"Ruffian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... They have each his dream. Sagan's of empire and revenge, for he is after all a splendid ruffian, untamable, gallant, a man who could never be compelled to cry 'Enough' ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... it was indecent to be angry, nay, had written a book to that purpose; and that the causing him to be so cruelly beaten, in the height of his rage, totally gave the lie to all his writings; to which Plutarch calmly and coldly answered, "How, ruffian," said he, "by what dost thou judge that I am now angry? Does either my face, my colour, or my voice give any manifestation of my being moved? I do not think my eyes look fierce, that my countenance appears troubled, or that my voice is dreadful: am I red, do I foam, does any word escape my ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... that it is his village bridegroom's hat, the gray beaver, with the long fur. He utters a gigantic maritime oath, something about thunder and portholes, and then, taking a most deliberate aim, quietly shoots stone dead the ruffian who has taken such a ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... I did; yet I was put out, for I thought his bold glances would have made her angry. But my dear Flavia was a woman, and so—she was not put out. On the contrary, she thought young Rupert very handsome—as, beyond question, the ruffian was. ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... Greene's death Harvey replied to some reflections made upon him by Greene, and called him in accordance with the amenities of the times, "a wilde head, ful of mad braine and a thousand crotchets; a scholler, a discourser, a courtier, a ruffian, a gamester, a lover, a souldier, a trauailer, a merchant, a broker, an artificer, a botcher, a pettifogger, a player, a coosener, a rayler, a beggar, an omnium-gatherum, a gay-nothing, a stoare-house of bald and baggage stuffe, unworth the answering ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... arrangements of the animal creation, extending down to the minutest portions of their frames—that same Divine mercy it is which we are bid to imitate. He whose soul burns with indignation against the brutal ruffian who misuses the poor, helpless, suffering horse, or dog, or ass, or bird, or worm, shares for the moment that Divine companion wrath which burns against the oppressors of the weak and defenceless everywhere. He who puts forth his hand to save from ill treatment, or add to the happiness ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... nothing pleasant in it as he smiled. Some faces are like this. He was a degenerate of the worst type; for he was a man who had slowly receded from a life of refinement, and mental retrogression finds painful expression on such a face. A ruffian from birth bears less outward trace, for his ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... the prostrate and howling Child Sir Galahad, after an onslaught delivered the precise instant the curtain began to fall upon the demoralized "pageant." And then—oh, pangs! oh, woman!—she slapped at the ruffian's cheek, as he was led past her by a resentful janitor; and turning, flung her arms round the Child ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... him into exile the cruel recollection of the name "brigand" (ruffian), which had been formerly abusively replied to him, and that keen desire for vengeance which was one day to prove so fatal ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... be thy bloom, thou lovely gem, Unscath'd by ruffian hand! And from thee many a parent stem Arise to deck ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... why he surrendered to one man, when he had defied a crowd, the ruffian afterwards said: "When he came up I looked him in the eye, and I saw shoot. There wasn't shoot in nary other eye in the crowd. I said to myself, it is about time to sing small; and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... uninvited and you've said too much," Doctor Hosmer stated in cold even tones. "You may be the town magnate, but you're only a ruffian and a crook after all. You can't bluff or bully us. More than that, you've insulted my daughter and me beyond any future reparation. As for your son, he got less than he deserved." He turned to the rancher. "You came just ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... a very abandoned ruffian," said one of the visitors, with both pity and amusement ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... withal, did deme it but paltry stuff, and was the more discomforted in that ye blody bucanier had got his wind again, and did turn his mind to farting with such villain zeal that presently I was like to choke once more. God damn this windy ruffian and all his breed. I wolde that ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... last settled quietly to watch for the badger's visit to the clearing. Philip told in a whisper of jokes he had played on the keeper; Ianto capped these stories with reminiscences of younger days and nights; and I, though hating bitterly the ruffian loiterers of the village who subsisted on the spoils of the trap, the snare, and the net, and were guilty of cowardly acts of revenge when checkmated in the very game they chose to play, felt a certain sympathy with the two old men by my side, who, as I was convinced, had fairly ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... just plain, honest 'gator hunters, working powerful hard for a mighty poor living," declared the ruffian. "An' you-alls, I reckon one guess will hit ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... chair. He was dishonouring the name of the Riegos, Carlos would exclaim feebly, turning his head towards his uncle. His uncle's own province, the name of his own town, stood for a refuge of the scum of the Antilles. It wras a shameful sanctuary. Every ruffian, rascal, murderer, and thief of the West Indies had come to think of this ancient and honourable town as a ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... receiving an indignity from a common ruffian, he was forced to strike him in self-defense; for which act, in accordance with the laws of slavery in that, as well as many other of the slave States, he was compelled to receive, on his naked person, nine and thirty lashes with a raw hide! ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... conversation of the others. "No, no, not at all," said one. "He wasn't a ruffian, he wasn't one of those toughs that we all know. We all enlisted together. He was a decent sort, like ourselves, no more, no less—a bit funky, that's all. He was in the front line from the beginning, he was, and I've never ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... some more courtly scene, To maids and youths in robes of state! I am a woman poor and mean, And therefore is my soul elate; War is a ruffian all with guilt defiled, That from the aged father tears ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... merry ruffian, and he controlled the "coke" graft in the 50th while Heinie was perpetual ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... designed adequate punishment. The abbot would doubtless have been expelled, but death anticipated the Conqueror of England. To punish the monks, the King appointed the fighting abbot, Turauld, as the successor of Brand, and in order to conciliate this ruffian-for such he was-the monks of Peterborough prepared their best cheer. But Hereward and his merry men anticipated Turauld's arrival by an hour or two, ate up the dinner prepared for the Normans, and spoiled what ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... a club struck one arm, and it dropped to his side, broken. He turned sharply; a ruffian pricked him with his knife; he staggered forward, lurched, swayed to and fro, and finally fell. I closed my eyes in order not to see the end of the ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... yards away. There in the fierce light of the flames now bursting from every window and roaring and shooting high in air from the brush-heaped roof of Moreno's ranch,—there stood the Concord wagon, stalwart men clinging to the heads of the plunging and excited mules, a big ruffian already in the driver's seat, whip and reins in hand; there beside it was the paymaster's ambulance, into which three of the gang were just shoving the green-painted iron safe,—the Pandora's box that had caused all their sorrows; there Moreno's California buck-board, pressed into service and ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... never thought upon the Wrongs your Pedagogue has wrought upon you, and longed to meet that Wretch, and wheal his flesh with the same instrument with which he whealed you, and make the Ruffian howl for mercy? Mercy, quotha! did he ever show you any? A pretty equal match it was, surely! You a poor, weak starveling of a child shivering in your shoes, and ill-nurtured by the coarse food he gave you, and he a great, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... shout was checked by another blow from the angry ruffian's fist, and Hugh measured his length upon ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... swore and blasphemed at Ned as the most infernal villain, and traitor, and blackguard, and coward under the sun, and wished Ned was in his grave, and in a worse place, only he would like the confounded ruffian to live, until Frank Clavering had had ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you'll do nothing of the kind, Teddy! I won't have your eye put out for the match by that old ruffian, and I'm not going to let you sit up all night either. Where are ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... the Pope and his curia. There, six years afterwards, another assembly was convened; the first occasion on which we find any historical proof that representatives were summoned to a national council in England. Eight times during his reign the ruffian King was himself a guest at the Abbey. Once after John's death, when Louis was desperately struggling to hold his own against young Henry's friends and supporters, he too came to St. Alban's, and threatened to ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... Paolo Bruno, a Corsican, in the prosecution of a love affair with the wife of a Trasteverine fisherman. The third son, Rocco, spent his time in street adventures, and on one occasion laid his hands on all the plate and portable property that he could carry off from his father's house. This young ruffian, less than twenty years of age, found a devoted friend in Monsignore Querro, a cousin of the family well placed at court, who assisted him in the burglary of the Cenci palace. Rocco was killed by Amilcare Orsini, a bastard ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... only one of the crew remaining on board, hastily belayed the clewline at the fife-rail, hauling it just taut enough to hold Bitts, without choking him to death. As the ruffian leaped into the boat, to which he had been assigned, Perth gave the order to shove off, and the runaways pulled with all ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... Nature cease to feel? Shall Mercy's tears no longer flow? Shall ruffian threats of cord and steel, The dungeon's gloom, the assassin's blow, Turn back the spirit roused to save The Truth, our Country, and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... until later in the evening, when it became his turn to speak. When Beecher arose he said: "When I came to this hall to-night I saw an old, crippled woman wending her way across the crowded street on crutches. When she had reached about midway, a burly ruffian came along and knocked the crutches out from under her, and she fell splash into the mud." Turning to Ingersoll, he said, "What do you think of that, Colonel?" "The villain!" replied Ingersoll. Beecher, pointing ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... devising, at sight of which all natural kindness of man to man seems to recoil from them. They are not slaves indeed, but they are pariahs; debarred from all fellowship save with their own despised race—scorned by the lowest white ruffian in your streets, not tolerated as companions by the foreign menials in your kitchens. They are free certainly but they are also degraded, rejected, the offscum and the offscouring of the very dregs of your society; they are ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... to be a soldier in disguise, and threatened her hostess with instant death unless she fetched out all her jewels and valuables on the spot. The poor woman accordingly had to open her great linen chest, in the bottom of which her little store of silver was hidden, and in this the ruffian began to rummage. Just when he had almost emptied it, and was stooping to reach the last articles from the bottom, a happy thought came into the brave woman's mind. She seized the robber unexpectedly by the legs and tipped him head first into the mighty chest; ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... the young ruffian's family the credit they deserve," she stated. "The whole connection despises his ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... himself. After he had made many attempts to find the path again, he heard a scream. He jumped up and ran boldly towards the spot from which the sound came. Through an opening in the trees he saw a young lady trying to get away from a ruffian who wanted to steal her mantle. With one heavy blow of his staff Jack sent the thief howling away, and then went back to the young lady, who was ...
— My First Picture Book - With Thirty-six Pages of Pictures Printed in Colours by Kronheim • Joseph Martin Kronheim
... the frightened Hiram, "I told thee that intimacy with that ruffian would bring great misfortune And here it is! We have not ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... in my intellects,—and that involved the probable loss of a boarder. A severe-looking person, who wears a Spanish cloak and a sad cheek, fluted by the passions of the melodrama, whom I understand to be the professional ruffian of the neighboring theatre, alluded, with a certain lifting of the brow, drawing down of the corners of the mouth, and somewhat rasping voce di petto, to Falstaff's nine men in buckram. Everybody looked up. I believe the old gentleman opposite was afraid I should seize the carving-knife; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... was indeed an adventure. I came across Broadway and Sixth Avenue together! Sixth Avenue, with its barbaric paving, surely could not be under the same administration as Fifth! Between Sixth and Seventh I met a sinister but genial ruffian, proudly wearing the insignia of Tammany; and soon I met a lot more of them: jolly fellows, apparently, yet somehow conveying to me the suspicion that in a saloon shindy they might prove themselves my superiors. (I was told in New York, and by the best people in New York, that ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... 'What a ruffian!'—(puff)—observed Mr. Waffles, taking his cigar from his mouth as he sat on the bench, dressed as a racket-player, looking on at the game, 'he shalln't ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... for depriving men of liberty of conscience, and of a share in the government of their country, there can be no excuse for the gross injustice of defrauding them of their property, and placing life and estate at the mercy of every ruffian who had an interest in depriving them of either or of both. Although the seventeenth century has not yet been included in the dark ages, it is possible that posterity, reading these enactments, may reverse present opinion on ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... yours," said Radisson, with contempt for the ruffian's boast; and he handed out the paper taken ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... successfully. The path was steep, and numerous creepers of a tropical vegetation crossed it. In one of these the big Frenchman must have caught his foot; he stumbled, and before he could recover himself young Doull sprung like a tiger on his throat, and held him tight. The ruffian still attempted to retain his hold on ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... determined. John was absent; Sarah, seeing the troopers gallop toward the house, poured a prayer over her babe, as it lay asleep in the crib, and fled in terror, hoping that sweet infancy would appeal to their hearts. A ruffian rushed in, and grasping the babe, shouted, "The nurse is not far away." He made it scream, to bring the mother back. She heard its pitiful cry; her heart was breaking, yet she was utterly powerless. She might expose ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... a little longer to educate the greater part of the community according to the present system of the Public Schools, and rest assured we shall soon have a hell upon earth—society will be stabbed to the heart by the ruffian assassin called godless Public School education—it will reel, stagger, and sink a bleeding victim to the ground, expiring, like the suicide, by the wound itself has inflicted. I truly believe that if Satan was presented with a blank sheet of paper, ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... That crazy brain of yours have quite upset, But aught of base or mean hath never yet Been charged by any in reproach to you. Your deeds are open proof in all men's view; For you went forth injustice to abate, And for your pains sore drubbings did you get From many a rascally and ruffian crew. If the fair Dulcinea, your heart's queen, Be unrelenting in her cruelty, If still your woe be powerless to move her, In such hard case your comfort let it be That Sancho was a sorry go-between: A booby he, hard-hearted she, and ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... SAYERIUS shouted. "Oh, get out! It was a 'barney.' If this ruffian rout Of cheats and 'bashers' now surround the Ring, You'd better stop it as a shameful thing. In JACKSON'S time, and even in my day, It did want courage, and did mean fair play— Most times, at least. But don't mix up this muck With tales of rough-and-tumble British pluck. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... as means without an end. The ingredients too are mixed in the happiest proportion, so as to uphold and relieve each other—more especially in that constant interpoise of wit, gaiety, and social generosity, which prevents the criminal, even in his most atrocious moments, from sinking into the mere ruffian, as far at least, as our imagination sits in judgment. Above all, the fine suffusion through the whole, with the characteristic manners and feelings, of a highly bred gentleman gives life to the drama. Thus having invited the statue-ghost of the governor, whom he had ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... shoulder. No one was in pursuit, but it was some moments before she realised that it was not relief she experienced, but something akin to disappointment. She was in the ugliest mood of which her nature was capable, and that was saying much. With one exception, better forgotten, this blond ruffian who had insulted her was the only man who had ever desired her; doubtless, she reflected bitterly, even Trennahan might be excepted. And when an unprepossessing woman of starved affections and implacably controlled ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... bower, by murd'rous ruffian hands, Before the frowning king fair Inez stands; Her tears of artless innocence, her air So mild, so lovely, and her face so fair, Mov'd the stern monarch; when, with eager zeal, Her fierce destroyers ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... ruffian, and for answer aimed a clour at my head. "Take that, my mannie," he said. "I'll learn ye to ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... off, many of whom had at different times suffered from his bold attacks, called in a number of Borgoo men, who bore no better reputation for honesty than the robber himself, and resolved to attempt the capture of the ruffian in his strong hold, without any other assistance. Their efforts, however, were unavailing; the governor, entrenched in his walled town, and supported by his people, sheltered the miscreant and compelled his enemies to raise the siege. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... "thou art an inexorable ruffian, Troisboules; but I will give thee all I am worth." And here he produced a billet of five hundred francs. "Look," said he, "this money is all I own; it is the payment of two years' lodging. To raise it, I have toiled ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with the war of the Revolution,—the noble declaration of independence, for truly noble it was: no dark compact of a crew of ruffian conspirators, but a generous bond that their aggrieved country should be freed, given by a band of citizen gentlemen, husbands, fathers, and brothers, to the fulfilment of the which they pledged unto each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honour; and having ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... minutes to the silent, motionless congregation, his raised hand came down on the shoulder of the leader with the exact, resistless precision of the tiger's paw, and the ruffian was snatched from his seat to the floor sprawling. Before he could rise, the steel-like grip of the roused preacher sent him halfway to the door, and then out into the dirt of ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... a more insolent and inhospitable old ruffian did I never meet. By the wine you worship, if one of you dare touch me, you shall rue it all your born days; and as for you, sir, if you advance one step towards me, I will take that sausage of a nose of yours and hurl you half ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... my horror redoubled. Here had we two expatriated Frenchmen engaged in an ill-regulated combat like the battles of beasts. Here was he, who had been all his life so great a ruffian, dying in a foreign land of this ignoble injury, and meeting death with something of the spirit of a Bayard. I insisted that the guards should be summoned and a doctor brought. "It may still be possible to save ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me, too, by a sense of my own inadequacy to be a teacher of the most solemn of truths, on any such scale as that towards which events seemed to be pointing. The unfair notices put me in a tremor of distress. The brutal ones affected me like a blow in the face from the fist of a ruffian. None of them, that I can remember, ever helped me in any sense whatsoever to ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... the express car, but were satisfied to go through the train hastily and relieve the passengers of their valuables. In this work, Black Harry took the lead; but Mr. Robert Dawson, an Eastern banker, who happened to have quite a sum on his person, objected, and snatched the mask from the young ruffian's face. Before the eyes of Miss Lona Dawson, who was traveling with her father, Black Harry deliberately shot the banker down, and then relieved him of his watch, diamond pin, and pocketbook, having first re-covered his face with ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... conflagration in the neighbourhood, and my property is attacked, I shall defend it like a tigress—I know I shall. Let me listen to Mercy as long as she is near me. Her voice once drowned by the shout of ruffian defiance, and I shall be full of impulses to resist and quell. If once the poor gather and rise in the form of the mob, I shall turn against them as an aristocrat; if they bully me, I must defy: if they attack, I must resist, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... the love of wealth absorb All other passions; in their souls that vice Struck deeply-rooted, like the poison-tree That with its shade spreads barrenness around. These, Maid! were men by no atrocious crime Blacken'd, no fraud, nor ruffian violence: Men of fair dealing, and respectable On earth, but such as only for themselves Heap'd up their treasures, deeming all their wealth Their own, and given to them, by partial Heaven, To bless them only: therefore ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... a ruffian, and had found a boor; but she was to be convinced that the ruffian existed in him. Notice came up to the castle of a convoy of waggons, and all was excitement. Men-at-arms were mustered, horses led down the Eagle's Ladder, and an ambush prepared in the ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this remark as the pair, engrossed in conversation, passed abreast of the party on the outside of the boundary fence and not ten feet from them. The speaker was a short, broad, powerfully built man in appearance, and he spoke in a harsh voice and with a twang that marked him as a ruffian of the city slums. He wore a cap, pulled so low over his features as to make them indistinguishable. And he walked ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... certainly she who had walked here was the veiled woman of the temple worshippers; there were the footprints, broader and heavier in appearance, of her companion, and the halting progress of the black-chapped ruffian, who had accompanied them, was also plainly visible. Constans followed the trail at a smart pace, for it was snowing harder than ever, and it would not take long to obliterate the marks. But three blocks farther on the three sets of footprints ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... the ruffian fired his first shot with the revolver at his powerless victim. The captain winced slightly, and I saw the bullet had carried off part of ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... Cyclops told about Odysseus? It is absolutely out of keeping, and it puzzles commentators. In fact, here was a hero and there was a tale, and the tale was attracted into the cycle of the hero; the very last man to have behaved as Odysseus is made to do. {34} But Cronos was an odious ruffian. The world-wide tale of swallowing and disgorging the children was attracted to his too notorious name 'by grace of congruity.' Does Professor Tiele now grasp my ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... Over pastures, through ravines, across rivers, under forest arches dim as twilight, they hurried on, a pack of hounds yapping in advance, a broken branch, a trampled bush, a hoof-print in the margin of a stream also giving proof that they were on the right path; a herder, who had seen the ruffian pass, likewise testifying to the fact, and giving his service to the company; and so they came to a clearing, where they found the marauder's abandoned and ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... Count. "We leaped to the conclusion—was it not so?—that the owner of the hat you found was also the assailant of my high-born master. We were wrong. I have heard the story from His Serene Highness's own lips. He was passing down a dark street when a ruffian in a mask sprang out upon him. Doubtless he had been followed from the Casino, where he had been winning heavily. My high-born master was taken by surprise. He was felled. But before he lost consciousness he perceived a young man in evening dress, wearing the hat you found, ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... ruffian whom he made his tool, had been associated with him before, in some transactions that would not bear the light of day, and when he unfolded the present scheme to him he found him ready to be his pliant instrument—willing ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... supposition of being heretical to thy creed, and yet how few truly adhere to the purity of thy precepts! How few are sincere in the expression of their adoration!—nay, how limited the number of those who really understand the essence of thy doctrine! The sanguinary ruffian considers himself as zealous in the service of honor, as the high minded and courageous man who has a sword to avenge the wrongs of his country, and a heart to sympathise with the picture of human misery. All are swayed by the magic word, ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... know how I could have borne to see her taken home by that ruffian—to be punished for so ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... pugilist bent his knees, slided his shoulders back, and, avoiding the clutch, raised, and threw his trunk forward, with the blow studied well, and planted his knuckles in the white man's eyes. The tall ruffian went down as from a ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... young fellow, with a wink to his comrades, followed her, and where the passage was darkest put his arm around her waist and pressed upon her cheek a resounding kiss. In response there came from the entrance a roar of jeering laughter. But the young ruffian found instantly to his sorrow that he had aroused a tigress. Belle was strong and furious from the insult, and her plump hand came down on the fellow's nose with a force that caused the blood to flow copiously. After the quick impulse of anger and ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... power. He may have removed the restrictions on grain, and did proclaim Sulla and Metellus outlaws; but, though he should have bent every energy to hinder Sulla's return, he did worse than nothing, and, instead of Sertorius, sent the incapable Flaccus and the ruffian Fimbria against the general who had just taken Athens and defeated Archelaus. The miscarriage of their enterprise will be told in the next chapter. When Cinna suddenly became alive to the fact that the avenger was at hand, and that either he must act promptly ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... kings do sometimes seek delight in change: For now and then, I tell you, poor men range. Sit down a little, I will make you smile. Though I be now like to the snowy Alps, I was as hot as Aetna in my youth; All fire, i' faith, true heart of oak, right steel— A ruffian, lady. Often for my sport I to a lodge of mine did make resort, To view my dear, I said; dear God can tell, It was my keeper's wife whom I lov'd well. My countess (God be with her) was a shrow, As women be, your majesty doth know; And some odd pick-thank put it in her ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... absolutely insufferable," said the Black Rat. "There is a local ruffian who answers to the name of Mangles—a builder— who has taken possession of the outhouses on the far side of the Wheel for the last fortnight. He has constructed cubical horrors in red brick where those deliciously ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... not being hindered, she wagged against him with all the virulence of malice. She asked if he was come to butcher his brother, to insult his father's corpse, and triumph in her affliction? And bestowed upon him the epithets of spendthrift, jail-bird, and unnatural ruffian. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... on the mother's side. Her father was a blackmailer, a despicable ruffian, in the pay of a notorious New York Inspector of Police. She suspected him of killing her mother and she hated him as a murderer. It was mainly because her father, Dirk Kerrnon, was employed at the Valentine Steel Works that ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... door that gave private access to the rear of the premises. As the attendant in charge confessed when questioned, he had been bribed by the American earlier in the day to leave this side door open and to allow the man to escape by the goods entrance. Thus the ruffian did not appear on the boulevard at all, and so had not been observed ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... bar of the hotel; and as it is no secret why he and Miss Bates parted, I enlightened the company on the subject of his antecedents. He threatened to challenge me! Ho! ho!—fight with a nigger—that is too good a joke!" And laughing heartily, the young ruffian leant back in his chair. "I want some money to-morrow, dad," continued he. "I say, old gentleman, wasn't it a lucky go that darkey's father was put out of the way so nicely, eh?—We've been living in clover ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... of the Inferior Doors of the Palace] the Steward of Admetus: he has stolen away to get a moment's respite from the hateful hilarity of this strange visitor—some ruffian or robber he supposes—on whom his office has condemned him to wait, and thereby to miss paying the last offices to a mistress who has been more like a mother to him. The guest has been willing to enter, and though he saw the mourning of the household, he did not allow it ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... the man with a violent knocking at the door. The old ruffian appeared with a sputtering lamp which might have belonged to a cave man, and a head of matted grey hair which suggested the same origin. He was old and suspicious, but at Lewis's bidding he hobbled forth and pointed ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... King said, "Serve him right, the rebellious ruffian! And now, as those lions won't eat that ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... confused and distracting extravagance that the reader's attention may at times be withdrawn from the all but unqualified ugliness of its ethical tone or tendency. Two of Webster's favorite types, the meditative murderer or philosophic ruffian, and the impulsive impostor who is liable to collapse into the likeness of a passionate penitent, will remind the reader how much better they appear in tragedies which are carried through to their natural tragic end. But here, where the story is admirably opened and the ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... phrases of gallantry, even if his fealty to Miss Kate Belthorpe had permitted him to do so. This fair young lady was the sister of Lieutenant Belthorpe, and Deck had made her acquaintance on the evening of the "Battle of Riverlawn," when he had rescued her from the grasp of a ruffian. He was too young to be absolutely in love with the maiden, though he believed she was the prettiest girl in the ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... of Bolton lived a young woman, much liked and respected as a teacher in one of the Board schools. On her way home from school she was accustomed to follow a footpath through a lonely wood, and here one evening her body was found. She had been strangled by a ruffian who had thought in this lonely place to have his wicked will of her. She had resisted successfully and he had killed her in the struggle. Fortunately the murderer was caught and the facts ascertained from circumstantial evidence ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... I sold my hay willingly at thirty kopecks a pood.... Well and good.... So you see I was taking the hay in the morning with a good will; I was interfering with no one. In an unlucky hour I see the village elder, Antip Syedelnikov, coming out of the tavern. 'Where are you taking it, you ruffian?' says he, and takes ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... all over the United States to whom the mere mention of the word mountaineer evokes a fantastic picture—a whiskey-soaked ruffian with bloodshot eyes and tobacco-stained beard, wide-brimmed felt cocked over a half-cynical eye, finger on the trigger of a long-barreled squirrel rifle. He is guarding his moonshine still. Or he may be lying in wait ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... I ought to have nipped my feelings in the bud when she told me she was his wife; but then he is a brigand, who threatened both my ears and my tongue, to say nothing of my life. To what extent is the domestic happiness of such a ruffian to be respected?" and I went on splitting the moral straws suggested by this train of thought, until I had recovered my sketch-book and overtaken my escort, with whom I rode triumphantly back into ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... persons, deadly white, gazing in a dazed vacant way at the scene around them, and sometimes casting a reproachful glance at the slowly plodding horse. One of the two was an old man, of fine, aristocratic presence, which the coarse clothes he wore could not disguise. The other was a low ruffian, with swollen face and bleared eyes, in the dress of a butcher. Between the two, except that they were on their way to death, there was nothing in common. Till to-day they had never met, and after to-day they would never meet again. The crime of one, so I heard, was that ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... gentleman, who repressed him: but when he gets out of the sight of his tutor, I'll warrant you he'll spare no woman he meets, young or old."' 'No, sir,' I replied, 'she'll say, "There was a terrible ruffian who would have forced me, had it not been for a civil decent young man who, I take it, was an angel sent ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... this, but pretended ignorance. One day my curiosity induced me to go to the Palace of Tears, to observe how my consort employed herself, and from a place where she could not see me, I heard her thus address the wounded ruffian: 'I am afflicted to the highest degree to behold you in this condition,' she cried, 'I am as sensible as yourself of the tormenting pain you endure; but, dear soul, I am continually speaking to you, and you do not answer me: how long will you remain silent? Speak only one word: ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... A ruffian examined it. "Ay," he murmured with reverence, "it is our Duke's. I saw it on his breast before ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... Smee, an oddly genial man who stabbed, so to speak, without offence, and was the only Nonconformist in Hook's crew; and Noodler, whose hands were fixed on backwards; and Robt. Mullins and Alf Mason and many another ruffian long known and ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... come in," said Lord Grosville, when, with more digressions and more plainness of speech with regard to his quondam sister-in-law than can be here reproduced, he had brought his story to this point. "Blackwater—the old ruffian—when he was dying had a moment of remorse. He wrote to my wife and asked her to look after his girls, 'For God's sake, Lina, see if you can help Alice—Wensleydale's a perfect brute.' That was the first light we had on the situation, ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the third ruffian rushed at me with a large sheath-knife, I knocked his hand aside quite neatly with the concussor and drove him out of range with a heavy blow of my left fist. But at this moment I observed Bamber frantically lugging something from his hip-pocket; something that was certainly ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... conventional cadence, and instantly extorted from him—amid all his dazedness—the corresponding "Good-by." When he turned and saw it was Mr. Glamorys who had come in, his heart leapt wildly at the nearness of his escape. As he passed this masked ruffian, he nodded perfunctorily and received a cordial smile. Yes, he was handsome and fascinating enough externally, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... The ruffian advanced toward me as he spoke. Suddenly he paused. His jaw dropped; his hair seemed literally to stand on end; his white lips quivered; he shook, as with an ague; his whole form appeared to shrink. I stared in amazement at the awful change. A strange thrill shot through me, as I ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... first. He was the victim, he declared, of such ill luck as rarely befell a man. Arriving at Euston by the Irish mail, and hastening to get a cab, whom should he encounter on the very platform but a base-minded ruffian who nursed a spite against him; a low fellow who had taken advantage of his good nature, and who—in short, a man from whom it was impossible to escape, for several good reasons, until they had spent some hours together. He got off a telegram to Lord Polperro, ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... as my shirt and presses a little button on the table. A big husky, made up like a Winter Garden chorus man, runs in and Stupid says, 'Eject this ruffian, Simms! And then you will answer to me ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... "Are you hurt much?" he said, coming close up and taking a tender hold of his friend's arm. Wharton smiled and shook his head, but spoke not a word. He was in truth more shaken, stunned, and bewildered than actually injured. The ruffian's fist had been at his throat, twisting his cravat, and for half a minute he had felt that he was choked. As he had struggled while one woman pulled at his watch and the other searched for his purse,—struggling, alas! unsuccessfully,—the man had endeavoured ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... balloon. The whimpering of our deck-boy, a skinny, impressionable little scarecrow out of a training-ship, for whom, because of the tender immaturity of his nerves, this display of German Ocean frightfulness was too much (before the year was out he developed into a sufficiently cheeky young ruffian), his desolate whimpering, I say, heard between the gusts of that black, savage night, was much more present to my mind and indeed to my senses than the green overcoat and the white cap of the German passenger circling the deck ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... says, you know—and it must be a very skilfully-dressed fly indeed which brings her to the surface. She's been hooked once, mind, and she has a horror of it. Her husband was the most frightful brute and ruffian, you know. I was strongly opposed to the marriage, but her mother carried it through. But—yes—about her—I think she is afraid to marry again. If she does ever consent, it will be because poverty has ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... respect to Louis Napoleon is stronger, and it tends more to unanimity every day. The Orleans confiscation has, I think, almost too much weight given to it. After his other crimes the mere robbery of a single family, ruffian-like as it is, is ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... goes, of late, he spies The scowls of sullen and revengeful eyes; 'Tis what he knows with much contempt to bear, And serves a cause too good to let him fear: He fears no poison from incensed drab, No ruffian's five-foot sword, nor rascal's stab; Nor any other snares of mischief laid, Not a Rose-alley cudgel ambuscade; From any private cause where malice reigns, Or general pique all ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... large pincushion. Then the window—an unusually large window. Then a dark old picture, which the feeble candle dimly showed me. It was a picture of a fellow in a high Spanish hat, crowned with a plume of towering feathers. A swarthy, sinister ruffian, looking upward, shading his eyes with his hand, and looking intently upward—it might be at some tall gallows at which he was going to be hanged. At any rate, he had the ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... to glory; Hark! hark! what myriads bid you rise! Your children, wives, and grandsires hoary, Behold their tears, and hear their cries! Shall hateful tyrants, mischief breeding, With hireling hosts, a ruffian band, Affright and desolate the land, While Peace and Liberty lie bleeding? To arms, to arms, ye brave, Th'avenging sword unsheath; March on, march on, all hearts resolv'd On victory ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... built themselves up into compositions as luminously simple and single as a mathematical idea. He thought of the "Call of Matthew," of "Peter Crucified," of the "Lute players," of "Magdalen." He had the secret, that astonishing ruffian, he had the secret! And now Gombauld was after it, in hot pursuit. Yes, it would be something terrific, if only he ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... Wilt thou, upon the high and giddy mast, Seal up the shipboy's eyes, and rock his brains, In cradle of the rude imperious surge; And in the visitation of the winds, Who take the ruffian billows by the top, Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them With deafning clamour in the slippery clouds, That, with the hurry, death itself awakes— Canst thou, O partial sleep! give thy repose To the wet sea—boy ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... John Bunyan, and been really moved by his majestic presence, and warning, yet hope-inspiring words. But he himself has been principally worked upon by the reading of the "Pilgrim's Progress;" and we see in him throughout, an unregenerate ruffian, whose carnal energies have merely transferred themselves to another field; and whose blood is fired to this act of martyrdom both by yesterday's potations, and to-day's virtuously endured thirst. "A mug," he cries, in the midst of his confessions; ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... exchanging broadsides, considerably thinning their crowded decks; but as some of our spars were wounded, our captain, fearing lest any being carried away, the enemy might escape, determined without delay to lay him on board, and to try the mettle of true men against their ruffian crew of desperadoes. ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... The ruffian against whom I was pitted began to draw his breath in gasps. He was a scoundrel not fit to die, less fit to live, unworthy of a gentleman's steel. I presently ran him through with as little compunction and as great a desire to be quit of a dirty job as if he ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... Barbarossa laid out for all Italy. In Carlyle's History of Frederick the Great you can read a pleasanter account of the Emperor's business at Roncaglia about this time than our Italian chroniclers will give you. Carlyle loves a tyrant; and if the tyrant is a ruffian and bully, and especially a German, there are hardly any lengths to which that historian will not go in praise of him. Truly, one would hardly guess, from that picture of Frederick Redbeard at Roncaglia, with the standard set before his tent, inviting all men to come and have justice ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... up the cry through the dark and bawl back, "All's well here too"; and all night long the two sentries bawl back and forward to each other through the dark. Sometimes, too, though strictest orders are issued against such ruffian warfare by both Van Rensselaer and Brock, the sentries chance shots at each other through the dark. Drums beat reveille at four in the morning, and the rub-a-dub-dub of Queenston Heights is echoed by rat-tat-too of Lewiston, though river ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... General of the Church, and had his Condotta gradually increased. Meanwhile his cousins, the murderers of his father, began to dread his rising power, and determined, if possible, to ruin him. He was not a man to be easily assassinated; so they sent a hired ruffian to Caldora's camp to say that Bartolommeo had taken his name by fraud, and that he was himself the real son of Puho Colleoni. Bartolommeo defied the liar to a duel; and this would have taken place before the army, had not two witnesses appeared, who knew ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... received the surname of Great—seemingly by comparison; 'Inter caecos luscus rex;' and it was highly creditable to a Roman Emperor in those days to be neither ruffian nor villain, but a handsome, highbred, courteous gentleman, pure in his domestic life, an orthodox Christian, and sufficiently obedient to the Church to forgive the monks who had burnt a Jewish synagogue, and to do penance in the Cathedral of Milan for the massacre of Thessalonica. That the morals ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... language began to take precision and force. But with much general improvement and literary industry there was still nothing great or original, nothing to mark an epoch in the history of letters. The only poets worthy of notice were Charles, Duke of Orleans (1391-1465), and Villon, a low ruffian of Paris (1431-1500). Charles was taken prisoner at the battle of Agincourt, and carried to England, where he was detained for twenty-five years, and where he wrote a volume of poems in which he imitated the allegorical style of the Romance of the Rose. The ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... having achieved the goal on which he had set his ambition, discards his party or followers, as Morgan did his buccaneers after the sacking of Panama. Nor is Europe to-day without a counterpart to the ruffian crews who arrogantly "defied the world and declared war ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... typical larrikins were engaged in earnest conversation. They had observed the girl coming towards them, and were evidently preparing some plan for accosting her. When she was only about fifty yards away, two of them walked to a distance, leaving the third and biggest ruffian to waylay her. He did so, but without success; she passed him and continued her walk at ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... ruffian may open on you again at any moment," warned Jack, keeping an anxious glance turned in the direction whence came the disturbing voice ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... short, but for the timely arrival of Achilles Henderson. The giant had heard the boy's warning cry, and being near at hand, rushed to his aid. His arrival was most opportune. He seized the miner in his powerful grasp, and the ruffian, strong and muscular as he was, was like a child in his clutch. His knife fell from his hand, as he was shaken like ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... I am unworthy of having such an angel," replied the old man, "but unless you were a cruel and a heartless ruffian, you would not at this moment mention her, or bring the thoughts ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Australian Bushranger be regarded as the legitimate representative of the traditionary highwayman who levied toll at Highgate, or stopped the post-boy and captured the mailbags in Epping Forest. The real, living bushranger is, however, more of a ruffian and less of a hero than our ideal highwayman; for time, like distance, softens down the harsh and the coarse, and gives dignity to ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... sought the assistance of his surgeon, in a state of anger and excitement that bid fair, in connection with his wounds, to lead him into a raging fever. Inventing some plausible story of being attacked by some unknown ruffian, and desiring the surgeon to observe his wishes as to secrecy, for certain reasons, the wounded man submitted to have his wounds dressed, and taking some cooling medicine by way of precaution, lay ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... which they had dressed up for the levee of their masters still flickering on their curled lips, presenting the faded remains of their courtly graces, to meet the scornful, ferocious, sardonic grin of a bloody ruffian, who, whilst he is receiving their homage, is measuring them with his eye, and fitting to their size the slider of his guillotine! These ambassadors may easily return as good courtiers as they went; but can they ever ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... robber, in his triumph, comes up for his booty; when the intended victim takes a quick aim and shoots him dead—the pistol being really loaded all the time. I have also heard of an incident in the days of Shooter's Hill, in England, where a ruffian waylaid and sprang upon a traveller, and holding a pistol to his breast, summoned him for the contents of his pocket. The traveller dived his hand into one of them, and, silently cocking a small pistol ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... to his country. Every man who is able to hold a gun, he said, must come to the help of civilization against barbarism. These dreadful outrages are happening thousands of miles away, but that makes them none the less real. Humanity is being attacked by a bully, a ruffian,—how can any man stay at home? Let no consideration of family life keep you from doing your duty. Every human being must give an account of himself to God. What did you do in the great day of testing? will be the question asked you in that great day of reckoning to which ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... very well, and cries Pall so pleasantly, that made my Lord give it my Lady Paulina; but my Lady, her mother, do not like it. Home, and observe my man Will to walk with his cloak flung over his shoulder, like a Ruffian, which, whether it was that he might not be seen to walk along with the footboy, I know not, but I was vexed at it; and coming home, and after prayers, I did ask him where he learned that immodest garb, and he answered me that it was not immodest, or some ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... referred to as the guardian of the boy Julius. He was certainly a disreputable-looking ruffian, and his character did ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... against them. But this very day, An honest man, my neighbor,—there he stands— Was struck—struck like a dog, by one who wore The badge of Ursini! because, forsooth, He tossed not high his ready cap in air, Nor lifted up his voice in servile shouts, At sight of that great ruffian! Be we men, And suffer such dishonor?—men, and wash not The stain away in blood? Such shames are common. I have known deeper wrongs. I, that speak to ye, I had a brother once, a gracious boy, Full of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... heroic tranquillity, inflexible to the rude jests and serious violences of the insolent soldiery, republican or royalist, sent to molest you—for ye sate betwixt the fires of two persecutions, the out-cast and off-scowering of church and presbytery.—I have seen the reeling sea-ruffian, who had wandered into your receptacle, with the avowed intention of disturbing your quiet, from the very spirit of the place receive in a moment a new heart, and presently sit among ye as a lamb amidst lambs. And I remembered Penn before his accusers, and Fox ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... was marvellously nimble; although Jack made a dart after him pistol in hand, meaning to wreak summary vengeance upon him, the ruffian ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... of rage, scorn, and indignation were concentrated into that moment, and, smarting at the blow, he sprang upon the schoolmaster, wrested the weapon from him, and, pinning him by the throat, beat the ruffian until he ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... permanent residence in Italy. Mrs. Billington realized all her property, and with her jewels and plate, of which she possessed a great quantity, departed for the land of song, taking with her Miss Madocks. She paid a bitter penalty for her revived tenderness toward Felican, for the ruffian subjected her to such treatment that she died from the effects of it, August 25, 1818. In such an ignoble fashion one of the most brilliant and beautiful women in the history of song ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... vengeance wreaked by a villainous Neapolitan street loafer upon a woman who has played him false—a vengeance which takes the form of ruining her son by drink and play, and of attempting to seduce her daughter. In the end this egregious ruffian is murdered in the street by the mother of his two victims, just in time to prevent his being knifed by the members of a secret society whom he had betrayed to justice. The music is not without dramatic vigour, and it has plenty of melody of a rough and ready kind. ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... your tongue and be hanged," answered the ruffian, turning aside; for Jerry's coolness puzzled ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... straightway dismissed by the majority as inadequate to account for the phenomenon. They inclined, rather, to adopt an alternative and alluring theory propounded by the Commissioner's lady. This theory laid it down that the American was bargaining for the Count's daughter, a pretty girl whom the old ruffian had shut up in a convent somewhere in anticipation of the day when a purchaser, rich enough to content his inordinate lust for gold, should present himself. Van Koppen was that purchaser. They had now been haggling, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... on his own cutlass. The sword flew from the man's hand, and Tom at once cut him down. Dimchurch engaged in a single-handed contest with the great mulatto captain. Strong as the sailor was he could with difficulty parry the ruffian's blows, but skill made up for inequality of strength, and after a few exchanges he laid the man low with a clever thrust. The fall of their leader completed the discomfiture of the pirates, most of whom at once sprang overboard and made ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... told him his daughter had received him kindly, and that she had promised to be married the next Sunday. This Katharine denied, saying she would rather see him hanged on Sunday, and reproached her father for wishing to wed her to such a mad-cap ruffian as Petruchio. Petruchio desired her father not to regard her angry words, for they had agreed she should seem reluctant before him, but that when they were alone he had found her very fond and loving; and he said to her, "Give me your hand, Kate; I will go to Venice ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... upon him, and Veyergang, with a cry of "You cowardly ruffian!" returned the blow with his walking-stick right across Nikolai's face, ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... the poet. And he for his part Will practice his art With a patriot heart, With the honest views That he now pursues, And fair buffoonery and abuse: Not rashly bespattering, or basely beflattering, Not pimping, or puffing, or acting the ruffian; Not sneaking or fawning; But openly scorning All menace and warning, All bribes and suborning: He will do his endeavor on your behalf; He will teach you to think, he will teach you to laugh. So Cleon again and again may try; I value him not, nor fear him, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... permitted him to comprehend. Austria was like the thief who set himself up as umpire to settle between two knaves of his own cloth, and, while he gave advice to both, was securing to himself the very plunder which gave rise to the dispute. Nicholas, John Bull said, was a ruffian of the go-ahead school; but, of the three ruffians, which shall we choose? history may be the teacher! Ruffians, however, may do good at times, in which sense Nicholas was entitled to more consideration than Mister Bull, in his frenzy, was willing ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... kindly. I do not intend to take up much space here with an account of him, but he did, after this first meeting, in some sort attach himself to me. I never learned his name nor where he lived; he was I should suppose an absolutely abominable plunderer and pirate and ruffian. He would appear suddenly in my room, stand by the door and talk—but talk with the ignorance, naivete, brutal simplicity of an utterly abandoned baby. Nothing mystical or beautiful about the Rat. He did not disguise ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... Mr. Vallandigham, though less valuable, is of the same purport, that "it is vain to underrate either the man or his conspiracy.... He is the farthest possible removed from the ordinary ruffian, ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... of course, was disgusted. Couldn't leave the boy alone one minute but he must misbehave himself, upset the party, be the little ruffian that he always was. She had always said that his mother spoiled him, and here were the fruits of that foolishness. How could she ever say enough to Miss Maddison? Her delightful party completely ruined!... Shocking!... ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole |
