us mortals to assume the robes of judgment. I will hope that farther thought will reclaim you from your truant wanderings.' ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... with Toby between them, and were just beginning to discuss the reward when a heavy hand fell on Mick's shoulder. It was the school porter. In spite of their protests he insisted that Mick was playing truant, and marched him off to school. Jane, left alone with Toby, debated what she ought to do. The reward was to be got in a village three or four miles at the other side of Rowallan, so she would have to wait and go back with Andy. But there was still an hour and a half before he ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... they say it is always a good thing to have taken pains, and that success is its own reward, whatever be its nature; so that, perhaps, even upon this I should plume myself, that no one ever played the truant with more deliberate care, and none ever had more certificates for less education. One consequence, however, of my system is that I have much less to say of Professor Blackie than I had of Professor Kelland; and as he is still alive, and will long, I hope, continue to ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as he strode along explaining, he threw off his surly fit. The brilliant sunlight, the breeze stirring toward them from a background of drooping bamboos, the gabble of coolies, the faint aroma of the fermenting no-me cakes, began, after all, to give a truant sense ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... that, I can say nothing," said Jenkin, "I have always served duly and truly; I have no heart to play truant, and cheat my master of his time ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... perform, but let no one think that he is therefore in love with idleness; he turns to something which is more agreeable to his inclination, and doubtless more suited to his nature; but he is not in love with idleness. A boy may play the truant from school because he dislikes books and study; but, depend upon it, he intends doing something the while—to go fishing, or perhaps to take a walk; and who knows but that from such excursions both his mind and body may derive more benefit than from books ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... When you were coming in, after playing truant on Friday afternoon, I was then going. You might have seen the ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... 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 ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... she repaired to one of these kinsfolk,—a person in a large way of business,—and returned home with two great books in white sheepskin. And when Losely looked in to dine, she said, in the suavest tones a tender mother can address to an amiable truant, "Jasper, you have great abilities; at the gaming-table abilities are evidently useless: your forte is calculation; you were always very quick at that. I have been fortunate enough to procure you an easy piece of task-work, for which ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... flame of color 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 confession in ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... might just as well have no tutor at all as to have one so tiny. How Prince Vance did laugh! Of all the wizards he had ever known—and for one so young his Highness had known a great many wizards; he almost always met more or less of them when he played truant by climbing out of a back window and going into the woods fishing—he thought the Blue Wizard was the most amusing and had invented the ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... and it was very dark, as Audrey and her squire passed along Third Avenue to the front. They did not converse—they were both too shy, too impressed by the peculiarity of the predicament. They simply peered. They peered everywhere for the truant form of Musa balanced on one side by a bag and on the other by a fiddle case. From the trim houses, each without exception new, twinkled discreet lights, with glimpses of surpassingly correct domesticity, and the wind rustled loudly ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... ancestral gods. The East Saxons drove out Mellitus, who, with Justus, retired to Gaul; and Archbishop Laurentius himself was minded to follow them. Then the Kentish king, admonished by a dream of the archbishop's, made submission, recalled the truant bishops, and restored Justus to Rochester. The Londoners, however, would not receive back Mellitus, "choosing rather to be under their idolatrous high-priests." Soon Laurentius died too, and Mellitus ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... brothers! I would fair have caught Some fresher fancy's gleam; My truant accents find, unsought, The old ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... ostensibly for school, but as they did not come home to dinner and were not seen by their little sister about the school-grounds, the awful suspicion entered the good mother's mind that they had again been truant. Along about dark one of them, the younger, came ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... 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 ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... went out he was soon aware of something else being wrong, for Brookes was rating the three blacks, who had thoroughly enjoyed their truant holiday, and would have stayed away for days in the myall scrub, but the bush in wet weather is to a blackfellow not pleasant, from the showers of drops falling upon his unclothed skin. Consequently the storm had sent them back, and they were all found clothed and curled up fast asleep in the wool-shed ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... I have played the truant, or have here Failed in my part, oh! Thou that art my dear, My mild, my loving tutor, Lord and God! Correct my errors gently with Thy rod. I know that faults will many here be found, But where sin swells there let Thy ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... is getting ready his supper, and wondering what's become of him, and torturing herself with hopes that break one by one; and to-night when she goes up to his empty room, having tried to persuade herself that the truant's come back and climbed ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... can full of worms and a heart full of joy, Up and down the old stream, a bare-footed boy, A truant from school, my footsteps would stray To the deep-shaded pool, or where ripples at play, As they flowed over beds of smooth-polished stones, Sang a lullaby sweet in soft undertones! From the dawn of the day to the set of the sun What pleasures we've had when we fished ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... her husband of the conduct of their truant son, as Harry had wished, and had in reply received his full forgiveness for the boy. Captain Grosvenor had written that he much regretted not having taken Harry along with him, "for," said he, "a second thought would have convinced me that the ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... of talking in metaphor," rejoined Brandon, smiling; "they who begin it always get the worst of it. In plain words, dear Lucy, I can give no more time to my own ailments. A lawyer cannot play truant in term-time without—" ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bumblebee, 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 birds,—like August there,— Beneath a beech, dripping from foot to hair, Like some drenched truant, cower. ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... destiny, or how often that face seen in the fitful moonlight would haunt my sleep and disturb my waking hours. But I mind yet the cold grue of terror I got from it, a terror which was surely more than the due of a few truant lads breaking the Sabbath with ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... the damsel fain Would wile him back,—she called in vain. The truant gamboll'd farther: One follow'd for the maiden's sake, A pilgrim in an Angel's ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... that hardly an hour remains before the closing of the mail. I found such pretty, solitary paths, quite narrow, between the greening hazel and thorn-bushes, where only the thrush and the glede-kite were heard, and quite far off the bell of the church to which I was playing truant, that I could not find my way home again. Johanna is somewhat exhausted, in connection with her condition, or I should have had her in the woods, too, and perhaps we should still be there. * * * She has presented me with an exquisite anchor ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... to the graceful groves and Gallic beauties of Belle Etoile his truant thoughts will fly once more. He wonders why he threw up his law studies under his uncle, Judge Valois, ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... fringe and feather my edges. To be beautiful is not amiss, But to be loved is more than this; And who more sought than I, By all that run or swim or crawl or fly? Sober shell-fish and frivolous gnats, Tawny-eyed water-rats; The poet with rippling rhymes so fluent, Boys with boats playing truant, Cattle wading knee-deep for water; And the flower-plucking parson's daughter. Down in my depths dwell creeping things Who rise from my bosom on rainbow wings, For—too swift for a school-boy's prize— ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... 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 to ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... moment the sound of sweet laughter became audible among the trees. His heart beat fast; he advanced a few steps and stopped. In a moment more the nymph of the island appeared, in her white robe, ascending the cliff in pursuit of her truant bird. She saw the strange man, and suddenly stood still; struck motionless by the amazing discovery that had burst upon her. The Captain approached, smiling and holding out his hand. She never moved; she stood before him in helpless wonderment—her lovely black ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... possible that the real Mrs. Manston, who was known to be a Philadelphian by birth, had returned by the train to London, as the porter had said, and then left the country under an assumed name, to escape that worst kind of widowhood—the misery of being wedded to a fickle, faithless, and truant husband? ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... 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
... summer-house received a sitter with the softly-yielding submission of elastic wires. Susan had just finished her early dinner: in mind and body alike, this good girl was entirely and deservedly at her ease. By finely succeeding degrees, her eyelids began to show a tendency downward; her truant needle-work escaped from her fingers, and lay lazily on her lap. She snatched it up with a start, and sewed with severe resolution until her thread was exhausted. The reel was ready at her side; she took it up for a fresh supply, and innocently rested her head against the leafy and flowery ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... ways, then, and get its patten.' Until that reconciling word was uttered, there had been a shadow of distrust on the baby's face, as if treachery might be in the wind. But the magic of that one word patten wrought an instant revolution. Back the little truant ran, and the young mother's manner made it evident that she would not on her part forget what had passed between the high contracting parties.[51] What, then, could be the meaning of this talismanic word patten? Accidentally, having had ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... slowly turned away The weight of his intolerable brow. When I glanced back, I saw him, as before, Sailing adown the hall on out-spread wings. Indeed, my lord, he should not do these things; They strain the weakness of mortality A jot too far. As for poor Ritta, she Fled like a doe, the truant. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... sometimes, if it pleased him to start early enough, he would walk there with his little daughter, her hand tucked within his arm. With her he was never savage, and rarely irritable; on these walks his mood would be playful and jocose, and they would incite each other to play the truant from office and school, and pretend they were off on a holiday ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... victories then. Our Te Deums were not sung with doubting hearts, to make the populace believe a defeat a victory—a delusion to which this French nation of ours is only too prone. My countryman, Marlborough, and the little truant Abbe, Eugene of Savoy, were not then the leaders of the opposite armies; but at the head of our own, we had M. le Prince and the Vicomte de Turenne in the flower of their age, and our triumphs were such that they might well intoxicate the King, who was, so to speak, brought ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who had been busy talking about water turtles with Frank, noticed this, and struck out with his willow branch to bring the truant back, but it was too late; the boat had got beyond his reach, and was now floating swiftly down the middle of the ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... am here,—I am here to save thee! Wilt thou deny to me thy sweet face? Truant, wouldst ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... calmly anticipate the condition of the Southern States at that period, should no remedy be devised to arrest the progressive miseries attendant on slavery? Will the absent father's heart be at peace, when, amid the hurry of public affairs, his truant thoughts return to the home of his affection, surrounded by doubtful, if not dangerous, subjects to precarious authority? Perhaps when deeply engaged in his legislative duties his heart may quail and his tongue falter with ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... laughing, dancing, purling waters, green, and, where the sun reached them, shot with seams and cleavages of light, like fluorspar. In the sun-flecked, shadow-dappled grass near by, violets tried to hide themselves, but were betrayed by their truant sweetness. The waters purled, a light breeze rustled the olive-leaves, and birds were singing loud and wild, as birds will ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... sensation, after seeing 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
... books, G.K. loved to play upon words, and sometimes of course this was merely a matter of words and the puns were bad ones. Once, for instance, after translating the French phrase for playing truant as "he goes to the bushy school—or the school among the bushes," he adds "not lightly to be confounded with the Art School at Bushey." This is indefensible, but rare. Christopher Morley has noted how "his play upon words often led to a genuine play upon thoughts. . . . One ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... but not until he had searched for and caught Connie's truant gaze. "Aren't we?" he asked of Miss Fowler, his eyes dancing. ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... when (Ah joy!) our singer For his truant string Feels with disconcerted finger, What does cricket else but fling Fiery heart forth, sound the note Wanted by ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... and his teeth to grow again—if he only took it long enough; and he had, besides, remedies which would cure chickens that had the pip, horses that kicked, old women with the rheumatism, dogs that howled at the moon, boys who played truant, and cats that ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... complicated facts the schoolmaster has to deal. In Macaulay's time he used to be guided by his 'common-sense,' and to intellectualise the whole process. The unfortunate boys who acted upon an ancient impulse to fidget, to play truant, to chase cats, or to mimic their teacher, were asked, with repeated threats of punishment,'why' they had done so. They, being ignorant of their own evolutionary history, were forced to invent some far-fetched lie, and were punished for that as well. ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... severe he was, and stern to view, I knew him well, and every truant knew— Yet he was kind, or if severe in aught, The love he bore for learning ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... 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
... other sons shall comfort her old age, And I was aye a truant bird, that thought his home a cage: For my father was a soldier, and, even as a child, My heart leaped forth to hear him tell of struggles fierce and wild; And when he died, and left us to divide his scanty hoard, I let them take whate'er they would—but kept ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... fact, I was alone in the world, dependent upon my own resources for whatever little truant ray of sunshine I might get from the golden flood that illuminated the world outside me, and forced by rigid, arbitrary circumstances to train my growing convictions into many a hazardous channel, left to myself to grope among the dawning mysteries of life, that are a burden to ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... ye daughters of celestial Virtue, point not the scoffing glance at these, her truant children, as ye pass them by—but pity, and afford them a gleam of cheerful hope: so shall ye merit the protection of Him whose chief attribute is charity and universal benevolence. And ye, lords of the creation! commiserate their misfortunes, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... along, Came dainty Zephyrus humming a song, And pausing—the truant—to kiss each flower That blushed in garden, or field, or bower. But no one was left to be merry with him, So he danced with the leaves till the light grew dim, And, as Twilight was going to sleep in the west, He, too, fell asleep on ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... that the Lady Eveline was visible, to the delight of all, and 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 do ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... disciplined bosom at half-heave. 'I think I can judge now that you're not much hurt by this wretched business of the presentation. The little service I could do was a moral lesson to me on the subject of deuce-may-care antecedents. My brother Tom, too, was always playing truant, as a boy. It ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was then all deceit? Did he but mock me, when with tears of rapture He bathed my hand; knelt; sighed; as had his voice By pleasure been o'erwhelmed, a while was silent; But soon came words, sweet as those most sweet kisses Which grateful Venus gave the swain whose care Brought back her truant doves!——So sweet, so sweet—— Distrust, herself, must have believed those words. Oh! and was ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... Pig hadn't been able to stay awake. Her eyes would close, in spite of all she could do. Though she slept, she dreamed about the truant Grunty. Now and then she cried aloud in the darkness, when some terrible creature seemed to be chasing him. But Mrs. Pig never ...
— The Tale of Grunty Pig - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... than half a dozen 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 ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... his time and attention to the congenial task of hatching or feeding them. It is he who builds the nest, and sits upon the eggs, and nurses the young, and imparts moral instruction (with a snap of his jaw or a swish of his tail) to the bold, the truant, the cheeky, or the imprudent; while his unnatural spouse, well satisfied with her own part in having merely brought the helpless eggs into this world of sorrow, goes off on her own account in the giddy whirl of society, forgetful of the sacred claims of her wriggling offspring ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... of the tenement, at three o'clock on the following afternoon, she felt like a naughty little girl who is playing truant from school. When she remembered the way that she had avoided the Superintendent's almost direct questions, she blushed with an inward sense of shame. But when she thought of the Young Doctor's offer to go with her—"wherever she was going"—she threw back her head ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... interest than most men. It embodies, from observation, what may be regarded as THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FISHERMAN, and describes some curious scenes and appearances which I witnessed many years ago when engaged, during a truant boyhood, in prosecuting the herring fishery as an amateur. Many of my observations of natural phenomena date from this idle, and yet not wholly wasted, ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... once inspired to do that thing, she will go on day in and day out doing the right thing for that child and for all others in her home. It may take a year to convert a police magistrate whose sympathy for delinquent parents and truant children is an active promoter of disorder; but a magistrate convinced, efficient, and interested is worth a hundred volunteer visitors. To get things done in this way for a hundred thousand children costs less in time and money than to do the necessary ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... 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 ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... then we heard a most furious quacking, as if there were 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, ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... offensive, and the school-house a dreary prison. "Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined." The child learns to hate school, to hate instruction, and all that is good. He soon becomes the practiced truant. In a few years he arrives at manhood; but, instead of being a blessing to his family and a useful member of society, he too frequently drags out a wretched life, in ignorance and penury, dividing it between ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... who adorn'd herself and folded her hair expectantly, My truant lover has come, and it ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... companion, who was talking with quickness and vivacity, her fair face radiant with smiles. Lemercier looked at them as they passed by. "Sur mon ame," muttered Frederic to himself, "surely that is la belle Julie; and she has got back her truant ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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
... excuse. He must peddle or be nagged to death. And if he ventured to slip into some synagogue of an afternoon and read a page or two he would be in danger of being caught red-handed, so to say, for, indeed, she often shadowed him to make sure that he did not play truant. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Sharpless comes with a letter to break the news that his friend is coming back with an American wife, he loses courage to perform his mission at the contemplation of the little woman's faith in the truant. Does he know when the robins nest in America? In Japan they had nested three times since Pinkerton went away. The consul quails at that and damns his friend as a scoundrel. Now Goro, who knows Butterfly's pecuniary plight, ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... more swiftly if they sought to amuse themselves and be happy. They allowed themselves to be comforted, in the absence of their husbands, by their lovers, and they felt no reproach of conscience; for they were convinced that their truant husbands were doing the same thing in their long separation—were making love to 'the lips ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... 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 ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... urged on me the importance of the habit, and I accordingly practise it systematically. Whenever I find my mind wandering away from the subject on which I am engaged, I bring it back forcibly, just as if it were a truant, or a deserter from his colours. Some people can think of two things at the same moment; but my father says it is much better to think of one thing well at a time, as likewise to do one thing well; so, as you may have observed, I never attempt more. The consequence of this system is, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... burr, and it was considered more prudent, economically and otherwise, to let him go on learning with his grandfather and herself. Mark missed Cass when he went to school in Rosemarket, because there was no such thing as playing truant there, and it was so far away that Cass did not come home for the midday meal. But in summertime, Mark used to wait for him outside the town, where a lane branched from the main road into the unfrequented country behind the Rose Pool and took ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... comfortable, though he would have died before he admitted it to Dora. Now that the exhilaration of truant delights had died away, his conscience was beginning to give him salutary twinges. After all, perhaps it would have been better to have gone to Sunday School and church. Mrs. Lynde might be bossy; but there was always a box of cookies in her kitchen cupboard and she was not stingy. ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... apt and gracious words That aged ears play truant at his tales, And younger hearings are quite ravished; So sweet and ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... from the table, Henry attempted to slip out of the house from the front door without Sylvia's knowledge. He had nearly reached the gate, and had a sensation of exultation like a child playing truant, when he ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... The day wet and rainy, though not uniformly so. No temptation, however, to play truant; so this will make some amends for a blank day yesterday. I am far in advance of the press, but it is necessary if I go to Drumlanrig on Wednesday as I intend, and to Lochore next week, which I also meditate. This will be no great interruption, however, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... as just then, in the gorgeous October coloring of the whole landscape that lies below, across the farm, which stretches on through an intervale of beautiful meadows and pastures to the woods that skirt the valley of the little truant river, as ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... 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
... a girl whose opinion was always received with respect. Ida went off obediently to fulfil her behests; and Constance, after searching in Maggie's room and wandering in different parts of the grounds, found the truant at last, comfortably established with a pile of new books and magazines in the library. The library was the most comfortable room in the house, and Maggie was leaning back luxuriously in an easy-chair, reading some notes from ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... captain, four sergeants, and fifty-seven patrolmen. Some of these are on 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
... Hong Kong— Some fancy called him thither unforeseen. So years had passed, till seven lay between His going and the coming of this note, Which I hid in my bosom, and replied To Aunt Ruth's queries, "What the truant wrote?" By saying he was still upon the wing, And merely dropped a line, while journeying, To say he lived: ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... said no more. When, after exploring the undergrowth for nearly half an hour, he suddenly descried his footgear lodged in the branches of a neighbouring ash, Mr. Dunkelsbaum's behaviour gave me cause to fear for his reason. My theory that some dim-sighted fowl must have mistaken the truant for a piece of refuse met with a furious dismissal, and, from the perfectly poisonous stare with which he declined my offer of assistance to secure his quarry, I was forced to the conclusion that he associated me with its elevation. ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... successful 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 than the eloquence ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... MOTHER OF US ALL, AND FRIENDS, WHOM 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 of the association existing de jure, and its government ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... nothing which was worthy of such careful record. Sometimes she did but bathe the weary feet of her little children, but the angel over the right shoulder—wrote it down. Sometimes she did but patiently wait to lure back a little truant who had turned his face away from the distant light, but the angel over the right shoulder—wrote it down. Sometimes she did but soothe an angry feeling or raise a drooping eye-lid, or kiss away a little grief; but the angel over the right ...
— The Angel Over the Right Shoulder - The Beginning of a New Year • Elizabeth Wooster Stuart Phelps
... wind among heaps of other leaves, where its splendor no more attracted attention. Of the gaiety of autumn, only the red bunches of the sumach were left as a parting present to welcome winter in. The querulous note of the quail had long been heard calling to his truant mate, and reproaching her for wandering from his jealous side; the robins had either sought a milder climate or were collected in the savin-bushes, in whose evergreen branches they found shelter, and on whose berries they love to feed; and little ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... one thing and then of another. They complain that by thus nibbling at every blade of grass on the way-side we shall never get to the end of our journey; and there is some truth in what they say. Still, I will whisper to you in excuse that I thought we might play truant a little bit while we were on familiar ground, where naturally you were sure to feel a particular interest in everything. The hand, the tongue, the teeth—these are all old friends of yours—and I thought you would like to hear all about them. By-and-bye we shall be in the little black ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... Gilles de Sille was still swathed in bandages when, with an additional swaddling of disguise across his eyes, he and Laurence, that truant scion of the house of O'Halloran, stole out into the night. A frosty chill had descended with the darkness, and a pale, dank mist from the marshes of the Seine made the pair shiver as arm in ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... 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 ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tone it seemed to say The sweetest words I ever heard, Then like a truant forest bird, It soared from me ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... Therefore, when a zealous Sunday-school teacher finds that one of her little charges has gone to work under age, the offices of the city's solitary factory inspector being out of the question, she hunts up a truant officer, who takes the child before a magistrate, who, in view of the want of school accommodations, promptly discharges the truant. Behind our local municipal administration lies our whole system of capitalistic production, calling for cheap ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... been a sad truant, Philip. But you are welcome home. I, for one, rejoice to see my ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... Daphnis! Open he the lay, He open: and Menalcas follow next: While the calves suck, and with the barren kine The young bulls graze, or roam knee-deep in leaves, And ne'er play truant. But a song from thee, ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... and meadow, They searched 'neath hedge and tree; "Where," said the puzzled children, "Where can the truant be?" ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... 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 ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... to your duty. Up and away. Though the wood looks dark from here, 'tis because of our fire so bright. The stars are out and once away from this the road will seem light enough. As light as many another when you're played truant to your master to wander ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... offices of their country. Can we calmly anticipate the condition of the Southern States at that period, should no remedy be devised to arrest the progressive miseries attendant on slavery? Will the absent father's heart be at peace, when, amid the hurry of public affairs, his truant thoughts return to the home of his affection, surrounded by doubtful, if not dangerous, subjects to precarious authority? Perhaps when deeply engaged in his legislative duties his heart may quail and his tongue falter with irresistible apprehension ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... 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 ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... By this time the truant boy and his companion approached the house, and he mounted the steps of the piazza with eager haste, pulling her after him, immediately upon the arrival of his father, Aunt Mary, and Cousin Bessie. Brief explanation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... me, Steal my priceless jewels, In fancy's store-house cherished, Your roguish eyes have robbed me, Of all my dreams bereft me, Dreams that are fair, yet fleeting. Fled are my truant fancies, Regrets I do not cherish, For now life's rosy morn is breaking, Now golden love is waking. Now that I've told my story, Pray tell me yours, too; Tell me frankly, who are ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... bless A, Band C! The rest of the song is D: That is all my lore. I came late yesterday, I played truant by my fay! I am a foul sinner. Good master, after dinner ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... by his blunt, indifferent reply, but before she could frame another question, Miss Murch appeared from an inner office, at the same moment that Miss Keith stepped through the doorway from behind them in search of her truant patient; and Peace suffered herself to be led docilely away. So absorbed was she in her new discovery that even her pleasure in her ability ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... my childhood I remember with nothing but pleasure. I must have been a dull boy, I suppose, in some respects, for I never got into scrapes, never played truant, and was never, that I can remember, punished for anything. The instruction was simple enough. Special stress was laid upon spelling, and I am inclined to think that every one of my fellow-pupils [22] learned to spell more correctly ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... Ellinor returned alone into the gallery, "You little truant!" she cried, "why so long? you said you would soon be with the foremost. I thought you must have escaped me, and have sought you through half the garden, and you are here all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... the subject of the American War, without further reference to the truant who stood by them in the covert of the dusk, thrilling with happiness ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I deserve it! I have been nothing but a truant and a vagabond. I have never obeyed anyone and I have always done as I pleased. If I were only like so many others and had studied and worked and stayed with my poor old father, I should not find myself here now, in this field and in the darkness, taking the place of a farmer's watchdog. ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... in question. Search was at once made; but neither search nor inquiry availed. Late at night, however, a knock was heard at the door of the boy's dwelling, and the mother, hurrying out, found her truant fast asleep on the ground. She could not discover who had knocked. The boy, upon being awakened, laughed, and said that on the morning of his disappearance he had met a lad of about his own age, with very pretty eyes, who had coaxed him away to the woods, where they had played together ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... discharged veterans, who had strength enough remaining for this municipal duty, and being, moreover, for the greater part, Highlanders, were neither by birth, education, nor former habits, trained to endure with much patience the insults of the rabble, or the provoking petulance of truant schoolboys, and idle debauchees of all descriptions, with whom their occupation brought them into contact. On the contrary, the tempers of the poor old fellows were soured by the indignities with which the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... was a long, long time; and never a word from the truant since the day she had left the village. Martha had waited, at first impatiently, then anxiously, and finally with a pathetic hopefulness that was more than half assumed. It was she who had insisted that ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... 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 have been in! Lazy, ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Llewellyn homeward hied, When near the portal seat, His truant Gelert he espied, Bounding his lord to greet. But when he gained the castle door, Aghast the chieftain stood: The hound was smeared with drops of gore; His lips and fangs ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... to be a Philadelphian by birth, had returned by the train to London, as the porter had said, and then left the country under an assumed name, to escape that worst kind of widowhood—the misery of being wedded to a fickle, faithless, and truant husband? ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... erect stone markers showing where Charley Ross was last seen and Carrie Nation was first sighted. We shall pile up tall monuments to Sitting Bull and Nonpareil Jack Dempsey and the man who invented the spit ball. Perhaps then these truant Americans will come back oftener from Paris and Florence and abide with us longer. Meanwhile though they will continue to stay on the other side. And on second thought, possibly it is just as well for the rest of us that ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... life was very unsympathetic to him, very narrow and mechanical, and it is no wonder that he took every opportunity to escape and play truant. He loved poetry and knew all the poems in the reading books by heart; he was fond, too, of declaiming them in season and out ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... be followed by woe— The W duly succeeds the V, This is the order of A, B, C. Ubi erit victoriae spes, Si offenditur Deus? which says, How, pray ye, shall victory e'er come to pass, If thus you play truant from sermon and mass, And do nothing but lazily loll o'er the glass? The woman, we're told in the Testament, Found the penny in search whereof she went. Saul met with his father's asses again, And Joseph his precious fraternal train, But he, who 'mong soldiers shall ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... overtaking the lamb and upsetting it with a poke of his nose. The lamb, 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 ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... of art, where he applied himself with the greatest assiduity. He copied all the great frescos of Raffaelle in the Vatican several times; he next turned his rapid pencil against the works of Annibale Caracci in the Farnese palace. Meantime, his father divining the direction which the truant had taken, followed him to Rome, where, after a long search, he discovered him ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... "the blind beggar of Bethnal Green," was intensely loved by Wilford, who first saw her in the streets of London, and subsequently, after diligent search, discovered her in the Queen's Arms inn at Romford. It turned out that her father Albert was brother to lord Woodville, and Wilford was his truant son, so that Bess was his cousin Queen Elizabeth sanctioned their nuptials, and took them under her own ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... He should have come ere this: The promised hour is past: he is not here! I love him—yes, my maiden heart is his; I sigh—I languish when he is not near. The truant! Wherefore tarries he? His love, Were it like mine, would woo him to my side— Or does he—dares he—merely seek to prove The doubted passion of his promised bride? Do I not love him? But does he love me? He swore so yester-eve, when last we met Down in the dell by our old trysting-tree: ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... round the corner, and running fast towards the cricket field. Vivian was very much disturbed and distressed. She scarcely knew what she ought to do. She ventured a little way into the grounds, but not a trace of any truant was to be seen, so she thought it useless to search far. One of the girls must have gone out; on that point she ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... shape, which to Anglantes' peer Seemed his Angelica, beseeching aid. Seemed to Rogero Dordogne's lady dear. Who him a truant to himself had made: If with Gradasso, or with other near He spake, of those who through the palace strayed. To all of them the vision, seen apart, Seemed that which each ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... second intimation as to my duty in the case. Only a moment or two elapsed before I was on the pavement, and making rapid approaches towards my truant boy. ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... and activity. The usual occupations of the sons of Japanese peasants, such as grass-cutting and rice-weeding, were not to the taste of young Monkey-pine, as the villagers called him, and he spent his time in the streets, a keen-witted and reckless young truant, who feared and cared for no one, and lived ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... 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
... about to be realised, as the truant emerged from the thicket and entered upon an open plain clothed with low heath,—the Erica vestila, ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... observe that although they had never moved since they sat down, they were now quite close together; both presenting faces of a very heightened colour to the eyes of Mr. Edward Hugh Bloomfield. That gentleman, coming up the river in his boat, had captured the truant canoe, and divining what had happened, had thought to steal a march upon Miss Hazeltine at her sketch. He had unexpectedly brought down two birds with one stone; and as he looked upon the pair of flushed and breathless culprits, the pleasant ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... some minutes after when the truant Cicely re-entered the little keeping-room, her cheeks and eyes bright ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... or be nagged to death. And if he ventured to slip into some synagogue of an afternoon and read a page or two he would be in danger of being caught red-handed, so to say, for, indeed, she often shadowed him to make sure that he did not play truant. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... 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 mere authorship part of the work, to the correction and chastening ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... chap as wanted to 'list, and nearly deafened him, till he picked up his hat and fair ran away. And they'd tell tales in th' Sunday-school o' bad lads as had been thumped and brayed for bird-nesting o' Sundays and playin' truant o' week days, and how they took to wrestlin', dog-fightin', rabbit-runnin', and drinkin', till at last, as if 'twere a hepitaph on a gravestone, they damned him across th' moors wi', 'an' then he went and 'listed for a soldier,' ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... "Oui, Monsieur," said the rogue, with a leer, for he remembered the francs, and we soon had our adventurer safe on terra firma again. Then began the tender expostulations, the affectionate reproaches, and the kind injunctions for the truant to remember that he was a husband and a father. Edouard, secretly cursing the punt and all rivers in his heart, made light of the matter, however, protesting to the last that he had only been ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... that I care," Elsie replied. "What's the odds o' one afternoon more or less? It'll be many a day I shall be called truant, I reckon. But they might be after tellin' of us, an' she'd be lockin' me up in the loft, which isn't what I want, so we'll get to school to-day," she added, meditatively. "Here, take the basket, while I try to make the map out ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... exceeds. She with a glance who rules us as her own, Opening my breast my heart in hand to take, Thus said to me: "Of this no mention make." I saw her then, in alter'd air, alone, So that I recognised her not—O shame Be on my truant mind and faithless sight! And when the truth I told her in sore fright, She soon resumed her old accustom'd frame, While, desperate and half dead, a hard rock ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... man severe he was, and stern to view, I knew him well, and every truant knew— Yet he was kind, or if severe in aught, The love he bore for learning ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... 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 ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... dim— Maria! thou hast heard my hymn! In joy and wo—in good and ill— Mother of God, be with me still! When the Hours flew brightly by, And not a cloud obscured the sky, My soul, lest it should truant be, Thy grace did guide to thine and thee Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast Darkly my Present and my Past, Let my future radiant shine With sweet hopes of thee ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... here, you truant," said the boy. "Why did you run away? What have you to say for ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... hula ulili, also called by the descriptive name kolili—to wave or flutter, as a pennant—was a hula that was not at all times confined to the tabu restrictions of the halau. Like a truant schoolboy, it delighted to break loose from restraint and join the informal pleasurings of the people. Imagine an assembly of men and women in the picturesque illumination given by flaring kukui torches, the men on one side, the women on the other. Husbands ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... or approved a pretext for doing what would be opposed or condemned; a tricky schoolboy makes a pretense of doing an errand which he does not do, or he makes the actual doing of an errand a pretext for playing truant. A ruse is something (especially something slight or petty) employed to blind or deceive so as to mask an ulterior design, and enable a person to gain some end that he would not be allowed to approach directly. A pretension is a claim ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... sat still, like truant schoolboys, with our hands on our knees. I didn't know where I was going and I didn't care. We seemed to be rumbling up the hill, and then I caught the glare of ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... no idea that he had left Duffield's Hotel," she said presently. "Mark is a dreadful truant. He never comes near me now! I suppose," she added, "he is ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... shield pierced with little holes to look through, that he held before his face. One day he came into this turret when they who worked the guns in Orleans were all at their meat. But it so chanced that two boys, playing truant from school, went into a niche of the wall, where was a cannon loaded and aimed at Les Tourelles. They, seeing the gleam of the golden shield at the window of the turret, set match to the touch-hole of the ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... with this surpassing magnet of popular interest so near at hand, that for every truant convert who might halt to taste of the pleasures provided by AEsop Loving and his associate promoters, half a dozen possible patrons would pass on by and beyond, drawn away by the compelling power of the Sin Killer's eloquence. Representations had been ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... got parents in the stage, and has been playing truant here," he mused, lazily. "Looked as if he'd been up to some devilment, or more like as if he was primed for it. If he'd been a little older, I'd have bet he was in league with some road-agents to watch the coach. Just my luck to have him light out as I was beginning to get some ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... hair. He closed them with a disagreeable sensation, after seeing 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. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... purling waters, green, and, where the sun reached them, shot with seams and cleavages of light, like fluorspar. In the sun-flecked, shadow-dappled grass near by, violets tried to hide themselves, but were betrayed by their truant sweetness. The waters purled, a light breeze rustled the olive-leaves, and birds were singing loud and wild, as ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... morn till night To scratch and write Upon a three-legged stool; Nor mourn the joys Of truant boys Who stay away ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... parchment containing the municipal statute confirming Ascanio's appointment, which is dated January 1, 1495, is still preserved in the archives of the city. At the beginning of the year 1499, however, Alexander again assumed control of Nepi by compelling the castellan, who commanded the fortress for the truant Ascanio, to surrender it to him. He now invested his daughter with the castle, the city, and the domain of Nepi.[66] September 4, 1499, Francesco Borgia, the Pope's treasurer, who was also Bishop of Teano, took possession of the city in ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... scientific part will tire you—skip and go on to the third volume. Delightful breakfast to-day at Mr. Ricardo's. We have this last week seen all Calcott's principal pictures, and those by Mulready, an Irish artist: one of a messenger playing truant; the enraged mistress, and the faces of the boys he is playing with, and the little child he had the care of asleep, all tell their story well; but none of these come near the exquisite humour and ingenuity of Hogarth. I have the face of that imbecile, ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... plan to execute, the husband went, And ev'ry passenger was thither sent, Where Damon entertained, with sumptuous fare; And, at the end, proposed the magick snare: Said he, my wife played truant to my bed; Wish you to know if your's be e'er misled? 'Tis right how things go on at home to trace, And if upon the cup your lips you place, In case your wife be chaste, there'll naught go wrong; But, if to Vulcan's troop ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... he'll be too cunning, and play truant—he has no notion of learning American manners; ev'ry dog must have his day (as the saying is); it may be our time by and by—the event of war ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... fell from the latter's lips as the truant returned to his post. A tender gracious smile was the only sign of displeasure that ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... we to do with the trap?" said Aveline. "We can't drag it back ourselves. And what about the pony? He's playing truant!" ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... questioning to give vent to his displeasure he would smile contentedly and stroke his chin, once so round, but then so peaked, and those who thought that the Court apothecary would diminish his legacy to his truant son, learned to know better, for the old man bequeathed in an elaborate will, the whole of his valuable possessions to Melchior, leaving only to the widow Vorkel, who had served him faithfully as housekeeper after the death of his wife, and to Schimmel, the dispenser, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off long ago to Megara or Boeotia—by the dog they would, if they had been moved only by their own idea of what was best, and if I had not chosen the better and nobler part, instead of playing truant and running away, of enduring any punishment which the state inflicts. There is surely a strange confusion of causes and conditions in all this. It may be said, indeed, that without bones and muscles and the other parts of the body I cannot execute my ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... 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 to ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... point of slipping away on the Easter Tuesday afternoon; he determined to drink tea with the Misses La Sarthe. He went to his room with important letters to write, and then sneaked down again like a truant schoolboy, and when he got safely out of sight, struck obliquely across the park to the one vulnerable spot in the haw-haw, and after fumbling a good deal, from his side, managed to get the spikes out and to climb down, ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... good temper appeared immortal—his situation was more peculiar than pleasant. He was seated on a log, three hundred miles from any civilised habitation, smiling blandly at a broken axe (his only one), the half of which was tightly grasped in his right hand, pointing to the truant iron in the trunk of a huge tree, the first of a thriving forest of fifty acres he purposed felling; and, thus occupied, a solitary traveller passed our uncle Job Bucket, serene as the melting sunshine, and thoughtless as the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... responsibility, Fyne solemn and shrinking—the children in bed upstairs; and outside the dark fields, the shadowy contours of the land on the starry background of the universe, with the crude light of the open window like a beacon for the truant who would never come back now; a truant no longer but a downright fugitive. Yet a fugitive carrying off spoils. It was the flight of a raider—or a tractor? This affair of the purloined brother, as I had named it to myself, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... N. absence; inexistence &c. 2[obs3]; nonresidence, absenteeism; nonattendance, alibi. emptiness &c. adj.; void, vacuum; vacuity, vacancy; tabula rasa[Lat]; exemption; hiatus &c. (interval) 198; lipotype|!. truant, absentee. nobody; nobody present, nobody on earth; not a soul; ame qui vive[Fr]. V. be absent &c. adj.; keep away, keep out of the way; play truant, absent oneself, stay away; keep aloof, hold aloof. withdraw, make oneself ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... at the children's service last Sunday. He had only fourpence halfpenny. I remember it all now. Oh, how stupid I've been, to be sure!' It was an intense relief to have chased successfully the truant halfpence. 'Now, Queenie,' went on Theo gleefully, 'in five minutes I shall be ready for you, and we are going to have a good time in the boat. Get your ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... is a good plan to have a book with you in all places and at all times. Most likely you will carry it many a day and never give it a single look, but, even so, a book in the hand is always a companionable reminder of that happier world of fancy, which, alas! most of us can only visit by playing truant from the real world. As some men wear boutonnieres, so a reader carries a book, and sometimes, when he is feeling the need of beauty, or the solace of a friend, he opens it, and finds both. Probably he will count among the most fruitful moments of his reading the snatched ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... mathematics, was just now stimulated by the effect of a liberal supper and the roguish consciousness of having been to the play. He saw and recognized Cashel as he approached the village pound. Understanding the situation at once, he hid behind the pump, waited until the unsuspecting truant was passing within arm's-length, and then stepped out and seized him by the collar of ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... "He is probably playing truant in the empty upper rooms, as usual. I can't wait for him any longer, so I'm doing his work myself," answered Miss Dickenson, who was tenderly winding a wet bandage round her Juno's face, one side of which was so much plumper than the other that it looked as if the Queen of ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... mind. The world grows big enough to include within its scheme both the instructive political economist and the truant mechanic. But that trick of truly logical behavior seems harder to the man than to the child. For example, I climbed up to my den under the eaves last night—a sour, black sea-fog lying all about, and the December ...
— Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry
... day wet and rainy, though not uniformly so. No temptation, however, to play truant; so this will make some amends for a blank day yesterday. I am far in advance of the press, but it is necessary if I go to Drumlanrig on Wednesday as I intend, and to Lochore next week, which I also meditate. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... have disturbed him for anything. But his watchfulness became so eager and intense that he almost, but not quite, exposed himself to the suspicion of a passing gendarme. He now expected Cheditafa, for the reason that the manner of the younger negro indicated that he was playing truant. It was likely that the elder man would go after him, and this was exactly ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... play truant at their tales, And younger hearings are quite ravished, So sweet and voluble ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... a pause and dead silence, as if it were a calm, although every passion was roused and on the alert; every bosom heaved tumultuously, and every pulse was trebled in its action. The same feeling which so powerfully affects the truant schoolboy—who, aware of his offence, and dreading the punishment in perspective, can scarce enjoy the rapture of momentary emancipation—acted upon the mutineers, in an increased ratio, proportioned to the ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and their Children busy, nine tenths of our Evils wou'd be remov'd, yet I am convinc'd, neither of these important Points will be minded, till we are forc'd to get better Notions of Things, by seeing the Nation ruin'd by the want of them, as often as a Boy at School is whipt for playing the Truant, before he ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... in this way:—Imagine that I am about to play truant (you may call the proceeding by any name which you like), and the laws and the government come and interrogate me: 'Tell us, Socrates,' they say; 'what are you about? are you not going by an act of yours to overturn us—the laws, and the ...
— Crito • Plato
... smiled and took his hand, And said, "Poor truant, passionate fool! Life's book is hard to understand: Why couldst thou not remain ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... reports were the impersonal records of personal labors. They had started libraries, made little parks, inaugurated playgrounds, instituted exchanges for the sale of women's wares, secured women internes in hospitals, paid for truant officers, founded children's protective associations, installed branches of the Associated Charities, encouraged night schools, circulated art exhibits and traveling libraries; they had placed pictures in the public schools, founded kindergartens—the ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... on new-fledged birds in every place, That duly they may get their tunes by rote; And oft, like echoes, answering remote, We hide in thickets from the feather'd throng, And strain in rivalship each throbbing throat, Singing in shrill responses all day long, Whilst the glad truant listens to our song." ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... plenty, vice without disguise, incessant gambling, brawls and quarrels every hour in the day, murders every now and then, ribaldry and obscenity, singing, dancing, laughing, swearing, cheating, and thieving without end. There many a man of quality seeks for his truant son, nor seeks in vain; and the youth feels as acutely the pain of being torn from that life of licence as though he were going to meet his death. But this joyous life has its bitters as well as its sweets. No one can lie ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... ALL, AND FRIENDS, WHOM 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 of the association ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Sultan in the New Entertainment." On the other hand, the Ghost of Queen Common-Sense appears before she is killed, and is with some difficulty persuaded that her action is premature. Part of "the Mob" play truant to see a show in the park; Law, straying without the playhouse passage is snapped up by a Lord Chief- Justice's Warrant; and a Jew carries off one of the Maids of Honour. These little incidents, together with the unblushing realism ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... lad soon made his appearance, and was immediately pressed in the old people's arms. This son was a truant, long absent from his home. At length, grown weary at delay, quitting their abode near Edinburgh, they had travelled south, inquiring at every port for their lost son, and only that morning had they arrived by waggon at Poole, believing that it was a port where men-of-war were to be found. ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... very small school, for many boys were away helping to collect the sheep for the schooner, which was coming in, and some were playing truant. The sheep were carted down to the shore and the men were ready for embarking, when the ship moved out, and so all their labour was again in vain. The sea was "making up," and to-night is stormy. It is rather late in the year for a ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... treacherous shoals, Where many a hope lay dead, And splendid wrecks were piled, like the ghouls Of joys forever fled. Once safely over these, We sped by a fairy realm, Across the bluest and calmest seas That were ever kissed by a truant breeze, With ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... care, he and Mrs. Dolman invited her to their house, where she was found by Mr. Linley, on his arrival in pursuit of her. After a few words of private explanation from Sheridan, which had the effect of reconciling him to his truant daughter, Mr. Linley insisted upon her returning with him immediately to England, in order to fulfil some engagements which he had entered into on her account; and a promise being given that, as soon as these engagements ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... vanished. As soon as the decorous swish of Sunday silks had ceased in the corridor outside, she caught up a book and a cushion, and, creeping down by the side stairs, set gaily out across the sunlit lawn, with the deliciously guilty thrill of a truant little boy who has run away ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... bringing dainty color to her cheeks, tossing truant wisps of hair this way and that, as the car swept onward. But she sat strangely silent now beside Thornton at ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... education. By a sort of strange fatality, his brain had doggedly resisted the little instruction he might have received. For instance, he had been to the Carmelite's school at ——, and instead of showing any aptitude for work, he had played truant with a keener delight than any of his school-fellows. His was an eminently contemplative nature, kindly and indolent, but proud and almost savage in its love of independence; religious, yet opposed to all authority; somewhat captious, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... original is truande, which, as well as the masculine truand, meant, in old French, a vagabond, a rascal; it is still retained in the English phrase "to play the truant."] ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere
... lover's friend, performed the work, and did him a good turn beside. The old Frenchman was slowly approaching, when a frolicsome wind whisked off his hat and sent it skimming along the beach. In spite of her late lecture, away went Debby, and caught the truant chapeau just as a wave was hurrying up to claim it. This restored her cheerfulness, and when she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... betimes, and shall, I hope, come to myself and business again, after a small playing the truant, for I find that my interest and profit do grow daily, for which God be praised and keep me to my duty. To my office, and anon one tells me that Rundall, the house-carpenter of Deptford, hath sent me a fine blackbird, which I went to see. He tells me he was offered 20s. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of oriole and grasshopper, pickerel and turtle,—quick of hand and eye,—in short, born for practical leadership and victory,—such a boy finds no provision for him in most of our seminaries, and must, by his constitution, be either truant or torment. The theory of the institution ignores such aptitudes as his, and recognizes no merits save those of some small sedentary linguist or mathematician,—a blessing to his teacher, but an object of watchful anxiety to the family ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... a truant in the law, And never yet could frame my will to it; And therefore frame the law unto ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... street, keeping close to the wall. It seemed unnatural being there at that hour; everything had a quiet, unfamiliar look. The white walls of the houses reproached the truant with their silent faces. ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... All that you see, I have seen. Hopes that beamed around my way, Cast their light on yours to-day. All that you do, I have done; All your childish ways I've run, All your joys and pangs I've had— All that make you gay or sad; I have sported in the brook, Truant from my work or book; Chased the butterfly and bee, Robb'd the bird's nest on the tree; Damm'd the brook and built my mill; Flew my kite from hill to hill; Sported with my top and ball— Childish joys, I know them all. Childish sorrows, too I've ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... into the world and the profession of letters with the merest shadow of an education. But they say it is always a good thing to have taken pains, and that success is its own reward, whatever be its nature; so that, perhaps, even upon this I should plume myself, that no one ever played the truant with more deliberate care, and none ever had more certificates for less education. One consequence, however, of my system is that I have much less to say of Professor Blackie than I had of Professor Kelland; and as he is still alive, and will long, I hope, continue to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seat beside Mr. Burnet, sheltered by his umbrella, sat the truant girl, while young Leonard was giving Roberts instructions in ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... old friend, Our warm fellowship is one Far too old to comprehend Where its bond was first begun: Mirage-like before my gaze Gleams a land of other days, Where two truant boys, astray, ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... late then to commit it to memory, and I felt ashamed to go to school without it, for I knew that I should be punished, and be obliged to remain in at recess to make up the lesson. I did not want to play truant, for I was fearful of detection, so I went to my father and feigned headache, and plead that I might remain at home that day. The wish was granted, and for a moment I felt relieved, but at breakfast or dinner, I was not allowed to eat anything; I was obliged to remain ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... in a solitary place of the neighbourhood, perched on the branch of a tree, gazing at the tempestuous face of the sky, and watching the flashes as in succession they spread their lurid gleam over it. To the reprimands of his parent, the whimpering truant pleaded in extenuation, "that the lightning was very beautiful, and that he wished to see where it was coming from!"—Such anecdotes, we have long known, are in themselves of small value: the present one has the additional defect of being somewhat dubious in respect of authenticity. ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... you're not much hurt by this wretched business of the presentation. The little service I could do was a moral lesson to me on the subject of deuce-may-care antecedents. My brother Tom, too, was always playing truant, as a boy. It ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Antonia maid, Appear'd like two poor harmless women, who Of goblins, but still more of men afraid, Had thought one man might be deterr'd 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 ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... the boisterous wind lifted that trifling appendage right into the air, and deposited it over a wall or a fence, and Will Locke was not half so quick as Dulcie in tracing the region of its flight, neither was he so active, however willing, in recovering the truant. Why, Dulcie found his own hat for him, and put it on his head to boot one day. He had deposited it on a stone, that he might the better look in the face a dripping rock, shaded with plumes of fern and tufts of grass, and formed into mosaic by tiny sprays of geranium faded into crimson ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... morning, haven't we, Bob?" said the Governor. "I feel like a boy again, a boy playing truant, a boy who has ran away from his big school of politicians at Ottawa, just to get a few days' fishing and—and—oh, well, get ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... with her. He played truant whenever he could, for he was a kindhearted boy, and could not bear to think of a master's time and labor being thrown away on a boy like himself—who did not wish to learn, only to find out—when there were so many worthy lads thirsting for instruction in geography ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... until he had searched for and caught Connie's truant gaze. "Aren't we?" he asked of Miss Fowler, his eyes dancing. ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... top of his float. Fred gave a half shriek at what he saw, for to him it seemed a feat of unsurpassed daring, as Harry clasped the bough with his legs, and swinging himself head downwards, he plunged his hands into the water and grasped his truant line. ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... before, Sailing adown the hall on out-spread wings. Indeed, my lord, he should not do these things; They strain the weakness of mortality A jot too far. As for poor Ritta, she Fled like a doe, the truant. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... he saw, rising from the depth of the pond, the white top of his float. Fred gave a half shriek at what he saw, for to him it seemed a feat of unsurpassed daring, as Harry clasped the bough with his legs, and swinging himself head downwards, he plunged his hands into the water and grasped his truant line. ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... for her, without intruding on her, or giving her a voice in the matter. Sir George was a magistrate, and accustomed to organize inquiries; spite of the length of time that had elapsed, he traced Griffith for a considerable distance. Pending further inquiries, he sent Mrs. Gaunt word that the truant had not made for the sea, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... begun; the horse had but warmed to his work; the hunter had but tasted of sweet triumph. Another hopeful of a buffalo mother, negligent in danger, truant from his brothers, stumbled and fell in the enmeshing loop. The hunter's vest, slipped over the calf's neck, served as danger signal to the wolves. Before the lumbering buffalo missed their loss, another red and black baby kicked helplessly on the grass and sent up vain, weak calls, ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... vivid and as fresh as if they were laid on but yesterday. Would that my old friend and master, Otho Venius, was here! At least I will carry back to Antwerp that in my coloring which shall prove to him that I have not played truant to the art." ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... the home of school-boy life, With creaking stair and wind-swept hall, And, scarred by many a truant knife, Our old initials on the wall; Here rest—their keen vibrations mute - The shout of voices known so well, The ringing laugh, the wailing flute, The chiding of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... THIS 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
... a very effective teacher, whose influence and 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 ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... Attendance Officer and a terror to every boy in the neighbourhood. He looks at the truant and says fiercely, "Where was you?" Then he wags a savage finger at him. "Yes, you was," he says, "you was, you know you was. I caught you in the hact." No boy has ever ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... Jessie into action, and quick as a flash the truant lines recurred to her, and to the great chagrin of her rival in the wings, she went on with her part ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... the educational interests of his kingdom as he was with every other interest. He sought to teach first the priests and nobles, and after that the masses of his people. He introduced the practice of compulsory education for all children, and decreed that truant children be first deprived of food as punishment, and if that did not suffice, that they be brought ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... and boys love. It is bounded on two sides by the village and highway, crossed at various points by carriage-roads, and threaded in all directions by paths and byways, along which soldiers, laborers, and truant school-boys are passing at all hours of the day. It is so far escaping from the axe and the bush-hook as to have opened communication with the forest and mountain beyond by straggling lines of cedar, laurel, and ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... George Graceless and his companions, being on the other side of the church, saw nothing of their running into school, and their minds were so taken up with play, that they never heard the clock strike, and continued playing so long till they were afraid to go in; so at last they agreed to play truant, and they all went together a bird's nesting. The first nest they found was a poor little Robin Redbreast's, which one of them, whose name was Harry Harmless, and who was not so hard-heated as the rest, (indeed his chief ...
— The History of Little King Pippin • Thomas Bewick
... the ground, Sent me by stealth a ray divinely fair; But still her jealous hair Broke the bright beam, and veiled her from my gaze. She, born and nursed in heaven for angels' praise, No sooner saw this wrong, than back she drew, With hand of purest hue, Her truant curls with kind and gentle mien. Then from her eyes a soul so fiery keen, So sweet a soul of love she cast on mine, That scarce can I divine How then I 'scaped from burning utterly. These are the first fair signs of love to be, That bound my heart with adamant, and these The matchless ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... turned her comely face to him and he saw smiles round her lips and laughter in her eyes. Aristide, worker of miracles, strutted by her side choke-full of vanity. They wandered through the picturesque streets of the old town with the gaiety of truant children, peeping through iron gateways into old courtyards, venturing their heads into the murk of black stairways, talking (on the part of Aristide) with mothers who nursed chuckling babes on their doorsteps, crossing the thresholds, hitherto taboo, of ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... 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
... makes reference in his plays. Young and old knew the Maypole. Nine Men's Morris was another popular game, and Falstaff, referring to his treatment when he escaped from Ford's house disguised as the fat woman of Brentford, says, "Since I plucked geese, played truant, and whipp'd top, I knew not what it was to be beaten, since lately." Goose-plucking was a particularly barbarous pastime. We know that hockey and football were played in Elizabethan England, and that the corporation of Stratford kept a bowling-alley at the ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... published stories open a new field to fiction and have a human richness of feeling and imagination rare in our oversophisticated literature. I refer to the fables of Seumas O'Brien. At first one is struck with their utter absence of form, and then one realizes that this is a conscious art that wanders truant over life and imagination. In Seumas O'Brien I believe that America has found a new humorist of popular sympathies, a rare observer and philosopher whose very absurdities have a persuasive philosophy of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... little door at an angle in the ruins,—a woman's form. Is it my mother? It is too tall, and the step is more bounding. It winds round the building, it turns to look back, and a sweet voice—a voice strange, yet familiar—calls, tender but chiding, to a truant that lags behind. Poor Juba! he is trailing his long ears on the ground; he is evidently much disturbed in his mind: now he stands still, his nose in the air. Poor Juba! I left thee ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the little gate that opened into our own green yard. I could see my mother looking from the window for her truant child. My heart began to palpitate, for no Catholic ever made more faithful confessions to his absolving priest, than I to my only parent. Were I capable of concealing any thing from her, I should have thought myself false and deceitful. With feelings of love and reverence ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... branches at my side, and at the foot of a rude stone-cross beheld a desolate infant, unnaturally left to perish in the wilderness! It was famishing—expiring. I raised it to my breast, and its little arms twined feebly round my neck Florian! thou wert heaven's gracious instrument to reclaim a truant to his duties! Welcome! I cried to thee, young brother in adversity!—"thou art deserted by thy mortal parents, and my heavenly father has forsaken me!" From that moment I felt I had a motive left to cherish ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... as if relieved by his absence, turned to Albany, and said: "And now, my lord, we should chide this truant Rothsay of ours; yet he hath served us so well at council, that we must receive his merits as some atonement ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... ceased to visit me. Day after day passed and he did not come; and yet I knew that he was in the village. At length I could no longer conceal my distress from my old friend; who, being very indignant at this treatment, called my truant lover ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... and genial was the weather that certain lads, imbued with that spirit of lawlessness and adventure which seems inherent in the nature of the young Briton, had conspired together to defy the authority of their schoolmaster by playing truant from afternoon school and going to bathe in Firestone Bay. And it was while these lads were dressing, after revelling in their stolen enjoyment, that their attention was attracted by the appearance of a tall ship gliding up the Sound before the soft ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... unflinching and ready for any responsibility, Fyne solemn and shrinking—the children in bed upstairs; and outside the dark fields, the shadowy contours of the land on the starry background of the universe, with the crude light of the open window like a beacon for the truant who would never come back now; a truant no longer but a downright fugitive. Yet a fugitive carrying off spoils. It was the flight of a raider—or a tractor? This affair of the purloined brother, as I had named ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... was surprised to discover that, after all, he had Mr. William Farbish for a traveling companion. That gentleman explained that he had found an opportunity to play truant from business for a day or two, and wished to see Samson comfortably ensconced ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... was 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 ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... timbre of the voice that, while a nightingale chorus at Fiesole may seem joyous, a nightingale chorus in the moist thickets along the banks of the Ouse may seem melancholy. Nay, more, as I once told Tennyson at Aldworth, I, when a truant boy wandering along the banks of the Ouse (where six nightingales’ nests have been found in the hedge of a single meadow), got so used to these matters that I had my own favourite individuals, and could easily distinguish one from another. That rich climacteric ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... great master of realistic painting. Nor are the accessories less effective. A wide-roofed kitchen chimney, a page-boy leaving the room by a flight of steps, which leads to the house door, and the table at which the truant monks are seated, complete a picture of homely Italian life. It may still be matched out of many an ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... I want to know what we are going to do. You asked me to meet you here at half past eight. You come at nine, and I don't see that anything is to be done. I shall catch it for playing truant from school, ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... 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 railroad tracks and "was onto them ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... June Humming with a merry tune, I too reckoned, like a boy, Less of Time and more of Joy: Till, as homeward I was wending, I perceived my back unbending, And before the mile was done Ran beside my truant son. ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... girls there, and I've played truant, and—yes, I think I shall go back presently, when I have taken my fill of freedom ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... tells how he once spent a night in his father's office and discovered there a murdered man. This was a true incident. The man had been stabbed that afternoon and carried into the house to die. Sam and John Briggs had been playing truant all day and knew nothing of the matter. Sam thought the office safer than his home, where his mother was probably sitting up for him. He climbed in by a window and lay down on the lounge, but did not sleep. Presently he noticed ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 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, long, carefully, ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... me and followed me home; I took him into the house and had him fed, intending to keep him until I could discover the owner. For this act of kindness the dog expressed thanks in the usual way. Rover, although used to play the truant, from the moment the little stranger entered the premises, never quitted us till he saw him fairly off. His manner towards us became more ingratiating than usual, and he seemed desirous, by his assiduities ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... his departure, John Jr. put spurs to the fleet Firelock, who soon carried him to Lexington, where, as we have seen, he came unexpectedly upon his father, who, not daring to trust him on horseback, lest he should play the truant, took him into the stage with himself, leaving Firelock to the care ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... I am a Lad of about fourteen. I find a mighty Pleasure in Learning. I have been at the Latin School four Years. I don't know I ever play'd [truant, [1]] or neglected any Task my Master set me in my Life. I think on what I read in School as I go home at noon and night, and so intently, that I have often gone half a mile out of my way, not minding whither I went. Our Maid ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... friend, performed the work, and did him a good turn beside. The old Frenchman was slowly approaching, when a frolicsome wind whisked off his hat and sent it skimming along the beach. In spite of her late lecture, away went Debby, and caught the truant chapeau just as a wave was hurrying up to claim it. This restored her cheerfulness, and when she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... when (Ah, joy!) our singer For his truant string Feels with disconcerted finger, What does cricket else but fling Fiery heart forth, sound the note ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... description of this individual may furnish some idea of the personal appearance of a whole race, it may be well to detain the narrative, in order to present it to the reader, in our hasty and imperfect manner. Would the truant eyes of Alston or Greenough turn, but for a time, from their gaze at the models of antiquity, to contemplate this wronged and humbled people, little would be left for such inferior artists as ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... with your master study,—the natural history of fishes,—you may take more interest than most men. It embodies, from observation, what may be regarded as THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FISHERMAN, and describes some curious scenes and appearances which I witnessed many years ago when engaged, during a truant boyhood, in prosecuting the herring fishery as an amateur. Many of my observations of natural phenomena date from this idle, and yet not wholly wasted, period of ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... her; a loud barking of 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 a harsh response to your ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... 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 going mumming, ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... White cots on the meadows green. Open to the sky and breeze, Or peeping through the sheltering trees, On a light gate, loosely hung, Laughing children gaily swung; Oft their glad shouts, shrill and clear, Came upon the startled ear. Blended with the tremulous bleat, Of truant lambs, or voices sweet, Of birds, that take us by surprise, And ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... their own riparian architecture. The busy towns along the streams I have known have turned their faces from these streams toward the railroads. They have left the riverside to the thriftless men and the truant boys. Stables and outhouses look upon their waters, and the sewers pollute them. And if on some especially eligible bluff better buildings do stand, their owners or builders show no appreciation of what the bluff or river cares for, but reproduce the lines of some ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... matter was that Jose and Patch, who had gone a-hunting, had not returned when the party had left for Bell Hammer. It was possible that, during their absence, the dogs had come back, and Anthony did not like to think that truant Patch might be wandering around the house, seeking admission in vain. Consequently, after the car had been noiselessly bestowed—out of consideration for their employers' rest, the four had alighted before they left the road and had man-handled a silent Ford up ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... dark as a rook's wing, but far away down the street burned a little light, like a red star truant from heaven. The Prince riding by descried it for a lanthorn, with an ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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 had ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... during the war ever published, its preservation may one day be useful in the socialistic archives of the South, to whose posterity slavery will seem almost a mythical thing. With as little bias in the second tale, I have etched the young Northern truant abroad during the secession. The closing tale, more recently written, in the midst of constant toil and travel, is an attempt to recall an old suburb, now nearly erased and illegible by the extension of a great city, and may be considered ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... prevented him from writing home till he had secured himself a position in which he could maintain himself. When he did communicate with Thursley, it was through Mehetabel, because Simon had forbidden any allusion to the truant boy, and Mrs. Verstage was not herself much of a scholar, and did not desire unnecessarily to anger her husband by having letters in his handwriting come to ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... him, and procure for him a badge, that he may 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
... AND FRIENDS, WHOM 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 of the association existing de jure, and its government de facto. Your President ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... of color 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 confession ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... and Antonia maid, Appear'd like two poor harmless women, who Of goblins, but still more of men afraid, Had thought one man might be deterr'd 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 ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Some of these are on 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 referred ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... be said a thousand times to every truant, and it would have very little effect, because he thinks that he will be an exception. He never sees beyond his own boyish smartness. Few men and women realize how true it is that these smart rascally fellows, who persist in remaining in ignorance, are to be the vicious, pauper, criminal class ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... the Cherwell Drysdale was completely baked (he had played truant the day before and dined at the Weirs, were he had imbibed much dubious hock), but he from old habit managed to keep time. Tom and the other young oars got flurried, and quickened; the boat dragged, there was no life left in her, and, though they managed just to hold their first advantage, could ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... I must parry, Still a wayward truant prove: Where I love, I must not marry; Where I marry, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... celebrated in England under the name of "The Water Music." When King George was going from Whitehall to Westminster in his barge, Haendel followed with a company of musicians, playing a succession of pieces, which the king knew well enough for a production of his truant capellmeister. Accordingly he received him once more into favor, and Haendel went ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... shall, I hope, come to myself and business again, after a small playing the truant, for I find that my interest and profit do grow daily, for which God be praised and keep me to my duty. To my office, and anon one tells me that Rundall, the house-carpenter of Deptford, hath sent me a fine blackbird, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... 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 ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Lean," with fillibeg and tartan-skirted knee; There pale was "Cleveland," as he slept by Stromness' howling sea; With faltering step crept "Trapbois" by, with drooping palsied head, More like a charnel truant stray'd from regions of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... was partly cleared, with here and there a pine stub left standing, and was of about twenty acres extent. We went up across it to the top of the hill, but could not find the colts. Then we walked around by the farther fence, but discovered no breach in it and no traces where truant hoofs had jumped over it. It was growing dark, and we at length went ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... of barley forty feet high. I became the owner, in fancy, of a colony of Liliputians, that manned my eighteen-inch canoe, or tilled my apron-breadth of a garden; and, coupling with the men of Liliput the scene in Brobdignag, I had often set myself to imagine, when playing truant on the green slopes of the Hill, or among the swamps of the "Willows," how some of the vignette-like scenes by which I was surrounded would have appeared to creatures so minute. I have imagined them threading their way through dark forests of bracken forty feet high—or admiring on the hill-side ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... by that time safe at home, and had been well scolded by Signora Orsola for having given her such a fright by playing the truant for so long. ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... kept me 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 ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... first waywardness of a child is in truancy from school, which, if it cannot be handled by the teacher, is turned over to the local truant officer. In many cases the truant officer is appointed because of his availability for such work rather than his special competency, and the enforcement of the truancy law is handled in a most perfunctory manner, whereas an intelligent investigation of home conditions and an effort ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... we played truant and climbed down in the morning's first freshness from the high room overlooking Rome and the work that had to be done in it, and loafed all day in Roman galleries and at Roman ceremonies, or strayed to places further ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... in point of fact, I was alone in the world, dependent upon my own resources for whatever little truant ray of sunshine I might get from the golden flood that illuminated the world outside me, and forced by rigid, arbitrary circumstances to train my growing convictions into many a hazardous channel, left to ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... what you call it, but I'm going round among those fleets with my niece, and I shall start in a week. If I'm satisfied, you shall hear from me." "And I'm going to play truant and go with you, ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... spirits near me now, For this inheritance is worth a struggle. 260 And though I am not the man to yield without one, Neither are they who now rise up between me And my desire. The boy, they say, 's a bold one; But he hath played the truant in some hour Of freakish folly, leaving fortune to Champion his claims. That's well. The father, whom For years I've tracked, as does the blood-hound, never In sight, but constantly in scent, had put me To fault; but here I have him, and that's better. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... an hotoke; Iemon Dono and O'Hana are the husband and wife not present?" The question came from some one in the room. "O'Hana San is very ill. Her state is serious. Iemon does not leave her." Akiyama answered for the truant pair. ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... is much farther from literary excellence than the first. I fear this little boy plays truant from school as well as taking apples which do not belong to him. It is high time that he learnt to spell, and also to observe the difference between meum and tuum. From not being well grounded on these two points, many boys ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... his reports of the results had added to the invalid's interest in it, and sometimes the master had found the planning gave him something to think of, which made him almost forget his weariness and pain. And at last, when Sara brought home the truant monkey, he had felt a wish to see her, and then her likeness to her ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... questions were fired at them regarding "th' latest from th' Hills." Waffles made a rush for Hopalong, but fell over Big-foot's feet and all three were piled up in a heap. All were beaming with good nature, for they were as so many school boys playing truant. Prosaic cow-punching was relegated to the rear and they looked eagerly forward to their several missions. Frenchy told of the barb-wire fence war and of the new regulations of "Smith of Buffalo" regarding cow-punchers' guns, ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... full of sin and of sorrow. Jean Jacques was now forwarded to Turin, to become inmate of a sort of charity school for the instruction of catechumens. The very day after he started on foot, his father, with a friend of his, reached Annecy on horseback, in pursuit of the truant boy. They might easily have overtaken him, but they let him go his way. Rousseau explains the case on behalf of his father ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... before she was found. She was unearthed at last. The gardener had seen her shrink away into the shrubbery when the carriage-wheels were heard coming up the road, and he gave information to the cook, by whom the truant was tracked and brought to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... waters, the laughing, dancing, purling waters, green, and, where the sun reached them, shot with seams and cleavages of light, like fluorspar. In the sun-flecked, shadow-dappled grass near by, violets tried to hide themselves, but were betrayed by their truant sweetness. The waters purled, a light breeze rustled the olive-leaves, and birds were singing loud and wild, ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... yes! and that is the worst part of all,' returned Geraldine, with the zest that is always shown by the bearer of bad news, even by a superior person like young Mrs. Harcourt. 'I had no idea Michael would play truant for so long: actually she says her brother is coming home without him! and he is going to spend the summer and autumn in Greece and the Holy Land, and perhaps winter in Algiers. In fact, Dick Abercrombie says he does not know when he means to ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... statements, bold assertions, appeals to the weaknesses of human nature, to our fancies, our eccentricities, our fears, our frivolities, our false philosophies. We see its agents, smiling and nodding and ducking to attract attention, as gipsies make up to truant boys, holding out tales for the nursery, and pretty pictures, and gilt gingerbread, and physic concealed in jam, and sugar-plums for good children. Who can but feel shame when the religion of Ximenes, Borromeo, and Pascal, is so overlaid? Who can ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... descriptive letter-press to George Cruikshank's illustrations of Punch says he "saw the late Mr. Wyndham, then one of the Secretaries of State, on his way from Downing-street to the House of Commons, on the night of an important debate, pause like a truant boy until the whole performance was concluded, to enjoy a hearty laugh at the whimsicalities of the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... his head and feel deeply ashamed, and when his father, who was a merchant, came home from the store, his mother would tell him that Robinson had again been truant. ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... letters with the merest shadow of an education. But they say it is always a good thing to have taken pains, and that success is its own reward, whatever be its nature; so that, perhaps, even upon this I should plume myself, that no one ever played the truant with more deliberate care, and none ever had more certificates for less education. One consequence, however, of my system is that I have much less to say of Professor Blackie than I had of Professor Kelland; and as he is still alive, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... boys love. It is bounded on two sides by the village and highway, crossed at various points by carriage-roads, and threaded in all directions by paths and by-ways, along which soldiers, laborers, and truant schoolboys are passing at all hours of the day. It is so far escaping from the axe and the bushwhack as to have opened communication with the forest and mountain beyond by straggling lines of Cedar, Laurel, and Blackberry. The ground is mainly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... again—if he only took it long enough; and he had, besides, remedies which would cure chickens that had the pip, horses that kicked, old women with the rheumatism, dogs that howled at the moon, boys who played truant, and cats ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... 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. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... from the latter's lips as the truant returned to his post. A tender gracious smile was the only sign of displeasure ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... temper appeared immortal—his situation was more peculiar than pleasant. He was seated on a log, three hundred miles from any civilised habitation, smiling blandly at a broken axe (his only one), the half of which was tightly grasped in his right hand, pointing to the truant iron in the trunk of a huge tree, the first of a thriving forest of fifty acres he purposed felling; and, thus occupied, a solitary traveller passed our uncle Job Bucket, serene as the melting sunshine, and thoughtless ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... dearie," went on the housekeeper, "he's playing truant these two days, and I don't like to bother the doctor, and get him into trouble. I hide what I can, ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... but he carries away a home relic with him, and dies with it on his breast. His nature is truant; in repose it longs for change: as on the journey it looks back for friends and quiet. He passes to-day in building an air castle for to-morrow, or in writing yesterday's elegy; and he would flyaway this hour, but that a cage, necessity, keeps ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... society. The youthful adventurer affectionately offered a free admission to the dear Pocquelins. They rejected their entrees with horror, and sent their genealogical tree, drawn afresh, to shame the truant who had wantoned into the luxuriance of genius. To save the honour of the parental upholsterers Pocquelin concealed himself under the ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... handicraftsman, journeyman, mechanic, workman, laborer, operative, industrial. Antonyms: idler, drone, dabbler, sluggard, truant, dilettante, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... sure of a sympathetic listener in Malcolm, who listened with approval to the tales of the various scrapes into which he had got since his last visit; of how, instead of going to school, he had played truant and with another boy his own age had embarked in a fisherman's boat and gone down the river and had not been able to get back until next day; how he had played tricks upon his dominie, and had conquered in single combat ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... to obtain influence over all, more or less, according to their different characters; and as she insensibly gained their affection, her own interest in them was increasing. But one day, at the children's dinner, the small truant of the stable-yard, in a little demonstrative gush, said, putting his hand in hers, "I love 'ou, Miss Bronte." Whereupon, the mother exclaimed, before all the children, "Love ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... animal books are Mr. Kipling's two Jungle Books. Two other beast stories by Mr. Kipling are "Moti Guj, Mutineer," the tale of a truant elephant, which is in Life's Handicap and "The Maltese Cat," a splendid tale of a polo pony, which is in The Day's Work. Next to these comes Mr. E. Thompson-Seton's Wild Animals I Have Known. The lives of animals by themselves, ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... England clergy, and a sly joke is told at the expense of his even temper, that on one occasion, when loftily reading the hymn, he encountered a blot upon the page quite obliterating the word; but without losing the cadence, although in a very vindictive tone at the truant word, or the culprit who erased it, he ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... Luttrell, gayest bard that ever threw off a triplet amid the clattering of cabs and the chattering of clubs, art thou, too, mute? Where, where dost thou linger? Is our Druid among the oaks of Ampthill; or, like a truant Etonian, is he lurking among the beeches of Burnham? What! has the immortal letter, unlike all other good advice, absolutely not been thrown away? or is the jade incorrigible? Whichever be the case, you need not be silent. There is ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... clearly as the right to give instruction. A boy is compelled to attend family worship: he is forbidden to read irreligious books: if he will not learn his catechism, he is sent to bed without his supper: if he plays truant at church-time a task is set him. If he should display the precocity of his talents by expressing impious opinions before his brothers and sisters, we should not much blame his father for cutting short the controversy with a horse-whip. All the reasons which lead us to think that parents ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... demonstrations of regard and affection by Emilia and her mother; but his absence produced great disturbance at Winchester, and finally the Commodore, having been informed of his nephew's disappearance, dispatched Hatchway, who traced the truant to the village where he had taken up his abode, and persuaded him to return to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... these children that they were brought up under the Maples? Hundreds of eyes are steadily drinking in this color, and by these teachers even the truants are caught and educated the moment they step abroad. Indeed, neither the truant nor the studious is at present taught color in the schools. These are instead of the bright colors in apothecaries' shops and city windows. It is a pity that we have no more Red Maples, and some Hickories, in our ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... would, Mrs. Pig hadn't been able to stay awake. Her eyes would close, in spite of all she could do. Though she slept, she dreamed about the truant Grunty. Now and then she cried aloud in the darkness, when some terrible creature seemed to be chasing him. But Mrs. Pig never quite ...
— The Tale of Grunty Pig - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... suddenly assume an air of deep concern. The poor plutocrat's face changed instantly, and he would ask, "What is the matter?" The joker then made answer, "You are a little flushed. You should rest." This was enough. The truant imagination of the unhappy butt went far afield in search of terrors; neither food, nor wine, nor the pleasures of the theatre could tempt him, and he remained in a state of limpness until the natural buoyancy of his spirits asserted itself. What a life! How much better would it have been for this ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... a wild, uncontrolled boy, who spent most of his time in the street, played truant three days out of five, was a great boaster, and sneered at anything like goodness. He was vastly amusing, however, and generally was surrounded by a crowd of admiring lads who thought him quite a hero. He had completely fascinated Louis, who ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... how perfectly well able he was to do 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 ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... still walked past him as primly as a young ladies' school—the Browningites still inked their eyebrows and minds in looking for the lost syntax of Browning; while Browning himself was away looking for God, rather in the spirit of a truant boy from their school looking for birds' nests. The nineteenth-century sceptics did not really shake the respectable world and alter it, as the eighteenth-century sceptics had done; but that was because the eighteenth-century ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... the guns, the common people came out along the road with fowling-pieces and pitchforks, in hopes to catch the truant. The gendarmes seemed very anxious to be on the look-out for him too. The price of a deserter was fifty crowns to ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... means of progress, she declared, had been snatched 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 remaining one, and Mrs. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... her laugh so that she tumbled into a clover-bed, and lay there a minute to get her breath. Just then, as if the playful wind repented of its frolic, the long veil fastened to the hat caught in a blackberry-vine near by, and held the truant ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott
... drop books, lunch, slate and all, and spitting on his hands and rolling up his sleeves, would bound away after it, yelling like a wild Indian. And some days, so fascinating was the chase, Jim did not appear at the schoolhouse at all; and of course Madge and Stumps played truant too. Sometimes a week together would pass and the Keene children would not be seen at the schoolhouse. Visits from the schoolmaster produced no lasting effect. The children would come for a day or two, then be seen no more. ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... the tree ceased immediately, but at first the man could not locate the truant. Finally he discovered Black Bruin away up in the top of the tree, where he was well screened ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... responsibility vanished. As soon as the decorous swish of Sunday silks had ceased in the corridor outside, she caught up a book and a cushion, and, creeping down by the side stairs, set gaily out across the sunlit lawn, with the deliciously guilty thrill of a truant little boy who ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... says he, "the service you have done me." And with that, and before my lord had finally taken up his meaning, he had slipped about the table, touched Nance lightly but imperiously on the arm, and left the room. In face of the outbreak of his lordship's lamentations she made haste to follow the truant. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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
... that they must begin without him, and poor Mary's verse was read, in consequence, with a most dolorous tone. As soon as the books were shut, she ran off, and a few words passed among the elder ones about the truant—Flora opining that the Andersons had led him away; Ethel suggesting that his gloom must arise from his not being well; and Margaret looking wistfully at Norman, and saying she feared they had judged much amiss last spring. Norman heard in silence, and walked thoughtfully into the ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... coming now?" muttered the great man, thrusting his foot into the truant slipper with a peevish jerk, for he had taken supper at the City Hall that evening, and after a temperance movement of that kind, the luxurious depth of his easy-chair was ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... inextinguished fires; Plunging along each tense limb poured the blood Hot with its years of sleeping-smothered flame. And in a dream I charged, and in a dream I smote resistless; foemen in my path Fell unregarded, like the wayside flowers Clipped by the truant's staff in daisied lanes. For over me burned lustrous the dear eyes Of my beloved; I strove as at a joust To gain at end the guerdon of her smile. And ever, as in the dense melee I dashed, Her name burst from my ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... who could carry away the feather without injuring the head. The girl upon hearing this looked round and said, "If you have the courage to fire, I will stand." Upon which the bystander drew a pistol and shot away the truant feather.' ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... is the way; here is the gate, This little creaking wicket; Here robin calls his truant mate From out the lilac-thicket. The walks are bordered all with box,— Oh! come this way a minute; The snowball-bush, beyond the phlox, Has chippy's nest hid in it. Look at this mound of blooming pinks, This balm, these mountain daisies; And can you guess what grandma thinks The sweetest ...
— The Nursery, No. 107, November, 1875, Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... work, in these days; indeed he never had been given to playing truant. Matilda pondered the matter a little, and then wrote a letter to Miss Redwood; upon which letter, when it reached Shadywalk, the housekeeper and the minister held consultation. The end was, that after ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... that although they had never moved since they sat down, they were now quite close together; both presenting faces of a very heightened colour to the eyes of Mr Edward Hugh Bloomfield. That gentleman, coming up the river in his boat, had captured the truant canoe, and divining what had happened, had thought to steal a march upon Miss Hazeltine at her sketch. He had unexpectedly brought down two birds with one stone; and as he looked upon the pair of flushed and breathless culprits, the pleasant human ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... about with a belaying-pin. Just about this time his mother, up in the country, is getting ready his supper, and wondering what's become of him, and torturing herself with hopes that break one by one; and to-night when she goes up to his empty room, having tried to persuade herself that the truant's come back and climbed in ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... spent in this new home on land. We kept constant watch at the window until, of a sudden, we joyfully recognised Robber strolling unconcernedly towards the house from a side street. Afterwards we learned that our truant had wandered as far as Oxford Street in search of adventures, and I have always considered his amazing return to a house which he had not even entered as a strong proof of the absolute certainty of the animal's instincts ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... many sports in which, in that woman-despising country, only boys could hope to excel. One day, when she was about fourteen years old, the Princess Woo was missing from the Nestorian mission-house, by the Yellow River. Her troubled guardian, in much anxiety, set out to find the truant; and, finally, in the course of his search, climbed the high bluff from which he saw the massive walls, the many gateways, the gleaming roofs, and porcelain towers of the Imperial city of Chang-an-the City ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
