"Burglar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to one side, shrinking against the wall, instinctively holding his breath. The prying of the shutter from without steadily continued. Conjectures and hopes surged through his mind—it was a burglar, it was the police, it was some unknown, unguessed friend. He didn't care who it was so long as ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... born an honest lad—a mere chance—and being determined to use the talents which nature had given me, eight days afterward I bid my astronomer good-morning, and went to the prefecture. My fear of being a burglar drove me ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... of anything to jump on the man outside his own door and do the burglar act openly, lest the police should jump on me, and I should be laid by before I'd found you. But about that time I began to have water on the brain; or rather, I got possessed with the idea of sneaking into houses by means ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... thumb again anywhere. It was flat like the head of a snake, and the nail was no larger than a pea—a thumb that had evidently been cruelly smashed at one time. The owner of the thumb might have been a common burglar, but in the light of recent events David was not inclined to think so. At any rate he felt disposed to give his theory every chance. He saw a long, fustian-clad arm follow the scarred thumb, and a hand ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... laid down this as law, "the adviser of one who commits a felony of himself is a murderer." He might have added, "the adviser of one who breaks into his own house is a burglar." ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... "Now, only that Burglar Bill and Company aren't such fools as to come out on such a night as this, here's their chance. Why, they might burgle every house on one side of the street while the whole division was on the other. Blest if I know hardly where ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... called to see a young girl who had had nervous prostration for two years. The physician was told before seeing the patient that the illness had started through fright occasioned by the patient's waking and discovering a burglar in her room. ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... day, fought a duel with a Yankee at Dieppe and winged him for saying through his confounded nose that Old England was played out; been a controlling voice already in his shipping firm; drunk five other of the best men in London under the table; broken his neck steeple-chasing; shot a burglar in the legs; been nearly drowned, for a bet; killed snipe in Chelsea; been to Court for his sins; stared a ghost out of countenance; and travelled with a lady of Spain. If this young pup had done the last, it ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... One of their number told off to advance to the assault scrambled up the garden wall and prepared to descend. This the bull-dog allowed him to do. The animal, knowing perfectly well what was coming, waited for the burglar to reach the ground; but when that gentleman directed a kick at him, the bull-dog flew at the visitor's shins, and, making but one bite of it, snapped the ankle-bone clean in two. The thief had the courage to tear him away, and returned, walking upon the bare ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... did tell the children, but children do not understand flower-talk, I find. And yet it is a very simple language. You see, I hear a great deal of flower-gossip, for my moonbeams are sad chatterboxes, and they bring me back all sorts of news when they come home in the morning. How the burglar-bees robbed old Madam Peony, how the daffodils in the long border had been flirting with the regiment of purple flags behind them, when the Tulip family are expected; yes, there is no end to the things I hear. But if I told all I know, everybody would be as wise as ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... accuse me, of all people in the world, of climbing in through the study window? Sybil must have been dreaming. She's an idiot of a girl. She'd imagine anything from a ghost to a burglar. What are we going to do about it? I wish to goodness they would tell Miss Mitchell! I'd rather she knew. I've a jolly good mind to go and tell her myself. Then I should have first innings and she'd hear our side of it. Hello! ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... truth in the report that a burglar has been fined for infringing the Defence of the Realm Regulations by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... a watchdog and a garden, it might be a good idea to paint a phosphorescent and terrifying watchdog on the wall. Perhaps a watchlion would be even more terrifying—and, presumably, just as easy to paint. Any burglar would be deterred if he came across a lion suddenly in the back garden. One way or another, it should be possible to have something a little more interesting than mere bricks at the ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... take a man and pay him 5,000 pounds a year to be wicked, and praise him for it, and have policemen and courts and laws and juries to drive him into it so that he can't help doing it, what can you expect? Sir Howard's all right when he's left to himself. We caught a burglar one night at Waynflete when he was staying with us; and I insisted on his locking the poor man up until the police came, in a room with a window opening on the lawn. The man came back next day and said he must return to a life of crime unless I gave him a job ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... our forbidden fruit was indirectly responsible. The immediate cause of our ill-humour was the exasperating reflection that we were debarred from taking even those simple steps which lead to the restoration of lost luggage. We stood in the shoes of a burglar who has been robbed of his spoils. As like as not, our precious uniform-case was lying at the station, waiting to be claimed. Yet we dared not inquire, because of what our inquiries might bring forth. Of course the authorities might be totally ignorant ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... quickly up a flight of steps. At the foot of the broad staircase Kennedy paused to examine some rich carvings, and I felt him nudge me. I turned. It was an enclosed staircase, with walls that looked to be of re-enforced concrete. Swung back on hinges concealed like those of a modern burglar-proof safe was ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... several ways to New York,—most fit choice for such a pilgrimage! This too was fathomed and forgiven. O unwise clemency! O base requital! Violence upon discovery? No doubt. Loaded pistol constantly in the house since the last burglar scare. At this Mrs. Bowers recollected shots in the night; Seneca had said "Campaign fireworks"; but she knew better; shots, of course. Dreadful thing to happen at one's very door. An immediate separation naturally. By all the laws of righteousness she should not be given the ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... ma'am," the shopkeeper declared suavely. "That service can be left right out in plain sight, and no burglar ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... over the waters, as in that picture of Vedder's which he calls "Memory," but the hair was not blond; it was the colour of those phosphorescent flames, and the eyes were like it. "Horrible! horrible!" he tried to shriek, but he cried, "Alice, I love you." There was a burglar in the room, and he was running after Miss Pasmer. Mavering caught him, and tried to beat him; his fists fell like bolls of cotton; the burglar drew his breath in with a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... is an education. In my innocence I thought that a burglar shoved his swag in a sack and then pushed off, and did the rest in the back parlour of a beer-house in Notting Dale. As it is, my only wonder is that you didn't bring a brazier and ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... the good results of the four or five hundred years' care bestowed upon them. In my brief sojourn in Oxford as a student I had been chased out of the grounds of Exeter by the caretaker, under the suspicion that I was a burglar, taking the measure of ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... law presumes that a burglar will commit murder, and comes prepared to commit it, rather than suffer himself to be taken ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... here," said the latter, intent upon gaining time since the burglar-alarm had been sprung. ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... "A burglar in the larder!" gasped Emma. "I seed 'im, I did! Out of the corner of my eye, like, and when I looked up 'e wasn't there no more. Flittin' up the 'all like a shadder, 'e was. Oh, lor! It's fairly turned me inside! ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... action, assuming that you are a man of ordinary common sense, and that you have established this hypothesis to your own satisfaction, will very likely be to go off for the police, and set them on the track of the burglar, with the view to the recovery of your property. But just as you are starting with this object, some person comes in, and on learning what you are about, says, "My good friend, you are going on a great deal too fast. How do you know that the man who really made ...
— The Method By Which The Causes Of The Present And Past Conditions Of Organic Nature Are To Be Discovered.—The Origination Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley
... the sole crime. Originally petty pilferers, the men of Tai-o-hae now begin to force locks and attack strong- boxes. Hundreds of dollars have been taken at a time; though, with that redeeming moderation so common in Polynesian theft, the Marquesan burglar will always take a part and leave a part, sharing (so to speak) with the proprietor. If it be Chilian coin—the island currency—he will escape; if the sum is in gold, French silver, or bank-notes, the police wait until the money begins to come in circulation, and ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sorry not to be with you this evening. Unfortunately Miss Aleyn has got one of her particularly fidgety nervous attacks, and I don't like to leave her. She found a cross chalked on the gate-post this afternoon, and imagines it is a burglar's mark! She won't listen to reason, and absolutely refuses to come home with me, so the house is now being barricaded in preparation for the ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... Miss Hyle told a tale of India, Miss Thrasher gave a Rocky mountain adventure, and the girls contributed ghost and burglar stories till each guest was in a thrill of ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... who own solid silverware store it away in bank vaults and use its fac simile in quadruple plate, and thus escape the constant dread of a possible burglar. For the sense of security that it gives, one may value the finest quality of plated ware, but it should be inconspicuous in style and not too profuse in quantity, since its utility, rather than its commercial value, should be suggested. Any ostentation in the use of ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... manufacturing districts, invading their domains; and they everywhere rose up in arms against the "new-fangled roads." Colonel Sibthorpe openly declared his hatred of the "infernal railroads," and said that he "would rather meet a highwayman, or see a burglar on his premises, than an engineer!" The impression which prevailed in the rural districts was, that fox-covers and game-preserves would be seriously prejudiced by the formation of railroads; that agricultural ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... mistaking the heavy tread and rush of Big Swankie as he made for the door. Major Stewart put out his foot, and the burglar naturally tripped over it; before he could rise the major had him by the throat. There was a long, fierce struggle, both being powerful men; at last Swankie was hurled completely through the glass door. In the fall he disengaged ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... OF WORRY ASSISTS IN CONCENTRATING ATTENTION.—The more fireproof the building, and the more stable the other conditions, the greater the efficiency of the inmate. Burglar-proof buildings not only actually induce better sleep, in that possible intrusions are eliminated, but give a state of mental peace by the removal of apprehension. So also, a "germ proof" house is not only really more healthful for an inmate, but eliminates worry over possible danger ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... reply, uttered in the most convincing tone. "The man who shot him was a common burglar, and frightened at having been betrayed into murder, fled without looking for booty. I am sure I heard him cry out in terror and remorse: 'God! what ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... this affair is very simple. To use your own eloquent language, you have the 'slight disadvantage' of being off your head. You see a total stranger in a public street; you choose to start certain theories about his eyebrows. You then treat him as a burglar because he enters an honest man's door. The thing is too monstrous. Admit that it is, Basil, and come home with me. Though these people are still having tea, yet with the distance we have to go, we shall ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... quiet as death itself. No midnight burglar had violated the sanctity of Lady Maulevrier's apartment. The soft, steady light of the night-lamp shone on the face of the sleeper. Yes, all was quiet in the room, but not in that sleeper's soul. The broad white brow was painfully contracted, the lips drawn down and distorted, ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... from his wife must have made some extraordinary revelation to Risler; and, in order not to disturb his hosts, he had made his escape noiselessly through the window, like a burglar. Why? With what aim ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... mother to bed, she pinned a shawl over her head, threw her mother's cloak about her shoulders, sneaked into Maria's house, and crept up into her friend's room like a burglar. What was to be done must ...
— Abijah's Bubble - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Why, the burglar, of course. Didn't you read about it in the newspaper? There was a long piece published about it the day after it happened, with headings in big letters: "The house No. 35 Wells Avenue, residence of Thomas Tompkins, the well-known dealer in hardware, ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... "Any burglar can open a door from the outside if the key is left in the lock, Herr Count. Only those doors can be securely locked which have ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... had said at once that there was a robber under the bed, a burglar at the window, or a ghost in the wardrobe, I should have prepared for the worst, and it would have been less alarming than this ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... are no longer made happy by a smile. We no longer take it, as we used to take it, as evidence that the person smiling is either happy or kind. It then seemed to come from the heart. It now seems a formula. It is, we may admit, a pleasant and useful formula. But a man might easily be a burglar or a murderer or a Cabinet Minister and smile. Some people are supposed to smile merely in order to show what good teeth they have. William John McNabb, I am sure, ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... to tell us, Fred, that a desperate burglar would take all the chances of breaking into a house where he might get shot, just to steal a hat!" Colon demanded, as though suspecting they were being made the victims of a joke, although as a rule Fred seldom allowed himself to attempt ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... was meant to be a burglar," he said placidly, "and I have no doubt I should have been if I hadn't happened to be born in that nice house next door. I can't see any harm ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... himself). He wants to fool me into saying the death-watch beetle. So I won't. You mean a burglar? ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... point that has been brought out by studies is the fact that degrading ideals are practically wanting in children. You were no doubt shocked to discover that Eddy was planning to become a burglar, or a pirate chief, or a tramp, or an ordinary highwayman. But a careful analysis of the motives and experiences of the boy will show that the particular feature that Eddy admires in his hero is far removed from the ones that shock ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... through a door opening off the veranda that Anthony entered the house, stealthily as a burglar, and with the same nervous apprehension. Before him stretched a wide hall, dimly illumined by a single light which splashed on the Italian table and went glimmering across the floor. Across the hall was his destination—the broad balustraded staircase, ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... in London one of the speakers expressed a preference for the son of a husky burglar over the son of a tuberculous bishop. This is doubtless quite correct, but why should the bishop be tuberculous? The truth of the matter is, the reverse is more likely to be the case. Personally, I should prefer to be the offspring of a husky bishop. In dealing ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... that any sight of him would cause James to repeat his job of destruction. Brennan also envisioned a self-destructive device that would addle the heart of the machine at the touch of a button, perhaps booby-traps fitted like burglar alarms that would ruin the machine at the first touch of ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... the sense of human oneness and social responsibility is strong will be intensely interested in these genuine experiences and in the naive, if perverted, viewpoint of a pick-pocket, thief and burglar who has served three terms in State's ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... actual experience that even Sir Seitz Siebenburg was puzzled, "though I am always disposed to be grateful to you, I cannot feel a sense of obligation for this lady's reception of me, even to the most gracious benefactress. For, by my patron saint, she forbade me the house as if I were a thief and a burglar." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... She had expected that the safe would have to be blown open in the most approved burglar fashion, and was wondering what bill ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... Grossman," Abe repeated. "You remember that you drew me up a burglar-proof contract between him and us a few weeks ago, and now I want you to be the burglar and bust it up ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... they halted and some took cover in the doorways, and others dropped on one knee in the open street, and fired carefully. I heard soft, whispering sounds stealing by my head with incredible slowness, and I knew that at last I was under fire. I no longer felt like a boy robbing an orchard, nor a burglar. I was instead grandly excited and happy, and yet I was quite calm too. I am sure of this, for I remember I calculated the distance between us and the warehouse, and compared it with the two hundred and twenty-yard stretch in an athletic park at home. As I ran I noted also ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... did. I don't want to wake up some night and find a burglar going off with my treasures. What did you say ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... taken by surprise, quailed at this first onset: for like any other paterfamilias who on returning home finds a burglar breaking into his house, the cock bird charged in the full ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... vast results obtained by Science are won by no mystical faculties, by no mental processes other than those which are practised by every one of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones. Nor does that process of induction and deduction by which a lady, finding a stain of a peculiar kind on her dress, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... with a single blow; and in most Izumo homes there is not a lock which could resist one vigorous pull. Indeed, the Japanese themselves are so far aware of the futility of their wooden panels against burglars that all who can afford it build kura—small heavy fire-proof and (for Japan) almost burglar-proof structures, with very thick earthen walls, a narrow ponderous door fastened with a gigantic padlock, and one very small iron-barred window, high up, near the roof. The kura are whitewashed, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... never to have peace? While on Friday we recorded the pretensions of a maniac to the great throne of France; while on Saturday we were compelled to register the culpable attempts of one whom we regard as a ruffian, murderer, swindler, forger, burglar, and common pickpocket, to gain over the allegiance of Frenchmen—it is to-day our painful duty to announce a THIRD invasion—yes, a third invasion. The wretched, superstitious, fanatic Duke of Bordeaux has landed at Nantz, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was a determined little girl, and having set out to fool the family she was not to be baffled by small obstacles. Then she went up to the second floor and into her Aunt Hester's room. She felt a little bit like a burglar when she saw the dear old lady peacefully ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... am neither a burglar nor a highwayman, nor anything else worth bothering; I'm just a poet, and I'm crazy, to all practical purposes, so please get used to me and let me wander about the streets at these strange hours ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... taken off the steamer in a small boat as soon as she came into the lower bay and before the police boat, with its load of officials, came alongside. This Irving and his two subordinates resolved to attempt, so he took into his counsels a great chum of his and a well-known burglar by the name of Johnny Dobbs. To him was given the job of getting Mac off the steamer, but he made a serious blunder. Instead of hiring and manning two boats, one to relieve the other, he got only one. For a day ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... external power. We can no more deduce the political character of the Irish from the history of the past seven hundred years than we can estimate the quality of genius in an artist whom we have only seen when grappling with a burglar. The political character of a people emerges only when they are shaping in freedom their own civilization. To get a clue in Ireland we must slip by those seven centuries of struggle and study national origins, as the lexicographer, to ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... qualities, definable and indefinable, Gorman had the power of assuming the appearance either of a burglar of the lowest type, or a well-to-do contractor or tradesman. A slight change in dress and manner were sufficient to metamorphose him ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... there is a combination will not be suggested to a stranger by the compasses, although it might be suggested if there were figures in place of compass points. But even supposing they did suspect a combination it would take a long time for them to work it out, and no one would do it but a thief. A burglar, however, would not take the time; he would pry open the door with his "jimmy" and, as I have said before, these locks are for the purpose of keeping out tramps, vagrants, ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... unfavourably compared with that in Bombay, but do you know, I almost prefer the classic style of Calcutta to the scientific rococco Bombay architecture, but I offer this opinion with the greatest diffidence, for I know the author of "India" is an artist—still—"I know what I like," as the burglar said when he ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... fanned herself. "Duke, you make me hot. But if you will have the truth: the fish-knife business by all means. Nobody need feel uncomfortable about the burglary, except the burglar; but see what a position ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... her aunt was going out. She answered my ring, and so I made a little call on her until Miss Stillman returned, and was so surprised to see her premises invaded and her niece missing that I think she inferred a conspiracy or a burglar. At all events, Lily and I were summarily dismissed. I ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... thousand turns out to be a real, live housebreaker. Whenever the wise woman hears one fussing with the lock on the front door or trying to squeeze into the pantry window, she just says: "Same old burglar. He'll be gone in the morning," and he always is. That's a heap better plan than arousing the household and suffering the unmerciful torture that a family given to ridicule ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... cudgel, with two or three ounces of lead let into one end, is a good thing to have under your pillow at night. Armed with this instrument, you can steal up behind your burglar whilst he is opening your wife's jewel case or bagging your favourite gold snuff-box; but don't get excited about it, and remember to hit his head rather on the sides than on ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... most of his time in prison. He was a professional burglar—but then he got on in years. Besides, the younger generation ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... twice on the door, loudly, with his knuckles and then kicked it with his boot. Vain hope! If a burglar with a sledge-hammer had driven the door in, he would have failed to tickle the drum of any ear there. The man evidently was aware of this, for, changing his plan, he went round to a back window on the ground-floor, and opened it at the top with some difficulty. Peeping in he gazed for ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... forward and examine her work. He approached with all the stealth of a gentlemanly burglar. He expected to see some trees and hills and mayhap a brook, or some cows standing in a stream, or some children picking daisies. He had a sister, and was reasonably familiar with the kind of subjects chosen by ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... 'just to oblige you, Murch, especially as I know you don't believe a word of it. First: no traces of any kind left by your burglar or burglars, and the window found fastened in the morning, according to Martin. Not much force in that, I allow. Next: nobody in the house hears anything of this stampede through the library, nor hears any shout from Manderson either inside the house or outside. Next: Manderson goes ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... smoke a pipe with him and hear him talk about things frankly. When he gave to the missionary collection, rest assured he gave sincerely; when he "covered swag," into the melting pot for an industrious burglar, he did so only in the regular course ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... the clock on the Old Brick struck the midnight hour. No voice broke the stillness of the night. The watchman scarcely heard his own footsteps in the newly fallen snow as he slowly made his way along Middle Street,[37] with his lantern and staff. He was not expecting to encounter a burglar, breaking and entering a shop, store, or residence. He heard the clock strike once more, and was just pursing his lips to cry, "Two o'clock, and all's well," when he caught a glimpse of a figure in front of Theophilus Lillie's ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... A burglar who broke into a Manchester wine stores made off with a large sum of money, but none of the wine was taken. This once again proves that total abstinence is absolutely ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... the mind and stuck the contents on a bill file,—one of those hard-bosomed women who stump into church as they stump into a department store with an air of "Now then, what can you show me that's new," who go about with a metaphorical set of burglar's tools in a large bag with which to break open confidences and who have ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... he doing there at this hour? Was it a thief or a burglar? There was no lack of evil-disposed folk ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... thing I intended to think over was how to stay in the "bucket-shop" business, but wash myself of its odium. Bucket-shop! What snobbery! Yet it's human nature, too. The wholesale merchant looks down on the retailer, the big retailer on the little; the burglar despises the pickpocket; the financier, the small promoter; the man who works with his brain, the man who works with his hands. A silly lot we are—silly to look down, sillier to feel badly when we're looked ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... were raised in the form of a splint to support the squire, who glared back over his cheekbone, horrified that he could not escape the contact, and in too great pain from arthritic throes to protest: he resembled a burglar surprised by justice. 'What infernal nonsense . . , fellow talking now?' I heard him mutter between his hoppings and dancings, with one foot in the stirrup and a toe to earth, the enemy at his heel, and his inclination half bent upon swinging to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Olga, all considerable ships; and the beautiful Adler, which lies there to this day, kanted on her beam, dismantled, scarlet with rust, the day showing through her ribs. They waited inactive, as a burglar waits till the patrol goes by. And on the 23rd, when the mail had left for Sydney, when the eyes of the world were withdrawn, and Samoa plunged again for a period of weeks into her original island-obscurity, Becker opened ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little nervously, now that it was all over, "I want you all to go to bed and stop worrying about me. Don't you see, I'm perfectly able to take care of myself? Besides, there isn't a chance, now, of the burglar coming back. ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... Indians' fire serves, not only to keep them comfortable, but also to keep off wolves, and other savage monsters, so my chimney, by its obvious smoke at top, keeps off prowling burglars from the towns—for what burglar or murderer would dare break into an abode from whose chimney issues such a continual smoke—betokening that if the inmates are not stirring, at least fires are, and in case of an alarm, candles may readily be lighted, to ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... the trunk reminded him of one in the garret, filled with old papers of all sorts,—newspapers, letters, bills of sale, children's writing-books,—accumulations of the past quarter of a century. Neither fire nor burglar nor ransacking youngster had ever molested those ancient records during all those five-and-twenty years. A bright thought ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... every one who has ever been touched by the love of a quest, his title-pages will appeal: The Great White Wall, a tale of "magic adventure, of war and death"; Merchants from Cathay (1913), The Falconer of God (1914), The Burglar of the Zodiac (1917). His verses surge with vitality, as in The Boast of the Tides. He is at his best in long, swinging, passionate rhythms. Unfortunately in the same measures he is also at his worst. His most potent temptation is the love of noise, which makes some of his ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... of the extent of the robbery was spread abroad. It appeared that the burglar had by no means done the profession credit, for out of a vast collection of prizes ranging from the vast and silver Mile Challenge Cup to the pair of fives-gloves with which the 'under twelve' disciple of Deerfoot was to be rewarded, he had selected only three. Two of these were worth ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... new and not expensive process for hardening and tempering steel, by which hardness and elasticity are carried forward in combination. A drill made of the new steel penetrated in forty minutes a steel safe-plate warranted to resist any burglar drill for twelve hours. A penknife tempered by the process cut the stem of a steel key readily, and with the same blade the inventor shaved the hairs on his arm. The inventor is a young blacksmith. He has also a new process for ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... up? Who was it, sir? Sir, was it a burglar, sir? Have you ever met a burglar, sir? My father took me to see Raffles in the holidays, sir. Do you think this chap was ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... the will is there, a burglar stole it. And if the will is not there, some one interested in the disposition of the property walked away with ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... poets, I suppose," she continued. "A burglar just has to have imagination or he can't climb through the window of a house he has never seen before. He must imagine everything perfectly—the silver on the sideboard, the watch under the pillow, and the butler stealing down the back ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... little—up to seven, for instance—are so remote from grown-up people; they are different creatures, as it were, of a different species. I knew a criminal in prison who had, in the course of his career as a burglar, murdered whole families, including several children. But when he was in prison, he had a strange affection for them. He spent all his time at his window, watching the children playing in the prison yard. He trained one little boy to come up to his window ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... her pistol; and Virginia could cock a pistol and wasn't covered with cold shivers at the sight of one, as she was. If it had only been Francie, whose shrill voice could have been heard over the side of the earth, or Juliet, whose long legs would have left burglar, and house, too, in the background between the opening and slamming of a door. Either of them was so much more fit than she, the chicken-hearted one of the family, to cope with this creature. And they were all gone to the wedding with Fred, and would not be at ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... the old man said,—"regular burglaries. There's been a great excitement about it. Several houses have been entered and robbed, some of money, others of what little silver there was, though I don't suppose there is enough silver in all New Joppa to support a good, healthy burglar for more than a few days. The funny part of it is that though I have no house, I came very near ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... rather you didn't explain any more." Angela's cheeks were bright pink, and she was more beautiful than Nick had ever seen her before, except the night of the burglar, when she had been drowned in the gold waves of her hair, the angel of his dreams. "But you may go on about the rest," she added hastily, when he was struck into silence, without being able to bring in the name ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... occasion he takes, so to speak, your burglar, your pickpocket, or your forger off the shelf, carefully dusts his label, and dispatches him, carriage paid, with a neat parcels note, for conveyance to his ultimate destination by the old-established firm of transport agents in ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... been the ambition of Keturah's life to see a burglar. The second of the memorable nights referred to crowned this ambition by not only one burglar, but two. She it was who discovered them, she who frightened them away, and nobody but she ever saw them. She confesses ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... Andy that he would get up and look at the gun. He wanted to make sure that he understood how to fire it. It was important that he should do so, he reasoned to himself, for might not a burglar come that very night? Then, suppose he was unable to fire the gun, and in consequence of his ignorance, both he and the two ladies should be murdered in their beds. Of course, this was not to be thought of, so ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... driving at? Mademoiselle W—— thought he was either a spy or a burglar who had come to take a survey of the hotel. Her bracelets and bunch of keys rattled ominously as the thought of ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... of chieftainship, but that being a "boy" he must grow older before he could wear it. The inner room can be closed with a strong door and a padlock; as even the window-hole is not admitted, the burglar would at once be detected. Except where goods are concerned, the Mpongwe have little respect for privacy; the women, in the presence of their husbands, never failed to preside at my simple toilette, and the girls of the villages would sit upon the bedside where lay an Utangani ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... (silver, too!) displayed, without a token of "Rebecca" terrorism appearing, was seen jutting into the road, only hidden, not defended, by such a weak apology for a shutter, as would not have resisted a burglar of ten ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... highwayman Dick Turpin, and one Parsons, the son of a baronet, educated at Eton, attained a public interest and admiration, in which the greatness of their crimes was forgotten in the dangers they incurred and the boldness with which they defied justice. When Jack Sheppard, the burglar, was finally captured after two remarkable escapes from Newgate,[145] he became a popular hero. Great numbers of people visited him in prison and gave him presents of money. Several lives were written ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... is used for so many purposes that they cannot all be noted. It plays an especially important part in telephonic installations to draw the attention of the subscribers, forms an item in automatic fire and burglar alarms, and is a necessary adjunct of railway ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... would not have answered so freely, in spite of the detective's authoritative manner. Foyle put one or two further questions to her and then dismissed her with a quiet word of thanks. He began to see that he had struck harder than he knew when he had descended on the house in the guise of a burglar. Dalehurst Grange was, of course, a rendezvous, and the Princess Petrovska was on her way to join Grell. The superintendent rubbed his hands together as he thought of the surprise in ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... scribbles on a sheet of paper stained with coffee-cup rings, "I made the acquaintance of a polite burglar, who introduced me to his lady wife, and to other courteous criminals, their spouses and families. My slight knowledge of Czech, which I had by this time acquired, enabled me to take vast pleasure in their society. Granted their sociological ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... "A burglar!" exclaimed Harley. His first thought was of Helen Anderson and her beautiful, appealing face, and without a moment's hesitation he sprang over the wall to pursue. Jimmy Grayson looked at him in astonishment, ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... get excited," laughed Old King Brady. "You must know, sir, that we are engaged upon very important business. Some time ago we saw you come out of that house, and thinking you were a burglar we followed you down to the ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... to the shadowy rear of the house, Jerry cautiously invaded the front porch. The shade which had been raised a little when Marjorie had come to the house was now drawn. Still she could see that the room on the right was lighted. With the stealth of a burglar she tried the door. It was locked. She listened at it, then stood up with a triumphant smile. From within she could hear the sound ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... Disraeli's sarcasm in his campaign against Peel was that the latter habitually borrowed the ideas of others. "His (Peel's) life," he said, "has been a great appropriation clause. He is a burglar of others' intellect.... From the days of the Conqueror to the termination of the last reign there is no statesman who has committed political petty larceny on ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... what reason they thought so, I never could learn; and others declared that he must either be an unprincipled bigamist, flying from his last wife and several small children; or a scoundrelly forger, bank-robber, or general burglar, who was returning to his beloved country with his ill-gotten booty. One observing sailor was of opinion that he was an English murderer, overwhelmed with speechless remorse, and returning home to make a full ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... train; but the majority were built on a strange American plan, with a canopy of dingy leather and a step behind, so that the fare, after progressing sideways like a crab, descended, at his journey's end, as does a burglar from "Black Maria." ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... wasn't doing anything of the sort, my dear Molly. He had gone off in a fright, and when my grandmother thought it over coolly, she felt convinced that he was not a regular burglar, and so it turned out. He was a man who worked at a smithy near by, and this was his first attempt at burglary. He had heard that my grandfather was to be out late, through one of the servants, whom he had persuaded not to lock the door, on ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... "This gintleman isn't the burglar that ye would think from his looks. He belongs to a good family, or ye wouldn't obsarve him in my company. The young gintlemen are two princes that are travelling in cog. In consideration of all of them having delicate appetites like mesilf, not ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... principle to be blind and to take no cognisance of particular cases. Inaccessible to pity, and heeding nothing but the text of the law, the judge in his professional severity would visit with the same penalty the burglar guilty of murder and the wretched girl whom poverty and her abandonment by her seducer have driven to infanticide. The jury, on the other hand, instinctively feels that the seduced girl is much less guilty than the seducer, who, however, is not touched ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... decent dwellings for such people would be well and even remuneratively spent. The kitchens, my informant—who has spent many years among them—added, are generally the turning point between honesty and crime. The discharged soldier or mechanic out of work is there herded with the professional thief or burglar, and learns his trade and gets to ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... than once detected the milkman winking at the maid with a diabolical suggestion that I was returning from a carouse, and Roundsman 9999 has once or twice followed me a block or two with the evident impression that I was a burglar returning from a successful evening out. Nevertheless, these various indiscretions have brought me into contact with a kind of character and phenomena whose existence ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... of September, at ten o'clock in the morning, Leon Renault, emaciated, dejected and scarcely recognizable, was at the feet of Clementine Sambucco in her aunt's parlor. There were flowers on the mantel and flowers in all the vases. Two great burglar sunbeams broke through the open windows. A million of little bluish atoms were playing in the light, crossing each other and getting fantastically mixed up, like the ideas in a volume of M. Alfred Houssaye. In the garden, the apples were falling, the peaches were ripe, the hornets were ploughing ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... like a burglar," she said to herself—"as though I had picked a lock and stolen something. I, to call myself a clever woman and never to guess it! But he has been too deep for me. He is very strong; one might as well try to open an oyster with one's nails as to ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... subject given in the rhetoric they studied under "Argumentation"—"Is a lie ever justifiable?" These girls of the "Per aspera ad astra" motto had decided the question in the affirmative. They had agreed that lying to a burglar wasn't wrong—it might prevent him from robbing a widow or one's own mother—the same with regard to a murderer, an insane person, or one sick unto death. And one and all had declared with spirit that if they lived in England and a hunting-party should come along with their cruel hounds and ask ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... Then he had another ride in the patrol wagon, along with the drunken wife-beater and the maniac, several "plain drunks" and "saloon fighters," a burglar, and two men who had been arrested for stealing meat from the packing houses. Along with them he was driven into a large, white-walled room, stale-smelling and crowded. In front, upon a raised platform behind a rail, sat a stout, florid-faced ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... ignorance only. The melodramatic idea that a straightforward girl with honest intent is abducted by strangers and held by physical force in places of degradation can simply be dismissed from a discussion of the general situation. The chances that any decent man or woman will be killed by a burglar are a hundred times larger than that a decent girl without fault of her own will become the victim of a white slavery system which depends upon physical force. Since the new policy of antisilence has filled ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... you yet, dear boy; many, many things," was her laughing rejoinder; from which it will be inferred that the episode in the Farmers' and Merchants' burglar-proof had become an episode forgotten—or at least forgiven. "You know men—a little; but when it comes to the women ... well, if I didn't keep continually nagging at you, your two heroines—with neither of whom you are really in love—would ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... a dog, But he stayed at home And guarded the family night and day. He was a dog That didn't roam. He lay on the porch or chased the stray— The tramps, the burglar, the hen, away; For a dog's true heart for that household beat At morning and evening, in cold and heat. ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... A burglar enlarging upon the sanctity of the law of property, or a sheep exposing the fallacies of vegetarianism, could hardly have produced ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... the morning, Paul Coquenil found himself alone in the baron's spacious, silent library before a massive safe. The opening of this safe is another matter that need not be gone into—a desperate case justifies desperate risk, and an experienced burglar chaser naturally becomes a bit of a burglar himself; at any rate, the safe swung open in due course, without accident or interference, and the detective ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... Jimmy, waking up for the first time to a genuine interest in the family excitement. "Has any one gone off with the spoons? It would be just my luck to have had a burglar in the house last night and me never got a pop at him with my air-gun loaded and close ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... general opposition to law, or even general opposition to English law. The statistics of ordinary crime are (it is said) no higher in Ireland than in other parts of the United Kingdom. A pickpocket or a burglar is as easily convicted in Ireland as elsewhere; the persons who lamentably enough are either left unpunished, or if punished may count on popular sympathy, are criminals whose offences, atrocious and cruel as they ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... little back room in the attic as his workshop, and from thence a net-work of wires soon ran throughout the house. Not only had every outside door its electric bell, but every window was fitted with a burglar alarm; moreover no one could cross the threshold of any interior room without registering the fact in Rob's workshop. The gas was lighted by an electric fob; a chime, connected with an erratic clock in the boy's room, woke ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... about me. His beat was changed the other day, it seems, and early yesterday morning a bank in his new district was broken into. Tim went in and arrested the burglar after a desperate fight in the dark. When other policemen came and turned on the lights, Tim discovered to his horror that he had captured ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... a sensible girl, Vera. I observed the fact on the afternoon I met you in New York City when you made no effort to argue with me in connection with the escape of that ridiculous burglar." ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... it right down here!" the girl was saying excitedly. "Where do you s'pose it came from? Oh, it's just like one my sister had that was stolen by a burglar last winter—why!" as the back of the pin was disclosed, "it is hers! There's the 'B' I scratched one day, and Tip gave me an awful scolding for it! I was going to scratch my whole name, but she caught me too quick—my, didn't she ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... A milk girl was going from door to door, and the lamplighter was vanishing in the distance. Yet "Cobbler" Horn flitted furtively across the way, as though he were afraid of being seen; and, having glided with the stealth of a burglar through the doorway of the little shop, found himself face to face with Tommy Dudgeon. The smile of commercial satisfaction, which had been summoned to the face of the little man by the consciousness that some one was ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... talk, Jess," interposed Eva. "One would think to hear you that Mr. Keeler was a common burglar. As Roy says, he didn't plan to come here, and like as not he'll go away in the morning without having disturbed ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... the multitude which surrounds the court-house, sounds like the murmur of the sea, till suddenly it is raised to a sort of shout. John West, the terror of the surrounding country, the sheep-stealer and burglar, had ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... murderer remain unknown, the trial shall take place all the same, and the unknown murderer shall be warned not to set foot in the temples or come within the borders of the land; if discovered, he shall die, and his body shall be cast out. A man is justified in taking the life of a burglar, of a footpad, of a violator of women or youth; and he may take the life of another with impunity in defence of father, mother, brother, wife, ...
— Laws • Plato
... night, the wind, which had veered more to the eastwardly, rose considerably, drowning the clanging knell of the Spit buoy bell and rattling the windows and doors, like some desperate burglar on thoughts of plunder bent trying ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Kerns; "I'm going uptown to Billy Lee's house to get my suit case. His family are out of town, and he is at Seabright, so he let me camp there until the workmen finish papering my rooms upstairs. I'm to lock up the house and send the key to the Burglar Alarm Company to-night. Then I go to Boston on the 12.10. Want to come? There'll be a ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... said, "that suite has three windows, seven stories above the ground. I found them all locked—not mere latches—the St. Dunstan has burglar-proof locks. No disturbance in the room; all neat, in place, the door closed with the usual spring lock; and I had to get Mrs. Griggsby to move, since she was tacking the carpet right at the threshold. Everything ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... A professional burglar of long experience could not have gotten that huge oak door open more quickly and silently than Nick Carter did, and Handsome gave him an approving pat on ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter |
