"Truant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... accept as some consolation until he found that it was stereotyped. Within a few hours it was despatched to another firm of publishers, taken at random from the advertisement columns of the Times. An hour or two afterwards Alfred arrived, with no label around his neck, but a veritable truant. Of the two he was the more self-possessed as ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... guns, the common people came out along the road with fowling-pieces and pitchforks, in hopes to catch the truant. The gendarmes seemed very anxious to be on the look-out for him too. The price of a deserter was fifty crowns to those who brought ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... occurred to either of us that his jacket was out at elbows, or that our mutual funds came altogether from my pocket. It was enough for us that we sat on the same school-bench, conned our tasks from the same primer, fought each other's battles, screened each other's faults, fished, nutted, played truant, robbed orchards and birds' nests together, and spent every half-hour, authorised or stolen, in each other's society. It was a happy time; but it could not go on for ever. My father, being prosperous, resolved to put me forward in the world. I must know ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... company paraded generally in some such terms as these, which were uttered with that sort of meekness that a native of the island of our forefathers is apt to assume when he condescends to praise the customs or character of her truant progeny: ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... like two poor harmless women, who Of goblins, but still more of men afraid, Had thought one man might be deterred by two, And therefore side by side were gently laid, Until the hours of absence should run through, And truant husband should return, and say, "My dear,—I was the first who ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... that little theatre in Boston, where for more than a hundred afternoons and evenings the "Professor," as he was called, showed off his four-footed pupils. One forenoon he set apart for a free entertainment of as many poor children as the house would hold, who went under the charge of the truant officers and ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... agree with her. He played truant whenever he could, for he was a kindhearted boy, and could not bear to think of a master's time and labor being thrown away on a boy like himself—who did not wish to learn, only to find out—when there were so many ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... her niece's faults the effect of their management; and she now imagined that there had been some encouragement of the child's discontent to make her run away; and that if they had been sufficiently shocked and concerned, the truant would have been brought home much sooner. It all came of her having allowed her niece to associate with those children at Bournemouth. She would be more careful for ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at the newcomers and many questions were fired at them regarding "th' latest from th' Hills." Waffles made a rush for Hopalong, but fell over Big-foot's feet and all three were piled up in a heap. All were beaming with good nature, for they were as so many school boys playing truant. Prosaic cow-punching was relegated to the rear and they looked eagerly forward to their several missions. Frenchy told of the barb-wire fence war and of the new regulations of "Smith of Buffalo" regarding cow-punchers' ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... visible reason why she should have had it put out, except as a picturesque and imaginative way of rubbing her altruism into its nearest victim. Unless, indeed, it was done in order that the darkened window should seem to announce to the returning truant that she had gone to bed, and to lull his mind to unconsciousness of the ambush ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... straight to the nearest of the rank of parked taxicabs. Its driver was nowhere in sight. A carriage starter for the cafe, in gorgeous livery, understood without being told what the tall muffled-up gentleman desired and blew a shrill blast on a whistle. At that the truant driver appeared, coming at a ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... had been busy talking about water turtles with Frank, noticed this, and struck out with his willow branch to bring the truant back, but it was too late; the boat had got beyond his reach, and was now floating swiftly down the middle of the stream ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... night before getting in to make sure nobody was hidden there. What was the use of blinking the truth? He was a born coward. It was the skeleton in the closet of his soul. His schooldays had been haunted by the ghost of dread. Never in his life had he played truant, though he had admired beyond measure the reckless little dare-devils who took their fun and paid for it. He had contrived to avoid fights with his mates and thrashings from the teachers. On the one occasion when public opinion ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... own nature lasts. The Forsaken Merman occurs to one; but I doubt if Miranda King, at the time, say, of her son's marriage with Mabilla, could have gone back to the sea. Sometimes, as in Mrs. Ventris's case, fairy-wives play truant for a night or for a season. I have reason to believe that not uncommon. The number of fairy-wives in England alone is very considerable—over a quarter of a million, I ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... now reached the little gate that opened into our own green yard. I could see my mother looking from the window for her truant child. My heart began to palpitate, for no Catholic ever made more faithful confessions to his absolving priest, than I to my only parent. Were I capable of concealing any thing from her, I should have thought myself false and deceitful. With feelings ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Susan had just finished her early dinner: in mind and body alike, this good girl was entirely and deservedly at her ease. By finely succeeding degrees, her eyelids began to show a tendency downward; her truant needle-work escaped from her fingers, and lay lazily on her lap. She snatched it up with a start, and sewed with severe resolution until her thread was exhausted. The reel was ready at her side; she took it up for a fresh supply, and innocently rested her head against the leafy and flowery ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... was staggered by his blunt, indifferent reply, but before she could frame another question, Miss Murch appeared from an inner office, at the same moment that Miss Keith stepped through the doorway from behind them in search of her truant patient; and Peace suffered herself to be led docilely away. So absorbed was she in her new discovery that even her pleasure in her ability to ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... persistently into her dreams? Why had the flush risen to her cheeks at the thought? At another time she would have refused to listen to the voice which answered; but now, as the object of her thoughts lay dying on her pillow, her mind would not play truant to her heart. Sometimes the approach of love is so imperceptible that it does not provoke analysis. We wake suddenly to find it in our hearts, so strong and splendid that we submit without question.... All, all her dreams had vanished, the latest and the fairest. Across the azure of her ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... the invisible world there is one class which lives a particularly painful life, sometimes for a great many years, namely, the suicide who tried to play truant from the school of life. Yet it is not an angry God or a malevolent devil who administers punishment, but an immutable law which proportions the sufferings differently to ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... think that he is therefore in love with idleness; he turns to something which is more agreeable to his inclination, and doubtless more suited to his nature; but he is not in love with idleness. A boy may play the truant from school because he dislikes books and study; but, depend upon it, he intends doing something the while—to go fishing, or perhaps to take a walk; and who knows but that from such excursions both his mind and body may derive more benefit than from books and school? ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... the Tzarevna Miliktrisa Kirbitievna; on another the city of Jerusalem. There are usually but few purchasers of these productions, but gazers are many. Some truant lackey probably yawns in front of them, holding in his hand the dishes containing dinner from the cook-shop for his master, who will not get his soup very hot. Before them, too, will most likely be standing a soldier wrapped in his cloak, a dealer from the old-clothes mart, with ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... of blades of grass and early flowers warned them that winter was gone and that spring was at hand. Their occupation, therefore, was at an end. Now how to satisfy the folks at home and get a further extension of time was the truant's supreme object. While he always professed obedience to parental demands, yet rebellion was brewing, for he did not want to go East—not just yet. Imperative orders to return were artfully parried. Finally remittances were ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... as ever, Time's a jewel in its loss; But, possessed in plenty, never Held as ought but worthless dross. Like lost truant-boys we linger Whimpering in Life's mazy wood, Heedless of the silent finger Ever pointing for our good; Each, in plodding darkness groping, Clothes his day in dreamy night, 'Stead of boldly climbing, hoping, Up the steeps towards the light, ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... about him, was in fact on the point of setting out in search of him. But about nine o'clock he heard the front gate open and jumping down from the low open window of the rectory drawing-room he went to meet the truant. ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... part did he avoid further disturbing Mrs. Braydon, who presumably was alone and who might be easily frightened. So he would just slip on past the Braydon apartment, and in the hallway on the fourth floor he would cannily bide, awaiting the truant Slack's arrival. ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... to that, I can say nothing," said Jenkin, "I have always served duly and truly; I have no heart to play truant, and cheat my master of his time as ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... was a very small school, for many boys were away helping to collect the sheep for the schooner, which was coming in, and some were playing truant. The sheep were carted down to the shore and the men were ready for embarking, when the ship moved out, and so all their labour was again in vain. The sea was "making up," and to-night is stormy. It is rather late in the year for ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... if I were a truant, being away from Washington to-day, but I thought that perhaps if I were absent the Congress would have the more leisure to adjourn. I do not ordinarily open my office at Washington on Saturday. Being a schoolmaster, I am accustomed to a Saturday holiday, and I thought I could ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... other day the two boys started out, ostensibly for school, but as they did not come home to dinner and were not seen by their little sister about the school-grounds, the awful suspicion entered the good mother's mind that they had again been truant. Along about dark one of them, the younger, came ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... a tiny headland about a mile away, stripped and plunged overboard, where we swam and dived, and wallowed about in the deliciously cool element for a good half-hour, enjoying our bath as thoroughly as though we were a couple of school- boys playing truant. We were strongly tempted to make a small preliminary exploring excursion inland after this, but Miss Ella had solemnly bound us both down not to do so without her; so we returned to the Water Lily instead, wonderfully refreshed and invigorated by our dip, and quite ready ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... handkerchief and mopped his brow. He stared at each familiar object in the room as though he were trying to recall a truant mind. Finally his eyes came around to Helene, and with a quick smile and the old toss of the head with which he was wont to throw off a mood, he brought himself back ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... languages, or antiquities, or the fine arts, although he himself could never find time for listening to him on such subjects, when the conversation happened to turn on them. But if Emilius ever chanced to be in a more active mood, he might almost make sure of his truant friend having caught cold the night before at a ball or a sledge-party, and being forced to keep his bed; so that, with the liveliest, most restless, and most communicative of men for his companion, Emilius ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... played truant. I was in a restless state. I remember how I felt as if it were yesterday. Nothing seemed real, except my father and mother. I thought about them all the time. I couldn't sleep, and I couldn't study. I couldn't bear to sit at a desk. ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... his son had gone to Berlin to study medicine, removed his shoes, and sat down on the ground to observe shivah (seven days of mourning). When Mattes der Sheinker (saloon-keeper) discovered that his boy Motke (later famous as Mark Antokolsky) had been playing truant from the heder, and had hidden himself in the garret to carve figures, he beat him unmercifully, because he had broken the second commandment. This was greatly altered in the latter part of the "seventies." Jacob Prelooker has a different story ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... the local color tendency toward uniformity in type have held the bad boy to a path which, in view of his character, seems singularly narrow. In book after book he indulges in the same practical jokes upon parents, teachers, and all those in authority; brags, fibs, fights, plays truant, learns to swear and smoke, with the same devices and consequences; suffers from the same agonies of shyness, the same indifference to the female sex, the same awkward inclination toward particular little girls. ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... something for the credit or advantage to be gained by it; he makes what is allowed or approved a pretext for doing what would be opposed or condemned; a tricky schoolboy makes a pretense of doing an errand which he does not do, or he makes the actual doing of an errand a pretext for playing truant. A ruse is something (especially something slight or petty) employed to blind or deceive so as to mask an ulterior design, and enable a person to gain some end that he would not be allowed to approach directly. A pretension ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... doesn't pay in the current coin. Not only is the angler, like the poet, born and not made, as Walton says, but there is a deal of the poet in him, and he is to be judged no more harshly; he is the victim of his genius: those wild streams, how they haunt him! he will play truant to dull care, and flee to them; their waters impart somewhat of their own perpetual youth to him. My grandfather when he was eighty years old would take down his pole as eagerly as any boy, and step off with wonderful ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... during school hours, they had to give an account of themselves. Sullenly one of them gave an address far up in the Bronx, ten miles away. They had not been home for a week, he said. Was he lying? What was to be done? Somewhere in the city their homes must be discovered. And the talk of the truant officer made Roger feel ramifications here which wound out through the police and the courts to reformatories, distant cells. He thought of that electric chair, and suddenly he felt oppressed by the heavy complexity of ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... by stream and meadow, They searched 'neath hedge and tree; "Where," said the puzzled children, "Where can the truant be?" ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... twilight dim— Maria! thou hast heard my hymn! In joy and wo—in good and ill— Mother of God, be with me still! When the Hours flew brightly by And not a cloud obscured the sky, My soul, lest it should truant be, Thy grace did guide to thine and thee; Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast Darkly my Present and my Past, Let my Future radiant shine With sweet hopes of thee ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... governments of the Nation, in all such matters as supervision of the housing of the poor, the creation of small parks in the districts inhabited by the poor, in laws affecting labor, in laws providing for the taking care of the children, in truant laws, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... school, (which he was constantly ordered to do) happening very luckily to be overtaken by Tom Sharper, and Dick Lackwit, they prudently agreed to avoid the intolerable drudgery of the hornbook, by playing truant and indulging themselves in the profitable diversions of sitting all day on the bank of a lonesome brook to fish for minows; they had pretty good sport, as they called it, for the first hour; but then Mr. Sharper's line happening to ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... was a long, long time; and never a word from the truant since the day she had left the village. Martha had waited, at first impatiently, then anxiously, and finally with a pathetic hopefulness that was more than half assumed. It was she who had insisted that Tony must go to the office every day, and ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... trick, and made everybody miserable until he was found in the evening, and brought home by a woman who washed for his mamma. Mabel and Julia did not feel at all comfortable, though Aunt Mary would not let them leave the table to go in search of the truant. ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... five years old when he entered heder, hated to be shut up all day over a printed page that meant nothing to him. He cried and protested, but my father was determined that he should not grow up ignorant, so he used the strap freely to hasten the truant's steps to school. The heder was the only beginning allowable for a boy in Polotzk, and to heder Joseph must go. So the poor boy's life was made a nightmare, and the horror was not lifted until he was ten years old, when he went to a modern school where intelligible things were taught, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... engage him: I have need of some such spirits near me now, For this inheritance is worth a struggle. 260 And though I am not the man to yield without one, Neither are they who now rise up between me And my desire. The boy, they say, 's a bold one; But he hath played the truant in some hour Of freakish folly, leaving fortune to Champion his claims. That's well. The father, whom For years I've tracked, as does the blood-hound, never In sight, but constantly in scent, had put me To fault; but here I ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... finer than the way in which this "milky steer," with Europa on his back, goes sailing over the brine, his "feet all oars." Meantime, she, the pretty truant, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... Drysdale was completely baked (he had played truant the day before and dined at the Weirs, were he had imbibed much dubious hock), but he from old habit managed to keep time. Tom and the other young oars got flurried, and quickened; the boat dragged, there was ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... dangerous age for a youth; but Shakespeare had perhaps a personal reason for the peculiar "ten to twenty-three." He was, no doubt, astoundingly precocious, and probably even at ten he had learned everything of value that the grammar school had to teach, and his thoughts had begun to play truant. Twenty-three, too, is a significant date in his life; in 1587, when he was twenty-three, two companies of actors, under the nominal patronage of the Queen and Lord Leicester, returned to London from a provincial tour, during which they visited Stratford. In Lord Leicester's company ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... peeping under people's elbows, trying not to annoy others and yet to make a thorough hunt in a short time so as not to keep the others waiting. Then in the music room, or East Parlor, as it is often called, she found the truant, gazing with rapt eyes at the quaint old harpsichord which had ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... furious quacking, as if there were fifty ducks there. We ran on and saw a drake flying at the hawk and pecking at its wings, and the duck, quacking in the utmost alarm, tried to get all her little ducklings under her wings; but, alas! one little truant ran into the weeds, and the hawk caught it in his claws, and, in spite of all the efforts of the poor drake, flew ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... who confesses that he never told a word about what he saw until yesterday. He confesses that he kept it to himself in order that he might hunt treasure and run away from the orders of this court; he confesses that he has deceived his father, that he has been truant and bad. Yes, and above all, gentlemen, he confesses he has dreams and sees visions. He believes that a book, a story, is true; that its characters are real; that a boy named Tom Sawyer really lives; and he ran away to see him; ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... of the boys sat at his iron-barred window, wide awake. He was a Truant, and had never yet been in any place from which he could not run away. He felt that his school-fellows depended upon him to run away and bring them assistance, and he knew that his reputation as a Truant was at stake. His responsibility was so heavy that he could not ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... as yours, believe me, Steal my priceless jewels, In fancy's store-house cherished, Your roguish eyes have robbed me, Of all my dreams bereft me, Dreams that are fair, yet fleeting. Fled are my truant fancies, Regrets I do not cherish, For now life's rosy morn is breaking, Now golden love is waking. Now that I've told my story, Pray tell me yours, too; Tell me frankly, who are you? Say, will ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... long.' 'Perhaps,' I suggested, 'it is not Pelichus at all, but Talos the Cretan, the son of Minos? He was of bronze, and used to walk all round the island. Or if only he were made of wood instead of bronze, he might quite well be one of Daedalus's ingenious mechanisms—you say he plays truant from his pedestal just like them—and not the work of Demetrius at all.' 'Take care, Tychiades; you will be sorry for this some day. I have not forgotten what happened to the thief who stole his monthly pennies.' ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... yokels have proved. But what had become of Lucy? This consideration almost sent Farmer Blaize off to London direct, and he would have gone had not his pipe enlightened him. A young fellow might play truant and get into a scrape, but a young man and a young woman were sure to be heard of, unless they were acting in complicity. Why, of course, young Tom had behaved like a man, the rascal! and married her outright there, while he had the chance. It was a long guess. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... grief in London, and torn with great remorse for thinking of his mother's sorrow, would have wondered, had he seen how easily she bore the calamity. Indeed, calamity is welcome to women if they think it will bring truant affection home again: and if you have reduced your mistress to a crust, depend upon it that she won't repine, and only take a very little bit of it for herself, provided you will eat the remainder in ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... its lower margin, a flattening of the great red foot that before had been round and perfect. I turned my smarting eyes away a minute,—saw the seventh drop fall with a melodious tingle into the cup, then back again,—there was no mistake—the truant fire was a fraction less, it had shrunk a fraction behind the hill even since I looked, and thereon all my life ran back into its channels, the world danced before me, and "Heru!" I shouted hoarsely, reeling back towards the palace, "Heru, 'tis ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... it? I'm distress'd. From home I must play truant, lest I meet my brother. My father too, perhaps, is ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... Thrice happy he whose sisters have just now flitted down the staircase, from their own inner sanctuaries, into the little library, bearing with them in noisy triumph the Harry of all Goodfellows, the truant Henrietta Ruyter! Ah! she is the key that will unlock for me those treasures of thought and observation that I will shortly lay before ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the inmates of our reformatories on admission. The School Boards in the country, and more especially the School Board of London, by enforcing compulsory attendance of all the children of the poor between the ages of five and thirteen, have swept into what are termed Truant Schools all the neglected and uncontrollable children who were formerly sent to certified industrial schools—these latter being now retained in a great measure for children who, besides being neglected and beyond the ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... deprecatingly, shrugging his shoulders and spreading out his hands, "I haf not seen her. If she come here, I shut the door upon her. I say, 'I vil haf no runaway wives here.' My fren, before you vos marrit did not I say, a truant daughter make a truant wife. She haf left me first, now ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... the others for his cue. What he saw disturbed him. Shorty Kilrain, like a boy caught playing truant, edged little by little back against the rock; Butch Conklin, his eyes staring, had grown waxy pale; Steve Nash himself was sullen ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... surprised to discover that, after all, he had Mr. William Farbish for a traveling companion. That gentleman explained that he had found an opportunity to play truant from business for a day or two, and wished to see Samson comfortably ensconced ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... fondness for it, used to say, that he took so much salt air and tar smoke into his lungs that it stopped his growth. The boys used to call him Little Jacket. Jacky, however, though small in size, was big in wit, being an uncommonly smart lad, though he did play truant sometimes, and seldom knew well his school-lessons. But some boys learn faster out of school than in school, and this was the case with Little Jacket. Before he was ten years old, he knew every rope in a ship, and could manage a sail-boat or a row-boat with equal ease. In fine, salt water ...
— The Last of the Huggermuggers • Christopher Pierce Cranch
... yet of steam, machinery, or trolleys, for the sweet lady and the angular man with the pained gait which spoke in loud tones of the unbroken store-shoe could belong in no other than a rural place. But the image of the New Hampshire village only flitted across my mind's film, for my truant senses seized on a message over memory's telephone: "Russell Sage has $100,000,000." One hundred millions, and I was back on earth again, but as I walked the thought was buzzing in my brain: "Is it possible that that countryman has MADE one hundred million dollars, when the expert carpenter ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... and frowsy cells, Where Infamy with sad Repentance dwells; Where turnkeys make the jealous portal fast, And deal from iron hands the spare repast; Where truant 'prentices, yet young in sin, Blush at the curious stranger peeping in; Where strumpets, relics of the drunken roar, Resolve to drink, nay, half, to whore, no more; Where tiny thieves not destin'd yet to swing, Beat hemp for others, riper ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... might be said a thousand times to every truant, and it would have very little effect, because he thinks that he will be an exception. He never sees beyond his own boyish smartness. Few men and women realize how true it is that these smart rascally fellows, ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... no Sidney. They had sent to the place whither he had been despatched; he had never arrived there. Mr. Morton grew alarmed; and, when Mr. Spencer came to dinner, his host was gone in search of the truant. He did not return till three. Doomed that day to be belated both at breakfast and dinner, this decided him to part with Sidney whenever he should be found. Mrs. Morton was persuaded that the child ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... AS HER OWN CHILDREN:—The older sons of our common parent who should have greeted you from this chair of office, being for different reasons absent, it has become my duty to half fill the place of these honored, but truant, children to the best of my ability—a most grateful office, so far as the expression of kind feeling is concerned; an undesired duty, if I look to the comparisons you must draw between the government of the association existing ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... reflex and expression of its own acquired habitudes. Such a mind, we may safely say, would be educated. But secondly, the foregoing considerations show that we are not unnecessarily to jumble together the topics and lessons; to vacillate from one line of study to another; to wander, truant-like, among all sorts of good things—exploiting, now, a color; then milk; then in due time gratitude and the pyramids; then leather, (for, though 'there's nothing like leather,' it may be wisest to keep it in its place;) then sponge, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... been trained only to believe one view possible. And they set to work in the true temper of missionaries, with profound eagerness and energy, and narrowness of grasp. Many genuine prayers and tears are worthily spent in the effort to tether some truant husband or a son to a family theological peg, and to prevent him from roving. And, up to a certain point, men continually give in. They find it easier and more comfortable to lower their arms, and not ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... queen, Thus Helen's brethren, stars of brightest sheen, Guide thee! May the Sire of wind Each truant gale, save only Zephyr, bind! So do thou, fair ship, that ow'st Virgil, thy precious freight, to Attic coast, Safe restore thy loan and whole, And save from death the partner of my soul! Oak and brass of triple fold Encompass'd sure that heart, which first made bold To ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... situation was more peculiar than pleasant. He was seated on a log, three hundred miles from any civilised habitation, smiling blandly at a broken axe (his only one), the half of which was tightly grasped in his right hand, pointing to the truant iron in the trunk of a huge tree, the first of a thriving forest of fifty acres he purposed felling; and, thus occupied, a solitary traveller passed our uncle Job Bucket, serene as the melting sunshine, and thoughtless ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... lavish plenty, vice without disguise, incessant gambling, brawls and quarrels every hour in the day, murders every now and then, ribaldry and obscenity, singing, dancing, laughing, swearing, cheating, and thieving without end. There many a man of quality seeks for his truant son, nor seeks in vain; and the youth feels as acutely the pain of being torn from that life of licence as though he were going to meet his death. But this joyous life has its bitters as well as its sweets. ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... "A truant disposition" took me into another district on my return to Kingston, as I was thoroughly determined to see a thoroughly new Canadian settlement, and therefore prepared, by purchasing a new waggon and a new pair of horses, ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... Thomas Moore Robert Burns Byron Goderich Kelvin Niagara Falls Autumn A Sunset Farewell By the Lake The Teacher Grace Darling The Indian Lines on the North-West Rebellion Louis Riel Ye Patriot Sons of Canada A Hero's Decision John and Jane The Truant Boy A Swain to his Sweetheart The Fisherman's Wife The Diamond and the Pebble Temptation Slander Woman Sympathy Love and Wine. How Nature's Beauties Should be Viewed To a Canary The School-Taught Youth A ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... education. But they say it is always a good thing to have taken pains, and that success is its own reward, whatever be its nature; so that, perhaps, even upon this I should plume myself, that no one ever played the truant with more deliberate care, and none ever had more certificates for less education. One consequence, however, of my system is that I have much less to say of Professor Blackie than I had of Professor Kelland; and as he is still alive, and will long, I hope, continue to be so, it will not surprise ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the truant set, and, at the first commotion, up went his great back, and down went his ears, with a single lash out behind that meant mischief, but Mr. Sponge was on the alert, and just gave him such a dig with his spurs as restored order, without exposing ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... in the same state of mind. They also went along with Lieutenant Lawton. It was arranged that Miss Jenny Ann and Jeff should wait for the truant. They would then bring Madge and Tom to the hotel at Portsmouth where they arranged ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... esteem a far better offer. In which respect I have returned my dutiful acknowledgement, which I beseech you to present, when you shall call a convocation, about some matter of greater moment. Because their letter was in Latin, methought it did enforce me not to show myself a truant, by attempting the like, with a pen out of practice: which yet I hope they will excuse with a kind construction of my meaning. And to the intent they may perceive that my good will is as forward ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... and disguise—no one else ever so well shewed how delicacy and timidity, when driven to extremity, grow romantic and extravagant; for the romance of his heroines (in which they abound) is only an excess of the habitual prejudices of their sex, scrupulous of being false to their vows, truant to their affections, and taught by the force of feeling when to forego the forms of propriety for the essence of it. His women were in this respect exquisite logicians; for there is nothing so logical ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... steals the Indian's fire-water. "What few can partake of. With impunity." Certainly not the Colonel. "Can this be he! This gibbering wreck!" He hides cigars in a hollow tree, and smokes on the sly. He plays truant. Lures other old gentlemen away from their lessons to join him. They are discovered in the woods, in a cave, playing whist for ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... one day that several of his scholars are playing truant. The morning passes and they do not arrive. At last, in the afternoon, the truants turn up. The master has a strong suspicion where they have been: however, he asks, "Why were you not at school this morning?" "Please, sir, mother kept me at home to mind the baby." "Indeed—let me look at your ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... brightest and most marked elements of his character—never failed to sustain him between the recurrences even of his most acute suffering; and the pursuit of his most beloved Art became every year more determined and independent. The first beginnings in landscape study were made in happy truant excursions, now fondly remembered, with the painter Haydon, then also a youth. This companionship was probably rather cemented by the energy than the delicacy of Haydon's sympathies. The two boys were directly opposed in their habits of application ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... language; and though it is maliciously said that some of the younger members speak more for the galleries than the house, and though some gallant individual may occasionally step up stairs to restore a truant handkerchief or boa to the fair owner, the distractions caused by their presence are very inconsiderable, and the arrangements for their comfort are a great reflection upon the miserable latticed hole to which lady listeners are condemned in the English House of Commons. I must remark, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... following the eventful one, Ephie played truant, on the ground of headache, partly because her fancy pictured him lying in wait like an ogre to eat her up, and partly from a poor little foolish fear lest he should think her too easily won. Now, however, she blamed herself for ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... young Cupid lost his way, And came to me to find it. He'd been a truant all the day, But ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... only feebly smile his thanks and reassurance, and then he, too, seemed floating away somewhere into space, and he could not manage to connect what Webb had been saying with the next words that fastened on his truant senses. It must have been hours later, too, for darkness had settled on the valley. A little fire was burning under the shelter of the bank. A little group of soldiers were chatting in low tone, close at hand. Among them, his arm in a sling, stood a stocky little chap whose ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... changed every other emotion to lively apprehensions for her safety, but he soon saw her run back, and, on observing him coming to meet her, assume an untroubled countenance. "Has this serene night," said she, "made you too a truant with your pillow? I have, of late, been little disposed to sleep, and enjoy a moon-light walk amazingly."—"Do not those dogs annoy you," inquired Sedley, with more of moody displeasure than tenderness; "I should think they would form but a harsh response to your soliloquies." ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... Mass., built a very substantial house in the trees, and the truant officer claimed that the lads hid away there so that they could play "hookey" from school; but if this is true, and there seems to be some doubt about it, it must be remembered that the fault was probably with the schools and not the boys, for boys who have ingenuity and grit enough to build ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... done wisely, is done well. Be bold 35 As thou art just. 'Tis like a truant child To fear that others know what thou hast done, Even from thine own strong consciousness, and thus Write on unsteady eyes and altered cheeks All thou wouldst hide. Be faithful to thyself, 40 And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... crossed the valley on Monday, nobody would have played truant, and if nobody had played truant on Monday, there would not have been occasion to whip three boys on Tuesday morning, and if Ben Berry and Riley had escaped a beating on Tuesday morning, they would not have thought of putting gunpowder into the stove on Wednesday at noon, ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... you came to me in the night, The golden moon aglow in your hair, and the spear-driven light Of an army of stars in your eyes, weary with truant sleep. O little skilled in self, who thought you ...
— Eyes of Youth - A Book of Verse by Padraic Colum, Shane Leslie, A.O. • Various
... as they did, from objects that he had looked upon as the friends of his youth, before life had opened to him the dark and blotted pages of suffering and sorrow. There, dimly shining to the right below him, was the transparent river in which he had taken many a truant plunge, and a little further on he could see without difficulty the white cascade tumbling down the precipice, and mark its dim scintillations, that looked, under the light of the moon, like masses of shivered ice, were it not that such a notion was contradicted by the soft ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... morn till night To scratch and write Upon a three-legged stool; Nor mourn the joys Of truant boys Who stay away ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... advantage of such questioning to give vent to his displeasure he would smile contentedly and stroke his chin, once so round, but then so peaked, and those who thought that the Court apothecary would diminish his legacy to his truant son, learned to know better, for the old man bequeathed in an elaborate will, the whole of his valuable possessions to Melchior, leaving only to the widow Vorkel, who had served him faithfully as housekeeper after the death ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... seek my school again, My teacher's rules obey, Nor wander, as a truant boy, And waste ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various
... tutor was found for him; but it is to be feared that he was by no means an industrious scholar. Indeed, we hear of such dreadful things as playing truant, so that when a day was fixed for an examination by learned men as to how the Heir-to-Empire was getting on with his studies, "at the master moment it was found that the scholar, having attired himself for sport, had disappeared!" Then his first tutor was ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... present at the bar-room scene, and had cheered, and then kicked Gus Elliot, and "laid for him" in the evening with the "boys." He was one of the upper graduates of Pushton street-corners, and having spent an idle, vicious boyhood, truant half the time from school, had now arrived at the dignity of clerk in a store, that thrived feebly on the scattering trade that filtered through and past Mr. Hard's larger establishment. He was one of the worst phases of the male gossip, and had the ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... a quarter of a century ago, or more, may possibly recollect the parish sexton. Bob Martin was held much in awe by truant boys who sauntered into the churchyard on Sundays, to read the tombstones, or play leap frog over them, or climb the ivy in search of bats or sparrows' nests, or peep into the mysterious aperture under the eastern window, which opened a dim perspective ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... gaily-crowded streets was sweet to him as a lazy truant ramble in the woods during church-time. Everything that he looked at delighted him—the richness of shop-windows, showing all the expensive useless goods that no sensible person ever wants; the liveries worn by pampered servants standing at carriage wheels; the glossy coats ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... love of the supernatural; he could believe anything, if it was only wonderful enough—except Geoffrey of Monmouth's History. But I must confine myself to one story—the story of the boy in Gower who (as the root of learning is bitter) played truant and found two little men of pigmy stature, and went with them to their country under the earth, and played games with golden balls with the fairy prince. These little folk were very small—of fair complexion, ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... books, G.K. loved to play upon words, and sometimes of course this was merely a matter of words and the puns were bad ones. Once, for instance, after translating the French phrase for playing truant as "he goes to the bushy school—or the school among the bushes," he adds "not lightly to be confounded with the Art School at Bushey." This is indefensible, but rare. Christopher Morley has noted how "his play upon words often led to a genuine play upon thoughts. . . . One of Chesterton's ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... was very dark, as Audrey and her squire passed along Third Avenue to the front. They did not converse—they were both too shy, too impressed by the peculiarity of the predicament. They simply peered. They peered everywhere for the truant form of Musa balanced on one side by a bag and on the other by a fiddle case. From the trim houses, each without exception new, twinkled discreet lights, with glimpses of surpassingly correct domesticity, and the wind rustled loudly through the ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... chill and grey after the storm, with a sky obscured by scudding clouds, but a gleam of truant sunshine was sporting wantonly on the hoary castled summit of St. Michael's Mount, and promised to visit the town later on. Mrs. Pendleton walked briskly, and soon ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... parish of St. Austell, in Cornwall. Though poor, he contrived to send his two sons to a penny-a-week school in the neighbourhood. Jabez, the elder, took delight in learning, and made great progress in his lessons; but Samuel, the younger, was a dunce, notoriously given to mischief and playing truant. When about eight years old he was put to manual labour, earning three-halfpence a day as a buddle-boy at a tin mine. At ten he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and while in this employment he endured much hardship,— living, as he used to say, "like a toad under a harrow." He often thought ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... and fifty-seven patrolmen. Some of these are on duty at the ferries and steamboat landings. Others are detailed to examine the steam boilers in use in the city. Others execute the orders of the Board of Health. Another detachment, nine in number, look after truant children. Others are detailed for duty at banks and other places. The Detectives ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... for, as I might have observed, if I had been a little less pleased with the universe at the moment, there was a clear way round the tree-top at the farther side. He had offered his services to haul me out, but as I was then already on my elbows I had declined and sent him down stream after the truant Arethusa. The stream was too rapid for a man to mount with one canoe, let alone two, upon his hands. So I crawled along the trunk to shore, and proceeded down the meadows by the riverside. I was so cold that my heart was sore. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... head was a crown of lace. Bristoll knew that its material name would be a boudoir cap, but on her head it became a crown—no, it was too filmy and ethereal for that: rather it was a sort of halo. Beneath it, and imprisoning pale fire in its amber softness, escaped a truant mass of curls. From the cap to the foamy whiteness of a lacy petticoat that peeped out just above the silk-clad ankles, she was exquisite. And all these things stamped themselves on young Carl Bristoll's brain as he bowed. Then he realized the delicate white-and-pink ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... it be? I should like to inquire how his son, my truant protege', is going on. And from your father's description of the vault, the interior must be interesting. Suppose we ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... we to do with the trap?" said Aveline. "We can't drag it back ourselves. And what about the pony? He's playing truant!" ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... the ancient fame of the State his chosen duty. He rummaged old cuddies, closets, vaults, and cocklofts, and pried into every recess of the Chancery, the Land Office, the Committee-Rooms, and the Council-Chamber, searching up-stairs and down-stairs, wherever a truant paper was supposed to lurk. Groping with lantern in hand and body bent, he made his way through narrow passages, startling the rats from their fastnesses, where they had been intrenched for half a century, and breaking down the thick drapery—the Gobelin tapestry ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... rested always on the fields, were beautiful to see, and the air was wonderfully bracing. Shy jack rabbits dodged back and forth between the bushes as Betty walked, and once, when she investigated a thicket that looked as though it might shelter the truant Daisy, the girl disturbed a guinea hen that flew out with a wild ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... again. That he dared not do; but accident, the lover's friend, performed the work, and did him a good turn beside. The old Frenchman was slowly approaching, when a frolicsome wind whisked off his hat and sent it skimming along the beach. In spite of her late lecture, away went Debby, and caught the truant chapeau just as a wave was hurrying up to claim it. This restored her cheerfulness, and when she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Llewellyn homeward hied, When near the portal seat, His truant Gelert he espied, Bounding his lord to greet. But when he gained the castle door, Aghast the chieftain stood: The hound was smeared with drops of gore; His lips and fangs ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... will be admitted into it, it is especially a school for boys, as you will understand when you learn that it is a Truant School. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 32, June 17, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... decorations, the grandees on the platform, and conspicuous among them the squire's slouching frame and striking head, side by side with a white and radiant Lady Helen—the outer success, the inner revolt and pain—and the constant seeking of his truant eyes for a face that hid itself as much as possible in dark corners, but was in truth the one thing sharply present to him—these were the sort of impressions that remained with Elsmere afterwards of this last meeting with ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... nicht o' the Latin prose I cam up to speak aboot the college, and ye thocht Geordie hed been playing truant." ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... day know. What is more, I am satisfied that the larger one has more than an ordinary interest in Stephens. She has twice already saved his life; and I should not be surprised if she were now to lay him once more under the obligation. Ha, truant," he said, turning to one of his staff who had come from a nigh tree-clump, where he had been writing, "you should have been here to see the beautiful Metis maiden. She was in disguise, but her beauty was not ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... his addresses with such affability as denoted approbation and delight, and gently chided him as a thoughtless truant, but carefully avoided the confession of a mutual flame; because she discerned, in the midst of all his tenderness, a levity of pride which she durst not venture to trust with such a declaration. Perhaps she was confirmed in this caution by her mother, who very wisely, in her civilities ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... the girl's mouth disappeared slowly as she passed a small brown hand across her forehead and replaced a truant lock. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... the schoolmaster has to deal. In Macaulay's time he used to be guided by his 'common-sense,' and to intellectualise the whole process. The unfortunate boys who acted upon an ancient impulse to fidget, to play truant, to chase cats, or to mimic their teacher, were asked, with repeated threats of punishment,'why' they had done so. They, being ignorant of their own evolutionary history, were forced to invent some far-fetched lie, and were punished for that as well. The trained schoolmaster of to-day ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... fillibeg and tartan-skirted knee; There pale was "Cleveland," as he slept by Stromness' howling sea; With faltering step crept "Trapbois" by, with drooping palsied head, More like a charnel truant stray'd from regions of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... He closed them with a disagreeable sensation, after seeing Mademoiselle Reine Gobillot's fresh, chubby face, her figure prim beyond measure in a lilac-and-green plaid gingham dress, and carrying a basket on her arm, a necessary burden to maidens of a certain class who play truant. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... straggling fence that skirts the way, With blossom'd furze unprofitably gay, There, in his noisy mansion, skill'd to rule, The village master taught his little school; A man severe he was, and stern to view,— I knew him well, and every truant knew; Well had the boding tremblers learn'd to trace The day's disasters in his morning face. 1591 GOLDSMITH: ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... a wild, uncontrolled boy, who spent most of his time in the street, played truant three days out of five, was a great boaster, and sneered at anything like goodness. He was vastly amusing, however, and generally was surrounded by a crowd of admiring lads who thought him quite a hero. He had completely fascinated Louis, who was ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... and activity. The usual occupations of the sons of Japanese peasants, such as grass-cutting and rice-weeding, were not to the taste of young Monkey-pine, as the villagers called him, and he spent his time in the streets, a keen-witted and reckless young truant, who feared and cared for no one, and ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... crops of "bile-whites" or "merinos." From time to time, a tall house jutted upon the road, with unctuous pig-sty under the lee of the garden-fence and wood-pile sprawling into the highway, where the parson would rein up his nag, and make inquiry after the truant Reuben. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... thou wouldst wish ere life's last day To taste the sweets of calm unbroken rest, Tread firm the narrow, shun the beaten way— Ah! to thy friend too well may be address'd: "Thou show'st a path, thyself most apt to stray, Which late thy truant feet, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... intellect, but he had had little education. By a sort of strange fatality, his brain had doggedly resisted the little instruction he might have received. For instance, he had been to the Carmelite's school at ——, and instead of showing any aptitude for work, he had played truant with a keener delight than any of his school-fellows. His was an eminently contemplative nature, kindly and indolent, but proud and almost savage in its love of independence; religious, yet opposed to all authority; somewhat captious, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... had returned by the train to London, as the porter had said, and then left the country under an assumed name, to escape that worst kind of widowhood—the misery of being wedded to a fickle, faithless, and truant husband? ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... came and went on two very round cheeks—the mischievous brown eyes grew full of laughter, and the next moment the little questioner had squeezed her way through a slightly open door, and was toddling down the broad stone stairs and across a landing to Hetty's room. The room-door was open, so the truant went in. A bed with the bed-clothes all tossed about, a half worn-out slipper on the floor, a very untidy dressing-table met ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... it," she said. "We're thirsty...." She came back into the room. "The postman's just come," she said with a nod and a smile to Esther. "Lydia will bring our letters up if there are any." She turned again to Micky. "Well, truant! And what have you been doing? Having a ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... lies the home of school-boy life, With creaking stair and wind-swept hall, And, scarred by many a truant knife, Our old initials on the wall; Here rest—their keen vibrations mute— The shout of voices known so well, The ringing laugh, the wailing flute, The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... inextinguished fires; Plunging along each tense limb poured the blood Hot with its years of sleeping-smothered flame. And in a dream I charged, and in a dream I smote resistless; foemen in my path Fell unregarded, like the wayside flowers Clipped by the truant's staff in daisied lanes. For over me burned lustrous the dear eyes Of my beloved; I strove as at a joust To gain at end the guerdon of her smile. And ever, as in the dense melee I dashed, Her name burst from my lips, as lightning breaks Out of the ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... then the form of a man, carrying a musket, could be discerned, making his way, to the glade. He reached the edge of the clearing, when he espied the sleeping Indian, lying with his face turned from him. He halted instantly. Was it an Indian belonging to the mission, and playing truant, or one of the savages of the forests, from whom the mission had suffered so much during the last three years? He must find out. Creeping so slowly and carefully that not a sound was heard again from his feet among the plants, he passed around the edge of ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... a person of this temper you repeat the hard maxims of workaday wisdom, he escapes from you with the smiling audacity of a truant boy. He is one who has awakened right early on a wonderful morning. There is a spectacle to be seen by those who have eyes for it. He is not willing out of respect for you to miss it. He hears the music, and he follows it. It ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... when I first struck the water, which I did upon the summit of a wave, I bounded off again and ricochetted several times from one wave to another, like the shot fired from a gun along the surface of the sea, or the oyster-shell skimmed over the lake by the truant child. The last bound that I gave, pitched me into the rigging of a small vessel on her beam-ends, and I hardly had time to fetch my breath before she turned over. I scrambled up her bends, and fixed ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... tell you how I long to be at home again and in my old place. In my dreams and in my waking hours, I am often back at the old homestead; my thoughts play truant while I pore over my books, and even while I listen to my teacher in the class-room. I would give so much to know what you are all doing—so much to feel that now and then I am in your thoughts, and that you do indeed miss me ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... mind me not? So qualified to swear and lie, Will they not trust me for a spy? Dear Mullinix, your good advice I beg; you see the case is nice: O! were I equal in renown, Like thee to please this thankless town! Or blest with such engaging parts To win the truant schoolboys' hearts! Thy virtues meet their just reward, Attended by the sable guard. Charm'd by thy voice, the 'prentice drops The snow-ball destined at thy chops; Thy graceful steps, and colonel's air, Allure the cinder-picking fair. M. No more—in mark of ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... a truant professor!" he exclaimed. "Simeon doesn't approve; we couldn't induce him to come. He said a day off meant a night on for him—he is so wise, is Simeon—but I positively had to do something in the way of sport; I am in ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... always managed to have a lodging of some sort about Bedford Square, because she clung tenaciously to such scraps and shreds of memories as were connected with it. The mummy room of the British Museum had been one of the chief delights of her childhood. That forbidding pile was the goal of her truant fancy, and she was sometimes taken there for a treat, as other children are taken to the theatre. It was long since Alexander had thought of any of these things, but now they came back to him quite fresh, and had a significance they did not have when they were first told him in his restless ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... in the babe, a toothless tender nursling; Beauty is boldness in the boy, a curly rosy truant; Beauty is modesty and grace in fair retiring girlhood; Beauty is openness and strength in pure high-minded youth; Man, the noble and intelligent, gladdeneth earth in beauty, And woman's beauty sunneth him, as with ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... they must once have pressed? It cannot be! A part of her possessions of Eden must have been spared to her with a part of her life. She must have refined the void air of the earth when she entered it, with a breath of the fragrant breezes, and gleam of the truant sunshine of her lost Paradise! They must have strengthened and brightened, and must now be strengthening and brightening with the slow lapse of mortal years, until, in the time when earth itself will be an Eden, they shall be made one ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... Valentine the welcome news of his friend Protheus' arrival. Valentine said, "If I had wished a thing, it would have been to have seen him here!" and then he highly praised Protheus to the duke, saying, "My lord, though I have been a truant of my time, yet hath my friend made use and fair advantage of his days, and is complete in person and in mind, in all good grace to ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... mother, the ocean, through a little gateway which the land left open by chance and was hiding there among the hills, listening to the calling of the surf voice by night, out there beyond the gate, and lying sullen and still when mother ocean sent the fog and the tides a-seeking; a truant child that played by itself and danced little wave dances which it had learned of its mother ages agone, and laughed up at the hills that ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... caught sight of him, his eyes got quite red. Without even allowing himself any time to question him about his gadding about with actors, and the presents he gave them on the sly, during his absence from home; or about his playing the truant from school and lewdly importuning his mother's maid, during his stay at home, he simply shouted: "Gag his mouth and positively beat him till ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... this, how often are saints found playing truant, and lurking like thieves in one hole or other. Now, in the guilt of backsliding by the power of this, and then in filth by the power of that corruption (Jer 2:26). Yea, and when found in such decayings, and under such revoltings from God, how commonly do they hide their sin with Adam, and David, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... for one of your gray existences. He was homesick for Weimar, and was a constant truant from Rome. But he had duties enough with his ambition as a composer and conductor, and his cloud of pupils whom he taught without price. To his excursions we owe four volumes of letters to the princess. The volumes average over four hundred pages each of ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... my mother that her other sons shall comfort her old age, and I was aye a truant bird, that thought his home a cage; For my father was a soldier, and even as a child My heart leaped forth to hear him tell of struggles fierce and wild; And when he died, and left us to divide his scanty hoard, I let them take whate're ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... some several-days-old papers we observe that the truant Mr. Bergdoll was discovered at Eberbach in Baden. Well, well, we meditate, Herr Bergdoll is not wholly devoid of sense, if he is rambling about that delicious valley of the Neckar. And if we were a foreign correspondent, anxious to send home to the papers ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... go to that table where he sat without seeming more than ever the school mistress in pursuit of a truant, but perhaps he would come to her if she put her request right. They had danced together quite a lot in the old days. She danced so well that not even her status of elder sister had prevented his enjoying the exercise of their ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the Captain's gate when they saw Wing Fan approaching on horseback, leading the truant Caliph. Chicken Little was immensely relieved to find, as they came near, that neither saddle nor bridle had suffered ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... next!" demanded the offended and, as she was fain to believe, neglected wife, under the impression that it was her truant husband, making his tardy return to his domestic allegiance, who had thus presumed to disturb her slumbers. "Is it not enough that you have eloped from my bed and board, for a long night, but you must dare to break in on the natural ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... pushed him bodily through the doorway and entered herself, turning quickly to slip into place the oaken bar that secured the door from the inside. Constans swelled with indignation at this singular treatment. He was a man grown, not a truant child to be led away by the ear for punishment. Yet she would not abate one jot of her first advantage, and his anger melted under the quiet serenity of her gaze; in spite of himself he let ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... ugly old rascal, or I'll twist this round your long neck," cried Dyke; and a great chorus arose from the pens, as if the tame birds within the wire fence were imploring the great truant to ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... as a rook's wing, but far away down the street burned a little light, like a red star truant from heaven. The Prince riding by descried it for a lanthorn, with an old man ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Middleton disappear over the next fence. So there I was alone in a big grass field, with strong notions that I should have to walk an unknown number of miles home. Judge of my delight as I paced slowly along—running was of no use—at seeing Frank G—— returning with my truant in hand. Such an action in the middle of a run deserves a Humane Society's medal. To struggle breathless into my seat; to go off at score, to find a lucky string of open gates, to come upon the hounds at a check, ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... by his absence, turned to Albany, and said: "And now, my lord, we should chide this truant Rothsay of ours; yet he hath served us so well at council, that we must receive his merits as ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... fame had spread from the Potomac to Detroit and Louisville. Many an anxious mother on the border used the story of his captivity as a means to frighten truant youngsters who had evinced a love for running wild in the woods. The evening of Isaac's return every one in the settlement called to welcome home the wanderer. In spite of the troubled times and the dark cloud ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... report of Benny's short interview with Grayson, had Benny thought to give it, but he had, on reaching home, promptly feigned headache, and gone to bed; so such of the boys as did not determine to play truant, and so postpone the evil day, thought bitterly of the morrow as they dispersed ...
— Harper's Young People, October 5, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... saw him in the 'seventies. I was a small boy then, and I did him the honour of playing truant—"playing wag" we called it. I felt that the occasion demanded it. To have the god of my idolatry in my own little town and not to pay him my devotions—why, the idea was almost like blasphemy. A half-dozen, or ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... her husband of the conduct of their truant son, as Harry had wished, and had in reply received his full forgiveness for the boy. Captain Grosvenor had written that he much regretted not having taken Harry along with him, "for," said he, "a second thought would have convinced me that the boy had too much of the spirit of his father ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale |
