"Urchin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the many instances of the ingratitude of human nature; I confided those boots to the boy whom you must have seen come with me to fetch yours and the other gentlemen's shoes or clothes for brushing, etc. Well, sir, that young urchin is a protege of mine; I took him, sir, from the lowest obscurity and made him what he is; I taught him my profession, I endowed him with all the benefit of my experience, and with respect to blacking ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... seat, looking, good man, faintly stern and sad, like a good parent who has had, regretfully, to chastise an erring urchin. ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... the urchin deem it "rot" (Such hasty views we stoop'd to, Not seeing how on earth they got ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... urchin, still red with the lash Of rein and of scabbard of wild Kuzzilbash, What lack you for changing your sob— If not unto laughter beseeming a child— To utterance milder, though they have defiled The graves which they ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... first make a statement totally at variance with the truth, and then ask a question," answered the young naturalist, looking up from his occupation, but apparently not well pleased at being interrupted. "That is the Echinus esculentus, or sea-urchin. Just let me finish knocking off this magnificent anemone, and I'll ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... note from Father Fabian, sir," said the urchin, who gave him the note, and rushed out of the office, while his laughter, unsuppressed, made the street ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... fortnight after the notice given, about three o'clock in the afternoon, came flying to the chief a ragged little urchin of the village, too breathless almost to make intelligible his news—that there were men at Mistress Conal's who would not go out of her house, and she and her old black cat ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... introducing newfangled cheeses and milk-products. The overseer suddenly turned lazy, and began to grow fat, as every Russian grows fat when he gets a snug berth. When he caught sight of Nikolai Petrovitch in the distance, he would fling a stick at a passing pig, or threaten a half-naked urchin, to show his zeal, but the rest of the time he was generally asleep. The peasants who had been put on the rent system did not bring their money at the time due, and stole the forest-timber; almost every night the keepers caught peasants' horses in the meadows of the 'farm,' and ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... Knightsbridge—a pretty show of Oriental wares which was burnt down, just at the height of its popularity, a few years ago. On the day of its destruction I was at the house of a famous financier, whose children had been to see the show only two days before. One of them, an urchin of eight, immensely interested by the news of the fire, asked, not if the pretty things were burnt or the people hurt, but this one question, "Mamma, was it insured?" Verily, bon chat chasse de race. ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... Goodfellow. Shakespeare, in Midsummer Night's Dream, represents him as "a very Shetlander among the gossamer-winged, dainty-limbed fairies, strong enough to knock all their heads together, a rough, knurly-limbed, fawn-faced, shock-pated, mischievous little urchin." ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... admirably described by Sir Charles Lyell.[67] He speaks of the frequency with which geologists find in the chalk a fossilized sea-urchin, to which is attached the lower valve of a Crania. This is a kind of shell-fish, with a shell composed of two pieces, of which, as in the oyster, one is fixed and the ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... seem a part of the scene. You see the picture through it. A step further on there is a Holy Family, which seems to me the ultimate effort of the early manner. A Jewish carpenter holds his fair-haired child between his knees. The urchin holds up a bird to attract the attention of a little white dog on the floor. The mother, a dark-haired peasant woman, looks on the scene with quiet amusement. The picture is absolutely perfect in detail. It seems ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... subkingdom comprises at present such familiar forms as the crinoid, the starfish, and the sea urchin. The structure of echinoderms is radiate. Their integument is hardened with plates or particles ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... wings in ever narrowing circles, would drop from the blue sky to claim his share of the plunder only to be frightened away again by the sound of the teacher's voice raised in sharp rebuke of some mischievous urchin. ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... bands, and wearing white waists—not only Louise, who had become a good musician, had made the piano submit to long tortures, but her sister Maria, and Amedee also, already played the 'Bouquet de Bal' or 'Papa, les p'tits bateaux'. Rosine, too, in her character of street urchin, knew all the popular songs, and spent entire hours in picking out the airs with one finger ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... unite : unu'igxi, -igi; kun'igxi, -igi. universe : universo. unless : esceptinte ke, se ne. up : supre. upholster : remburi. upright : vertikala, rekta; honesta. upset : renversi. upstairs : supre. urchin : bubo. urgent : urgxa. use : uzi, utiligi,("—up") eluzi. useful : utila, ("be—") utili. usual : ordinara, kutima. usurp : uzurpi. usury : procentego. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... gazing wonderingly at all they saw; while in strange contrast to their unintelligible jabberings, rose the familiar patois of the barrack-room, or snatches of some popular music-hall song hummed or whistled by every urchin ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... fact that, as the day advanced, the avenue outdid the square in popularity. The latter was barely able to hold its own by means of a very tall greased pole with a ten-dollar bill sticking on top of it, which was to be had by any boy climbing the pole. The crowd yelled itself hoarse as urchin after urchin slid back to defeat. Finally a little fellow, who had surreptitiously smeared the inside of his breeches with pitch, reached the top and seized the prize. The crowd went wild, threw ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... nodded to Hugh, who was still standing on the steps, and turned away to buy a box of matches from a passing urchin. Then he turned up his fur collar, and proceeded leisurely on ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... a human sound struck upon my ear—a cry strangely modulated between pathos and derision; and looking across the valley, I saw a little urchin sitting in a meadow, with his hands about his knees, and dwarfed to almost comical smallness by the distance. But the rogue had picked me out as I went down the road, from oak wood on to oak wood, driving Modestine; and he made me ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The boy recovered, grew up to be a man, and christened his eldest son "Gordon," in memory of one who, he used to say, had "saved both his body and soul." Another story is told of a case in which Gordon handed over a dirty little urchin to one of his lady friends, with the remark, "I want to make you a present of a boy." Under good influences the lad grew up until he became a respectable member of society. Years after, when he was earning good wages at sea, and was about ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... boy but yesterday, A merry urchin blithe and gay, Whose joyous shout came ringing out Unchecked ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... writ, Vanessa much esteemed his wit, And called for his poetic works! Meantime the boy in secret lurks. And while the book was in her hand, The urchin from his private stand Took aim, and shot with all his strength A dart of such prodigious length, It pierced the feeble volume through, And deep transfixed her bosom too. Some lines, more moving than the rest, ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... youths at baseball playing You'll notice Winthrop Adams! Greater ends Than these absorb HIS leisure. No doubt straying With Caesar's Commentaries, he attends Some Roman council. Let us ask, however, Yon grimy urchin, who my soul offends By wheeling offal, if he will endeavor To find— What! heaven! ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... rolling gait, and boots from heel to hip, with inch-thick soles, like those of a dramatic buccaneer, he bore as little resemblance to the popular idea of a lace-coated, brass-buttoned, cock-hatted admiral as a sea-urchin bears to a cockle-shell. Nevertheless Manx was a real admiral—as real as Nelson, and ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... his joyous laugh, The urchin blind and bare, But Love, with spectacles and staff, And ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... cavalier I recognized General Davenant, whom I had seen near the village of Paris, and who was now personally known to me. In the boy I recognized the urchin, Charley, with the braided jacket and ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... fine cottonwood trees and half-a-dozen lordly white-oaks. The spot is famous as a picnicking ground, and in the heat of summer is as cool a place as may be found in the county. And here, paddling in the brook like an urchin, we found Bumblepuppy. His eyes sparkled as they fell upon ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... tumult, which extended through the city as the congregation poured precipitately out of the Cathedral, to escape a band of destroying and furious Calvinists. Yet when the shock had a little subsided, it was discovered that a small urchin was the cause of the whole tumult. Having been bathing in the Scheldt, he had returned by way of the church with a couple of bladders under his arm. He had struck these against the door of the Cathedral, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... at her like a turbulent urchin. "I'm having the time of my young life with this thing, and I want to take you in ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... little room divided from the main garret by wooden bars, in which a quantity of split firewood and more finely chopped fir sticks, smelling fresh and dry, are piled up in obliquely arranged heaps, a little urchin with tightly closed mouth and obstinate expression has, for more than two hours, been bearing his punishment ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... story, I became aware that he had another listener in the shape of a little urchin, clad in a brightly coloured gown, which reached to the ground, and who wore, perched on his closely-shaven head, a small tarboosh. He had appeared from some corner of the shop, and now sidled up to Halil, his bright black eyes ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... nothing in the world but frights. I looked hard at the baby, to see if it was like Mortimer, but I could not make it out; those young things are like nothing. I tried if it would talk, for I wanted sadly to make it call Mrs Delvile grandmama; however, the little urchin could say nothing to be understood. O what a rage would Mrs Delvile have been in! I suppose this whole castle would hardly have been thought heavy enough to crush such an insolent brat, though it were to have fallen upon it ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... of an hour ago, while in the small, cheap French restaurant below, kept by her father—a long, narrow place with red-plush seats along the white walls and small tables set before them—an urchin had passed, selling the "extra special." On the contents bill he carried in front of him were the words, in ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... the room and seized the cringing urchin by the collar as the others scampered out of the hall and down the steps. The tissues rustled up in the draught, floated softly in the air blue scrawls and under the table came ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... room, and he took a calm survey of it, in all its details. Then he marched up to a small urchin who, with much effort, was rocking a large chair to and fro, his chubby legs just reaching to the edge of its ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... life. Winnie and Bobsey, in their rambles after strawberries, had met two other children, and, early in the acquaintance, fortunately brought them to the house. The moment I saw the strange girl, I recognized a rural type of Melissa Daggett, while the urchin of Bobsey's age did not scruple to use vile language in my hearing. I doubt whether the poor little savage had any better vernacular. I told them kindly but firmly that they must not come on the place again ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... I have a vision with me Of a home upon a hill; And my heart is sad with longing And my eyes with tear-drops fill. I would be the care-free urchin That I was so long ago When across the sun-lit meadows Rover with me used to go Yonder where the graceful lindens Threw their shadows far and cool, And the waters waited for me In ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... luxuriant rose trees, and by the side of that brimming Loddon river. 'Do not expect us before six o'clock,' said I, as I left the house; 'Six at soonest!' added my charming companion; and off we drove in our little pony chaise, drawn by our old mare, and with the good humoured urchin, Henry's successor, a sort of younger Scrub, who takes care of horse and chaise, and cow and garden, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... was interrupted by a queer-looking urchin of five years old, dressed in a long-tailed coat and trousers, popping his black shock head in at the door, and ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... del Popolo and stopped near some ragamuffins who were playing a game, throwing coins in the air. A tattered urchin had written with charcoal on a wall: "Viva Musolino!" and below that he was drawing a ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... pet of the village. Why did Mother Muggins of the shop let the goody side of her scales of justice drop the lower by one lollipop for Bill than for any other lad, and exempt him by unwonted smiles from her general anathema on the urchin race? There were other honest boys in the parish who paid for their treacle-sticks in sterling copper of the realm! The very roughs of the village were proud of him, and would have showed their good nature in ways little to his benefit, had not his father kept a somewhat severe watch upon ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... in Catriona, are grotesque imaginations of the school of Tam o' Shanter rather than of the school of Shakespeare, who deals in no comedy ghosts. They are turnip-lanterns swayed by a laughing urchin, proud of the fears he can awaken. Even The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the story of The Bottle Imp are manufactured bogeys, that work on the nerves and not on the heart, whatever may be said by those who insist on seeing allegory in what is only dream-fantasy. ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... would have abjectly held out his hand if he had been told to do it. He had been invited to witness the evolutions of the graduating class in history and oratory, and the moisture gathered in his honest blue eyes when a panic-stricken urchin faltered forth— ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... vile names under the sun for not helping him across the gully. While he swore roundly in all the moods and tenses of the Spanish language, his uncle fished on, now and then congratulating his hopeful nephew on his accomplishment. At the end of his rich vocabulary the urchin sauntered off into the fields, and shortly returned with a bunch of flowers, and with all smiles handed them to me with the innocence of an angel. I remembered having seen the same flower on the banks of the river farther up, some years before. I asked the young pirate why he had brought ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... received some money, if his inflamed countenance and drunken staggers may be taken as evidence of the fact. Having waited some little time, he makes his presence known by venting his ill-humour on a ragged urchin, who, being unable to bring his face on a level with the counter by any other process, has employed himself in climbing up, and then hooking himself on with his elbows—an uneasy perch, from which he ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... pressed the little urchin's head to his breast and murmured: "Ah! he is my very grandson, my ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... the front of the peninsula, I looked for "sea-urchin," but none fell in my way. I had often wished to get a good specimen of this curious shell, but without success. Some of them turned up now and then upon the beach near our village, but they were not allowed to lie long. As they made a pretty ornament for the mantel-shelf, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... had been for years practically deserted by the children. Jacob's Red Astrakhan and Granny Garland trees hung thick with apples, but no Riverboro or Edgewood boy stole them; for terrifying accounts of the fate that had overtaken one urchin in times agone had been handed along from boy to boy, protecting the Moody fruit far better than ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was he strongly tempted to give a snapping pull at the apron-strings and make for sweet liberty—a thing he was in the habit of doing about once a week, when the keenest switching and the liveliest dancing that one could wish to witness would follow, sure as fate. To do our urchin hero justice, however, he rarely yielded to the temptation without making some considerable effort to resist it; efforts such as older transgressors are apt to set down largely to their own credit in their private accounts between self and conscience, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... deprived me of a blessing which you never enjoyed." There never was any thing finer or more moving! Your sensibility will not be quite so much affected by a story I heard t'other day of Sir Fletcher Norton. He has a mother—yes, a mother: perhaps you thought that, like that tender urchin Love, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... prepared by Mrs. Buttershaw he went to the cottage armed with toys and weird and injudicious food for little Jean and demanded an account of the precious infant's doings during the day. Gradually Jean recovered of his congestion, being a sturdy urchin, and, to Aristide's delight, resumed the normal life ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... children, who found him guilty without waiting for the summing-up, and hanged him without benefit of clergy. Thus Baby Charles, and the Twelfth-night Queen of Hearts, and the overgrown schoolboy Cottington, and that little urchin Laud—who would reduce a verdict of 'guilty, death,' by famine, if it were impregnable by composition—all impannelled against poor Archy for presenting them bitter physic the last day of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... again with such vigour that the horse forgot altogether to shy at the urchin that had ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... urchin, stuck up in a small tree, growing just out of one of the banks over which the horses were to pass; "shure thin, Playful's an illigant swate baste entirely. I'll go bail there's nothin 'll come ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... infections that the sun sucks up From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him By inch-meal a disease! His spirits hear me, And yet I needs must curse. But they'll nor pinch, Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i' the mire, 5 Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark Out of my way, unless he bid 'em: but For every trifle are they set upon me; Sometime like apes, that mow and chatter at me, And after bite ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... from that bucket," he directed. It was the voice of authority commanding the urchin on the curb; of seasoned seniority chiding the heedlessness of the stripling ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... the train at a sleepy country station next day I was promptly waylaid by a black-eyed urchin who informed me that Mrs. Ashley had sent him with an express wagon for my luggage, and that "Miss Gussie" was waiting with the carriage at the store, pointing down to a small building before whose door a girl was trying ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... coat and hat, lighted his pipe, and tried to realize just what this all meant for him. He was in charge—in charge of the greatest railroad building job on earth—he, Jack Howland, who less than twenty years ago was a barefooted, half-starved urchin peddling papers in the streets where he was now famous! And now what was this black thing that had come up to threaten his chances just as he had about won his great fight? He clenched his hands as he thought again of what had ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... and Lodhi. It is said, however, that they do not form a caste or intermarry, members of each caste continuing their relations with their own community. Their regular method of stealing is through the agency of a boy, and no doubt they pick up a likely urchin whenever they get the chance, as only selected boys would be clever enough for the work. Their trade is said to possess much fascination, and Mr. Crooke quotes a saying, 'Once a Sanaurhia always a Sanaurhia'; so that ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... from any voice; the hardest, crudest most imbruted urchin at the street-corner can ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... along until he turned into the dark lane which led to the churchyard—a nice, gloomy, mournful place into which the towns-people did not care to go except in broad daylight, consequently he was not a little indignant to hear a young urchin roaring out some jolly song about a Merry Christmas. Gabriel waited until the boy came up, then rapped him over the head with his lantern five or six times to teach him to modulate his voice. And as the boy hurried away, with his hand to his head, Gabriel ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... Essex would have a poor chance of getting much admiration out of my friend, George Talboys," said Robert. "His heart is at Southampton, where he has a curly-headed little urchin, about as high as his knee, who calls him 'the big gentleman,' and asks him ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... horrid scene of strife, small revengeful fingers twisted themselves viciously in my auburn curls, and wresting from my grasp a "Child's Own Bible Concordance," a birthday outrage received from an Evangelical aunt, Julia Dolan, aged twelve, began to pound me about the face with it. As a snub-nosed urchin, gifted with a marvellous capacity for the cold storage and quick delivery of Scripture genealogies and Hebrew proper and improper names, I had often reduced my mild, long-legged girl-neighbour to ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... rare) very mild also and meek, and liked very well such service as she did her in the house. But she so much misliked this continual discomfortable fashion of hers that she would sometimes say, "Eh, what aileth this girl? The elvish urchin thinketh I were a devil, I do believe. Surely if she did me ten times better service than she doth, yet with this fantastical fear of hers I would be loth to ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... was no need of sending for Master Noll. While King James was speaking, a rugged, bold-faced, sturdy little urchin thrust himself through the throng of courtiers and attendants and greeted the prince with a broad stare. His doublet and hose (which had been put on new and clean in honor of the king's visit) ...
— Biographical Stories - (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... how," said the urchin, as he disengaged himself from his wet saddle, and stood upon the ground; "and it is not my fault that the coach ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... their hearts to—all at eight years old. Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure, 'Twas not for nothing—the good bellyful, The warm serge and the rope that goes all round, And day-long blessed idleness beside! 105 "Let's see what the urchin's fit for"—that came next. Not overmuch their way, I must confess. Such a to-do! They tried me with their books; Lord, they'd have taught me Latin in pure waste! Flower o' the clove, 110 All the Latin I construe is "amo," I love! But, mind you, when a boy starves ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... private letters to Mr. Osbalderston, and called Laud "the little great man," for this he, in 1639, was fined L5,000 to the King, and L3,000 to the Archbishop. Osbalderston in his letters had spoken of the "great Leviathan" and the "little Urchin," and was fined L5,000, to the King, and the same to the Archbishop, and sentenced also to stand in the pillory with his ears ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... rich, mamma," Jansoulet, when he was a mere urchin, used to say to his mother whom he adored, "I'll ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... was once a merry urchin—curly-headed I was called, And I laughed at good old people when I saw them going bald; But it's not a proper subject to be lightly joked about, For it's dreadful to discover that your ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... I sought the spangled bowers, To cull a wreath of matin flowers, Where many an early rose was weeping, I found the urchin Cupid sleeping, I caught the boy, a goblet's tide Was richly mantling by my side, I caught him by his downy wing, And whelmed him in the racy spring. Then drank I down the poisoned bowl, And love now nestles in my soul. Oh, yes, my soul is Cupid's nest, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... contended for recognition. Alike rusty as these were, it became a problem as to which would best secure communication with the interior. While the matter still seemed indefinite, it was set at rest by the advice of an obliging street-urchin, who volunteered his information with appropriate brevity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... focus of the cameras ran a barefooted urchin waving a newspaper. This was the Alectrion Company's smartest "kid" actor and a favorite wherever his tousled head, freckled face, and wide grin appeared on the screen. He plunged right at Mother Paisley and thrust the ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... is deeply engaged in petty finance, some quite mites, to make up the accounts for Tripoli. Whilst seated near his Excellency, a big lout of a fellow was brought up, charged with beating a little urchin, who was present to substantiate the charge. The Rais, after gravely hearing the case, had the big clown turned round with his hands tied behind him, and then told the little rogue aggrieved to lay it into him as hard as he could ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... other took his son out of the ear; then he put him down upon a straw, where he sat as merry as you please. The two strangers were all this time looking on, and did not know what to say for wonder. At last one took the other aside and said, "That little urchin will make our fortune if we can get him, and carry him about from town to town as a show; we must buy him." So they went to the woodman and asked him what he would take for the little man: "He will be better off," said they, "with us than with you." "I won't ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... small boy long to slip into a new suit of clothes. And when a ragged urchin disappeared behind the head of the great old "four-poster" to-day, it seemed scarcely a minute before a trig, "tailor-made boy" strutted out from the opposite side, ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... These little boys are called fags, and are forced to wait upon and obey their master-companions. Their duties vary in different schools. I have heard of its being customary in some places, to make use of a fag regularly in the depth of winter instead of a warming-pan, and to send the shivering urchin through ten or twenty beds successively to take off the chill of cold for their luxurious masters. They are expected, in most schools, to run of all the elder boys' errands, to be ready at their call, and to do all their high behests. ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... listener. That this was the correct "business" in Scotch nurseries is borne out by a sentence in Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland: "The old nurse's imitation of the gnash, gnash, which she played off upon the youngest urchin lying in her ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... scarcely less animated as he searched hastily in the pigeon-holes of his desk. The patent might have a company to manage its affairs, but the mine on Big Unaka was sacred to these two, in whom the immortal urchin sufficiently survived to make ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... man like a child, His blue eyes bright, his white hair wild, Who turned for ever, and might not stop, Round and round like an urchin's top. ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton
... small Butterflies and carcasses of almost-untouched Locusts, all deprived of their hind-legs, or at least of one. Locusts' legs often dangle, emptied of their succulent contents, on the edges of the web, from the meat-hooks of the butcher's shop. In my urchin-days, days free from prejudices in regard to what one ate, I, like many others, was able to appreciate that dainty. It is the equivalent, on a very small scale, of the larger legs of ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... gave a sudden start. He had altogether forgotten his nephew's presence. He went on:—"People are as proud as if they were all of blood royal. Even the poorest women, one sees pass in the afternoon with perambulators in which sleeps some little urchin who, mayhap, is brought up nearly all on the charity of saving people ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... other passions in the scale, And balance them 'gainst that which gold outweighs— Against this love—and you shall see how light The most supreme of them are in the poise! I speak by book and history; for love Slights my high fortunes. Under cloth of state The urchin cowers from pompous etiquette, Waiving his function at the scowl of power, And seeks the rustic cot to stretch his limbs In homely freedom. I fulfil a doom. We who are topmost on this heap of life Are ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... happening there?' he asked, in the peremptory tone peculiar to him, of an old peasant woman who was standing on the threshold of her hut. Leaning against the doorpost as though dozing, the old woman stared in the direction of the tavern. A white-headed urchin in a print smock, with a cypress-wood cross on his little bare breast, was sitting with little outstretched legs, and little clenched fists between her bast slippers; a chicken close by was chipping at ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... this period of stagnation was the capture of Maurie. No; the authorities didn't get him, but Clarette did. Ajo and Patsy had gone into the city one afternoon and on their return to the docks, where their launch was moored, they found a street urchin awaiting them with a soiled scrap of paper clenched fast in his fist. He surrendered it for a coin and Patsy found the following ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... falling like a wind in the upper regions of the night; but they did not see him. Fortunately, there was a side door in the railing, seldom used, of which the key hung in the porter's room. By this door Alec let himself out, and relocked it. But the moment he turned to go home, he heard an urchin, who had peeped round a corner, screech to the ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... the way, in which the obstinate and masterful spirit of the ungentle sex often begins to show itself in nurseries of a far more polished description;—from that moment may Jesse's wanderings be said to commence. Disobedience lurked in the habit masculine. The wilful urchin stood, like some dandy apprentice, contemplating his brown sturdy legs, as they stuck out from his new trowsers, already (such was the economy of the tailor employed on the occasion) "a world too short," and the first use he made ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... columns bear legendary decorative motifs of the transition of plant to animal life in the forms of tortoise and other shell motifs;—kelp and its analogy to the prehistoric lobster, skate, crab and sea urchin. The water-bubble motif is carried through all vertical members which symbolize the Crustacean Period, which is the second ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... departure for California. The great excitement over the gold discoveries was thus felt in Milan, and these wagons, laden with all the worldly possessions of their owners, were watched out of sight on their long journey by this fascinated urchin, whose own discoveries in later years were to tempt many other argonauts into the auriferous realms ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... swimming. A little urchin would hang to his pony's long tail, while the latter, with only his head above water, glided sportively along. Finally the animals were driven into a fine field of grass and we turned our ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... urchin who must needs traverse the correspondence through the seeming Tibbott, and so got Antony removed from about us. A stout lubberly Yorkshire lad, fed on beef and pudding, a true Talbot, a mere English bull-dog who will have lost all the little breeding he had, while committing spulzie and ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not going to the Lyric Theatre and have that poor little hungry urchin haunting me all through the show. I don't believe he's had anything to eat all day. Just see how he looks in that window, it's pathetic. Poor little fellow, he may be starving for all we know. I'm going to give him twenty-five cents; have you ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... of the window again. Professor Biggleswade suddenly remembered the popular story of the great scientist's antecedents, and reflected that as McCurdie had once run, a barefoot urchin, through the Glasgow mud, he was likely to have little kith or kin. He himself envied McCurdie. He was always praying to be delivered from his sisters and nephews and nieces, whose embarrassing demands ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... spirit of revenge, but for the benefit of the culprit and the good of society. Now, Sir, the opportunity has been thrown in your way of slipping out of the pillory without risk of serious injury; but, like an obstinate urchin, you have chosen to quarrel with your opportunity and remain there, and thus you compel me to deal with you as schoolmasters used to do with stupid boys in bygone days—that is to say, you force me to the use of the critic's rod, compel me to put you where little Jack ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... months old, a coral with gold whistle and bells; from his youth upwards he was "tipped" regularly by the old gentleman at Christmas: and on going back to school, he remembered perfectly well being thrashed by Joseph Sedley, when the latter was a big, swaggering hobbadyhoy, and George an impudent urchin of ten years old. In a word, George was as familiar with the family as such daily acts of kindness ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... host," He cried, "if this its strength has lost; I fear, relax'd with midnight dews, The strings their former aid refuse." With poison tipt, his arrow flies, Deep in my tortur'd heart it lies: Then loud the joyous Urchin laugh'd:— "My bow can still impel the shaft: 'Tis firmly fix'd, thy sighs reveal it; Say, courteous host, canst thou not ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... small hours of the Monday morning, and dossed on Banstead Downs that night. Next day they joined the great stream of traffic rolling out of London Epsomward. Young Joe, whose strength lay in his powers of sympathetic intuition, let Monkey drive. And the urchin took his place with pride in that vast stream of char-a-bancs, 'buses, hansoms, and drags rolling southward; and no four-in-hand coachman of them all held up his hand to stay the following traffic, or twiddled his whip with lordlier dignity than the dark lad who sat on the ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... longer any doubt that he was safe in his old home; but where were his brothers and sisters? With a beating heart he crept to the other end of the bed; and there lay the prodigal, with no haggard cheeks or sunken eyes, no gray locks or miserable rags, but a rosy, yellow-haired urchin fast asleep, with his head upon his arm. 'I took his ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... SEA-URCHIN. The Echinus, an animal of the class Echinodermata, of globular form, and a hard calcareous outer covering, beset with movable spines, on the ends of which it ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... our baggage-train has been seen, where our camp is pitched. No one knows, no one cares; until at last a ragged, smiling urchin, one of those blessed, ubiquitous boys who always know everything that happens in a town, offers to guide us. He trots ahead, full of importance, dodging through the narrow alleys, making the complete circuit of the castle-hill ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... four minutes Patrolman Dennis Patrick Murphy, who was standing on post on Washington Street in front of Nasheen Zereik's Embroidery Bazaar talking to Sardi Babu, saw a red-headed, pug-nosed urchin ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... The Stonewall Brigade would hardly have been surprised had they seen their general surrounded by ponderous volumes, gravely investigating the teaching of departed commentators, or joining with quiet fervour in the family devotions. But had they seen him running down the stairs with an urchin on his shoulders, laughing like a schoolboy, they would have refused to credit the evidence of ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... however, is to fill the world more and more with things displaying organic unity. By this is meant any arrangement of which one part helps to keep the other parts in existence. Some organic unities are material,—a sea-urchin, for example, a department store, a civil service, or an ecclesiastical organization. Some are mental, as a "science," a code of laws, or an educational programme. But whether they be material or mental ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... from the wholesome dam Of the young bull, until the milkmaid finds The nipple, next day, sore, and udder dry. Call not thy brothers brethren! Call me not Mother; for if I brought thee forth, it was As foolish hens at times hatch vipers, by Sitting upon strange eggs. Out, urchin, out! ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... bailiff was reasonably quiet, until Bacchus and his train again entered the square. At the appearance of the laughing urchin who bestrode the cask, he resumed his dissertations with a confidence that all are apt to feel who are about to treat on a subject with which they have ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... The urchin held out his dirty hand, and I put the coin into it. He smiled, tossed the sixpence, caught it deftly, and transferred it to ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... cry; fun isn't all over yet; you can ride too." Tossing the urchin up, Jack set him behind Link. "Hold on ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... do, dar," shouted the biggest boy, a woolly-heady urchin, with nothing on but a big pair of trousers that came up under his arms and were fastened over his shoulders by two bits of string, "jist you come on dis side and jump ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... and Harris stood that afternoon in the public square, while the girl gazed enraptured at an equestrian statue of Simon Bolivar, a ragged little urchin approached and begged them to buy an afternoon paper. Harris humored him and bade Carmen ask ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... years gone, the wet, spongy margin of a tiny bayou under his feet, the great swamp at his back, the leafy undergrowth all around; his canoe and paddle waiting for him, and Bonaventure repeating to him—swamp urchin of fourteen—the costliest words of kindness—to both of them the costliest—that he had ever heard, ending with these two that Marguerite had spoken. As he resumed his work, he ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... should think she encouraged him, but she knew all the same that he was keeping on her heels. Along Fleet Street he kept close to her and on Ludgate Bridge where the traffic was blocked by the crowd gazing into the Fleet river at some urchin's paddling in the muddy stream he spoke to her. She hadn't the least idea what he said, ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... intervals out came his voice bubbling and deploring, and was again swallowed up. At breakfast, the child being pitied, I ventured to speak about it, and was laughing and sympathizing in perfect good faith, when Mathews came in, and I found that the little urchin was he. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... sufficient degree of simplicity to make it intelligible to very young children, and rather choosing to be diffuse than obscure." With these objects in mind, we can understand small Tommy's embellishment of his demand for the return of his ball by addressing the ragged urchin as "Sirrah." ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... dreamt-of fortune came would be more welcome if there were an heir to whom to leave it. What was the good of being rich, if the money went to collateral relatives? There was his nephew Savinien, a disagreeable urchin whom he looked on with indifference; and he was biased regarding his brother, who had all but failed several times in business, and to whose aid he had come to save the honor of the name. The mistress had not hesitated to help him, ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... disposed to quit it. She never spoke at table, ate rapidly, reading all the while a small book, treating of some protestant propaganda. She gave a copy of it to everybody. The cure himself had received no less than four copies, conveyed by an urchin to whom she had paid two sous' commission. She said sometimes to our hostess, abruptly, without preparing her in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... numerous; they are of various colors and very cunning. Hares[193] are abundant, and turn white in winter like those of Norway. The wolverine or carcajou is called by the hunters beaver-eater, and somewhat resembles a badger; the skin is soft and handsome. A species of porcupine or urchin is found to the northward, and supplies the Indians with quills about four inches long, which, when dyed, are worked into showy ornaments. Squirrels[194] and various other small quadrupeds with fine furs are abundant ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... feeling justly incensed. Of course, he knew what it was—some good-for-nothing urchin finding a vent for his excited feelings. His parlor-maid, who was never in any hurry to open the door,—she had once kept him waiting ten minutes when he had forgotten his latch-key,—would certainly take no notice of this unseemly noise, but he, James Tapster, would himself ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... enter another shop, baby linen shop or some nonsense of that sort, so it was plain for what she had popped her watch; but what cared I? I continued to sing most beautifully. I lunged gayly with my stick at a lamp-post and missed it, whereat a street-urchin grinned, and I winked at him and slipped twopence ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... tender relationship between the two young creatures who alone belonged to each other. Lucy almost forgot her present self as she talked, and they moved about together, the tall boy clinging to her arm as the little urchin had done, altogether dependent, yet always with a curious leadership, suggesting a thousand things that would ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... get help for you before I think of the boy. He has run home, I dare to say, the young urchin; ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... Uncle Pyke was merely boorish or torpidly savage towards Aunt Belle and Aunt Belle's way with him—as with all combative men—was to rally him with a kind of boisterous chaff and to discharge it at him as an urchin with an armful of snowballs fearfully discharges them at an old gentleman in a silk hat: backing away, that is to say, before an advance and advancing before a retreat. Uncle Pyke usually retreated, ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... the deliberate syllables of one of the writers, who is, however, not disposed to personal irony when speaking of her. It is otherwise in his case and a general fling at the sex we may deem pardonable, for doing as little harm to womankind as the stone of an urchin cast upon the bosom of mother Earth; though men must look some day to have it returned to them, which is a certainty; and indeed full surely will our idle-handed youngster too, in his riper season; be heard complaining of a strange assault of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... beautifully transparent, permitted the eye to penetrate into its green depths for many fathoms around, though every object presented, through the agitated surface, an uncertain and fluctuating outline. I could see, however, the pink-colored urchin warping himself up, by his many cables, along the steep rock-sides; the green crab stalking along the gravelly bottom; a scull of small rock-cod darting hither and thither among the tangle-roots; and a few large medusae slowly flapping ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... we ran parallel to the one-thousand-foot wall of Horn Bluff meeting several boulders stranded on the ice, as well as the fragile shell of a tiny sea-urchin. The promontory was domed with snow and ice, more than one thousand two hundred feet above sea-level. From it streamed a blue glacier overflowing through a rift in the face. Five miles on our way, the sledge passed from frictionless ice to rippled snow ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... oratory of infants, to get me for a plaything. The mother out of pure indulgence took me up, and put me towards the child, who presently seized me by the middle and got my head in its mouth, where I roared so loud that the urchin was frighted, and let me drop, and I should infallibly have broke my neck if the mother had not held her apron under me. The nurse, to quiet her babe, made use of a rattle, which was a kind of hollow vessel filled with great stones, and fastened by a cable ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... so far as my experience had gone, for I could most certainly draw before I could write, and had not only become an editor long before I was fit to be a contributor, but was also a publisher before I had even seen a printing press. In fact, I was but a little urchin in knickerbockers when I brought out a periodical—in MS. it is true—of which the ambitious title was "The Schoolboys' Punch." The ingenuous simplicity with which I am universally credited by all who know me now had not then, I fancy, obtained ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... it dropped down into de sewer hole!" sobbed the ragged urchin. "Every cent of it ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... attracted considerable attention. It ought to have, for the expense of its hire was two pounds ten shillings. Stopped at the "Crown Inn," upon the road, for refreshments, and on handing a ragged little urchin a shilling for his voluntary service of standing at the door of our barouche, on starting off were saluted by a hiss for our generosity. A greater douceur was expected from the drivers of such a ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... rather bravely at the attack on the Louvre. The urchin who first scaled the gate beneath the bullets of the Swiss was I. I received the Medal of July. But the shopkeepers gave us a king. It had all to be done over. I joined a secret society; I learned to melt ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... solo, to salvos of applause, Mademoiselle Klosking took the second part with this urchin, the citizens and all the musical people who haunt a cathedral were on the tiptoe of expectation. The boy amazed them, and the rich contralto that supported him and rose and swelled with him in ravishing harmony enchanted them. The vast improvement in the boy's style ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... noticed Mr. Plaisted sauntering toward the house, twirling his light cane and looking as if he thought himself the pink of perfection. But what was it that was fluttering in the breeze behind him? Some urchin—exasperated, no doubt, by Plaisted's immaculate appearance—had fastened to his coat-tails a bunch of dirty rags, and as Dexie watched him from the window, she was convulsed with laughter as she saw him lift ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... favorably will he regard the worshiper. Love is a religion, and his cult must in the nature of things be more costly than those of all other deities; Love the Spoiler stays for a moment, and then passes on; like the urchin of the streets, his course may be traced by the ravages that he has made. The wealth of feeling and imagination is the poetry of the garret; how should love ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... out-door life. And now John Broom's troubles began. By fair means or foul, with here an hour's weeding and there a day's bird scaring, and with errands perpetual, the farm-bailiff contrived to "get some work out of" the idle little urchin. His speckled hat and grim face seemed to be everywhere, and always to pop up when John Broom began ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... middle of the adjoining grassy field. It comes well from the open expanse of purpling grass, and reminds me of a favourite grasshopper in a distant sunny land. O happy grasshopper! singing all day in the trees and tall herbage, in a country where every village urchin is not sent afield to "study natural history" with green net and a good store of pins, shall I ever again hear thy breezy music, and see thee among the green leaves, beautiful with steel-blue and creamy-white body, and dim purple over ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... while the whale was some fifty feet long—nearly a third of the length of the Nancy Bell—the thresher could not have exceeded thirteen feet; and as for girth, the former was in proportion like a portly, Daniel-Lambert sort of man put by the side of a starving street urchin of seven. The only advantage the thresher apparently possessed was in its eyes, which, when one could get a glimpse of them, looked like those of a hawk; while the unwieldy cetacean had little tiny optics, not much bigger than those of ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... "Prithee, little urchin," said one of the men, "can you tell us what has become of a young alder-tree, whose green leaves are ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... passage," Paul continued—"so much so as to need elucidation. 'I have taken the child with me to get the picture from the jeweller, who has mended the ring, and the little urchin knew it at ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... found by counting that he would have enough without disturbing his beloved gold-piece, and the shop-keeper strapped the three articles on his back, drawing the grater around to his side, and the happy Fritz set out for the depot, when a street urchin slipped up behind him and blew a shrill blast upon the trumpet. Fritz turned quickly and at that moment he heard a call, "Pixy! Pixy!" and the dog turned joyously and looked back at a tall policeman who laid his hand ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... under discussion do not read 'The Egoist' and 'The Master Builder.' It is the custom, particularly among magistrates, to attribute half the crimes of the Metropolis to cheap novelettes. If some grimy urchin runs away with an apple, the magistrate shrewdly points out that the child's knowledge that apples appease hunger is traceable to some curious literary researches. The boys themselves, when penitent, frequently accuse the novelettes with great bitterness, which is only to be expected ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... which it had sprung, and to repose in death in its native valley. From one of its masts, a long, loose, solitary shroud was pendant, having at its end a large double block attached to it, on which a boy was seated, and swung backward and forward. He was a little saucy urchin, of about twelve years of age, dressed in striped homespun, and had on his head a red yarn clackmutch, that resembled a cap of liberty. He seemed quite happy, and sung a verse of a French song with an air of ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... furtive glance of the urchin, I perceived that he recognised me; he spoke a couple of words to his father, who, turning his head in the direction where I stood, muttered an interjectional "Ugh!" and resumed his previous calm attitude, contrasting oddly with the insouciant look and merry ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... solemn-eyed urchin who had strayed in from the kitchen and now stood in the door hitching at a diminutive pair of trousers and eying Elliott absorbedly. "Gone!" he announced suddenly; coming out of ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... were not all spent in the water. Many were the curious and delicious morsels we found on the rocks that were uncovered at low tide, stranded fish, crabs, and small crawling shell-fish. One of our favorites was the sea-urchin, called hatuke, fetuke, or matuke. Round, as big as a Bartlett pear, with greenish spines five or six inches long, they were as hideous to see as they were pleasant to eat. In the last quarter of the moon they were specially good, though ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... can. I don't suppose any one will steal him in a quarter of an hour or so; and I daresay we shall meet some village urchin whom I can send to ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... the way, is an excellent musician) entered the Royal Chapel "booted and spurred," and was, of course, called upon for the fine. But His Grace calling upon the youngest chorister to repeat his GAMUT, and the "little urchin" failing, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 30. Saturday, May 25, 1850 • Various
... without saying a word, he dropped off the logs, brought up the peevy, and ran away, dripping. The men laughed, and not knowing his name, called him "the peevy-boy." Afterward, when they had found out his mother, they named the urchin "Young Moll's Peevy." This sobriquet clung to him even after he had reached manhood and worked with the gang, particularly among the older men who remembered the circumstance. But his mother called him Lotte. A stranger would ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... flesh-wound in the flank, and no vital part was touched. It was enough for me, however, poor Urchin,—enough to make me tumble down in a dead faint; and when I came to myself, I found that I had been removed to the bar-room down-stairs, where I made one of nineteen Blacks, all prisoners to the King for stealing his Deer, and all bound hand and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... glorious, in the mother's mind, as his historic exploit of bearing Montgomery's body from the battlefield. Dry clothing, doses of cordial, vigorous chafing of body and limbs, by many loving hands, soon brought the patient "round." By the time his father came home, soon after the rescue, the urchin declared he was "well" and would rather upset again in the river than be rubbed ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... the cliffs with a load of implements, shouldering rake and spade, and dangling tiny buckets from their arms. One little group makes straight for its sand-hole of yesterday, and is soon busy with huge heaps and mounds which are to take the form of a castle. A crowing little urchin beside is already waving the Union Jack which is ready to crown the edifice, if the Fates ever suffer it to be crowned. Engineers of less military taste are busy near the water's edge with an elaborate system of reservoirs and canals, and greeting with shouts of triumph the admission of the ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... The small urchin, Tommy, had apparently not suffered seriously from his immersion in the waters of Sunrise Lake. Perhaps he was to some extent accustomed to tumbling overboard; though this time the consequences might have been most serious only for the lucky presence ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... is a good commentary upon such discipline: A blacksmith brought up his son, to whom he was very severe, to his own trade. The urchin was, nevertheless, an audacious dog. One day the old vulcan was attempting to harden a cold chisel which he had made of foreign steel, but could not succeed; "horsewhip it, father," exclaimed the youth, "if that will not harden ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... simple forms the female nucleus alone possesses all the essential determiners for a new individual. Boveri's classic experiment[10] proved the same thing for the male nucleus. He removed the nuclei from sea-urchin eggs and replaced them with male nuclei. Normal individuals developed. To make things still more certain, he replaced the female nucleus with a male one from a different variety of sea-urchin. The resulting individual exhibited the characteristics of the male ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... too, but he did not know how to get over the hurdle. Mitya put his powerful hand under his elbow to help him jump. Tucking up his cassock, Alyosha leapt over the hurdle with the agility of a bare-legged street urchin. ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... when pointed spines rise up all over the balloon, they think better of it! They leave him alone; and the Porcupine-fish goes back to his usual shape, the spines lying flat until wanted again. He is sometimes called the Sea-hedgehog or Urchin-fish, ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... not a child among us was too young to feel in his own flesh the lash of the oppressor. We knew what it was to be Jews in exile, from the spiteful treatment we suffered at the hands of the smallest urchin who crossed himself; and thence we knew that Israel had good reason to pray for deliverance. But the story of the Exodus was not history to me in the sense that the story of the American Revolution was. It was more like a glorious ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... unwitting that four disconsolate maidens were marooned on the farther side of the river, waiting for some faerie boat to ferry them across. For a long time no knight-errant arrived for their relief, but at last, as chance would have it, an urchin came down on to the wharf, with a string and a bent pin, intent on fishing. He was at least a link with the outer world, and they yelled hopefully to him across the water. He stopped and stared, then took to his heels and ran, but whether in terror or to fetch help they were uncertain. After ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil |
