"Ruffianly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... selected was one called Dotheboys Hall, a long, cold-looking, tumble-down building, one story high, in a dreary part of the country. It belonged to a man named Squeers, a burly, ruffianly hypocrite, who pretended to the world to be a kind, fatherly master, but in fact treated his pupils with such cruelty that almost the only ones ever sent there were poor little orphans, whose guardians were glad to get rid of them. Squeers had an oily, wrinkled face ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... the afternoon and were still several miles from home, when, passing through a bit of woods, a sudden turn of the road brought them face to face with a band of mounted men, some thirty or forty in number, not disguised but rough and ruffianly in appearance and armed with ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... debate on the Boston Port Bill in Parliament, April 15th, 1774, Colonel Barre referred to the ruffianly attack made on Mr. Otis, and his treatment of the injury, in a manner that reflects honor ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... or picked up our pickets, including the ruffianly Wyandotte, or Erie, as he was now judged to be, and, filing as we had filed the night before we crossed the ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... lands, although in Canada it is illegal to purchase land from the Indian races. A superintendent, an old officer in the British army, is stationed with the Five Nations purposely to protect them; yet it is impossible for any one to be aware or to guard against the ruffianly practices of those who think that the Red Man has no longer a right ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... Masham's ruffianly blow and kick had evidently done far more damage than he or any one supposed. As we waited in silence for the doctor to come our alarm increased, and it even seemed doubtful whether, as we stood there, we were not destined to see a terrible ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... he had pretended to ally himself with Frank's foes, and thus had heard the plots against the boy. He had sent Frank the warnings, and he had secured the aid of Plug Kirby to aid him in beating off Merriwell's ruffianly assailants. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... subdued by his noisy entrance and ruffianly conduct, and seeing that an assumption of dignity would only draw down on her some fresh impertinence, appeared to resign herself to her position. All this time Quennebert never took his eyes from the chevalier, who sat with his face towards the partition. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to provoke me further. This I spoke in such a tone as bespoke an high resentment of the abuse put upon us, and withal pressed him so hard with my horse that I suffered him not to come up again to Guli." By this time, it became evident to the companions of the ruffianly assailant that the young Quaker was in earnest, and they hastened to interfere. "For they," says Ellwood, "seeing the contest rise so high, and probably fearing it would rise higher, not knowing ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... prank. Indeed, he regarded it as such himself, performing the act with a good nature that I found quite irresistible, and I am certain that neither his lordship nor I have ever thought the less of each other because of it. I revert to this merely to show that I have not always acted in a ruffianly manner under these circumstances. It seems rather to depend upon how the thing is done—the mood of the performer—his mental state. Had Mr. Belknap-Jackson been—pardon me—quite drunk, I feel that the outcome would have been happier for ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the awning, dripped dismally from his slouched hat; and now, as he turned round, and his sinister and gloomy gaze rested upon the face of Alice, his bad countenance, rendered more haggard by the cold raw light of the cheerless dawn, completed the hideous picture of unveiled and ruffianly wretchedness. ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... king of the power which he still possessed to allay the tumult, if the reasonable demands of the people (as he called them) were granted. Marie Antoinette alone was undaunted and calm; or, at least, if in the depths of her woman's heart she felt terror at the sanguinary and obscene threats of her ruffianly enemies, she scorned to show it. When the firing began, M. de Luzerne, one of the ministers, had quietly placed himself between her and the window; but, while she thanked him for his devotion, she begged him to retire, ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... man, are we to sit idle and let these ruffianly thieves make off with our money—children—wives! One good man-o'-war could teach the scamps such a lesson as would scare half of 'em off the seas! Why, if I'd had even a good culverin aboard the Indian Queen last night, I'd ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... ruffianly fellow, indeed!" said the mild Hartopp, indignantly, as he brushed from his sleeve the splash of dirt which the horseman bequeathed to it. "He ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... doesn't take that for an excuse. It wants the man. This is a hard country and a hard rule, but no other rule will keep a respect for law in our territories. A shot, a dagger-thrust, anything to punish Seguis for his crime, and this ruffianly collection of ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... this is not the time and place to reproach you with other misconduct; and yet I could almost regret that it is not possible to put you once more in the dock, and try you for conspiracy and incitement to riot; as in my own mind I have no doubt that you are in collusion with the ruffianly revolutionists, who, judging from their accent, are foreigners of a low type, and who, while this case has been proceeding, have been stimulating their bloodstained souls to further horrors by the ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... discoveries were made was, at that time, a species of "No-Man's-Land." The southern bank belonged to the Free State, but for the other side there were many claimants, none of whom could prove a title to it. The community of miners which there gathered was consequently lawless and ruffianly, and its mode ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... in heaven's name. You are a treasure, Gahra Dahra. In rescuing you from those ruffianly Spaniards we did ourselves, as well as you, ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... the trench was not without its effect upon the gang of villains at Morris's. About nine in the morning Cleggett noticed that he was under observation from the roof of the east verandah of the road house. Loge and two of his ruffianly lieutenants were scrutinizing the Cleggett flotilla and fortifications through their binoculars. Cleggett, through his own glass, returned ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... his feet on the table beside an empty beer bottle and dirty glass, was a ruffianly-looking chap, who had a thick neck that ran straight up with the back of his head. His hair was close cropped and his forehead low. There was a bulldog look about his mouth and jaw, and his forehead was ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... that all the points came together in a focus; and this action suited well with their fierce and animal features, their long neglected beards, their matted hair and their gleaming eyes. It looked the prologue to some deed of blood. This done, at another word from their ruffianly leader they turned away from the angle in the rock and plunged hastily down the ravine; but they had scarcely taken thirty steps ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... protectors against harm of the country: and, in fine, how the two orders of neighbours lived in long and happy communion of kind offices with one another; until, upon one unfortunate day, the ill-renowned freebooter, Aymerigot Marcel, with his ruffianly men-at-arms, having approached, by stealth, from his near-lying hold, stormed the romantically seated rock-mansion of the bountiful pigmies: who, scared, and in anger, forsook the land. Ever since the foul outrage, only a straggler may, now ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... place for her beside him. Otherwise she would hardly have had seat or food.' She was now able to survey the inmates of the castle. Besides the family themselves, there were about a dozen men, all ruffianly-looking, and of much lower grade than her father, and three women. One, old Ursel, the wife of Hatto the forester, was a bent, worn, but not ill-looking woman, with a motherly face; the younger ones were hard, bold ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with an insolent fierceness from the doorway, and Orrin, booted and spurred, with mud on his holiday hose, and his hat still on his head, strode into our midst and confronted us all with an air of such haughty defiance that it half robbed him of his ruffianly appearance. ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... amongst our young nobles. God knows, I grudge not his life in your Grace's quarrel; and love him for the willingness with which he labours for your rescue. But wherefore should he brawl with an old ruffianly serving-man, and stain at once his name with such a broil, and his hands with the blood of an old and ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... something unusual perturbed his mind. The cause was soon after explained, for, the negress, before mentioned, coming into the room on some trifling errand, to my surprise accosted him rather freely. Her master suddenly broke out in a paroxysm of rage, swore at her awfully, and accused her in a ruffianly way of being insolent to her mistress. Then, violently ringing a bell which stood on the table, he summoned a negro lad into the room, and at once despatched him to a neighbour's house to borrow a new raw-hide whip, threatening all the while to flay her alive. ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... over the centuries, fixed in the present, launched to the endless future; that they cannot stomach the high-life-below-stairs coloring all our poetic and genteel social status so far—the measureless viciousness of the great radical Republic, with its ruffianly nominations and elections; its loud, ill-pitched voice, utterly regardless whether the verb agrees with the nominative; its fights, errors, eructations, repulsions, dishonesties, audacities; those fearful and varied and long-continued storm and stress stages (so ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... face out for a moment, with the hand that again wandered over his forehead, and then it lowered on Redlaw, reckless, ruffianly, and callous. ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... you a story of him. They have a young new schoolmistress at Wrapworth, his father's former living, you know, close to Castle Blanch. This poor thing was obliged to punish a school-child, the daughter of one of the bargemen on the Thames, a huge ruffianly man. Well, a day or two after, Owen came upon him in a narrow lane, bullying the poor girl almost out of her life, threatening her, and daring her to lay a finger on his children. What do ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to be quite fresh and not affected by the sultriness of the day. It had cost her small effort to adhere to her statement that she had had no share in the escape of the sisters, when catechised by the ruffianly negro; but she found it hard to defy Othman's benevolent questioning. However, there was no choice, and she succeeded in proving that she had never quitted Memphis nor the house of Rufinus at the time when the Arab warriors met their death between ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a comradeship among men of gentle blood and bearing which banded them together against all ruffianly or unchivalrous attack. These rude fellows were no soldiers. Their dress and arms, their uncouth cries and wild assault, marked them as banditti—such men as had slain the Englishman upon the road. Waiting in narrow gorges ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... withered specimens. Reached Bahawul ghat at 1 P.M. The Khan visited Mr. Macnaghten in the afternoon, his visit was preceded by one from his Hindoo minister, and another man, Imaam Shah, who is a very fat ruffianly- looking fellow. The Khan was attended by numerous suwarries; he is ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... was a pandemonium, as the more ruffianly part of the mob hurled furniture out of windows, or ran off with anything they could carry. The ricks had been fired, and the food of man, the labour of years, devoured in aimless ruin, when some one shouted: "The yeomanry!" And at that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... embarked on as a stowaway was bound for America. When I was discovered hiding among the cargo we were in mid-ocean, and there was nothing for it but to carry me to the States. Still, to earn my passage, I was made cabin-boy to a ruffianly captain, and once more tasted the early delights of childhood, viz., kicks, curses, and starvation. When the ship arrived in New York I was turned adrift in the city without a penny or ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... organise the crime, handed on the job to Martinez, his steward. Martinez asked a ruffianly page, Enriquez, 'if I knew anybody in my country' (Murcia) 'who would stick a knife into a person.' Enriquez said, 'I will speak about it to a muleteer of my acquaintance, as, in fact, I did, and the muleteer undertook the business.' But ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... to live by pugilism, or gambling, or harlotry, with nearly every keeper of a tippling house, is politically a Democrat.... A purely selfish interest attaches the lewd, ruffianly, criminal and dangerous class to the Democratic party by the instinct of self-preservation."—Ibid., January 7. Conkling quoted these extracts in his Cooper Institute speech of July 23.—New York Times, July ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... forging up-stream and presently it was disclosed to view no more than a cable-length away. It was a pinnace filled with ruffianly fellows, more than a score of them. No merchant seamen these but brethren of the coast, freebooters who were gallows-ripe. Bill Saxby was quick to recognize two or three of them as old hands of Blackbeard's crew who must have deserted their leader ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... conditions offer no satisfactory criterion; the Americans are, for reasons I have discussed elsewhere,[8] a "State-blind" people concentrated upon private getting; they have been negligent of public concerns, and the public appointments have been left to the peculiarly ruffianly type of politician their unfortunate Constitution and their individualist traditions have evolved. In England, too, public servants are systematically undersalaried, so that the big businesses have merely to pay reasonably well to secure the pick of the national capacity. Moreover, ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... humblest beggar in the street to the king upon the throne, and had I been older I should have been proud of what then was my greatest annoyance. But I was young—a mere boy—and so I watched her jealously, until a new element of disquiet was presented to me in the shape of a ruffianly looking fellow, who was frequently seen about the premises, and with whom I once found Genevra in close converse, starting and blushing guiltily when I came upon her, while her companion ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... which nothing might have distracted him. And who knows what effect may be produced on a criminal by an incessant, forced meditation on the crimes which he had committed, and their punishment? Far from this, thrown into the midst of a ruffianly crowd in whose eyes the least sign of repentance is cowardice, or, rather, treachery, which they dearly expiate, for, in their savage obduracy and in senseless distrust, they look upon as a spy every man (if there should be such a one) who, sad and mournful, regretting ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... goes to form their being—how much their decent behaviour is owing to the moral pressure, like that of the atmosphere, of the laws and persons and habits and opinions that surround them. Witness how many, who seemed respectable people at home, become vulgar, self- indulgent, ruffianly, cruel even, in the wilder parts of the colonies! No man who has not, through restraint, learned not to need restraint, but be as well behaved among savages as in society, has yet become a true man. No perfection ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... look of piercing sharpness; there was in his whole air and demeanour that certain French air of swaggering bullyism, which ever remained in those who, having risen from the ranks, maintained the look of ruffianly defiance which gave their early character for ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... permission I will here interpolate the remark that the further adventures of the eminent surgeon with the mysterious confederacy that sought his life, bore evidence that these depraved and ruffianly men were not without a certain rude artistic temperament as well as a tinge of romance, and a dramatic sense that many who write for the stage might ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... soon told," she said. "I knew that it was death to serve the Gods any more, yet none the less in my little temple did fire burn upon Apollo's altar this morning. Scarcely was it kindled ere I became aware of a ruffianly mob thronging to sack and spoil. I was ready for death, but not at their hands. I caught up this basket, and escaped up the mountain. On its inaccessible summit, it is reported, hangs Prometheus, whom Zeus (let me bow in awe before his inscrutable counsels) doomed for ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... I saw a shadow steal out of the deeper darkness and draw to his side. I made it out for Pierce, the murderer. I will say that that interruption of the ruffianly boatswain turned unexpectedly the course of my blood. I had seemed somehow to have been dealing with Holgate, as a scoundrel, certainly, yet upon terms of fair warfare. But that shadow struck us all down to a lower level. Murder had been committed, ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... generations before the Council of Clermont; but, from the first, the southward advance against the rulers of Cordova foreshadows the age of the Crusades. In Spain, as in the German marks, the pioneers of Christendom were often ruffianly, and always fought with an eye to the main chance. Among them are mere desperadoes like the Cid Campeador (d. 1099), who serves and betrays alternately the Christian and the Moorish causes, founds a principality at the expense of both religions, but is finally claimed as ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... strange if Dick Taverner be not among them. I will see what they are about." And as he spoke he hurried to the oriel window which looked out upon the wharf, exclaiming—"Ay, ay,—'t is as I thought. Dick is among them, and at their head. 'Fore heaven! they are attacking those ruffianly braggarts from Whitefriars, and are laying about them lustily with their cudgels. Ha! what is this I see? The Alsatians and the myrmidons are routed, and the brave lads have captured Sir Francis Mitchell. What are they about to do with him? I must ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... that a thousand marauding Albanians had crossed their frontier and were invading Serbia, and that, to his personal knowledge, there was a gang of these marauders in Geneva, and, in his view, the responsibility for any ruffianly crime committed in this city was not far to seek. He then sat down, amid loud applause from the Greeks and cries of "shame" from the English-speaking delegates. A placid Albanian bishop rose calmly to reply. He, too, it seemed, had had a telegram from the seat of his government, and his was about ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... are you doing you ruffianly red-trickled waves? Will you kill the courageous giant? will you kill him in the prime of ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... to think of it, it must have looked remarkable—a ruffianly-looking man, carrying a disreputable bundle of blankets, a tin cup and water-bottle slung across his shoulders all clanking together, and a small Bible in his hands, with a well-dressed lady on each arm and an armed soldier ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... point Dougal nodded downward, and the other two saw on a patch of turf, where the Garple began to widen into its estuary, a group of figures round a small fire. There were four of them, all men, and Dickson thought he had never seen such ruffianly-looking customers. After that they moved high up the slope, in a shallow glade of a tributary burn, till they came out of the trees and found themselves ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... made of her refusal to wear woman's dress. For this she seems to have had two reasons: first, that to give up her old dress would have been to acknowledge that her mission was ended; next, for reasons of modesty, she being alone in prison among ruffianly men. She would wear woman's dress if they would let her take the Holy Communion, but this they refused. To these points she was constant: she would not deny her visions; she would not say one word against ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... as that of a distinguished regiment of the British army. It was framed in much the same language and to much the same purpose as its predecessor of Rutherglen, though it would not be right to degrade Cameron to the level of Hamilton and his ruffianly associates. It took its title from having been fixed to the market-cross of Sanquhar, a small town in Dumfriesshire, on June 22nd, 1680. Exactly a month later Claverhouse's troopers (though, as I have ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... became head of the English government; he appointed the absurd Duke of Cumberland, captain-general of the English army, to the direction of American military affairs; and he picked out an obstinate, ruffianly, stupid martinet of a Perthshire Scotchman, sixty years old and of ruined fortunes, to lead the English forces against the French in America. Braddock went over armed with the new and despotic mutiny bill, and with directions to divest all colonial army officers ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... held Drogheda at the battle of the Boyne, and was induced to surrender it by William's ruffianly and ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... head, sheered a little in the direction of the voice, and landed stiffly on the sand-bar below the bridge. Then you saw what a ruffianly brute he really was. His back view was immensely respectable, for he stood nearly six feet high, and looked rather like a very proper bald-headed parson. In front it was different, for his Ally Sloper-like head and neck had not a feather to them, and there ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... when amid the plaintiff's shrieks, The ruffianly defendant speaks— Upon the other side; What he may say you needn't mind— From bias free of every kind, This ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... hair." The ministers preached bitterly and incessantly against the fashion; the Apostle Eliot, Parson Stoddard, Parson Rogers, President Chauncey, President Wigglesworth, all launched burning invective and skilful Biblical argument against the long-growing locks—"the disguisement of long Ruffianly hair" (or Russianly—whichever it may be). It was derisively suggested that long nails like Nebuchadnezzar's would next be in fashion. Men under sentence for offences were offered release from punishment if they would "cut off their long hair into a civil frame." Exact ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... I was returning to the shelter of my humble roof, a dirty hairy fellow—but why should I describe him to you?—leapt out and fired at me point-blank with a huge old-fashioned horse-pistol, and missed. I give you my word he singed half an inch off my left whisker. Of course they say he was a ruffianly suitor offended by my just decision in favour of his opponent, but I know better. 'Sweet Hal, by my faith!' thinks I to myself, says I, and what I says I sticks to. I know he ought to have been taken alive, and returned to you postage-paid, with ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... almost entirely to {583} variations of praise. In the realm of autobiography Benvenuto Cellini attained to the non plus ultra of self-revelation. If he discloses the springs of a rare artistic genius, with equal naivete he lays bare a ruffianly character and a ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... is called the "ruffianly style of dress" or the slouchy appearance of a half-unbottoned vest, and suspenderless pantaloons. That sort of affectation is, if possible, even more disgusting than the painfully elaborate frippery of the dandy or dude. Keep your clothes well brushed and keep them ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... to be done?" asked the doctor. "Our cockleshell of a boat will only hold three or four people, and the chances are that some ruffianly work is going on, and we shall only share the fate ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... private secretary of the governor, the first and second in command, and several old residents. They would apply to the British consul for warrants for the arrest of the ruffianly marksmen, they would wrench them from the rails, and sentence ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... foulest and the insult from him to her deepest, she assuredly conceived and cherished a bitter loathing. But there was one man who had always been ready to champion her cause, the daring, reckless, ruffianly James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, who nevertheless was no mere swash-buckler, but according to Scottish standards of the day, a man of education [Footnote: Lang, Hist. Scotland, ii., p. 168.] and even, it would seem, of some culture. From this time, Bothwell was her one ally. She ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... small room. The chief inmates were some Papal soldiers of ruffianly air, engaged in the clamorous game of moro. Unlike the close shorn Englishmen, their beards and mustachios, were allowed to grow to such length, as to hide the greater ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... respectful demeanor. But these soldiers of Elizabeth showed themselves, from first to last, full of ferocity. They generally went far beyond the letter of their orders; they took an inhuman delight in adding insult to injury, uniting in their persons the double character of preservers of public order and ruffianly executioners of innocent victims. Many and many a record of their barbarity is kept to this day. We add a few, only to ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... receive the homage of those men who had used him so treacherously, and whom—with the exception of Paolo Orsini—he now met face to face for the first time since their rebellion. Here were Francesco Orsini, Duke of Gravina, with Paolo and the latter's son Fabio; here was Oliverotto, the ruffianly Lord of Fermo, who had won his lordship by the cold-blooded murder of his kinsman, and concerning whom a rumour ran in Rome that Cesare had sworn to choke him with his own hands; and here was Vitellozzo Vitelli, the arch-traitor of ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... M. Riel went among the Metis, perfecting his plans, but towards midnight he ordered his horse, and, with a lurid light in his eye, set off for the hut of the half-breed hag where he expected his ruffianly emissaries would have placed Marie before his arrival. But the cabin was desolate, save for the figure of an ill-featured old woman, who, when she heard hoof-beats approach, came to the door peering ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... became a pandemonium. The more ruffianly part of the mob—and alas! there were but too many of them—hurled the furniture out of the windows, or ran off with anything that they could carry. In vain I expostulated, threatened; I was answered ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... man, apparently lifeless, and stretched upon a mattress, with his head bound up in a linen cloth, through which the blood had oosed. Near the body, which, it will be surmised, was that of Abraham Mendez, two ruffianly personages were seated, quietly smoking, and bestowing no sort of attention upon the new-comers. Their conversation was conducted in the flash language, and, though unintelligible to Wood, was easily comprehended by this companion, ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the plaintiff's shrieks, The ruffianly defendant speaks - Upon the other side; What HE may say you need not mind - From bias free of every kind, This trial must ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... you right," came harshly from the boy leader of the ruffianly crew. "Tomlinson attempted to set himself up as head of this crew—as captain over me. You backed him. All the time, you knew I was the leader in ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... Mr. Kinosling. "You ruffianly creature! Do you know what's going to happen to you when you grow up? Do you realize ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... there in the crowd was a little boy carrying a tin can with something in it good to eat, sent, doubtless, by his old mother to her scamp of a son. The little beggar has his first experiences of a prison administering to the comforts of his big, ruffianly brother, probably a great hero ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... keep up the practice of reading the Scriptures and praying, they must do it as secretly as they would commit a murder, and find it more difficult to accomplish than any crime that could be named. There always will be a large proportion of ruffianly characters among many boys; some naturally so, others made so by example. These have the ascendency of course, and they will use it to check and to stifle whatever might shine in contrast to themselves; while, what with those unstable characters who always row with the stream, and prudent ones ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... Speed that Buckhurst had collected his ruffianly franc company in the forest; that the day the cruiser sailed he had appeared in Paradise to proclaim the commune; that doubtless he had signalled, from the semaphore, orders for the cruiser's departure; that a few hours later his red battalion ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... Bannerworth Hall!" was the cry. "Burn it—burn it," and augmented by fresh numbers each minute, the ignorant, and, in many respects, ruffianly assemblage, soon arrived within sight of what had been for so many years the bane of the Bannerworths, and whatever may have been the fault of some of that race, those faults had been of a domestic character, and not at all ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... regiment on Pine Knob was recruited from the Bowery. I happened to be with Kemp, their surgeon, when sick call sounded, and I never saw such a line of impudent, ruffianly malingerers as filed before Kemp. One, I am convinced, had deliberately shot off his trigger finger; but it couldn't be proven, and he'll get his discharge. Another, a big, hulking brute, all jaw and no forehead, came up and ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... the carriage instantly,' said Lady Palliser, almost shouting the substantive, in order that Jack might be reminded what kind of people he had insulted by his ruffianly bearing. 'I feel that I am bemeaning myself every moment I stay in ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... the ruffianly traders of the time was a certain Stewart. At the end of 1830, he was hanging about Cook's Straits in the brig Elizabeth. There he agreed to become Rauparaha's instrument to carry out one of the most diabolical acts of vengeance ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... The manager scoured the country for men to take your places. Ruffianly men came from all parts of the country; insolent, strife-provoking thugs. More than once you saw your fellow-workmen attacked and beaten by thugs, and then the police were ordered to club and arrest—not the aggressors but your comrades. ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... imagination into a composition of striking scenes and the effective portrayal of character. With extraordinary ability and consistency to the type he works out the gradual evolution of a wild Irish boy, hot-headed in love and fighting, full of daring impetuosity and ignorant vanity, into the ruffianly soldier, the intrepid professional gambler, and finally into the selfish profligate, who marries a great heiress and sets up as a county magnate. Instead of the mere unadulterated villainy and meanness which were impersonated in his previous stories, we have here the ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... to her feet in astonishment, and at the same moment heard the voice of the viscount without, saying in ruffianly tones: ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... of the great thoroughfares, and made Alsatia dangerous ground for respectable feet. Here, too, they saw familiar phantoms: poor Jo, perpetually moving on; and little Oliver led by Nancy, with a shawl over her head and a black eye; Bill Sykes, lounging in a doorway, looking more ruffianly than ever; and the Artful Dodger, who kept his eye on them as two hopeful 'plants' with profitable ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... it transpired that the Empress Dowager was not in the Imperial city at all, but out at the Summer Palace on the Wan-shou-shan—the hills of ten thousand ages, as these are poetically called. Tung Fu-hsiang, whose ruffianly Kansu braves were marched out of the Chinese city—that is the outer ring of Peking—two nights before the Legation Guards came in, is also with the Empress, for his cavalry banners, made of black and blue velvet, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... under her superior knowledge; they trusted her, fawned on her, whined when she rebuked them, carried themselves more decently for a day or two when she dropped a rare word of commendation. They respected her in spite of the latent ruffianly instinct which sneers at women; they feared her as a parish fears its priest; they loved her as they loved one another—which was rather toleration than affection; ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... touch told him he had reached the foot of the stairs, Lord Emsworth paused. The hall was very dark and the burglars seemed temporarily to have suspended activities. And then one of them, a man with a ruffianly, grating voice, spoke. What it was he said Lord Emsworth could not understand. It sounded like "Heh! Mer!"—probably some secret signal to his confederates. Lord Emsworth raised his revolver and emptied it in the direction ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... whole, and, after making every allowance for the effects of the hardship and suffering that they had so recently passed through, I was compelled to confess to myself that they were by no means a prepossessing lot; they, one and all, O'Gorman and Price not excepted, wore that sullen, hang-dog, ruffianly expression of countenance that marks the very lowest class of British seamen, the scum and refuse of the vocation. Still, we had not far to go, and I consoled myself with the reflection that they would probably prove good enough to ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... himself tremulously and looked around, the turf was cut and spoilt by the trampling of many feet. All his life of the last few months floated before his memory, his residence in his father's hovel with ruffianly comrades, the desperate schemes he heard as he pretended to sleep on his lowly bed, their expeditions at night, masked and armed, their hasty returns, the news of his father's capture, his own removal ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... miscreants. By exercising it they are able to show their power over the authorities of the country—a fact which impresses the masses. That is why in the neighbourhood of many mosques one sees a great number of ruffianly faces, unmistakable cut-throats, men and boys whose villainy is plainly stamped on their countenances. As long as they remain inside the sacred precincts—which they can do if they like till they die of old age—they can laugh at the law and at the world at large. But let ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... figures whose clothes and arms seemed to encumber them.... I thanked my friend for his politeness, and returned to my carriage. The young woman smiled at me, as much as to say: 'Is he not a fine fellow?' I thought he was; and there may be other fine fellows as much out of place in the ruffianly mass with which ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... Pete Leddy belongs still farther back. We may laugh at his ruffianly bravado, but no one may laugh at a forty-four calibre bullet! Think what you are going to make me pay for your kindness! I must pay with memory of the sound of a shot and the fall of a body there in the streets of Little Rivers—a nightmare for life! ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... more a resident in the family of that cursed marquis. I think, by the way, I should go and apologize to both the marquis and the Abbe, and throw the blame of my own violence upon the conduct and instructions of the last Government; that, and the giving up of this ruffianly Rapparee to the present, may do something for me. This country, however, now that matters have taken such an unexpected turn, shall not long be my place of residence. As for Reilly, my marriage on ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the man kept a sharp eye on the Square gardens. When Tom Ryfe emerged through the heavy iron gate he whispered a deep and horrible curse, but his dark eyes shone and his whole face beamed into a ruffianly kind of beauty, when after a discreet pause, Miss Bruce followed the young lawyer through the same portal. Then the man went to work with his broom harder than ever. Not Sir Walter Raleigh spreading his cloak at the feet of his sovereign mistress lest they should take a ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... "Greater Britain," Vol. I, p. 148: "Brigham's deeds have been those of a sincere man. His bitterest opponents cannot dispute the fact that, in 1844, when Nauvoo was about to be deserted owing to attacks by a ruffianly mob, Brigham Young rushed to the front and took command. To be a Mormon leader was then to be the leader of an outcast people, with a price set on his head, in a Missouri country in which almost every man who was not a Mormon ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... these border forts, men of the lowest type, miztiros and mulattos most of them, criminals from the gaols condemned to serve in the frontier army for their crimes. And in the midst of the low-browed, swarthy-faced, ruffianly crew appeared the tall distinguished-looking young man with a white skin, blue eyes and light hair—an ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... sympathy aroused for this poor pale-faced lad, put on the airs of a ruffianly bully. He did not wish that message to be taken indoors by the lad, for the concierge might get hold of it, despite the boy's protests and tears, and after that Blakeney would perforce have to disclose himself before it would be given up to him. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... semi-pirate adventurers developed the buccaneers, a ruffianly, dare-devil lot, who feared neither God, ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... exterior; whereas, a broken, squashed, higgledy-piggledy sort of a hat, such as Randal Leslie had on, would go far towards transforming the stateliest gentleman that ever walked down St. James's Street into the ideal of a ruffianly scamp. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... ought to consider ourselves very fortunate," he continued. "We might have been captured by a set of ruffianly fellows, who would have robbed us and ill-treated us in every way. Instead of that, the crew are the best sort of privateer's-men I ever fell in with. The captain and first mate are very good, kind-hearted ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... came upon her. While Caesar was operating round Dyrrhachium, there was a dangerous rising in Campania and Southern Italy, for which our giddy friend Caelius Rufus was chiefly responsible; gladiators and ruffianly shepherd slaves were enlisted, and by some of these the villa where she was staying was attacked, and successfully defended by her—so much at least it seems possible to infer from the fragment ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... and pertinent discourse would appear far more generous and masculine than such mad hectoring the Almighty, such boisterous insulting over the received laws and general notions of mankind, such ruffianly swaggering against sobriety and goodness. If gentlemen would regard the virtues of their ancestors, the founders of their quality; that gallant courage, that solid wisdom, that noble courtesy which advanced their ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... of ignoble birth, of ruffianly manners, of low and brutal character. Tauntingly he inquired of De Soto, if he were ready to give proof of his confidence in the faith of the Peruvian monarch, by going forward to his court, as an envoy from ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... to the opening and lifted the iron bar. With scant ceremony he pushed his colleague aside and strode into the cell, whilst Chauvelin, seemingly not resenting the other's ruffianly manners and violent language, followed close ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... stillness of departed life, to calm the brutal frenzy of your passions! Have you common courage? No; I tell you to your teeth that none but spiritless caitiffs and cowards would, in the presence of death and sorrow—in the miserable cabin of the destitute widow and her orphan boy—exhibit the ruffianly outrages of men who are wanton in their cruelty, merely because they know there is none to resist them; and I may add, because they think that their excesses, however barbarous, will be shielded by higher authority. No, I tell you, if there stood man for man before you, even ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... and judgment, and her voice had risen to such a pitch of clamour, that all my attempts at interruption and explanation were lost; while the screams which the girls could not control when they heard her call in assistance, prevented a reply. One after another, five ruffianly-looking fellows rushed in at her call; and ere I could free myself from the importunate exculpations of poor Nanny, they were crowding and cursing round me; while one, apparently their leader, held a lantern to my face, a pike to my throat, and ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... fighting with and overcoming the "barrow-wight" (ghost) itself, the first of the many supernatural incidents in the story. The most precious part of the booty is a peculiar "short-sword." Also when Thorfinn's wife and house are left, weakly guarded, to the mercy of a crew of unusually ruffianly bersarks, Grettir by a mixture of craft and sheer valour succeeds in overcoming and slaying the twelve bersarks single-handed. Thorfinn on his return presents him with the short-sword and becomes ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... nice-looking young man, who had the skin of a leopard-cat (F. Serval) tied round his neck—a badge which royal personages only were entitled to wear. N'yamgundu seeing this, as he knew the young man was not entitled to wear it, immediately ordered his "children" to wrench it from him. Two ruffianly fellows then seized him by his hands, and twisted his arms round and round until I thought they would come out of their sockets. Without uttering a sound the young man resisted, until N'yamgundu told them to be quiet, for he would hold a court on ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... slavery. They not only met their foes half way, they carried the war into the hearts and homes of the enemy. From time to time wicked and sorrowful things happened to fret their fanaticism and keep it at a white heat. Peaceable negroes were attacked in their homes by ruffianly whites, their cattle killed, their fields wasted; and sometimes they made a bloody resistance. They were not always harmless, and they were not always pleasant neighbors. Slavery was a bad school, for the slaves as well ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... was short and broad, and though their noses were much of the same colour, being as red as strong potations and hot suns could possibly make them, Lieutenant Pyke's was enormously long. He was now engaged in drilling twelve of the most ruffianly and ill-conditioned of the crew, whom he called his jollies. They were of various heights and dimensions, and though they wore red coats and belts, knee-breeches and gaiters, and carried muskets, they were, as Dick, who held them in supreme contempt, declared, "as unlike sodgers ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... the train went on again, and as it started Grace was aroused and shocked by the appearance at the forward end of the car of the ruffianly character whom she had but half seen from the car window. For a moment she believed that the train-robbery, that she had been confidently expecting over since her departure from San Francisco, was about to take place. Her heart beat hard, and her breath came ...
— A Border Ruffian - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... During the luncheon a man rushed up to our host and whispered in his ear something which seemed to give him great satisfaction, for he at once smilingly said, 'Captain, I have found the men you are after;' and sure enough we saw approaching two ruffianly looking fellows, tied together, and being dragged along by men on horseback. I hope they were the right men. I will presume that they were, but they had been very quick in catching them. After my ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... out as Governor in 1696 he set about doing it. It was decided that the best way to do it was to send a swift and well-armed frigate under a captain who knew their haunts and ways, to catch these sea-robbers. For this, Captain Kidd, a tried sailor, was chosen, and he set sail with a somewhat ruffianly crew in the ship Adventure. But Captain Kidd was unlucky. Though he roamed the seas and sought the pirates in the haunts he knew so well he found never ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... they after? What is there for them to find out? We know what had happened. The ship scraped her side against a piece of ice, and sank after floating for two hours and a half, taking a lot of people down with her. What more can they find out from the unfair badgering of the unhappy "Yamsi," or the ruffianly abuse of ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... majestic self-importance, he had not the remotest idea that he was small. Usually he saw the world from a window, or from the seat of an automobile, or over his mistress's arm. He looked down on all dogs, thought them ruffianly, despised them; and it is the miraculous truth that not only was he unaware that he was small, but he did not even know that he was a dog, himself. He did not think ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... write about the Vikings, nor about his Elizabethan heroes in "Westward Ho!" in a perfectly simple, straightforward way. He was always thinking of our own times and referring to them. That is why even the rather ruffianly Hereward is so great an enemy of saints and monks. That is why, in "Hypatia" (which opens so well), we have those prodigiously dull, stupid, pedantic, and conceited reflections of Raphael Ben Ezra. That is why, in all Kingsley's novels, he is perpetually exciting himself in defence of marriage ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... Arthur Huntington resisted manfully, their efforts were unavailing, for whilst the two ladies were borne off in one direction, they were quickly hurried on board their boat and compelled by the threats of their ruffianly assailants to row swiftly towards the ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... his shirt and trousers, as if caught unawares, holding a cocked revolver yet in his rigid fingers, stretched out in steady aim; while, at the further end of the cabin, where there was another doorway, communicating apparently with the main saloon, lay four ruffianly-looking fellows, all with long Spanish knives in their hands tightly clutched ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... at least; for when his cousin Caroline made gentle overtures of friendship, he did not encourage them—he rather avoided than sought her. One living thing alone, besides his pale, crippled scholar, he fondled in the house, and that was the ruffianly Tartar, who, sullen and impracticable to others, acquired a singular partiality for him—a partiality so marked that sometimes, when Moore, summoned to a meal, entered the room and sat down unwelcomed, Tartar would rise from his lair at Shirley's feet and betake himself to the taciturn tutor. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... when opposite the bar-room door, she heard her father in loud conversation with some one inside. Impelled by an impulse to rescue him from impending evil, she opened the door and walked in. She found herself in the midst of a bar-room full of drunken, ruffianly-looking men, a long row of whom were standing at the bar, with glasses in hand, while one of their number was proposing a toast of the grossest character. To her dismay her father was among them. She stood for a moment or two hesitating what to do, and she ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... not then tell her that all her fears for herself and the lovely Angele could now be laid to rest. Her ruffianly son was even now being conveyed by Leroux and his gendarmes to the frontier, where the law would take its course. I was indeed not sorry for him. I was not sorry to think that he would end his evil life upon the guillotine or the gallows. I was ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... should recommend a visit to the ruins of St. Bridget's Church, a very interesting relic of the early Norman era. By the way, there is one objection which I see to your going to Croxley on Saturday. It is upon that date, as I am informed, that that ruffianly glove fight takes place. You may find yourself molested by the ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a great glutton, and thought of nothing but his stomach, even up to the very hour of his death. On account of his "position in society," (!) every officer of the prison became his waiter; and a certain ruffianly turnkey, who was in the habit of abusing poor prisoners in the most outrageous manner, would fawn to the Doctor like a hungry dog ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... blackguards of Saint-Antoine! French troops massacring and murdering men, women, and children; rampant diabolism, and incarnate revenge were at work in the most beautiful city in the world! Fair women converted into demons, and dragged by ruffianly soldiery through the streets to universal execration and pitiless death; children of tender age pinned to the earth and bayoneted; men innocent or not, shot, cut, stabbed, slashed, destroyed—a whole city given up to the summa injuria ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... was owned by some half-caste Portuguese, and worked by a mixture of aborigines and Malays, a most unpromising and ruffianly-looking set. However, they received the unhappy boatload quite civilly, promised that a messenger should be dispatched across country to the nearest civilized centre, and provided a good meal of salt junk, sweet ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... of Ojeda was received with acclamations of transport by some of the rebels; others made objections. Quarrels arose: a ruffianly scene of violence and brawl ensued, in which several were killed and wounded on both sides; but the party for the expedition to San ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... protested. "I am a slave to my word. There will be a siring of carts and mules on a certain part of the coast, and a most ruffianly lot of men, men you understand, men with wives and children and sweethearts, who from the very moment they start on a trip risk a bullet in the head at any moment, but who have a perfect conviction that I will never fail them. That's my freedom. I wonder ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... society, in what were once low dance-halls. There is an unusual amount of interest displayed at these meetings, and much good has, doubtless, been accomplished thereby, but it is also a fact, that there are but a few, and sometimes none, of the wretched women, or ruffianly, vicious men, of that neighborhood, present. Those classes are not reached at all, and it is false to say that a revival is going on among them. The character of the audiences and the exercises are similar to that of the noon meeting ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... long ago when you were flying from a ruffianly mob and you sought the shelter of my house? But may be you've a short memory. Mine isn't so fleeting. Men's kisses are lightly bestowed. Women are different. I shall never forget the tender touch ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... uttered these words, in a coarse, ruffianly tone, a visible shudder of fear or disgust, or both combined, passed through the frame of each of the prisoners; and Algernon turning to him, with an expression of loathing ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... acquainted with the full particulars of his shame, and to sport with his jealous agonies. Congreve was the first dramatic author who put an English seaman on the stage; and, after his characteristic fashion, he made his Ben Legend a selfish, coarse, and ruffianly lout. But if one cannot admire many of Congreve's characters, on the other hand one cannot help admiring every sentence they speak. The only fault to be found with their talk is that it is too witty, too brilliant, for any manner of real life. Society would have to be all composed ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... looked well; but what a Stukely! I was afraid my eyes would scarcely answer my purpose, but that I should have been obliged to "employer l'effort de mon bras" to keep him at a proper distance. What ruffianly wooing! and not one of the actors knew their parts. Stukely said to me in his love-speech, "Time has not gathered the roses from your cheeks, though often washed them." I had heard of Time as the thinner of people's hair, but never as the washer ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... when they heard cries of "murder" in a neighboring street. With his usual determined courage, the prince, unarmed as he was, snatched a stick from one of his attendants, and rushed forward in the direction whence the sound came. Three ruffianly-looking fellows were just about to assassinate a man, who with his companion was feebly defending himself; the prince appeared just in time to arrest the fatal blow. The voices of the prince and his followers alarmed the murderers, who did not expect any interruption in so lonely a place; after ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... strange women, gambling and quarelling with the other youths, but still in company, and with their old love for one another unaltered. They had been duly entered as members of the King's Youths, and had proved themselves not to be the least reckless and truculent of those who form that ruffianly gang, but they had chiefly used their position to carry on their love intrigues with greater freedom and daring. Both were handsome, dashing, fearless, swaggering, gaily-dressed boys, and many were the girls within the palace, and the town which lay around it, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... co-heiresses, Anne, the enthusiast, paid an afternoon visit to the St. Quentins, at Harpham. On starting to return home about nightfall with her dog, she had gone no great distance when she was confronted by two ruffianly-looking beggars, who asked alms. She readily gave them a few coins, and in doing so the glitter of her finger-ring accidentally attracted their notice, which they at once demanded should be given up to them. This she refused to do, as it had been her mother's ring, and ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... doubted the legality of the proceeding, perfectly agreed with Tom that it would be a just punishment for the kidnappers. Six ruffianly-looking fellows, one of whom appeared to be the master, most of them having their heads or arms bandaged up as if they had been wounded, received them on deck. The master pointed to the Peruvian flag, and inquired why he was stopped on ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... pigtails, of giant grenadiers in the old-time blue and red coats, the high and fantastic shako made of metal and tapering to a point, of three-cornered hats resting on powdered wigs, of yellow top-boots, and exhaling the general air of ruffianly geniality characteristic of the manners and ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... They wore their pantaloons in their boots; their hair was long, bushy and untrimmed; their faces had evidently never made the acquaintance of a razor. They seemed determined to win the race by fair means or foul. They did a great deal of swearing, and swaggered about in rather a ruffianly style. ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... under the wall were two or three dozen of Irish reapers; some were lying asleep, others in parties of two or three were seated with their backs against the wall, and were talking Irish; these last all appeared to be well-made middle-sized young fellows, with rather a ruffianly look; they stared at me as I passed. The whole party had shillealahs either in their hands or by their sides. I went to the extremity of the pier, where was a little lighthouse, and then turned back. As I again drew near the Irish, I heard a hubbub and observed a great commotion amongst ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... bushy beard, and hooked nose; and yet she could hardly believe that this was the same man who once showed her such ruffianly manners on the wharf in Chicago. He was fondling and feeding the child, and talking to it, and drumming on the table with his knife to amuse it and still its ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge |
