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Vagrant   /vˈeɪgrənt/   Listen
Vagrant

adjective
1.
Continually changing especially as from one abode or occupation to another.  Synonyms: aimless, drifting, floating, vagabond.  "The floating population" , "Vagrant hippies of the sixties"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Vagrant" Quotes from Famous Books



... quick notes of the song suited the sunshiny weather, the sheen of the river, the azure skies. A light wind brought from the orchard a vagrant troop of pink and white petals to camp upon the silken sleeve of Mistress Evelyn Byrd. The gentleman sitting beside her gathered them up and gave them again to ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... to one thou wert A Jew's possession, got in honest barter; Next, John the ostler's; last of all, past doubt A vagrant's hat; the equitable purchase Of an ill-sung song. Till quite worn out With rain, and wind, and sleet, and other 'ills Thy race is heir to,' the beggar cast thee From his plebeian pate—and here ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... exercise and were enervated in the ease so propitious to vices. At last the eldest of those who shared the name of Grep, wishing to regulate and steady his promiscuous wantonness, ventured to seek a haven for his vagrant amours in the love of the king's sister. Yet he did amiss. For though it was right that his vagabond and straying delights should be bridled by modesty, yet it was audacious for a man of the people to covet the child of a king. She, much fearing the impudence of her ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... cross the Tuileries Garden I run my eyes over the groups scattered among the chestnut-trees. I see children playing and falling about; nursemaids who leave them crying; mothers who pick them up again; a vagrant guardsman. No Jeanne. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... Coton Manor would have been trying to anyone; to Durant they were intolerable. For limbs that had roamed the world to be tucked up under the Colonel's whist table, for a mind equally vigorous and vagrant to be tied to the apron-strings of the Colonel's intellect, was really a refinement of torture. Thrice Durant had tried to find an exit into the surrounding landscape, and thrice the Colonel had been too quick for him. ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... short of breath, from her haste, she ran it down at last, and came upon it—a series of small waterfalls down which a small stream tumbled recklessly along a vagrant watercourse, seeming to care little when it reached its destination, so that it contrived to have plenty of fun and exercise by the way. And on the bank, stretched recumbent, hands clasped under head, ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond

... were happy, peaceful days for California. The vagrant keels of prying Commerce had not as yet ruffled the lordly gravity of her bays. No torn and ragged gulch betrayed the suspicion of golden treasure. The wild oats drooped idly in the morning heat, or wrestled with the afternoon breezes. ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte

... I thought of it, I suddenly remembered my dream of being similarly smothered in the Gnomons by slowly inpouring grain. A superstitious mind would have feared that dream foretold my fate, but I was rational enough to perceive that it must have been suggested to me by a vagrant memory of the ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... Delia, on thy balmy lips Let me, no vagrant insect, rove; O let me steal one liquid kiss, For Oh! my soul is ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... time there was a little hunchback girl in the court, upon whom the duke fixed his vagrant desires, and she became his unconcealed favorite. The duke was ever in the habit of talking freely with Catharine about his paramours and praising ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... him with that clear, disarming gaze that she knew how to achieve so perfectly. He felt a great yearning overwhelm him ... a desire to meet her halfway ... a vagrant ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... 'Tis not the thing t' accept the terms, But dread th' event—the tale affirms. A Stag approach'd the Sheep, to treat For one good bushel of her wheat. "The honest Wolf will give his bond." At which, beginning to despond, "The Wolf (cries she) 's a vagrant bite. And you are quickly out of sight; Where shall I find or him or you Upon the day ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... a ballet-dancer with opera-glasses; we pick his rays to pieces with prisms as if they were so many skeins of colored yarn; we tell him we do not want his company and shut him out like a troublesome vagrant. The gods of the old heathen are the servants of to-day. Neptune, Vulcan, Aolus, and the bearer of the thunderbolt himself have stepped down from their pedestals and put on our livery. We cannot always master them, neither can we always master our servant, the horse, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... that may be, I have thought it well to acquaint you with my way of thinking; and I venture to think—I venture to hope Mr. Kurnatovsky will be received a bras ouverts. He is no Montenegrin vagrant.' ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev

... told by the two witnesses was calculated to make. But, on hearing the cross-examination of those witnesses, and seeing no evidence against the defendant but from sources so impure and corrupt—recollecting the severe penalties of the Vagrant Acts, and sitting there not merely as a judge, but also exercising the functions of a jury, he could not bring himself to convict on such evidence. The witnesses, impure as they were, were NOT SUPPORTED BY MR MACKENZIE ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... donum; Poverty thy summum bonum; Thy frigid couch a sandstone stratum; A colder grave thy ultimatum; Circumventing, circumvented; In short, excessively tormented, Everything combines to scare Charity's dear pensioner! —Say, vagrant, can'st thou grant to me A slice of thy philosophy? Haply, in thy many trudgings, Having found unchallenged lodgings, Thy thoughts, unused to saddle-crupper, Ambling no farther than thy supper— Thou, by the light of heaven-lit taper, Mendest thy prospective paper! Then, jolly pauper, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... have a story yourself," said the dusty vagrant—impudently, it seemed to me. "Suppose you take your dime back and spin your yarn for me. I'm interested myself in the ups and downs of unfortunate ones who spend their ...
— Options • O. Henry

... sessions for the county of Northumberland, the chief constable was questioned by the magistrates about the strange state of affairs in the district, and reported that the encampment was a little way from the highway, and that, therefore, the lady could not be apprehended under the Vagrant Act! A summons, however, had been taken out by the local surveyor, and would be followed by a warrant. On that summons the so-called countess was convicted; but appealed to the Court of ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... It's twenty mile away; and coming back I begs a trifle on the road. To jail with him! At last, the constable, the keeper—anybody—finds me anywhere, a-doing anything. To jail with him, for he's a vagrant, and a jail-bird known; and jail's the only home ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens

... the philosophic sense of "accident") a cause of pleasure, pain, or desire seems to explain the essence of all the particular variations of the psychological phenomena known now by all who have been aroused to the significance of their vagrant cryptic slumbers, as the phenomena of symbolism, sublimation, and fetich worship. Spinoza's proposition explains all the phenomena adequately because among the fundamental human emotions, Spinoza like Freud—if ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... the readings of a literary vagrant. One book led to another, one study to another. The first was published with trepidation. Since no bones were broken, the second was launched with greater confidence. So, by insensible degrees, a young man of our generation acquires, in his own eyes, a kind of ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... ideas. All those vagabond, roving propensities will cease. They are the offspring of idleness of mind and a want of something to fix the feelings. You are like a bark without an anchor, that drifts about at the mercy of every vagrant breeze or trifling eddy. Get a wife, and she'll anchor you. But don't marry a fool because she has a pretty face, and don't seek after a great belle. Get such a girl as Mary ——, or get her if you ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... paying rent and yet dragging a pallet out of the corner and finding or waiting for a place to throw it in, like a little vagrant, is very characteristic of East Side tenements. She paid $36 a year for lodging, and yet can scarcely be said to have received for this sum any definite space at all under a roof-tree, honestly provided for her as her own, but simply the chance of getting such ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt

... sleep. Turning at full length upon his back, his arms above his head, he stared steadily up into the darkness until his brain, freed of all lesser problems, all vagrant thoughts, was concentrated upon the great problem ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... valley was a tapestry, where, from earliest Spring until the grapes were gathered colour and light were caught and imprisoned within the web. At the bend in the river, where the rushes grew thickly, the river-god kept his harp, which answered with shy, musical murmurings to every vagrant wind. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... disappeared; so did the old Acts against the Lollards; so did the Act of the Six Articles. A curious attempt was made to deal with the problem of vagrancy, the outcome of prevalent economic conditions, which the penalties of flogging and hanging had failed to repress. The vagrant was to be brought before the magistrates, branded, and handed over to some honest person as a "slave" for two years. If he attempted to escape from servitude, he was to be branded again and made a slave for life; if still ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... as she watched her down the street, With brow grown bright with sunny thought, And heart o'erfilled with something sweet, She knew the vagrant child had brought The blessing of ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland

... the marauders, determined Mothibi and his people to leave their present place of settlement and remove to the eastward. For a considerable time, however, they remained in an unsettled state, suffering from attacks, and leading a vagrant life. ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane

... went to the central police station Wednesday night and asked to be locked up on a charge of vagrancy. He said he had been conducting an unsuccessful search for work for so long that he was sure he must be a vagrant. In any event, he was so hungry he must be fed. Police Judge Graham sentenced him to ninety days' imprisonment."—San ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... because of its dimensions which were just about that square. It was a little improvement, though nothing to brag of. What fitful zephyrs there might be, caused no doubt by the rapid passage to and fro on the roof above and fence-tops below of vagrant felines on Cupid's contentious battles bent, to the disturbance of the still air, soughed softly through the meshes of my hammock and gave some measure of relief, grateful enough for which I ceased the perfervid language I had been using practically since ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs

... day at Palmerston, and there was an unusual amount of business that morning. A constable brought in a prisoner, and charged him with being a vagrant—having no lawful visible means of support. I entered the charge in the cause list, "Police v. John Smithers, vagrancy," and then looked at the vagrant. He was growing aged, was dressed in old clothes, faded, dirty, and ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... a dandelion. That most home-like and steadfast flower blooms in early springtime and later in the season, with no regard to the chronology of the year. It was one of the vagrant late gladdeners of the earth that his ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... It is the vagrant straw that shows the wind's direction, and since the attempt to bushwhack him Racey was not overlooking any straws. The door had been ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... gives directions to "Steal a piece of beef from a butcher's shop, and rub your wart with it, then throw it down the necessary house, or bury it, and as the beef rots, your warts will decay."[161] Some have great faith in having a vagrant count them, mark the number on the inside of his hat, and then when he leaves the neighborhood he takes the warts with him. Coffin water was also considered good ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... seemed to be Excelsior; and the lawful occupant of the clothes lay back against the cushions and endeavoured rapidly to evolve some means for putting an end to the dual ownership. It was unthinkable that he should continue for the space of a whole hour in the horrible position of a Rowton House for vagrant mice (already his imagination had at least doubled the numbers of the alien invasion). On the other hand, nothing less drastic than partial disrobing would ease him of his tormentor, and to undress in the presence of a lady, even for so ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)

... still hovered about Saltash's face; a smile in which cynicism and some vagrant, half-stifled ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... be content with such slender encouragement as I receive. In vain do I purchase choice brands of cigars and cigarettes, and load my side-table with the best Scotch whisky. Not eyen with that solace will the vagrant undergraduate consent to be douched under the stream of my ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... of youth and joy she discerned upon his features even in the filtered moonlight, touched her again as with the spell of those shining, mild green presences. It sank down into her. She felt sleep grope for her. On the threshold of slumber one of those strange vagrant voices that loss of consciousness lets loose cried faintly ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood

... specific analysis of each social situation. The one consideration to be urged at this point is that the concept "social forces" has a real content. It represents reality. There are social forces. They are the desires of persons. They range in energy from the vagrant whim that makes the individual a temporary discomfort to his group, to the inbred feelings that whole races share. It is with these subtle forces that social arrangements and the theories of social arrangements have ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... desolate dwelling comes the vagrant spring breeze. It brings the tidings of flowers—the flowers that for your worship are ...
— Gitanjali • Rabindranath Tagore

... all time and all existence.' Nothing is contemptible in their eyes, for all things have a meaning, and they both walk in august reasonableness before all men, conscious of the workings of God yet free from all terror of mendicant priest or vagrant miracle-worker. But the parallel ends here. For the one stands aloof from the world-storm of sleet and hail, his eyes fixed on distant and sunlit heights, loving knowledge for the sake of knowledge and wisdom for the joy of wisdom, while the other is an eager ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... woman freedom. He would devote himself to restoring her to the air and sunshine. What nobler ambition! He was an idler, he had never done anything for anybody. He was only a killer of time, a vagrant, but now was his opportunity—he would do for this beautiful soul what no one else on earth could do. She was slipping away as it was—the world would soon lose her. Was there ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... unpleasant reflections, Glossin began to count up the chances in his favour. Meg Merrilies was dead. Gabriel Faa, besides being a gipsy, was a vagrant and a deserter. The other witnesses—he did not greatly fear them! If only Dirk Hatteraick could be induced to be steady, and to put another meaning upon the sums of money which had been paid to him on ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... question of "What is to be done with our vagrant children?" is occupying the attention of all men of philanthropic minds, it may be worth while to give place in your pages to the following order addressed by the Lord Mayor of London to his aldermen in 1650-51, which applies, amongst other things, to that very subject. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various

... no Idler who hath no particular calling, or vagrant Person under pretence of a calling, be suffered to perform worship in Families, to or for the same: Seeing persons tainted with errours or aiming at division, may be ready (after that manner) to creep into houses and lead captive ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland

... sort of King one loves to imagine, not concerned in such petty matters as wars and parliaments and taxes, but a mellow and moderate despot who is a true patron of genius—a mild old chap who has in his court the greatest men and women in the world—and all of them vying to please the most vagrant of his moods! Invite any one of them to talk, and if your highness is not pleased with him you have only to put him back in his corner—and bring some jester to sharpen the laughter of your highness, or some poet to set your faintest emotion ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson

... find him after a long search, sitting fearlessly in some leafy glade. His dislike for the customary indoor studies became so marked that at last he was set down as stupid, and allowed to follow his own vagrant courses. No one understood that the spirits of Heaven were ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... the cant phase, it was "the London season." And happy, take it altogether, happy above the rest of the year, even for the hapless, is that period of ferment and fever. It is not the season for duns, and the debtor glides about with a less anxious eye; and the weather is warm, and the vagrant sleeps, unfrozen, under the starlit portico; and the beggar thrives, and the thief rejoices—for the rankness of the civilisation has superfluities clutched by all. And out of the general corruption things sordid and things miserable ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... asleep. Her book slid to the floor, I shaded her face with my green umbrella, pulled down her muslin frock over her pretty ankles, and gave myself up to vagrant thoughts of ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... sigh. "I suppose," said he, after an unquiet pause, "that the vagrant and the outlaw are strong in me, for I long to run back to my old existence, which was all action, and therefore ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... each poor hut! Filled with content so great, The smell of stubble burnt, delights. Piled high The wagons silent standing take their nightly rest, On distant hills the silver birches I descry, Framed gold by fertile fields the sacred picture blest. Then with a joy unshared save by the vagrant, I see the threshing floor well filled and fragrant, The sloping straw-thatched cottage roofs again, The window panels carved, of ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi

... ornaments of its predecessors, till we trace in the productions of this contemporary pottery, the patterns used by the nations of antiquity when just emerging from barbarism. Hunting, the most necessary of arts to the vagrant and carnivorous savage, is the employment celebrated on all these vessels, A stag, followed by ferocious quadrupeds and hungry bipeds, forms their general ornament. I have picked up the same groups among Roman ruins, have often contemplated ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... already?—Certain knights of the forest, by whom your quiet was for a time interrupted. Well—that incident hath come to our ear, and something we may presently form out of it.—Tell me, King Louis, were it not well, before this vagrant Helen of Troy [the wife of Menelaus. She was carried to Troy by Paris, and thus was the cause of the Trojan War], or of Croye, set more Kings by the ears, were it not well to carve out a ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... rows, and asked him what it was. Adopting the waif, then and there, I dug what I called "my little garden" about it, Spotswoode tugging up the stoutest roots and clearing out the wire-grass. With an occasional hand's turn and toss from him I cultivated the vagrant into extraordinary size and vigor. Not a day passed in which I did not visit it. Not a blade of grass or a weed was allowed to invade the charmed circle, and many a spadeful of fresh mould, black with fatness, was worked about the swelling tuber by my kind field-hand. ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... steps of one, whom she knew by description must be widow Dobson's lodger, turn up from the newly-cut road which was to lead to the terrace walk around the North Cliff, a road which led to no dwelling but widow Dobson's. Tramp, and vagrant, he might be in the eyes of the law; but, whatever his character, Sylvia could see him before her in the soft dusk, creeping along, over the bridge, often stopping to rest and hold by some support, and then going on again ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell

... quietly and keeps out of scrapes poetical and political, and if Robert and I had but a little less modesty we are assured that we should find access to him easy. But we can't make up our minds to go to his door and introduce ourselves as vagrant minstrels, when he may probably not know our names. We never could follow the fashion of certain authors who send their books about without intimations of their being likely to be acceptable or not, of which practice poor Tennyson knows too much for his peace. If, indeed, a letter of ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... well as realise, the love that kindles ours. It is the possession of the fact of redemption for my very own and of the blessings which accompany it, and that alone, that binds a man to God in the bonds of love that cannot be broken, and that subdues and unites all vagrant emotions, affections, and desires in the mighty tide of a love that ever sets towards Him. As surely as the silvery moon in the sky draws after it the heaped waters of the ocean all round the world, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... it, I might know as much of mirth To live and die a poet Of unacknowledged worth; For Fame is but a vagrant— Though a loyal one and brave, And his laurels ne'er so fragrant As when ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... were only that butterfly!" At that moment the luxurious vagrant, in the midst of its careless sports, and voluptuous banquet, became entangled in a web woven by a great black spider, which sat with eager impatience waiting until it had wound itself into the toils by its fruitless exertions, that he might seize ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... or less agreeably on the senses. The music we make automatically we cannot help hearing incidentally; the sensation may even modify the expression, since sensation too has its physical side. The expression is reined in and kept from becoming vagrant, in proportion as its form and occasion are remembered. The automatic performer, being henceforth controlled more or less by reflection and criticism, becomes something of an artist: he trains himself to be consecutive, impressive, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... the sun went down, a vagrant breeze stole out from some leafy covert and disported itself blithely. The big Irish setter moved from the corner to the top step, and ceased yawning. An old colored man appearing from behind the house took his way across the lawn in quest of the colts. The dog, with his ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... A vagrant breeze sighed through the trees and made Saxon shiver. The mysterious cricket-noise ceased with suspicious abruptness. Then, from the rustling noise, ensued a dull but heavy thump that caused both Saxon and ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... conditions, at once charming and insidious, Damaris Verity, resting in a wicker deck-chair in the shade of the great ilex trees, found herself alone, free to follow her own vagrant thoughts, perceptions, imaginations without human let or hindrance. Free to dream undisturbed and interrogate both Nature and her ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... clothes in vagrant wards and hospitals for infectious diseases, on the contrary, a continued heat is necessary, and in this case the accumulation of reserve heat, which takes place slowly in a jacketed oven, becomes of value, as the gas can be turned low or out, and the ventilators ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various

... me. "With the Scarlet Woman—with Mathilde," I said, hoping in my heart that it was so, for somehow I felt even then that she, poor vagrant, would play a part in the history of Alixe's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... "That of a vagrant student of manners and customs," answered the colorless voice. "Therefore, to imitate your frankness, ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... the crowds before, during, and after performances (the proprietor of the Cross Keys, it will be recalled, was described as "citizen and brewer of London"); and the resultant intemperance among "such as frequented the said plays, being the ordinary place of meeting for all vagrant persons, and masterless men that hang about the city, theeves, horse-stealers, whoremongers, cozeners, cony-catching persons, practicers of treason, and such other like,"[25] led to drunkenness, frays, bloodshed, and often to general disorder. Sometimes, ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... half the hurt to morals or manners that one grim-visaged justice did—the curmudgeon, you called him, Eusebius, that would, were they now on earth, and sleeping all lovely with their pearly arms together, locked in leafy bower, have Cupid and Psyche taken up under the Vagrant Act, or have them lodged in a "Union House" to be disunited. You thought the superstition of the world as it was, far above the knowledge it now brags of. You admired the Saxons and Danes in their veneration of the predictions of old women, whom the after ungallantry of a hard age would have burned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... Prepared the force of early powers to try; Sudden a look of languor he descries, And well-feign'd apprehension in her eyes; Train'd but yet savage, in her speaking face He mark'd the features of her vagrant race; When a light laugh and roguish leer express'd The vice implanted in her youthful breast: Forth from the tent her elder brother came, Who seem'd offended, yet forbore to blame The young designer, but could only trace The looks of pity in the trav'ller's face: Within, the Father, who ...
— Tales • George Crabbe

... sister) accompanied him and mentioned what had been their own domestic experience of the case. They described the wandering propensities which took the lad away from home, and the odd concealment of his waistcoat, on the last occasion when he had returned from one of his vagrant outbreaks. ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins

... chapter has been dealt with; firstly, because in this are enunciated those radical conceptions which he afterwards argues not to, but from; and secondly, because it has been the writer's desire, avoiding all vagrant and indecisive criticism, to have a fair grapple, and come to some clear result,—like that of a wrestler, who frankly proffers himself to throw or be thrown. It only remains to indicate, so far as may be, a comprehensive estimate of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... more spiritual each day of your life. That meditation does affect one's spirituality is an undeniable fact. Meditating upon God and his law is an excellent means of increasing spiritual life in the soul. Vagrant thoughts dull the finer sensibilities of the spiritual being, thereby rendering it less capable of impression by the ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr

... time that Henry set sail for Calais, Francis started from Montreuil for Ardres. It was a meagre old town, long since in ruins, the fosses and castle of which had been hastily repaired. He was attended on his route by a vast and motley multitude. No less than ten thousand of this poor vagrant crew were compelled to turn back, by a proclamation ordering that no person, without special permission, should approach within two leagues of the King's train, "on pain of the halter." As the French had proposed that both parties should lodge in tents erected on the field, they had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... won't need it, thank you. I'm not afraid of a few tramps. Besides I sent one of my men over to the island yesterday, and he couldn't find a sign of a vagrant. If any ...
— The Curlytops on Star Island - or Camping out with Grandpa • Howard R. Garis

... cap or bonnet, of unparalleled form and dimensions, was disposed upon his head, hiding the upper part of his face, and almost covering a pair of bushy grey eyebrows, that, in their turn, crouched over a quick and vagrant eye, little the worse for the wear of probably some sixty years. A grizzled reddish beard hung upon his breast; and his aspect altogether was forbidding, almost ferocious. A well-plenished satchel was ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... commanding the next to move over, stopping to whisper caressing words into the ear of a favorite. Sitting listlessly in the balcony of some theatre in the evening while a mimic world lived its joys and sorrows below and an orchestra played soft accompaniment to his vagrant thoughts. All this was Weary's ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower

... had rebaited my hook and dropped in a third time; but as before the vagrant school had moved on. They had seemed alarmed for the moment by the commotion, and darted off with accelerated speed. But we now had more confidence that they would return and again settled ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... straight for one of her ancient years, and her profuse hair was scarcely touched with the gray of age. Arrayed in a decent black dress, with a decent black bonnet and a black woollen shawl, the old lady looked intensely respectable. There was nothing of the picturesque vagrant about her. Therefore Miss Greeby, and with every reason, was disappointed, and when the queen of the woodland spoke she was still more so, for Mother Cockleshell did not even interlard her English speech with Romany words, as ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... men in the midst of it steadied me, and in my quest for them I forgot myself. For an hour I saw nothing but the naked, desolate sea. And then, where a vagrant shaft of sunlight struck the ocean and turned its surface to wrathful silver, I caught a small black speck thrust skyward for an instant and swallowed up. I waited patiently. Again the tiny point of black projected itself through the wrathful blaze a couple of points off our port-bow. I did ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... being made too amiable, or too plain? No, no! You are not vain. Whence comes this vagary?—well, we shall all know in good time. Were I to be with you, I should talk—perhaps maliciously—on purpose to see how your features would unsettle and shift themselves to the vagrant humour, that though one would know another from habit, and their old acquaintanceship, the painter would never be able to keep them steadily together. I should laugh to see every lineament "going ahead," and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... sign on the gate, though so courteously worded, was no mere formality; for she had heard how a colored man, who had wandered into the cemetery on a hot night and fallen asleep on the flat top of a tomb, had been arrested as a vagrant and fined five dollars, which he had worked out on the streets, with a ball-and-chain attachment, at twenty-five cents a day. Since that time the cemetery gate ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... too late. Side by side with the peace of night, there dwell Spirits of Evil, the never-resting, vagrant, home-destroying guests, who enter unbidden into the human soul! Hark, the rustling of their raven-hued plumage! They take wing, they fly aloft; 't is the shriek of the vulture, swooping down ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert

... at once she set to work to win back her self-control. It might not yet be too late to help. She gripped herself, dispelling at once all hysteria, all her vagrant thoughts. He would have been hard at work long since. His face was still warm—perhaps ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... glimpse of a distant fire burning brightly through the dim trees. They quickened their pace, and striking a little out of their path into a common, soon approached two tents, the Arab homes of the vagrant and singular people with whom the gypsy claimed ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... whom his parents had given over to the civil authority, was to be corrected at the whipping-post. It might be that an Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist, was to be scourged out of the town, or an idle or vagrant Indian, whom the white man's firewater had made riotous about the streets, was to be driven with stripes into the shadow of the forest. It might be, too, that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... it so happened, by no action of the boys', matters were suddenly brought to a sharp crisis. Over the patch of woods beyond the farm there came a vagrant puff of wind. It was followed ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner

... the state of a country be where those who are on the way to pauperism themselves are exclusively burdened with the support of the vagrant poor? It is like putting additional weight on a man already sinking under the burden he bears. The landlords suppose, that because the maintenance of the idle who are able, and of the aged and infirm who are not able to work, comes upon the renters of land, they ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... our legislators took proper steps to prevent the maiming of the little show children, who are put through excruciating practices to please a British public, and they would have done well at the same time if they had taken steps to prevent the warping influence of a vagrant's life having its full force upon the tribes of little Gipsy children, dwelling in calico tents, within the sound of church bells—if living under the body of an old cart, protected by patched coverlets, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... appalled. Evidently I had been wasting my time, for I could have no doubt that the gallant six hundred would include a sample of every kind of pundit, stationary or vagrant, encompassed within the seven seas; and against such competition I felt my chances to be ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland

... of all restraint from the coloured population of the colony, without the protection to the whites of even a Vagrant Act. Several of the colonial divisions had been for ten or twelve years overrun by fugitives from the Basuto and Betshuana countries, who had been driven from their own homes by the troubles already recorded. These people were ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... too, "twice or thrice in a month;" and he complains that it is "poverty which alone maketh me so unconstant to my determined studies, trudging from place to place to and fro, and prosecuting the means to keep me from idlenesse." An author was then much like a vagrant. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... Saturday nights, outside a house of general refreshment (familiarly termed a wine vaults) at Battle-bridge. The singer is a young gentleman who can scarcely have numbered nineteen summers, and who before his last visit to the treadmill, where he was erroneously incarcerated for six months as a vagrant (being unfortunately mistaken for another gentleman), had a very melodious and plaintive tone of voice, which, though it is now somewhat impaired by gruel and such a getting up stairs for so long a period, I hope shortly to find restored. I ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray

... his heart out of dread of hearing it mocked or of finding it something common to all men. While, then, the words "Premier of Russia" still echoed through his head, there rose upon his inner ear a sudden note of melody, vagrant, sweet and melancholy as the songs of the Steppes. Known song it was not, however; but something unique, as were all the airs that came to him unbidden. Under its influence it was natural that his face should change, and soften. But Michael, imagining that rapt expression ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... delicate since 1800: and it is not surprising to find—as we do find—that between the text of the "Lyrical Ballads" of 1800, and that of 1802, there are many important variations. This is seen, for example, in the way in which he dealt with 'The Female Vagrant', which is altered throughout. Its early redundance is pruned away; and, in many instances, the final text, sanctioned in 1845, had been adopted in 1803. Without going into further detail, it is sufficient to remark that in the year 1803 Wordsworth's critical faculty, the faculty ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... pricks and cracks Befall the flesh through too much stress and strain, 10 Whereby the wily vapor fain would slip Back and rejoin its source before the term— And aptest in contrivance (under God) To baffle it by deftly stopping such— The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace) Three samples of true snakestone—rarer still, One of the other sort, the melon-shaped, (But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs) And writeth ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning

... hero of his 'Excursion.' Much ridicule, and even obloquy, did the staunch poet of Rydal incur for choosing such a character, when he might have taken Laras and Conrads by the score, and been praised for his choice. But "the vagrant merchant under a heavy load," being a portion of the mountain life which surrounded the poet's home, was better than any hero of romance for his purpose; and a younger generation has confirmed the poet's ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne

... the swagman is the happiest vagrant's life in the world. He is usually regarded as a bona fide seeker for work, and food is readily given him for the asking. Unlike the American hobo, he is given his food raw, and is expected to cook it himself. So he carries what ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... of Drusilla's vagrant lord. The others looked up, interested. "Say, everybody, Lady Agnes and I have hit upon a ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... Dutchess County, New York, they had established a flourishing Indian congregation; and now, the Assembly of New York, stirred up by some liquor sellers who were losing their business, passed an insulting Act, declaring that "all vagrant preachers, Moravians, and disguised Papists," should not be allowed to preach to the Indians unless they first took the oaths of allegiance and abjuration {1744.}. James Hutton was boiling with fury. If this ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... they got up in the morning. Out the little old woman jumped, and whether she broke her neck in the fall or ran into the wood and was lost there, or found her way out of the wood and was taken up by the constable and sent to the House of Correction for a vagrant as she was, I cannot tell. But the three Bears never saw anything more ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten

... grade, then he climbed back through the window. Inside, every vestige of impudence deserted him. A grave frown puckered his forehead as he seated himself thoughtfully on the solitary chair to sit like a statue staring at the floor. Certain sudden twistings of his clumsy frame revealed the vagrant meanderings of his mind, now satisfied and determined, now uncertain and reflective. Plainly it was a mind ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan

... those gloomy eyes at the head of the table watched them with a sort of envy, I think there must be something fatal to gaiety in the mere responsibilities of wealth; I am sure that there is something corrupting in the labours of its acquisition. I think I had rather be a vagrant, with a crust in my knapsack, a blue sky above me, and the adventurous road before me, than look upon the world with a pair of eyes so laughterless as his who was our host ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson

... the particulars of our cargo as already detailed, we had sundry items of live freight in the shape of some pigs, which were stowed in the long- boat on top of the deck-house; three cats, two belonging to the Portuguese steward and messing in the cuddy, while the third was a vagrant Tom that had strayed on board in the docks, and making friends with the carpenter Gregory, or "old chips" as he was generally called, was allowed to take up his quarters in the forepeak, migrating to the cook's cabin ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... the vagrant feet of youth are the roads of Manhattan beset "with pitfall and with gin." But the civic guardians of the young have made themselves acquainted with the snares of the wicked, and most of the dangerous paths are patrolled by their agents, who seek to turn straying ones away from the peril that ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... XIIIth Amendment, abolishing slavery, had been ratified by aid of their votes. Congress, however, still refused to admit their Senators or Representatives. The first action of many of the new governments had been to pass labor, contract, stay, and vagrant laws which looked much like a re-establishment of slavery, and the majority in Congress felt that further guarantees for the security of the freedmen were necessary before the war could be ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... morning. Out the little old Woman jumped; and whether she broke her neck in the fall, or ran into the wood and was lost there, or found her way out of the wood and was taken up by the constable and sent to the House of Correction for a vagrant, as she was, I cannot tell. But the Three Bears never ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... be kind," said the man, "I think it would be easier. You ought to give me up, you know, and let me go to jail. I'm no good. I'm a vagrant and a drunkard, and worse. But you won't, I know that; so now let me go. I'm not fit to stay in Arthur's room or lie on his bed. Give me a little money, my dear old friend—yes, the parrot knew me!—and let ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards

... Great War a somewhat casual visitor was present when a vagrant shell smashed the refreshment dug-out where a young Red Cross man was handling some comforts for the khaki-clad boys near the front line. And when the alarmed visitor explained to the dispenser of refreshments, ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... quality of godless young heroism not unexhausted in Beauchamp's blood. Reanimated by him, she awakened his imagination of the vagrant splendours of existence and the rebel delights which have their own laws and 'nature' for an applauding mother. Radiant Alps rose in his eyes, and the morning born in the night suns that from mountain and valley, over sea and desert, called ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... branch for his final jump—a bit of pure bravado because he felt nervous inside—discovered, with mingled terror and joy, that his vagrant foot had narrowly shaved Aunt Jane's neat hard summer hat: Aunt Jane—of all people—at such a moment, when you couldn't properly explain. He half wished he had kicked the fierce little feather and ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... of a heavy gun, and all eyes turned to a huge shell, making its curve a mile above our heads, reminded us that the artillery had a field-day as we passed Woolwich, and that there was every possibility that this vagrant messenger of destruction, might plump into our midships. The consternation on board grew, as it descended, looking bigger and blacker every instant. If it had come on board, it must have torn us up like paper. The catastrophe would have been invaluable to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... control; that Count Bossu, or some other person nominated by himself, should be appointed to the government of Friesland; that the people of Brabant and Flanders should set themselves instantly to hunting, catching, and chastising all vagrant heretics and preachers. He required, in particular, that Saint Aldegonde and Theron, those most mischievous rebels, should be prohibited from setting their foot in any city of the Netherlands. He insisted that the community of Brussels ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Gould says it is abundant in all parts of Europe, in all the islands of the Mediterranean, and in Madeira and the Azores. And then he says—(now notice the puzzle of this),—"In many parts of the Continent it is a migrant, and, contrary to what obtains with us, is there treated as a vagrant, for there is scarcely a country across the water in which it is not shot ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... are other proofs pointing as decidedly to the determination of this long-continued controversy in favour of Scotland, as the soil from which this vagrant child of the muses sprung. No evidence seems to have been hitherto sought from the most obvious source, his writings. The writer of the memoir in the Biographia Brittanica, (who certainly dealt a well-aimed, though by no means decisive, blow, in observing, "It is pretty ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt

... occurs which gives the first great impulse to the mind of genius. Mendelssohn received this from the companion of his misery and his studies, a man of congenial but maturer powers. He was a Polish Jew, expelled from the communion of the orthodox, and the calumniated student was now a vagrant, with more sensibility than fortitude. But this vagrant was a philosopher, a poet, a naturalist, and a mathematician. Mendelssohn, at a distant day, never alluded to him without tears. Thrown together into the same situation, they approached each other by the same sympathies, and communicating ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... small table to themselves, close by one of the long glass doors opening out into the garden. It was a warm evening, and sweet, vagrant perfumes came straying in at the open door, and in the momentary hush which sometimes falls upon the noisiest table d'hote, pretty plashing sounds could be heard in the Canal ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller

... Jennet blush'd, how Alfred with a stride Bore off his prize, and fancied every charm, And clipp'd against his ribs her trembling arm; How mute we seniors stood, our power all gone? Completely conquer'd, Love the day had won, And the young vagrant triumph'd in our plight, And shook his roguish plumes, and laugh'd outright. Yet, by my life and hopes, I would not part With this sweet recollection from my heart; I would not now forget that tender scene To wear a crown, or make my girl ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield

... It is a bad cell that in which M. de Boiscoran is staying. Since I have been at Sauveterre, one man has killed himself in it, and one man has tried to commit suicide. So I called Trumence, a poor vagrant who assists me in the jail; and we arranged it that one of us would always be on guard, never losing the prisoner out of sight for a moment. But it was a useless precaution. At night, when they carried M. de Boiscoran his supper, he was perfectly calm; ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... big clouds slowly sail; A faint breeze lingers in the rustling beech; Atop the withered oak with vagrant speech The brawling crows call down the sleepy vale; Unseen the glad cicadas trill their tale Of deep content in changeless vibrant screech, And where the old fence rambles out of reach, The drowsy lizard hugs the shaded rail. Warm odors from the hayfield wander by, Afar the ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove

... immortal joys I mount The proudest emperors above, For I am honoured with the love Of the fair daughter of a count. A lace from Na Raymbauda's hand I value more than all the land Of Richard, with his Poctou, His rich Touraine and famed Anjou. When loup-garou the rabble call me, When vagrant shepherds hoot, Pursue, and buffet me to boot, It doth not for a moment gall me; I seek not palaces or halls, Or refuge when the winter falls; Exposed to winds and frosts at night, My soul is ravished with delight. Me claims my she-wolf (Loba) so divine: And justly she that claim prefers, For, ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould

... of life, unheeded until passed, but never to be recalled without pleasure. About eleven the guests generally depart, and by midnight the great avenue of this city is hardly disturbed by a foot-fall; not a sound comes on the ear except the short, fierce wrangle of packs of vagrant curs crossing each other's hunting-ground, which they are as tenacious of as the Indians are of ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... over her hat, and she stood revealed. She was not pale; she was fresh from the woods, and in the glory of renewed health. A murmur of admiration went around the room like the stirring of leaves before a vagrant breeze. ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... of his paper, too disturbed to read; the young vagrant's words kept sounding in his ears. He raised his eyes. The plump hand of the lady with the Roman nose still rested on her lap; it had been recased in its black glove with large white stitching. Her frowning gaze was fixed on ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... path of the outmost sun through utter darkness hurled — Further than ever comet flared or vagrant star-dust swirled — Live such as fought and sailed and ruled and loved ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... infallibly choosing the worse by the very act of lazily or weakly allowing accident to determine their lives. Not consciously and strongly to will the right, not resolutely and with coercion of the vagrant self to will to take God for our aim, is to choose the low, the wrong. Perhaps none, or very few of us, would deliberately say 'I choose Mammon, having carefully compared the claims of the opposite systems of life that solicit me, and with open-eyed scrutiny measured their courses, their goods and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... again, beginning to roll down his sleeves, "suppose we do; I aren't above giving a lift to a chap as can use 'is fists,—not even if 'e is a vagrant, and a uncommon dusty one at that;—so, if you're in the same mind about it, up you get,—but no more furrin curses, mind!" With which admonition, the Waggoner nodded, grinned, and climbed back to his seat, while Bellew swung himself up into the ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol

... forces of the air were merciful. During the twenty-four hours there was nothing but little vagrant breezes and the drafts created by the heat of the fire itself. When day came again, without striking a single futile blow at the heart of the fire, they had drawn the enemy's teeth and clipped his claws—in so far as the flats of the Toba were threatened. The fire would burn up to that cleared ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... not, and care not. She's a real vagrant, that girl is. No manner of use. She may go her own ways; I wash ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child

... soon taken; princesses came into the world to be sacrificed. The plot ran on for some time, the Queen, who was in the habit of calling Charles Albert 'that little vagrant,' giving it her indefatigable support. Victor Emmanuel was weak, and stood in considerable awe of his wife, who had obtained a great ascendancy over him in the miserable days of their residence in the island of Sardinia. ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... Coleridge and his own growing repute in the world of letters gathered about him a circle of friends—Southey, Wordsworth, Hazlitt, Manning, Barton, and the rest—more congenial, and certainly more profitable, than the vagrant intimados, "to the world's eye a ragged regiment," who had wasted his substance and his leisure ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... habit and the manners of those vagrants with whom he had nearly been confounded by the hasty proceedings of Trois Eschelles and Petit Andre, and he, too, entertained very natural apprehensions concerning the risk of reposing trust in one of that vagrant race. ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... this Martian's wooing? Yet was held to him by some power he might have over her brother? The vagrant thought ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... must be done. What! surely you will not have him collared by a constable, and commit his innocent pallor to the common jail? And upon what ground could you procure such a thing to be done?—a vagrant, is he? What! he a vagrant, a wanderer, who refuses to budge? It is because he will not be a vagrant, then, that you seek to count him as a vagrant. That is too absurd. No visible means of support: there I have him. Wrong again: for indubitably ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... more in the way of reading after the boating and the cricket began, than while we continued in a state of vagrant idleness, without a fixed amusement of any kind. In the first place, it was necessary to conciliate Hanmer by some show of industry in the morning, in order to keep him in good humour for the cricket in the evening; for he was decidedly the main hope of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... all those formulas which in the past were supposed to have served the turns of those seeking adventure in a great city. There was the trick of bestowing a thousand-dollar bill upon a chance vagrant and then trailing after the recipient to note what happened to him, in his efforts to change the bill. Heretofore, in fiction at least, the following of this plan had invariably brought forth most beautiful results. Accordingly, Judson Green ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... were the servants, my dear? Surely you are not required, in your brother's house, to perform such menial services as taking food and medicine to a sick vagrant." ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... the dismay of his amazement in finding himself quarreling with the perfect wife, a vagrant memory came to George that he had heard that Genevieve had a hot temper. She certainly had. He didn't notice how handsome she looked kindled with anger. He only knew that the rose garden in which they lived was ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.

... all vnhabited, sauing that vpon the riuer Volgha on the Westside, the Emperour hath some fewe Castels with garisons in them. This happeneth by meanes of the Crimme Tartar, that will neither himselfe plant Townes to dwel there, (liuing a wild and vagrant life) nor suffer the Russe (that is farre off with the strength of his Countrey) to people those parts. From Vologda (whieh lieth almost 1700. verst from the port of S. Nicholas) downe towards Mosco, and so towards the South ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt

... to curb my vagrant Muse; A subject waits my pen she well may choose. Now aid me, O my God! who dwell'st above, While I attempt to sing Redeeming Love! Nor let one line, or word, be writ by me Not in accordance with that Mystery! May I, to profit ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... power, has at last degenerated or grown up to (as you please) a trade. There are men who habitually set aside a portion of money which they are annually to apply to what are called "charitable purposes"—that is to say, so far as I understand it, to support some vagrant lecturer, whose purpose is agitation and mischief wherever he goes. This constitutes, therefore, a trade; a class of people are thus employed—employed for mischief, for incendiary purposes, perhaps not always understood by those who furnish the money; but such ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis



Words linked to "Vagrant" :   wanderer, have-not, roamer, tramp, beachcomber, vagrancy, hobo, floating, sundowner, poor person, unsettled, bird of passage, floater, rover, bum



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