"Pickpocket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my pocket "cut" by a pickpocket. That is the way they go through you in England, neatly lift your pocket out. I thought this was an interesting thing, so I told it about that I had had my pocket cut, but I did not see any international ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... your instructions then, and we will agree upon my share of the spoils. It should be something handsome, for I have the vanity to believe that no one would come and disturb a fellow of my calibre for any insignificant piece of business. But after all I am weary of playing the thief and pickpocket—it is beneath me—and I mean to devote all my energies in future to the noble art of assassination; it is more worthy of my undisputed prowess. I would rather be a grand, man-slaying lion than any meaner beast of prey. If this is a question of killing I am your man—but one thing more, it must be ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... to Booth, and, taking hold of his arm, asked him to walk aside with her; saying, "What a pox, are you such a fresh cull that you do not know this fellow? why, he is a gambler, and committed for cheating at play. There is not such a pickpocket in the whole quad."[Footnote: A cant word ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... only too prone to prey upon his fellows, though hardly in the brutal manner of his ancestors. He preys upon inferior intelligence, upon weakness of character, upon the greed and upon the gambling instinct of mankind. In the grandest scale he is called a financier; in the meanest, a pickpocket. This predatory spirit is at once so ancient and so general, that the reader, who is, of course, wholly innocent of such reprehensible tendencies, must nevertheless make an effort to understand the delights of robbery considered as a fine ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... a pickpocket Craig reached into the man's coat, pulled out a packet of papers, and gazed eagerly at one after another. From among them he unfolded one written in French to Madame Marie de Nevers ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... lively brown eyes with just the hint of a twinkle in 'em. Always does. I know some like the wide-set, stary kind that go with an open-faced smile and a loud haw-haw; but for me the quiet chuckle and the twinklin' eye! Still, he hadn't proved yet that he wa'n't a pickpocket or a wife beater; so I just nods non-committal over my shoulder and ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... coming down the Haymarket, just as the masquerade was breaking up, the noise of a pickpocket was announced, upon which Buffoonery fell upon Wit, and mangled him most piteously. Invention stood Wit's friend, and help-ed him to make his escape to those Sciences. Now it happened that night, Lady Fashion had lost her lap-dog, which Wit found, ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... there was an extraordinary play of emotion in his features: he looked ferociously at the pickpocket, and, more than once, somewhat suspiciously at myself; at last his countenance cleared, and, with a good grace, he said, 'Well, you have done me a great service, and you have my consent to let him go; but the rascal shall not ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... direction of the meadow, in the midst of which they presently showed themselves, their horses clearing the deep ditches with wonderful alacrity. 'That's Gypsy Will and his gang,' lisped a Hebrew pickpocket; 'we shall have another fight.' The word Gypsy was always sufficient to excite my curiosity, and I looked attentively at ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... moment he came aboard—d'ye remember—that night in Bombay? Been bullying all that softy crowd—cheeked the old man—we had to go fooling all over a half-drowned ship to save him. Dam' nigh a mutiny all for him—and now the mate abused me like a pickpocket for forgetting to dab a lump of grease on them planks. So I did, but you ought to have known better, too, than to leave a nail ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... her that she went silently to the table and compared the printed page with what he had just written. "So nowadays you have turned pickpocket? My poet, you ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... rather officious in this crowd," said a burly policeman to a notorious pickpocket. "I am only trying to dis-purse them," ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... to drop a few into Fred's overcoat pockets. Without discovery I put what I washed into one, and was about slipping my porte-monnaie into the other, when my hand was caught with such a grip that I screamed right out. At the same time Fred exclaimed, 'Here is a pickpocket!' And of course there was a policeman there, as none was needed. I was too frightened to speak for an instant. At length I found voice enough to say to the officer, who was making his way toward me, 'The gentleman will find he is mistaken in ...
— Edna's Sacrifice and Other Stories - Edna's Sacrifice; Who Was the Thief?; The Ghost; The Two Brothers; and What He Left • Frances Henshaw Baden
... place in the world for so pretty a girl to be out. Connie, too, was known by several people, and although in her old clothes, and with her hair fastened round her head, she did not look nearly so striking as when Mammy Warren had used her as a decoy-duck in order to pursue her pickpocket propensities, yet still her little face was altogether on a different plane from ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... Caledonian convict is at least a Christian European. Felix received the strange announcement without the faintest shock of surprise or disgust. He would gladly have shaken hands then and there with M. Jules Peyron, indeed, had he introduced himself in even less equivocal language as a forger, a pickpocket, or an ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... very quick in her motions," suggested Jack, "and from what we know of the man she was with, she may have been just such a character herself, and have learned deftness of fingers from him. He was evidently a pickpocket, and perhaps she had practiced the trade herself. That is the only explanation ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... authors. Once, in censuring a popular writer for pleasing the public and thereby growing rich, the "eminent hand" ended with "He who surreptitiously accumulates bustle [money] is, in fact, nothing better than a buzz gloak!" [Pickpocket]. ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... most pompous, the silliest and most vapid, the greatest criminal, tyrant, booby, Bluebeard, Catherine Hayes, George Barnwell, among us, we need never despair. I have read of the passion of a transported pickpocket for a female convict (each of them being advanced in age, repulsive in person, ignorant, quarrelsome, and given to drink), that was as magnificent as the loves of Cleopatra and Antony, or Lancelot and Guinever. The passion which Count Borulawski, the Polish dwarf, inspired in the bosom of ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... made the refinements of the ancient schoolmen seem blunt in comparison. No respecters of persons, they harried the rich and taunted the powerful, and would have as soon jailed a bishop or a judge as a pickpocket if he deserved it. Between them they knew more kinds of law than most of their professional brethren, and as Mr. Tutt was a bookworm and a seeker after legal and other lore their dusty old library was full ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... safeguard," he had assured her. "It corresponds to the method of a notorious Paris assassin who was very generally regarded by the police as a cunning pickpocket. Kazmah's business of 'dreamreading' does not actually come within the Act. He is clever enough for that. Remember, he does not profess to tell fortunes. It also enables him to ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... then sat down beside the cot. Slowly and carefully, like some pickpocket, she inserted her fingers under the pillow. Amid a tenseness that affected even the actors working with her, Alice took out the papers, inch by inch, and began to move away ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... the hut is yours, that's another matter," I said. "But I don't intend like a pickpocket to take it with me ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... in his late teens was Curlie. Slender, dark, with coal-black eyes, with curls of the same hue clinging tightly to his well-shaped head, he had the strong profile and the smooth tapering fingers that might belong to an artist, a pickpocket or a detective. ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... the King beat but two men, and they both well deserved it. The first was a valet, who would not let him enter the garden during one of his own fetes. The other was a pickpocket, whom the King saw emptying the pocket of M. de Villars. Louis XIV., who was on horseback, rode towards the thief and struck him with his cane; the rascal cried out, "Murder! I shall be killed!" which made us all laugh, and the King laughed, also. He had the thief taken, and made him ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... fantastic lips of Autolycus. Here again the old critics were very wonderful. Dr. Burney puts "When daffodils begin to peer" and "Lawn as white as driven snow" into one bag, and flings it upon the dust-heap, as "two nonsensical songs" sung by "a pickpocket." Dr. Warburton blushed to think that such "nonsense" could be foisted on Shakespeare's text. Strange that those learned men were unable to see, not merely that the rogue-songs are intensely human and pointedly Shakespearean, but that they are an integral part ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... was past all powers of speech. Here was her brother, a respectable man, who had seen better days, and whose sister had been a dressmaker in good families, harbouring in his own house a common boy off the streets, who, no doubt, was a thief and pickpocket, with all sorts of low ways and bad language. At the same time there was poor Susan's little girl dwelling under the same roof; the child whose pretty manners she was to attend to, living in constant companionship with a vulgar and vicious ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... "I thought you got away. Never saw any more of you after you jumped through the French window. Never had time. The last thing I remember is her Ladyship screaming like a mad cockatoo, yes, and abusing me as though I were a pickpocket, with the drawing-room all on fire. Then something happened, and down I went among the broken china and hit my head against the leg of a table. Next came a kind of whirling blackness ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... newspapers or books, a place in which no one could read; a place in which every man, woman and child regarded the Government of the country, in which they had not the least share, as their natural enemy and oppressor. Among them lurked the housebreaker, the highway robber, and the pickpocket. Along the riverside, where many thousands of working men lived—at St. Katherine's, Wapping, Shadwell, and Ratcliff—all the people together, high and low, were in league with the men who loaded and unloaded the ships in the river and robbed them ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... parts of me were not sore, leading to an investigating touch. I put his hand aside shyly, but did not resent the action. Presently he was for exploring my trousers pockets and I began to think him a pickpocket; repulsed in that direction, he returned, to rubbing my back. The sensation was pleasant. I now took him for a pimp who wished to take me to a prostitute, and as at that time I had begun to realize that such pleasures were not to my taste I was glad to ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... a big, open-faced, silver watch which was connected to his vest in pickpocket-proof fashion with a braided leather thong. When it told him nine thirty had arrived, he got up, his telescope in his hand, and ambled heavily down the corridor. He poked his head in at an open door, ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... pickpocket, highwayman—anything he could turn his dishonest hand to," replied the old gentleman; "and he was run to earth in this house one Christmas week some eighty years ago. He took his last supper in this very room, and after he had gone up to bed a couple ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... would rise above the level of their King. The English, when asked why they do not assert their rights, granted not only to them, but to thirteen other governments, reply that if they did they would be accused of "ulterior motives." What ulterior motives? If you pursue a pickpocket and recover your watch from him, are your motives in doing ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... his companion, with the air of one who presents his credentials, "I want you to understand that I am a crook. Out West I am known as Rowdy the Dude. Pickpocket, supper man, second-story man, yeggman, boxman, all-round burglar, cardsharp and slickest con man west of the Twenty-third Street ferry landing—that's my history. That's to show I'm on the square—with you. My ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... questioned whether the greatest criminals are to be found within the walls of prisons. Dishonesty on a small scale nearly always finds its punishment. Dishonesty on a gigantic scale continually escapes. The pickpocket and the burglar seldom fail to meet with their merited punishment, but in the management of companies, in the great fields of industrial enterprise and speculation, gigantic fortunes are acquired by the ruin of multitudes and by methods which, though ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... opposite wall; they looked at the likeness with the hard and cruel brightness of the eyes of a bird of prey. "Red is your taste in your old age is it?" she said to the portrait. "Red hair, and a scrofulous complexion, and a padded figure, a ballet-girl's walk, and a pickpocket's light fingers. Miss Gwilt! Miss, with those eyes, and that walk!" She turned her head suddenly on the pillow, and burst into a harsh, jeering laugh. "Miss!" she repeated over and over again, with the venomously pointed emphasis of the most merciless of all human forms ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... hardened little sinner! I abused her like a pickpocket, and called her an ungrateful serpent! Bring some sackcloth and ashes, somebody, quickly! I shall go in mourning for ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... indifferent person for an umpire. For instance, the stealing of pocket-handkerchiefs or snuff-boxes may or may not be vicious; but if we, who have not the wit, or will not take the trouble to decide the question ourselves, want to hear the real rights of the matter, we should not, surely, apply to a pickpocket to know what he thought on the point. It might naturally be presumed that he would be rather a prejudiced person—particularly as his reasoning, if successful, might get him OUT OF GAOL. This is a homely illustration, no doubt; all we would urge by it is, that Madame Sand having, according to the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... from the mountain sides came falling around them. Francesco, the driver, on foot, urged the tired horses onward with blows and the most powerful language he could bring to bear; he accused the off-horse of being a pickpocket and an arciprete, and a robber of a small family, of which Francesco assured him he knew he was the father. Then the mare Filomena came in for her share of vilifications, being called a 'giovinastra (naughty girl), a vecchierellaccia (vile old hag), a—' Here the rain, pebbles, lightning, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... his incarceration, terrified by his murderous experience of the last night at the cafe, red-eyed and restless, the dive-keeper was pacing up and down his cell. A pickpocket whom he knew and who, through his own political pull was serving a term as a trusty, brought the information to him scrawled on a bit of cigarette paper which, with a little warning whistle, he dropped through the ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... price of four? What is a threadbare soldier who robs thee of thy clothes at the swords' point when compared with the lawyer who despoils thee of thy whole estate with the stroke of a quill, and against whom thou canst claim no recompense or remedy? What is a pickpocket who steals a five- pound in comparison to a dice-sharper who robs thee of a hundred pounds in the third part of a night? And what the swindler that deceives thee in a worthless old hack compared with the apothecary who swindles thee of thy money and life too, for some effete, medicinal stuff? And ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... cent from that old man to use for my benefit! I would not touch his diamonds if they lay here at my feet! But if I can make him suffer anything like as my poor father suffered through him, then I am ready to turn robber—yes, pickpocket, if you will!" he ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... him? Poor devil! why, you never can remember after you're drunk what you've been doing the night before. Some time it'll be the death of you. You abused him like a pickpocket,—the sergeant of the guard ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... seriously asked to credit statements which, to put the case gently, are not exactly probable, and on the acceptance or rejection of which his whole view of life may depend, without asking for as much "legal" proof as would send an alleged pickpocket to goal, or as would suffice to prove the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... of division and a bass-drummer on the Champs-Elysees; one must not have been a constable in London; one must not have undergone, with lowered eyes, in the Court of Peers, the haughty scorn of M. Magnan; one must not have been called "pickpocket" by the English newspapers; one must not have been menaced with Clichy; in a word, there must have been nothing of the sneak ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... canvas walls, but thefts and robbery are seldom heard of. The rich returns of honest labor render harmless temptations which would prove an overmatch for the average virtue of New England. The cut-purse and pickpocket in California find their occupation useless, and become chevaliers of industry, in a better sense than the term has ever before admitted of. It will appear natural," says our author, "that California should be the most democratic country in the world. The practical ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... Are such people fit for political power? Ask the wretched rich man who indirectly buys the seat, and hear his record of dull misery if he is inclined to be confidential. He does not like to leave Parliament, and yet he knows he is merely a mark for the licensed pickpocket; he is not regarded as a politician—he is a donor of sundry subscriptions, and nothing more. The men in manufacturing centres will return a poor politician and pay his expenses; but the people in some quiet towns have about as much sentiment or loyalty as they have knowledge; ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... he had lost it. He remembered being hustled somewhat roughly on the bridge over one of the canals that cross that busy thoroughfare. Possibly some slant-eyed, light-fingered pickpocket was even then enjoying the fifty-odd yen his purse had contained. And then again, he thought, he might have lost it himself, just ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... of it made him weak. To Malevski and the ship's crew he was a criminal, a cheap chiseler and pickpocket, almost a murderer, escaping credit for that crime only by grace of his own good luck and his victim's thick skull. They had felt such contempt for him that they hadn't even bothered to guard him too carefully. They had thought him a complete coward, without ...
— Divinity • William Morrison
... the whole gang. Can't you see how they're counting on it? It's in their faces, in their ways! This Earl—don't you see he's counting on living on you? Do you think the son would get that settlement? Why, a Terre Hut pickpocket could get it away from him—let alone his old man! What do you think would become of ...
— The Man from Home • Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson
... woman went out to buy articles of any value, she required to carry with her an enormous weight of small silver cash. Purses were not therefore the toys we use, but large bags of heavy leather, attached to the girdle on the left side; and the aim of a pickpocket was to cut the leather bag away from its metal fastening— ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... to be swimming the Hellespont, he threw wide his arms as though breasting the waves. Unfortunately, his hand struck the pocket of a passer-by and knocked out a purse. The outer deed was that of a pickpocket and could have sent the youth to jail. The inner motive was that of an imaginative youth deeply impressed by the story he was translating from the Greek, and that inner motive made the owner of the purse his friend and sent ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... maternal wings a dozen newly hatched chickens, and with much pride and satisfaction feels them all safely tucked away in her feathers. In the morning she is walking about disconsolately, attended by only two or three of all that pretty brood. What has happened? Where are they gone? That pickpocket, Sir Mephitis, could solve the mystery. Quietly has he approached, under cover of darkness, and one by one relieved her of her precious charge. Look closely and you will see their little yellow legs ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... of merit? to be despised as an animal who must necessarily be living on his wits in some purlieu, answering to that antiquated reproach, a Grub-street attic; or suspected among gentler company in this most mercantile age for a pickpocket, a pauper, a chevalier d'industrie? And then those hounds upon the bleeding flanks of many a hunted author, those open-mouthed inexorable critics, (I allude to the Pariah class, not to the higher caste brethren,) how suddenly ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... news was bruited afar, wherever men read and write and invest money on the planet, and it appealed to every city editor and scandal-monger. Julian Hawthorne, son of the author of "The Scarlet Letter," a pickpocket. Well, ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... how it was. Talbot used to get tight; and although he was ordinarily a perfect gentleman in his behavior, when drunk he was the very devil! Then, he would abuse me like a pickpocket, and find all manner of fault with whatever I did. He would curse me for a d—d Yankee, and I would give him as good as he sent. I was no more a Yankee than he was, having been born, as ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... himself, but lay among the chips and fragments of decayed wood, like a part of themselves. Indeed, it took a sharp eye to distinguish him. Not till I had pulled him forth by one wing, rather rudely, did he abandon his trick of simulated sleep or death. Then, like a detected pickpocket, he was suddenly transformed into another creature. His eyes flew wide open, his talons clutched my finger, his ears were depressed, and every motion and look said, "Hands off, at your peril." Finding this game ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... of Assessors comes with poor grace from those whose endeavors for the common good are confined to academic essays on good government. It savors too much of the adroit pickpocket, who, finding himself hard pressed, joins in the chase, shouting as lustily as any of ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... believe me" (here the nose went still higher): "I suppose if you dared you would call me a liar. Our engagement is ended, sir—yes, on the spot; You're a brute, and a monster, and—I don't know what." I mildly suggested the words Hottentot, Pickpocket, and cannibal, Tartar, and thief, As gentle expletives which might give relief: But this only proved as a spark to the powder, And the storm I had raised came faster and louder; It blew, and it rained, thundered, lightened, and hailed Interjections, verbs, pronouns, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Physiognomy fizionomio. Physiology fiziologio. Piano fortepiano. Piaster piastro. Pick (choose) elekti. Pick (implement) pikfosilo. Pickaxe pikfosilo. Picket (military) pikedo. Pickle (to salt) pekli. Pickle (liquid) peklakvo. Pickpocket fripono. Picnic kampfesteno. Picquet (cards) pikedo. Pictorial ilustrita. Picture pentrajxo. Picturesque pentrinda. Pie pastecxo. Piebald multkolora. Piece (to patch) fliki. Piece peco. Piecemeal peco post peco. Pier ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Graham, I served an apprenticeship as a pickpocket, and flatter myself I still have ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... dollars," said Snorky, who from time to time had been feeling with his fingers to assure himself that no pickpocket ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... late in June, and, pushing day and night, reached that city on the 9th of July. The day of my arrival was a hot one, and, during our temporary stop in the cars between the Relay House and Bladensburg, some pickpocket eased me of my pocket-book, containing a treasury-note for $50, about $60 in bills, and sundry papers. The man must have been a genteel and well-dressed fellow, for I conversed with none other, and very adroit at his business. I did not ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... caustically observed, after a long and dull legal argument: "I agree with my brother J——, for the reasons given by my brother M——." A prisoner once was given a practical specimen of his lordship's wit, and must have been rather distressed by it. He was passing sentence upon a pickpocket, and ordering a punishment common at that time. "You will be whipped from North Gate to South Gate," said the judge. "Bad luck to you, you old blackguard," said the prisoner. "—And back again," said the ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... of bad people. As Mr. Van Torp had said to Logotheti, 'different kinds of cats have different kinds of ways,' and the various classes of criminals are pursued by various classes of detectives. Many are ex-policemen, and make up the pack that hunts the well-dressed lady shop-lifter, the gentle pickpocket, the agile burglar, the Paris Apache, and the common murderer of the Bill Sykes type; they are good dogs in their way, if you do not press them, though they are rather apt to give tongue. But when they are not ex-policemen, ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... slipped the paper and the two letters into the vast pocket of his huge frock-coat with a dexterity and a rapidity which would have excited the envy of an accomplished pickpocket. It was high time; for the women who were bending over the bed of the young girl were exhibiting signs of intense excitement. One of them said she was sure the body had trembled under her hand, and the others insisted ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... evil aroused in him an appetite for worse. It was the street boy turned pickpocket, and a pickpocket turned garroter. He was genteel, effeminate, graceful, robust, sluggish, ferocious. The rim of his hat was curled up on the left side, in order to make room for a tuft of hair, after the style of 1829. He lived ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... understand very well what this unknown visitor was saying to her, and merely opened her eyes rather wide and rolled them upon him, thinking, however, that he had a quiet respectable air, was well dressed ... and not a pickpocket ... ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... Great (as in a famous anecdote he was charged) with the crime of highway-robbery, as the "snapper-up of unconsidered trifles" in the way of crowns and a few dozen sceptres, what a heinous charge must be brought against this Corsican as universal pickpocket! This pecuniary depreciation De Quincey himself realized some years later, when, determining to quit school, he thought himself compelled[A] to cut off all communication with his guardians, and gave ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to my father: "It is in our very blood. It may be only a pin, but I cannot help taking it, although I am quite ready to give it back to its owner." The pickpocket Bor... confessed that at the age of twelve he had begun to steal in the streets and at school, to the extent of taking things from under his schoolfellows' pillows, and that it was impossible for him to resist stealing, even when his pockets ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... human being. I may now, however, exclaim in the language of complaint employed by my first and greatest predecessor, that I have been abused "in such exaggerated and indecent terms as could scarcely be applied to a Nero, to a notorious defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket." ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... feeling, as she supposed, for her pocket-book, and she started to run, yelling, "pickpocket," and left the burning polonaise in Mr. Field's hands. He blushed, and was about to explain to his lady friends how the best of us are liable to have our motives misconstrued, when somebody threw a box of four dozen of those large firecrackers right at his feet, and they were all ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... the magistrate, and, accompanied by the young pickpocket, returned to his own residence. It was now about five o'clock, and growing quite dark; a drizzly rain was falling intermingled with snow. Frank conducted the boy to his library, and having carefully closed and locked the ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... the man who built that, would have built Stonehenge? Do you think an old Roman would have liked such a piece of filigree work? or that Michael Angelo would have spent his time in twisting these stems of roses in and out? Or, of modern handicraftsmen, do you think a burglar, or a brute, or a pickpocket could have carved it? Could Bill Sykes have done it? or the Dodger, dexterous with finger and tool? You will find in the end, that no man could have done it but exactly the man who did it; and by looking close at it, you may, if you ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... "A dip—pickpocket—and his girl, or gun-moll, as they call them," translated Kennedy. "One of their number has evidently been picked up by a detective and he looks to them for a good ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... of the sympathy that lightens in any habitual name, seems to have become aware, by one of those wonderful processes of chary instinct which serve the great, vulnerable, timid organism in lieu of a brain, that to accept of the pickpocket his names for the mysteries of his trade is to accept also a new moral stand-point and outlook on the question of property. For this reason, and by no special masonic precautions of his own, the pickpocket is allowed to keep the admirable devices of his nomenclature for the ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... were worn, in Bunyan's time, hanging to the girdle, or slung over the shoulder, as they now are in some parts of Germany. A pickpocket was then ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "A swell pickpocket, I'll lay my life," commented Collins, as he squared himself for an encounter and made ready to leap on the man when he came within gripping distance. "Here! get out of the way, madmazelly. Business before pleasure. And, besides, you're like to get bowled over in the rush. Here, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... from laughing at the pirate chief going on in this way about being taken in. As he whispered to Tom, when he had the chance, it reminded him of the pickpocket who had stolen a watch, complaining of being hardly used because the article turned ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... return to New Zealand, and nothing more was heard of him. On December 5th, 1828, "The Australian," which 'was published in Sydney, stated that a man named Rutherford, who had been tattooed by the Maoris, and naturalized by them, was then in London, practising the trade of a pickpocket, in the character of a New Zealand chief, but that was before he supplied his ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... the coffee and cigarettes, took the knife in his hand, he placed a veil over the point. He began, laughingly, with the picture of a pickpocket he had helped to catch in London. London was greatly inhabited by pickpockets, according to Antonio's declaration. Yet, he continued, it was nothing in comparison to Paris. Paris was the rendezvous, the world's home, for the criminals, adventurers, and rascals if the world, English, ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... hear of nothing less than two guineas a head, which wouldn't do, you know. Here comes another of your passengers—a great foreign nobleman, they say—Baron something—though he looks as much like a foreign pickpocket as anything else." ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... him much as if he were a pickpocket] I'll take my oath I've met you before somewhere. Where ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... reward of service. The General, profiting by the precepts of his erstwhile companions in arms, had never soiled his military escutcheon by labor, nor had he ever risen to the higher planes of criminality. Rather as a mediocre pickpocket and a timorous confidence man had he eked out a meager existence, amply punctuated by seasons of straight bumming and intervals spent as the guest of various inhospitably hospitable states. Now, for the first time in his life, The General faced the possibility of a serious charge; and his terror ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... had dropped on his knees, rose panting, left the lid of his strong box open, hurried up to the child, who had been standing at the window all the while, and bending over her from behind pressed a kiss on her curly head, saying with a laugh: "There, little pickpocket, that is my interest. But look out still, till I call you again." He nimbly trotted back on his short little legs, wiping his eyes; took from the strong box a little bag of gold, which contained rather more than the desired sum, locked the chest again, looking at ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... bones. Hind laigs at res'." The Wildcat subsided to the floor. "Fingehs, lemme see kin you play de pickpocket jazz. Shoots five dollahs. Wham! Ah reads a feeble five. Five stay alive. Five Ah craves. Lady Luck, boon me. P'odigal five, come home whah de fat calf waits. Bam! Th'ee an' a deuce. Ah lets it lay. Shoots ten ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... so general as to attract attention. If you do not take a hack at the impertinent solicitation of the driver, he will unquestionably curse you." "The telegraph operator grabs your message and eyes you as if you were a pickpocket." Now, Mr. PUNCHINELLO does not offer himself as an apologist for the abusive and obstreperous hackman, but he wishes to say that in the course of his active and eventful career he has had various conferences with those servants of the sidewalk, and he has never yet been unquestionably cursed ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... had just gone out. As to M. Saint Pavin, I found him at the office of his paper, 'The Financial Pilot.' He is a coarse and vulgar personage, and received me like a pickpocket. I ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... us, like enough! He's a pickpocket or a confidence man. I seen him follerin' us. I've kep' an eye on him.' And then came ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... understood the mystery of the handkerchiefs, the watches, the purses and the curious game he had learned at Fagin's. He knew then that the Artful Dodger was a pickpocket. He was so frightened that for a minute he lost his wits and ran off as ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... fraud given us in The Doctor's Dilemma is not too exaggerated for the purposes of a debating argument; but in his long essay on the subject he gives a far more reasonable statement of the case. He does not treat the doctor as a murderer, or a pickpocket, or a human vulture, or even a cold-blooded cynic; he explains what is likely to happen to the ordinary, moderately decent, normal man, without any special moral or intellectual equipment, who becomes a doctor. "As to the honour and conscience of doctors, they ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... borne in mind that New York has become, as it were, the Alsatia of the whole continent of Europe. Every scoundrel who has swindled, forged, or robbed in England, or elsewhere, makes his escape to New York. Every pickpocket, who is too well known to the English police, takes refuge here. In this city they all concentrate; and it is a hard thing for the New York merchants, that the stream of society, which otherwise might gradually become more pure, should be thus poisoned by the continual inpourings of the continental ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... of the birds is attracted by any unusual sound or commotion among them. In May and June, when other birds are most vocal, the jay is a silent bird; he goes sneaking about the orchards and the groves as silent as a pickpocket; he is robbing birds'-nests and he is very anxious that nothing should be said about it, but in the fall none so quick and loud to cry "Thief, thief" as he. One December morning a troop of them discovered a little screech-owl secreted ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... society has been brought into such a state, by reading in the annals of Botany Bay, the account of a whole nation exerting itself to floor the government-house. Yet time shall come, when some Botany Bay Tacitus shall record the crimes of an emperor lineally descended from a London pickpocket."[63] ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... into your miscellany. Dennis, the critic, has said, and I know not how many others after him, that a punster is no better than a pickpocket, and with truth, for how dare any quibbling varlet attempt to rob his neighbour of any portion of that delightful inflexibility, the very taciturnity of which bespeaks what wisdom may lie buried in a ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... this," said Bruce. "You are a liar, a forger, a thief, a dirty pickpocket, a coward, a seller of secrets to Foreign Powers," and, ere the astounded soldier could speak, John Bruce sprang at him and tried to knock him out. "Take that you greasy cad—and fight me if you dare," he shouted as the other ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... had my expectation confirmed for I found my fellow,—a faithful rogue I got in Rome on a Cardinal's recommendation,—hot in dispute with a lady's maid. The woman was old, harsh-featured—no Italian clearly, though she spoke fluently in the tongue. She rated my man like a pickpocket, and the dispute was ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... ye Havana cigarette smokers! and when next you indulge in a whiff from your favourite luxury, remember that a pickpocket has had his ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... who gave a good price for jewels without asking too many questions. But the diamond merchant had not lived up to his reputation. He had refused to look at the diamond. He had been horribly rude, treating him as though he was a pickpocket, and had practically ordered him out of his office. In fact, his whole attitude was so suspicious that Nepcote decided it would be better to leave his gambling debts owing than run the risk of trying to raise money on a married woman's ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... rebellion,"—her father having in truth been a tailor,—and three of the Council, assuming to themselves an equal splendour of origin, are shown to have been, one "a broken exciseman who came over a poor servant," another a tinker transported for theft, and the third "a common pickpocket often flogged at the cart's-tail." The ancestry of South Carolina will as little pass muster at the Herald's Visitation, though I hold them to have been more reputable, inasmuch as many of them were honest tradesmen and artisans, in some measure exiles for conscience' sake, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... the debts due to British subjects were paid. Many people were very angry with Jay and with Washington for making this treaty. Stuffed figures of Jay were hanged, and Washington was attacked in the papers as if he had been "a common pickpocket"—to ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... I know you as the most expert pickpocket in the country. I've been on your track a long time. Now you can just pony up and go on with your flirtin'; otherwise you and the ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... her to go; ordered her to go; he seized her by the shoulder, shook her, and abused her like a pickpocket. She would not stir. He abandoned the effort, sat down, and knitted his brow again in profound and painful thought, working out his plan. Now and again his eyes flashed, once or twice they twinkled. Victoire watched his face with just the ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... against such a depredation? The kangaroos—your aborigines—do they keep their primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted, with those little short forepuds, looking like a lesson framed by nature to the pickpocket! Marry, for diving into fobs they are rather lamely provided a priori; but if the hue and cry were once up, they would show as fair a pair of hind-shifters as the ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... "reporter," accompanied by the flourish of a pencil and a roll of paper, the three policemen smiled obsequiously, and unbarred the way. Seeing how well this plan worked, two gentlemen of inelegant leisure, and at least one pickpocket, provided themselves with rolls of paper and pencils, and, giving ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... illustration, no divergence from the beaten track is attempted; the heavy and portentous gravity of his manner and matter is unrelieved by a single touch of light—all is sombre, deep, profound. One can fancy that Dr. Buchanan is inclined to think, with Dr. Johnson, that a punster is as bad as a pickpocket. ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... He was likewise aware that he was not altogether deficient in courage and in propriety of behaviour. He knew that his appearance was not particularly against him; his face not being like that of a convicted pickpocket, nor his gait resembling that of a fox who has lost his tail; yet he never believed himself adapted for the appointment, being aware that he had no aptitude for the doing of dirty work, if called to do it, nor pliancy which would enable him to submit to scurvy ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... places on this side of the river," the sergeant added, "The landlord's a returned convict. Sly as he is we shall have him again yet, for receiving stolen goods. There's every sort of thief among his lodgers, from a pickpocket to a housebreaker. It's my duty to continue the inquiry, sir; but a gentleman like you will be better, I should say, out of ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... sir, not one at a time, but both at the same time—I will fight both, or none. If you are my superior officer, you must descend," replied Jack, with an ironical sneer, "to meet me, or I will not descend to meet that fellow, whom I believe to have been little better than a pickpocket." ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... always go there and have a cup of coffee in a glass when I am wondering what to do next and feeling it is about time something was happening. One of my acquaintances came and sat down at my table. To confess the truth he has once been a pickpocket, the sort of professional who followed the trade in the old dull days of peace for the excitement it furnished. He has since served in the Foreign Legion, and says that now he cannot bring himself to return to his normal work, since by contrast it is so very tame. For a time he was stranded, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... the one whose constitution and by-laws we now present to the reader. Composed of men of all classes and grades in society, from the priest at the altar, the judge on the bench, the lawyer at the bar, down to the most common felon and street thief or pickpocket, all bound together by a solemn oath, they laboured for the general cause of secret plunder, to the enriching of themselves at the expense of the mass. But having previously shown how I procured my information regarding these desperadoes, I shall leave farther comment on their acts, for the ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... much pickpocket, too much dirt. Bottom always drop out of bucket shop at last. I understand, end in police court and severe magistrate, or perhaps ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... he was still waiting when two men came out and paused near him to light their cigars. They were talking about Skeeter Newson, the notorious pickpocket, who two days before had broken jail and had not yet been found. Skeeter's exploits were a favorite topic of the Calvary Micks, and Dan, despite the low state of his mind, ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... that you accepted the Inscription. I meant to have inscribed 'The Foscarini' to you instead; but first, I heard that 'Cain' was thought the least bad of the two as a composition; and, 2dly, I have abused S * * like a pickpocket, in a note to the Foscarini, and I recollected that he is a friend of yours (though not of mine), and that it would not be the handsome thing to dedicate to one friend any thing containing such matters about another. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... to be melted down by its intensity. Henceforth, they said, universal benevolence, uncoined and exhaustless, was to be the golden currency of the world. At this intelligence the bankers and speculators in the stocks grew pale, and a pickpocket, who had reaped a rich harvest among the crowd, fell down in a deadly fainting fit. A few men of business burned their day-books and ledgers, the notes and obligations of their creditors, and all other evidences of debts due to themselves; while perhaps ...
— Earth's Holocaust (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... instant's hesitation he dived through the opening and met the fiend as he was rising to his feet. Together they rolled among the wreckage. While no match for his antagonist in size, the pickpocket was tough and wiry and apparently uninjured. He fought viciously, ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... powers into voluntary action from motives of mere worldly wisdom. Every one does so who places some object before himself, and cultivates his powers with a special view to attain perfection therein. The pickpocket, the gambler, the housebreaker, must do it before they can attain skill in their depravity. The worldling does it who follows an honorable profession with all his heart and soul and mind and strength, seeking only such rewards ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... yacht flying the Tunisian flag among a number of small flags with which she was decorated. De Gery was greatly excited, thinking for a moment that he was pursued and that on going ashore he might have a scuffle with the Italian police like a common pickpocket. But no, the yacht was lying quietly at anchor, her crew were scrubbing the deck and repainting the red mermaid that formed her figurehead as if some personage of importance were expected on board. Paul had no curiosity to ascertain who that personage ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... of his men, who is a very skilful pickpocket, to steal the major's memorandum-book just at the moment when he was entering the ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... she retorted. "I worked in a beauty parlor for a little as a hairdresser and manicure. I'm out for the money, Hiram. I'm not a pickpocket yet, but that's because I don't know how to be one. But if you've got any loose change in your pockets watch out. I'm out for the coin. But here comes Al. He brought me down. He's going to set ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... during these manoeuvres, a lady arriving at head-quarters alone is apt to be looked upon with no favourable eye. Especially do people wonder what on earth can bring a foreigner to an out of the way country place at such a time—she must surely be a spy, pickpocket or ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... with her back partly to him, and discoursed with eagerness to her companion. The sailor knew many tricks of sleight-of-hand—he was, in short, a kind of Jack-of-all-trades, and the laudable profession of the professional pickpocket was by no means beneath his notice. He managed to help himself to Sister Mary's purse without her being at all aware of the fact. Her hands were clasped in her muff, which, though unprofessional, the cold night necessitated her wearing. She paid her tram fare with some loose change which ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... a belligerent attitude, "every infernal thing that can happen to a man happened to me yesterday. It wasn't enough that you robbed me and tried to murder me—yes, you did, sir!—but when I was in the city I was robbed in the subway by a pickpocket. A thief took my bill-book containing invaluable data I had just received from my agent in China giving me a clue to porcelains, sir, such as you never dreamed of! Some more of your work—Don't you contradict me! You don't contradict me! Roger, ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... a careful contortion of the manacled hands, which seemed suddenly to have become endowed with the crafty deftness of the hands of a pickpocket, he found his working capital in a pocket of the short-sleeved coat. It had been diminished only by the hundred dollars put into John Gavitt's hands, and the twenty he had given the negro. He wished he might have had a glimpse of the little Irish cabman's face. Since he had not, he made two hundred ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... cried Jerry to the pickpocket, as the man mounted the steps of the house. But whether the man heard our hero or not, he paid no attention. When Jerry reached the spot he was standing on a ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... conceived, occupy the centre of the picture, while around them are clustered rustic shepherds and shepherdesses amid their pastimes and pursuits, the whole being enlivened by the tricks and humours of a merry pedler and pickpocket. For simple purity and sweetness, the scene which unfolds the loves and characters of the Prince and Princess is not surpassed by any thing in Shakespeare. Whatsoever is enchanting in romance, lovely ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... trader; success must clearly imply obedience to the rules of the game. Taking all that one can grab without punishment is a reversion to barbarism; the unscrupulous magnate is morally no better than a pickpocket. And these men are, in general, responsive to public opinion; it has effected rapid improvement in some points in the past few years. Just so soon as the community conscience is aroused to the point of a general condemnation of industrial robbery, it will cease ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... character of Court art. How different from true politics. For, comparing the talents of two professions that are very different, I cannot but think, that in the present sense of the word Politician, a common sharper or pickpocket, has every quality that can be required in the other, and accordingly I have personally known more than half a dozen in their hour esteemed equally to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... That is precisely what the profession is always observing. No sooner do they return from one circuit than they start off on another. Are you aware, Mr. Bumpkin, that we pay a judge five thousand a-year to try a pickpocket?" ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... out, whispered again, and as this time he put his mouth close to my ear, I understood! He said, 'If you will give anything for the whisper, it will be gratefully received.' There are notices all over the church forbidding fees, and I felt that the man was a beggar at best—more properly a pickpocket. ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... decent creature. I have done everything you could expect, and more. But I will not be mixed up with you and the gang you choose to make your friends; and I will not lift a finger to save your friend the pickpocket from ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... Mully Ully Gue. And the fifty would soon be five hundred if any notice were taken of them. They call mankind to witness that science will not defend itself, though publicly attacked in terms which might sting a pickpocket into standing up for his character: science, in return, allows mankind to witness or not, at pleasure, that it does not defend itself, and yet receives no injury from centuries of assault. Demonstrative reason never ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... from whatever sophistry of motive trailed down into the mire, are lower far than they who began deep in the mire and have been struggling bravely toward the surface. I know a man who was born in the slums, was a pickpocket at eight years of age, was a boss at forty-five, administering justice according to his lights. I know a man who was born what he calls a gentleman and who, at forty-five, sold himself for the "honors" of a high office. And once, after he had shaken hands with that boss, he looked at me, furtively ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... Pied Bull Inn, at Islington, was the first house in England where tobacco was smoked, while Moll Cut-Purse, a noted pickpocket who flourished in the time of Charles II., is said to have been the ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... except his purse? And, that too, she is now taking. In the indulgence of an agreeable self-conceit which supplies for him the want of imagination he sees Ireland to-day as a species of "sturdy beggar," half mendicant, half pickpocket—making off with the proceeds of his hard day's work. The past slips from him as a dream. Has he not for years now, well, for thirty years certainly, a generation, a life time, done all in his power to ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... wanted a witness, and he could not find any man just then who could sign his name. He was one of the Lord Mayor's men, but notwithstanding by this time had become a pretty smart hand. He had been a pickpocket or something of that sort it the streets of London, and always spoke of himself as being a gentleman, and was fond of ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... vocation compared with which the life of a beggar, of a pickpocket, of a pimp, is honorable—did Barere now descend. It was his constant practice, as often as he enrolled himself in a new party, to pay his footing with the heads of old friends. He was at first a Royalist; and he made atonement by watering the tree of liberty ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is something positively awful about the potentialities that are in human nature. The Archbishop of Canterbury might have grown up under influences which would have made him a bloodthirsty pirate or a sneaking pickpocket. The pirate or the pickpocket, taken at the right time, and trained in the right way, might have been made a pious, exemplary man. You remember that good divine, two hundred years since, who, standing in the market-place of a certain town, and seeing a poor wretch led ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... Tarleton. "Heavens! what a black bead-roll of offences; Mrs. Merton would have discarded me for one of them. However, thy account has removed my surprise; I heard her praise thee the other day; now, as long as she loved thee, she always abused thee like a pickpocket." ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is short; jerk them, and pull them even as the fancy policeman pulleth the pickpocket when he seeth him picking ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... sacrificing the strong for the weak, but when it came to his own honour not Val himself could have held a more conservative view. He, take advantage of a cripple? He commit a breach of hospitality? He sneak into Wanhope as his cousin's friend to corrupt his cousin's wife? What has been called the pickpocket form of adultery had never been to his taste. Had Bernard been on his feet, a strong man armed, Lawrence might, if he had fallen in love with Laura, have gloried in carrying her off openly; but of the baseness of which Val accused him he ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... effort to show off his mental powers at their best and evidently did somewhat better work than when later in the hospital.) He gave them a history of being somewhat of a cocainist and morphinist, of being a slick "pickpocket,'' and of associating with prominent criminals, particularly "auto'' bandits. He was boastful of his experiences, but sometimes admitted that he prevaricated. It is most interesting to note that he told a story of having concealed ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... to gratify his taste. One day while walking down the Strand, he put out his arms as if in the act of swimming, and in so doing touched a passer-by. The man, taking him for a thief, seized him, crying, "What, so young and so wicked!" "I am not a pickpocket," replied the boy; "I only thought I was Leander swimming the Hellespont!" After making some inquiries, his chance acquaintance subscribed to a library for him, and the story runs that in a short time the young bookworm had read "right through ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... at the door, listening to the cheers as they swelled again, then he stepped out and ran swiftly down the street. A fat policeman, taking him for a fleeing pickpocket, shouted to him to stop, but he ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... tableau would be complete in its guiltiness. For Heaven's sake, Mrs Bompas, let that glove alone: you look like a pickpocket. ...
— How He Lied to Her Husband • George Bernard Shaw
... festooning a boa constrictor about his neck and arms, and in his sanctum he keeps young crocodiles in sundry watering-pots, and other crawling things in unexpected places. You never quite know where the next surprise is coming from. I always feel doubtful about his pockets. I shouldn't recommend a pickpocket to try them, unless he really doesn't mind running against a casual rattlesnake. Tyrrell is the sort of man who is quite likely to produce something from his cap and say: "By-the-bye, this is a promising youngster—death adder, you know. And here," taking something else from ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... matter, he's a bad, spiteful bird. He is like a pickpocket in his ways. He doesn't like man to be happy. When Christ was crucified it was the sparrow brought nails to the ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... this one, but then I'll say I've changed my mind and have decided that I ain't going to marry. Takes me really for a man, she does. Must be a fool, she must. And she ain't asked for money, ain't that funny? If she writes back she'll abuse me like a pickpocket, anyway. Won't he be mad when he gets ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... in my favor, and it was at this moment that I noticed a manifest plain-clothes officer observing my exhibits with undue attention. But here fortune favored me; for at the same instant I saw a man attempt to pick a pocket under the officer's very nose. The pickpocket caught my eye and moved off quickly. I pulled up, and, pointing at the thief, bawled out, 'Stop that man! Stop him!' The pickpocket flung himself into the crowd and made off. The startled loafers drew hastily away from him. Men shouted, women screamed, and the plain-clothes ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... very emotional, yet his feeling, so easily aroused, had in it something absurd, so that you accepted his kindness, but felt no gratitude. To take money from him was like robbing a child, and you despised him because he was so foolish. I imagine that a pickpocket, proud of his light fingers, must feel a sort of indignation with the careless woman who leaves in a cab a vanity-bag with all her jewels in it. Nature had made him a butt, but had denied him insensibility. He writhed ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... generally called "Master Bates," one of Fagin's "pupils," training to be a pickpocket. He is always laughing uproariously, and is almost equal in artifice and adroitness to "The Artful Dodger" ...
— 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.
... hundred gold jacobuses from the Parliamentary General Fairfax on Hounslow Heath. She is the chief character in Middleton's play of the "Roaring Girl"; and after a varied life as a thief, cutpurse, pickpocket, highwayman, trainer of animals, and keeper of a thieves' fence, she died in peace at the age of seventy. To return to the inns, Fyner Morrison, a traveler in 1617, sustains all that Harrison says ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... older man. "A theoretical socialist always seemed to me about like a theoretical pickpocket—neither of them stands to do much harm. For example, here you are, one of the richest young fellows of my acquaintance, living along very contentedly where every tenet you profess to hold is daily outraged. You're not giving away your money. You take a healthy interest ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... he pronounced from the tribune a phrase which had never yet been uttered—"The United States of Europe." Contempt and calumny were poured upon him, but what of that? They called George Washington a pickpocket. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... Louis Burjois, and dis is de brudder of dat gal wot you see walkin' over dere. She is an innercent gal, which dat feller is a-tollin' of her off. He's a pickpocket, and I'm one wot kin swear to it. We want him arrested an' jugged. We'll ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... scum, and refuse of the players— Stale topics against Magistrates and Mayors— City and Country both thy worth attest. Bid him leave off his shallow Eton wit, More fit to sooth the superficial ear Of drunken PITT, and that pickpocket Peer, When at their sottish orgies they did sit, Hatching mad counsels from inflated vein, Till England, and the nations, reeled ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... They are instructed to direct persons not to lounge or loiter on the main thoroughfares, which are always too much crowded to permit such obstructions. Details are made for places of amusement and public resort. If the patrolman on duty at one of these places sees a known thief or pickpocket enter, he orders him to leave the premises. If the fellow refuses to obey, he is arrested and locked up in the station house for the night. By this means respectable persons, at public resorts, are saved heavy losses at the hands of ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... pickpocket, foretells some enemy will succeed in harassing and causing you loss. For a young woman to have her pocket picked, denotes she will be the object of some person's envy and spite, and may lose the regard of a friend ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... description of an author should also fit the public-speaker: "His eye is like a suction pump, absorbing everything; like a pickpocket's hand, always at work. Nothing escapes him. He is constantly collecting material, gathering-up glances, gestures, intentions, everything that goes on in his presence—the slightest look, the least act, the ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... Shakespeare. See also Schlegel's "Lectures on the Drama." ed. Bohn, p. 363: "Never perhaps was there so comprehensive a talent for characterization as Shakespeare. It not only grasps the diversity of rank, age, and sex, down to the lispings of infancy; not only do the king and the beggar, the hero and the pickpocket, the sage and the idiot, speak and act with equal truthfulness ... his human characters have not only such depth and individuality that they do not admit of being classed under common names, and are inexhaustible even in conception; no, this ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... philosopher; but in one thing thou hast blundered: the gods created thee a pickpocket, and thou hast become a demon. That is why thou ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz |
