"Pilfering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... creature whom he had made what she was. He was left disarmed, without possible defense; not wishing to act, and having no other resources than to watch with vigilance. On all sides the investment was closing around him. He fancied he felt the little pilfering hands stealing into his pockets. He had no longer any tranquillity, even with the doors closed, for he feared that he was being robbed through ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... companions were going to deceive the old gentleman, by not going to work at all. The Dodger had a vicious propensity, too, of pulling the caps from the heads of small boys and tossing them down areas; while Charley Bates exhibited some very loose notions concerning the rights of property, by pilfering divers apples and onions from the stalls at the kennel sides, and thrusting them into pockets which were so surprisingly capacious, that they seemed to undermine his whole suit of clothes in every direction. These things looked so bad, that Oliver was on the point of declaring ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... court of England for a remote nook in this inaccessible desert—quitting the tilt-yard, where I was ever ready among my compeers to splinter a lance, either for the love of honour, or for the honour of love, in order to couch my knightly spear against base and pilfering besognios and marauders—exchanging the lighted halls, wherein I used nimbly to pace the swift coranto, or to move with a loftier grace in the stately galliard, for this rugged and decayed dungeon of rusty-coloured stone—quitting the gay theatre, for ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... easily fancy that the appearance of these two must have been rather splendid and imposing. Quite the reverse, however, as regarded the third savage, who in a recent foray into the white settlements, having contrived to get his pilfering hands on a new broadcloth coat, with bright metal buttons, and a ruffled shirt, had added these two pieces of civilized finery to his Indian gear—thus imparting to his whole appearance, which had else been wild, at ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... at finding that these gentry, after denouncing him for years as a quack, were pilfering his system, yet still reviling him. He went in a towering passion, and hashed them by tongue and pen: told them they were his subtractors now as well as detractors, asked them how it happened that in countries where ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... of the family; she laughed when Grandet laughed, felt gloomy or chilly, warmed herself, and toiled as he did. What pleasant compensations there were in such equality! Never did the master have occasion to find fault with the servant for pilfering the grapes, nor for the plums and nectarines eaten under the trees. "Come, fall-to, Nanon!" he would say in years when the branches bent under the fruit and the farmers were obliged to give it to ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... contained the brass markers and after taking them off bent the wires back into their original form, with this difference, that they placed the end which is carried in the hand in the middle. This was the first instance I had experienced of their pilfering anything and I did not chuse to proceed to extremities. I gave the native a blanket and some biscuits and the mate ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... of the largest tax-payers in New York.' His influence is co-extensive with his cash. The docile Legislature sits at his feet, as Saul at the feet of Gamaliel, and waits, in reverent inactivity, for his signal before proceeding to action. He thrives on percentages of pilfering, grows rich on the distributed dividends of rascality. His extortions are as boundless in their sum as in their ingenuity. Streets unopened profit him—streets opened put money in his purse. Paving an avenue with poultice enriches him—taking off ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... had played his part so well that, in spite of his constant pilfering from the bag which held the slender resources of the little band, no one suspected him. His fellow-disciples might contend for the first places at the table, but all felt that Judas, at any rate, had a prescriptive right to sit near Jesus. All round, in sorrowful tones, the question passed, "Lord, ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... acquirement for those who are to regulate the expenses of a family. Economy is not the mean "penny wise and pound foolish" policy which some suppose it to be; it is the art of calculation joined to the habit of order, and the power of proportioning our wishes to the means of gratifying them. The little pilfering temper of a wife is despicable and odious to every man of sense; but there is a judicious, graceful species of economy, which has no connexion with an avaricious temper, and which, as it depends upon the ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... the earth's far corners-Palestine, Egypt, India, England, France, Italy. How laboriously had Mr. Wright counted the trunks at each foreign junction, that no pilfering hand receive the treasures intended for loved ones in America! Plaques of the sacred olive tree from the Holy Land, delicate laces and embroideries from Belgium and Holland, Persian carpets, finely woven Kashmiri shawls, ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... family, I am lodged in the old Dutch Stadthaus, formerly the residence of the Dutch Governor, and which has enough of solitude and faded stateliness to be fearsome, or at the least eerie, to a solitary guest like myself, to whose imagination, in the long, dark nights, creeping Malays or pilfering Chinamen are far more likely to present themselves than the stiff beauties and formal splendors of the heyday of Dutch ascendancy. The Stadthaus, which stands on the slope of the hill, and is the most prominent building in Malacca, is now ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... said she. But she no sooner comprehended the check system fully than she gave warning. It put a stop to her wholesale pilfering. Rosa's cooks had made fully a hundred pounds out of her amongst them since she ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... do and plenty to gain. Thinking this over, he remembered the indulgences of the blackbirds and the sparrows. Then the good Tryballot selected for his profession that of begging money at people's houses, and pilfering. From the first day, charitable people gave him something, and Tryballot was content, finding the business good, without advance money or bad debts; on the contrary, full of accommodation. He went about it so heartily, that he was liked everywhere, and received a thousand consolations refused ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... produce the tender, persuasive, manly, but fascinating voice which had aroused Jasper's ready compassion and had secured Freya's sympathy! Who could ever have supposed such an end in store for the impossible, gentle Schultz, with his idiosyncrasy of naive pilfering, so absurdly straightforward that, even in the people who had suffered from it, it aroused nothing more than a sort of amused exasperation? He was really impossible. His lot evidently should have been a half-starved, mysterious, but by no means tragic existence ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... to sustain life; and, to speak what experience has taught me, crime is more increased than reduced by this wretched system. There seems to be little distinction among the prisoners, and no means to observe it, except in what is called Mount Rascal on the third story. Pilfering is so common, that you cannot leave your room without locking your door. The jailer is a good, kind-hearted old man, very often giving from his own table to relieve the wants of debtors, many of whom repay him with ingratitude. I have ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... to get taught, and those who can write are very fond of corresponding with one another. Taken as a whole, they are a quiet and orderly people, not given to crimes of violence, and less given (so far as I could gather) to pilfering than are the negroes of the Southern States of America. The stealing of stock from farms has greatly diminished. Assaults upon women, such as are frequent in those States, and have recently caused a hideous epidemic of lynching, ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... Popery was mixed up with Jacobitism? The present writer remembers perfectly well, on reading some extracts from it at the time in a newspaper, on the top of a coach, exclaiming—"Why, the simpleton has been pilfering from Walter Scott's novels!" ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... fund of humor, his anecdotes were extremely amusing, especially since he never hesitated to place himself in a ludicrous point of view, provided he could raise a laugh by doing so. Tete Rouge, however, was sometimes rather troublesome; he had an inveterate habit of pilfering provisions at all times of the day. He set ridicule at utter defiance; and being without a particle of self-respect, he would never have given over his tricks, even if they had drawn upon him the scorn of the whole party. Now and then, indeed, something worse than laughter fell to his share; on ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... with the whites. They have a well-arranged police system, with a chief, lieutenants and sergeants, embracing sixteen men in all, and directly responsible to the agent. No liquor is allowed on the reservation. They have no pilfering, and the few locks and bolts are rarely needed. In case of trespass or disagreement the parties come or are summoned before the agent, who examines the case on its merits, weighs the facts and the equities, decides; and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... say so? Another case of pilfering! this is getting serious: I will call Lawless—I say, Lawless!" "Well, what's the row?" was the reply. "Have the French landed? or is the kitchen chimney on fire? eh! What do I behold! Fairlegh, lightly and elegantly attired in nothing but his shirt, and Thomas standing like Niobe, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... suppose from this that I became a good girl the very next day. No, nor the day after. I ceased from the wickedness of telling lies, just as I had stopped pilfering sweetmeats. This was all; but it ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... morning's care, Why with new arts correct the year, Why glows the peach with crimson hue, And why the plum's inviting blue; 20 Were they to feast his taste design'd, That vermin of voracious kind? Crush then the slow, the pilfering race; So purge thy garden from disgrace.' 'What arrogance!' the snail replied; 'How insolent is upstart pride! Hadst thou not thus with insult vain, Provoked my patience to complain, I had concealed thy meaner birth, Nor traced thee to the scum of earth. 30 For scarce nine suns ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... old writers exhibited in this matter the perfection of literary modesty. Far from secretly pilfering, like the modern plagiarist, it was their great boast that they themselves had not suggested the great thought or struck out the brilliant metaphor, but that it had been done by some one of old, and was found in its ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... think that Venetian servants are, as a class, given to pilfering; but knowing ourselves subject by nature to pillage, we cannot repress a feeling of gratitude to G. that she does not prey upon us. She strictly accounts for all money given her at the close of each week, and to this ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... Sarah Drew. An identical description occurring in a letter written by Pope to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and subsequently published by Warton from the original, naturally caused the poet to be accused of pilfering another man's letter, and sending it off as his own. Mr. Thackeray so puts it in his world-famous Lectures, and few literary anecdotes are better known; but the better opinion undoubtedly is that the letter was Pope's from the beginning, and attributed by ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... this odd subject in the first edition of his "British Topography," "An Academic" in the Gentleman's Magazine for August 1772, insinuated that this charge of literary pilfering was only a jocular one; on which Gough, in his second edition, observed that this was not the case, and that "one might point out enough light-fingered antiquaries in the present age, to render ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... despite her slovenly ways, her sour disposition and her addiction to drink, was married to a good hardworking man, while Salome, endowed with excellent gifts of industriousness and sweet temper, had wound up by going to live with an outcast who made his way by swindling, pilfering and browbeating and who had given her two children. Her humble or servile spirit, confronted with this wild, independent nature, made Salome adore her man, and she deceived herself into considering him a tremendous, energetic fellow, though he was ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... it must also plead guilty to having been the residence of that not very reputable personage, Mr. John Eyre, who, although worth, as it was said, some L20,000, was transported on November 1, 1771 (George III.) for systematic pilfering of paper from the alderman's chamber, in the justice room, Guildhall. This man, led away by the thirst for money, had an uncle who made two wills, one leaving Eyre all his money, except a legacy of L500 to a clergyman; another leaving the bulk to the clergyman, and L500 ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... sad—a painful affair, Burr junior. I wanted to disbelieve in your guilt, I wanted to feel that there was no young gentleman in my establishment who could stoop to such a piece of base pilfering; but the truth is so circumstantially brought home through the despicable meanness of a boy of whose actions I feel the utmost abhorrence, that I am bound to say to you that there is nothing left but for you to ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... that feed upon it have so much to do with the multiplication of flowers, it is not surprising that the swamp, which has been called "nature's sanctuary," should have its altars so exquisitely decked. This blossom hangs its head, partly to protect its precious nectar from rain, and partly to make pilfering well nigh impossible to the unwelcome crawling insect that may have ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... do I feel at times my mind decline,[186] But with a sense of its decay: I see 190 Unwonted lights along my prison shine, And a strange Demon,[187] who is vexing me With pilfering pranks and petty pains, below The feeling of the healthful and the free; But much to One, who long hath suffered so, Sickness of heart, and narrowness of place, And all that may be borne, or can debase. I thought mine enemies had been but Man, But ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... travels or as a Steward of a Ship of Packet. HE SPEAKS FRENCH AND SPANISH, READS AND WRITES and never known to be guilty of any mean or bad tricks which blacks in common are addicted to, such as pilfering or drinking. His deportment is agreeable and polite. Seized by virtue of an execution for Drain Assessment and Arrearages of Taxes, and to be sold as the Property ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... choose irregular and temporary sexual relations with men they like rather than to sell themselves to strangers. To such sexual morals is added (in the nature of self-defense) that revolt against unjust labor conditions which expresses itself in "soldiering," sullenness, petty pilfering, unreliability, and fast and fruitless ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... assimilate with the thrifty Saxon, but prefer to be hangers-on at the castle of the Hungarian noble: they call themselves by his name, and profess to hold the same faith, be it Catholic or Protestant. Notwithstanding that, the gipsy has an incurable habit of pilfering here as elsewhere; yet they can be trusted as messengers and carriers—indeed I do not know what people would do without them, for they are as good as a general "parcels-delivery company" any day; and certainly they are ubiquitous, for never is a door left unlocked but a gipsy will ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... character was the residence of the jolly juncos, which dwelt all winter in northeastern Kansas, let the weather be never so lowering. Always active and alert, flitting from bush to weed, and from the snow-carpeted ground to the gnarled oak saplings, now pilfering a dinner of wild berries and now a luncheon of weed seeds, they seemed to generate enough warmth in their trig little bodies to defy old Boreas to do his best. Water flowing from melting snow must be ice-cold, yet the juncos plunged into the crystal pools and rinsed ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... dear for it. To these thou hast thy times to go, And trace the hare in the treacherous snow; Thy witty wiles to draw, and get The lark into the trammel net; Thou hast thy cockrood, and thy glade To take the precious pheasant made; Thy lime-twigs, snares, and pitfalls, then, To catch the pilfering ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the cackling of a hen, he started for the place; but found Kees had been before him, and nothing remained but the broken shell. Having caught him in his pilfering, his master gave him a severe beating; but he was soon at his old habit again, and the gentleman was obliged to train one of his dogs to run for the egg as soon as it was laid, before he could enjoy his ...
— Minnie's Pet Monkey • Madeline Leslie
... movement, that they delight in pilfering, in outwitting each other and their higher brethren—men; that they glory in tearing and destroying the works of art by which they are surrounded in a domestic state; that they lay the most artful plans to effect their purposes, is all perfectly ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... from us at the worst. I will lock up the gold in the chest with my documents. It is strong and could only be opened with a crow-bar. Besides the fellow will have left off stealing at any rate at first, for his late master was none of the mildest and had cured him of his pilfering I should think, once for all. It is lucky that in selling such rascals we should be compelled to state what their faults are; if the seller fails to do so compensation maybe claimed from him by the next owner for what he may lose. Lykophron certainly concealed nothing, and setting ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... pilfering. 'I must bear my testimony,' says Cook, 'that the people of this country, of all ranks, men and women, are the arrantest thieves upon the face of the earth; but,' he adds, 'we must not hastily conclude that theft is a testimony of the same depravity in them that it ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... loss without some small gain," said one man. "We are quit of Big Pete, that's certain, and it is a good riddance of bad rubbish. He was the worst man in this bailiwick, and I am thinking that more than one job of pilfering might safely be ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... intrusted thee with the least dram of his saving grace, nor will he, because thou art a hypocrite: and as for what thou hast, thou hast stolen it, even every man of you from his neighbour; still pilfering out of their profession, even as Judas did out of the bag. Thou comest like a thief into thy profession, and like a thief thou shalt go out of the same. Jesus Christ hath not counted thee faithful to commit to thee any of his jewels to keep, because thou fearest him not. He hath given his "banner ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... from contractors, and charged the crown with the cost of repairs which had never been made. The King was, in truth, almost the only person who could be trusted not to rob the King. There had therefore been, during the last three years, much less waste and pilfering in the dockyards than formerly. Ships had been built which were fit to go to sea. An excellent order had been issued increasing the allowances of Captains, and at the same time strictly forbidding them to carry merchandise from port to port without the royal permission. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... feelings of his family in his excuse, and tried every means to get the man off. I have read also in the confessions of a celebrated philosopher, that in his youth he committed some act of pilfering, and accused a young servant-girl of his own theft, who was condemned and dismissed for it, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... said Stuart, in a voice unlike his own; for a horrified amazement was creeping upon him and supplanting the contemptuous anger which the discovery of this beautiful girl engaged in pilfering his poor belongings had ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... the wife of poaching Giles. There seemed to be a conspiracy in Giles' whole family to maintain themselves by tricks and pilfering. Regular labor and honest industry did not suit their idle habits. They had a sort of genius at finding out every unlawful means to support a vagabond life. Rachel travelled the country with a basket on her arm. She pretended to get her bread by selling laces, cabbage-nets, ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... small, brown fingers Gleaning them one by one, With the partridge drumming near her In the forest bare and dun, And the jet-black squirrel, winking His saucy, jealous eye At those tiny, pilfering fingers, From his sly nook ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... pilot, who was now our friend, got us a lodging, and a warehouse for our goods, which, by the way, was much the same: it was a little house, or hut, with a large house joining to it, all built with canes, and palisadoed round with large canes, to keep out pilfering thieves, of which it seems there were not a few in the country. However, the magistrates allowed us all a little guard, and we had a soldier with a kind of halbert, or half-pike, who stood sentinel at our door, to whom we allowed a pint of rice, and a little piece of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... hair-dresser, another an ex-chair-bearer; all of them a vile lot, chosen by the government for its agents, and, under new titles, resuming their old positions. At the head of the armed force is Gen. Bonnard, who is accompanied by a prostitute and who passes his time in orgies, pilfering wherever he can, and so shameless in his thievery as to be condemned, six months later, to three months in irons.[5136] On arriving at Blois, he organizes "a paid guard, composed of all the most abject Jacobins."—Elsewhere, as here,[5137] it is the full staff of the reign of Terror, the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... some mean pamphlet, an unmeaning farrago of garbled extracts from his work, to which your name as author, with the honourable distinction annexed, of having perpetrated a hundred other outrages of the same description. Now, show me the distinction between such pilfering as this, and picking a man's pocket in the street: unless, indeed, it be, that the legislature has a regard for pocket-handkerchiefs, and leaves men's brains, except when they are knocked out by violence, to take care ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... under the spot where the judge's feet rested, while the other two men took their stand on either side of the judge, each laying hold of the hem of his robe. Then:—"Sir, sir, I pray you for God's sake," began Maso, "that, before the pilfering rascal that is there beside you can make off, you constrain him to give me back a pair of jack boots that he has stolen from me, which theft he still denies, though 'tis not a month since I saw him getting them resoled." Meanwhile Ribi, at the top of his voice, shouted:—"Believe ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... people in our little church for a long time, but after Mr. Bennett's death that hope seemed to die, and those to whom a church home was more than a church, left us; those of that mind that didn't leave voluntarily were lured away by ministers who had a building. The amount of ecclesiastical pilfering that goes on in a small city like New Haven is surprising. Conversion is a lost art or a lost experience, and the average minister whose reputation and salary depend upon the number of people he can corral, usually has two fields of action: one is the Sunday School and the other ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... whose face did not attract her. Just why she ran, she did not know. It was of no use to appeal to ole missus, who would not know whether she belonged to her or some one else. Miss Dory was her only hope. With promises of future good behavior and abstinence from pilfering and lying, and badness generally, she might enlist her sympathy and protection till Jake came home, when all would be right. So she sped on like a deer, glancing back occasionally to see the stranger ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... pay For honey that I bear away. This said, he laid his little scrip Of honey 'fore her ladyship: And told her, as some tears did fall, That that he took, and that was all. At which she smiled, and bade him go And take his bag; but thus much know: When next he came a-pilfering so, He should from her full lips derive Honey enough to fill ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... occasions, for you will meet everybody. This collar won't wear well; Clara hasn't a particle of judgment, though her taste is sweet. These hose, now, are a good, firm article; I chose them myself. Do be sure you get all your things from the wash. At those great hotels there's a deal of pilfering, ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... of the Jesuits, who purposed, as Bedloe said, by such attempts, to find an opportunity for the general massacre of the Protestants; and, in the mean time, were well pleased to enrich themselves by pilfering goods from ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... that the town is most thoroughly under martial law, the pilfering still goes on. The wreck is a gold mine for pilferers. A Hungarian woman fished out a trunk down in Cambria City yesterday, and on breaking it open found $7,500 in it. Another woman found a jewel box containing ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... Pilfering sparrows, you have taught me, By this loss, a lesson true; When a bunch of grapes I gather, Just to keep ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... the beginning of which is as when one letteth out water, and I will no tolerate it. Short weights are an abomination to the Lord. I would rather steal outright than be mean. A highway robber has some claims upon respect; but a petty, pilfering, tricky Christian is a damning spot on our civilization. Lord Chesterfield asserts that a man's reputation for generosity does not depend so much on what he spends, as on his giving handsomely when it is proper to give ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... farther, not merely because I have no liking for my theme, but because I am pilfering. All these arguments—the very words themselves—I have stolen from an American writer, who, in Horace Greeley fashion, is addressing his countrymen on the subject of negro equality. He not alone professes to show the humanity of the project, but its policy—its even necessity. ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... party. This incident is mentioned to show that the greater superstition which exists here does not lead to the practice of the virtues. We never met an instance like this of theft from a white man among the Makololo, though they complain of the Makalaka as addicted to pilfering. The honesty of the Bakwains has been already noticed. Probably the estimation in which I was held as a public benefactor, in which character I was not yet known to the Balonda, may account for the sacredness with which my property was always treated before. But other incidents which happened ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... gipsies could not take him out, of course, whilst there was danger of his breaking out in this way; and after he came to that hut in the valley, he did not remember ever going out with any of the people when they went their rounds of begging, and pilfering, and buying rags; telling fortunes meanwhile, ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... lock or a clamp in a fourth place, about the sugar-estates, regardless of the serious injury which he caused to working buildings; and when he had gathered a sufficient pile, hidden safely away behind his neighbour's house, the new hut rose as if by magic. This continual pilfering, I was assured, was a serious tax on the cultivation of the estates around. But I was told, too, frankly enough, by the very gentleman who complained, that this habit was simply an heirloom from the bad days of slavery, when the pilfering of the slaves from other estates was connived ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... before 'em; Both cover their faces with mobs and all that; 45 But the judge bids them, angrily, take off their hat. When uncover'd, a buzz of enquiry runs round, — 'Pray what are their crimes?' — 'They've been pilfering found.' 'But, pray, whom have they pilfer'd?' — 'A Doctor, I hear.' 'What, yon solemn-faced, odd-looking man that stands near!' 50 'The same.' — 'What a pity! how does it surprise one! Two handsomer culprits I never set eyes on!' Then their ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... went into camp up the road, but a short distance from the Ruthven home. The coming of the soldiers filled the whole neighborhood with alarm, but it was soon evident that Colonel Stanton was a strict disciplinarian and did not countenance any pilfering, and then the inhabitants became more quiet. In the meanwhile the Confederate troops had departed for parts unknown. But another ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... pilfering. Also he was insolent. I suppose he could not help remembering that I lived at the smithy once—the dear smithy," she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... deputies, Orlando and Luriottis, who had been sent to England to raise the money and to see that it was properly expended, but who, as was well known, had sought only their own advantage and enjoyment, and, pilfering themselves, had allowed others to pilfer without restraint. He urged that the innocent holders of the Greek stock ought not to suffer on this account, and showed also, that, if there had been great abuse of the loan, it had enabled the Greeks to tide over their worst time of trouble. "Your excellency ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... perpetuated; for I cannot think how the boys which are educated in charity schools can be more properly employed. A proportion may be easily selected for the service, who will benefit the publick much more than by serving sharpers and attorneys, and pilfering either at low gaming houses, or ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... his tendency to write love-poems, but apparently his efforts came to nothing. CELSUS ALBINOVANUS was, like Florus, a friend of Tiberius, to whom he acted as private secretary for some time; [82] he was given to pilfering ideas and Horace deals him ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... sir; and as for the rest of it, I publicly charge you with pilfering my note from Mr. Burgess and substituting a copy of it signed with your own name. There is no other way by which you could have gotten hold of the test-remark; I alone, of living men, possessed the secret ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that on the face of it is a dishonourable aspiration; if he robs some one, I do not in the faintest degree try to palliate his crime—he is a responsible being, or ought to be one, and he has no excuse for pilfering. I should never aid any man who suffered through betting, and I would not advise any one else to do so. My appeal to the selfish instincts of the gudgeons who are hooked by the bookmakers is made only for the sake of the helpless creatures who suffer for the follies and blundering cupidity of ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... live to future ages; Through many a labor'd tome, Rankly embalm'd in thy too natural pages. Faith, friend De Foe, thou art quite at home! Not one of thy great offspring thou dost lack, From pirate Singleton to pilfering Jack. Here Flandrian Moll her brazen incest brags; Vice-stript Roxana, penitent in rags, There points to Amy, treading equal chimes, The faithful handmaid to ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... the son of a corn-chandler near the corn-market of this capital, and was a shopman to his father in 1789. Having committed some pilfering, he was turned out of the parental dwelling, and therefore lodged himself as an inmate of the Jacobin Club. In 1792, he entered, as a soldier, in a regiment of the army marching against the county of Nice; and, in 1793, he served before Toulon, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and handsomely dressed, so that you take them to be persons of rank; as indeed may sometimes be the case: persons who by extravagance and excesses have reduced themselves to want, and find themselves obliged at last to have recourse to pilfering and thieving. ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... the effect that he did not mean by it to represent mankind as 'puppets of an overpowering destiny,' or 'to deny the doctrine of seducing spirits,' is a little superfluous. The fact that a parish-clerk has taken to petty pilfering can scarcely justify those heterodox conclusions. But when we have smiled at Crabbe's philosophy, we begin to wonder at the force of his sentiment. A blighted human soul is a pathetic object, however paltry the temptation to which it has succumbed. Jachin ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... gossip from the late Will S. Hays, that Foster did not compose his own music, but that he had obtained a collection of unpublished manuscripts by an unnamed old 'German musician and thus dishonestly, by pilfering and suppression' palmed off upon the public themes and compositions which he could not himself have originated. Something like this has been said about every composer and writer, big and little, whose personality and habits did not impress his immediate ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... incidents. For instance, some years ago, among the orders for the sentry posted at Government House, Sierra Leone, was one to the effect that no one was to be permitted to leave the premises after dark carrying a parcel. This order had been issued at the request of the Governor, to prevent pilfering on the part of his servants. One evening the Governor was coming out of his house with a small despatch-box, when, to his surprise, he was stopped by ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... new home elsewhere: older than others which had somehow gone to pieces when the rancher died or went to the penitentiary under the stigma of a long sentence as a cattle thief. There were many such, for the Sawtooth, powerful and stern against outlawry, tolerated no pilfering from their thousands. ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... though she were about to deny something to the death, 'what have you got to say? Something you have got into your heads about her, of course. Prove it, will you—that's all. Prove it. You have found her, you say. I can tell you (if you don't know it) that you have found the most artful, lying, pilfering, devilish little minx that was ever born.—Have you got her here?' she ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... when I thus dispute and grieve I do resume my sight; And, pilfering what I once did give, Disseize ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... court if there was anything to be got out of you; but it would only be throwing good money away after bad. Get you gone to the ditch where you'll die! You guzzling, muzzling fool, to leave my house without a shilling after all your pilfering!" ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... against the captains and dragoman, who were sleeping in tents higher up the hill, and had by contract undertaken all these charges. So long as they were there, the pilgrims suffered continual annoyance from the Turks, who ran in among them pilfering, breaking any wine bottles they found, and provoking them to blows, in order to secure the fines of which the pilgrims would then be mulcted. One young man was so disgusted at it all that he went back on board and gave up his pilgrimage; ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... and horses, and loaded them down with food and valuables, then sent them to the nearby mountains and caves to hide until the soldiers were gone. Mr. Angel himself told me later that lots of the folks who came around pilfering after the war, warn't northerners at all, but men from just anywhere, who had fought in the war and came back home to find all they had was gone, and they ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... after a long while, as we estimate happenings. . . . I suffered then. Yes, I went down to the doors of death, as people say, in my long illness. But that crude, corporal fever had a providential thievishness; and not content with stripping me of health and strength,—not satisfied with pilfering inventiveness and any strong hunger to create—why, that insatiable fever even robbed me of my insanity. I lived. I was only a broken instrument flung by because the god had wearied of playing. I would give forth ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... being together in so perfect a community that the survivor always succeeded his dead partner to any property he may have had. They behave to each other with the greatest justness and openness of heart. It is a crime to keep anything hidden. On the other hand, the least pilfering is unpardonable, and punished by death. And indeed there can be no great temptation to steal when it is reckoned a point of honour never to refuse a neighbour what he wants; and when there is so little property of value ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... replied: "That thief has been pilfering and plundering the whole city, and by his means the king's archers were defeated; why, then, at my request, should our most ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... pecuniary point of view; and he will moreover gain a stream of agreeable reflections throughout life, which will cost him nothing." He recommended fireproof brick houses, warm clothing, and abundant, varied food. Customary plenty in meat and vegetables, he said, would not only remove occasions for pilfering, but would give the master effective power to discourage it; for upon discovering the loss of any goods by theft he might put his whole force of slaves upon a limited diet for a time and thus suggest to the thief that on any future occasion his fellows would be under pressure to inform on him as ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... wished forgiveness for that crime before going to his task, "in order that he might confess, and receive the holy communion at the coming Easter, without scruples of conscience." He likewise begged the Prince of Parma to obtain for him absolution from his Holiness for this crime of pilfering—the more so "as he was about to keep company for some time with heretics and atheists, and in some sort to conform himself ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to be done. He was ignominiously dismissed like a lackey caught pilfering. But there was black wrath in his heart as he picked himself up, and turning to the others, ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... having given way to the temptation to commit acts of petty pilfering in the carpenter's shop where he is apprenticed, ultimately suffers the consequences of his wrong-doing, and not only learns that honesty is the best policy, but comes to see ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... assured. What kind of business is indifferent. Every kind that is possible. If the group only learns that it can obtain enough and much more even than before - much greater wealth and much more happiness and content - by no longer pilfering one another and squandering, but by intelligent mutual agreement and by restriction of personal boundless liberty for the sake of the whole ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... are, to some extent," Bethune carelessly agreed. "That kind of thing is hard to stop anywhere, and these folks are very smart at petty pilfering. Anyway, you might get yourself into trouble by interfering and any small theft you stopped probably wouldn't pay for the time you'd have to spend on the job. Leave it alone, and take matters as you find them, is ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... told was in precise accordance with the suspicions that his hearers had entertained. He had been tramping through the country, sometimes pilfering, sometimes taking money as a footpad. He had, one day, met John Dormay and demanded his money. He was armed only with a heavy cudgel, and thought Dormay ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... cruelty brought out the meanness inherent in the boy's weak nature. Rousseau had not been incapable of generosity; perhaps he never quite became so. But, with a cowardly temperament, he especially needed firm kindness and judicious reproof, and these he did not receive. He took to pilfering from his master, who, in return, used to beat him. Rousseau's thefts were, in fact, not very considerable,—apples from the larder, graving tools from the closet. His worst offenses at this time ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... think that the child's concepts of property rights and of fair dealing are without importance. Habits of pilfering are permitted to develop and success in cheating wins admiration. Low standards are accepted and religion is divorced from moral questions. The family attitude practically assumes that all persons ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... being stolen from time to time, the soldiers maintained their watch over the garden, well knowing that their vigilance would be rewarded by a full share of the good things, while they would be the losers if the pilfering were ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... or should have controlled its sale. For the matter of that, it still contained one of St. Lucy's knuckles, which in case of a regular transaction would have been transferred to a less precious reliquary. No, there must have been a pilfering sacristan, or worse, a faithless priest, to explain its translation from the Chianti hills to Novelli's shop ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... innumerable expenses in armed fleets, most of them useless because the news of the loss did not reach us until the pirates were returning unhurt to their own lands. At times it has given even the governors and captains-general of these islands plenty to do in defending them from these pilfering thieves, as we saw in the first part of this history, in the case of Don Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera and others. All the life of Cachil Corralat—which was a very long one, for it exceeded ninety years—and that of his father Bahisan kept our vigilance continually on the alert, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... tarantula's. The cold, relentless hate of that glance chilled him. He forced himself to bow to her again, and to beat a dignified retreat, when his inclination was to take to his heels like a school-boy caught pilfering apples. ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... Erikson had her coffee party. The talk turned on the day's market, on the price of wooden shoes, on pilfering maids. The women chatted and laughed. They poured their coffee into the saucer. They were mild and unconcerned. Anna Erikson could not understand why she had been afraid of them, why she had always believed that ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... She, Child; She is only wicked. She is a Gypsy, a sort of Vagabond, whose sole occupation is to run about the country telling lyes, and pilfering from those who come by their money honestly. Out upon such Vermin! If I were King of Spain, every one of them should be burnt alive who was found in my dominions after the next ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... who belonged to the second engineer, but he was caught pilfering the skipper's private supply of fresh butter, which he kept in a jar in his bunk and was very jealous of, so Bertie had to be made away with. He walked the plank at daybreak one grey stormy morning ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... would glare at his wife and children for a whole week, picking a quarrel for nothing, although he was, as yet, ashamed to confess the real cause of his irritations. On the next pay-day, however, he would station himself on the watch, and as soon as he had succeeded in pilfering the youngster's earnings, he ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... a Conjurer but I'll find this Pol-cat, This pilfering Whore: a plague of Vails, I cry, And covers for the impudence of Women, Their sanctity in show will deceive Devils, It is my evil ...
— Rule a Wife, and Have a Wife - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... far as I was informed by personal observation or report, that their conduct could, on the whole, be called lawless. There was some stealing of pigs and chickens and other petty pilfering, but rather less than might have been expected. More serious depredations rarely, if ever, occurred. The vagrants were throughout very good-natured. They had their carousals with singing and dancing, and their camp-meetings with ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... you ought to warn her," he replied, after some thought. "You ought to tell Betsy Butterfly that she must stop pilfering." ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... opened upon a flower-bordered lawn, terminating in shady acacia walks, and a grove which screened from sight the peasant cottages on the opposite bank of the river. A hedge concealed the vegetable garden, where the village urchins were in the habit of pilfering their beloved cucumbers with perfect impunity, since a wholesome spanking, even though administered by the Elder of the Commune, might result in the spanker's exile to Siberia. Another instance of the manner in which the peasants are protected by the law, in their wrongs ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... into thirty-two compartments, corresponding with the number of rooms. In these the students and tutors stored their liquors, sometimes in no inconsiderable quantities. Frequent entries are met with in the records of the Faculty, in which the students are charged with pilfering wine, brandy, or eatables from ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... suggestion of force or violence. The swindler is he who appropriates another's goods by methods of gross deception or false pretenses while the embezzler transfers to himself the funds entrusted to his care. Petty thieving is called pilfering or filching; stealing on a large scale usually has less dishonorable qualificatives. Boodling and lobbying are called politics; watering stock, squeezing out legitimate competition, is called financiering; wholesale confiscation ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... there are other old friends whom it is pleasant enough to recognise at so long a distance. 'Certain smooth-haired, sleek-faced fellows—insolent where their lords would permit them; inquisitive and pert, living but to eat and drink, and pilfering the good things, to convey them stealthily to their friends outside the castle wall.' The thing that hath been, that shall be again. When Homer wrote, the type had settled into its long enduring form. 'Such are they,' he adds, in his good-natured irony, 'as the valet ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... race between the people of Tanna and the Friendly Isles; or between those of Tanna and the New Zealanders; or all three. Their language is in some respects a mixture of them all. In their disposition they are courteous and obliging; and they are not in the least addicted to pilfering, which is more than can be asserted concerning any other nation in ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... compromises with the world. [Sidenote: Jesuitical compromises] One reads in their books how the bankrupt, without sinning mortally, may defraud his creditors of his mortaged goods; how the servant may be excused for pilfering from his master; how a rich man may pardonably deceive the tax-collector; how the adulteress may rightfully deny her sin to her husband, even on oath.[1] Doubtless these are extreme instances, but that they should ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... her head. "Oily Dave may be, for pilfering seems to be second nature with him. But Stee Jenkin is made of better stuff, and I believe he is really grateful because we saved him that night. Then remember how kind he and his wife were to us when Father was so ill. Oh, I've ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... pursuits? No, they turn out common pickpockets, petty larceny villains; and is this mercy, forsooth, to turn them into a way in which they must lose their lives,—for where they are thrown upon the world, void of property and connections, they cannot get their living but by pilfering. What is to be done for compensation? Will Virginia set all her negroes free? Will they give up the money they cost them, and to whom? When this practice comes to be tried there, the sound ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... wrote on the pane of his bedroom window the scandalous epigram on Inveraray so often quoted. The present Duke (who has perpetrated a fair amount of poetry himself) would give much of his odd cash to recover that pane, which was cut out some years ago by a pilfering visitor.[31] ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... freeze and maim for dividends. Drive parents to suicide, and sons and daughters to crime and prostitution—for dividends. Not fair competition, in which the stronger and better would survive, but cheating and swindling, lying and pilfering and bribing, so that the honest and the decent go down before the dishonest and the depraved. And the custom of doing these things so "respectable," the applause for "success" so undiscriminating, and men ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... suspicion of the good faith of the savages. They had uniformly behaved with the greatest decorum, aiding us with alacrity in our work, offering us their commodities, frequently without price, and never, in any instance, pilfering a single article, although the high value they set upon the goods we had with us was evident by the extravagant demonstrations of joy always manifested upon our making them a present. The women especially were most obliging in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... if you have heard that I have committed one sanguinary action or one ruinous and deliberate fraud. You have heard that I have lived by the plunder of the rich,—I do not deny the charge. From the grinding of the poor, the habitual overreaching, or the systematic pilfering of my neighbours, my conscience is as free as it is from the charge of cruelty and bloodshed. Those errors I leave to honest mediocrity or virtuous exertion! You may perhaps find, too, that my life ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... strong enough, at any rate, to show that I'm not afraid to lead the way. I've the greatest possible regard for our friend here,—but her book is a bad book, a thoroughly rotten book, an unblushing compilation from half-a-dozen works of established reputation, in pilfering from which she has almost always managed to misapprehend her facts, and to muddle her dates. Then she writes to me and asks me to do the best I can for her. I have done ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... what when the weeds spring up together with the corn and choke it? or when they rob and ruthlessly devour the corn's proper sustenance, like unserviceable drones [17] that rob the working bees of honey, pilfering the good food which they have made and stored away with ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... country every session, we cannot perceive any dimunition of the numbers of such characters; but that others seem always to supply their places?" The foregoing instance of the systematized instruction of young delinquents by old adepts in the art of pilfering, affords, I think, a satisfactory answer ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... a hurried journey.—Of course, so Madeleine wound up the story, she had never expected Heinz to behave like a normal mortal, and to take leave of his friends in the ordinary way, and she was also grateful to him for not pilfering her umbrella, which was silvertopped. All the same, there was something indecent about his behaviour. It showed how little he had, at heart, cared for any of them. Only a person who thoroughly despised others, would treat them in this ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... I quit pilfering from the writings of Francis Audaine, since in the happenings which now concern us he plays but a subsidiary part. The Captain had an utter faith in decorum, and therefore it was, as he records, an earth-staggering shock when the following day, on the Pantiles, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... game of cards between Jonathan Wild, of pilfering propensities, and a professional gambler, says: "Such was the power of habit over the minds of these illustrious persons, that Mr. Wild could not keep his hands out of the count's pockets, though he knew they were empty; nor could the count abstain from palming a card, though he was ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... themselves the successors and living representatives of Israel. But the Greek, rising on the swell of Homer's roll and boom, had need of no such transformation. The uplift was all for him; his by hereditary right; and no pilfering necessary, from alien creed or race. We have seen in Homer an inspired Race-patriot, a mighty poet saddened and embittered by the conditions he saw and his own impotence to change them.—Yes, he had ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... persecution. In both cases he will probably recognise the reality of a racial fault, while admitting that it may be largely a racial misfortune. That is to say, the drifting and detached condition may be largely the cause of Jewish usury or gipsy pilfering; but it is not common sense to contradict the general experience of gipsy pilfering or Jewish usury. The comparison helps us to clear away some of the cloudy evasions by which modern men have tried to escape from that experience. ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... made inquiry concerning the number of peasants who had lately died: but of these there appeared to be few. And suddenly his quick eye discerned that Tientietnikov's estate was not being worked as it might have been—that much neglect and listlessness and pilfering and drunkenness was abroad; and on perceiving this, he thought to himself: "What a fool is that Tientietnikov! To think of letting a property like this decay when he might be drawing from it an income of fifty ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... rear of the bakery. In one way and another these hungry mouths must have been a considerable drain on Silver Tongue's resources; and though they feebly responded to his bounty—one by driving a natty cart and delivering hot morning rolls, and another by pilfering firewood for the furnace—the account (if one had been made) was far from even. But to any objection to this Quixotic generosity Silver Tongue had a reply ever ready on his lips. "I lofe dem like my fader," he would say ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... this pilfering disposition which some of us have may be implanted in us for a good reason. Maybe through us pilferers or borrowers, Heaven takes care of the seeds of knowledge and wisdom from age to age. The worthwhile thoughts which some of our early members gave ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... with dark design, To make each well-stored nest a prey, If dusky hues denote them thine, Will draw his pilfering hand away. ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... wanting to you; you shall see them homing with you, building their nests in your money-bags and laying coins. Besides, you shall be housed like the gods, for we shall erect gables(6) over your dwellings; if you hold some public post and want to do a little pilfering, we will give you the sharp claws of a hawk. Are you dining in town, we will provide you with crops.(7) But, if your award is against us, don't fail to have metal covers fashioned for yourselves, like those they place over statues;(8) else, ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... middle like the bottoms of bottles. Against the plaster wall diagonally crossed by black joists, a meagre pear-tree sometimes leans and the ground-floors have at their door a small swing-gate to keep out the chicks that come pilfering crumbs of bread steeped in cider on the threshold. But the courtyards grow narrower, the houses closer together, and the fences disappear; a bundle of ferns swings under a window from the end of a broomstick; there is a blacksmith's forge and then a wheelwright's, with ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... present time, the ruler there may be said to be not so much the head man of the land as the head thief. Travellers report that that country is divided into departments upon a basis of abstraction, and that the interests of each department, in pilfering respects, are under the supervision of a Chief of Thieves. The Chief of Thieves is responsible to the government, and to him all those who steal professionally must give in their names, and must also keep him informed of their successful operations. When goods are missed, the owner applies to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... at Blangy, lost that place through misconduct and his singular ideas as to public education. He helped the children to make paper boats with their alphabets much oftener than he taught them how to spell; he scolded them in so remarkable a manner for pilfering fruit that his lectures might really have passed for lessons on the best way of scaling the walls. From teacher he became a postman. In this capacity, which serves as a refuge to many an old soldier, Pere Fourchon was daily reprimanded. Sometimes he forgot the ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... had spent his time, he had contracted an unconquerable habit of indolence, and a rooted aversion to business; in this frame of mind, the army became his last resource, into which he entered as a common soldier, but after a short time his itch for pilfering returning, he could not refrain from making free with some money with which he was intrusted by his officer; being detected, he was punished with that rigorous severity with which thefts in the army usually are, and being afterwards thrown into the Savoy prison, ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... finger-biscuits which one eats with ice-cream. The rascal had elsewhere come across some rich preserve and had his feet loaded with gold—for he pulled out other bars to show me—and he did not care for this petty pilfering. Then the Frenchmen began coming out, with the Annamites and the Indians, each man with a bundle on his back, and the Cossack, esteeming his watch ended, got up and stepped back. Once again, like bloodhounds, the crowd rushed in, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... pilfering from the English version, that version, and Herd's undisputed version, have undeniably a common source. Neither, as it stands, is "original"; of an ORIGINAL contemporary Otterburn ballad we have no trace. By 1550, when such ballads were ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... work to do here, looking after all these scoundrels, having to keep my eyes open as much as possible in order to prevent wholesale robbery as far as I could, although it was utterly impossible to prevent petty pilfering of the ore on its way from the mine to Puerto Cabello, its general port for transhipment to Europe, to swell the treasure chest of ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson |
