"Truant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conscientious, Timothy's mother found it hard not to spoil the youngest in the family. Master Timothy was wilful, and his feet became used to taking their own way before he stepped into the fairy shoes. He played truant from school, and was late for dinner so often that at length his mother decided that something must be done about Timothy. One morning the leather of the fairy shoes was brightly blacked and the copper tips polished, and Timothy wore them for ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... morning we made our adieus and pursued our journey; but, tenacious of this comparative liberty and the enjoyment of pure air, we prevailed on our conductors to let us dine on the road, so that we lingered with the unwillingness of truant children, and did not reach Amiens until dark. When we arrived at the Hotel de Ville, one of the guards enquired how we were to be disposed of. Unfortunately for us, Dumont happened to be there himself, and on hearing we were sent from Arras by order of Le Bon, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... his ship as he does his shipmates. I sailed with him, boy, when everything seemed bright and happy, as at your age; when, as he often expressed it, I knew nothing and feared nothing. I was then a truant from an old father and a kind mother, and he did that for me which no parents could have done in my situation—he was my father and mother on the deep!—hours, days, even months, has he passed in teaching me the art of our profession; and now, in my manhood, he has followed ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... reduce the enrolment per schoolhouse to the lowest point. 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, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... fact, but one member of the household he did not exclusively claim. This was the married daughter, Salina, whose life had been embittered by a truant husband,—no other, in fact, than the erring son of the worthy Mrs. Sprowl. The day when the infatuated girl made a marriage so much beneath the family dignity, Toby, in great grief and indignation, gave her up. "I ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... meanwhile the managing editor had instructed his subordinates to inform Gallegher, when he condescended to return, that his services were no longer needed. Gallegher had played truant once too often. Unconscious of this, he remained with his new friend until late the same evening, and started the next ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... like a couple of schoolboys playing truant, and then they disappeared under the doorway of a dilapidated house, whilst I was left wondering how two such elegant gentlemen dared be abroad in Lyons these days, seeing that every man, woman and child ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... the primeval earth, Surely was with magic fraught That upon my pulses wrought: I too felt the air of June Humming with a merry tune, I too reckoned, like a boy, Less of Time and more of Joy: Till, as homeward I was wending, I perceived my back unbending, And before the mile was done Ran beside my truant son. ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... the nature of the country in which the sheep is straying; and also the nature of the sheep that is straying there. He knows the roughness of the mountain passes, and the silliness of the solitary truant sheep; he divines accordingly what track it will take. He conjectures beforehand, with a considerable measure of accuracy, the pit in which it will be found lying, or the thicket in which it will be seen struggling. He follows and finds the fugitive. ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... take children to school every morning, and to bring them home again in the evening. Each morning he called at the various houses, he led the children out, he carried the little ones, some on his back and some in his arms, he chastised with a stick those who were inclined to play truant, and he landed them all ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... was playing truant round the steps did Ben a service without knowing it, for a sudden puff blew a torn leaf to his feet, and seeing a picture he took it up. It evidently had fallen from some ill-used history, for the picture showed some queer ships at anchor, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... the truant set, and, at the first commotion, up went his great back, and down went his ears, with a single lash out behind that meant mischief, but Mr. Sponge was on the alert, and just gave him such a dig with his spurs as restored ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off long ago to Megara or Boeotia—by the dog they would, if they had been moved only by their own idea of what was best, and if I had not chosen the better and nobler part, instead of playing truant and running away, of enduring any punishment which the state inflicts. There is surely a strange confusion of causes and conditions in all this. It may be said, indeed, that without bones and muscles and the other parts of the body ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... and deeper into the seclusion, having by this time lost the deceitful track. No matter if he go astray; even were it after nightfall instead of noontime, a will-o'-the-wisp, or Puck himself, would not lead him into worse harm than to delude him into some mossy pool, the depths of which the truant schoolboys had known for ages. Nevertheless, some little time after his disappearance, there was the report of a shot that echoed sharp and loud, startling the pheasants from their boughs, and sending the hares and deer a-scampering ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Thou wert a stranger in these parts? Ah, truant, Some village beauty lured thee;—thou art ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... "Ah, playing truant," said Wilfred, self-consciously; his schoolmaster had often proved an alibi against him. "Then Denzil will ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... It was astonishing what a change in the morals of men army life occasioned. Someone has said, "A rogue in the army, a rogue at home;" but this I deny. Sometimes that same devilish, schoolboy spirit that actuates the truant to filch fruit or melons from orchards of others, while he had abundance at home, caused the soldier oftentimes to make "raids," as they called these nocturnal visits to the farm houses outlying the army's track. I have known men who at home was as honorable, honest, upright, and ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... of having done a foolish thing made Prosper appear like a frightened school-boy, accused by his teacher of playing truant. ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... gaily-crowded streets was sweet to him as a lazy truant ramble in the woods during church-time. Everything that he looked at delighted him—the richness of shop-windows, showing all the expensive useless goods that no sensible person ever wants; the liveries worn by ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... been wrong, and left his house and family. He was sought and awaited in vain. Bertrande spent the first month in vainly expecting his return, then she betook herself to prayer; but Heaven appeared deaf to her supplications, the truant returned not. She wished to go in search of him, but the world is wide, and no single trace remained to guide her. What torture for a tender heart! What suffering for a soul thirsting for love! What sleepless nights! What restless vigils! Years passed thus; her son was growing up, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the certainty that both public and domestic scandal must soon arise from the inevitable revelation of his discontinuing his attendance at school without mentioning this important change of career at home. He had been truant a full fortnight, under brighter circumstances a matter for a lawless pride—now he had neither fear nor vainglory. There was no room in ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... at this time at once my true school and favourite play-ground; and if my master did wink at times harder than master ought, when I was playing truant among its woods or on its shores, it was, I believe, whether he thought so or no, all for the best. My uncle Sandy had, as I have already said, been bred a cartwright; but finding, on his return, after his seven years' service on board a man-of-war, that the place had cartwrights ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... is done wisely, is done well. Be bold 35 As thou art just. 'Tis like a truant child To fear that others know what thou hast done, Even from thine own strong consciousness, and thus Write on unsteady eyes and altered cheeks All thou wouldst hide. Be faithful to thyself, 40 And fear no other witness but thy fear. For if, as cannot be, some circumstance ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... widespread nature of the movement may be illustrated by the school strike of the spring of 1912, during which every boy and girl above the age of fourteen in most of the primary and secondary schools of Croatia, Dalmatia, and Bosnia played truant as a protest against the misgovernment of Croatia. On that occasion a crowd of 5000 school children paraded the streets of Agram shouting "Down with Cuvaj" (the Ban or Governor of Croatia), and cheering the police when they tried ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... Manston, who was known to be a Philadelphian by birth, had returned by the train to London, as the porter had said, and then left the country under an assumed name, to escape that worst kind of widowhood—the misery of being wedded to a fickle, faithless, and truant husband? ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... not until he had searched for and caught Connie's truant gaze. "Aren't we?" he asked of Miss Fowler, his eyes ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... modern education, in its better efforts, really conveys to any of us that kind of idealising power, it does so (though dealing mainly, as its professed instruments, with the most select and ideal remains of ancient literature) oftenest by truant reading; and thus it happened also, long ago, with ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... ever truant daughter so whimsically circumstanced as I am? I have sent my intended husband to look after my lover—the man of my father's choice is gone to bring me the man of my own: but how dispiriting is this interval ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... eventide. The truth is, these girls have brought in a new life among us, and there is not one of us, except the children, that is not some years younger for their presence. Mr Grey deserts his business for them, like a school-boy; and Mr Rowland watches his opportunity to play truant in turn. Mrs Enderby gives dances, and looks quite disposed to lead off in person. Mrs Plumstead has grown quite giddy about sorting the letters, and her voice has not been heard further than three doors off since the arrival of the strangers. Dr Levitt is ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... affectation and disguise—no one else ever so well shewed how delicacy and timidity, when driven to extremity, grow romantic and extravagant; for the romance of his heroines (in which they abound) is only an excess of the habitual prejudices of their sex, scrupulous of being false to their vows, truant to their affections, and taught by the force of feeling when to forego the forms of propriety for the essence of it. His women were in this respect exquisite logicians; for there is nothing so logical as passion. They knew their own minds exactly; and only followed up ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... finally taken up his meaning, he had slipped about the table, touched Nance lightly but imperiously on the arm, and left the room. In face of the outbreak of his lordship's lamentations she made haste to follow the truant. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a moment, put in a hen from the aviary as call-bird, a few grains of hemp as bait, stand the cage on a box, or anything else, close to the bush, and watch from some point out of sight. In less than ten minutes we shall most likely have caught the truant ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the invasion did come whether he would stick at his post in London and dutifully forward the news to his paper, or play truant and as a war correspondent watch the news in the making. So the words of Mr. Clarkson's assistant did not sink in. But a few weeks later young Major Bellew recalled them. Bellew was giving a dinner on the terrace of the ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... house in a state of excitement and agitation which it would be impossible to describe. The old lady was dressed out in a brocaded gown, which had not seen the light for twenty years, saving and excepting such truant rays as had stolen through the chinks in the box in which it had been laid by, during the whole time. Mr. Trundle was in high feather and spirits, but a little nervous withal. The hearty old landlord was trying to look very cheerful and unconcerned, but failing signally in the ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... was alone in a big grass field, with strong notions that I should have to walk an unknown number of miles home. Judge of my delight as I paced slowly along—running was of no use—at seeing Frank G—— returning with my truant in hand. Such an action in the middle of a run deserves a Humane Society's medal. To struggle breathless into my seat; to go off at score, to find a lucky string of open gates, to come upon the hounds at a check, was my good fortune. But ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... how I long to be at home again and in my old place. In my dreams and in my waking hours, I am often back at the old homestead; my thoughts play truant while I pore over my books, and even while I listen to my teacher in the class-room. I would give so much to know what you are all doing—so much to feel that now and then I am in your thoughts, and that you do ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... some several-days-old papers we observe that the truant Mr. Bergdoll was discovered at Eberbach in Baden. Well, well, we meditate, Herr Bergdoll is not wholly devoid of sense, if he is rambling about that delicious valley of the Neckar. And if we were a foreign correspondent, anxious to send ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... friend; but beware of making marriage a mere convenience. There may be folly in calling each truant inclination that deep sentiment and secret sympathy which firmly knits heart to heart, and doubtless a common fortune may bind the worldly-minded together; but this is not the holy union which keeps noble qualities in a family, and which fortifies against the seductions of ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... hear or see; Whilst those you now would woo, The time-worn truant slight, Nor dream of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... a great deal to do with schools after his docile childhood. When he began to run wild with the other boys he preferred their savage freedom; and he got out of going to school by most of the devices they used. He had never quite the hardihood to play truant, but he was subject to sudden attacks of sickness, which came on about school-time and went off towards the middle of the forenoon or afternoon in a very strange manner. I suppose that such complaints are unknown at the present time, but the Young People's fathers can tell them how ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... come back," said the little truant, peeping up at her agitated friends' with some surprise; "thought I'd come ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... brown eyes grew full of laughter, and the next moment the little questioner had squeezed her way through a slightly open door, and was toddling down the broad stone stairs and across a landing to Hetty's room. The room-door was open, so the truant went in. A bed with the bed-clothes all tossed about, a half worn-out slipper on the floor, a very untidy dressing-table met her eyes, but ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... the newcomers and many questions were fired at them regarding "th' latest from th' Hills." Waffles made a rush for Hopalong, but fell over Big-foot's feet and all three were piled up in a heap. All were beaming with good nature, for they were as so many school boys playing truant. Prosaic cow-punching was relegated to the rear and they looked eagerly forward to their several missions. Frenchy told of the barb-wire fence war and of the new regulations of "Smith of Buffalo" regarding cow-punchers' ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... succeed very well if only he wants to learn. I have known many people who, as they said, "were no scholars," and yet they were not very far from the kingdom of Heaven. Brethren, some of us have never yet been to Christ's school. We have been playing truant, or altogether taken up with the lessons of that great, selfish, public-school—the world. I want you all to come to Christ's school to-day, old and young, clever and dull, and to hear some of the lessons which ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... will, but accident and necessity made me a truant from my promise. I was to have left Merton, in Surrey, at half-past eight on Tuesday morning with a Mr. Hall, who would have driven me in his chaise to town by ten; but having walked an unusual distance on the Monday, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... the Ritz Frohman discussed the play after his manner: "Do you know," he said, "I find the element of pity quite as strongly developed in these French farces as in the Ambigu melodramas. The truant husband leaves home, goes out for a good time, gets buffeted and bastinadoed for his pains, and when the compassionate audience says, 'He has had enough; let up,' he comes humbly home to the bosom of his family and is forgiven. Where ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... theory that, playing truant from the house while his father was engaged in work below stairs, he had been overwhelmed and perhaps wholly consumed by a detached fragment from the fiery visitant. This picturesque suggestion found many supporters until, on the afternoon of December fourteenth, ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... color lifted in her pale cheek. She looked at the dusty road, her hand pressed to her bosom as if to make certain that the truant heart had come back to her like a dove to its cote out of the storm. She looked up presently, and smiled a bit; looked down again, the hot blood writing a ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... governments of the Nation, in all such matters as supervision of the housing of the poor, the creation of small parks in the districts inhabited by the poor, in laws affecting labor, in laws providing for the taking care of the children, in truant ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the main reception-room for the truant expedition. He was hoping against hope. Orders had been given that Popova, Kalora and the whole disobedient crew should be brought before him as soon as they arrived. His wrath had not cooled, but ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... that was all, and, deeply pained, Ellen retired to her own room, which she did not quit, even to see her favourite cousin decked for the ball. Emmeline sought her, however, and tried by kisses to recall the truant rose, the banished smile, but Mrs. Hamilton did not come to wish her good night, and Ellen's heart ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... about the body of the dead Grabritin, looking futilely down the river to where it made an abrupt curve to the west, a quarter of a mile below us, and was lost to sight, as though we expected to see the truant returning to us with our precious launch—the thing that meant life or death to us in ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of the matter was that Jose and Patch, who had gone a-hunting, had not returned when the party had left for Bell Hammer. It was possible that, during their absence, the dogs had come back, and Anthony did not like to think that truant Patch might be wandering around the house, seeking admission in vain. Consequently, after the car had been noiselessly bestowed—out of consideration for their employers' rest, the four had alighted before they left ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... the sweet lady and the angular man with the pained gait which spoke in loud tones of the unbroken store-shoe could belong in no other than a rural place. But the image of the New Hampshire village only flitted across my mind's film, for my truant senses seized on a message over memory's telephone: "Russell Sage has $100,000,000." One hundred millions, and I was back on earth again, but as I walked the thought was buzzing in my brain: "Is it possible that that countryman has ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... has gone out of fashion. After a long and| |honorable career as truant officer, he has finally | |been buried with his fathers. That is why twentieth | |century men and women don't attend church." Such was| |Dr. Amos Buckwin's explanation yesterday of the | ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... my first sight of the man. Little I knew at the time how big the moment was with destiny, or how often that face seen in the fitful moonlight would haunt my sleep and disturb my waking hours. But I mind yet the cold grue of terror I got from it, a terror which was surely more than the due of a few truant lads breaking the Sabbath with ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... am a truant there, for I do not answer aunt Julia's letters as punctually as I ought to do. I shall be down there for the hunting I suppose next month." Then dinner was announced; and as it was necessary that the Earl should take down Mrs. Bluestone ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... Stillicide a crime. But though I would not willingly part with such scraps of science, I do not set the same store by them as by certain other odds and ends that I came by in the open street while I was playing truant. This is not the moment to dilate on that mighty place of education, which was the favourite school of Dickens and of Balzac, and turns out yearly many inglorious masters in the Science of the Aspects ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... these are on duty at the ferries and steamboat landings. Others are detailed to examine the steam boilers in use in the city. Others execute the orders of the Board of Health. Another detachment, nine in number, look after truant children. Others are detailed for duty at banks and other places. The Detectives will ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... shakes off his drowsihed, And 'gins to sprinkle on the earth below Those rays that from his shaken locks do flow; Meantime, by truant love of rambling led, I turn my back on thy detested walls, Proud City! and thy sons, I leave behind, A sordid, selfish, money-getting kind; Brute things, who shut ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... course we all went to the little village school; but I fear, from all that I can remember, and from what I have been told, that knowledge had little attraction for me in those days, and I know that I very often played truant, sometimes for three weeks at a stretch. Consequently my old schoolmaster, Mr. Boomer, had no particular reason to be proud of me at that time, as he seems to have become since. He never enjoys a holiday so much in these days as when he comes over from Jersey to see me play for the ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... wrought on thee? Mak'st thou it good to me, now, Lord of men, That love which long ago before the gods Thou didst proclaim? Alas! Death will not come, Except at his appointed time to men, And therefore for a little I shall live, Whom thou hast lived to leave. Nay, 't is a jest! Ah, Truant, Runaway, enough thou play'st! Come forth, my Lord!—I am afraid! Come forth! Linger not, for I see—I spy thee there; Thou art within yon thicket! Why not speak One word, Nishadha? Nala, cruel Prince! Thou know'st me, lone, and comest not to calm My terrors, and be with me in my ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... him, and his good temper appeared immortal—his situation was more peculiar than pleasant. He was seated on a log, three hundred miles from any civilised habitation, smiling blandly at a broken axe (his only one), the half of which was tightly grasped in his right hand, pointing to the truant iron in the trunk of a huge tree, the first of a thriving forest of fifty acres he purposed felling; and, thus occupied, a solitary traveller passed our uncle Job Bucket, serene as the melting sunshine, and thoughtless as the wild insect ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... day that several of his scholars are playing truant. The morning passes and they do not arrive. At last, in the afternoon, the truants turn up. The master has a strong suspicion where they have been: however, he asks, "Why were you not at school this morning?" "Please, sir, mother kept me at home to mind the baby." "Indeed—let me ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... long while your friend and enemy; and if, like Beranger's your gaiety has run away from home and left open the door for sorrow to come in, of all covers in Europe, it is here you may expect to find the truant hid. With every hour you change. The air penetrates through your clothes, and nestles to your living body. You love exercise and slumber, long fasting and full meals. You forget all your scruples and live a while in peace and freedom, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of responsibility vanished. As soon as the decorous swish of Sunday silks had ceased in the corridor outside, she caught up a book and a cushion, and, creeping down by the side stairs, set gaily out across the sunlit lawn, with the deliciously guilty thrill of a truant little boy who has run away ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... Square, because she clung tenaciously to such scraps and shreds of memories as were connected with it. The mummy room of the British Museum had been one of the chief delights of her childhood. That forbidding pile was the goal of her truant fancy, and she was sometimes taken there for a treat, as other children are taken to the theatre. It was long since Alexander had thought of any of these things, but now they came back to him quite ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... were in the same state of mind. They also went along with Lieutenant Lawton. It was arranged that Miss Jenny Ann and Jeff should wait for the truant. They would then bring Madge and Tom to the hotel at Portsmouth where they ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... working conditions, a condition which affects both white and black labor alike, in many sections of the state. (Bibliography: Rev. John R. Cox (colored) Catlettsburg, Kentucky. Born 1852 (does not know day and month), Minister A.M.E. Church. First truant officer Catlettsburg, Kentucky. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... he may display his energies for the benefit of old mas'r. This done, she orders the servant to show him his bed in one of the "yard houses;" bids the old man an affectionate good night, retires to her room, and watches the return of her truant swain. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... put the true reason down in the record book. And there it will stay always. My nice little boy was a truant-player. And we shall all be so ashamed. What will your father say? And he was so afraid last night that ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... and nearly deafened him, till he picked up his hat and fair ran away. And they'd tell tales in th' Sunday-school o' bad lads as had been thumped and brayed for bird-nesting o' Sundays and playin' truant o' week days, and how they took to wrestlin', dog-fightin', rabbit-runnin', and drinkin', till at last, as if 'twere a hepitaph on a gravestone, they damned him across th' moors wi', 'an' then he went and 'listed for a soldier,' an' they'd all fetch a deep breath, and throw ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... the School Attendance Officer and a terror to every boy in the neighbourhood. He looks at the truant and says fiercely, "Where was you?" Then he wags a savage finger at him. "Yes, you was," he says, "you was, you know you was. I caught you in the hact." No boy has ever been known ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... advantage to be gained by it; he makes what is allowed or approved a pretext for doing what would be opposed or condemned; a tricky schoolboy makes a pretense of doing an errand which he does not do, or he makes the actual doing of an errand a pretext for playing truant. A ruse is something (especially something slight or petty) employed to blind or deceive so as to mask an ulterior design, and enable a person to gain some end that he would not be allowed to approach directly. A pretension is a claim that is ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... "Ah, truant!" cried the fair maiden, as she caressed her little favourite, "how could you wander from me—how could you ever fancy yourself safe apart from Duty? I saw the hawk wheeling in the air, and I trembled for my beautiful pet; but he has found here a refuge and protector. ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... disagreeable sensation, after seeing Mademoiselle Reine Gobillot's fresh, chubby face, her figure prim beyond measure in a lilac-and-green plaid gingham dress, and carrying a basket on her arm, a necessary burden to maidens of a certain class who play truant. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... ground in the same great, blind, inexorable Governmental machine. Here, too, was a miniature fair, the path being lined by itinerant temptations. There was brisk traffic in toffy, and gray peas and monkey-nuts, and the crowd was swollen by anxious parents seeing tiny or truant offspring safe within the school-gates. The women were bare-headed or be-shawled, with infants at their breasts and little ones toddling at their sides, the men were greasy, and musty, and squalid. Here a bright earnest little girl ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... those drear solitudes and frowsy cells, Where Infamy with sad Repentance dwells; Where turnkeys make the jealous portal fast, And deal from iron hands the spare repast; Where truant 'prentices, yet young in sin, Blush at the curious stranger peeping in; Where strumpets, relics of the drunken roar, Resolve to drink, nay, half, to whore, no more; Where tiny thieves not destin'd yet to swing, Beat hemp for others, riper for the string: From these dire ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... profound And serious heads, who guard the twin retreats Of British learning, give the studious boy His due indulgence. Let him range the field, Frequent the public walk, and freely pull The yielding oar. But mark the truant well, And if he turn aside to vice or folly, Show him the rod, and let him feel you prize The parent's ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells
... ingenious in their pursuit of benevolences, and their annual reports were the impersonal records of personal labors. They had started libraries, made little parks, inaugurated playgrounds, instituted exchanges for the sale of women's wares, secured women internes in hospitals, paid for truant officers, founded children's protective associations, installed branches of the Associated Charities, encouraged night schools, circulated art exhibits and traveling libraries; they had placed pictures in the public schools, founded kindergartens—the ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... Mass., built a very substantial house in the trees, and the truant officer claimed that the lads hid away there so that they could play "hookey" from school; but if this is true, and there seems to be some doubt about it, it must be remembered that the fault was probably with the schools and not the boys, for boys who ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... be admitted into it, it is especially a school for boys, as you will understand when you learn that it is a Truant School. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 32, June 17, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... With instant flash, life's inextinguished fires; Plunging along each tense limb poured the blood Hot with its years of sleeping-smothered flame. And in a dream I charged, and in a dream I smote resistless; foemen in my path Fell unregarded, like the wayside flowers Clipped by the truant's staff in daisied lanes. For over me burned lustrous the dear eyes Of my beloved; I strove as at a joust To gain at end the guerdon of her smile. And ever, as in the dense melee I dashed, Her name ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... was sent to a High School in the County town. He did not like it. His Cousin Matilda had longed to make a little gentleman of him, but he refused to be made. He would give a little contemptuous curve to his lip, and take on a shy, charity-boy grin, when refinement was thrust upon him. He played truant from the High School, sold his books, his cap with its badge, even his very scarf and pocket-handkerchief, to his school-fellows, and went raking off heaven knows where with the money. So he ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... called little things, to which you, do not attend, your handwriting is one, which is indeed shamefully bad and illiberal; it is neither the hand of a man of business, nor of a gentleman, but of a truant school-boy; as soon, therefore, as you have done with Abbe Nolet, pray get an excellent writing-master (since you think that you cannot teach yourself to write what hand you please), and let him teach you ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Captain Truant, was polite and correct in everything and toward me he was cordial and pleasant, but he could not quite hide that he looked upon me as an Italian, that is to say, a man of lower race and backward civilization. I realized that he would think ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... the beauty, throwing down the novel which had occupied the moments intervening the completion of the extravagant toilet and the arrival of an admirer. "I feel very much inclined to impose severe punishment upon you. Is it becoming a suitor to play truant when he wishes to hear favorably from his ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... truant! there's no true drop of blood in him, to be truly touched with love. If he ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... being as familiar with the educational interests of his kingdom as he was with every other interest. He sought to teach first the priests and nobles, and after that the masses of his people. He introduced the practice of compulsory education for all children, and decreed that truant children be first deprived of food as punishment, and if that did not suffice, that they be brought ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... sundowner, that's gone mad of heat and loneliness—like the old codger we met back yonder—he could sit by the lagoon in the cool of the evening and fish to his heart's content with a string and a bent pin, and dream he's playing truant from school and fishing in the brook near his native village in England about fifty years ago. It would seem more real than fishing in the dust as some mad ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... left to perish in the wilderness! It was famishing—expiring. I raised it to my breast, and its little arms twined feebly round my neck Florian! thou wert heaven's gracious instrument to reclaim a truant to his duties! Welcome! I cried to thee, young brother in adversity!—"thou art deserted by thy mortal parents, and my heavenly father has forsaken me!" From that moment I felt I had a motive left to cherish life, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... proper that boys should learn to swim, when with Papa or some kind friend, but not as these boys have. I feel just sure they have played the truant—as I see the village school-master, with his little dog, coming over the ...
— The Royal Picture Alphabet • Luke Limner
... what earthly happiness can last! How does the fairest purpose often fail? A truant schoolboy's wantonness could blast Their flattering hopes, and leave ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... about the girl's mouth disappeared slowly as she passed a small brown hand across her forehead and replaced a truant lock. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... dear. I was but jesting. If you have had an agreeable time, you are forgiven for playing truant. Where have you been ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... so, my dear! a dearly-bought, but invaluable lesson!" quoth Miss Briskett, blandly. So far from being incensed, she actually purred with satisfaction, for had not the truant returned home in a humble and tractable spirit, ready to acknowledge and apologise for her error? Her good humour was such that she bore the shock of hearing of Guest's role in ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... talk continued on the subject of the American War, without further reference to the truant who stood by them in the covert of the dusk, thrilling with happiness and ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was a very small school, for many boys were away helping to collect the sheep for the schooner, which was coming in, and some were playing truant. The sheep were carted down to the shore and the men were ready for embarking, when the ship moved out, and so all their labour was again in vain. The sea was "making up," and to-night is stormy. It is rather late in the year for ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... was the Tzarevna Miliktrisa Kirbitievna; on another the city of Jerusalem. There are usually but few purchasers of these productions, but gazers are many. Some truant lackey probably yawns in front of them, holding in his hand the dishes containing dinner from the cook-shop for his master, who will not get his soup very hot. Before them, too, will most likely be standing a soldier wrapped ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... and not made, as Walton says, but there is a deal of the poet in him, and he is to be judged no more harshly; he is the victim of his genius: those wild streams, how they haunt him! he will play truant to dull care, and flee to them; their waters impart somewhat of their own perpetual youth to him. My grandfather when he was eighty years old would take down his pole as eagerly as any boy, and step off with wonderful elasticity toward the beloved streams; ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... of fact, I was alone in the world, dependent upon my own resources for whatever little truant ray of sunshine I might get from the golden flood that illuminated the world outside me, and forced by rigid, arbitrary circumstances to train my growing convictions into many a hazardous channel, left to myself to grope among the dawning ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... guns, the common people came out along the road with fowling-pieces and pitchforks, in hopes to catch the truant. The gendarmes seemed very anxious to be on the look-out for him too. The price of a deserter was fifty crowns to those who ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... inhabitants of the invisible world there is one class which lives a particularly painful life, sometimes for a great many years, namely, the suicide who tried to play truant from the school of life. Yet it is not an angry God or a malevolent devil who administers punishment, but an immutable law which proportions the sufferings differently to each ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... a student at Hilton Seminary," Katherine replied, as she frankly gave him her hand, her color deepening as she did so. "I played truant from school for several months, as you know, and am now ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... said a thousand times to every truant, and it would have very little effect, because he thinks that he will be an exception. He never sees beyond his own boyish smartness. Few men and women realize how true it is that these smart rascally fellows, who ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... prospered. We crossed the country without obstacle, mounted on two powerful Mecklenburgers; and before noon, were deep in Brabant. The very rashness of the undertaking seemed to restore to Don John his forgotten hilarity of old! He was like a truant schoolboy, that has cheated his pedagogue of a day's bird-nesting; and eyes more discerning than those of the stultified natives of these sluggish provinces, had been puzzled to detect under the huge patch ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... not a word; and what he said was of no moment;—but they had met as lovers, and any of the family who had allowed themselves to imagine that even yet the match might be broken, now unconsciously abandoned that hope. "Was he always such a truant, Lady Fawn?"—Lizzie asked, when it seemed to her that no one else would speak ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... walk in the woods, that hardly an hour remains before the closing of the mail. I found such pretty, solitary paths, quite narrow, between the greening hazel and thorn-bushes, where only the thrush and the glede-kite were heard, and quite far off the bell of the church to which I was playing truant, that I could not find my way home again. Johanna is somewhat exhausted, in connection with her condition, or I should have had her in the woods, too, and perhaps we should still be there. * * * She has presented me ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... the sky is blue, and the sward is green, And the soft winds wake from the balmy west,— The leaves unfold in their gilded sheen, And the bird, in the tree top, builds its nest; The truant zephyr plumes her wings Once more, and quitting her perfumed bed, Soft calls on the sleeping flowers to wake, And sportive ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... expressed by Mr. Pump, whenever the company paraded generally in some such terms as these, which were uttered with that sort of meekness that a native of the island of our forefathers is apt to assume when he condescends to praise the customs or character of her truant progeny: ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... they were laid on but yesterday. Would that my old friend and master, Otho Venius, was here! At least I will carry back to Antwerp that in my coloring which shall prove to him that I have not played truant to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... must parry, Still a wayward truant prove: Where I love, I must not marry; Where I marry, can ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... chills of horror. If I had laughed at that moment I cannot think what that justice would have said! But it was a pleasure to have the old man read the deed, looking at me over his spectacles from time to time to make sure I was not playing truant. There are good and great words in a deed. One of them I brought away with me from the conference, a very fine, big one, which I love to have out now and again to remind me of the really serious things of life. It gives me a peculiar dry, legal feeling. If I am about to enter upon ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... their times. The immediate effect of their views was decidedly in favor of Rationalism, because they almost uniformly deny the absolute authority of the Scriptures. They grant too much to reason. While Kant would drive the truant mind back to self-contemplation, he terminates by giving to reason a value and dignity so great that it becomes entitled to decide upon matters of faith. Their theories, spun out at such length and concluding in so little satisfaction, make us rejoice that we have not ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... the woods, where he stayed until the children returned at night. He kept this up for several days, fearing to return to school and take the whipping he knew he must get from his teacher. In the end his father heard that he was playing truant, and tried to force the boy back to school. Davy refused to go, and when his father tried to punish him, ran away from home and engaged himself to a drover. He was fifteen years old before he returned to his home, and then he had ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... brief colloquy elicited the melancholy fact that the boy had been left behind at Potsdam. The tutor thereupon turned back in one of the carriages, whilst the rest proceeded to the next stopping-place. In the course of an hour he returned with the truant seated by his side, dusty and footsore, but otherwise as fresh as when he had started. He had, it appeared, strayed from the party at Potsdam, and returned to the starting-place in time to see the carriages disappearing in the distance enveloped in a cloud of dust. He began to ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... a glance who rules us as her own, Opening my breast my heart in hand to take, Thus said to me: "Of this no mention make." I saw her then, in alter'd air, alone, So that I recognised her not—O shame Be on my truant mind and faithless sight! And when the truth I told her in sore fright, She soon resumed her old accustom'd frame, While, desperate and half dead, a hard rock ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... Honor was well round the corner, and running fast towards the cricket field. Vivian was very much disturbed and distressed. She scarcely knew what she ought to do. She ventured a little way into the grounds, but not a trace of any truant was to be seen, so she thought it useless to search far. One of the girls must have gone out; on that point she was ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... morn—at noon—at twilight dim— Maria! thou hast heard my hymn; In joy and woe—in good and ill— Mother of God, be with me still! When the hours flew brightly by, And not a cloud obscured the sky, My soul, lest it should truant be, Thy grace did guide to thine and thee; Now, when storms of fate o'ercast Darkly my present and my past, Let my future radiant shine, With sweet hopes ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... one of them gave an address far up in the Bronx, ten miles away. They had not been home for a week, he said. Was he lying? What was to be done? Somewhere in the city their homes must be discovered. And the talk of the truant officer made Roger feel ramifications here which wound out through the police and the courts to reformatories, distant cells. He thought of that electric chair, and suddenly he felt oppressed by the ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... girl whose opinion was always received with respect. Ida went off obediently to fulfil her behests; and Constance, after searching in Maggie's room and wandering in different parts of the grounds, found the truant at last, comfortably established with a pile of new books and magazines in the library. The library was the most comfortable room in the house, and Maggie was leaning back luxuriously in an easy-chair, reading ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... must all come in, and bow 'way down to the ground, and say, 'O, respected teacher, grant us knowledge.' They are very polite in India.—All but Prudy, she may stay behind and play truant." ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... gems. Her dark hair, though drawn low upon the temples in acknowledgment of the prevailing mode, was bound in fashion of her own by a gem-clasped, golden fillet, under which it broke into a riot of lesser curls which swept over ears and temples. Here and there a gleaming jewel confined some such truant lock, so that she glittered, half-barbaric, as she walked, surmounted by a thousand trembling points of light. Ease, confidence, carelessness seemed spoken alike by the young woman's half haughty carriage and her ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... cried, with her usual buoyant air. "You truant! We've all been wondering what had become of you. Busy, of course! Always the same excuse! Find something fresh. You used it a fortnight ago to refuse my invitation to take pot-luck ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... the supposition, they talked about the hour they should get back that evening, and wondered if Mrs Ashford would have supper ready for them in her own parlour. And it was equally plain that, whatever their destination might be, they were not starting on a truant's expedition, for the said Mrs Ashford presently came out and handed them each a small parcel of sandwiches, and enjoined on them most particularly to keep well buttoned up, and not let their feet ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... in the stage, and has been playing truant here," he mused, lazily. "Looked as if he'd been up to some devilment, or more like as if he was primed for it. If he'd been a little older, I'd have bet he was in league with some road-agents to watch the coach. Just my luck to have him light ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... some kingly match in Town, To give the scene its fitting ode, Sir! Could Pindar fire the athletic lyre, A truant from his bright abode, Sir, How would he chant the Chief heroic, The trundler's hope become zeroic, The drives from liberal shoulders poured, The changing history of the Board! Long may the champion's pith be scored In figures leaping on ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... why should I whip him? Strange visitant, Has he been playing truant this long summer day? I listened a moment; more clear and more shrill Rang the voice of the bird, as he ...
— Ballads • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... parasol, and grasp the fishing rod. However it may be, whether the water queen below wished to compliment the earthly queen above,—we know that ladies are prone to be polite to each other—or that some truant fish remained behind to become an easy prey to the enemy, suffice it to say that Mistress Ulrica was generally fortunate; but she did not—as she might have done—make use of her advantage, as she herself would say, "to cause her husband ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... "that sometimes the old lady tires of her splendor, sends the maids away to visit their cousins, and turns in and works for a day or two like all possessed. She's been seen hanging out blankets on a windy day in the back yard, with a face as happy as that of a child playing truant." ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... the truant,' said Lucilla, turning aside. 'Owen, where have you hidden yourself? I hope you are ready to sink into the earth with shame at hearing you have rubbed off the bloom from a young ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... brought the tea while Cerissa looked after her little charge. Cerissa sat on the kitchen porch sewing and expanding under the deep attention of the cook; they could see Middy a little way off on the tennis-court wiping the mud gravely from a truant ball he had found among the nasturtiums. All was as peaceful as the time of day and the season ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... has left his city and fled, after him his wife has entered the house of another, if that man shall return and has seized his wife, because he hated his city and fled, the wife of the truant shall not return ...
— The Oldest Code of Laws in the World - The code of laws promulgated by Hammurabi, King of Babylon - B.C. 2285-2242 • Hammurabi, King of Babylon
... the boys sat at his iron-barred window, wide awake. He was a Truant, and had never yet been in any place from which he could not run away. He felt that his school-fellows depended upon him to run away and bring them assistance, and he knew that his reputation as a Truant was at stake. His responsibility was so heavy that ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... they had to rest. They sat down on a curbstone, with Toby between them, and were just beginning to discuss the reward when a heavy hand fell on Mick's shoulder. It was the school porter. In spite of their protests he insisted that Mick was playing truant, and marched him off to school. Jane, left alone with Toby, debated what she ought to do. The reward was to be got in a village three or four miles at the other side of Rowallan, so she would have to wait and go back with ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... it was sharpened, and the man turned to me with, "Now, you little rascal, you've played truant! Scud to school, or you'll ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... indeed. Pen, who was plunged in his shame and grief in London, and torn with great remorse for thinking of his mother's sorrow, would have wondered, had he seen how easily she bore the calamity. Indeed, calamity is welcome to women if they think it will bring truant affection home again: and if you have reduced your mistress to a crust, depend upon it that she won't repine, and only take a very little bit of it for herself, provided you will eat the remainder in ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... person of this temper you repeat the hard maxims of workaday wisdom, he escapes from you with the smiling audacity of a truant boy. He is one who has awakened right early on a wonderful morning. There is a spectacle to be seen by those who have eyes for it. He is not willing out of respect for you to miss it. He hears the music, and he follows it. It is the music ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... said Gunson, as we drew near our resting-place; and I believe now he said it to try and cheer me on. "Perhaps while we have been away the truant may have returned." ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... barren cliffs the ravenous vulture dwells, Who never fattens on the prey which from afar he smells; But, patient, watching hour on hour upon a lofty rock, He singles out some truant lamb, ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... and had cheered, and then kicked Gus Elliot, and "laid for him" in the evening with the "boys." He was one of the upper graduates of Pushton street-corners, and having spent an idle, vicious boyhood, truant half the time from school, had now arrived at the dignity of clerk in a store, that thrived feebly on the scattering trade that filtered through and past Mr. Hard's larger establishment. He was one of the worst phases of the male gossip, and ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... and followed me home; I took him into the house and had him fed, intending to keep him until I could discover the owner. For this act of kindness the dog expressed thanks in the usual way. Rover, although used to play the truant, from the moment the little stranger entered the premises, never quitted us till he saw him fairly off. His manner towards us became more ingratiating than usual, and he seemed desirous, by his assiduities and attentions, to show us, that we stood ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... as if I were a truant, being away from Washington to-day, but I thought that perhaps if I were absent the Congress would have the more leisure to adjourn. I do not ordinarily open my office at Washington on Saturday. Being a schoolmaster, ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson |
