"Waif" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who stop a moment to refresh themselves from her little cup, and hurry on about their own near and dear affairs, in which she has no share?... He stands in a big, bright garden and commands the spiritual mother to remain a waif out on the dusty highway. 'How much better off you are out there!' he says. 'You can show people the Gate, and keep them from going the wrong way, on the long empty road. Nothing can hurt you, but yourself. It is very foolish of you ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... but a waif on the ocean of commerce—the jetsam and flotsam, of which the law must direct the disposal. The heirs, as they have been called, may come in to the wreck that lies on the shores of time, after the soul has gone to eternity—but law must decide whether these wreckers are entitled ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... Southampton. Having reproved his mother, while still a lad, for murdering his father, she employed Saber to kill him; but Saber only left him on a desert land as a waif, and he was brought up as a shepherd. Hearing that his mother had married Mor'dure (2 syl.), the adulterer, he forced his way into the marriage hall and struck at Mordure; but Mordure slipped aside, and escaped the blow. Bevis ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... not take the young naturalist and this stranded waif, seven thousand miles from home, long to see that they had much in common. Both were eager for truth, both had the ability to cut the introduction and reach live issues directly. "I saw you were a woman with whom only honesty ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... never barked at a slinking cat, But stood in the square where the wind blew raw, With a drooping ear, and a trembling paw, And a mournful look in his pleading eye, And a plaintive sniff at the passer-by That begged as plain as a tongue could sue, "Oh, Mister, please may I follow you?" A lorn, wee waif of a tawny brown Adrift in the roar of a heedless town. Oh, the saddest of sights in a world of sin Is a little lost pup with ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... was indeed well received that winter's morning, and in the course of the day a poor waif rang timidly at the door of the happy home, and presented a paper ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... on the Anniversary of Eddy's Death. Extracts from her Journal. Little Susy's Six Teachers. The Teachers' Meeting. A New York Waif. Summer in the Country. Letters. Little Susy's Little Servants. Extracts from her Journal. "Alone ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... the piping voice had a strange effect upon Allison. He leaned forward, a sort of guarded astonishment in his attitude, to peer at the childish face in the fire-glow. Then he seemed to remember that it was just a bit of a woods-waif who had spoken. But Caleb, who was lazy-brained in some matters, sensed that Steve had put into words Allison's own unspoken thought, just as Allison at that moment voiced the question which he was ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... us are very anxious to learn the authorship of the following poem, which is to be found in so many scrap-books, and which ever and anon appears as a newspaper waif: ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... shepherd" did not know who he was nor whence he came—he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood, seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and mothered this waif about whom there was such a mystery—a charming waif, by the way, who could play the banjo better that anyone else in ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... mystery. Occasional passages in his writings refer to his sympathy for outcast children, and he quotes the saying of Jesus, "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." He then refers to himself as having been a waif and robbed of the love that was his due, "the lawful, legal heritage of every child, sent without its consent into a world of struggle and strife, where only love ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... and Jack and you and the rest, he called me a little fool and bade me understand that he had not poisoned me as he was paid to do because it was to his advantage to keep me alive. Courtiers would not assassinate a stray waif, he said; there was wealth for the court's ward somewhere; and when I was restored, I was to remember who had slaved for me. Indeed, indeed, I think that he would have married me, but that he feared it would bar him from any property as ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... shore near a group of wigwams. A woman of the village found the baby on the shore and brought it to her home. Every morning, after the baby had been brought to the place, a baby of the village died. The Indians did not know what the matter was until they noticed that the waif which the woman had found in the bark on the river bank went to the river every night and returned shortly after. A woman watched to see what this had to do with the death of the babes, and she saw the child, when it returned to the wigwam, bring a tongue of a little child, roast and eat it. Then ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... crying in the street, and wrap her furs about it and carry it off, smiling and happy, in her arms, with no more thought of the attention such an action would attract than if she had been alone with her waif in the desert. But many and many a time, and in many a way, she had made glad hearts by deeds like that; and now where was she? And was there never a one in the whole wide world to help her to bear her own ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... her children, but she is restrained by a sense of propriety from tearing other mothers' children in pieces. A hen has no such checks; her motherhood exists without any qualification. Her intense love for her own brood is softened by no social requirements. If a poor lost waif from another coop strays into her realm, no pity, no sympathy springing from the memory of her own offspring, moves her to kindness; but she goes at it with a demoniac fury, and would peck its little ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... it in its breast. Moreover, she bit off the infant's left little toe, as an indelible mark of identity. No sooner had this been done than a gust of wind blew a large plank to the river's edge. The poor mother tied her infant firmly to this plank and abandoned it to the mercy of the waves. The waif was carried to the shore of the isle of Chin Shan, on which stands the famous monastery of Chin-shan Ssu, near Chinkiang. The cries of the infant attracted the attention of an old monk named Chang Lao, who rescued it and gave it the name of Chiang Liu, 'Waif of the River.' He reared it with much ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... on she abandoned herself more and more simply to the part she was acting, and in the death scene had a kind of quiet, poignant, reticent perfection. A plaintive figure out of tapestry, a child out of a nursery tale, she made one feel at once the remoteness and the humanity of this waif of dreams, the little princess who does know that it is wrong to love. In the great scene by the fountain in the park, Mrs. Campbell expressed the supreme unconsciousness of passion, both in face ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... prohibitory. She was the wife of a poor minister and school-teacher. To eke out the family income she took boarders. She had five children of her own, who were too young to be of any material assistance, and, in addition, she occasionally harbored a waif that besought her protection when fleeing from slavery. Necessarily the most of her time was spent in the kitchen. There, surrounded by meats and vegetables and cooking appliances, with just enough of the common deal table ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... be promptly and reverently deposited among the other Vestiges of Creation, in the Royal Cabinet. In the course of years, some historian would probably have occasion to turn over these curiosities, and would presently light on the scorched but still legible waif. "Why," says he, in astonishment, "I thought the earth was burnt on the 15th of May! To be sure, it was in the night, and nobody saw it go, [think of that, conceited Worldling!] but it was missed by somebody the day after. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... over the cantle and swung down to go on one knee to my stout challenger. I can never make you understand, my dears, how the sight of this helpless waif appearing thus unaccountably in the heart of the great forest mellowed and softened me. 'Twas a little maid, not above three or four years old, and with a face that Master Raphael might have taken as a pattern for one of ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... must do what I can for the poor waif," Stella protested. "There isn't much that I can do when I am away from you,—not much, I mean, ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... the story of Charlie Bell, who was thrown upon Elm Island like a waif from the ocean, and adopted by Lion Ben. With Yankee boys he shares the exciting adventures of a new country and a rude ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... by a crime. That if her hand had fallen in comfort on her husband's forehead instead of in pressure on his mouth, he would have outlived his brother long enough to have become owner of his millions; in which case a rightful portion would have been insured to his daughter, now left a penniless waif. The thought made my hair rise, as the proceedings over, I faced her and made my first and last effort to rid my conscience of its new ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... as desolate as any waif in all that great city. He had been cared for all his life, and now that he was suddenly thrown upon his own resources, he felt helpless, like a rudderless ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... is no longer impersonated as a waif or wanderer; and Truth is not fragmentary, disconnected, unsystematic, but concentrated and immovably fixed in Principle. The best spiritual type of Christly method for uplifting human thought and imparting divine Truth, is stationary power, stillness, and strength; ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... of dawn brought sober reflections. What interest could he have in the young girl other than to help her escape from the savage Cochise? She was a waif, of unknown parentage. Mentally she was little more than a child, and all her conscious experience had been confined to the environment of this crude ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... Starr came to their home, but he had only lived a few weeks. The memory of that golden, fuzzy head, the little appealing fingers, the great blue eyes of his son still lingered bitterly in the father's heart. When he first looked upon this waif the fancy seized him that, perhaps his own boy would have been like this had he lived, and a strange and unexpected tenderness entered his heart for Mikky. He kept going to the little invalid's room night after night, pleasing himself with the thought that ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... sorrows, no man need be made worse by them. That depends upon how we take the things which come storming against us. The set of your sails, and the firmness of your grasp upon the tiller, determine whether the wind shall carry you to the haven or shall blow you out, a wandering waif, upon a shoreless and melancholy sea. There are some of you that have been blown away from your moorings by sorrow. There are some professing Christians who have been hindered in their work, and had their peace and their ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Imperial Hotel," disappeared from the columns of the newspapers, as the remembrance of that ghastly enigma faded from the minds of their readers, and solicitude about it ceased to occupy the police. The tide of life, rolling that poor waif amid its waters, had swept on. Yes; but I, the son? How should I ever forget the old woman's story that had filled my childhood with tragic horror? How should I ever cease to see the pale face of the murdered man, with its fixed, open eyes? ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... the world mid double danger, groans, and tears; The toy, the sport, the waif and stray of ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... two men could have known that the steel box was in that satchel this story might never have been told. But it never entered their heads that the pallid little waif had sense enough to conceal a button ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... life, little aid. She might have closely counselled, wound in and out with his ideas. Sensible of capacity, she confessed to the having been morally subdued, physically as well; swept onward; and she was arrested now by an accident, like a waif of the river-floods by the dip of a branch. Time that it should be! But was not Mr. Durance, inveighing against the favoured system for the education of women, right when he declared them to be unfitted to speak an opinion on any matter external to the household or in a crisis ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... felt also that he had not come out of this first brush with entire distinction. Matt had been in the wrong and had shown that he was angry, yet he had a certain discipline which had enabled him to control his temper, and the issue had ended in defeat for the undisciplined waif who might well have been victorious had ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... river. He remembered to have heard vaguely that he was a man of family. To half strangle the child with a few drops from his whisky flask, to extricate his canoe from the marsh, and strike out into the river with his waif, was at least to do something. In half an hour he had reached the straggling cabin and sheds of Trinidad Joe, and from the few scanty flowers that mingled with the brushwood fence, and a surplus of linen fluttering on the line, he knew that his surmise as to Trinidad Joe's domestic establishment ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... own impulses, or the enticements of evil companions. Kept within certain bounds at home, after he had begun to go wrong, by the weight of opinion, he rushed into all excesses when abroad upon business, till at length the vessel of his fortune went to pieces, and he was a waif on the waters of the world. But in feeling he had never been vulgar, however much so in action. There was a feeble good in him that had in part been protected by its very feebleness. He could not sin so much against it as if ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... permission of government. The more and more avowed materialistic theories revolted his shrewd and sensible mind; without caring to go to the bottom of his thought and contemplate its consequences, he clung to the notion of Providence as to a waif in the great shipwreck of positive creeds; he could ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... gillie to overtake them; and certainly the latter, deprived of his plaid, presented a sufficiently ridiculous appearance in the trousers and jacket that were obviously too big for him. But neither Lady Macleod nor Janet laughed at all when they saw this starved London waif before them. ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... silly, triumphant laugh, and thrust the child forward against the carriage step. The poor waif, drenched, dazed, tottering without his crutch, caught at the plated handle for support. Honoria gazed down on him with eyes which took slow and pitiless account of the deformed little body, the ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... thousand strange and singular thoughts rushed into his mind, but his first purpose was ever uppermost; and at length, unfolding his girdle of skin, he tied the tough cincture round the chest, and, exerting all his powers, dragged his mysterious waif into the ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... of my journey. At every station at which we stopped he came to the window to see how I was getting on, and whether I was in want of anything, and was altogether so kind to me that I was quite sorry to part from him when the train reached Eastbury, and left me, a minute later, standing, a solitary waif, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... redness of her lips had not been due to careful make-up; for her features were good and, as Paul recognised, experiencing a sensation of chill at his heart, not unlike those of his wife. If he could have imagined a debauched Yvonne, she would have looked like this waif of the night who now stood bending beneath the shelter of her wet umbrella upon which the rain pattered, ruefully rubbing a slim ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... share his exile, although for your sake he had just jeopardized his life by killing two men. You felt no scruples at abandoning your child in London; although rolling in wealth, you never even inquired if this poor waif had bread to eat. You felt no scruples about marrying M. Fauvel. Did you tell your confiding husband of the lines of shame concealed beneath that orange wreath? Did you hesitate to confirm and strengthen his happy delusion, that his lips had pressed the first kiss upon your brow? No! All ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... alternative to this philosophy. It is not atheism—which is seldom more than a revulsion from superstition—because the adherents of absolute atheism are so few, if any, and its intellectual position is too precarious ever to be a menace. An atheist, if such there be, is an orphan, a waif wandering the midnight streets of time, homeless and alone. Nor is the alternative agnosticism, which in the nature of things can be only a passing mood of thought, when, indeed, it is not a confession of intellectual ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... study, where, with a little sigh, he put away his chess-men, and heartily hoped that it might not be his favorite adversary who was coming before him to be sent to jail. For although the good rector had a warm regard, and even affection, for Robin Lyth, as a waif cast into his care, and then a pupil wonderfully apt (which breeds love in the teacher), and after that a most gallant and highly distinguished young parishioner—with all this it was a difficulty for ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... daughter of a frivolous mother. Her dislike for the rugged life of Girl Scouts is eventually changed to appreciation, when the rescue of little Lucia, a woodland waif, becomes a problem for the ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... name—'Angela,' which corresponded with the name embroidered on her clothing. This is all we know about her; and I greatly fear that those to whom she belonged perished in the storm. Even the wreckage that was washed ashore furnished no clew; it was part of two different vessels. The little waif was brought to me and with me ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... they wish to know the one they'll have to accept the other. In any case, it's usually useless to try and pretend that Uncle George died of heart failure when he really died of drink, or that the young girl whom Aunt Maria "adopted" was a waif-and-stray, when everybody knows she is her own daughter; or that your first wife isn't still alive—probably kicking—or that your only child suddenly went to Australia because he was seized by the wander-lust, when everybody knows ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... will certainly, as we foresee, become less rather than more communicative on this subject, as he thinks upon it. Nevertheless, whatever it be that he knows or suspects, it is something which leads him to contemplate with more than usual interest this little mortal waif that has so strangely come ashore in his parish. He mentally resolves to study the child as minutely as possible, without betraying that he has any particular reason for ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... from all eternity he had loved this helpless little waif of Time, with its small, thin, blue-gray, gin-drugged face; this tiny life, so hopeless, so miserable, yet so uncomplaining: the thing that was, was the thing for it to bear; it had come into the world to bear it! Ready to die, even Death would not have it; it must live where it was not wanted, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... W'en Petri fin', he keel me." The thin face worked pathetically as the little fellow bravely tried to stifle the sobs which shook his feeble body; and Peace, with childish instinct, understood what the waif's queer, broken English ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... at herself critically in the glass. Her maid Fanchon—a little French waif picked up in the slums of Soho—helped to readjust a stray curl which ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... service could she be to such a man as Adrien? There was nothing for it but to return to Cracknell Court. So, wearily, but still with that grace which Southern blood bestows, even though it runs in the veins of a gipsy, or such a street waif as Jessica, she walked on ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... mine, but I forfeited that; Will they welcome the waif, kill the calf that is fat? Will dear ARTHUR rejoice to receive his lost chief? Will the Wanderer's return bring regret, or relief? Home! Ho-ome! Sweet, sweet home! Be it ever so humble (winks) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 25, 1893 • Various
... for the little waif for a long time, when at last the clock struck eight and daylight came. The snow, had she not trampled it down, would have come up to her shoulders. The old door behind her was covered with it, as if hung with ermine, and it looked as white as ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... beautiful, like a white page on which neither with ink of red or black has any pen drawn character. But, as the years go on, the pen begins to move and the fatal tracery to grow,—that tracery which means and tells so much. And the face of this man,—this waif, so to speak,—this waif that had come to us from the stretch of the prairie, whose southern line is the southern gulf; this stranger, who had come so suddenly to the circle of our light, and so plaintively ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... waif of good fortune had thrown herself upon his protection and had paid him the highest compliment that a woman could pay a man—a faith in him that was in itself ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... resulted, partly from want of opportunity, and partly from want of ambition in herself, that Bessie Fairfax remained a rustic little maid, without the least tincture of modern accomplishments. Still, the doctor's wife did not forget that her dear drudge and helpful right hand was a waif of old gentry, whose restoration the chapter of accidents might bring about any day. Nor did she suffer Bessie to forget it, though Bessie was mighty indifferent, and cared as little for her gentle kindred as they cared for her. And if these gentle kindred had increased ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... great rarity in Twinrip, but never was there such a happy, bright-eyed little maiden as this waif proved to be. Among the children she glowed like a dandelion in the grass, and reigned like a queen among ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... that you were just trying to carry on the ghastly game they call flirtation up here, I wouldn't be so angry with you. I'm not Willa Murdaugh down inside of me, and you know it!—I'm just Gentleman Geoff's Billie, a waif raised by the greatest-hearted man that ever lived, but I've got some pride myself. I don't want any man who hasn't s-spunk enough to ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... They face all dangers—carry succor forth To save their fellowmen—with speed and skill The aid goes out to rescue friend and foe. They know no enemy but heed each call. A line is thrown to stranded waif or man. In flood they rush like water down the slope To bring relief to those who toss in waves. They care for mothers left to starve, alone. In pestilence, they labor long to soothe The fevered brow and ease the gnawing ...
— Clear Crystals • Clara M. Beede
... sufficient justification for the establishment of an independent company, who, without any consultation with the proprietors of the main line, or enquiry as to their ultimate intentions, seize upon the vacant ground as a waif, and throw themselves confidently upon the public. If the matter does not end in a lease, the unfortunate public will be the losers, since it is manifestly impossible that a little Lilliput line can be cheaply worked, independent of the larger trunk. This class of schemes also ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... where I stand to the sun is a pathway of sapphire and gold, Like a waif of those Patmian visions that wrapt the lone seer of old, And it seems to my soul like an omen that calls me far over the sea— But I think of a little white cottage and one ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... sunshine full on it, appeared entirely of a shining, splendid green. Never had I seen the kingfisher in such favourable circumstances; flying so low above the flowery level that the swiftly vibrating wings must have touched the yellow petals; he was like a waif from some far tropical land. The bird was tropical, but I doubt if there exists within the tropics anything to compare with a field of buttercups—such large and unbroken surfaces of the most brilliant colour in nature. The first bird's mate appeared a minute later, flying ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... for a short distance. Again my ear was greeted with that loud, ringing chirp, and now the bird uttering it obligingly alighted on a stone not too far away to be seen distinctly through my binocular. Who was the little waif that had chosen this sky-invading summit for its summer habitat? At first I mistook it for a horned lark, and felt so sure my decision was correct that I did not look at the bird as searchingly as I should have done, ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... simplicity transcendent. By the aid of a microscope, a 'gillyflower' was seen protecting a chrysalis. Warm leaves cherished it, dainty juices aided its digestion, wholesome offshoots nourished it to maturity. Eking out a scant existence between two granite flags, this insignificant waif reared a caterpillar. What man are you, who can say ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... take the child under my wing, so to speak—take her into my home, without—" "Wait! We'll look at it from another point of view. Suppose this detective of yours had found your child in the slums of New York, a street waif, a beggar— what then? Was it your intention to take her into your home in that case? Wasn't it your idea to provide a home for her in some respectable family, educate her, give her a secret allowance—and let it go at that? Can you honestly say to me, Force, that you intended to adopt ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... heavens only like a scarf of stars caught upon its tree-tops and shaking in the wind. The deep loneliness made Flor tremble; the water that upbuoyed her was blackness itself; the way before her was impenetrable; far up above her opened that rent of sky,—so far, that she, a little dark waif among such tremendous shadows, was all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... husband had been a smuggler, and she herself was a daring and keen-eyed wrecker. For a season both throve. He had escaped detection in many a heavy run of contraband goods; and she had come in for many a valuable 'waif and stray' which the receding waters left upon the slimy strand. It was, however, her last venture, which, in her neighbors' language, had made her. Made her, indeed, independent of her fellows, but a murderer before her God!... About day-break ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... we dedicate this "waif of weary moments" to some warm-hearted, watchful spirit, who might shelter it from the pitiless assaults of the wide, wide world. But will not our simple booklet prove too insignificant a mark ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... from the other's tone or manner. "But where are the girls? They will be dead with terror, if we don't relieve their minds. They got the idea it was their brother Howard who was hurt; and so did I, but it's only some wandering waif—some——" ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... relates how the poet was awakened on a rainy midnight by the cry of a child begging shelter. The little waif proved to be Cupid in disguise. After being warmed and dried by the fire, the boy artfully craved permission to try his bow, to see if the rain had injured its elasticity. The arrow flew straight at the poet's heart with a sweet pain, and away flew Cupid laughing ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... here was a prosperous man laying two handsomely furnished houses at her feet—a man of gentlemanlike bearing, good-looking, well-informed, well-spoken, with no signs of age in his well-preserved face and figure; a man whom any woman, friendless, portionless, a mere waif upon earth's surface, at the mercy of all the winds that blow, ought proudly and gladly to ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... waiting for the gong to sound, when Cecil came in with her father. For a moment he did not recognize the soaked waif of the garden whom he had recommended "to go ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... mean assistance, the waif's howls once more became lingual. "Dey's tryin' to swipe me money, boss," he whined. "Hope I ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... upon the earth am I, The waif of nature—like uprooted weed Borne by the stream, or like a shaken reed, A frail dependent of the fickle sky. Far, far away, are all my natural kin; The mother that erewhile hath hush'd my cry, Almost hath grown a mere fond memory. Where ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... spare minute I could find. Our little home-journal went bravely on through twelve numbers. Its yellow manuscript pages occasionally meet my eyes when I am rummaging among my old papers, with the half-conscious look of a waif that knows it has no right to its escape ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... astonishment in Towsley's eyes as she thus indifferently declined ice-cream, and was amused by it. A whimsical impulse seized her to furnish the waif with all of the dainty which he could possibly consume, and satisfy his craving for one time, at least. In all her life she had never seen any person eat the cold stuff as he did. His mouth opened like a trap, a spoonful went into it, the mouth closed, reopened, another spoonful—no pause, ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... A waif two years of age was taken from a benevolent institution in Boston, and given to a childless sailor, on his way from a voyage to his home in Maine on the Penobscot River. The sailor knew not from what institution ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... this man had looked straight into his eyes, and had at once stopped and questioned him, had singled out the one true statement from a mass of lies, and had given him—not a stale loaf with the top cut off, a suspicious sort of charity which always angered the waif—but his own food, bought for his own consumption. Most wonderful of all, too, this man knew what it was to be hungry, and had even the insight and shrewdness to be aware that the waif's best chance of eating the scones at all was to eat them then and there. For the first time a feeling ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... for verse from me, the feeble prey Of this self-seeking world, a waif and stray With none to whom to cling; From me—unhappy, purblind, hopeless devil! Who e'en in what is good see only evil In any ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... upon his breast and put a little hot hand into his own. A great tenderness toward her filled his whole being and brought a sense of happiness very foreign to him lately. How gentle and kindly this little waif of fortune had ever been. And how even those few weeks of a better schooling had improved her. She had shed all the old vulgarities—she was just a simple schoolgirl as he would ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... be peculiar difficulties in his age which he cannot overcome. He may be out of harmony with his circumstances, too early or too late, and then all his thoughts perish; his genius passes away unknown. But not therefore is he to be regarded as a mere waif or stray in human history, any more than he is the mere creature or expression of the age in which he lives. His ideas are inseparable from himself, and would have been nothing without him. Through a thousand personal influences they have been brought home ...
— Sophist • Plato
... kitten, with a faded red ribbon knotted about its neck, and vicious, amber-colored eyes that were a perpetual challenge, had fled from the tender mercies of Dick to the city of refuge under Beryl's cot; and community of suffering had kindled an attachment that now prompted the lesser waif to spring into the girl's folded arms, and rub its head against her shoulder. Mechanically Beryl's hand stroked the creature's ear, while it purred softly under the caress; but suddenly its back curved into an arch, the tail broadened, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the years that endure not Whose tide shall endure till we die And know what the seasons assure not, If death be or life be a lie, Sways hither the spirit and thither, A waif in the swing of the sea Whose wrecks are of memories that wither As ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... sighed as if her own thoughts frightened her. For a moment they sat silent, while the mist trailed its white shroud above them, as if death had paused to beckon a tired child away, but, finding her so gently cradled on a warm, human heart, had relented and passed on, leaving no waif but the broken oar for the river to carry toward ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... and Vasconia was much more keenly disputed and for a much longer time uncertain. Duke Waif re was as able in negotiation as in war; at one time he seemed to accept the pacific overtures of Pepin, or, perhaps, himself made similar, without bringing about any result; at another, he went to seek and found even in Germany allies who caused Pepin much embarrassment and peril. The population ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... thought; "I am condemned to float here below, like a waif which no one wants; no shore is henceforward accessible, for if the world refuses me, I disgust God. Ah! Lord, remember the garden of Gethsemani, the tragic defection of the Father whom Thou didst implore in unspeakable pangs." In the silence which received his cry he gave way, ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... sharply, perhaps unreasonably, irritated. Known in the neighborhood as open-handed and kindly, it had sometimes happened, but generally only in wintry weather, that he had come home to find some poor waif lying in wait for him. Man, woman or child who had wandered in, maybe, before the big door downstairs was closed, or who, if still blessed with some outer semblance of gentility, had managed cunningly to get past the Cerberus who lived in the basement, and whose duty ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... thing more poor than themselves, whereon they could satisfy the anger of their tortured souls. And his last misery lay in this: that he himself could find no day in his life to admire, no one past dream to cherish, no inmost corner of his heart to love. The lowest tramp, the least-heeded waif of the night, might have some ultimate pride, but he himself had nothing, nothing whatever. He was a dream-pauper, ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... her into their home and brought her up. It was a simple tale and simply told, but the heroism of the romance touched it with an epic quality that gripped the listener's imagination and sympathies tenaciously. And now the waif snatched from the grasp of the covetous sea had blossomed into this exquisite being; this creature beloved, petted, and well-nigh spoiled by a proudly ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... across China that presently arose from his flea-ridden bed of sickness, and began to make a languid personal introspection. I had developed a new sensitiveness, the sensitiveness of an alien in an alien land, in the hands of new-made, faithful friends. Without them I should have been a waif of all the world, helpless in the midst of unconquerable surroundings, leading to an inevitable destiny of death. I seemed declimatized, denationalized, a luckless victim ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Like the waif, he spoke Shainsan, and spoke it with a better accent than any nonhuman I had ever known—so well that I looked again to be certain. I wasn't too dazed to answer in the same tongue, but I couldn't keep ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... odd of me, I must confess, to talk in this way, and to receive all those tender allusions from a gentleman about whom I had spoken and felt so sharply only the evening before. But Bartram was abominably lonely. A civilised person was a valuable waif or stray in that region of the picturesque and the brutal; and to my lady reader especially, because she will probably be hardest upon me, I put it—can you not recollect any such folly in your own past ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... the only picture we have as yet seen of the interior of Vicksburg during its ever-memorable siege; the only sketch of the hopes and fears of its inhabitants. Its dedication is as follows: 'To one who, though absent, is ever present, this little waif ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... great men who were loved and nurtured and ministered to by their stepmothers. I think well of womankind. The woman who abuses a waif that Fate has sent into her care would mistreat her own children, and is a living ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... quivering, and caused the strong shudders that passed over her in rapid succession; but the child had rendered her such good service, in her own hour of need, that she felt the least she could do was to receive and care for the poor little waif tenderly, without making any inquiries as to her evidently desperate situation. After giving her in charge to her own maid, with orders that she should be properly clothed, and made thoroughly comfortable in every way, Isabelle resumed her reading—or rather tried to resume it; ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... at that, and looked at his watch quickly. "Not late yet, but I'll walk along. Where are you going, waif? Aren't you in ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... heart reverted to her. He had been in a dream, he said to himself; he would conquer it and be only hers; he would go away with her into the forests and green fields she loved, or he would share in the life of usefulness for which she yearned. But then, what was he to do with this little waif from the heart's tropics,—once tampered with, in an hour of mad dalliance, and now adhering in-separably to his life? Supposing him ready to separate from her, could she be detached ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... her youth there. It is all, as I say, so simple, and written with such apparent economy of effort, that only afterwards does the amazing cleverness of Mrs. WHARTON'S method impress itself upon the reader. Charity Royall was a waif, of worse than ambiguous parentage, brought up in a community where her passionate and violently sensitive nature was stifled. Two men loved her—dour middle-aged Lawyer Royall, whose house she kept, and Lucius Harney, the young visitor from the city, the fairy-prince of poor Charity's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... having none other, to scrape acquaintance, where, how, and with whom he could. Many a long dull talk he held upon the benches or the grass; many a strange waif he came to know; many strange things he heard, and saw some that were abominable. It was to one of these last that he owed his deliverance from the Domain. For some time the rain had been merciless; one night after another he had ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... with new eyes, not as an enemy, but as a comrade—a comrade marooned on the selfsame island of loneliness and bound to him by the common experience of a kindred adversity. He was like Crusoe discovering the footprint. Here, quite close to him, was a fellow waif who had drunk deep of his own bitter sense of desertion. With a thrill of sympathy, ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... reappeared with a very unpromising looking boy whom we recognized as a street waif that had been taken into what some one called our "raggedy school" a few years before. He was a glum looking boy—a boy without a smile. There was a set expression on his face which might be interpreted as "life is not worth living," or, which would be an equally ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... on. At nine he had been boarded with a woodsaw man, who worked him sixteen hours a day and beat him in addition; so Jimmie had skipped out, and for ten years had lived the life of a street waif in the cities and a hobo on the road. He had learned a bit about machinery, helping in a garage, and then, in a rush-time, he had got a job in the Empire Machine Shops. He had stayed in Leesville, because he had got married; he had met his wife in a brothel, and she had wanted to quit the ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... through the time of her traitors of the Revolutionary age, down to the time of her Butlers and her Marcys, her Van Burens and Hoyts, poltroonery and corruption have with her ruled the hour. Nature has her freaks, and in one of them she gave a great man, John Jay, to New York. Hamilton was a waif from the West Indies on her spirit- barren strand, and Rufus King from Massachusetts. No doubt, among her millions, she has many wise and good, but the day when they begin to impress any fit influence of theirs upon her counsels, will open a new chapter ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... none can clearly know; Athwart the mountains and immense wild tracts, Or flung a waif upon that vast sea-flow, Or down the river's boiling cataracts: To reach it is as dying fever-stricken 5 To leave it, slow faint birth intense pangs quicken; And memory swoons ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... And, do you know, Mr. Horn, its being for waifs and strays makes me like it all the more; because I was a waif and ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... and peopled by the countrymen of Cortes; and the sea that laves the piers of San Francisco is the ocean of the East and of the isles of summer. There goes the Mexican, unmistakable; there the blue-clad Chinaman with his white slippers; there the soft-spoken, brown Kanaka, or perhaps a waif from far-away Malaya. You hear French, German, Italian, Spanish, and English indifferently. You taste the food of all nations in the various restaurants; passing from a French prix-fixe where every one is French, to a roaring German ordinary where ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have jumped into the boat with a rope's-end, as she came alongside, taking a turn anywhere for the moment; but as, with main-topsail aback, we crept slowly down upon the poor, forlorn-looking waif, a gaunt, unkempt scarecrow suddenly upreared itself in the stern-sheets and, uttering queer, gibbering sounds the while, scrambled forward into the eyes of the boat, with movements that somehow were equally suggestive of the ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... martyrs for our glorious faith, married to a Melchite! The mere idea is sacrilege, is blasphemy; I can give it no milder name! I and your father will die childless before we consent! And it is for the love of this woman, whose heart is so cold that I shiver only to think of it—for this waif and stray, who has nothing but her ragged pride and the mere scrapings of a lost fortune, which never could compare with ours—for this thankless creature, who can hardly bring herself to bid me, your mother, such a civil good-morning—by Heaven it is the truth—as I ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the mute appeal of this wee waif alone and unloved in the midst of the horrors of the savage jungle. It was this thought more than any other that had sent her mother's heart out to the innocent babe, while still she suffered from disappointment that she had been deceived ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... ruin—no human soul can tell. No wonder my bark was wrecked after such mad and careless navigation; but, thank God, the blow of the tempest that staggered and shattered it, and drove it on the reefs, has not sunk it utterly, and now, like a waif or stray, it is being carried to be refitted across ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... work is known." A piece of honey-comb, one day, Discovered as a waif and stray, The Hornets treated as their own. Their title did the Bees dispute, And brought before a Wasp the suit. The judge was puzzled to decide, For nothing could be testified Save that around this honey-comb There had been seen, as if at home, ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... backward glance, inspired by fond imaginings that the pinto might have stopped to graze, Sundown stalked down the road. Waif of chance and devotee of the goddess "Maybeso," he rose sublimely superior to the predicament in which he found himself. "The only reason I'm goin' east is because I ain't goin' west," he told himself, ignoring, with warm adherence to the glowing ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... ladies have found their way into the state-rooms of the other cabin; particularly a nightcap of Mademoiselle Viefville's, that has been discovered in Captain Truck's room, and which that gallant seaman has forthwith condemned as a lawful waif. As he never uses such a device on his head, he will be compelled to wear it next his heart. He will be compelled to convert it ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... hear of battle, murder, and sudden death unmoved—it seemed to him in the game; but the tragedy of a child, a mere counter yet in the play of life—that was different. He slid a hand over the table, and caught Macavoy's arm. "Poor little waif!" he said. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... seize mementoes from the deceased lady's scant leavings, was one who had in her own palmetto hut an empty cradle scarcely cold, and therefore a necessity at her breast, if not a place in her heart, for the unfortunate Lufki-Humma; and thus it was that this little waif came to be tossed, a droll hypothesis of flesh, blood, nerve and brain, into the hands of wild nature with carte blanche as to the disposal of it. And now, since this was Agricola's most boasted ancestor—since it appears the darkness of her ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... independent waif in theatre-land, this was wealth beyond her dreams. She stretched both hands across ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... dying of rapid consumption. By what mysterious providence a new-born babe should thus be sent to such a man's door is beyond my comprehension. But the wife of Varick, softer of heart than its mother, took in the shivering waif, adopted it in place of one only a few weeks older, which she had buried two days previous, and resisted all urgency of the few friends she had to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... was angry? Not a bit of it! He smiled back into the laughing face and let her pull his whiskers as much as she liked. For his whole heart had gone out to this little waif that he rescued from the river, and at last the solitary man had ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... herself. I guess you could call it an incantation. I got a picture of a nubile waif, too freakish to fit where she'd been raised. What had her Hegira been like? In what frightful places had she found herself welcome? From her talk, it could have been an Ozark backwater. I didn't want to know what backwoods crone had taught her ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... a night long and a day long, faint with hunger, weak from a beating that had been added to five days in the dungeon and eighty hours in the jacket, oppressed by the calamity of human fate, apprehensive of what was to happen to me from what I had seen happen to the others—I, a wavering waif of a human man and an erstwhile professor of agronomy in a quiet college town, I hesitated to accept ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... and you are wanted, Though a waif upon life's stair; Though the sunlit hours are haunted With the shadowy shapes of care. Still the Great One, the All-Seeing Called your spirit into being - Gave you strength for any fate. Since your life by Him was needed, All your ways ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... as she spoke, and showed to the young man, who now stood beside the carriage, the still inanimate form of the little waif ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... rightfully. He will have all that I die possessed of. I am seeking his interests but only justly and humanly. When he first came in contact with this—this investment of yours—as you call him, it was as tutor to this Morley. Consider! tutor, my brother's son, to your—your waif! And the dear, noble fellow—my Lans, fell in love with him. Has trusted and helped him socially. Why, he made his college life easy for him by his own popularity. Quite by accident I discovered the vulgar intrigue of this—this Morley. I saw him go into a house where a little seamstress ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... that wild glance, the wet hand clinging to his wrist, the laugh repeated like an echo from the symphony of that November hillside. He reproached himself withal. What was known of Cad Sills? Little known, and nothing cared to be known. A waif, pursuing him invisibly with a twinkle or flare from her passionate eyes. She was the daughter of a sea captain by his fifth wife. He had escaped the other four. They had died or been deserted in foreign ports, but ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... woman, without children, had cheerfully given the little stranger shelter, and had in time grown so fond of her that she could not bear the thought of parting. Hence, after the first unsuccessful effort, no further attempt had been made to discover the parentage of the little waif. She called herself Daisy, in her lisping fashion, and her lovely disposition had won for her the poetical title of "Daisy of ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... a moment and said, "I think he said his name was Gladstone." England's grand old man appears to us in many a charming role, but in none is he more manly and commanding than in this of visiting a little crippled waif in a ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... with excitement also, for the boat Carette had sighted was evidently astray, and, moreover, it was, as they could easily see even at that distance, no Island boat, but a stranger, a waif, and so lawful prey and treasure-trove if they ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... gowd and gear, Wi' thee I ne'er gat nane; I got thee as a waif woman, I'll leave thee as ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... as a mechanic as well? Was I unfit for anything? The other fellows at the shop had a definite foothold in life, while I was a waif, a ne'er-do-well, nearly two years in America with ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... the devil spoke it," said the knight; "and I thank Heaven I can follow good counsel, though old Nick gives it. And so, friend, touching these same Commissioners, bear them this message; that Sir Henry Lee is keeper of Woodstock Park, with right of waif and stray, vert and venison, as complete as any of them have to their estate—that is, if they possess any estate but what they have gained by plundering honest men. Nevertheless, he will give place to those who have made their might their right, and will not expose the lives of good and true ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... better introduce the few poems which I shall present for your consideration, than by the citation of the Proem to Longfellow's "Waif":— ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... touched his feelings deeply, but he said enough to let the eager and thankful Hetty know that not only had Jesus and His love been preached to the boys, but she perceived that what had been said and sung had made an unusual impression, though the little ragged waif sought to conceal it under the veil of cool pleasantry, and she now recognised the fact that the prayers which she had been putting up for many a day in her brother's ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... hostelry worthy of the name. This place, the Fountain House, as it was called, was a decent enough looking hotel and the young aviators were warmly welcomed. After supper, for in Meadville nobody "dined," Miss Prescott and the girls sauntered out with The Wren to obtain some clothing for the waif who had so strangely come into their possession. It was odd, but somehow they none of them even suggested giving up the queer little foundling to the authorities as had originally been their intention. Instead, although none of them actually voiced it, it appeared that tacitly they had decided to ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... despairs of grace? There's no spring-gun or man-trap in that face! Let Moses then look black, and Aaron blue, That look as if they had little else to do: For Chisholm speaks, 'Poor youth! he's but a waif! 60 The spoons all right? the hen and chickens safe? Well, well, he shall not forfeit our regards— The Eighth Commandment was not ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to comprehend. God knows, at that moment I pitied the poor dumb waif, alone in all the whole round earth with me. The candle-flame, moved by the wind like a slow-painting brush, flickered upon her face, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... ignorance of grammar and spelling; and while I smiled at the evident pride in the "brutther" who was a "verry good hite," and the offer to take less wages if "I would do his washin," I found myself wondering what sort of waif upon the sea of life was this not very tall person, over thirteen, ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... stood, and the negro was tying Master Philip's hat over his ears, my aunt entered the room, bearing in her arms the poor little waif from the massacre. The child had been washed and warmed, and wore over her dress and feet a sort of mantle, which the good woman had hastily and ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... Freckles is a nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms in the great Limberlost Swamp; the manner in which everyone who meets him succumbs to the charm of his engaging ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... We've never learned anything conclusive. Sometimes I'm sure he is. Then again I doubt it. I think HE really believes he is—bless his heart! At all events, one thing is sure: he has good blood in him from somewhere. Jamie's no ordinary waif of the streets, you know, with his talents; and the wonderful way he has responded to teaching and training ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... Ah, senor, a waif of the wind, adrift on the night's Plutonian shore; but an hour or two ago, the gale caught me up in Spain and swept me over the seas. Regard me as a voice, merely a voice that would hold speech with so distinguished ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... welcomed the same circle that had met at her home the November before, and Lena's little heart glowed with the soul-satisfying sense of the difference to her. Then she had been a social waif, received on sufferance. Now she was one of them. She could even afford to have her own opinions. The very memory of past discomforts doubled the present blessedness, and Mr. Lenox looked only half the size that he ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... from the heights, Like witch's demon-spell, that fearful moan. She knew that somewhere in the green abyss His body swung in curves of watery force, Now in a circle slow revolved, and now Swaying like wind-swung bell, when surface waves Sank their roots deep enough to reach the waif, Hither and thither, idly to and fro, Wandering unheeding through the heedless sea. A kind of fascination seized her brain, And drew her onward to the ridgy rocks That ran a little way into the deep, Like questions asked of Fate by longing hearts, Bound which the eternal ocean breaks ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... bridge. He was followed almost immediately by Hiram Da Souza, who, curiously enough, seemed to have been on the platform when the train came in and to have been much interested in this shabby, lonely old man, who carried himself like a waif stranded in an unknown land. Da Souza was gorgeous in frock coat and silk hat, a carnation in his buttonhole, a diamond in his black satin tie, yet he was not altogether happy. This little man hobbling along in front represented fate to him. On the platform at Waterloo he had heard ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lookers-on assisted his hospitality by bringing a saucer of milk. While she ate Plato rested, looking as pleased as if he were her mother at her enjoyment. The luncheon finished, the washing was resumed, and as the waif was now able to help, she soon looked more respectable. But Plato had not finished his work of mercy. He looked at the door leading to the parlor, then at her; and finally bent down tenderly to her little torn ears, as if whispering, but ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... began to start not only in the eyes of the little waif, but handkerchiefs were in demand among all who stood listening to the story, forgetful of sales or profits for the moment, and intent only upon feeding the little ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... and left no descendants; in the later years of his life he built himself a sumptuous palace some five miles from Constantinople, and no man in all the realm save the Sultan himself was so great a man as the Calabrian renegado, the unknown waif from Southern Italy who possessed neither name nor kindred. He was tall and robust in stature, but all his life suffered from "scald-head"; for a definition of which ailment we may refer the curious to the ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... by a physician, who learned that the girl had been a waif and had been taken in charge by a Protestant clergyman when she was nine years old and brought up as his servant. This clergyman had for years been in the habit of walking up and down a passage of his house into which the ...
— The Trained Memory • Warren Hilton
... new departure of rescue work. There is no rest for him until it is accomplished. His rapidity of speech tells of continual activity of mind. He is essentially a business man—he needs must be. He takes a waif in hand, and makes a man or woman of it in a very few years. Why should the child's unparentlike parent now come forward and claim it once more for a life of misery and probable crime? Dr. Barnardo thinks long before he would snap the parental ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... queerly-fashioned brown dress that had seemed very nice back at Miller's Notch, but very funny when contrasted with the pretty, simple serge dresses that the other girls at Highacres wore. Perhaps they had all thought she was a "charity girl," a waif brought here by Uncle Johnny. To be sure, her schoolmates had welcomed her into all their activities, but perhaps they had felt sorry for her and, anyway, it had been after Uncle Johnny had given her the ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... a poor boy who has lost his way—and lost his memory. He doesn't know who he is or where he comes from," explained Van Cheele desperately, glancing apprehensively at the waif's face to see whether he was going to add inconvenient candour to his other ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... deferent, so loving, to his father. And with a peculiar trust and tenderness, John's heart turned to his eldest son, the heir of his name, his successor at Enderley Mills. For, in order that Guy might at once take his natural place, and feel no longer a waif and stray upon the world, already a plan had been started, that the firm of Halifax and Sons should become Halifax Brothers. Perhaps, ere very long—only the mother said privately, rather anxiously ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... outlaw printer of the McClure Press excited and voluble over the possibilities of the country. Now the investment broker found a land of desolation and ruin, and the printer in sorry plight, living in a crude, bare shack, clad like some waif of the streets in the clothes ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... such a character, in such circumstances, in such an age, and such a place: I commend it to those of the Anglo-Gallic school, who love the domestically horrible, and delight in unsunned sorrows: but, I throw not any one topic away as a waif, for the casual passer-by to pick up on the highway. Shadows, indeed, are flung upon the waters, but Phulax still holds the substance ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Edwin in his mother's home dawned clear and bright, and as the soft gleams of brilliant sunlight shone in upon the coverlet of his bed, he, who had been a poorhouse waif, opened his eyes and in bewilderment gazed about the place. Suddenly he remembered some of the events of the previous day, and especially the form of the "big man" and that of the "woman," who, he had been told, was his mother. He remembered, too, his decision ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... is laid in the South during the Civil War, and the hero is a waif who was cast up by the sea and adopted by a ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... bred none can tell, but on the day following the coroner's findings there was a waif-word wandering about that Danvers Carmichael knew more than he had told of the duke's taking off; and whether bred by servants' gossip or the talk of the fool chemist-doctor who had taken the medicine to Pitcairn on the night of the murder and encountered Danvers hatless in the snow, I can ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... exquisitely tender, and his lips, as he whispered the heavenly words, were quite close to her ear. He, a great gentleman, loved the miserable little waif whose kindred consisted of a blind father and two half-starved little brothers, and whose only home was this miserable hovel, whence milor's graciousness and ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... my faith in him, Diana; it is not to be shaken. He has told me a little about the past, though I can see that it pains him very much to speak of it. He has told me of his friendless youth, spent amongst unprincipled people, and what a mere waif and stray he was until he met me. And I am to be his pole-star, dear, to guide him in the right path. Do you know, Di, I cannot picture to myself anything sweeter than that—to be a good influence for the person one loves. Valentine says his whole nature has undergone ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... she bounded in her place. "Oh you incredible little waif!" She brought it out with a wail of violence; after which, with another convulsion, ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... must be a woman, and hastily removed the ribbon, expecting to find embroidered upon it some such name as "Amelie" or "Leontine." But my examination proved futile, the silver ribbon afforded me no clue to the antecedents of my canine waif. And indeed, as I stood contemplating him in some perplexity, the conviction forced itself on my mind that he was not exactly the kind of animal that Amelie or Leontine would be likely to select for ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... enjoy seeing how quickly the girls in our Home learn to help each other. Mercedes had been in the Home but ten days when Francesca came—a bit of a waif who had never worn shoes in all her life, nor seen a bed before. Of course she knew nothing about undressing and sleeping between clean, white sheets. She tried to do like the others, but got into bed with her precious new shoes and stockings on. Mercedes watched her, and when ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen |
