"Truant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... regard to languages, antiquities, or the fine arts, though he himself could never find leisure to listen to him on these subjects when the conversation happened to turn on them. But if Emilius ever chanced to be in a more active mood, he might almost make sure that his truant friend would have caught cold the night before at some ball or sledge-party, and be forced to keep his bed; so that, with the liveliest, most restless, and most communicative of men for his companion, Emilius lived in the ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... the truant messenger returned, and was sent out to report himself to his master under ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... admitted into it, it is especially a school for boys, as you will understand when you learn that it is a Truant School. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 32, June 17, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... was invariably expressed by Mr. Pump, whenever the company paraded generally in some such terms as these, which were uttered with that sort of meekness that a native of the island of our forefathers is apt to assume when he condescends to praise the customs or character of her truant progeny: ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... resolution he remained fixed, and in this frame of mind he received his truant sons on their return to Echanbroignes on the Sunday morning. They entered the village together with Chapeau, about nine in the morning, having been met about a mile from the town, by four or five friends, who escorted them back. Annot was not there, for ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... that he had left Duffield's Hotel," she said presently. "Mark is a dreadful truant. He never comes near me now! I suppose," she added, "he is a ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... upon the wound by Lady Mary's kind attendant, till the little girl, tired of hearing so much said about the bitten finger, gravely desired her maid to go in search of the cage, and catch the truant, which had effected its escape, and was clinging to the curtains of the bed. The cage was procured—a large wooden cage, with an outer and an inner chamber, a bar for the little fellow to swing himself on, and a drawer for his food, and a little dish for ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... in the corner Sits greeting on a stool, And sair the laddie rues Playing truant frae the school; Then ye'll learn frae silly Sandy, Wha's gotten sic a fright, To do naething through the day That may gar ye ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... hand,— Behold the guests advancing! How fast the stragglers join the throng, From stall and work-shop gathered; The lively barber skips along And leaves a chin half-lathered; The smith has flung his hammer down, The horse-shoe still is glowing, The truant tapster at the Crown Has left a beer-cask flowing; The coopers' boys have dropped the adze, And trot behind their master; Up run the tarry ship-yard lads;— The crowd is hurrying faster. Out from the mill-pond's purlieus gush, The streams of white-faced ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... no intention of playing the truant or traitor, and does his duty bravely and successfully. But the new King has a niece and the Count himself has a mother, who, motherlike, is convinced that her son's mysterious love is a very bad person, if not an actual maufes or devil, and is very anxious ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... And was it for this that you took fencing lessons, to run poor travellers through the body for the sake of a dollar, or stab women in the back? Go! go! You have played truant to your nurse because she shook ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... except next door?" mademoiselle questioned; "and when I went to ask, Monsieur Dubois was seated with his sons having supper, and no signs of the truant. He had seen or heard nothing of her, ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... mother that her other sons shall comfort her old age, For I was aye a truant bird, that thought his home a cage. For my father was a soldier, and, even when a child, My heart leaped forth to hear him tell of struggles fierce and wild; And when he died, and left us to divide his scanty hoard, I let them take whate'er they would, but kept my father's sword; And with boyish ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... leaping heart, With instant flash, life's inextinguished fires; Plunging along each tense limb poured the blood Hot with its years of sleeping-smothered flame. And in a dream I charged, and in a dream I smote resistless; foemen in my path Fell unregarded, like the wayside flowers Clipped by the truant's staff in daisied lanes. For over me burned lustrous the dear eyes Of my beloved; I strove as at a joust To gain at end the guerdon of her smile. And ever, as in the dense melee I dashed, Her name burst from my lips, as lightning breaks Out of the plunging ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... from objects that he had looked upon as the friends of his youth, before life had opened to him the dark and blotted pages of suffering and sorrow. There, dimly shining to the right below him, was the transparent river in which he had taken many a truant plunge, and a little further on he could see without difficulty the white cascade tumbling down the precipice, and mark its dim scintillations, that looked, under the light of the moon, like masses of shivered ice, were it not that such a notion was contradicted by the soft dash and ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... brown eyes grew full of laughter, and the next moment the little questioner had squeezed her way through a slightly open door, and was toddling down the broad stone stairs and across a landing to Hetty's room. The room-door was open, so the truant went in. A bed with the bed-clothes all tossed about, a half worn-out slipper on the floor, a very untidy dressing-table met ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... That was a good day in my life, and better ones followed. No, you and True must be friends. Truant is her name by rights, for her mother never could keep her indoors or at home. Now, Bobby, look ahead! Do you see those lights? We go through the town; and just outside is our home—a very tiny one at present, for we move about; but we'll find a ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... only thing to do was to go himself and summon home his truant child. Miss Lambart objected that it would mean hewing expensively a path through the wood wide enough to permit his passage, and it was improbable that the owner of the wood would allow it. Thereupon the baroness volunteered to go. Miss Lambart with infinite pleasure explained ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... it? But then who am I to condemn? When I see the gods to hurl thunderbolts upon those who flout them, it will be time enough for us mortals to assume the robes of judgment. I will hope that farther thought will reclaim you from your truant wanderings.' ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... with Toby between them, and were just beginning to discuss the reward when a heavy hand fell on Mick's shoulder. It was the school porter. In spite of their protests he insisted that Mick was playing truant, and marched him off to school. Jane, left alone with Toby, debated what she ought to do. The reward was to be got in a village three or four miles at the other side of Rowallan, so she would have to wait and go back with Andy. But there was still an hour and a half before he ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... and the local color tendency toward uniformity in type have held the bad boy to a path which, in view of his character, seems singularly narrow. In book after book he indulges in the same practical jokes upon parents, teachers, and all those in authority; brags, fibs, fights, plays truant, learns to swear and smoke, with the same devices and consequences; suffers from the same agonies of shyness, the same indifference to the female sex, the same awkward inclination toward particular little girls. For the most part, thanks to ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... they say it is always a good thing to have taken pains, and that success is its own reward, whatever be its nature; so that, perhaps, even upon this I should plume myself, that no one ever played the truant with more deliberate care, and none ever had more certificates for less education. One consequence, however, of my system is that I have much less to say of Professor Blackie than I had of Professor Kelland; and as he is still alive, and will long, I hope, continue to ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as he strode along explaining, he threw off his surly fit. The brilliant sunlight, the breeze stirring toward them from a background of drooping bamboos, the gabble of coolies, the faint aroma of the fermenting no-me cakes, began, after all, to give a truant sense ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... that, I can say nothing," said Jenkin, "I have always served duly and truly; I have no heart to play truant, and cheat my master of his time ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... perform, but let no one think that he is therefore in love with idleness; he turns to something which is more agreeable to his inclination, and doubtless more suited to his nature; but he is not in love with idleness. A boy may play the truant from school because he dislikes books and study; but, depend upon it, he intends doing something the while—to go fishing, or perhaps to take a walk; and who knows but that from such excursions both his mind and body may derive more benefit than from books ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... When you were coming in, after playing truant on Friday afternoon, I was then going. You might have seen the ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... theory that, playing truant from the house while his father was engaged in work below stairs, he had been overwhelmed and perhaps wholly consumed by a detached fragment from the fiery visitant. This picturesque suggestion found many ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... solitudes and frowsy cells, Where Infamy with sad Repentance dwells; Where turnkeys make the jealous portal fast, And deal from iron hands the spare repast; Where truant 'prentices, yet young in sin, Blush at the curious stranger peeping in; Where strumpets, relics of the drunken roar, Resolve to drink, nay, half, to whore, no more; Where tiny thieves not destin'd ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... she repaired to one of these kinsfolk,—a person in a large way of business,—and returned home with two great books in white sheepskin. And when Losely looked in to dine, she said, in the suavest tones a tender mother can address to an amiable truant, "Jasper, you have great abilities; at the gaming-table abilities are evidently useless: your forte is calculation; you were always very quick at that. I have been fortunate enough to procure you an easy piece of task-work, for which ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... flame of color lifted in her pale cheek. She looked at the dusty road, her hand pressed to her bosom as if to make certain that the truant heart had come back to her like a dove to its cote out of the storm. She looked up presently, and smiled a bit; looked down again, the hot blood writing a confession in ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... truant to peep into your literary seminary, he will venture to present you with the inclosed hastily written lines, as a peace offering; but shall not be irritated beyond measure, should you choose to convert it into a burnt offering, as a ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... One of the results of all this legislation has been to throw, during the past quarter of a century, an entirely new burden on schools everywhere. Such legislation has brought into the schools not only the truant and the incorrigible, who under former conditions either left early or were expelled, but also many children who have no aptitude for book learning, and many of inferior mental qualities who do not profit by ordinary classroom procedure. Still more, they have brought into ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... might just as well have no tutor at all as to have one so tiny. How Prince Vance did laugh! Of all the wizards he had ever known—and for one so young his Highness had known a great many wizards; he almost always met more or less of them when he played truant by climbing out of a back window and going into the woods fishing—he thought the Blue Wizard was the most amusing and had invented the ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... and it was very dark, as Audrey and her squire passed along Third Avenue to the front. They did not converse—they were both too shy, too impressed by the peculiarity of the predicament. They simply peered. They peered everywhere for the truant form of Musa balanced on one side by a bag and on the other by a fiddle case. From the trim houses, each without exception new, twinkled discreet lights, with glimpses of surpassingly correct domesticity, and the wind rustled loudly ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... ancestral gods. The East Saxons drove out Mellitus, who, with Justus, retired to Gaul; and Archbishop Laurentius himself was minded to follow them. Then the Kentish king, admonished by a dream of the archbishop's, made submission, recalled the truant bishops, and restored Justus to Rochester. The Londoners, however, would not receive back Mellitus, "choosing rather to be under their idolatrous high-priests." Soon Laurentius died too, and Mellitus ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... brothers! I would fair have caught Some fresher fancy's gleam; My truant accents find, unsought, The old ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... ostensibly for school, but as they did not come home to dinner and were not seen by their little sister about the school-grounds, the awful suspicion entered the good mother's mind that they had again been truant. Along about dark one of them, the younger, came ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... truant school-boy days—"sowed their wild oats"—have taken their stand among men, and are realizing themselves now the blessedness of a home of conjugal and paternal happiness, and begin to know something ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... Sidney. They had sent to the place whither he had been despatched; he had never arrived there. Mr. Morton grew alarmed; and, when Mr. Spencer came to dinner, his host was gone in search of the truant. He did not return till three. Doomed that day to be belated both at breakfast and dinner, this decided him to part with Sidney whenever he should be found. Mrs. Morton was persuaded that the child only sulked, and would ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... went out he was soon aware of something else being wrong, for Brookes was rating the three blacks, who had thoroughly enjoyed their truant holiday, and would have stayed away for days in the myall scrub, but the bush in wet weather is to a blackfellow not pleasant, from the showers of drops falling upon his unclothed skin. Consequently the storm had sent them back, and they were all found clothed and curled up fast asleep in the wool-shed ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... why should I whip him? Strange visitant, Has he been playing truant this long summer day? I listened a moment; more clear and more shrill Rang the voice of the bird, as ...
— Ballads • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... I have played the truant, or have here Failed in my part, oh! Thou that art my dear, My mild, my loving tutor, Lord and God! Correct my errors gently with Thy rod. I know that faults will many here be found, But where sin swells there let Thy ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... is getting ready his supper, and wondering what's become of him, and torturing herself with hopes that break one by one; and to-night when she goes up to his empty room, having tried to persuade herself that the truant's come back and climbed ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... can full of worms and a heart full of joy, Up and down the old stream, a bare-footed boy, A truant from school, my footsteps would stray To the deep-shaded pool, or where ripples at play, As they flowed over beds of smooth-polished stones, Sang a lullaby sweet in soft undertones! From the dawn of the day to the set of the sun What pleasures we've had when we fished ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... her husband of the conduct of their truant son, as Harry had wished, and had in reply received his full forgiveness for the boy. Captain Grosvenor had written that he much regretted not having taken Harry along with him, "for," said he, "a second thought would have convinced me that the ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... of talking in metaphor," rejoined Brandon, smiling; "they who begin it always get the worst of it. In plain words, dear Lucy, I can give no more time to my own ailments. A lawyer cannot play truant in term-time without—" ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bumblebee, within the last half-hour, Has ceased to hug the honey to its heart; While in the barnyard, under shed and cart, Brood-hens have housed.—But I, who scorned thy power, Barometer of birds,—like August there,— Beneath a beech, dripping from foot to hair, Like some drenched truant, cower. ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... destiny, or how often that face seen in the fitful moonlight would haunt my sleep and disturb my waking hours. But I mind yet the cold grue of terror I got from it, a terror which was surely more than the due of a few truant lads breaking the Sabbath with ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... of the matter was that Jose and Patch, who had gone a-hunting, had not returned when the party had left for Bell Hammer. It was possible that, during their absence, the dogs had come back, and Anthony did not like to think that truant Patch might be wandering around the house, seeking admission in vain. Consequently, after the car had been noiselessly bestowed—out of consideration for their employers' rest, the four had alighted before they left the road and had man-handled a silent Ford up ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... about the girl's mouth disappeared slowly as she passed a small brown hand across her forehead and replaced a truant lock. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... the damsel fain Would wile him back,—she called in vain. The truant gamboll'd farther: One follow'd for the maiden's sake, A pilgrim in an Angel's ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... that hardly an hour remains before the closing of the mail. I found such pretty, solitary paths, quite narrow, between the greening hazel and thorn-bushes, where only the thrush and the glede-kite were heard, and quite far off the bell of the church to which I was playing truant, that I could not find my way home again. Johanna is somewhat exhausted, in connection with her condition, or I should have had her in the woods, too, and perhaps we should still be there. * * * She has presented me with an exquisite anchor ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... to the graceful groves and Gallic beauties of Belle Etoile his truant thoughts will fly once more. He wonders why he threw up his law studies under his uncle, Judge Valois, ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... fringe and feather my edges. To be beautiful is not amiss, But to be loved is more than this; And who more sought than I, By all that run or swim or crawl or fly? Sober shell-fish and frivolous gnats, Tawny-eyed water-rats; The poet with rippling rhymes so fluent, Boys with boats playing truant, Cattle wading knee-deep for water; And the flower-plucking parson's daughter. Down in my depths dwell creeping things Who rise from my bosom on rainbow wings, For—too swift for a school-boy's prize— ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... meanwhile, and that still-existing old aunt, who seemed resolved to live to a hundred, kept her as before at Burleigh: and, seeing that a few months after the captain's departure she had presented the world, not to say her truant lord, with twins, she had always found something to do in the way of, what she considered, education, and other juvenile amusement: that is to say, when the gayeties of a circle of fifteen miles in radius left her any time to ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... moment the sound of sweet laughter became audible among the trees. His heart beat fast; he advanced a few steps and stopped. In a moment more the nymph of the island appeared, in her white robe, ascending the cliff in pursuit of her truant bird. She saw the strange man, and suddenly stood still; struck motionless by the amazing discovery that had burst upon her. The Captain approached, smiling and holding out his hand. She never moved; she stood before him in helpless wonderment—her lovely black ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... possible that the real Mrs. Manston, who was known to be a Philadelphian by birth, had returned by the train to London, as the porter had said, and then left the country under an assumed name, to escape that worst kind of widowhood—the misery of being wedded to a fickle, faithless, and truant husband? ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... the district doctor, was a blue-eyed youngster in knickerbockers and a sailor blouse. He was playing truant, no doubt—Klaus had his lessons at home with a private tutor—and would certainly get a thrashing from his father when he ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... summer-house received a sitter with the softly-yielding submission of elastic wires. Susan had just finished her early dinner: in mind and body alike, this good girl was entirely and deservedly at her ease. By finely succeeding degrees, her eyelids began to show a tendency downward; her truant needle-work escaped from her fingers, and lay lazily on her lap. She snatched it up with a start, and sewed with severe resolution until her thread was exhausted. The reel was ready at her side; she took it up for a fresh supply, and innocently rested her head against the leafy and flowery ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... ways, then, and get its patten.' Until that reconciling word was uttered, there had been a shadow of distrust on the baby's face, as if treachery might be in the wind. But the magic of that one word patten wrought an instant revolution. Back the little truant ran, and the young mother's manner made it evident that she would not on her part forget what had passed between the high contracting parties.[51] What, then, could be the meaning of this talismanic word patten? Accidentally, having had ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... off for school But loitered by the way, Until at last 'twas quite too late To go to school that day. Ah naughty, naughty, truant boys! But listen what befell! Close by a wicked ogress lived, Down in a ...
— Careless Jane and Other Tales • Katharine Pyle
... slowly turned away The weight of his intolerable brow. When I glanced back, I saw him, as before, Sailing adown the hall on out-spread wings. Indeed, my lord, he should not do these things; They strain the weakness of mortality A jot too far. As for poor Ritta, she Fled like a doe, the truant. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... sometimes, if it pleased him to start early enough, he would walk there with his little daughter, her hand tucked within his arm. With her he was never savage, and rarely irritable; on these walks his mood would be playful and jocose, and they would incite each other to play the truant from office and school, and pretend they were off on a holiday ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... government should be a model for the other municipal governments of the Nation, in all such matters as supervision of the housing of the poor, the creation of small parks in the districts inhabited by the poor, in laws affecting labor, in laws providing for the taking care of the children, in truant ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... was a very small school, for many boys were away helping to collect the sheep for the schooner, which was coming in, and some were playing truant. The sheep were carted down to the shore and the men were ready for embarking, when the ship moved out, and so all their labour was again in vain. The sea was "making up," and to-night is stormy. It is rather late in the year for a ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... victories then. Our Te Deums were not sung with doubting hearts, to make the populace believe a defeat a victory—a delusion to which this French nation of ours is only too prone. My countryman, Marlborough, and the little truant Abbe, Eugene of Savoy, were not then the leaders of the opposite armies; but at the head of our own, we had M. le Prince and the Vicomte de Turenne in the flower of their age, and our triumphs were such that they might well intoxicate the King, who was, so to speak, brought ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who had been busy talking about water turtles with Frank, noticed this, and struck out with his willow branch to bring the truant back, but it was too late; the boat had got beyond his reach, and was now floating swiftly down the middle of the ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... am here,—I am here to save thee! Wilt thou deny to me thy sweet face? Truant, wouldst ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... calmly anticipate the condition of the Southern States at that period, should no remedy be devised to arrest the progressive miseries attendant on slavery? Will the absent father's heart be at peace, when, amid the hurry of public affairs, his truant thoughts return to the home of his affection, surrounded by doubtful, if not dangerous, subjects to precarious authority? Perhaps when deeply engaged in his legislative duties his heart may quail and his tongue falter with ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... laughing, dancing, purling waters, green, and, where the sun reached them, shot with seams and cleavages of light, like fluorspar. In the sun-flecked, shadow-dappled grass near by, violets tried to hide themselves, but were betrayed by their truant sweetness. The waters purled, a light breeze rustled the olive-leaves, and birds were singing loud and wild, as birds will ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... that we are de Soyecourts, you and I," he repeated, in a new voice. "After all, I cannot drag you to Noumaria by the scruff of your neck like a truant school-boy. Yes, let us recognize the fact that we are de Soyecourts, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... sensation, after seeing Mademoiselle Reine Gobillot's fresh, chubby face, her figure prim beyond measure in a lilac-and-green plaid gingham dress, and carrying a basket on her arm, a necessary burden to maidens of a certain class who play truant. ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... books, G.K. loved to play upon words, and sometimes of course this was merely a matter of words and the puns were bad ones. Once, for instance, after translating the French phrase for playing truant as "he goes to the bushy school—or the school among the bushes," he adds "not lightly to be confounded with the Art School at Bushey." This is indefensible, but rare. Christopher Morley has noted how "his play upon words often led to a genuine play upon thoughts. . . . One ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... but not until he had searched for and caught Connie's truant gaze. "Aren't we?" he asked of Miss Fowler, his eyes dancing. ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... when (Ah joy!) our singer For his truant string Feels with disconcerted finger, What does cricket else but fling Fiery heart forth, sound the note Wanted by ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... and his teeth to grow again—if he only took it long enough; and he had, besides, remedies which would cure chickens that had the pip, horses that kicked, old women with the rheumatism, dogs that howled at the moon, boys who played truant, and cats that ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... complicated facts the schoolmaster has to deal. In Macaulay's time he used to be guided by his 'common-sense,' and to intellectualise the whole process. The unfortunate boys who acted upon an ancient impulse to fidget, to play truant, to chase cats, or to mimic their teacher, were asked, with repeated threats of punishment,'why' they had done so. They, being ignorant of their own evolutionary history, were forced to invent some far-fetched lie, and were punished for that as well. ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... severe he was, and stern to view, I knew him well, and every truant knew— Yet he was kind, or if severe in aught, The love he bore for learning ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the verra nicht o' the Latin prose I cam up to speak aboot the college, and ye thocht Geordie hed been playing truant." ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... other sons shall comfort her old age, And I was aye a truant bird, that thought his home a cage: For my father was a soldier, and, even as a child, My heart leaped forth to hear him tell of struggles fierce and wild; And when he died, and left us to divide his scanty hoard, I let them take whate'er they would—but kept ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... fact, I was alone in the world, dependent upon my own resources for whatever little truant ray of sunshine I might get from the golden flood that illuminated the world outside me, and forced by rigid, arbitrary circumstances to train my growing convictions into many a hazardous channel, left to myself to grope among the dawning mysteries of life, that are a burden to ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... ye daughters of celestial Virtue, point not the scoffing glance at these, her truant children, as ye pass them by—but pity, and afford them a gleam of cheerful hope: so shall ye merit the protection of Him whose chief attribute is charity and universal benevolence. And ye, lords of the creation! commiserate their misfortunes, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... along, Came dainty Zephyrus humming a song, And pausing—the truant—to kiss each flower That blushed in garden, or field, or bower. But no one was left to be merry with him, So he danced with the leaves till the light grew dim, And, as Twilight was going to sleep in the west, He, too, fell asleep on ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... that the Lady Eveline was visible, to the delight of all, and especially of the faithful Rose, who, regardless of the risk of personal harm, fluttered around her mistress's place of confinement, like a bird robbed of her nestlings around the cage in which the truant urchin has imprisoned them. Precaution was necessary to remove the stone, lest falling inwards it might do ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... disciplined bosom at half-heave. 'I think I can judge now that you're not much hurt by this wretched business of the presentation. The little service I could do was a moral lesson to me on the subject of deuce-may-care antecedents. My brother Tom, too, was always playing truant, as a boy. It ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was then all deceit? Did he but mock me, when with tears of rapture He bathed my hand; knelt; sighed; as had his voice By pleasure been o'erwhelmed, a while was silent; But soon came words, sweet as those most sweet kisses Which grateful Venus gave the swain whose care Brought back her truant doves!——So sweet, so sweet—— Distrust, herself, must have believed those words. Oh! and was ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... Pig hadn't been able to stay awake. Her eyes would close, in spite of all she could do. Though she slept, she dreamed about the truant Grunty. Now and then she cried aloud in the darkness, when some terrible creature seemed to be chasing him. But Mrs. Pig never ...
— The Tale of Grunty Pig - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... than half a dozen times. Why had it entered so persistently into her dreams? Why had the flush risen to her cheeks at the thought? At another time she would have refused to listen to the voice which answered; but now, as the object of her thoughts lay dying on her pillow, her mind would not play truant to her heart. Sometimes the approach of love is so imperceptible that it does not provoke analysis. We wake suddenly to find it in our hearts, so strong and splendid that we submit without question.... All, all her dreams had ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... his time and attention to the congenial task of hatching or feeding them. It is he who builds the nest, and sits upon the eggs, and nurses the young, and imparts moral instruction (with a snap of his jaw or a swish of his tail) to the bold, the truant, the cheeky, or the imprudent; while his unnatural spouse, well satisfied with her own part in having merely brought the helpless eggs into this world of sorrow, goes off on her own account in the giddy whirl of society, forgetful of the sacred claims of her wriggling offspring ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... of the tenement, at three o'clock on the following afternoon, she felt like a naughty little girl who is playing truant from school. When she remembered the way that she had avoided the Superintendent's almost direct questions, she blushed with an inward sense of shame. But when she thought of the Young Doctor's offer to go with her—"wherever she was going"—she threw back her head ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... interest than most men. It embodies, from observation, what may be regarded as THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FISHERMAN, and describes some curious scenes and appearances which I witnessed many years ago when engaged, during a truant boyhood, in prosecuting the herring fishery as an amateur. Many of my observations of natural phenomena date from this idle, and yet not wholly wasted, ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... once inspired to do that thing, she will go on day in and day out doing the right thing for that child and for all others in her home. It may take a year to convert a police magistrate whose sympathy for delinquent parents and truant children is an active promoter of disorder; but a magistrate convinced, efficient, and interested is worth a hundred volunteer visitors. To get things done in this way for a hundred thousand children costs less in time and money than to do the necessary ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... match in Town, To give the scene its fitting ode, Sir! Could Pindar fire the athletic lyre, A truant from his bright abode, Sir, How would he chant the Chief heroic, The trundler's hope become zeroic, The drives from liberal shoulders poured, The changing history of the Board! Long may the champion's pith be scored In ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... then we heard a most furious quacking, as if there were fifty ducks there. We ran on and saw a drake flying at the hawk and pecking at its wings, and the duck, quacking in the utmost alarm, tried to get all her little ducklings under her wings; but, alas! one little truant ran into the weeds, and the hawk caught it in his claws, and, in spite of all the efforts of the poor drake, ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... offensive, and the school-house a dreary prison. "Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined." The child learns to hate school, to hate instruction, and all that is good. He soon becomes the practiced truant. In a few years he arrives at manhood; but, instead of being a blessing to his family and a useful member of society, he too frequently drags out a wretched life, in ignorance and penury, dividing it between ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... who adorn'd herself and folded her hair expectantly, My truant lover has come, and it ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... companion, who was talking with quickness and vivacity, her fair face radiant with smiles. Lemercier looked at them as they passed by. "Sur mon ame," muttered Frederic to himself, "surely that is la belle Julie; and she has got back her truant ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... valley by Wildeve's. A cream-coloured courser had used to visit this hill, a bird so rare that not more than a dozen have ever been seen in England; but a barbarian rested neither night nor day till he had shot the African truant, and after that event cream-coloured coursers thought fit to enter ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... excuse. He must peddle or be nagged to death. And if he ventured to slip into some synagogue of an afternoon and read a page or two he would be in danger of being caught red-handed, so to say, for, indeed, she often shadowed him to make sure that he did not play truant. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Sharpless comes with a letter to break the news that his friend is coming back with an American wife, he loses courage to perform his mission at the contemplation of the little woman's faith in the truant. Does he know when the robins nest in America? In Japan they had nested three times since Pinkerton went away. The consul quails at that and damns his friend as a scoundrel. Now Goro, who knows Butterfly's pecuniary plight, ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... more swiftly if they sought to amuse themselves and be happy. They allowed themselves to be comforted, in the absence of their husbands, by their lovers, and they felt no reproach of conscience; for they were convinced that their truant husbands were doing the same thing in their long separation—were making love to 'the lips ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... other emotion to lively apprehensions for her safety, but he soon saw her run back, and, on observing him coming to meet her, assume an untroubled countenance. "Has this serene night," said she, "made you too a truant with your pillow? I have, of late, been little disposed to sleep, and enjoy a moon-light walk amazingly."—"Do not those dogs annoy you," inquired Sedley, with more of moody displeasure than tenderness; "I should ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... urged on me the importance of the habit, and I accordingly practise it systematically. Whenever I find my mind wandering away from the subject on which I am engaged, I bring it back forcibly, just as if it were a truant, or a deserter from his colours. Some people can think of two things at the same moment; but my father says it is much better to think of one thing well at a time, as likewise to do one thing well; so, as you may have observed, I never attempt more. The consequence of this system is, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... burr, and it was considered more prudent, economically and otherwise, to let him go on learning with his grandfather and herself. Mark missed Cass when he went to school in Rosemarket, because there was no such thing as playing truant there, and it was so far away that Cass did not come home for the midday meal. But in summertime, Mark used to wait for him outside the town, where a lane branched from the main road into the unfrequented country behind the Rose Pool and took ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... comfortable, though he would have died before he admitted it to Dora. Now that the exhilaration of truant delights had died away, his conscience was beginning to give him salutary twinges. After all, perhaps it would have been better to have gone to Sunday School and church. Mrs. Lynde might be bossy; but there was always a box of cookies in her kitchen cupboard and she was not stingy. ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... apt and gracious words That aged ears play truant at his tales, And younger hearings are quite ravished; So sweet and ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... from the table, Henry attempted to slip out of the house from the front door without Sylvia's knowledge. He had nearly reached the gate, and had a sensation of exultation like a child playing truant, when he ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... The day wet and rainy, though not uniformly so. No temptation, however, to play truant; so this will make some amends for a blank day yesterday. I am far in advance of the press, but it is necessary if I go to Drumlanrig on Wednesday as I intend, and to Lochore next week, which I also meditate. This will be no great interruption, however, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... as just then, in the gorgeous October coloring of the whole landscape that lies below, across the farm, which stretches on through an intervale of beautiful meadows and pastures to the woods that skirt the valley of the little truant river, as ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... been washed clean by the rain, while Robert walked on reading his book. At last, John, calling after his brother, said, "I do not see what is the use of going to school this fine morning; let us play truant." ...
— Child's New Story Book; - Tales and Dialogues for Little Folks • Anonymous
... a girl whose opinion was always received with respect. Ida went off obediently to fulfil her behests; and Constance, after searching in Maggie's room and wandering in different parts of the grounds, found the truant at last, comfortably established with a pile of new books and magazines in the library. The library was the most comfortable room in the house, and Maggie was leaning back luxuriously in an easy-chair, reading some notes from ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... captain, four sergeants, and fifty-seven patrolmen. Some of these are on duty at the ferries and steamboat landings. Others are detailed to examine the steam boilers in use in the city. Others execute the orders of the Board of Health. Another detachment, nine in number, look after truant children. Others are detailed for duty at banks and other places. The Detectives will be ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... affectation and disguise—no one else ever so well shewed how delicacy and timidity, when driven to extremity, grow romantic and extravagant; for the romance of his heroines (in which they abound) is only an excess of the habitual prejudices of their sex, scrupulous of being false to their vows, truant to their affections, and taught by the force of feeling when to forego the forms of propriety for the essence of it. His women were in this respect exquisite logicians; for there is nothing so logical ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Hong Kong— Some fancy called him thither unforeseen. So years had passed, till seven lay between His going and the coming of this note, Which I hid in my bosom, and replied To Aunt Ruth's queries, "What the truant wrote?" By saying he was still upon the wing, And merely dropped a line, while journeying, To say he lived: ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... said no more. When, after exploring the undergrowth for nearly half an hour, he suddenly descried his footgear lodged in the branches of a neighbouring ash, Mr. Dunkelsbaum's behaviour gave me cause to fear for his reason. My theory that some dim-sighted fowl must have mistaken the truant for a piece of refuse met with a furious dismissal, and, from the perfectly poisonous stare with which he declined my offer of assistance to secure his quarry, I was forced to the conclusion that he associated me with its elevation. ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... truant, who has told you that you are safe?" Pablo cried in agony. "For Don Mike shall not come ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... successful picture of Beatrice herself. The artist resided at Teddington. Wilfrid was due for a sitting this Wednesday morning, and he went down into the country, intending to be back for lunch and the House of Commons. But the weather was magnificent, and, the sitting over, truant thoughts began to assail the young legislator. Bushey Park was at hand, with its chestnut avenue leading to Hampton Court. A ramble of indefinite duration was, in his present frame of mind, much more attractive than the eloquence ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... MOTHER OF US ALL, AND FRIENDS, WHOM SHE WELCOMES AS HER OWN CHILDREN:—The older sons of our common parent who should have greeted you from this chair of office, being for different reasons absent, it has become my duty to half fill the place of these honored, but truant, children to the best of my ability—a most grateful office, so far as the expression of kind feeling is concerned; an undesired duty, if I look to the comparisons you must draw between the government of the association existing de jure, and its government ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... nothing which was worthy of such careful record. Sometimes she did but bathe the weary feet of her little children, but the angel over the right shoulder—wrote it down. Sometimes she did but patiently wait to lure back a little truant who had turned his face away from the distant light, but the angel over the right shoulder—wrote it down. Sometimes she did but soothe an angry feeling or raise a drooping eye-lid, or kiss away a little grief; but the angel over the right ...
— The Angel Over the Right Shoulder - The Beginning of a New Year • Elizabeth Wooster Stuart Phelps
... wind among heaps of other leaves, where its splendor no more attracted attention. Of the gaiety of autumn, only the red bunches of the sumach were left as a parting present to welcome winter in. The querulous note of the quail had long been heard calling to his truant mate, and reproaching her for wandering from his jealous side; the robins had either sought a milder climate or were collected in the savin-bushes, in whose evergreen branches they found shelter, and on whose berries they love to feed; and little ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... one thing and then of another. They complain that by thus nibbling at every blade of grass on the way-side we shall never get to the end of our journey; and there is some truth in what they say. Still, I will whisper to you in excuse that I thought we might play truant a little bit while we were on familiar ground, where naturally you were sure to feel a particular interest in everything. The hand, the tongue, the teeth—these are all old friends of yours—and I thought you would like to hear all about them. By-and-bye we shall be in the little black ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace |
