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Vagabond   Listen
noun
Vagabond  n.  One who wanders from place to place, having no fixed dwelling, or not abiding in it, and usually without the means of honest livelihood; a vagrant; a tramp; hence, a worthless person; a rascal. "A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be." Note: In English and American law, vagabond is used in bad sense, denoting one who is without a home; a strolling, idle, worthless person. Vagabonds are described in old English statutes as "such as wake on the night and sleep on the day, and haunt customable taverns and alehouses, and routs about; and no man wot from whence they came, nor whither they go." In American law, the term vagrant is employed in the same sense. Cf Rogue, n., 1.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Vagabond" Quotes from Famous Books



... insisted that all they were entitled to was just enough to keep them in working order. There is slavery for you. And when at last they protested, when they were tormented by hunger, when they saw their children in tatters, they were shot down as if they had been so many vagabond dogs. ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing

... the vagabond red men of to-day, the Osages were of that character that a white man would much prefer not to meet them in a lonely place, unless help was present or within call. If they should come across the two ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... be empty till I reached Nasirabad, when a huge gentleman in shirt-sleeves entered, and, following the custom of Intermediates, passed the time of day. He was a wanderer and a vagabond like myself, but with an educated taste for whiskey. He told tales of things he had seen and done, of out-of-the-way corners of the Empire into which he had penetrated, and of adventures in which he risked his life for a few days' food. "If India was filled ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... after all, none of these people combined the vocal power, the sonorous movement, the delicate grace, and the vast compass of our woodman. Yet this man, as far as virtue went, was vox et praeterea nihil. He was a vagabond of the most abandoned; he was habitually in drink, and I think his sins had gone near to make him mad—at any rate he was of a most lunatical deportment. In other lands, the man of whom you are a regular purchaser, serves ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... forgetful of the abrupt mode in which he had previously been expelled from that city. Almost immediately after his arrival, he was seized by order of the Emperor Rudolph, and thrown into prison. He was released after some months' confinement, and continued for five years to lead a vagabond life in Germany, telling fortunes at one place, and pretending to make gold at another. He was a second time thrown into prison, on a charge of heresy and sorcery; and he then resolved, if ever he obtained ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... for him at the ministry of the interior, where, protected by his father's memory, he might have risen to be chief of a division before he was twenty-five, he, my boy, he wants to be a painter,—a vagabond! I always knew that child would give me ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... just men in priestly garb. Through the presence of Magdalen, the prison recovered its sanctity in my eyes. Before this I had frequently quitted it full of deep contempt, for among the imprisoned Christians, there were too often lazy vagabond's, who had loudly confessed the Saviour only to be fed by the gifts of the brethren; there I had seen accursed criminals, who hoped by a martyr's death to win back the redemption that they had forfeited; there I had heard the woeful cries of the faint-hearted, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... honour to touch his finger. During this proceeding, which lasted a few hours, an influential personage generously offered to receive the eager subscriptions of the assembled thousands. Even the boys subscribed, and ere six hours had passed since his arrival as a coatless vagabond in this liberal city, Captain Popanilla found himself a ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli

... beggar. So two beggars have received alms to-day. I hear they spoke of me during dinner. She said I received charity from her father when I was a poor student; then I ran away from school and returned as a vagabond. So you know it now, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various

... Waif fared better, having fallen to the hands of a vagabond philosopher, than if she had drifted to those of a respected philanthropist. The latter would have had her glistening hair shorn short, as a crown with which that immortal and inconsistent socialist Nature had no justification in crowning a foundling, and, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... His attendant vagabond obeyed the order, and a large pitcher full of water was handed to the master, who heaved it upwards to his head and drank as audibly and nearly as much as a horse. Then holding his hands to receive the remaining contents of the pitcher, which his followers poured into his monstrous palms, he ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... Has a vagabond soul without any settled place of abode, like the wandering Jew. His head is unfixed, out of order, and utterly unserviceable upon any occasion. He is very apt to be taken with anything, but nothing can hold him, for he presently ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... indeed, you little vagabond?" said Hans, administering an educational box on the ear, as ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... known of her than that she was bound for Lisbon; that she had been driven out of her course; and that she had touched at Madeira, short of men and short of provisions. The last want had been supplied, but not the first. Sailors distrusted the sea-worthiness of the ship, and disliked the look of the vagabond crew. When those two serious facts had been communicated to Mr. Blanchard, the hard words he had spoken to his child in the first shock of discovering that she had helped to deceive him smote him to the heart. He instantly determined to ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... Master Tusser,—poet, farmer, chorister, vagabond, happily dead at last, and with a tomb whereon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... romantic; down every ride of the forest, roseate with the deep and tender glow of sunset;—innumerable and alternative hiding-places, to which would fly simultaneously for refuge, in the uncertain ubiquity of his hopes, his happy, vagabond and divided heart. "We mustn't, on any account," he would warn M. de Forestelle, "run across Odette and the Verdurins. I have just heard that they are at Pierrefonds, of all places, to-day. One has plenty of time to see them in Paris; it would ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... the commonest misconceptions about angling is that it is just the pastime for an idle man. "The lazy young vagabond cares for nothing but fishing!" exclaims the despairing mother to her sympathetic neighbour of the next cottage listening to the family troubles. Even those who ought to know better lightly esteem the sport, as if, forsooth, there were something in the nature ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... trail, knows something important will happen a little farther on, gazes with the true wonder-seeing eyes, whatever the spot or whatever the road finds it good to be there,—in short, is just that happy, delicious, excursive vagabond that touches one at so many points, and whose human prototype in a companion robs miles and leagues of ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... unbelieving authorities owe it to the public to institute a series of investigations into their relative's claims, in order that he may either be claimed as the master healer of his age, or summarily prosecuted as a rogue and vagabond, who is obtaining money under false pretences. It is monstrous that a gentleman of his rank and position should be allowed to go at large, making such enormous claims of quasi-supernatural powers, without having them promptly brought to the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various

... jingles silver in his pocket. The noise of a great terminus is no jar to me. It is music. I prick up my ears to it, and paw the platform. Dear to me as the bugle-note to any war-horse, as the first twittering of the birds in the hedgerows to the light-sleeping vagabond, that cry of 'Take your seats please!' or—better still—'En voiture!' or 'Partenza!' Had I the knack of rhyme, I would write a sonnet-sequence of the journey to Newhaven or Dover—a sonnet for every station one does not stop at. I await ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... lobsters," replied the coachman, in an imperative tone; "if that vexes them, they can take care of themselves. But I will not allow any one to attack my honor or that of my beasts by calling them screws—and that is what you did, you vagabond! And did you not say that I sent bags of oats to Remiremont to be sold, and that, for a month, my team had steadily been getting thin? Did you ever hear anything so scandalous, Pere Rousselet? to dare to say that I endanger the lives of my horses? Did you not say that, you rascal? And did you not ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... recently, while advocating the Children's Bill in the House of Commons (March 24th, 1908), Mr. Shaw said that "George Borrow never did a worse service to humanity than by writing 'Lavengro,' with its glorification of vagabond life." Though one cannot acquit Borrow of inconsistency, we must remember that "The Gypsies of Spain" was written in 1840, and that he sent a notice of it to Mr. Brandram of the Bible Society in March of that year, ending his letter with the words: "I hope yet ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper

... or home, unknown and unregarded, or who, if heeded at all, are only picked up by some critic beadle to receive the usual treatment of vagrants. Indeed, were I disposed to draw comfort from the misfortunes of others, I might make myself happy with the reflection, that however my vagabond might deserve the lash, it would receive no more punishment than those who deserved none at all; for the gentlemen castigators seldom take the pains to distinguish Innocence from Guilt, but most liberally bestow their stripes on all poor wanderers who are unhappily of American ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker

... The Vagabond, Kivi, who lived near the High Place, came down to my paepae one evening to bid me come to a feast given in Atuona Valley to the men of Motopu, who had been marvelously favored by the god of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... Chateau-Trompette with its guns and equipment. The Commandant at Metz, who remains firm, suffers the insults and the orders of the populace. The Commandant of Brittany wanders about his province "like a vagabond," while at Rennes his people, furniture, and plate are kept as pledges. As soon as he sets foot in Normandy he is surrounded, and a sentinel is placed at his door.—The Intendant of Besancon takes to flight; that of Rouen sees his dwelling sacked from top to bottom, and escapes amid the shouts ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... this stoical figure gave rise in Monsieur de Maulincour to one of those vagabond reveries which begin with a common question and end by comprising a world of thought. The storm was past. Monsieur de Maulincour presently saw no more of the man than the tail of his coat as it brushed the gate-post, but as he turned to leave his own place he noticed ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... entitled the Luck of Roaring Camp, by Francis Bret Harte, a native of Albany, N. Y. (1835), who had come to California at the age of seventeen, in time to catch the unique aspects of the life of the Forty-niners, before their vagabond communities had settled down into the law-abiding society of the present day. His first contribution was followed by other stories and sketches of a similar kind, such as the Outcasts of Poker Flat, Miggles, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... next day, the Friday, I think, that story was also made as clear as daylight to us; for being banished out of the town as a common thief and vagabond, down on the Musselburgh road, by order of a justice of the peace, it was the bounden duty of Daniel Search and Geordie Sharp to see her safe past the kennel, the length of Smeaton. They then tried to make her understand by writing ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... what they please in their reports to their societies, they make no converts to their faith, except the pretended ones of vagrant and vagabond drunkards, who are ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... old Cromwell dying early, the widow was remarried, to a cloth-merchant; and the child of the first husband, who made himself so great a name in English story, met with the reputed fortune of a stepson, and became a vagabond in the wide world. The chart of his course wholly fails us. One day in later life he shook by the hand an old bellringer at Sion House before a crowd of courtiers, and told them that "this man's father had given him many ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... crieth to thee from the earth, wherefore thou art cursed, and accursed be the earth that received the blood of thy brother by his mouth of thy hands. When thou shalt work and labor the earth it shall bring forth no fruit, but thou shalt be fugitive, vagabond, and void on the earth. This Cain deserved well to be cursed, knowing the pain of the first trespass of Adam, yet he added thereto murder and ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... him," he answered, emphatically, "for as proper a fellow as ever I met in all my vagabond days. Barring his primness he would have proved a gallant"—he was going to say "pirate," but paused in time and said "seaman." "God pardon him for a Puritan," he went on, "for he has in him the making of ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... his home probably never would have revealed to him. It often cut him to the quick, when, on entering an office in his daily search for employment, he was met by hostile or suspicious glances, or when, as it occasionally happened, the door was slammed in his face, as if he were a vagabond or an impostor. Then the wolf was often roused within him, and he felt a momentary wild desire to become what the people here evidently believed him to be. Many a night he sauntered irresolutely about the gambling places in obscure streets, and the glare of light, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... but when he conspires and combines with hundreds of others, thereby a thousandfold increasing the danger and damage, it becomes a delicate matter for office-holders to handle, and so, while the leaders are free to roam the land and preach sedition and rebellion, the criminal and vagabond classes, the ignorant and vicious, and the great array of foreign-born, foreign-bred laborers, eagerly await the next opportunity. The real sufferers are the native-born or naturalized citizens, who, ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... Muir whisked you away from London the day after she found out that you were playing with my vagabond of a Robin—unknowing of your danger? There was a mother for you! It nearly killed ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... against the flashes of sudden lightning that seemed to blaze into his heart. He could not help thinking of his father's sick-bed in those midnight hours, and of all the melancholy array of lost years which had made him no longer "a gentleman, as he used to be," but a skulking vagabond in his native place; and his penitence lasted till after he had had his breakfast and Mr Wentworth was gone. Then perhaps the other side of the question recurred to his mind, and he began to think that if his father died there ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... coming home in the evening, to find Mrs. Stokes the landlady, Miss Selina Stokes her daughter, and Master Bob Stokes her son (an idle young vagabond that was always playing marbles on St. Bride's steps and in Salisbury Square),—when I found them all bustling and tumbling up the steps before me to our rooms on the second floor, and there, on the table, between our two flutes ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray

... stumps and look sharp about it, my good fellow, and don't set all our dogs barking for nothing," said the major-domo, and with that he seized the vagabond's hand ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... out and falling back to her side with automatic regularity, and still the little figure pranced, and gesticulated, and blew kisses to right and left, at one moment a merry Irish vagabond, at the next a French marionette—all smirks and bows and ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... proudly sports; his slouched and gaily-ribboned hat betoken his grand features. A terror to the smiling innocence of the villages through which he floats; his swart visage and bold swagger are not unshunned in cities. Once a vagabond on his own canal, I have received good turns from one of these Canallers; I thank him heartily; would fain be not ungrateful; but it is often one of the prime redeeming qualities of your man of violence, that ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... Dudden, and they were soon grumbling as usual, and all to the tune of, "If only we could get that vagabond, Donald O'Neary, out of ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... by profession, was somewhat of a light-hearted vagabond by instinct; if the artist was ready to be annoyed because of an imaginary loss of precious daylight, the vagabond laughed cheerily when he blinked at a clock and learned that the hour still lacked some minutes of half past five ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... kindly by me in calling"—the vagabond had finished his story and was standing, a very abject figure, among the books—"and in giving me the message from your friend. I am truly thankful that he is now labouring—in iron, did you say? and I hope he ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... been between his lips when he had sunk into that fatal sleep. The memory of Peter's words flashed through her brain. He had smoked opium. She wondered if Peter really knew. But of what avail now to conjecture? He was gone, and only this mad native vagabond ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... of things mundane. The waiting-maid no doubt wore some horror made of hemp against her skin. If Carlotta's gossamer follies had been thrown into the vagabond court of the Queen of Navarre, I wonder whether those delectable stories ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... awaken in him a revulsion of feeling. At length, however, the retributive powers of conscience were thoroughly aroused—those powers which in all literature have formed the theme of the deepest tragedy; which in the Bible are typified by Cain, escaping as a fugitive and a vagabond from the cry of his brother's blood; which in Greek literature are shadowed forth by the terrible figures of the Eumenides, with gorgon faces and blood-dropping eyes, following silently but remorselessly those upon whose track they have been set; and which in Shakespeare are represented in the ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker

... by this cacique to examine a river over which it was intended to lay a bridge, there appeared about five hundred Indians on the other side, who shot their arrows towards the Spaniards, continually crying out "go away with you, vagabond robbers!" Soto asked the cacique why he permitted his subjects to behave in this manner; to which he made answer that many of them had thrown off their obedience because he had entered into friendship with the Spaniards. Soto therefore gave him permission to rejoin his subjects, on promising ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... pocket, he was, in point of fact, so completely, though unintentionally, disguised, that an ordinary observer would have had difficulty in deciding what he was. He might have been one of that class, who abound in the United States, who prefer a wandering vagabond life to honest work, and who thus thought that a brief acquaintance with the college might add to the diversity or excitement of life. But, happily, there is something in the human eye which surely betokens character. Cheats and impostors of all kinds cannot control their eyes. It would seem ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike

... the constables of Dover, Hampton, Salisbury, Newbury, Rowley, Ipswich, Wenham, Lynn, Boston, Roxbury, Dedham, and until these vagabond Quakers are carried out of this jurisdiction. You, and every one of you, are required, in the King's Majesty's name, to take these vagabond Quakers, Anne Colman, Mary Tomkins, and Alice Ambrose, and make them fast to the cart's tail, and driving the cart through your several towns, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... their primitive soil, they are thence inspired with superior vigour and keenness. Amongst the people of Germany I would not reckon those who occupy the lands which are under decimation, though they be such as dwell beyond the Rhine and the Danube. By several worthless and vagabond Gauls, and such as poverty rendered daring, that region was seized as one belonging to no certain possessor: afterwards it became a skirt of the Empire and part of a province, upon the enlargement of our bounds and the extending of ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus

... turned sharply towards the bushes as the visitors appeared; they also lighted up the tinker's cart in the background, the browsing pony close by, the implements of the tinner's trade strewn around on the grass. It was an alluring picture of vagabond life, and Neale suddenly compared it with the dull existence of folk who, like himself, were chained to a desk. He would have liked to sit down by Tinner Creasy and ask him about his doings—but the policeman ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher

... self-conscious, twentieth-century way, through the tale of his glorious peccadilloes? Or is it to be a Jonathan Wild, memorable as the hero of a hundred magnificent felonies with which a Fielding or a Wells could glorify a sturdy vagabond? But Remington writes in bitterness. His pen is steeped in the gall of Swift. He feels rancour against Altiora, against the Cramptons, against all the "Pinky-Dinkies" who prescribe morals for a ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... where he learned French and mathematics. He was not the man by nature that Harris was. Harris had made everything of his mind and character in spite of obstacles; while this man had evidently been born in a different rank, and educated early in life accordingly, but had been a vagabond, and done nothing for himself since. Neither had George the character, strength of mind, or memory of Harris; yet there was about him the remains of a pretty good education, which enabled him to talk quite up to his ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... with which Jupe clung to this consolation, rejecting the superior comfort of knowing on a sound arithmetical basis that her father was an unnatural vagabond, filled Mr. Gradgrind with pity. Yet, what was to be done? Mr. M'Choakumchild reported that she had a very dense head for figures; that, once possessed with a general idea of the globe, she took the smallest conceivable interest ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... hand, I reflect on the exultation of my rivals, saying, They will scoffingly sneer behind my back, and impute my zeal in behalf of my family to a want of humanity.—Do but behold that graceless vagabond who can never witness the face of good fortune. He will consult the ease of his own person and abandon to distress his wife and children.—And, as is known, I have some small skill in the science of accounts. If, through your respected interest, any office can be obtained that may be ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... the rear, arm-in-arm, and smiling to each other as they went. In this order the company visited two other taverns, where scenes were enacted of a like nature to that already described—some refusing, some accepting, the favours of this vagabond hospitality, and the young man himself eating ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

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

... who had wandered about the country as an idle vagabond until the war broke out, when he took to army-contracting with considerable success. It was in his capacity of contractor that he became acquainted with the boisterous black Pasha, who greatly appreciated his low but ready wit, and delighted ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... adventurer. Any day some trivial accident might oppress him with the burden of a wife and child who looked to him for their support. Tarrant the married man, unless he were content to turn simple rogue and vagabond, must make for himself a place in the money-earning world. His indolence had no small part in his revolt against the stress of such a consideration. The climate of the Bahamas by no means tended to invigorate him, and in the United States he found so ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... still at large, and the orthodox Presbyterians denounced Cennick as a Covenanter, a rebel, a spy, a rogue, a Jesuit, a plotter, a supporter of the Pretender, and a paid agent of the Pope. Again and again he was accused of Popery; and one Doffin, "a vagabond and wicked fellow," swore before the Ballymena magistrates that, seven years before, he had seen Cennick in the Isle of Man, and that there the preacher had fled from the arm of the law. As Cennick was pronouncing the benediction at the close ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... she had from Calcutta, Bunter told her he had had a fall down the poop-ladder, and cut his head, but no bones broken, thank God. That was all. Of course, she had other letters from him, but that vagabond Bunter never gave me a scratch of the pen the solid eleven months. I supposed, naturally, that everything was going on all right. Who could ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad

... Miss Effie Germon. (Aside.) "I am supposed to be a virtuous and vagabond boy. I hate to show my ankles in ragged trowsers, but ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various

... little dream she had forgot Crept near and clung and stayed— A roving, ragged vagabond Half daring, half afraid, And all because young love went by And ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison

... known until the end of the story. Hannibal is charmed into tolerance of the Judge's picturesque vices, while Miss Betty, lovely and capricious, is charmed into placing all her affairs, both material and sentimental, in the hands of this delightful old vagabond. ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... met, in the same class, with such natural politeness. This is much changed for the worse now; but before the invasion of tourists one never passed a man on the road who did not salute one with a 'Vaya usted con Dios.' Nor would the most indigent vagabond touch the filthy BACALLAO which he drew from his wallet till he had courteously addressed the stranger with the formula 'Quiere usted comer?' ('Will your Lordship please to eat?') The contrast between the people and the ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... never out of the streets from his companions. This course he followed till he was fifteen years old, without giving his mind to any useful pursuit, or the least reflection on what would become of him. In this situation, as he was one day playing according to custom in the street, with his vagabond associates, a stranger passing by stood to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... to music; not the least. He was tolerant of everything; he often said so. He considered it a vagabond kind of trifling, in general, just suited to Tom's capacity. But in regard to Tom's performance upon this same organ, he was remarkably lenient, singularly amiable; for when Tom played it on Sundays, Mr ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... shining sun. He salaamed; she rose, took him by the hand and placed him near her. 'O young man! who are you? where do you come from? How did you get into this garden?' He told her his story from beginning to end, and Lady Latifa[9] replied: 'This is folly! It will make you a vagabond of the earth, and lead you to destruction. Come, cease such talk! No one can go to the Caucasus. Stay with me and be thankful, for here is a throne which you can share with me, and in my society you can enjoy my wealth. I will do whatever ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... discussions of the question, What to do with the tramp, will ever so make the student of life participant of the innermost experience of the tramp, his experience of dull despair, his loss of his grip on life, as Beranger's "The Old Vagabond." No expert in nervous diseases, no psychological student of mental states, normal and abnormal, can give the reader so clear an understanding of that deep and seemingly causeless dejection, which because it ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... consciousness that my companion was withdrawing his hand from my pocket. My first impulse was to make an exclamation; my second, which I carried into execution, to ascertain my loss, which I found to be the very alarming one of my baggage checks; my whole property being thereby placed at this vagabond's disposal, for I knew perfectly well that if I claimed my trunks without my checks the acute baggage-master would have set me down as a bold swindler. The keen-eyed conductor was not in the car, and, had ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... restricting Chinese immigration,[106] and while discussing the Indian bill,[107] he took high ground, showing that we had failed in our selfish policy toward the Indian—a policy by which the breeding of hatred and discontent had kept him a fugitive and a vagabond—and emphasized the necessity for the government to do something to civilize the Indian. There must be a change in the Indian policy "if they are to be civilized," said he, "in that the best elements of their natures are to be developed to the exercise ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... vagabond ought to be locked up. Why, when I was young and pearter than I am now, I didn't mind packing a sheep or two off on my back—but stealing hens—faugh! It is low and shows what the country ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... "Man, if you dare to cross the Border you will be whipped at a cart-tail and clapped into Bedlam as a crazy vagabond." ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... Hereford; But as I come, I come for Lancaster. And, noble uncle, I beseech your Grace Look on my wrongs with an indifferent eye: You are my father, for methinks in you I see old Gaunt alive: O! then, my father, Will you permit that I shall stand condemn'd A wandering vagabond; my rights and royalties Pluck'd from my arms perforce, and given away To upstart unthrifts? Wherefore was I born? If that my cousin king be King in England, It must be granted I am Duke of Lancaster. You have a son, Aumerle, my noble cousin; Had you first died, and he been thus trod down, ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... I tell you," he said, "to keep that useless damned mongrel of a dog outside the house altogether—eh?—did n't I? Go this moment and tie the brute up, you vagabond!" ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd

... British dominions, and perhaps in foreign dominions too—we think it very likely, but, being no great traveller, cannot distinctly say—there happened to be, in Mudfog, a merry-tempered, pleasant-faced, good-for-nothing sort of vagabond, with an invincible dislike to manual labour, and an unconquerable attachment to strong beer and spirits, whom everybody knew, and nobody, except his wife, took the trouble to quarrel with, who inherited from his ancestors ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... came a quarter of an hour ago, you donkey! He has just gone out, and you did not even get up and make a salaam, you impertinent vagabond!" Narain protested that no pundit, or sahib, or any one else, had passed the threshold since Ram Lal had entered. "Ha! you budmash. You lazy dog of a Hindoo! you have been asleep again, you swine, you son of a pig, you father of piglings! Is that the way you do your work in my service?" ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... made the acquaintance of an outlaw; an unfortunate fellow-creature under the ban of condemnation, burdened with an opprobrious name, and by general consent given over to the tender mercies of any vagabond who chooses to torture him or take his life. One would naturally sympathize with the "under dog," but when, instead of one of his peers as opponent, a poor little fellow, eight inches long, has arrayed against him the whole human race, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... away from home, left me no alternative but to dismiss him on my return. With this exertion of authority my interference as chief of the household came to an end. I left it to my excellent housekeeper, Mrs. Mozeen, to find a sober successor to the drunken vagabond who had been sent away. She discovered a respectable young man—tall, plump, and rosy—whose name was Joseph, and whose character was beyond reproach. I have but one excuse for noticing such a trifling event as this. It took its place, at a later period, ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... vague desire for action and change of scene common to such irritation; yet after mixing for a few moments with the departing passengers, each selfishly hurrying to some rendezvous of rest or business, he insensibly drew apart from them, with the instinct of a vagabond and outcast. Although he was conscious that he was neither, but merely an unsuccessful miner suddenly reduced to the point of soliciting work or alms of any kind, he took advantage of the first crossing to plunge into a side street, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... these things in his heart, and is still. This vagabond, Juan Catheron, follows my lady to Catheron Royals, is expelled, haunts the grounds, and a man answering to his description is discovered quarrelling with my lady, demanding money, etc., two or three hours before the murder. The window of the room, in which she takes ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... least with the exaggeration of nocturnal orgies which he has been slandered with—a reason that he should be deprived of his chosen, harmless, nay edifying, way of life, and be committed in hoary age for a sturdy vagabond?— ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... compulsion, as witnesses, and possible accomplices, and Overtop and Maltboy as guides, philosophers, and friends. All looked seedy and criminal, as if there were something in the atmosphere of station houses to give a man the semblance of a vagabond and an outcast. Marcus Wilkeson was very pale, and, when he looked across the room, as he did upon his entrance, by a singular impulse, and saw the great blood mark and the club on the floor, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... I looked for a splendid reception, tournaments, carousals, pageants, and festivals; instead of which, all has been seclusion and obscurity! and the best society whom the King introduced to us, was a Bohemian vagabond, by whose agency he directed us to correspond with our friends in Flanders.—Perhaps," said the lady, "it is his politic intention to mew us up here until our lives' end, that he may seize on our estates, after the extinction of the ancient house ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... chief officers of the garrison, and a considerable convoy of Germans and Rascians. The emperor has several regiments of these people; but, to say the truth, they are rather plunderers than soldiers; having no pay, and being obliged to furnish their own arms and horses; they rather look like vagabond gypsies, or stout beggars, than regular troops. I cannot forbear speaking a word of this race of creatures, who are very numerous all over Hungary. They have a patriarch of their own at Grand Cairo, and ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... police had ended in no definite result. At Maisons-Lafitte, people thought that the Russian house had been attacked by some thieves who had been in the habit of entering unoccupied houses and rifling them of their contents. They had even arrested an old vagabond, and accused him of the attempted robbery at General Vogotzine's; but the old man had answered: "I do not even know the house." But was not this Menko a hundred times more culpable than a thief? It was more and worse than money or silver that he had dared to come for: it ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... troupe from Drury Lane. They had moved down from London, these happy-go-lucky Bohemians, as they were wont to do each season, among them being the ubiquitous Cibber, the gentlemanly Wilks, and that very talented vagabond, George Powell. Powell it was who liked his brandy not wisely but too well, and who made such passionate love on the stage that Sir John Vanbrugh used to wax nervous for the fate of the actresses. One great artiste was missing, however. ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... Mr. Lawrence Boythorn, really making the whole house vibrate. "What, you have not forgotten it yet! Ha, ha, ha! And that was another most consummate vagabond! By my soul, the countenance of that fellow when he was a boy was the blackest image of perfidy, cowardice, and cruelty ever set up as a scarecrow in a field of scoundrels. If I were to meet that most unparalleled ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... when tea and coffee were unknown, and English ladies drank beer for breakfast. And if he perished in a sudden brawl, it was at a time when everyone wore arms, and swords and daggers were readily drawn in the commonest quarrels. Nor should it be forgotten that he belonged to a "vagabond" class, half-outlawed and denounced by the clergy; that the drama was only then in its infancy; that it was difficult to earn bread by writing even immortal plays; and that irregularity of life was natural in a career whose penury was only diversified ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... the first day we met by the road-side fountain, I advised you to do like me, seek amusement and adventure as a foot-traveller. Now, seeing you, evidently a gentleman by education and birth, still a foot-traveller, I feel as if I ought to say, 'You have had enough of such experience: vagabond life has its perils as well as charms; ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... can look in, though the lights of fires and lamps shine out, than they do in broad daylight, with open windows and people coming and going through open doors, and a general air of comradeship and busy living, it is hard to see. But there is not a lonely vagabond in the world who does not know that they do. One may see on a dark night many a wistful face of lonely man or lonely woman, hurrying resolutely past, and looking away from, the illumined houses which mean nothing to ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... between two powers of a brilliant woman's nature. Sometimes you are sure the lawless, the vagabond, and the intriguing side will win. ...
— The Damsel and the Sage - A Woman's Whimsies • Elinor Glyn

... of mendicant buffoon; I can never have anything in common with a woman as beautiful and as young as you. My only ambition—and this can offend no one—would have been to devote myself to you. But how to have such happiness? I, a vagabond, with nothing but my old sword, my old hat, and my pink hose! Ah! well, by a chance which I at first blessed, Colonel Rutler to-night mistook me for him they call your husband; this mistake might be useful to you. Judge of my joy—I could ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... when the ancient pair In fables old, less ancient yet than these, Deucalion and chaste Pyrrha, to restore The race of mankind drowned, before the shrine Of Themis stood devout. To Heaven their prayers Flew up, nor missed the way, by envious winds Blown vagabond or frustrate: in they passed Dimensionless through heavenly doors; then clad With incense, where the golden altar fumed, By their great intercessour, came in sight Before the Father's throne: them the glad Son Presenting, thus ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... Equally pleasant to us is the Chapter on Vagabonds. 'A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind,' and, confessing ourselves to be one of this genus, we dwell with delight on our author's genial description of their naive pleasures and innocent eccentricities. Mr. Smith says: 'The true vagabond is to be met with among actors, poets, painters. These may grow in any way their nature dictates. They are not required to conform to any traditional pattern. A little more air and light should be let in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... gown, apparently finding exquisite delight in the mere contact of her finger-tips with the smooth, glossy surface of the silk. Though her touch was so light Isabelle immediately turned towards the child and smiled upon her encouragingly, but the poor little vagabond, finding herself detected, in an instant had assumed a stupid, almost idiotic look—with an instinctive amount of histrionic art that would have done honour to a finished actress. Then dropping her eyelids and leaning her shoulders against the hard back of the wooden settle she seemed to ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... figure, the pat allusion. His touch was light; his address could be almost courtly, so that, on suddenly looking up, you would feel a vague surprise to behold in the speaker, not a polished man of the world in his dress-suit, but this beery old one-eyed vagabond in tatters. It was strange to witness his transitions. At one moment he would be holding high discourse of Goethe, and translating illustrative passages into classic French; at the next, whining about la deche, and begging for a petite salete ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... attempts and the fate of the other pretenders.[220] This time it was a slave from Pontus, or, according to other traditions, a freedman from Italy. His skill as a singer and harpist, combined with his facial resemblance to Nero, gave him some credentials for imposture. He bribed some penniless and vagabond deserters by dazzling promises to join him, and they all set out to sea. A storm drove them on to the island of Cythnus,[221] where he found some troops homeward bound on leave from the East. Some of these he enrolled, killing all who ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... still lingers in his memory: yet more of her conversation. "You have there a very fine parlour," said the poor gentleman. "Ah!" said Madame la Marechale (des-logis), "you are very well acquainted with such parlours!" And you should have seen with what a hard and scornful eye she measured the vagabond before her! I do not think he ever hated the Commissary; but before that interview was at an end, he hated Madame la Marechale. His passion (as I am led to understand by one who was present) stood confessed in a burning eye, a pale ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Let me be branded for the public scorn, Turn'd forth and driv'n to wander like a vagabond, Be friendless and forsaken, seek my bread Upon the barren wild and desolate waste, Feed on my sighs, and drink my falling tears, E'er I consent to teach my lips injustice, Or wrong the orphan, who has none to ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe

... accompaniment of a dozen, tagging at his heels and holding on to his hands and the skirts of his long coat. There's Dick there, six feet if he's an inch and gone twenty last month. Well, many and many a time have I seen the strapping fellow when he was a little chap sitting astride the old vagabond's neck, with his little feet crooked in under his armpits, laughing and screaming uproariously as his human horse underneath him pranced and curvetted along the pavement, and charged through the flock of childish admirers around him, as if they were a hostile soldiery and Dick was a ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... a human sacrifice, to propitiate the favor of their gods in a battle they were about to undertake. The victim was generally some strolling vagabond, who was not aware of his fate till the moment arrived, and he received his death-blow from a club. For the purpose of showing the inhabitants the use of the horses, Captains Cook and Clerke rode into the country, to the great ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous

... row of—What d'you mean, you impudent vagabond? I wouldn't let you put a headstone on one of my graves if you'd do ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... to take whatever might offer next. And she was eager to see what that would be, and hopeful about it—no—more than hopeful, confident. Burlingham, aided by those highly favorable surroundings of the show boat, and of the vagabond life thereafter, had developed in her that gambler's spirit which had enabled him to play year after year of losing hands with unabating courage—the spirit that animates all the brave souls whose deeds awe the docile, conventional, ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... destination is the state of Savoy.' Upon this pilgrimage Tasso chose the sobriquet of Omero Fuggiguerra. Arriving at Turin, he was refused entrance by the guardians of the gate. The rags upon his back made them suspect he was a vagabond infected with the plague. A friend who knew him, Angelo Ingegneri, happened to pass by, and guaranteed his respectability. Manso compares the journey of this penniless and haggard fugitive through the cities of Italy to the meteoric passage of a comet.[44] Wherever he appeared, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... possibly she would through one of the little Buttons, who might pick up the news in the street, he would be soundly beaten. But there was a chance of her not hearing, and he desired to be no more of a blight than he could help. So Paul, vagabond and self-reliant from his babyhood, turned up at the Sunday-school treat, hatless and coatless, his dirty little toes visible through the holes in his boots, and his shapeless and tattered breeches secured to his person by a single brace. The better-dressed urchins moved away ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... situation as that any time I asked for it. But I don't want it. No paper in the United States can afford to pay me what my place on the Enterprise is worth. If I were not naturally a lazy, idle, good-for-nothing vagabond, I could make it pay me $20,000 a year. But I don't suppose I shall ever be any account. I lead an easy life, though, and I don't care a cent whether school keeps or not. Everybody knows me, and I fare like a prince ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... blessing, "How much work have I done to-day for my dinner?" But the proper way to enforce that order on those below you, as well as on yourselves, is not to leave vagabonds and honest people to starve together, but very distinctly to discern and seize your vagabond; and shut your vagabond up out of honest people's way, and very sternly then see that, until he has worked, he does NOT eat. But the first thing is to be sure you have the food to give; and, therefore, to enforce the organization of vast activities in ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin

... yet," muttered the other, sullenly; adding, sharply and bitterly, "Mighty good friends you all are, to wish her married to a beggar, a vagabond harper, rather than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... which I direct—cease the line of least resistance and take the one of greatest resistance." When day dreams and "castles in Spain" attempt to lure you from your lessons, refuse to follow; shut out these vagabond thoughts and stick to your task. When intellectual inertia deadens your thought and clogs your mental stream, throw it off and court forceful effort. If wrong or impure thoughts seek entrance to your mind, close and lock your mental doors to them. If thoughts of desire try to ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts

... had been infested by vagabond Indian dogs, prowling about in quest of food. They were about the size of a large pointer; with ears short and erect, and a long bushy tail—altogether, they bore a striking resemblance to a wolf. These skulking visitors would keep about ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... you turn up and get my breakfast, you idle young vagabond?" inquired the Sixth Form boy, half good-humouredly, and little guessing what was in the wind. ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... not being thought one. And so, beyond all question, instead of genuine and active justice, you give us only an effigy of justice, and you teach us, as it were, to disregard our own unvarying conscience, and to go hunting after the fleeting vagabond opinions of others. ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... myself, that's poz; and to take with me such a swindling, pimping, thieving, brandy-faced rascal as this Brock will never do. Egad! he's a disgrace to the service. As it is, I've often a mind to have the superannuated vagabond drummed ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... sort were Elymas, the sorcerer whom Paul found squatting at the ear of the Roman Governor of Cyprus; the magicians at Ephesus; the vagabond Jews exorcists, who with profitable eclecticism, as they thought, tried to add the name of Jesus as one more spell to their conjurations; and, finally, this Simon the sorcerer. Established in Samaria, he had been juggling and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... thought of the wretched appearance which he and George presented he was not surprised at the coolness of their reception. For not only were their clothes remarkable to look upon, but they were without hats. Even Waggie seemed a bedraggled little vagabond. ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins

... new glory by sitting for a moment in its unpretentious shade. If your brother comes down, as I hope he will, next week, I shall beg him to come and write a poem here. The place is fitter for a poet than a prosy vagabond like me." ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... imagine them to be. Living themselves in ease, and it may be affluence, and surrounded by all the amenities of existence, it is difficult for them to realise that multitudes can enjoy a rude kind of happiness in the absence of all this. Such, however, is the fact. The vagabond class is not more miserable than any other; it is, of course, not without its sorrows, vicissitudes, and troubles, but what section of the community is free from these ills? This class has even a philosophy adapted to its circumstances, the fundamental ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... Sundays, it is the relief map of the entire Republic inside the race-course. This is of cement, with real water to represent the lakes and oceans and (when it is turned on) the rivers. Every town, railway, and trail of any importance is marked, an aid to the vagabond that should be required by law of every country. On it I picked out easily the route of my further travels. The map covers a space as large as a moderate-sized house and is seen in all its details from the two platforms above it. Its only apparent fault is that the mountains and ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck



Words linked to "Vagabond" :   wanderer, unsettled, tramp, beachcomber, go, travel, cast, have-not, vagrant, drifting, drifter, ramble, physical object, maunder, bird of passage, aimless, vagabondage, wander, floating, locomote, object, roll, rove, roam, gallivant, sundowner



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