"Urchin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... do, dar," shouted the biggest boy, a woolly-heady urchin, with nothing on but a big pair of trousers that came up under his arms and were fastened over his shoulders by two bits of string, "jist you come on dis side and jump down, ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... than half a century before, Daniel Herbert, then a country urchin tending cattle on the hillside where now stood his turreted stone mansion, had decided that some day when he should be rich he would return and buy that hillside and the great reach of flat river-bottom that lay adjacent to it, and there build his home. His worldly goods at the time of this decision ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... She needs no rivals apprehend. Her sex, with universal voice, Must laugh at her capricious choice. Cadenus many things had writ: Vanessa much esteem'd his wit, And call'd for his poetic works: Meantime the boy in secret lurks; And, while the book was in her hand, The urchin from his private stand Took aim, and shot with all his strength A dart of such prodigious length, It pierced the feeble volume through, And deep transfix'd her bosom too. Some lines, more moving than the rest, Stuck to the point that pierced her breast, And, borne directly ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... earnest but indistinct hum of the two children's voices, as Violet and Peony wrought together with one happy consent. Violet still seemed to be the guiding spirit; while Peony acted rather as a laborer and brought her the snow from far and near. And yet the little urchin evidently had a proper understanding ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... fell out of the window again, and stuck out her tongue like an impudent urchin. "A pair of smarties," she scoffed. "Come home and fret our ears with your college slang. ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... An urchin came by, bawling oranges. They looked small and sour, but, for sheer lack of anything better to do, Alec went out of the car to buy a couple. He was just stepping in again to present them when, to his surprise, he became aware that one of the various people on the platform was ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... games, Without the baffled North-wind calls. But soft! a sultry morning breaks; The ground-pines wash their rusty green, The maple-tops their crimson tint, On the soft path each track is seen, The girl's foot leaves its neater print. The pebble loosened from the frost Asks of the urchin to be tost. In flint and marble beats a heart, The kind Earth takes her children's part, The green lane is the school-boy's friend, Low leaves his quarrel apprehend, The fresh ground loves his top and ball, The air ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... a blessing which you never enjoyed." There never was any thing finer or more moving! Your sensibility will not be quite so much affected by a story I heard t'other day of Sir Fletcher Norton. He has a mother—yes, a mother: perhaps you thought that, like that tender urchin Love, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... of that brimming Loddon river. 'Do not expect us before six o'clock,' said I, as I left the house; 'Six at soonest!' added my charming companion; and off we drove in our little pony chaise, drawn by our old mare, and with the good humoured urchin, Henry's successor, a sort of younger Scrub, who takes care of horse and chaise, and cow and ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... tiny urchin spoke,— "My daddy's Giles the ditcher; I water fetch, and, oh! I've ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... to be vigorously replaced, so that stray strands were apt to be tossing about her eyes—fearless, direct blue eyes, that looked out of her square, wrinkled, weather-beaten little face with the sincere gaze of an urchin. Back of her chair lay a bundle of white-oak splits for use in her by-trade of basket-weaver; above them hung bundles of drying herbs, for Nancy was a sick-nurse and a bit of an herb-doctor. She had made a hard and a more or less losing fight against poverty—the ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... known the soft, inchanting wiles, Which Cupid practised in Aurelia's smiles. 'Till by degrees, like the fam'd Asian taught, Safely I drank the sweet, tho' pois'nous draught. Love vex'd to see his favours vainly shown, The peevish Urchin murthered with a frown. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... Bot. Mag. 4326.—This is another of the Mamillaria-like kinds, and is remarkable for the depressed form of its stem, which may be likened to a sea urchin, both in size and shape. Old plants are from 6 in. to 8 in. in diameter, and about 4 in. high; the spiral formed by the tubercles rises very gradually, and each of the latter is surmounted by a tuft of strong, brown, radiating ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... cased in this heavy armour of reason; Cupid himself may strain his bow, and exhaust his quiver upon you in vain. But have a care—you cannot live in armour all your life—lay it aside but for a moment, and the little bold urchin will make it his prize. Remember, in one of Raphael's pictures, Cupid creeping into the armour of the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... snug retreat. (Sensation.) From the moment when he was roused from his slumbers in the early morning by Sweeps who came to attend to somebody else's chimneys—(cries of "Shame!")—to a late hour, frequently close on eleven at night, when a loud-lunged urchin bawled out a false alarm of a local murder in the "latest edition," his whole life was one continual contest with organs, with or without monkeys or babies, shouting fern-vendors, brass bands, broken-winded concertinas, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... furtive glance of the urchin, I perceived that he recognised me; he spoke a couple of words to his father, who, turning his head in the direction where I stood, muttered an interjectional "Ugh!" and resumed his previous calm attitude, contrasting oddly with ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... Hares[193] are abundant, and turn white in winter like those of Norway. The wolverine or carcajou is called by the hunters beaver-eater, and somewhat resembles a badger; the skin is soft and handsome. A species of porcupine or urchin is found to the northward, and supplies the Indians with quills about four inches long, which, when dyed, are worked into showy ornaments. Squirrels[194] and various other small quadrupeds with fine furs are abundant in the forests. ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... attained the middle age, with an eye in which spirit, intelligence, philanthropy, and, at that moment, paternal fondness were equally glowing. He tossed in his arms, with paternal pride, a laughing urchin of some three or four years, who rioted in the amusement which brought him, and the author of his being, for a time seemingly on a level. A fair Venetian dame, with golden locks and glowing cheeks, such as Titian ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... ugly Urchin: Did Uncle's Usher urge an ugly Urchin? If Uncle's Usher urg'd an ugly Urchin, Where's the ugly Urchin Uncle's ...
— Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation • Anonymous
... formation of opinions is vastly dependent upon circumstances. Whang-shing is born in the Celestial Empire; and the chances are that the fellow will go the length of pinning his faith to Confucius. Yonder squalid urchin, turning out of Saffron Hill or some other sweet-scented purlieus, has been cradled on the ragged lap of professional mendicancy; and there is a strong probability that he will come to a misunderstanding with the police one of these fine days. The mild-eyed priest ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... small hours of the Monday morning, and dossed on Banstead Downs that night. Next day they joined the great stream of traffic rolling out of London Epsomward. Young Joe, whose strength lay in his powers of sympathetic intuition, let Monkey drive. And the urchin took his place with pride in that vast stream of char-a-bancs, 'buses, hansoms, and drags rolling southward; and no four-in-hand coachman of them all held up his hand to stay the following traffic, or twiddled his whip with lordlier dignity ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... of the details. The three guards are foremost in the picture, and in merit; the struggle in their countenances between discipline and a sense of the ludicrous scene before them is admirably represented; as well as the little urchin with his tin sword. The centre figure of the High Sheriff, with his tattered and faded finery of office, is equally clever; but the skill with which the artist has contrived to express his forced mirth, and mopstick bravado, is still more forcible. The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... wearing white waists—not only Louise, who had become a good musician, had made the piano submit to long tortures, but her sister Maria, and Amedee also, already played the 'Bouquet de Bal' or 'Papa, les p'tits bateaux'. Rosine, too, in her character of street urchin, knew all the popular songs, and spent entire hours in picking out the airs with one finger ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the notice given, about three o'clock in the afternoon, came flying to the chief a ragged little urchin of the village, too breathless almost to make intelligible his news—that there were men at Mistress Conal's who would not go out of her house, and she and her old black cat were swearing ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... There's no occasion to leave nothing in the world but frights. I looked hard at the baby, to see if it was like Mortimer, but I could not make it out; those young things are like nothing. I tried if it would talk, for I wanted sadly to make it call Mrs Delvile grandmama; however, the little urchin could say nothing to be understood. O what a rage would Mrs Delvile have been in! I suppose this whole castle would hardly have been thought heavy enough to crush such an insolent brat, though it were to have fallen upon it all at ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... coming," was the general cry. There was a horrible tumult, which extended through the city as the congregation poured precipitately out of the Cathedral, to escape a band of destroying and furious Calvinists. Yet when the shock had a little subsided, it was discovered that a small urchin was the cause of the whole tumult. Having been bathing in the Scheldt, he had returned by way of the church with a couple of bladders under his arm. He had struck these against the door of the Cathedral, partly to dry them, partly from a love of mischief. Thus a great ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... laid down in the last sentence, it would follow that if man were constructed upon a plan as different from that of any other animal as that of a sea-urchin is from that of a whale, it would be "equally probable" that he had been developed from some other animal as it is now, when we know that for every bone, muscle, tooth, and even pattern of tooth, in man, there ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... been accomplished Chandrapal was again in Deadborough—a guest at the Rectory. It was Billy Rowe, an urchin of ten, who informed me of the arrival. Billy had just been let out of school, and was in the act of picking up a stone to throw at Lina Potts, whom he bitterly hated, when the Rectory carriage drove past the village ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... comfortable warmth into his bones. "No further than from this fire to my bed," and he listened with enjoyment to the rain which cracked upon the window like a shower of gravel flung by some mischievous urchin. He was not suffered to listen long, for the corpulent man ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... whereas the product of your own imagination, the mere figment, the sheer fiction, is adopted, petted, termed pretty, proper, sweetly natural—the little, spurious wretch gets all the comfits, the honest, lawful bantling all the cuffs. Such is the way of the world, Peter; and as you are the legitimate urchin, rude, unwashed, and ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... lies the Mole, disembowelled by the peasant's spade; at the foot of the hedge the pitiless urchin has stoned to death the Lizard, who was about to don his green, pearl-embellished costume. The passer-by has thought it a meritorious deed to crush beneath his heel the chance-met Adder; and a gust of wind has thrown a tiny unfeathered bird ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... the birling had drawn close to the boat; and Murray, shaking hands with his uncle and aunt, exclaimed to Wallace, "That urchin is such a monopolizer, I see you have not a greeting for any one else." On this Edwin raised his face, and turned to the affectionate welcomes of Lord Mar. Wallace stretched out his hand to the ever-gay Lord Andrew; and, inviting him into ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... Meanwhile the nets are brought on shore glittering with the fry of sardines, which are cooked like whitebait, with cuttlefish—amorphous objects stretching shiny feelers on the hot dry sand—and prickly purple eggs of the sea-urchin. Women go about their labour through the throng, some carrying stones upon their heads, or unloading boats and bearing planks of wood in single file, two marching side by side beneath one load of lime, others ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... affectionate eyes at the sturdy urchin. "I know how you feel, Peter; but wait a bit. It's sad and disheartening enough now, God knows, but perhaps better days may dawn for the patriots. My father says we must keep up our hearts as best we can, and trust ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... adjuncts of the deserted promenade may be comprised in the loitering waiter at the Bugle, amusing himself with his watch-chain, and anxiously listening for the roll of some welcome carriage—the sullen urchin, reluctantly wending his way to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... begun to grow a little anxious about his boy, but presently from the garden, up from the cliff-path, the two bounded in-little Felix with the brightest of eyes and rosiest of cheeks, and a great ruddy, white-beaded sea-urchin held in triumph ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... make her appear much shorter. She would sit and relate wonderful occurrences which seemed constantly taking place in her daughter's family; one of the children would cut his foot, and for sometime there would be danger of amputation—another urchin would upset a kettle of scalding water on himself, and then he would be laid up for sometime, while mamma turned the green-ribbon room topsy-turvy in her searches after old linen—and once the daughter fell down stairs, and was taken up for dead. They seemed to be an unfortunate family—always ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... and crying quietly. He did not dare say a word. It was well for him he did not. Clare, perplexed and anxious about the baby, was in no mood to accept annoyance from Tommy. But the urchin remaining silent, the elder boy's indignation ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... solemn-eyed urchin who had strayed in from the kitchen and now stood in the door hitching at a diminutive pair of trousers and eying Elliott absorbedly. "Gone!" he announced suddenly; coming ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... a snapping pull at the apron-strings and make for sweet liberty—a thing he was in the habit of doing about once a week, when the keenest switching and the liveliest dancing that one could wish to witness would follow, sure as fate. To do our urchin hero justice, however, he rarely yielded to the temptation without making some considerable effort to resist it; efforts such as older transgressors are apt to set down largely to their own credit in their private accounts between self and conscience, vaguely hoping ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... shrieked the smaller boys, with an impetuosity that made Mr. Grimshaw smile in spite of himself. One luckless urchin said, "Chucked it," for which happy expression he was kept ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Kate Clive! Ah! here comes her messenger," continued he, as an ancient man appeared with a letter in his hand. This letter Mrs. Woffington snatched and read, and at the same instant in bounced the call-boy. "Epilogue called," said this urchin, in the tone of command which these small fry of Parnassus adopt; and, obedient to his high behest, Mrs. Woffington moved to the door, with the Bracegirdle missive in her hand, but not before she had delivered its general contents: "The great actress will ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... renewed mystery on the following day. Astonishing-looking packages were smuggled from one room to another. Ned created a succession of panics, and at last the ubiquitous and garrulous little urchin had to be tied into a chair. Johnnie and Alf were in the seventh heaven of anticipation, and when Webb brought Amy a check for fifty dollars, and told her that it was the proceeds of his first crop from his brains, and that she must spend the money, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... provisions and various household necessities. Milk was brought to us daily from the above-mentioned cottage by a little toddler who seemed just able to carry the small tin bucket which held a lacteal pint. If the urchin had been the child of rich parents, as Euphemia sometimes observed, he would have been in his nurse's arms—but being poor, he was scarcely weaned before he began to carry milk around ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... Crow!" shouted out the young urchin, in a mimicking voice, and running up close to him as he was returning ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... not too dark to see what it is, Pierre. It is a small white cross that some urchin has chalked on ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... Medici 100 Have given their hearts to—all at eight years old. Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure, 'Twas not for nothing—the good bellyful, The warm serge and the rope that goes all round, And day-long blessed idleness beside! 105 "Let's see what the urchin's fit for"—that came next. Not overmuch their way, I must confess. Such a to-do! They tried me with their books; Lord, they'd have taught me Latin in pure waste! Flower o' the clove, 110 All the Latin ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... presence and a talkative group of people could not warm the imagination quite enough. He says, in speaking of the Carnival, "For my part, though I pretended to take no interest in the matter, I could have bandied confetti and nosegays as readily and riotously as any urchin there." These few words explain his magnetism. The decorous pretense of his observant calm could not make us forget the bursts of mirth and vigorous abandon which now and then revealed the flame of unstinted ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... romance fled, Even as a vision of the morning! Its rites foredone, its guardians dead, Its priestesses, bereft of dread, Waking the veriest urchin's scorning! Gone like the Indian wizard's yell And fire-dance round the magic rock, Forgotten like the Druid's spell At moonrise by his holy oak! No more along the shadowy glen Glide the dim ghosts of murdered men; ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... buy everything with plenty of money?" asked a seven-year-old urchin, on one of these occasions, looking solemnly up into his face with a pair of ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... shaken we feared to lose every tooth in our heads. It was a lovely evening, and we munched wild strawberries by the way, which we bought for twopence in a birch-bark basket from a shoeless little urchin on the road. We had no spoon of course; but we had been long enough in Finland to know the correct way to eat wild strawberries was with a pin. The pin reminds us of pricks, and pricks somehow remind of soap, and soap reminds us of a little incident ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... hands, easy, rolling gait, and boots from heel to hip, with inch-thick soles, like those of a dramatic buccaneer, he bore as little resemblance to the popular idea of a lace-coated, brass-buttoned, cock-hatted admiral as a sea-urchin bears to a cockle-shell. Nevertheless Manx was a real admiral—as real as ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... by living long enough. I, like any other man of my years, have in my day known more or less every grief which the world breeds; and each maddened me in turn, as each was duly salved by time; so that to-day their ravages vex me no more than do the bee-stings I got when I was an urchin. To-day I grant the world to be composed of muck and sunshine intermingled; but, upon the whole, I find the sunshine more pleasant to look at, and—greedily, because my time for sightseeing is not very long—I stare at it. And I hold Judith's ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... are sea-plant life and its animal evolution. The piers, arches, reeds and columns bear legendary decorative motifs of the transition of plant to animal life in the forms of tortoise and other shell motifs;—kelp and its analogy to the prehistoric lobster, skate, crab and sea urchin. The water-bubble motif is carried through all vertical members which symbolize the Crustacean Period, which is the second stratum ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... and her purpose had been to go home by the nearest way, and not pass through the Square. The villagers had feared this, and had forestalled her; at the turning where she would have left the main road, she found waiting for her the swiftest-footed urchin in all St. Mary's, little Pierre Michaud. The readiest witted, too, and of the freest tongue, and he was charged to bring Aunt Hibba by the way of the Square, but by no means ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... mind there framed a picture of himself riding along the road with a string between his fingers; and, following in the upper layers of air, a buzzing kite; and, down in the dust of the highway, an urchin trudging wistfully after the kite, drawn on irresistibly, in spite of his better judgment, on and on, horrified but fascinated, up ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... of a wave, swam lustily to it, and found Freddy inside: it was tied under his chin, and would have floated Goliath. Dodd turned to the ship, saw the poor mother with white face and arms outstretched as if she would fly at them, and held the urchin up high to her with a joyful "hurrah." The ship seemed alive and to hurrah in return with giant voice: the boat soon picked them up, and Dodd came up the side with Freddy in his arms, and placed him in his mother's with honest ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... suppose any one will steal him in a quarter of an hour or so; and I daresay we shall meet some village urchin whom I can send to ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... and clerks and shop-boys are great customers. Among these people, there ought to be a good crop of monetary sensations. In success, the little man-boy sees a grand vision of cheap cigars, and copper and paste jewellery; for the urchin early initiated in practical London-life, thinks of such things, and worse, when the country lad of the same age would dream of nothing beyond kites, fishing-tackle, or perhaps a gun. Molly, the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... we ran parallel to the one-thousand-foot wall of Horn Bluff meeting several boulders stranded on the ice, as well as the fragile shell of a tiny sea-urchin. The promontory was domed with snow and ice, more than one thousand two hundred feet above sea-level. From it streamed a blue glacier overflowing through a rift in the face. Five miles on our way, the sledge passed from frictionless ice to rippled ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... in the door. His dishevelled hair made him look like a sea-urchin; his face was quite disfigured with black marks of violence; behind his bleeding left ear still stuck the cigarette. His swollen upper lip was drawn sideways and gave him the expression of a ghastly smile. His eyes looked out helpless, dispirited, ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... the dreamt-of fortune came would be more welcome if there were an heir to whom to leave it. What was the good of being rich, if the money went to collateral relatives? There was his nephew Savinien, a disagreeable urchin whom he looked on with indifference; and he was biased regarding his brother, who had all but failed several times in business, and to whose aid he had come to save the honor of the name. The mistress had ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... Cuckoo, who had travelled seven hundred miles with us. In a year and a half Cuckoo had grown immensely, and being in a good suit of clothes, he was with difficulty recognized by his savage-looking parent, who had parted with him as a naked, ash-smeared little urchin of between six and seven ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... there came a pattering of little feet and two small figures scrambled into the vacant seat in front of Redmond. His gaze fell on a diminutive, red-headed, inquisitive-faced urchin of some eight years, and a small, gray-eyed, wistful-looking maiden, perhaps about a year younger, with hair that matched the boy's in colour. Under one dimpled arm she clutched tightly to her—upside-down—a fat, squirming fox-terrier puppy. Hand-in-hand, in an attitude of breathless, ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... though the urchin deem it "rot" (Such hasty views we stoop'd to, Not seeing how on earth they ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... the urchin, with a grimace to attract the attention of the crowd. They looked in the direction indicated, and then in' chorus began to shout. Old Robin turned and glanced indifferently down the road. The next instant he wheeled and his black hand made a clutch at the boy, who dodged ...
— Bred In The Bone - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... urchin made little hills of dust, using a well worn slipper for a trowel, and Dobbin kicked and stamped impatiently, occasionally taking another drink, and still the ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... clear, that her stepfather was dull and weak: that mamma dropped her H's, and was not refined in manners or appearance; and that little Frank was a spoiled quarrelsome urchin, always having his way, always treading upon her feet, always upsetting his dinner on her dresses, and keeping her out of her inheritance. None of these, as she felt, could comprehend her: and her solitary heart naturally pined for other ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... other. He could have handled these implements to better purpose and with better grace had not his arms been firmly held by three laughing girls, who pulled not wisely, but too well. He was further incommoded by the presence of a small urchin who lay on the dusty ground beneath his feet, fastening an upward clutch on ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the hunter fell upon the outstretched legs of the dozer, who cringed and groaned, but did not start. Another and another, and yet another, fell with the quickness and force of a pedagogue's rod on the legs of an offending urchin, till the aroused, maddened and enraged victim of the seeming cruelty leaped to his feet, and, with doubled fists, rushed upon the assailant, who darted off into the snow and led his pursuer a doubling race of several hundred ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... going into the salting-house, we observe a little urchin running by the side of them, and hitting their edges with a long cane, in a constant succession of smart strokes, until they are fairly carried through the gate, when he quickly returns to perform the same office for the next series that arrive. The object of this apparently ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... and that casual touch of communalism made him feel more at home. He took out his watch—it was already five minutes past eight: over those high narrow streets, with their thin strip of sky, the big clock of Parliament had boomed the hour and he had not heard it. Away scurried the urchin as though already late for something, excitedly calling on others to follow; and the King, with the presumption that these running feet would be sure to lead him in the direction where he wished to go, followed them round two corners. After that all ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... the boy came back and told her what she wanted to know; the friar had disappeared within the doors of a little church by the sea-shore, not many yards distant, a church under the charge of an austere religious, Father Hieronymus. Delighted, Lysidice gave the urchin his piece of ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... might satisfy Ann Knight, And classic Mitford just not fright. Just such a one I've found, and send it; If liked, I give—if not, but lend it. The moral? nothing can be sounder. The fable? 'tis its own expounder— A Mother teaching to her Chit Some good book, and explaining it. He, silly urchin, tired of lesson, His learning seems to lay small stress on, But seems to hear not what he hears; Thrusting his fingers in his ears, Like Obstinate, that perverse funny one, In honest parable of Bunyan. His working Sister, more sedate, Listens; but in a kind of state, The painter ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... peculiar character of the place have been felt even by the natives, who have called it Sogoton (properly, a bay in the sea). In the very hard limestone, which is like marble, I observed traces of bivalves and multitudes of spines of the sea-urchin, but no well-defined remains could be knocked off. The river could still be followed a short distance further upwards; and in its bed there were disjointed fragments of talcose and ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... has been already said, was a robust and combative urchin, and at the age of four began to struggle against the yoke and authority of his nurse. That functionary was a good-hearted, tearful, scatter-brained girl, lately taken by Tom's mother, Madam Brown, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... to-night any unicorn I may see I will not find myself at liberty to catch. (N.B.—should you meditate really an addition to the 'Elegant Extracts'—mind this last joke is none of mine but my father's; when walking with me when a child, I remember, he bade a little urchin we found fishing with a stick and a string for sticklebacks in a ditch—'to mind that he brought any sturgeon he might catch to the king'—he having a claim on such a prize, by courtesy if ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... laborious epistle, terse and to the point, written with a stub of pencil on the corner of a piece of wrapping paper, and addressed by a kindly clerk at the post office where Buck bought the stamped envelope. It was the same clerk who usually paid to the urchin his monthly money order, so he knew the address. For the inditing of the letter Buck went to night school two whole weeks before he could master enough letters and words to finish it to his ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... village where the custom is to wear ponchos with broad fringes, brightly colored, and knitted caps richly decorated with tasseled tops and elaborate ear-tabs, a costume whose design shows no trace of European influence. Side by side with these picturesque visitors was a barefooted Cuzco urchin clad in a striped jersey, cloth cap, coat, and pants of ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... Ha!" she exclaimed, as Archelaus, by habit obedient to the word of command, faced about towards the balustrade. "There was a coat-tail missing yesterday, if I remember, when you crept out from the bushes like a whipped urchin, and now there's two: and you'll be telling me that these fine stitches were put in by Jane Treacher, who is like most soldier's wives, and ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of one of them, and following the slow pace of the animals I re-entered Rimini without the slightest notice being taken of me, even by the drivers of the mules. I gave some money to the first street urchin I met, and he took me to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... crept under the tent, and reached out some platters and spoons. Maggie trembled a little, and was afraid the tears would come into her eyes. Meanwhile the tall girl gave a shrill cry, and presently came running up the boy whom Maggie had passed as he was sleeping,—a rough urchin about the age of Tom. He stared at Maggie, and there ensued much incomprehensible chattering. She felt very lonely, and was quite sure she should begin to cry before long; the gypsies didn't seem to mind her at all, and she felt ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... scratches. Don't ever forget to wear some kind of shoes in the water. Even though you're wearing a mask or goggles, take along a gig or some slender stick and feel your way along so you don't fall into a hole you can't see in the deceptive near-tropical waters. If, despite precautions, you get a sea urchin's needlelike spine broken off in your skin, soak the wound in vinegar which will dissolve the fragments and stop the pain in ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company
... urchin, tossing up a handful of the hot dust into the air, part of which in descending fell into ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... gaiety that those who have watched French children in the Gardens of the Luxembourg or Tuileries, or a French seaside resort, know to be absolutely truthful. For the Gallic bebe certainly seems less "rampageous" than the English urchin. A certain daintiness of movement and timidity in the boys especially adds a grace of its own to the games of French children which is not without its peculiar charm. This is singularly well caught ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... passed by the black-tail and the 'thrush', The sea-merle and the shadow of the sea? Best to Corcyra go for cuttlefish, For the acarne and the fat sea-skull The purple-fish, the little murex too, Mice of the sea and the sea-urchin sweet. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... and Bobsey, in their rambles after strawberries, had met two other children, and, early in the acquaintance, fortunately brought them to the house. The moment I saw the strange girl, I recognized a rural type of Melissa Daggett, while the urchin of Bobsey's age did not scruple to use vile language in my hearing. I doubt whether the poor little savage had any better vernacular. I told them kindly but firmly that they must not come on the ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... shirts and skull-caps, wandered through the lines, gazing wonderingly at all they saw; while in strange contrast to their unintelligible jabberings, rose the familiar patois of the barrack-room, or snatches of some popular music-hall song hummed or whistled by every urchin in the ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... had been for years practically deserted by the children. Jacob's Red Astrakhan and Granny Garland trees hung thick with apples, but no Riverboro or Edgewood boy stole them; for terrifying accounts of the fate that had overtaken one urchin in times agone had been handed along from boy to boy, protecting the Moody fruit far better ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... small black boys learned on their back little brothers equally inky, and, gravely depositing them, shook hands. Never had I seen human beings so clad, or rather so unclad, in such amazing squalid-ness and destitution of garments. I recall one small urchin without a rag of clothing save the basque waist of a lady's dress, bristling with whalebones, and worn wrong side before, beneath which his smooth ebony legs emerged like those of an ostrich from its plumage. How weak is imagination, how cold is memory, that ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... me full time to hear particulars about the boy whom I left in your care—a wilful, petted urchin, ten years of age he ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... suited for a necromancer. It was at different times a brazier's shop and a magazine for lint, and in my younger days was employed for the latter use; but no family would inhabit the haunted walls as a residence; and bold was the urchin from the High School who dared approach the gloomy ruin at the risk of seeing the Major's enchanted staff parading through the old apartments, or hearing the hum of the necromantic wheel, which procured for his sister such a character as a spinner. At the time I am writing this last fortress ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... understood by the outsider. Slight differences of pronunciation are noticeable in different parts of the country: the people of Seibo are inclined to use the vowel "i" instead of the consonant "r" and say "poique" instead of "porque," somewhat as the New York street urchin says "boid" for "bird"; the people of Santiago sometimes drop the "r" entirely and say "poque," as the Southern negro in the United States says "fo" for "four"; the peasants of Puerto Plata show a tendency to use the "u" instead of "o" and say "tudu" instead of "todo," ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... The urchin caught the hat deftly on the back of his head, and pranced up to Ann with his hands ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... merely boorish or torpidly savage towards Aunt Belle and Aunt Belle's way with him—as with all combative men—was to rally him with a kind of boisterous chaff and to discharge it at him as an urchin with an armful of snowballs fearfully discharges them at an old gentleman in a silk hat: backing away, that is to say, before an advance and advancing before a retreat. Uncle Pyke usually retreated, either ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... children, who found him guilty without waiting for the summing-up, and hanged him without benefit of clergy. Thus Baby Charles, and the Twelfth-night Queen of Hearts, and the overgrown schoolboy Cottington, and that little urchin Laud—who would reduce a verdict of 'guilty, death,' by famine, if it were impregnable by composition—all impannelled against poor Archy for presenting them bitter physic the last day of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... all had been told to keep away from the ditch at the bottom of the field; but, notwithstanding this injunction, one little urchin, of the name of Jarvis, seeing a flower in the hedge on the opposite bank, which he wished to gather, crept nearer and nearer to ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... and said to his master, "I marvel, senor, at the boldness of Altisidora, the duchess's handmaid; he whom they call Love must have cruelly pierced and wounded her; they say he is a little blind urchin who, though blear-eyed, or more properly speaking sightless, if he aims at a heart, be it ever so small, hits it and pierces it through and through with his arrows. I have heard it said too that the arrows of Love are blunted and robbed of ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... they have seen which were like the color they are studying, and show them some of the more familiar kinds; also speak of the action of the sun in making certain fruits red,—the raspberries and strawberries, for instance. Some rosy-faced little urchin in the class may be chosen and asked how he keeps such red cheeks, and from this the idea of red as the color of warmth and life may be developed. We may proceed with blue and yellow, then with violet, orange, and green, ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... fun isn't all over yet; you can ride too." Tossing the urchin up, Jack set him behind Link. "Hold on ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... half-witted lad, of very small stature, who had a kind of charge of the poultry under the old henwife; for in a Scottish family of that day there was a wonderful substitution of labour. This urchin being sent for from the stubble-field, was hastily muffled in the buff coat, and girded rather to than with the sword of a full-grown man, his little legs plunged into jack-boots, and a steel cap put upon his head, which seemed, from its size, as if it had been intended to extinguish him. ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... pa," lisped a little urchin in the kitchen. "Man wants to see him. What for funny ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... surely, of one who was actually drowned in the sea," said the clergyman. "It might be suitably placed on many of the memorial slabs in the church yonder," he continued, waving his hand towards the casement that looked on the churchyard. "But your sea-urchin—" ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... such thing with my consent, Guy. Go with the rest, and I'll put this cross urchin in charge of Mr. Bunker," replied Mr. Sherwood. Then turning to the ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... volunteered the moment Conscription was declared and had been fighting bravely in the Army Clothing Department ever since. Further she supposed the Babe's father was in Parliament and that he was a Conscientious Objector. In Hyde Park one urchin addressed him as "Daddy" and asked him what he was doing in the Great War; another gambolled round and round him making noises like a rabbit. In Knightsbridge a Military Policeman wanted to arrest him as a deserter. The Babe ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... din, and let me hear the lady speak!' addressing herself, in no very gentle voice, to a little urchin of about a year old. She apologetically continued to Margaret, 'He's always mithering me for "daddy" and "butty;" and I ha' no butties to give him, and daddy's away, and forgotten us a', I think. He's his father's ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... mice at night Can wake more fright Than lions at midday. An urchin small Torments us all Who tread his ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... of my boyhood. He crossed my path in the sweetest weather, and the sweetest season of the year, when all nature called to the fields, and the rural feeling throbbed in every bosom; but when I, luckless urchin! was doomed to be mewed up, during the livelong day, in that purgatory of boyhood, a school-room. It seemed as if the little varlet mocked at me, as he flew by in full song, and sought to taunt me ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... his head; so-so,—that's right." Philip's sallow cheek and long hair were now tenderly lapped on the soliloquist's bosom. "Poor wretch! he smiles; perhaps he is thinking of home, and the butterflies he ran after when he was an urchin—they never come back, those days;—never—never—never! I think the wind veers to the east; he may catch cold;"—and with that, the man, sliding the head for a moment, and with the tenderness of a woman, from his breast to his shoulder, unbuttoned ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... desired effect, for every urchin on the ground went industriously to work to wring the necks of the wounded birds. Judge Temple retired toward his dwelling with that kind of feeling that many a man has experienced before him, who discovers, after the excitement of the moment has passed, that ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... not in a spirit of revenge, but for the benefit of the culprit and the good of society. Now, Sir, the opportunity has been thrown in your way of slipping out of the pillory without risk of serious injury; but, like an obstinate urchin, you have chosen to quarrel with your opportunity and remain there, and thus you compel me to deal with you as schoolmasters used to do with stupid boys in bygone days—that is to say, you force me ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... potential maternity to mother an orphan asylum; too busy, too absorbed, too radiantly absent-minded to see a husband in any man, but claiming every child in the universe as her very own. There was never anywhere an urchin so dirty, so ragged, so naughty, that it could not climb into Mistress Mary's lap, and from thence into her heart. The neophytes partook of her zeal in greater or less degree, and, forsaking all probability of lovers (though every one of them was young and pretty), they tied on their ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... bull, until the milkmaid finds The nipple, next day, sore, and udder dry. Call not thy brothers brethren! Call me not Mother; for if I brought thee forth, it was As foolish hens at times hatch vipers, by Sitting upon strange eggs. Out, urchin, out! [Exit BERTHA. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... wild, mournful note to stare at me. A wisp of smoke stole from a stone chimney, and the smell that corn-pone and bacon leave was in the air. A bolt was slammed back, a door creaked and stuck, was flung open, and with a "Va t'en, mechant!" a cotton-clad urchin was cast out of the house, and fled into the dusty street. Breathing the morning air in the doorway, stood a young woman in a cotton gown, a saucepan in hand. She had inquisitive eyes, a pointed, prying nose, and I knew her to be the village gossip, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill |
