"Truant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Gilles de Sille was still swathed in bandages when, with an additional swaddling of disguise across his eyes, he and Laurence, that truant scion of the house of O'Halloran, stole out into the night. A frosty chill had descended with the darkness, and a pale, dank mist from the marshes of the Seine made the pair shiver as arm in ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Mary Elsmere, shyly amused, held aloof, while Meynell and Miss Fox-Wilton talked across the stream. Meynell's peremptory voice reached her now and then, and she could not help hearing a sharp final demand that the truant should transfer herself at once ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tone it seemed to say The sweetest words I ever heard, Then like a truant forest bird, It soared from me ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... Therefore, when a zealous Sunday-school teacher finds that one of her little charges has gone to work under age, the offices of the city's solitary factory inspector being out of the question, she hunts up a truant officer, who takes the child before a magistrate, who, in view of the want of school accommodations, promptly discharges the truant. Behind our local municipal administration lies our whole system of capitalistic production, calling for cheap ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... been a sad truant, Philip. But you are welcome home. I, for one, rejoice to see my ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... Daphnis! Open he the lay, He open: and Menalcas follow next: While the calves suck, and with the barren kine The young bulls graze, or roam knee-deep in leaves, And ne'er play truant. But a song from thee, ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... and meadow, They searched 'neath hedge and tree; "Where," said the puzzled children, "Where can the truant be?" ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Betham,—Not my will, but accident and necessity made me a truant from my promise. I was to have left Merton, in Surrey, at half-past eight on Tuesday morning with a Mr. Hall, who would have driven me in his chaise to town by ten; but having walked an unusual distance on the Monday, and talked and exerted myself in spirits that have been long unknown ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... to your duty. Up and away. Though the wood looks dark from here, 'tis because of our fire so bright. The stars are out and once away from this the road will seem light enough. As light as many another when you're played truant to your master to wander ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... offices of their country. Can we calmly anticipate the condition of the Southern States at that period, should no remedy be devised to arrest the progressive miseries attendant on slavery? Will the absent father's heart be at peace, when, amid the hurry of public affairs, his truant thoughts return to the home of his affection, surrounded by doubtful, if not dangerous, subjects to precarious authority? Perhaps when deeply engaged in his legislative duties his heart may quail and his tongue falter with irresistible apprehension ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... murdered. They, who had lived in the country twenty, thirty years, were better qualified to judge than I was. For peace and quiet I pretended acquiescence, and my purpose thus acquired a taste of stealth. It was with the feelings of a kind of truant that I had set out at length without a word to anyone, and with the same adventurous feelings that I now drew near to Karameyn. Two soldiers, basking in the sunshine on a dust-heap, sprang up at my approach. One was the man I sought, the rogue ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... the movement may be illustrated by the school strike of the spring of 1912, during which every boy and girl above the age of fourteen in most of the primary and secondary schools of Croatia, Dalmatia, and Bosnia played truant as a protest against the misgovernment of Croatia. On that occasion a crowd of 5000 school children paraded the streets of Agram shouting "Down with Cuvaj" (the Ban or Governor of Croatia), and cheering the police when they ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... By this time the truant boy and his companion approached the house, and he mounted the steps of the piazza with eager haste, pulling her after him, immediately upon the arrival of his father, Aunt Mary, and Cousin Bessie. Brief explanation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... me, Steal my priceless jewels, In fancy's store-house cherished, Your roguish eyes have robbed me, Of all my dreams bereft me, Dreams that are fair, yet fleeting. Fled are my truant fancies, Regrets I do not cherish, For now life's rosy morn is breaking, Now golden love is waking. Now that I've told my story, Pray tell me yours, too; Tell me frankly, who are ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... bless A, Band C! The rest of the song is D: That is all my lore. I came late yesterday, I played truant by my fay! I am a foul sinner. Good master, after dinner ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... by his blunt, indifferent reply, but before she could frame another question, Miss Murch appeared from an inner office, at the same moment that Miss Keith stepped through the doorway from behind them in search of her truant patient; and Peace suffered herself to be led docilely away. So absorbed was she in her new discovery that even her pleasure in her ability ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... my childhood I remember with nothing but pleasure. I must have been a dull boy, I suppose, in some respects, for I never got into scrapes, never played truant, and was never, that I can remember, punished for anything. The instruction was simple enough. Special stress was laid upon spelling, and I am inclined to think that every one of my fellow-pupils [22] learned to spell more correctly ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... Ellinor returned alone into the gallery, "You little truant!" she cried, "why so long? you said you would soon be with the foremost. I thought you must have escaped me, and have sought you through half the garden, and you are here all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... the subject of the American War, without further reference to the truant who stood by them in the covert of the dusk, thrilling with happiness ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I deserve it! I have been nothing but a truant and a vagabond. I have never obeyed anyone and I have always done as I pleased. If I were only like so many others and had studied and worked and stayed with my poor old father, I should not find myself here now, in this field and in the darkness, taking the place of a farmer's watchdog. ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... in question. Search was at once made; but neither search nor inquiry availed. Late at night, however, a knock was heard at the door of the boy's dwelling, and the mother, hurrying out, found her truant fast asleep on the ground. She could not discover who had knocked. The boy, upon being awakened, laughed, and said that on the morning of his disappearance he had met a lad of about his own age, with very pretty eyes, who had coaxed him away to the woods, where they had played together ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... discharged veterans, who had strength enough remaining for this municipal duty, and being, moreover, for the greater part, Highlanders, were neither by birth, education, nor former habits, trained to endure with much patience the insults of the rabble, or the provoking petulance of truant schoolboys, and idle debauchees of all descriptions, with whom their occupation brought them into contact. On the contrary, the tempers of the poor old fellows were soured by the indignities with which the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... was a long, long time; and never a word from the truant since the day she had left the village. Martha had waited, at first impatiently, then anxiously, and finally with a pathetic hopefulness that was more than half assumed. It was she who had insisted that ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... an incorrigible truant, a chip of the old block, as Tona put it, thinking of that loafer who had been responsible for her, and who also sat staring day in day out at the horizon like a good-for-nothing idiot, half awake. If Tona had had to depend on that girl for a living, a fine mess she would have been in! Lazy, ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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 laws, and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Llewellyn homeward hied, When near the portal seat, His truant Gelert he espied, Bounding his lord to greet. But when he gained the castle door, Aghast the chieftain stood: The hound was smeared with drops of gore; His lips and fangs ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... to be a Philadelphian by birth, had returned by the train to London, as the porter had said, and then left the country under an assumed name, to escape that worst kind of widowhood—the misery of being wedded to a fickle, faithless, and truant husband? ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... erect stone markers showing where Charley Ross was last seen and Carrie Nation was first sighted. We shall pile up tall monuments to Sitting Bull and Nonpareil Jack Dempsey and the man who invented the spit ball. Perhaps then these truant Americans will come back oftener from Paris and Florence and abide with us longer. Meanwhile though they will continue to stay on the other side. And on second thought, possibly it is just as well for the rest of us that ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... life was very unsympathetic to him, very narrow and mechanical, and it is no wonder that he took every opportunity to escape and play truant. He loved poetry and knew all the poems in the reading books by heart; he was fond, too, of declaiming them in season and out ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... be followed by woe— The W duly succeeds the V, This is the order of A, B, C. Ubi erit victoriae spes, Si offenditur Deus? which says, How, pray ye, shall victory e'er come to pass, If thus you play truant from sermon and mass, And do nothing but lazily loll o'er the glass? The woman, we're told in the Testament, Found the penny in search whereof she went. Saul met with his father's asses again, And Joseph his precious fraternal train, But he, who 'mong soldiers shall ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... overtaking the lamb and upsetting it with a poke of his nose. The lamb, not at all disconcerted by the tumble, which was only a variation of its method of progress, came over on its knees and rose at once to go ahead; but the delay had been sufficient. Steve caught up; and the next instant, the truant, feeling the ground removed from under it, hung helpless across the ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... of art, where he applied himself with the greatest assiduity. He copied all the great frescos of Raffaelle in the Vatican several times; he next turned his rapid pencil against the works of Annibale Caracci in the Farnese palace. Meantime, his father divining the direction which the truant had taken, followed him to Rome, where, after a long search, he discovered him ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... "the blind beggar of Bethnal Green," was intensely loved by Wilford, who first saw her in the streets of London, and subsequently, after diligent search, discovered her in the Queen's Arms inn at Romford. It turned out that her father Albert was brother to lord Woodville, and Wilford was his truant son, so that Bess was his cousin Queen Elizabeth sanctioned their nuptials, and took them under her own ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... He should have come ere this: The promised hour is past: he is not here! I love him—yes, my maiden heart is his; I sigh—I languish when he is not near. The truant! Wherefore tarries he? His love, Were it like mine, would woo him to my side— Or does he—dares he—merely seek to prove The doubted passion of his promised bride? Do I not love him? But does he love me? He swore so yester-eve, when last we met Down in the dell by our old trysting-tree: ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... round the corner, and running fast towards the cricket field. Vivian was very much disturbed and distressed. She scarcely knew what she ought to do. She ventured a little way into the grounds, but not a trace of any truant was to be seen, so she thought it useless to search far. One of the girls must have gone out; on that point she ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... shape, which to Anglantes' peer Seemed his Angelica, beseeching aid. Seemed to Rogero Dordogne's lady dear. Who him a truant to himself had made: If with Gradasso, or with other near He spake, of those who through the palace strayed. To all of them the vision, seen apart, Seemed that which each ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... second intimation as to my duty in the case. Only a moment or two elapsed before I was on the pavement, and making rapid approaches towards my truant boy. ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... and activity. The usual occupations of the sons of Japanese peasants, such as grass-cutting and rice-weeding, were not to the taste of young Monkey-pine, as the villagers called him, and he spent his time in the streets, a keen-witted and reckless young truant, who feared and cared for no one, and lived ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... a man has left his city and fled, after him his wife has entered the house of another, if that man shall return and has seized his wife, because he hated his city and fled, the wife of the truant shall not return ...
— The Oldest Code of Laws in the World - The code of laws promulgated by Hammurabi, King of Babylon - B.C. 2285-2242 • Hammurabi, King of Babylon
... more deeply depressed by the certainty that both public and domestic scandal must soon arise from the inevitable revelation of his discontinuing his attendance at school without mentioning this important change of career at home. He had been truant a full fortnight, under brighter circumstances a matter for a lawless pride—now he had neither fear nor vainglory. There was no room in ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... about to be realised, as the truant emerged from the thicket and entered upon an open plain clothed with low heath,—the Erica vestila, ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... observe that although they had never moved since they sat down, they were now quite close together; both presenting faces of a very heightened colour to the eyes of Mr. Edward Hugh Bloomfield. That gentleman, coming up the river in his boat, had captured the truant canoe, and divining what had happened, had thought to steal a march upon Miss Hazeltine at her sketch. He had unexpectedly brought down two birds with one stone; and as he looked upon the pair of flushed and breathless culprits, the pleasant ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... some minutes after when the truant Cicely re-entered the little keeping-room, her cheeks and eyes bright ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... or be nagged to death. And if he ventured to slip into some synagogue of an afternoon and read a page or two he would be in danger of being caught red-handed, so to say, for, indeed, she often shadowed him to make sure that he did not play truant. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... book and its accomplished author, with much respect and gratitude. Before doing so, however, and having said much in commendation, Captain Widdrington will perhaps permit us to offer him a slight and well-intended hint in the contrary sense. When next the truant-fit comes over him, and he favours us with the result of his researches and observations in Spain or any other country—and we hope it will not be long before he does thus favour us—may he be able to devote rather more time to the mere authorship part of the work, to the correction and chastening ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... chap as wanted to 'list, and nearly deafened him, till he picked up his hat and fair ran away. And they'd tell tales in th' Sunday-school o' bad lads as had been thumped and brayed for bird-nesting o' Sundays and playin' truant o' week days, and how they took to wrestlin', dog-fightin', rabbit-runnin', and drinkin', till at last, as if 'twere a hepitaph on a gravestone, they damned him across th' moors wi', 'an' then he went and 'listed for a soldier,' ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... "Oui, Monsieur," said the rogue, with a leer, for he remembered the francs, and we soon had our adventurer safe on terra firma again. Then began the tender expostulations, the affectionate reproaches, and the kind injunctions for the truant to remember that he was a husband and a father. Edouard, secretly cursing the punt and all rivers in his heart, made light of the matter, however, protesting to the last that he had only been ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... that I care," Elsie replied. "What's the odds o' one afternoon more or less? It'll be many a day I shall be called truant, I reckon. But they might be after tellin' of us, an' she'd be lockin' me up in the loft, which isn't what I want, so we'll get to school to-day," she added, meditatively. "Here, take the basket, while I try to make the map out ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... exceeds. She with a glance who rules us as her own, Opening my breast my heart in hand to take, Thus said to me: "Of this no mention make." I saw her then, in alter'd air, alone, So that I recognised her not—O shame Be on my truant mind and faithless sight! And when the truth I told her in sore fright, She soon resumed her old accustom'd frame, While, desperate and half dead, a hard rock ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... "Ah, truant, truant," said she, the whole day absent, without inquiry or farewell! After this, when shall I believe that ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... man severe he was, and stern to view, I knew him well, and every truant knew— Yet he was kind, or if severe in aught, The love he bore for learning ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... son of the district doctor, was a blue-eyed youngster in knickerbockers and a sailor blouse. He was playing truant, no doubt—Klaus had his lessons at home with a private tutor—and would certainly get a thrashing from his ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... dim— Maria! thou hast heard my hymn! In joy and wo—in good and ill— Mother of God, be with me still! When the Hours flew brightly by, And not a cloud obscured the sky, My soul, lest it should truant be, Thy grace did guide to thine and thee Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast Darkly my Present and my Past, Let my future radiant shine With sweet hopes of thee ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... here, you truant," said the boy. "Why did you run away? What have you to say for ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... hula ulili, also called by the descriptive name kolili—to wave or flutter, as a pennant—was a hula that was not at all times confined to the tabu restrictions of the halau. Like a truant schoolboy, it delighted to break loose from restraint and join the informal pleasurings of the people. Imagine an assembly of men and women in the picturesque illumination given by flaring kukui torches, the men on one side, the women on the other. Husbands ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... or approved a pretext for doing what would be opposed or condemned; a tricky schoolboy makes a pretense of doing an errand which he does not do, or he makes the actual doing of an errand a pretext for playing truant. A ruse is something (especially something slight or petty) employed to blind or deceive so as to mask an ulterior design, and enable a person to gain some end that he would not be allowed to approach directly. A pretension is a claim ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... sat still, like truant schoolboys, with our hands on our knees. I didn't know where I was going and I didn't care. We seemed to be rumbling up the hill, and then I caught the glare of ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... no idea that he had left Duffield's Hotel," she said presently. "Mark is a dreadful truant. He never comes near me now! I suppose," she added, "he is ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... shield pierced with little holes to look through, that he held before his face. One day he came into this turret when they who worked the guns in Orleans were all at their meat. But it so chanced that two boys, playing truant from school, went into a niche of the wall, where was a cannon loaded and aimed at Les Tourelles. They, seeing the gleam of the golden shield at the window of the turret, set match to the touch-hole of the ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... with this surpassing magnet of popular interest so near at hand, that for every truant convert who might halt to taste of the pleasures provided by AEsop Loving and his associate promoters, half a dozen possible patrons would pass on by and beyond, drawn away by the compelling power of the Sin Killer's eloquence. Representations had been ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... got parents in the stage, and has been playing truant here," he mused, lazily. "Looked as if he'd been up to some devilment, or more like as if he was primed for it. If he'd been a little older, I'd have bet he was in league with some road-agents to watch the coach. Just my luck to have him light out as I was beginning to get some ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... hair. He closed them with a disagreeable sensation, after seeing Mademoiselle Reine Gobillot's fresh, chubby face, her figure prim beyond measure in a lilac-and-green plaid gingham dress, and carrying a basket on her arm, a necessary burden to maidens of a certain class who play truant. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... purling waters, green, and, where the sun reached them, shot with seams and cleavages of light, like fluorspar. In the sun-flecked, shadow-dappled grass near by, violets tried to hide themselves, but were betrayed by their truant sweetness. The waters purled, a light breeze rustled the olive-leaves, and birds were singing loud and wild, as ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... morn till night To scratch and write Upon a three-legged stool; Nor mourn the joys Of truant boys Who stay away ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... parchment containing the municipal statute confirming Ascanio's appointment, which is dated January 1, 1495, is still preserved in the archives of the city. At the beginning of the year 1499, however, Alexander again assumed control of Nepi by compelling the castellan, who commanded the fortress for the truant Ascanio, to surrender it to him. He now invested his daughter with the castle, the city, and the domain of Nepi.[66] September 4, 1499, Francesco Borgia, the Pope's treasurer, who was also Bishop of Teano, took possession of the city in ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... scientific part will tire you—skip and go on to the third volume. Delightful breakfast to-day at Mr. Ricardo's. We have this last week seen all Calcott's principal pictures, and those by Mulready, an Irish artist: one of a messenger playing truant; the enraged mistress, and the faces of the boys he is playing with, and the little child he had the care of asleep, all tell their story well; but none of these come near the exquisite humour and ingenuity of Hogarth. I have the face of that imbecile, ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... plan to execute, the husband went, And ev'ry passenger was thither sent, Where Damon entertained, with sumptuous fare; And, at the end, proposed the magick snare: Said he, my wife played truant to my bed; Wish you to know if your's be e'er misled? 'Tis right how things go on at home to trace, And if upon the cup your lips you place, In case your wife be chaste, there'll naught go wrong; But, if to Vulcan's troop ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... he'll be too cunning, and play truant—he has no notion of learning American manners; ev'ry dog must have his day (as the saying is); it may be our time by and by—the event of war ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... fell from the latter's lips as the truant returned to his post. A tender gracious smile was the only sign of displeasure that ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... we to do with the trap?" said Aveline. "We can't drag it back ourselves. And what about the pony? He's playing truant!" ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... questioning to give vent to his displeasure he would smile contentedly and stroke his chin, once so round, but then so peaked, and those who thought that the Court apothecary would diminish his legacy to his truant son, learned to know better, for the old man bequeathed in an elaborate will, the whole of his valuable possessions to Melchior, leaving only to the widow Vorkel, who had served him faithfully as housekeeper after the death of his wife, and to Schimmel, the dispenser, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off long ago to Megara or Boeotia—by the dog they would, if they had been moved only by their own idea of what was best, and if I had not chosen the better and nobler part, instead of playing truant and running away, of enduring any punishment which the state inflicts. There is surely a strange confusion of causes and conditions in all this. It may be said, indeed, that without bones and muscles and the other parts of the body I cannot execute my ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... Wie du uns erschreckt hast! Wie es mich freut dich zu finden!" (Oh, my truant sister! What a scare you have given us! How glad I am to ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... man was angry with them for playing truant. He said slowly, "N—no. She didn't exactly send us; but I don't think she'll mind our having come if we get back in time for supper. Mamma never forbid our going mumming, ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... the invasion did come whether he would stick at his post in London and dutifully forward the news to his paper, or play truant and as a war correspondent watch the news in the making. So the words of Mr. Clarkson's assistant did not sink in. But a few weeks later young Major Bellew recalled them. Bellew was giving a dinner on the terrace of the Savoy Restaurant. His guests were his nephew, young Herbert, who was only ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... point of slipping away on the Easter Tuesday afternoon; he determined to drink tea with the Misses La Sarthe. He went to his room with important letters to write, and then sneaked down again like a truant schoolboy, and when he got safely out of sight, struck obliquely across the park to the one vulnerable spot in the haw-haw, and after fumbling a good deal, from his side, managed to get the spikes out and to climb down, ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... good temper appeared immortal—his situation was more peculiar than pleasant. He was seated on a log, three hundred miles from any civilised habitation, smiling blandly at a broken axe (his only one), the half of which was tightly grasped in his right hand, pointing to the truant iron in the trunk of a huge tree, the first of a thriving forest of fifty acres he purposed felling; and, thus occupied, a solitary traveller passed our uncle Job Bucket, serene as the melting sunshine, and thoughtless as the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... responsibility, Fyne solemn and shrinking—the children in bed upstairs; and outside the dark fields, the shadowy contours of the land on the starry background of the universe, with the crude light of the open window like a beacon for the truant who would never come back now; a truant no longer but a downright fugitive. Yet a fugitive carrying off spoils. It was the flight of a raider—or a tractor? This affair of the purloined brother, as I had named it to myself, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... N. absence; inexistence &c. 2[obs3]; nonresidence, absenteeism; nonattendance, alibi. emptiness &c. adj.; void, vacuum; vacuity, vacancy; tabula rasa[Lat]; exemption; hiatus &c. (interval) 198; lipotype|!. truant, absentee. nobody; nobody present, nobody on earth; not a soul; ame qui vive[Fr]. V. be absent &c. adj.; keep away, keep out of the way; play truant, absent oneself, stay away; keep aloof, hold aloof. withdraw, make oneself ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... at the children's service last Sunday. He had only fourpence halfpenny. I remember it all now. Oh, how stupid I've been, to be sure!' It was an intense relief to have chased successfully the truant halfpence. 'Now, Queenie,' went on Theo gleefully, 'in five minutes I shall be ready for you, and we are going to have a good time in the boat. Get your ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... is a good plan to have a book with you in all places and at all times. Most likely you will carry it many a day and never give it a single look, but, even so, a book in the hand is always a companionable reminder of that happier world of fancy, which, alas! most of us can only visit by playing truant from the real world. As some men wear boutonnieres, so a reader carries a book, and sometimes, when he is feeling the need of beauty, or the solace of a friend, he opens it, and finds both. Probably he will count among the most fruitful moments of his reading the snatched ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... mathematics, was just now stimulated by the effect of a liberal supper and the roguish consciousness of having been to the play. He saw and recognized Cashel as he approached the village pound. Understanding the situation at once, he hid behind the pump, waited until the unsuspecting truant was passing within arm's-length, and then stepped out and seized him by the collar of ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... "He is probably playing truant in the empty upper rooms, as usual. I can't wait for him any longer, so I'm doing his work myself," answered Miss Dickenson, who was tenderly winding a wet bandage round her Juno's face, one side of which was so much plumper than the other that it looked as if the Queen of ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... mind. The world grows big enough to include within its scheme both the instructive political economist and the truant mechanic. But that trick of truly logical behavior seems harder to the man than to the child. For example, I climbed up to my den under the eaves last night—a sour, black sea-fog lying all about, and the December ...
— Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry
... day wet and rainy, though not uniformly so. No temptation, however, to play truant; so this will make some amends for a blank day yesterday. I am far in advance of the press, but it is necessary if I go to Drumlanrig on Wednesday as I intend, and to Lochore next week, which I also meditate. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... have disturbed him for anything. But his watchfulness became so eager and intense that he almost, but not quite, exposed himself to the suspicion of a passing gendarme. He now expected Cheditafa, for the reason that the manner of the younger negro indicated that he was playing truant. It was likely that the elder man would go after him, and this was exactly ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... play truant at their tales, And younger hearings are quite ravished, So sweet and voluble ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... a pause and dead silence, as if it were a calm, although every passion was roused and on the alert; every bosom heaved tumultuously, and every pulse was trebled in its action. The same feeling which so powerfully affects the truant schoolboy—who, aware of his offence, and dreading the punishment in perspective, can scarce enjoy the rapture of momentary emancipation—acted upon the mutineers, in an increased ratio, proportioned to the ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and their Children busy, nine tenths of our Evils wou'd be remov'd, yet I am convinc'd, neither of these important Points will be minded, till we are forc'd to get better Notions of Things, by seeing the Nation ruin'd by the want of them, as often as a Boy at School is whipt for playing the Truant, before he ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... in this way:—Imagine that I am about to play truant (you may call the proceeding by any name which you like), and the laws and the government come and interrogate me: 'Tell us, Socrates,' they say; 'what are you about? are you not going by an act of yours to overturn us—the laws, and the ...
— Crito • Plato
... smiled and took his hand, And said, "Poor truant, passionate fool! Life's book is hard to understand: Why couldst thou not remain ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... reports were the impersonal records of personal labors. They had started libraries, made little parks, inaugurated playgrounds, instituted exchanges for the sale of women's wares, secured women internes in hospitals, paid for truant officers, founded children's protective associations, installed branches of the Associated Charities, encouraged night schools, circulated art exhibits and traveling libraries; they had placed pictures in the public schools, founded kindergartens—the ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... on new-fledged birds in every place, That duly they may get their tunes by rote; And oft, like echoes, answering remote, We hide in thickets from the feather'd throng, And strain in rivalship each throbbing throat, Singing in shrill responses all day long, Whilst the glad truant listens to our song." ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... plenty, vice without disguise, incessant gambling, brawls and quarrels every hour in the day, murders every now and then, ribaldry and obscenity, singing, dancing, laughing, swearing, cheating, and thieving without end. There many a man of quality seeks for his truant son, nor seeks in vain; and the youth feels as acutely the pain of being torn from that life of licence as though he were going to meet his death. But this joyous life has its bitters as well as its sweets. No one can lie ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... ALL, AND FRIENDS, WHOM SHE WELCOMES AS HER OWN CHILDREN:—The older sons of our common parent who should have greeted you from this chair of office, being for different reasons absent, it has become my duty to half fill the place of these honored, but truant, children to the best of my ability—a most grateful office, so far as the expression of kind feeling is concerned; an undesired duty, if I look to the comparisons you must draw between the government of the association ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Sultan in the New Entertainment." On the other hand, the Ghost of Queen Common-Sense appears before she is killed, and is with some difficulty persuaded that her action is premature. Part of "the Mob" play truant to see a show in the park; Law, straying without the playhouse passage is snapped up by a Lord Chief- Justice's Warrant; and a Jew carries off one of the Maids of Honour. These little incidents, together with the unblushing realism ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... lad soon made his appearance, and was immediately pressed in the old people's arms. This son was a truant, long absent from his home. At length, grown weary at delay, quitting their abode near Edinburgh, they had travelled south, inquiring at every port for their lost son, and only that morning had they arrived by waggon at Poole, believing that it was a port where men-of-war were to be found. ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... very small school, for many boys were away helping to collect the sheep for the schooner, which was coming in, and some were playing truant. The sheep were carted down to the shore and the men were ready for embarking, when the ship moved out, and so all their labour was again in vain. The sea was "making up," and to-night is stormy. It is rather late in the year for a ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... treacherous shoals, Where many a hope lay dead, And splendid wrecks were piled, like the ghouls Of joys forever fled. Once safely over these, We sped by a fairy realm, Across the bluest and calmest seas That were ever kissed by a truant breeze, With ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... care, he and Mrs. Dolman invited her to their house, where she was found by Mr. Linley, on his arrival in pursuit of her. After a few words of private explanation from Sheridan, which had the effect of reconciling him to his truant daughter, Mr. Linley insisted upon her returning with him immediately to England, in order to fulfil some engagements which he had entered into on her account; and a promise being given that, as soon as these engagements ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... vanished. As soon as the decorous swish of Sunday silks had ceased in the corridor outside, she caught up a book and a cushion, and, creeping down by the side stairs, set gaily out across the sunlit lawn, with the deliciously guilty thrill of a truant little boy who has run away ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... bringing dainty color to her cheeks, tossing truant wisps of hair this way and that, as the car swept onward. But she sat strangely silent now beside Thornton at ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... education. By a sort of strange fatality, his brain had doggedly resisted the little instruction he might have received. For instance, he had been to the Carmelite's school at ——, and instead of showing any aptitude for work, he had played truant with a keener delight than any of his school-fellows. His was an eminently contemplative nature, kindly and indolent, but proud and almost savage in its love of independence; religious, yet opposed to all authority; somewhat captious, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... original is truande, which, as well as the masculine truand, meant, in old French, a vagabond, a rascal; it is still retained in the English phrase "to play the truant."] ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere
... lover's friend, performed the work, and did him a good turn beside. The old Frenchman was slowly approaching, when a frolicsome wind whisked off his hat and sent it skimming along the beach. In spite of her late lecture, away went Debby, and caught the truant chapeau just as a wave was hurrying up to claim it. This restored her cheerfulness, and when she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... betimes, and shall, I hope, come to myself and business again, after a small playing the truant, for I find that my interest and profit do grow daily, for which God be praised and keep me to my duty. To my office, and anon one tells me that Rundall, the house-carpenter of Deptford, hath sent me a fine blackbird, which I went to see. He tells me he was offered 20s. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of oriole and grasshopper, pickerel and turtle,—quick of hand and eye,—in short, born for practical leadership and victory,—such a boy finds no provision for him in most of our seminaries, and must, by his constitution, be either truant or torment. The theory of the institution ignores such aptitudes as his, and recognizes no merits save those of some small sedentary linguist or mathematician,—a blessing to his teacher, but an object of watchful anxiety to the family ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... a truant in the law, And never yet could frame my will to it; And therefore frame the law unto ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... 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 school the ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... street, keeping close to the wall. It seemed unnatural being there at that hour; everything had a quiet, unfamiliar look. The white walls of the houses reproached the truant with their silent faces. ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... All that you see, I have seen. Hopes that beamed around my way, Cast their light on yours to-day. All that you do, I have done; All your childish ways I've run, All your joys and pangs I've had— All that make you gay or sad; I have sported in the brook, Truant from my work or book; Chased the butterfly and bee, Robb'd the bird's nest on the tree; Damm'd the brook and built my mill; Flew my kite from hill to hill; Sported with my top and ball— Childish joys, I know them all. Childish sorrows, too I've ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... into the world and the profession of letters with the merest shadow of an education. But they say it is always a good thing to have taken pains, and that success is its own reward, whatever be its nature; so that, perhaps, even upon this I should plume myself, that no one ever played the truant with more deliberate care, and none ever had more certificates for less education. One consequence, however, of my system is that I have much less to say of Professor Blackie than I had of Professor Kelland; and as he is still alive, and will long, I hope, continue to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seat beside Mr. Burnet, sheltered by his umbrella, sat the truant girl, while young Leonard was giving Roberts instructions in ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... old friend, Our warm fellowship is one Far too old to comprehend Where its bond was first begun: Mirage-like before my gaze Gleams a land of other days, Where two truant boys, astray, ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... late then to commit it to memory, and I felt ashamed to go to school without it, for I knew that I should be punished, and be obliged to remain in at recess to make up the lesson. I did not want to play truant, for I was fearful of detection, so I went to my father and feigned headache, and plead that I might remain at home that day. The wish was granted, and for a moment I felt relieved, but at breakfast or dinner, I was not allowed to eat anything; I was obliged to remain ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... in a solitary place of the neighbourhood, perched on the branch of a tree, gazing at the tempestuous face of the sky, and watching the flashes as in succession they spread their lurid gleam over it. To the reprimands of his parent, the whimpering truant pleaded in extenuation, "that the lightning was very beautiful, and that he wished to see where it was coming from!"—Such anecdotes, we have long known, are in themselves of small value: the present one has the additional defect of being somewhat dubious in respect of authenticity. ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... you're not much hurt by this wretched business of the presentation. The little service I could do was a moral lesson to me on the subject of deuce-may-care antecedents. My brother Tom, too, was always playing truant, as a boy. It ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Antonia maid, Appear'd like two poor harmless women, who Of goblins, but still more of men afraid, Had thought one man might be deterr'd by two, And therefore side by side were gently laid, Until the hours of absence should run through, And truant husband should return, and say, 'My dear, I was the ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... the boisterous wind lifted that trifling appendage right into the air, and deposited it over a wall or a fence, and Will Locke was not half so quick as Dulcie in tracing the region of its flight, neither was he so active, however willing, in recovering the truant. Why, Dulcie found his own hat for him, and put it on his head to boot one day. He had deposited it on a stone, that he might the better look in the face a dripping rock, shaded with plumes of fern and tufts of grass, and formed into mosaic by tiny sprays of geranium faded into crimson ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... morning, haven't we, Bob?" said the Governor. "I feel like a boy again, a boy playing truant, a boy who has ran away from his big school of politicians at Ottawa, just to get a few days' fishing and—and—oh, well, get ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... with her. He played truant whenever he could, for he was a kindhearted boy, and could not bear to think of a master's time and labor being thrown away on a boy like himself—who did not wish to learn, only to find out—when there were so many worthy lads thirsting for instruction in geography ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... Truant Bards! where are the Triumphal Odes and the Congratulatory Poems which should have greeted Mr. PUNCHINELLO, who, after deserting his beloved Italy, after a stormy voyage and unspeakable sea-sickness, has arrived here with a view of settling and of becoming a citizen (having already filed his first ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... until he had searched for and caught Connie's truant gaze. "Aren't we?" he asked of Miss Fowler, his eyes dancing. ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... top of his float. Fred gave a half shriek at what he saw, for to him it seemed a feat of unsurpassed daring, as Harry clasped the bough with his legs, and swinging himself head downwards, he plunged his hands into the water and grasped his truant line. ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn |
