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More "Truant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whipped for playing truant,' she said; 'and I should also punish thee for tearing ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... the way; here is the gate, This little creaking wicket; Here robin calls his truant mate From out the lilac-thicket. The walks are bordered all with box,— Oh! come this way a minute; The snowball-bush, beyond the phlox, Has chippy's nest hid in it. Look at this mound of blooming pinks, This balm, these ...
— The Nursery, No. 107, November, 1875, Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... It goes, however, slower and slower, and curving its journey less and less, until at last its motion in remote obscurity is again so sluggish, that the sun's attraction is once more predominant, and able to recall the truant towards its realms of light. Such is the history of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... church, saw nothing of their running into school, and their minds were so taken up with play, that they never heard the clock strike, and continued playing so long till they were afraid to go in; so at last they agreed to play truant, and they all went together a bird's nesting. The first nest they found was a poor little Robin Redbreast's, which one of them, whose name was Harry Harmless, and who was not so hard-heated as the rest, (indeed his chief fault was keeping company with these ...
— The History of Little King Pippin • Thomas Bewick
... in the same great, blind, inexorable Governmental machine. Here, too, was a miniature fair, the path being lined by itinerant temptations. There was brisk traffic in toffy, and gray peas and monkey-nuts, and the crowd was swollen by anxious parents seeing tiny or truant offspring safe within the school-gates. The women were bare-headed or be-shawled, with infants at their breasts and little ones toddling at their sides, the men were greasy, and musty, and squalid. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... breast, Among the broom, and thorn, and whin, A truant-boy, I sought the nest, Or listed, as I lay at rest, While rose on breezes thin, The murmur of the city crowd, And, from his steeple jangling loud, Saint Giles's mingling din. Now, from the summit to the plain, Waves all the hill with yellow grain And o'er the landscape ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... fighting, and thought it would be bad policy. Tim was tolerably tractable now that he was having his own way, and was not very strenuous in support of his own pugnacious views. When their plans were fully digested they left the island to prepare the stakes. Before noon they separated, and the truant returned home about the ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... was, and stern to view, I knew him well, and every truant knew— Yet he was kind, or if severe in aught, The love he bore for ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... What, thou! Methought Thou wert a stranger in these parts? Ah, truant, Some village beauty lured thee;—thou art now ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... there," said George, self-defensively. "I played moocher," he continued,—by which he meant truant,—"and then they whopped I, and a went home to mother, and she kept un at home, ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... 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 ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... point of slipping away on the Easter Tuesday afternoon; he determined to drink tea with the Misses La Sarthe. He went to his room with important letters to write, and then sneaked down again like a truant schoolboy, and when he got safely out of sight, struck obliquely across the park to the one vulnerable spot in the haw-haw, and after fumbling a good deal, from his side, managed to get the spikes out and to climb down, and repeat the operation upon ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... 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 ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... 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
... municipal 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, and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... district some twenty miles distant from his home. Ned's disposition was a singular compound of good and evil, and his conduct depended in a great measure, upon the companions he associated with. He was easily persuaded, and often during his father's frequent and lengthened absences from home he played truant from school, and associated with the worst boys in the village. I well remember the first morning he entered our school. He was then about twelve years of age; but, owing to his carelessness and inattention, he had made but slight progress in study. ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... those drear solitudes 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 ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... 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
... every morning, and to bring them home again in the evening. Each morning he called at the various houses, he led the children out, he carried the little ones, some on his back and some in his arms, he chastised with a stick those who were inclined to play truant, and he landed them all safely at ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... of an 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; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the corner Sits greeting on a stool, And sair the laddie rues Playing truant frae the school; Then ye'll learn frae silly Sandy, Wha's gotten sic a fright, To do naething through the day That may ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... a spur of this hill, lo! the lake; and not far from the foot of a tree, behold! our truant brother. Beside him was Dash, and not a great way off, tied to a dwarf algaroba tree, stood the mule. Dugald was sitting on the ground, with his gun over his arm, gazing up ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... battles, in which the latter, like his dog, always came off the victor. The upshot of all these contests was, the expulsion of Dick from the Sabbath-school, into which he carried the bickerings engendered through the week. Another reason for his expulsion was the frequency with which he played truant, and of his having, in several instances, enticed other boys away from the school for ...
— Who Are Happiest? and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... the weather that certain lads, imbued with that spirit of lawlessness and adventure which seems inherent in the nature of the young Briton, had conspired together to defy the authority of their schoolmaster by playing truant from afternoon school and going to bathe in Firestone Bay. And it was while these lads were dressing, after revelling in their stolen enjoyment, that their attention was attracted by the appearance of a tall ship gliding up the Sound before the soft ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... Maypole. Nine Men's Morris was another popular game, and Falstaff, referring to his treatment when he escaped from Ford's house disguised as the fat woman of Brentford, says, "Since I plucked geese, played truant, and whipp'd top, I knew not what it was to be beaten, since lately." Goose-plucking was a particularly barbarous pastime. We know that hockey and football were played in Elizabethan England, and that the corporation of Stratford kept a bowling-alley at the municipality's expense for ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... him that they were overheard and must respect the conventions here. The door had just been opened anew, and an old lady had come in, followed by a young man in whom the journalist recognized the truant schoolboy, perpetrator of the famous and as yet unforgotten "tres chic" of the Blonde Venus first night. This lady's arrival caused a stir among the company. The Countess Sabine had risen briskly from her seat in order to go and greet her, ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... try calling the rooster back, when he starts to play truant, with all that mouthful of ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... 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 Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... braided blades of grass Where the truant had to pass; And they wriggled through the rushes And the reeds of the morass, Where they danced, in rapture sweet, O'er the leaves that laid a street Of undulant mosaic for The ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... childhood. When he began to run wild with the other boys he preferred their savage freedom; and he got out of going to school by most of the devices they used. He had never quite the hardihood to play truant, but he was subject to sudden attacks of sickness, which came on about school-time and went off towards the middle of the forenoon or afternoon in a very strange manner. I suppose that such complaints are unknown at the present time, but the Young People's fathers can ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... mock me, when with tears of rapture He bathed my hand; knelt; sighed; as had his voice By pleasure been o'erwhelmed, a while was silent; But soon came words, sweet as those most sweet kisses Which grateful Venus gave the swain whose care Brought back her truant doves!——So sweet, so sweet—— Distrust, herself, must have believed those words. Oh! and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... rising from the depth of the pond, the white top of his float. Fred gave a half shriek at what he saw, for to him it seemed a feat of unsurpassed daring, as Harry clasped the bough with his legs, and swinging himself head downwards, he plunged his hands into the water and grasped his truant line. ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... to drink; father invalided and being helped by a Sick Society, 3/- a week, and Parish 5/- a week. Housing: five in two rooms. They are in a burying club. Children fleabitten. Two have died. Food is rather scanty. Wife very quarrelsome and drunken. The boys play truant often. Two were given free food and clothes two winters ago, and this winter one has free dinners and clothes given. A Mission has given cheap clothes. Evidence from School-master, Police, Poor Law Officer, C.O.S. branch, Church, School Charity, Sick ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... perfect right, besides sound reason, to do. It was a great while before our grandmothers' daughters could peaceably stitch and overcast a seam, instead of over-sewing and felling it. I know women who feel to this moment as if to sit down and read a book of a week-day, in the daytime, were playing truant to the needle, though all the sewing-machines on the one hand, and all the demand and supply of mental culture on the other, of this present changed and bettered time, protest ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... said he, "it's no reason why you shouldn't." So he put Young Gerard to work, first as sheepboy to his own flock, but later the boy had a flock of his own. There was no love lost between these two, and kicks and curses were the young one's fare; for he was often idle and often a truant, and none was held responsible for him except the old shepherd who was selling him piece-meal, year by year, to their master. Because of what depended on him, Old Gerard was constrained to show him some sort of care when he would liever have wrung ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... We crossed the country without obstacle, mounted on two powerful Mecklenburgers; and before noon, were deep in Brabant. The very rashness of the undertaking seemed to restore to Don John his forgotten hilarity of old! He was like a truant schoolboy, that has cheated his pedagogue of a day's bird-nesting; and eyes more discerning than those of the stultified natives of these sluggish provinces, had been puzzled to detect under the huge patch that blinded him of an eye, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... its rich vengeance." Silently, Bowing his head, Sidney withdrew. But Drake, So fiercely the old grief rankled in his heart, Summoned his swiftest horseman, bidding him ride, Ride like the wind through the night, straight to the Queen, Praying she would most instantly recall Her truant courtier. Nay, to make all sure, Drake sent a gang of seamen out to crouch Ambushed in woody hollows nigh the road, Under the sailing moon, there to waylay The Queen's reply, that she might never know It reached him, if it proved ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Betham,—Not my will, but accident and necessity made me a truant from my promise. I was to have left Merton, in Surrey, at half-past eight on Tuesday morning with a Mr. Hall, who would have driven me in his chaise to town by ten; but having walked an unusual distance on the Monday, and talked and exerted myself ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... returned from the West Indies, but without having recovered her truant husband. On her return, one or two more letters Burns wrote to her in the old exaggerated strain—the last in June, 1794—after which Clarinda ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... had longed to make a little gentleman of him, but he refused to be made. He would give a little contemptuous curve to his lip, and take on a shy, charity-boy grin, when refinement was thrust upon him. He played truant from the High School, sold his books, his cap with its badge, even his very scarf and pocket-handkerchief, to his school-fellows, and went raking off heaven knows where with the money. So he spent two very ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... audible, but that was all, and, deeply pained, Ellen retired to her own room, which she did not quit, even to see her favourite cousin decked for the ball. Emmeline sought her, however, and tried by kisses to recall the truant rose, the banished smile, but Mrs. Hamilton did not come to wish her good night, and Ellen's ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... of Long Ago! O drowsy winds, awake, and blow The snowy blossoms back to me, And all the buds that used to be! Blow back along the grassy ways Of truant feet, and lift the haze Of happy summer from the trees That trail their tresses in the seas Of grain that float and overflow The orchard lands ...
— Riley Farm-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... not so!—and still, 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, Where, as metal plucks the lightning Flashing ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... anticipated. "Shall we go to school?" he asked. "We shall have time to get there before it opens." "No," I replied; "you have persuaded me to come here, and now I shall stay." We both did. I never played truant again after this day. Did the schoolmaster become acquainted with this breach of discipline? No; or I am afraid he would not have given me such a testimonial as I now hold ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... Talbot, his uncle's dearest and most intimate friend. He informed Waverley that on his return from abroad he had found both Sir Everard and his brother in custody on account of Edward's reported treason. He had, therefore, immediately started for Scotland to endeavour to bring back the truant. He had seen Colonel Gardiner, and had found him, after having made a less hasty inquiry into the mutiny of Edward's troop, much softened toward the young man. All would have come right, concluded Colonel Talbot, had it not been for our hero's joining ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... old woman opened the door and Maria slept in her house. The king was very angry at her for playing truant, but when she returned home the next day, she found the plants of her sisters withered away, because they had disobeyed their father. Now the window in the room of the eldest overlooked the gardens of the king, ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... 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 of mettlesome, ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... the other side said: 'I observe you lay great stress on a painter's eye; what do you mean by that expression?' 'A painter's eye,' replied Gainsborough, 'is to him what the lawyer's eye is to you.' As a boy at the Grammar School of his native town, it is to be feared he loved to play truant. One day he went out to his usual sketching haunts to enjoy the nature which he loved heartily, previously presenting to his uncle, who was master of the school, the usual slip of paper, 'Give Tom a holiday,' in which his father's handwriting was so exactly imitated that not the slightest suspicion ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... by which the childish mind attempts to achieve an indirect purpose and at the same time keep his peace with his conscience. It is when he already has a certain fear of lying, and is not yet thoroughly sincere and truth-loving, that he will come home from the truant fishing party and ingeniously tell you that a "friend of Harry's" caught the fish, instead of saying that he himself did it. His conscience is quite satisfied with the reflection that he is a friend of Harry's. In this stage of his career ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... the traveller did nothing which was worthy of such careful record. Sometimes she did but bathe the weary feet of her little children, but the angel over the right shoulder—wrote it down. Sometimes she did but patiently wait to lure back a little truant who had turned his face away from the distant light, but the angel over the right shoulder—wrote it down. Sometimes she did but soothe an angry feeling or raise a drooping eye-lid, or kiss away a little grief; but the angel over ...
— The Angel Over the Right Shoulder - The Beginning of a New Year • Elizabeth Wooster Stuart Phelps
... are a-bloom once more. The lilac buds are bursting with the joy of the new spring. A veil of silver-gray floats over Moose Hillock. The idle brook, like a truant boy, dances in the sunshine, singing to itself as it leaps ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... fact, but one member of the household he did not exclusively claim. This was the married daughter, Salina, whose life had been embittered by a truant husband,—no other, in fact, than the erring son of the worthy Mrs. Sprowl. The day when the infatuated girl made a marriage so much beneath the family dignity, Toby, in great grief and indignation, gave her up. "I washes my hands ob her! she ain't no more a chile ob mine!" said the old servant, ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... instance, on the road to 'Frisco and New York, where Pa had resolved to go, at all costs, come what might—it was one step nearer London!—at Honolulu—ten days there and such a success!—the child played truant in the gardens teeming with birds and fruit, climbed apple-trees, was caught one day and scampered off at full speed, pursued by Ma, who threatened to give her a sound smacking this time, the little thief! But Pa thought it ridiculous, for the ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... us with Egyptian exactness and Spartan severity, and the most vexatious and grievous fact of all is, that the strong arm of the law of the land loses its power when it comes our turn to receive justice. The law either plays truant, or openly acknowledges that it has no power to defend us. But the God of law and {pg 199} justice, who broke down one form of slavery, will break down this, too. Still, there is a part for us to do. On this line, as on others, the man who needs help ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various
... that the dog which should have wrought the spit had disappeared. He attempted to employ another, but it bit his leg and fled. Soon after, however, the refractory dog entered the kitchen, driving before him the truant turnspit, which immediately, of its own accord, went into the wheel. A company of turnspits were assembled in the Abbey Church of Bath, where they remained very quietly. At one part of the service, however, the word "spit" was pronounced, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... took from him and plunged into hot water. Between four and five he was sent to school, his parents thinking to keep him out of mischief of this kind. But he had not the least interest in school knowledge, and constantly played truant; and when he did come to school he brought with him all kinds of horrid insects, reptiles, and birds. One morning during prayers a jackdaw began to caw, and as the bird was traced to the ownership of Thomas Edward, ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... tell you:—he beat me grievously, in the shape of a woman; for in the shape of man, Master Brook, I fear not Goliath with a weaver's 20 beam; because I know also life is a shuttle. I am in haste; go along with me: I'll tell you all, Master Brook. Since I plucked geese, played truant, and whipped top, I knew not what 'twas to be beaten till lately. Follow me: I'll tell you strange things of this knave Ford, on 25 whom to-night I will be revenged, and I will deliver his wife into your hand. ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... not, O Freya, weep no golden tears! One day the wandering Oder will return, Or thou wilt find him in thy faithful search On some great road, or resting in an inn, Or at a ford, or sleeping by a tree. So Balder said;—but Oder, well I know, My truant Oder I shall see no more To the world's end; and Balder now is gone, And I am left uncomforted in Heaven." She spake; and all the Goddesses bewail'd. Last from among the Heroes one came near, No God, but of the hero-troop the chief— Regner, who swept the northern sea with fleets, And ruled o'er ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Fancy's two-winged doorway slow doth close. The birds begin to twitter and to sing. All nature waketh and on pointed toes Young truant Morpheus stealeth gently in. Oh, happiness of reinstalled repose, And balsam for thy cold and sweated skin! 'Twas worse than all the nightmares, blessed wight; This vigil with these ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... him with no fear whatever showing in her dark eyes. The clear light of the bright autumn morning had no terrors for youth and health like hers. She put back a truant curl from her forehead where it had sought egress to the world, and looked him full in the face now, drawing a deep breath which caused the round of her bosom to lift the lace at her throat. Then, woman-like, she did the unlocked for, and laughed at him, a low, full ripple of wholesome ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... Evesham keepsake," touching his side, "burst forth again one evening, and left me so spent, that Bessee sent the boy to get me a draught of wine. The boy—mountebank as he is—lost her groat, and played truant; and she, poor wench, got into such fear for me that she went herself, and fell in with a sort of insolent masterful rogues, from whom this young knight saved her. I took her home safe enough after that, and thought to be rid of the knaves when they saw my wallet; ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is seldom that her wishes cross the limits of the domestic circle, which to her is earth itself, and all that it contains which is most desirable. Her husband and children compose her little world, and beyond them and their sympathies, it is rare indeed that her truant affections ever wish to stray. A part of this concentration of the American wife's existence in these domestic interests, is doubtless owing to the simplicity of American life and the absence of temptation. Still, so devoted is the ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... was that Jose and Patch, who had gone a-hunting, had not returned when the party had left for Bell Hammer. It was possible that, during their absence, the dogs had come back, and Anthony did not like to think that truant Patch might be wandering around the house, seeking admission in vain. Consequently, after the car had been noiselessly bestowed—out of consideration for their employers' rest, the four had alighted before they left the road and had man-handled a silent Ford up the drive and ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... 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, very suspicious, and inexorable with hypocrites. ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... found the outdoor air very fresh and sweet after the closeness of the school-house. It had just that same odor in his boyhood, and as he escaped he had a delightful sense of playing truant or of having an unexpected holiday. It was easier to think of himself as a boy, and to slip back into boyish thoughts, than to bear the familiar burden of his manhood. He climbed the tumble-down stone wall across the road, and went along a narrow path ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... played truant all day from school, was lolling on his mother's best sofa in the drawing-room with his leather boots tucked up on the satin cushions, and nothing to do but to suck a few oranges, and nothing to think of but how much sugar to put upon them, when suddenly ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... reported noticing one of the Briarcroft boarders in Mansfield Road on several successive evenings could give no account of the truant's personal appearance. It had been dusk at the time, and they had only seen a girl in a sailor hat with a blue-and-white striped band hurrying rapidly past, as if anxious to escape observation. They thought she had dark hair, and ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... with upturned gaze Idly dreaming away his days. No companions? Yes, a book Sometimes under his arm he took To read aloud to a lonesome brook. And school-boys, truant, once had heard A strange voice chanting, faint and dim— Followed the echoes, and found it him, Perched in a tree-top like a bird, Singing, clean from the highest limb; And, fearful and awed, they all slipped by To wonder in ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... over the unrivalled scene, and gave it a silvery lustre which sweetly harmonized with the silence of the night. The clock's iron tongue, in a neighboring belfry, proclaimed the hour of twelve, as the truant and unfaithful husband seated himself by the side of his devoted and loving wife, and inquired if she ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... kind friend; but beware of making marriage a mere convenience. There may be folly in calling each truant inclination that deep sentiment and secret sympathy which firmly knits heart to heart, and doubtless a common fortune may bind the worldly-minded together; but this is not the holy union which keeps noble qualities in a family, and which fortifies against the ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... rosy East gives warning, 'Tis the wished-for nuptial morning. Sweetest truant from Elysium, Golden morning of the May! All the guests are in their places— Lilies with pale, high-bred faces— Hawthorns in white wedding favours, Scented with celestial savours— Daisies, like sweet country maidens, Wear white scolloped frills to-day; 'Neath her hat of straw the Peasant Primrose ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... Southampton," roared the bosun in reply, "run a-truant from Doggy-Trang. And who ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... gratitude. Before doing so, however, and having said much in commendation, Captain Widdrington will perhaps permit us to offer him a slight and well-intended hint in the contrary sense. When next the truant-fit comes over him, and he favours us with the result of his researches and observations in Spain or any other country—and we hope it will not be long before he does thus favour us—may he be able to devote rather more ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... I play truant from Parkhurst, and that transgression was attended with consequences so tragical that to this day its memory is as vivid and impressive as if the event I am about to record had happened only last week, instead of a ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... team a powerful St. Bernard, so trained that all he had to do was to show him the collar of the missing dog and then send him after the truant. Hamilton gave one smell at the collar and then was off. If that dog was anywhere within two miles he was driven into the camp in a hurry. If a stubborn, obstinate dog objected to march in before him, he gave him a shaking that never had to ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... more especially, of a revelation in colour and form. If our modern education, in its better efforts, really conveys to any of us that kind of idealising power, it does so (though dealing mainly, as its professed instruments, with the most select and ideal remains of ancient literature) oftenest by truant reading; and thus it happened also, long ago, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... proposition to a young widower that he shall undertake re-marriage with a young widow, well-to-do, of another parish; of his going a-wooing with the rather incongruous adjuncts of a pretty young servant girl, who is going to a "place," and his own truant elder sonlet; of the benighting of them as above by the side of a mere or marsh of evil repute; of the insult offered to Marie on the arrival at her new place; of the discomfiture of Germain, the hero, at finding ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... from writing home till he had secured himself a position in which he could maintain himself. When he did communicate with Thursley, it was through Mehetabel, because Simon had forbidden any allusion to the truant boy, and Mrs. Verstage was not herself much of a scholar, and did not desire unnecessarily to anger her husband by having letters in his handwriting come to her by ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... style are feebleness and inanity.' He was thus happily ridiculed by Person:—'Soon after the publication of Sir John's book, a parcel of Eton boys, not having the fear of God before their eyes, etc., instead of playing truant, robbing orchards, annoying poultry, or performing any other part of their school exercise, fell foul in print (see the Microcosm, No. 36) upon his Worship's censure of Addison's middling style.... But what ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... The truant quarrier seemed rather inclined to stay where he was and finish the mug of ale, but Pierston quickened him, and he ascended the staircase. As soon as the lower room was empty Pierston leant with his elbows on the table, and covered his ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... crisp thickness. To her maiden fancy something of his strong virility had escaped even to this wayward little lock of hair. She had wondered then how the Senorita Valdes could keep from loving this splendid fellow if he cared for her. All the more she wondered now, for her truant heart was going out to him with the swift ardent passion of her race. It was as a sort of god she looked upon him, as a hero of romance far above her humble hopes. She found herself longing for chances to wait upon him, to do little services that would draw the approving ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... well to quit the churchyard at once for some place where he was not likely to be seen; he had never played truant before, and for the next hour or two was thoroughly miserable as he slunk about the premises of a neighboring farm, and finally took refuge in a shed, and began to consider his position. He would remain hidden till nine o'clock, and then go home. If nothing were ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... it was sharpened, and the man turned to me with, "Now, you little rascal, you've played truant! Scud to school, or you'll ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... 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. ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... was a pleasure to see the expression of Reed's face when he came upon a new book really after his mind, or, still better, an old book, "Anything fifteenth century or early sixteenth," he used to say; any relic or scrap from Caxton's or De Worde's Press; any specimen of a "truant type" on the page of an early book; or a Caslon, or a Baskerville in good condition; or one of the beauties from Mr Morris's modern Press. Charles Lamb himself could not have looked more radiant or more happy in ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... throwing down the novel which had occupied the moments intervening the completion of the extravagant toilet and the arrival of an admirer. "I feel very much inclined to impose severe punishment upon you. Is it becoming a suitor to play truant when he wishes to hear favorably ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... some 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 less divine than that of your own Iena. Fancy the feelings ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... gowns with white bows in their caps, running about the house in a state of excitement and agitation which it would be impossible to describe. The old lady was dressed out in a brocaded gown, which had not seen the light for twenty years, saving and excepting such truant rays as had stolen through the chinks in the box in which it had been laid by, during the whole time. Mr. Trundle was in high feather and spirits, but a little nervous withal. The hearty old landlord was trying to look very cheerful and unconcerned, but failing signally in the attempt. All the girls ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... one of the soundest thrashings I ever got in my life by playing truant from school in order to follow the Slasher to a wretched little race meeting, held at a place called The Roughs, on the side of the Birmingham Road, in the parish of Hands-worth. My hero was there in glory, followed about by an innumerable tag-rag and bobtail, and I am afraid that ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... heard some news of the truant lover. The fact is, this young lady was as intelligent as she was inexperienced; and she had asked Jacintha to tell Dard to talk to every soldier that passed through the village, and ask him if he knew anything about Captain Dujardin of the 17th regiment. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... like to say, I'm sure, I shouldn't like to say Why I hear your voice, so fresh and pure, In the dash of the laughing spray. Nor why the wavelets that all the while, In many a diamond-glittering file, With truant sunbeams play, Should make me remember your rippling smile— I shouldn't ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... these barren cliffs the ravenous vulture dwells, Who never fattens on the prey which from afar he smells; But, patient, watching hour on hour upon a lofty rock, He singles out some truant lamb, a victim, ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... "cumbered with much serving," and his sister generally remaining with some of her friends in the village during the interval between the morning service and Sunday school, it was comparatively easy for Master Sam to play truant, as indeed he sometimes did from the day school, where his chances of punishment were much greater, Mr. Ford being far more alive to the advantages of a "good education" than to the need of the knowledge which "maketh wise unto salvation." So that, when ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... Sir Bruin, "let me alone with Reynard; I am not such a truant in discretion to become a mock to his knavery;" and thus, full of jollity, ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown
... the street, keeping close to the wall. It seemed unnatural being there at that hour; everything had a quiet, unfamiliar look. The white walls of the houses reproached the truant with ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... (ah, joy!) our singer For his truant string Feels with disconcerted finger, 45 What does cricket else but fling Fiery heart forth, sound the note Wanted by the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... caused an old man's gray hair to turn black and his teeth to grow again—if he only took it long enough; and he had, besides, remedies which would cure chickens that had the pip, horses that kicked, old women with the rheumatism, dogs that howled at the moon, boys who played truant, and cats ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... associations, and so fine and historic an animal is "Brownie" that the newspapers devote write-ups to him just as if he were a regular celebrity or something like that. He is now guarding the chicks on a ranch and is making a dandy truant officer, ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... on our return by the same path, a voice greeted using a colloquial tone as we passed— "Maracana!" We looked about for some time, but could not see anything, until the word was repeated with emphasis— "Maracana- a!" When we espied the little truant half concealed in the foliage of a tree, he came down and delivered himself up, evidently as much rejoiced at the meeting ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... artist to avoid a waste of work and to conserve and concentrate his energies; yet frequently the mind of the maker desires to escape from it, and there is scarcely an artist worth his salt who has not at some moments, with the zest of truant joy, made things which were not for sale. In nearly all the arts it is possible to secede at will from all allegiance to the business which is based upon them; and Raphael may write a century of sonnets, or ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... of the week he wanted to play truant from the office, to be off with Ruth over the hills and far away. Both mornings there came to him a picture of Gertie, wanting to slip out and play like Ruth, but having no chance. He felt guilty because he had never bidden Gertie come tramping, and guiltily he ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... little breeze that was playing truant round the steps did Ben a service without knowing it, for a sudden puff blew a torn leaf to his feet, and seeing a picture he took it up. It evidently had fallen from some ill-used history, for the picture showed some queer ships at anchor, some oddly dressed men just landing, and a crowd of Indians ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... turned again and the truant waters came back, lapping once more the sides of our boat. The Commodore had to see that anchors were run ahead and astern, and all made snug for the night. Then, in the enjoyment of one of the most charming features of houseboating, ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... grieve to chronicle the fact, That selfsame truant known as "Cadet Grey" Was the young hero of our moral tract, Shorn of his twofold names on entrance-day. "Winthrop" and "Adams" dropped in that one act Of martial curtness, and the roll-call thinned Of his ancestors, he with youthful tact Indulgence claimed, since Winthrop no more sinned, ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... son of my neighbor, Luigi Carfarone, who works on the railroad. The boy's been bad—truant—street gamin—all that sort of thing, and his mother, who comes in to clean for me sometimes, has been awfully anxious about him. But it seems he has a passion for tools—maybe his ancestors were mediaeval craftsmen. Anyhow, he's been working for me lately, doing some of the ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... but let no one 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 ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... by hope her sorrows to remove, 45 A heart, that could not much itself approve, O'er Gallia's wastes of corn dejected led, [C] Her road elms rustling thin above my head, Or through her truant pathway's native charms, By secret villages and lonely farms, 50 To where the Alps, ascending white in air, Toy with the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... house and family. He was sought and awaited in vain. Bertrande spent the first month in vainly expecting his return, then she betook herself to prayer; but Heaven appeared deaf to her supplications, the truant returned not. She wished to go in search of him, but the world is wide, and no single trace remained to guide her. What torture for a tender heart! What suffering for a soul thirsting for love! What sleepless nights! What restless vigils! Years passed thus; her son was growing up, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... most intimate friend. He informed Waverley that on his return from abroad he had found both Sir Everard and his brother in custody on account of Edward's reported treason. He had, therefore, immediately started for Scotland to endeavour to bring back the truant. He had seen Colonel Gardiner, and had found him, after having made a less hasty inquiry into the mutiny of Edward's troop, much softened toward the young man. All would have come right, concluded Colonel Talbot, had it not been for ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... supped. 'Tis time you were a-saddle and riding home to your duty. Up and away. Though the wood looks dark from here, 'tis because of our fire so bright. The stars are out and once away from this the road will seem light enough. As light as many another when you're played truant to your master to wander in it. Up, ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... you ever try calling the rooster back, when he starts to play truant, with all that mouthful of words?" queried ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... "You see 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 ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... playing truant," said Lucy, a flush of excitement tinting her cheek. "You see, my aunt wouldn't like my being here any more ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... drear solitudes 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, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Massachusetts and Virginia to Ohio, gives one a tender pang as for a lost child. Perhaps the poor human tramps, who sleep in barns and feed at back doors along those dusty ways, are mindful of the Baby's Breath, and keep a kindly eye out for the little truant. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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 her have ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... blew, and it 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 foliage of the prim gardens, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... weaknesses of human nature, to our fancies, our eccentricities, our fears, our frivolities, our false philosophies. We see its agents, smiling and nodding and ducking to attract attention, as gipsies make up to truant boys, holding out tales for the nursery, and pretty pictures, and gilt gingerbread, and physic concealed in jam, and sugar-plums for good children. Who can but feel shame when the religion of Ximenes, Borromeo, and Pascal, is so overlaid? Who can ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... 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 her ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... shave the Sultan in the New Entertainment." On the other hand, the Ghost of Queen Common-Sense appears before she is killed, and is with some difficulty persuaded that her action is premature. Part of "the Mob" play truant to see a show in the park; Law, straying without the playhouse passage is snapped up by a Lord Chief- Justice's Warrant; and a Jew carries off one of the Maids of Honour. These little incidents, together with the unblushing realism of the Pots of Porter that are made to do duty for wine, and ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... become disloyaltie: Apparell vice like vertues harbenger: Beare a faire presence, though your heart be tainted, Teach sinne the carriage of a holy Saint, Be secret false: what need she be acquainted? What simple thiefe brags of his owne attaine? 'Tis double wrong to truant with your bed, And let her read it in thy lookes at boord: Shame hath a bastard fame, well managed, Ill deeds is doubled with an euill word: Alas poore women, make vs not beleeue (Being compact of credit) that you loue vs, Though others haue the arme, shew vs the sleeue: We in your motion turne, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... a Philadelphian by birth, 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
... 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 ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... the age of ten her life was sketchy. A passionate scramble for food, beatings, tears, slumber, a swift transition from one childish ailment to another that kept her forever out of reach of the truant officer. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... 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
... penniless any more, having leaped to wealth and fame with an immensely successful musical comedy they have just written. And, like Nanki Poo, the musician isn't really a musician, but is the talented, rebellious nephew of the Cosmetic King, none other than Dick Benham himself, a truant from his tyrannical uncle's determination to make him into a rouge and talcum salesman. He falls in love with Sylvia, not knowing her as Sylvia, of course, but only as the girl up-stairs, a poor little wretch ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... but he carries away a home relic with him, and dies with it on his breast. His nature is truant; in repose it longs for change: as on the journey it looks back for friends and quiet. He passes to-day in building an air castle for to-morrow, or in writing yesterday's elegy; and he would flyaway this hour, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... placed behind the door, that the worthy dame soon afterwards repaired to that corner of the room, the more knowing of the scholars were apt to draw certain conclusions as to the somnulent condition of their instructress and the easy terms upon which a truant boy could get off by going that little errand! But the limited means placed at the disposal of those engaged in the education of children then, compared with our millions of Government grant of to-day, do not allow us to judge too ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... being punished for being too fascinating to a poor little fool princess who has played truant and who doesn't want to go back to school." She talked on with forced levity. "As for the kingdom,"—once more her eyes became wistful—"you may say what you like about it. You can't possibly hate it as ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... he is under the complete control of his principal, and consequently a ruinous veering about from school to school is effectually prevented, while the retention of a decidedly vicious boy would obviously be a most unprofitable policy. I have seen a rich English parent bring back his truant offspring to be soundly flogged in presence of his grinning schoolmates—an ugly spectacle, and now happily a rare one in England; but the reverse of the picture, though far less shocking, is by no means pleasantly suggestive. I have heard an American lady express ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... men,—axe in hand,— Behold the guests advancing! How fast the stragglers join the throng, From stall and work-shop gathered; The lively barber skips along And leaves a chin half-lathered; The smith has flung his hammer down, The horse-shoe still is glowing, The truant tapster at the Crown Has left a beer-cask flowing; The coopers' boys have dropped the adze, And trot behind their master; Up run the tarry ship-yard lads;— The crowd is hurrying faster. Out from the mill-pond's purlieus gush, The streams of white-faced millers, And down their slippery ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... their truant school-boy days—"sowed their wild oats"—have taken their stand among men, and are realizing themselves now the blessedness of a home of conjugal and paternal happiness, and begin to know something of the care and anxiety that has been felt for them, and of the hopes which ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... she played lawn-tennis, and, when at the seaside, golf; when all failed, she walked resolutely four or five miles on the high-road, swinging along at a healthy pace, and never pausing save to counsel an old woman or rebuke a truant urchin. On such occasions her manner (for we may not suppose that her physique aided the impression) suggested the benevolent yet stern policeman, and the vicar acknowledged in her an invaluable assistant. By a strange ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... the first waywardness of a child is in truancy from school, which, if it cannot be handled by the teacher, is turned over to the local truant officer. In many cases the truant officer is appointed because of his availability for such work rather than his special competency, and the enforcement of the truancy law is handled in a most perfunctory manner, whereas an intelligent investigation of home conditions and an effort to gain the ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... hour of this sport, Nannie lost patience, and picking up stones, pelted the feathered truant until she fled out of sight—in the ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... heat and loneliness—like the old codger we met back yonder—he could sit by the lagoon in the cool of the evening and fish to his heart's content with a string and a bent pin, and dream he's playing truant from school and fishing in the brook near his native village in England about fifty years ago. It would seem more real than fishing in the dust as some mad old ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... Orpheus; then a series of Christian or religious illustrations, from Adam and Saul to Christ at the Well of Samaria; next, individual portraits; a series of domestic figures, such as the "Children in the Wood," or "Truant Boys"; and, finally, what may be termed national statuary, of which Beethoven and Washington are eminent exemplars. Like Thorwaldsen, Crawford excelled in basso-rilievo, and was a remarkable pictorial sculptor. Having made early and intense studies of the antique, he as carefully observed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... doorway slow doth close. The birds begin to twitter and to sing. All nature waketh and on pointed toes Young truant Morpheus stealeth gently in. Oh, happiness of reinstalled repose, And balsam for thy cold and sweated skin! 'Twas worse than all the nightmares, blessed wight; This vigil ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... years! It 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
... color lifted in her pale cheek. She looked at the dusty road, her hand pressed to her bosom as if to make certain that the truant heart had come back to her like a dove to its cote out of the storm. She looked up presently, and smiled a bit; looked down again, the hot blood writing a ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... immediately set on foot, and the entire body of truant warriors were brought back without bloodshed. One of them, a young warrior, came to Will's tent to beg for tobacco. The Indian—as all know who have made his acquaintance—has no difficulty in reconciling begging ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... caught sight of Vane's face, she uttered a cry which brought out Eliza, who shrieked and ran to tell Aunt Hannah, who heard the cry, and came round from the front, where, with the doctor, she had been watching for the truant, the doctor being petulant and impatient ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... a ship has a master; when a house is to be built, there is a master; when the highways are repairing, there is a master; every little school has a master: the continent is a great school; the boys are numerous, and full of roguish tricks; and there is no master. The boys in this great school play truant, and there is no person to chastise them."—See ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... was not to get his holiday so easily. There came a shout from the forest, and a boy on a brown moor pony went racing off after the truant beast, while a lady and a young girl looked on laughing. It was a very pretty chase, but at last Roger came back in triumph and tethered the donkey, repentant and ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... these complicated facts 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 ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... had been like a truant's escapade for Jane Dardenne; it was a delightful and unexpected holiday, and as she was an actress at heart, she played her part seriously, and threw herself into her character, and enjoyed herself more than she ever enjoyed herself in her most ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... comes in, With his nose above his chin; (two prominent features) With pleasant smile he waves his cane, As though to say, "I would fain refrain; It grieves me sore to give a thwack Upon the shrinking truant's back." ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... another boy who worked his way to New York and back again to Chicago before he was quite fourteen years old, skilfully escaping the truant officers as well as the police and special railroad detectives. He told his story with great pride, but always modestly admitted that he could never have done it if his father had not been a locomotive engineer so that he had played around railroad tracks and "was onto them ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... 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
... had been swallowed up in a hum of truant inattention, and as the heralded speaker made his appearance upon the platform Claire Robson, leaning ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... these, for so her lines impart, The Queen of Benham lost that gem her heart; Scar'd by the din, her bosom treasure flew, And with it every grace and muse withdrew. But far, or long, the wanderer could not roam, For wit and taste soon brought the truant home! One tuneful sonnet at her feet it sung, Then to her breast, its snowy mansion, sprung; Thither it went, the virtues in its train, To hail the panting blessing back again. On its fair throne it now ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... attempt one other,' said the truant—'the utter worthlessness of young ladies' letters, which is such as not to encourage their friends to make any ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for the loving thoughts that start Into being are like perfumes from the blossom of the heart; And to dream the old dreams over is a luxury divine— When my truant fancies wander with that ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... try to bear, With close-lipp'd Patience for our only friend, Sad Patience, too near neighbour to Despair: But none has hope like thine. Thou through the fields and through the woods dost stray, Roaming the country-side, a truant boy, Nursing thy project in unclouded joy, And every doubt ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... predilection. It sounds like heresy to say that Edison became an electrician by chance, but it is the sober fact that to this pre-eminent and brilliant leader in electrical achievement escape into the chemical domain still has the aspect of a delightful truant holiday. One of the earliest stories about his boyhood relates to the incident when he induced a lad employed in the family to swallow a large quantity of Seidlitz powders in the belief that the gases generated would enable him to fly. The agonies ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... thou! Methought Thou wert a stranger in these parts? Ah, truant, Some village beauty lured thee;—thou art ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a sailor. They had little to do, and enjoyed great liberty, going and coming much as they pleased. This idleness seemed, to me, to form the summit of human happiness. I did not often dare to play truant; and the school became odious to me. According to my recollections, this desire for a change must have existed near, or quite a twelvemonth; being constantly fed by the arrival and departure of vessels directly before my ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... the time had made the Easy Chair hypercritical. No; it was only that there comes a time in theatre-going when the boxes are more interesting than the stage. The mimic life fades before the real. In the midst of the finest phrases of the impassioned Herr Faust, what if your truant eyes stray across the parquette and see a slight, pale figure, and recognize one of the bravest and most daring Union generals, whose dashing assaults upon the enemy's works carried dismay and victory day after day? Herr Faust trills on, but ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... not till now, how oft soe'er the task Of truant verse hath lightened graver care, From Muse or Sylvan was he wont to ask, In phrase poetic, inspiration fair; Careless he gave his numbers to the air, They came unsought for, if applauses came: Nor for himself prefers he now the prayer; ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... searched 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
... original is truande, which, as well as the masculine truand, meant, in old French, a vagabond, a rascal; it is still retained in the English phrase "to play the truant."] ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere
... Nature, and marked by those half-cultivated, half-wild features which birds and boys love. It is bounded on two sides by the village and highway, crossed at various points by carriage-roads, and threaded in all directions by paths and by-ways, along which soldiers, laborers, and truant schoolboys are passing at all hours of the day. It is so far escaping from the axe and the bushwhack as to have opened communication with the forest and mountain beyond by straggling lines of Cedar, Laurel, and Blackberry. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... sound of the 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 ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of water in charge of his nest. When the young ones were hatched it was most curious to notice his anxiety for their welfare. Of course young sticklebacks, like young children, are of an inquisitive turn of mind, and apt to play truant too occasionally; but should some little fellow wander too far from the nest, Father Stickles hurries after him, takes the little truant in his mouth, and spits him out right over the nest. This I repeatedly witnessed myself, and I have no doubt you will be able to ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... occasionally the boisterous wind lifted that trifling appendage right into the air, and deposited it over a wall or a fence, and Will Locke was not half so quick as Dulcie in tracing the region of its flight, neither was he so active, however willing, in recovering the truant. Why, Dulcie found his own hat for him, and put it on his head to boot one day. He had deposited it on a stone, that he might the better look in the face a dripping rock, shaded with plumes of fern and tufts of grass, and formed into mosaic by tiny sprays ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... called little things, to which you, do not attend, your handwriting is one, which is indeed shamefully bad and illiberal; it is neither the hand of a man of business, nor of a gentleman, but of a truant school-boy; as soon, therefore, as you have done with Abbe Nolet, pray get an excellent writing-master (since you think that you cannot teach yourself to write what hand you please), and let him teach you to write a genteel, legible, liberal hand, and quick; not ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... a schoolboy, Keith, you would be cleverer at making an excuse for playing truant," she said, laughing. "And I could ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... gentleman? And was it for this that you took fencing lessons, to run poor travellers through the body for the sake of a dollar, or stab women in the back? Go! go! You have played truant to your nurse because she shook ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... demanding to know whether it was not her face I had seen at the opening in the cliff, she replied that it was. Her stag often played the truant, and passed whole hours away from her, rambling beyond the precincts of the solitude that contained its mistress; but no sooner was the small silver bugle, which she wore across her shoulder, applied to her lips, than 'Fidelity' (thus she had named ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... ha' kept me there," said George, self-defensively. "I played moocher," he continued,—by which he meant truant,—"and then they whopped I, and a went home to mother, and she kept un ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... morning, David was afraid to go to school, apprehending the severe punishment he might get from the master. He therefore left home as usual, but played truant, hiding himself in the woods all day. He did the same the next morning, and so continued for several days. At last the master sent word to John Crockett, inquiring why his son David no longer came to school. The boy was called to an account, and ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... in love's delight And let the whole world see; Alas! one day, away, away, Sped truant Bumble Bee; 'Twas then the red rose turned to white - So was the ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... sharp set hunger and 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
... have been a truant in the law, And never yet could frame my will to it; And therefore frame the ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... by the soul-stuff of its friends in the packet. But the doctor has still to catch it, a feat which is not so easily accomplished as might be supposed. It is now that the whip of souls comes into play. Suddenly the doctor heaves up his arm and lashes out at the truant soul with all his might. If only he hits it, the business is done, the soul is captured, the doctor carries it back to the house in triumph, and restores it to the body of the poor sick man, who ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... where Eliza did the same thing to help start another. We shall erect stone markers showing where Charley Ross was last seen and Carrie Nation was first sighted. We shall pile up tall monuments to Sitting Bull and Nonpareil Jack Dempsey and the man who invented the spit ball. Perhaps then these truant Americans will come back oftener from Paris and Florence and abide with us longer. Meanwhile though they will continue to stay on the other side. And on second thought, possibly it is just as well for the rest of us that ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... He had never "skipped" school before, but the Zoo had him utterly. He was powerless against himself. Some bigger force, represented by a truant officer, was necessary to keep him away from those cages. His father got down to business and gave him a beating—much against that good man's heart. (Skag's father was a Northern European who kept a fruit-store down on Waspen ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... the corner Sits greeting on a stool, And sair the laddie rues Playing truant frae the school; Then ye'll learn frae silly Sandy, Wha's gotten sic a fright, To do naething through the day That may gar ye greet ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... indeed, they had need to be) and issued an edict, ordering the lace-workers to return forthwith, or, failing this, the nearest relative would be imprisoned for life, and steps would be taken to have the truant lace-worker killed. If, however, he or she returned, complete forgiveness would be extended, and work found them for life at handsome remuneration. History does not tell us the result of this decree, but it evidently failed to destroy the lace ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... wou'd be remov'd, yet I am convinc'd, neither of these important Points will be minded, till we are forc'd to get better Notions of Things, by seeing the Nation ruin'd by the want of them, as often as a Boy at School is whipt for playing the Truant, ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... mentioned are some of the shorter poems and detached lyrics. Here Shelley forgets for a while all that ever makes his verse turbid; forgets that he is anything but a poet, forgets sometimes that he is anything but a child; lies back in his skiff, and looks at the clouds. He plays truant from earth, slips through the wicket of fancy into heaven's meadow, and goes gathering stars. Here we have that absolute virgin-gold of song which is the scarcest among human products, and for which we can go to but three poets—Coleridge, Shelley, Chopin, {8} and perhaps ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... me up, and 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 myself ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... should note it; and now, why, there WAS a flaw in 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 ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... "Ah, truant!" cried the fair maiden, as she caressed her little favourite, "how could you wander from me—how could you ever fancy yourself safe apart from Duty? I saw the hawk wheeling in the air, and I trembled for my beautiful pet; but he has found here a refuge and protector. ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... 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 ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... 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
... Yes, I deserve it! I have been nothing but a truant and a vagabond. I have never obeyed anyone and I have always done as I pleased. If I were only like so many others and had studied and worked and stayed with my poor old father, I should not find myself ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... clothes or you don't stir a step," she said sternly. "An' if you don't go to school the truant officer'll come here an' like enough I'll be arrested for not sendin' you. If you don't want your poor aunt to go to jail you'll stand up an' put on this dress I ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... globe of down, The schoolboy's clock in every town, Which the truant puffs amain To conjure lost ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... crowned with corn-flowers. All of them are little ones who have made their escape from poor families. The outer boulevard is their breathing space; the suburbs belong to them. There they are eternally playing truant. There they innocently sing their repertory of dirty songs. There they are, or rather, there they exist, far from every eye, in the sweet light of May or June, kneeling round a hole in the ground, snapping marbles with their ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... plan to execute, the husband went, And ev'ry passenger was thither sent, Where Damon entertained, with sumptuous fare; And, at the end, proposed the magick snare: Said he, my wife played truant to my bed; Wish you to know if your's be e'er misled? 'Tis right how things go on at home to trace, And if upon the cup your lips you place, In case your wife be chaste, there'll naught go wrong; ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... playin' truant maybe. A' mind gettin' ma paiks for birdnestin' masel. I'll wager that's ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... that can charm and enchain, Lureth back at her beck the wild truant again, By the spell of her presence beguil'd— In the home of the Mother her modest abode, And modest the manners by Nature bestow'd On Nature's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... with 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... the trail of one fled, as the truant fawn seeketh again the covers of the woods," said Content. "Our hunt was uncertain, and it might have been vain, so many feet have lately crossed the forest, were it not that Providence hath cast our route on that of our friend, here, who hath had reason to know the probable situation ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... prospered. We crossed the country without obstacle, mounted on two powerful Mecklenburgers; and before noon, were deep in Brabant. The very rashness of the undertaking seemed to restore to Don John his forgotten hilarity of old! He was like a truant schoolboy, that has cheated his pedagogue of a day's bird-nesting; and eyes more discerning than those of the stultified natives of these sluggish provinces, had been puzzled to detect under the huge patch that blinded him of an eye, and the slashed sleeve of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... his dewy, azure eyes, And from his lips words of soft music broke; But still the truant tears would crowding rise, And snowy bosom heave before he spoke. "Oh, come and weep with me," he cried, "fair maid Weep that the gentle reign of Love is o'er; Come, venture nearer—cease to be afraid, For I have ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... ah! what earthly happiness can last! How does the fairest purpose often fail? A truant schoolboy's wantonness could blast Their flattering hopes, and leave them ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... 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 lived ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... a curious thing, but Jane Is sure, just then, to smile again; Or, out the truant sun will peep, And both the babies fall asleep. The fire burns up with roar sublime, And butcher's man is just in time. And oh! My feeble faith grows strong Sometimes, when ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... his flesh." It is seldom that her wishes cross the limits of the domestic circle, which to her is earth itself, and all that it contains which is most desirable. Her husband and children compose her little world, and beyond them and their sympathies, it is rare indeed that her truant affections ever wish to stray. A part of this concentration of the American wife's existence in these domestic interests, is doubtless owing to the simplicity of American life and the absence of temptation. Still, so devoted is the female heart, so true to ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... history of fishes,—you may take more interest than most men. It embodies, from observation, what may be regarded as THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FISHERMAN, and describes some curious scenes and appearances which I witnessed many years ago when engaged, during a truant boyhood, in prosecuting the herring fishery as an amateur. Many of my observations of natural phenomena date from this idle, and yet not wholly ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... upon them by repeating it himself? Does he believe all competition, all allowance of another's merit, fatal to him? Must he, like Moody in the Country Girl, lock up the faculties of his admirers in ignorance of all other fine things, painting, music, the antique, lest they should play truant to him? Methinks such a proceeding implies no good opinion of his own genius or their taste: it is deficient in dignity and in decorum. Surely if any one is convinced of the reality of an acquisition, he can bear not to have it spoken of every minute. If he knows he has an undoubted ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... his last moments. The confusion of the day, and his increasing dread that Harvey might be too late, helped to hasten the event he would fain arrest for a little while. As night set in, his illness increased to such a degree, that the dismayed housekeeper sent a truant boy, who had shut up himself with them during the combat, to the Locusts, in quest of a companion to cheer her solitude. Caesar, alone, could be spared, and, loaded with eatables and cordials by the kind-hearted ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... went on the housekeeper, "he's playing truant these two days, and I don't like to bother the doctor, and get him into trouble. I hide what I can, in pity for ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... shall, I hope, come to myself and business again, after a small playing the truant, for I find that my interest and profit do grow daily, for which God be praised and keep me to my duty. To my office, and anon one tells me that Rundall, the house-carpenter of Deptford, hath sent me a fine blackbird, which I went to see. He tells me he was offered 20s. for him ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... garden open; but Honor was well round the corner, and running fast towards the cricket field. Vivian was very much disturbed and distressed. She scarcely knew what she ought to do. She ventured a little way into the grounds, but not a trace of any truant was to be seen, so she thought it useless to search far. One of the girls must have gone out; on that ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... 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, and in ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... they were so tired they had to rest. They sat down on a curbstone, with Toby between them, and were just beginning to discuss the reward when a heavy hand fell on Mick's shoulder. It was the school porter. In spite of their protests he insisted that Mick was playing truant, and marched him off to school. Jane, left alone with Toby, debated what she ought to do. The reward was to be got in a village three or four miles at the other side of Rowallan, so she would have to wait and go back with Andy. But there was still an hour ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... question I must parry, Still a wayward truant prove: Where I love, I must not marry; Where I ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the destroyer, has here stayed his hand; the colors are as vivid and as fresh as if they were laid on but yesterday. Would that my old friend and master, Otho Venius, was here! At least I will carry back to Antwerp that in my coloring which shall prove to him that I have not played truant to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... at the base, the Violet, the Gilliflower, and the vermilion spotted Mignonette, on their breast, and the chaplet of wilding shrubs upon their brows, give them a charm in the most common-place observation. With me, truant as I have been to the Classic page, it seemed a natural process of my desultory mind, to revert from a contemplation of such pensive dreamy realities of waking enjoyment as I have described, to visions, startling in their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... this truant husband of thine, my lady?' asked the marquis, as soon as Dr. Bayly had said grace. 'Know you whether he eats at all, or when, or where? It is now three days since he has filled his place at thy side, yet is he in the castle. Thou knowest, my lady, I deal ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... idea that he had left Duffield's Hotel," she said presently. "Mark is a dreadful truant. He never comes near me now! I suppose," she added, "he is a great friend ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... make for the treachery of his little gunboat? Not even he [his hands went up in imitation of the sultan's own gesture of the day before] could help it, powerful officer though he was. It was Christmas, a most holy day, and doubtless before dawn the truant craft had slipped out of the harbor without ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... distance from the landing-place under the bridge, we found the detachments that had gone by road, awaiting us. Joining company, we proceeded together to the park, and set about our picnic in the usual harum-scarum fashion, chasing truant children, losing one another, finding one another, making merry over the most dire mishaps, and enjoying the whole thing hugely—elders, juveniles, ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the foot of a rude stone-cross beheld a desolate infant, unnaturally left to perish in the wilderness! It was famishing—expiring. I raised it to my breast, and its little arms twined feebly round my neck Florian! thou wert heaven's gracious instrument to reclaim a truant to his duties! Welcome! I cried to thee, young brother in adversity!—"thou art deserted by thy mortal parents, and my heavenly father has forsaken me!" From that moment I felt I had a motive left to cherish life, since my existence could ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... coil of rich, dark hair, With sunlight sifted through, And a truant curl just here and there, And a knot of ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... 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 ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... girls there, and I've played truant, and—yes, I think I shall go back presently, when I have taken my fill of freedom and this ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... 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 ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... of them to call him. She wrote: 'If I have any power or credit with you, I pray you let me have a trial of it, at this time, in dealing sincerely and earnestly with the King, that Sir Walter Ralegh's life may not be called in question.' Her intercession with her truant Consort through his favourite was not more successful than her pleadings with himself had been. As vainly young Carew Ralegh prayed, without date or superscription, for the life of 'my poor father, sometime honoured with many ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... son of the district doctor, was a blue-eyed youngster in knickerbockers and a sailor blouse. He was playing truant, no doubt—Klaus had his lessons at home with a private tutor—and would certainly get a thrashing from his father when ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... a boy named Elidyr. He was such a poor scholar and he so hated books and loved play, that in his case spankings and whippings were almost of daily occurrence. Still he made no improvement. He was in the habit also of playing truant, or what one of the monks called "traveling to Bagdad." One of the consequences was that certain soft parts of his body—apparently provided by nature for this express purpose—often received a warming ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... Mrs. Eaton's I was sent to a school kept by two very nice rather young Quaker ladies in Walnut Street. It was just opposite a very quaint old-fashioned collection of many little dwellings in one (modelled after the Fuggerei of Augsburg?) known as the Quaker Almshouse. One morning I played truant, and became so fearfully weary and bored lounging about, that I longed for the society of school, and never stayed from study any more. Here I was learning to read, and I can remember "The History ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... efforts, really conveys to any of us that kind of idealising power, it does so (though dealing mainly, as its professed instruments, with the most select and ideal remains of ancient literature) oftenest by truant reading; and thus it happened also, long ago, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... my little matter here is settled at once. Gloriana don't know it, and sha'n't till I'm off. She'd send me to the Tower, I think, if she caught me playing truant. I could hardly get leave to come hither; but I must out, and try my fortune. I am over ears in debt already, and sick of courts and courtiers. Humphrey must go next spring and take possession of his kingdom beyond seas, or his patent ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... pride prevented him from writing home till he had secured himself a position in which he could maintain himself. When he did communicate with Thursley, it was through Mehetabel, because Simon had forbidden any allusion to the truant boy, and Mrs. Verstage was not herself much of a scholar, and did not desire unnecessarily to anger her husband by having letters in his handwriting come ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... 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 ...
— The Last of the Huggermuggers • Christopher Pierce Cranch
... but one member of the household he did not exclusively claim. This was the married daughter, Salina, whose life had been embittered by a truant husband,—no other, in fact, than the erring son of the worthy Mrs. Sprowl. The day when the infatuated girl made a marriage so much beneath the family dignity, Toby, in great grief and indignation, gave her up. "I washes my hands ob her! she ain't no more ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... shakes off his drowsihed, And 'gins to sprinkle on the earth below Those rays that from his shaken locks do flow; Meantime, by truant love of rambling led, I turn my back on thy detested walls, Proud City! and thy sons, I leave behind, A sordid, selfish, money-getting kind; Brute things, who shut their ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... of talking in metaphor," rejoined Brandon, smiling; "they who begin it always get the worst of it. In plain words, dear Lucy, I can give no more time to my own ailments. A lawyer cannot play truant in ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... invincible disputant, now advanced in years, of the Protagoras and Symposium; he is still pursuing his divine mission, his 'Herculean labours,' of which he has described the origin in the Apology; and he still hears the voice of his oracle, bidding him receive or not receive the truant souls. There he is supposed to have a mission to convict men of self-conceit; in the Theaetetus he has assigned to him by God the functions of a man-midwife, who delivers men of their thoughts, and under this character ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... 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
... school was as great as his hatred of the plough. He never could get his lessons or bear the least constraint. He was so much indulged by his mother at home, that tasks and discipline of any kind were intolerable. He was a perpetual truant; till, the master one day attempting to strike him, he ran out of the room and never entered it more. The mother excused and countenanced his frowardness, and the foolish father was obliged to give way. I do ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... matter was that Jose and Patch, who had gone a-hunting, had not returned when the party had left for Bell Hammer. It was possible that, during their absence, the dogs had come back, and Anthony did not like to think that truant Patch might be wandering around the house, seeking admission in vain. Consequently, after the car had been noiselessly bestowed—out of consideration for their employers' rest, the four had alighted before they left ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... first thing he saw was his grandfather propped up in bed, with a ghastly pallor on his face. When he beheld his truant grandson, the scowl upon his brow deepened, and ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... suspect me unjustly." The last word was audible, but that was all, and, deeply pained, Ellen retired to her own room, which she did not quit, even to see her favourite cousin decked for the ball. Emmeline sought her, however, and tried by kisses to recall the truant rose, the banished smile, but Mrs. Hamilton did not come to wish her good night, and Ellen's ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... 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 flapping ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... back "when the robins nest again," and that suffices Cio-Cio-San. But when Sharpless comes with a letter to break the news that his friend is coming back with an American wife, he loses courage to perform his mission at the contemplation of the little woman's faith in the truant. Does he know when the robins nest in America? In Japan they had nested three times since Pinkerton went away. The consul quails at that and damns his friend as a scoundrel. Now Goro, who knows Butterfly's pecuniary plight, brings ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... 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, who persist in remaining in ignorance, are to be the vicious, ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... glistening, I showed to my lover all I wished to hide. His vows were so tender, his speech was so fluent, He whispered his sorrow if ever we must part. My heart in my bosom fluttered and played truant, So I gave it him all ... my innocent heart. On a green bank amidst the purple irises, And the shadow of a pine-wood across it was flung, I gave him soft words, I gave him my kisses, I gave him myself—myself that was so young. ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... township,—intimate in the families of oriole and grasshopper, pickerel and turtle,—quick of hand and eye,—in short, born for practical leadership and victory,—such a boy finds no provision for him in most of our seminaries, and must, by his constitution, be either truant or torment. The theory of the institution ignores such aptitudes as his, and recognizes no merits save those of some small sedentary linguist or mathematician,—a blessing to his teacher, but an object of watchful anxiety to the family ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... 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 elasticity toward the ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... him, and making his way to her, he inquired for Lady Elizabeth. Emma, on the other hand, asked after Violet; and it was curious that both questions were put and answered with constraint, as if each was conscious of being something like a truant. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... devotees deluded, then as now, By astronomical, selfish fakirs, Who pretend claim to heavenly agency And power over human souls divine. Poor bamboozled man; know God never yet Empowered any one of his truant tribe To ride with a creed rod, image of Himself; And thou, oh Sol, giver of light and heat, Speed the hour when man, out of superstition Shall leap into the light of pure reason, Only ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... whole day's exemption from school, the customary half-holiday not being long enough for our picnic. Somehow, we couldn't work it; but fortune arranged it for us. I may say here, that, whatever else I did, I never played truant ("hookey" we called it) ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... cheeks, and gazed fixedly into the green waters, the laughing, dancing, purling waters, green, and, where the sun reached them, shot with seams and cleavages of light, like fluorspar. In the sun-flecked, shadow-dappled grass near by, violets tried to hide themselves, but were betrayed by their truant sweetness. The waters purled, a light breeze rustled the olive-leaves, and birds were singing loud and wild, as birds will ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... you are, I have been; All that you see, I have seen. Hopes that beamed around my way, Cast their light on yours to-day. All that you do, I have done; All your childish ways I've run, All your joys and pangs I've had— All that make you gay or sad; I have sported in the brook, Truant from my work or book; Chased the butterfly and bee, Robb'd the bird's nest on the tree; Damm'd the brook and built my mill; Flew my kite from hill to hill; Sported with my top and ball— Childish joys, I know them all. Childish sorrows, too I've felt— Anguish that ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... 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
... forgotten!" she said. "I forgot about your wife in Delhi." She half turned in the hammock, and after some searching, during which we were silent, succeeded in finding a truant piece of worsted work behind her. The wool was pulled out of the needle, and she held the steel instrument up against the light, as she doubled the worsted round the eye and pushed it back through the little ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... about than who the writers were, and what they felt and thought than by what names they were baptised. The mass of their literature, as it is at present known to us, divides into two broad classes. The one division includes poems on the themes of vagabond existence, the truant life of these capricious students; on spring-time and its rural pleasure; on love in many phases and for divers kinds of women; lastly, on wine and on the dice-box. The other division is devoted to graver topics; ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... ringing for petits pains and chocolate. A toilette was hastily made, without too much time being wasted on water; and Mademoiselle,—all in black and white this morning, like a jeune fille in second mourning,—hurried out to walk on the terrace at the fashionable hour. If she did not find the truant there, she said to herself, she would go into the Casino; for he was sure to be in one place or the other at this time of day, even ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... make up his sixpence for the hospital-cot collection at the children's service last Sunday. He had only fourpence halfpenny. I remember it all now. Oh, how stupid I've been, to be sure!' It was an intense relief to have chased successfully the truant halfpence. 'Now, Queenie,' went on Theo gleefully, 'in five minutes I shall be ready for you, and we are going to have a good time in the boat. Get ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... foot, and the entire body of truant warriors were brought back without bloodshed. One of them, a young warrior, came to Will's tent to beg for tobacco. The Indian—as all know who have made his acquaintance—has no difficulty in reconciling begging with ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... 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 control of their parents, have either taken their first steps ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... gazed upon thee, ROSE, Across the pebbled way, And thought the very wealth of mirth Was thine that winter day; For while I saw the truant rays Within thy window glide, Remember'd beams reflected ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Thou wert a stranger in these parts? Ah, truant, Some village beauty lured thee;—thou art now ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... all disconcerted by the tumble, which was only a variation of its method of progress, came over on its knees and rose at once to go ahead; but the delay had been sufficient. Steve caught up; and the next instant, the truant, feeling the ground removed from under it, hung helpless across the ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... noon—at twilight dim— Maria! thou hast heard my hymn; In joy and woe—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 Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... abtruennige Schwester! Wie du uns erschreckt hast! Wie es mich freut dich zu finden!" (Oh, my truant sister! What a scare you have given us! How glad I am to find ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... 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 returned, she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... hear your enemy say so, Nor shall you do my ear that violence, To make it truster of your own report Against yourself: I know you are no truant. But what is your affair in Elsinore? We'll teach you to drink ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... he, half in jest and half in earnest, "gin I find ye playing truant, and reading a' sorts o' nonsense instead of minding the scholastic methods and proprieties, I'll just bring ye in a bill at the year's end o' twa guineas a week for lodgings and tuition, and tak' the law o' ye; so mind and read what I tell ye. Do ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... were so tired they had to rest. They sat down on a curbstone, with Toby between them, and were just beginning to discuss the reward when a heavy hand fell on Mick's shoulder. It was the school porter. In spite of their protests he insisted that Mick was playing truant, and marched him off to school. Jane, left alone with Toby, debated what she ought to do. The reward was to be got in a village three or four miles at the other side of Rowallan, so she would have to wait and go back with Andy. But there was still an hour and a half before he would call at Miss Courtney's ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... the adjoining grammar-school, called William and Mary College, of which I am an aspiring bachelor, and you were an ornament before your religious opinions caught from Fauquier drove you away like a truant school-boy. The shepherds were as usual very ridiculous, and I had no opportunity to whisper so much as a single word into my dear Belle-bouche's ear. Ah! how lovely she looked! By heaven, I'll go to-morrow and request her to designate some form of death for me to die—all ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... muddy, dusty, ragged, dishevelled, playing hide-and-seek, and crowned with corn-flowers. All of them are little ones who have made their escape from poor families. The outer boulevard is their breathing space; the suburbs belong to them. There they are eternally playing truant. There they innocently sing their repertory of dirty songs. There they are, or rather, there they exist, far from every eye, in the sweet light of May or June, kneeling round a hole in the ground, snapping marbles with their thumbs, quarrelling over half-farthings, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... The pasture was partly cleared, with here and there a pine stub left standing, and was of about twenty acres extent. We went up across it to the top of the hill, but could not find the colts. Then we walked around by the farther fence, but discovered no breach in it and no traces where truant hoofs had jumped over it. It was growing dark, and we at length went ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... said we would not wait, and his remark called my attention to the fact that there was one more place at the table than there were people assembled. I had barely noted this, when my host said, "Here's the truant," and, turning, I faced a lady who had just entered. Mr. Cullen said, "Madge, let me introduce Mr. Gordon to you." My bow was made to a girl of about twenty, with light brown hair, the bluest of ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... that Ben was a truant from home, as his dress would hardly class him among the homeless boys who ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... is the way; here is the gate, This little creaking wicket; Here robin calls his truant mate From out the lilac-thicket. The walks are bordered all with box,— Oh! come this way a minute; The snowball-bush, beyond the phlox, Has chippy's nest hid in it. Look at this mound of blooming pinks, This balm, these mountain daisies; And can you guess what ...
— The Nursery, No. 107, November, 1875, Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... fence that skirts the way, With blossom'd furze unprofitably gay, There, in his noisy mansion, skill'd to rule, 195 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; 200 Full well they laugh'd, with counterfeited glee, At all his jokes, for many a joke had he; Full well the busy whisper, circling round, Convey'd the dismal ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... thou shouldst be whipped for playing truant,' she said; 'and I should also punish thee ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... become of us all, suppose The sun, some morn, should say, as he rose, 'A truant I'll ...
— The Nursery, April 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 4 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... It was too late then to commit it to memory, and I felt ashamed to go to school without it, for I knew that I should be punished, and be obliged to remain in at recess to make up the lesson. I did not want to play truant, for I was fearful of detection, so I went to my father and feigned headache, and plead that I might remain at home that day. The wish was granted, and for a moment I felt relieved, but at breakfast or dinner, I was not allowed to eat anything; I ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... 22.—There 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 a sailing-ship ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... reply, but stole up to the truant step by step cautiously, and gradually approached near enough to lay his hand on its shoulder; from its shoulder he worked to its neck and wound his arms ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... not 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 worthy lads thirsting for instruction in geography and history and reading and ciphering, ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... Le Bourget they circled the 'drome once, noted the wind socks on the great hangars, and dropped as lightly to the field as two tardy, truant schoolboys seeking to gain entrance without ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... the Cherwell 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 no life left in her, and, though they managed ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... their single note; And tend on new-fledged birds in every place, That duly they may get their tunes by rote; And oft, like echoes, answering remote, We hide in thickets from the feather'd throng, And strain in rivalship each throbbing throat, Singing in shrill responses all day long, Whilst the glad truant ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... the School Attendance Officer and a terror to every boy in the neighbourhood. He looks at the truant and says fiercely, "Where was you?" Then he wags a savage finger at him. "Yes, you was," he says, "you was, you know you was. I caught you in the hact." No boy has ever been ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... knew exactly what had happened, and had no doubt at all about whose duty it was to get the flock together again. All night long the shepherd sought in vain, not being able even to discover what direction either of the three flocks of truant lambs had taken; but in the morning he suddenly came upon his dog, guarding the whole flock—all the seven hundred brought back, and ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... time, and independence should have yielded to subservience—to the male, to him. With her vivid hair and eyes and her swift slenderness, Hazel had a fawn-like air as she traversed the wavering shadows. She passed his tree without seeing him, and stood listening. Then she began to plead with the truant. 'What for did you run away, Foxy, my dear? Where be you? Come back along with me, dear 'eart, for it ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... train Samson was 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 ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... there is seen no change of predilection. It sounds like heresy to say that Edison became an electrician by chance, but it is the sober fact that to this pre-eminent and brilliant leader in electrical achievement escape into the chemical domain still has the aspect of a delightful truant holiday. One of the earliest stories about his boyhood relates to the incident when he induced a lad employed in the family to swallow a large quantity of Seidlitz powders in the belief that the gases generated would ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... here, then, because the occasion offered, and if I pretermitted this, it might be the last, and I was unwilling that any friend or any child, who might lean upon me, who reckoned upon my counsel or advice, should know that I had been such a truant to the cause of religious liberty and humanity, as never to have ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... 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
... my mother that her other son shall comfort her old age; For I was still 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'er they would,—but kept my father's sword; ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... 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 ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... go loafing through town with a truant school-girl you hardly know. I suppose it's my fault for introducing you to her. I want you to tell me how you managed this. Did you telephone her or write a note? Sit down here now and let's have ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... the fairy books," she said, "and all those wonderful and never-to-be-forgotten sensations of the truant, doesn't it? ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 is a claim that is or may be contested; the ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... the old man was angry with them for playing truant. He said slowly, "N—no. She didn't exactly send us; but I don't think she'll mind our having come if we get back in time for supper. Mamma never forbid our ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... vexed these two ladies very little indeed. Pen, who was plunged in his shame and 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 ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... She had always been led to think 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 ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Tennysonians still walked past him as primly as a young ladies' school—the Browningites still inked their eyebrows and minds in looking for the lost syntax of Browning; while Browning himself was away looking for God, rather in the spirit of a truant boy from their school looking for birds' nests. The nineteenth-century sceptics did not really shake the respectable world and alter it, as the eighteenth-century sceptics had done; but that was because ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... like truant schoolboys, with our hands on our knees. I didn't know where I was going and I didn't care. We seemed to be rumbling up the hill, and then I caught ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... I should note it; and now, why, there WAS a flaw in 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, ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... was one lady who would not bore him, and making his way to her, he inquired for Lady Elizabeth. Emma, on the other hand, asked after Violet; and it was curious that both questions were put and answered with constraint, as if each was conscious of being something like a truant. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she know of the late hours of harassing watching that, night after night, Pauline spent waiting the coming in of her truant husband; and less did she know of the agonized feelings of the young wife, as she read in the glassy eye and flushed brow of her husband, the meaning of that once insignificant word "wild," which now she was beginning to apprehend in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... as Chia Cheng 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
... should learn to swim, when with Papa or some kind friend, but not as these boys have. I feel just sure they have played the truant—as I see the village school-master, with his little dog, coming over the rustic bridge ...
— The Royal Picture Alphabet • Luke Limner
... they say, Rather a bad stick any way, Splintered all over with dodges and tricks, Known as "the worst of the Deacon's six;" I, the truant, saucy and bold, The one black sheep in my father's fold, "Once on a time," as the stories say, Went over the hill on a winter's day— Over ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... carries away a home relic with him, and dies with it on his breast. His nature is truant; in repose it longs for change: as on the journey it looks back for friends and quiet. He passes to-day in building an air castle for to-morrow, or in writing yesterday's elegy; and he would flyaway this hour, but that a cage, necessity, keeps him. What is the charm of his verse, of his style, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... 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. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... behint them, and twal o'clock chappit?" Then approaching the Master, he craved pardon for having permitted the rest of his people to go out to see the hunt, observing, that "They wad never think of his lordship coming back till mirk night, and that he dreaded they might play the truant." ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... the son of the district doctor, was a blue-eyed youngster in knickerbockers and a sailor blouse. He was playing truant, no doubt—Klaus had his lessons at home with a private tutor—and would certainly get a thrashing from his ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... his own occupation of stone-cutting was too laborious and too unprofitable an exercise. But this did not come to pass, because, although Giuliano went to a grammar-school for a little, his thoughts were never there, and in consequence he made no progress; nay, he played truant very often, and showed that he had his mind wholly set on sculpture, although at first he applied himself to the calling of joiner and also gave ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... time the truant boy and his companion approached the house, and he mounted the steps of the piazza with eager haste, pulling her after him, immediately upon the arrival of his father, Aunt Mary, and Cousin Bessie. Brief explanation was made, that the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... the depths of the wood there lived a terrible Ogre and Ogress, who kidnapped all children who strayed near their dwelling. Every morning the Ogre threw a big black bag over his shoulder, and stalked through the forest, making the ground shake as he walked. If he found any truant children he popped them into his bag, and when he got home his wife cooked ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... shape, which to Anglantes' peer Seemed his Angelica, beseeching aid. Seemed to Rogero Dordogne's lady dear. Who him a truant to himself had made: If with Gradasso, or with other near He spake, of those who through the palace strayed. To all of them the vision, seen apart, Seemed that which each ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... who worked his way to New York and back again to Chicago before he was quite fourteen years old, skilfully escaping the truant officers as well as the police and special railroad detectives. He told his story with great pride, but always modestly admitted that he could never have done it if his father had not been a locomotive engineer so that he had played around railroad tracks and "was ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... a strong desire to see their country, as well as to become a sailor. They had little to do, and enjoyed great liberty, going and coming much as they pleased. This idleness seemed, to me, to form the summit of human happiness. I did not often dare to play truant; and the school became odious to me. According to my recollections, this desire for a change must have existed near, or quite a twelvemonth; being constantly fed by the arrival and departure of vessels directly before my eyes, ere I set ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 lived by ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... him from writing home till he had secured himself a position in which he could maintain himself. When he did communicate with Thursley, it was through Mehetabel, because Simon had forbidden any allusion to the truant boy, and Mrs. Verstage was not herself much of a scholar, and did not desire unnecessarily to anger her husband by having letters in his handwriting come to ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... study,—the natural history of fishes,—you may take more interest than most men. It embodies, from observation, what may be regarded as THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FISHERMAN, and describes some curious scenes and appearances which I witnessed many years ago when engaged, during a truant boyhood, in prosecuting the herring fishery as an amateur. Many of my observations of natural phenomena date from this idle, and yet not wholly ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... who had lived in the country twenty, thirty years, were better qualified to judge than I was. For peace and quiet I pretended acquiescence, and my purpose thus acquired a taste of stealth. It was with the feelings of a kind of truant that I had set out at length without a word to anyone, and with the same adventurous feelings that I now drew near to Karameyn. Two soldiers, basking in the sunshine on a dust-heap, sprang up at my approach. One was the man I sought, the rogue Rashid. They led me to their captain's ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... disagreeable duty. When the cook had prepared the meat for roasting, he found that the dog which should have wrought the spit had disappeared. He attempted to employ another, but it bit his leg and fled. Soon after, however, the refractory dog entered the kitchen, driving before him the truant turnspit, which immediately, of its own accord, went into the wheel. A company of turnspits were assembled in the Abbey Church of Bath, where they remained very quietly. At one part of the service, however, the word "spit" was pronounced, rather loudly. This reminded the dogs of their ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... hath been more faithful, say. 'Tis all through me that Cino can display The sail of fame on life's unhappy stream." "Thee," quoth I, "root of all my woe I deem, I found what gall beneath thy sweetness lay." Then he: "Ah, traitorous and truant slave! Are these the thanks thou renderest, ingrate, For giving thee a maid without a peer?" "Thy left," cried I, "slew what thy right hand gave." "Not so," said he. The judge, "Your wrath abate. I must have time to give true ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... must have been somewhere in this neighbourhood. And now, Lovel, my good lad, be sincere with meWhat make you from Wittenberg?why have you left your own country and professional pursuits, for an idle residence in such a place as Fairport? A truant ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... How fast the stragglers join the throng, From stall and work-shop gathered; The lively barber skips along And leaves a chin half-lathered; The smith has flung his hammer down, The horse-shoe still is glowing, The truant tapster at the Crown Has left a beer-cask flowing; The coopers' boys have dropped the adze, And trot behind their master; Up run the tarry ship-yard lads;— The crowd is hurrying faster. Out from the mill-pond's purlieus gush, The streams of white-faced millers, And down ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... Mrs. Hardcastle's mild assertion that it could equally well be viewed and studied at a more reasonable hour did not move Tamara, and while her friend slumbered comfortably in her bed at Mena House, she had set off, a self-conscious feeling of a truant schoolboy exalting and yet ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... 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 blind to his faults ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... a-bloom once more. The lilac buds are bursting with the joy of the new spring. A veil of silver-gray floats over Moose Hillock. The idle brook, like a truant boy, dances in the sunshine, singing to itself as it leaps ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 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 and modes of study. ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... in point of fact, I was alone in the world, dependent upon my own resources for whatever little truant ray of sunshine I might get from the golden flood that illuminated the world outside me, and forced by rigid, arbitrary circumstances to train my growing convictions into many a hazardous channel, left to myself to grope among the dawning mysteries of life, ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... nightingale modifies so greatly the timbre of the voice that, while a nightingale chorus at Fiesole may seem joyous, a nightingale chorus in the moist thickets along the banks of the Ouse may seem melancholy. Nay, more, as I once told Tennyson at Aldworth, I, when a truant boy wandering along the banks of the Ouse (where six nightingales’ nests have been found in the hedge of a single meadow), got so used to these matters that I had my own favourite individuals, and could easily distinguish one from another. That rich climacteric swell which is reached ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... words, "no, I will not 'give my requests the form of an order,' I will not 'fly to tears as a means of revenge,' I will not 'condemn the things I once approved without reservation,' I will not 'dog his footsteps with a prying eye'; if he plays truant, he shall not on his return 'see a scornful lip, whose kiss is an unanswerable command.' No, 'my silence shall not be a reproach nor my first word a quarrel.'—I will not be like every other woman!" she went on, laying on her table the little yellow paper volume which had already attracted ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... so, I yet might have retain'd My truant love. Each virtue that she hath With me's a vice—each charm, deformity. They are my foes, array'd against my power, And I must hate them, as ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... Hull, a cousin of Mrs. Flinders. Malay Road. Pombasso's Island, after the chief of the Malay praus. Cotton's Island, after Captain Cotton of the East India Company's Directorate. English Company Islands, after the East India Company. Wigram Island. Truant Island, "from its lying away from the rest." Inglis Island. Bosanquet Island. Astell Island. Mallison Island. Point Arrowsmith, after the map-publisher. Cape Newbald, Newbald Island—After Henrietta Newbald, nee Flinders, who introduced him to Pasley. Arnhem Bay. Wessell ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... Billy, after an hour's vain effort to imprison within notes a tantalizing melody, captured the truant and rain down to the studio to ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... played the truant, or have here Failed in my part, oh! Thou that art my dear, My mild, my loving tutor, Lord and God! Correct my errors gently with Thy rod. I know that faults will many here be found, But where sin swells ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... 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 of Various Types • Various
... the hearty wind was calling to me companionably from where he swung and bellowed in the tree-tops. "Take me for guide to-day," he seemed to plead. "Other holidays you have tramped it in the track of the stolid, unswerving sun; a belated truant, you have dragged a weary foot homeward with only a pale, expressionless moon for company. To-day why not I, the trickster, the hypocrite? I, who whip round corners and bluster, relapse and evade, then rally and pursue! I can lead you the best and rarest dance of any; for I am ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... sentiments was invariably expressed by Mr. Pump, whenever the 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
... father has strongly urged on me the importance of the habit, and I accordingly practise it systematically. Whenever I find my mind wandering away from the subject on which I am engaged, I bring it back forcibly, just as if it were a truant, or a deserter from his colours. Some people can think of two things at the same moment; but my father says it is much better to think of one thing well at a time, as likewise to do one thing well; so, as you may have observed, I never attempt more. The consequence of this system is, that ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... understanding. Their terrible significance." He 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, ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... an incorrigible truant, a chip of the old block, as Tona put it, thinking of that loafer who had been responsible for her, and who also sat staring day in day out at the horizon like a good-for-nothing idiot, half awake. If Tona had had to depend on that girl for a living, ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... form of his wife soon called his thoughts back to misery. Health had wandered away, and the smiling truant strayed so long, that hope of her return had ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... waywardness of a child is in truancy from school, which, if it cannot be handled by the teacher, is turned over to the local truant officer. In many cases the truant officer is appointed because of his availability for such work rather than his special competency, and the enforcement of the truancy law is handled in a most perfunctory manner, whereas an intelligent ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... Philadelphian by birth, 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
... begun; the horse had but warmed to his work; the hunter had but tasted of sweet triumph. Another hopeful of a buffalo mother, negligent in danger, truant from his brothers, stumbled and fell in the enmeshing loop. The hunter's vest, slipped over the calf's neck, served as danger signal to the wolves. Before the lumbering buffalo missed their loss, another red and black baby kicked helplessly on ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... theatrical performances. Girls are sometimes forbidden to sell newspapers or deliver messages for telegraph companies or others. Compulsory education is, of course, universal, and the machinery to bring it about is generally based upon a system of certificates or cards, with truant officers and ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... That was a good day in my life, and better ones followed. No, you and True must be friends. Truant is her name by rights, for her mother never could keep her indoors or at home. Now, Bobby, look ahead! Do you see those lights? We go through the town; and just outside is our home—a very tiny one at present, for we move about; but we'll find a ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... Colonel Talbot, his uncle's dearest and most intimate friend. He informed Waverley that on his return from abroad he had found both Sir Everard and his brother in custody on account of Edward's reported treason. He had, therefore, immediately started for Scotland to endeavour to bring back the truant. He had seen Colonel Gardiner, and had found him, after having made a less hasty inquiry into the mutiny of Edward's troop, much softened toward the young man. All would have come right, concluded Colonel Talbot, had it ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the "Tree Society." Do you not think it will make some odds to these children that they were brought up under the Maples? Hundreds of eyes are steadily drinking in this color, and by these teachers even the truants are caught and educated the moment they step abroad. Indeed, neither the truant nor the studious is at present taught color in the schools. These are instead of the bright colors in apothecaries' shops and city windows. It is a pity that we have no more Red Maples, and some Hickories, in our streets as ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... nagged to death. And if he ventured to slip into some synagogue of an afternoon and read a page or two he would be in danger of being caught red-handed, so to say, for, indeed, she often shadowed him to make sure that he did not play truant. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... home-coming than she had been at the marriage, and much searching went on before she was found. She was unearthed at last. The gardener had seen her shrink away into the shrubbery when the carriage-wheels were heard coming up the road, and he gave information to the cook, by whom the truant was tracked and brought to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... is to be built, there is a master; when the highways are repairing, there is a master; every little school has a master: the continent is a great school; the boys are numerous, and full of roguish tricks; and there is no master. The boys in this great school play truant, and there is no person to chastise ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... 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 Dream A Snow Storm To Nova Scotia The Huntsman and His Hound The Maple Tree The ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... myself and some other lads played truant from school, and went towards the Humber to bathe, but the schoolmaster, Mr. Peacock, followed us closely. He ran and I ran, and I had just time to throw off my clothes and leap into the water, when he got to the bank. He ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... their bedchamber window when they got up in the morning. So naughty, frightened little Goldilocks jumped; and whether she broke her neck in the fall, or ran into the wood and was lost there, or found her way out of the wood and got whipped for being a bad girl and playing truant, no one can say. But the Three Bears never saw ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... for coming," he said in an outburst of gratitude.—"Oh, thank you for coming," and held out his hand. She took it and pressed it, and so they went on hand in hand until the village street was reached. Their high resolve to play truant at all costs had begotten a wonderful sense of fellowship. "I can't call you Miss Henderson," he said. "You know I can't. You know ... I ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... ridicule, when the duke himself entered the room, and told Valentine the welcome news of his friend Proteus' arrival. Valentine said: 'If I had wished a thing, it would have been to have seen him here!' And then he highly praised Proteus 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 ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... was 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 a couple of penknives ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... characteristics of Addison's style are feebleness and inanity.' He was thus happily ridiculed by Person:—'Soon after the publication of Sir John's book, a parcel of Eton boys, not having the fear of God before their eyes, etc., instead of playing truant, robbing orchards, annoying poultry, or performing any other part of their school exercise, fell foul in print (see the Microcosm, No. 36) upon his Worship's censure of Addison's middling style.... But ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... put the true reason down in the record book. And there it will stay always. My nice little boy was a truant-player. And we shall all be so ashamed. What will your father say? And he was so afraid last ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... 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 ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... company? It was Nym, you remember, who set Master Slender on to drinking. "And I be drunk again," quoth he, "I'll be drunk with those that have the fear of God, and not with drunken knaves." Or rather did not every separate squeak of the grocer's wagon cry out a truant disposition? After years of repression here was its chance at last. And with what a joyous rollic, with what a lively clatter, with what a hilarious reeling, as though in gay defiance of the law of ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... talk followed; and then, one of the lords rising to question some of the evidence, he said he must return to his committee and business,-very flatteringly saying, in quitting his post, "This is the first time I have played truant from the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... irregular line of laughing, jostling, shouting men, constantly renewed at the rear until the procession covered miles of roadway. They were of all races and all types; individually they were, many of them, like boys playing truant from school, not quite certain of themselves, smiling and yet uneasy, not entirely wicked in intent. But they were shepherded by men with cunning eyes, men who knew well that a mob is greater than the sum of its parts, more wicked than the individuals who compose it, ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... hurriedly, 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 belonged to ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... the latter's lips as the truant returned to his post. A tender gracious smile was the only sign of displeasure ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... stood in the park watching the game, which proved not so interesting as he had anticipated. "Shall we go to school?" he asked. "We shall have time to get there before it opens." "No," I replied; "you have persuaded me to come here, and now I shall stay." We both did. I never played truant again after this day. Did the schoolmaster become acquainted with this breach of discipline? No; or I am afraid he would not have given me such a testimonial as I ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... our Evils wou'd be remov'd, yet I am convinc'd, neither of these important Points will be minded, till we are forc'd to get better Notions of Things, by seeing the Nation ruin'd by the want of them, as often as a Boy at School is whipt for playing the Truant, before he ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... daughters could peaceably stitch and overcast a seam, instead of over-sewing and felling it. I know women who feel to this moment as if to sit down and read a book of a week-day, in the daytime, were playing truant to the needle, though all the sewing-machines on the one hand, and all the demand and supply of mental culture on the other, of this present changed and bettered time, ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... say, I'm sure, I shouldn't like to say Why I hear your voice, so fresh and pure, In the dash of the laughing spray. Nor why the wavelets that all the while, In many a diamond-glittering file, With truant sunbeams play, Should make me remember your rippling smile— I shouldn't like ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... It 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 during those long years, every ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... indeed myself," answered Owen, smiling as he spoke. "Most grateful I am for the kind way in which you have received me, after I had played truant so many long years; but I could not have come back before, unless you had sent for me, and I have received no letters since ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... corner Sits greeting on a stool, And sair the laddie rues Playing truant frae the school; Then ye'll learn frae silly Sandy, Wha's gotten sic a fright, To do naething through the day That may gar ye greet ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... have been wrong, and left his house and family. He was sought and awaited in vain. Bertrande spent the first month in vainly expecting his return, then she betook herself to prayer; but Heaven appeared deaf to her supplications, the truant returned not. She wished to go in search of him, but the world is wide, and no single trace remained to guide her. What torture for a tender heart! What suffering for a soul thirsting for love! What sleepless nights! What restless ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a boy who had been playing truant and the Jews' harp at the same time, in a subdued and melancholy way under the window, and who had, doubtless, been bribed to undertake his present commission through some extraordinary means, entered the school-room, and laid on my desk a note from the auburn-haired fisherman. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... Senior, had been an Irish politician of considerable ability and some prominence on the East River side of the city. The boy's early education had been picked up in the streets (his father had got the truant officer his position) and it was thorough. Later he had received a more theoretical training in the University of New York, but I think it was his early education which stuck by him longest, and which, in the end, was probably the more useful of the two. ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... 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, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... swallowed up in a hum of truant inattention, and as the heralded speaker made his appearance upon the platform Claire Robson, leaning ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... 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, ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... how perfectly well able he was to do his own business without assistance. Hamilton missed him, and glanced down the table with a gaze of mingled disappointment and displeasure. A few words from him might have recalled Louis, but they were not spoken, and the only impression conveyed to the poor truant was, that the friend he most cared about, in common with the rest, considered him beneath ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... faintly return the pressure of that firm, muscular hand, 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 face, ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... represent the manhood and the intellect of the race. The widespread nature of the movement may be illustrated by the school strike of the spring of 1912, during which every boy and girl above the age of fourteen in most of the primary and secondary schools of Croatia, Dalmatia, and Bosnia played truant as a protest against the misgovernment of Croatia. On that occasion a crowd of 5000 school children paraded the streets of Agram shouting "Down with Cuvaj" (the Ban or Governor of Croatia), and cheering the police when they tried ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... call in the sunrise and the sunset, the rainbow and the autumn woods and the wild flowers, and the woodpecker and the purple finch and the squirrel and the jay and the butterfly, the November traveller and the truant boy, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... US ALL, AND FRIENDS, WHOM SHE WELCOMES 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 de jure, and ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Fanny went to school again; but Jack played truant, as he had done in the morning, and went down in the meadows, with the boys, whom he had told Frank he was ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton
... imperturbable countenance of the mirza lightens up a little, as though infected by the khan's overflowing merriment and the mudbake's rough handling of the young goat. They know each other thoroughly—as thoroughly as orchard-looting, truant-playing, teacher-deceiving school-boys—these three hopeful aspirants to the favor of Allah; they are an amusing trio, and not a ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... forward. We abused the press-censor roundly—we were extremely indignant with him. It was so like him to lose himself the day Ladysmith was relieved. "Confound him," we muttered, and grinned guiltily. We felt as we used to feel when we were playing truant from school. ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... is getting ready his supper, and wondering what's become of him, and torturing herself with hopes that break one by one; and to-night when she goes up to his empty room, having tried to persuade herself that the truant's come back and climbed in at ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... themselves so powerless to prevent it, that they decided to appeal to the Indian Council for assistance. For a time the stern commands of the Chief were listened to and obeyed. Then they neglected his words, and about as frequently as ever they were found playing truant from their ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... this story to justify the idea that the chief had lost his first wife, Kailiokalauokekoa, unless it be the fact that he is searching Hawaii for another beauty. Perhaps, like the heroine of Halemano, the truant wife returns to her husband through jealousy of her rival's attractions. A special relation seems to exist in Hawaiian story between Kauai and the distant Puna on Hawaii, at the two extremes of the island group: it is here that Halemano ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... which, in that woman-despising country, only boys could hope to excel. One day, when she was about fourteen years old, the Princess Woo was missing from the Nestorian mission-house, by the Yellow River. Her troubled guardian, in much anxiety, set out to find the truant; and, finally, in the course of his search, climbed the high bluff from which he saw the massive walls, the many gateways, the gleaming roofs, and porcelain towers of the Imperial city of Chang-an-the City of ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... respect and gratitude. Before doing so, however, and having said much in commendation, Captain Widdrington will perhaps permit us to offer him a slight and well-intended hint in the contrary sense. When next the truant-fit comes over him, and he favours us with the result of his researches and observations in Spain or any other country—and we hope it will not be long before he does thus favour us—may he be able to devote rather more time to the mere authorship part of the work, to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... discovered and prevented her scheme. Then followed her experiences as nursery-governess, her evening lessons under self-selected masters, and her ultimate rise to a higher grade among the teaching sisterhood. Next came another epoch. To the mansion in which she was engaged returned a truant son, between whom and the heroine an attachment sprang up. The master of the house was an ambitious gentleman just knighted, who, perceiving the state of their hearts, harshly dismissed the homeless ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... when Marguerite was announced, for an open book lay on a table beside her; but it seemed to the visitor that mayhap the young girl's thoughts had played truant from her work, for her pose was listless and apathetic, and there was a look of grave ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... there came a message from the schoolmaster that the boy was absent too often. The message was repeated. Ditte could not understand it. She had a long talk with the boy, and got out of him that he often played truant. He made a pretense of going to school, hung about anywhere all day long, and only returned home when school-time was over. She said nothing of this to Lars Peter—it would only ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... was fascinated, but not convinced; and it is probable that had Marie de Medicis at this moment sufficiently controlled her feelings to remain neuter, she might, for a time at least, have retained her truant husband under the spell of her own attractions. Such, however, was not the case; and between his suspicion of being deceived by his mistress, and his irritation at being openly taunted by his wife, the King, who shrank ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... course. It goes, however, slower and slower, and curving its journey less and less, until at last its motion in remote obscurity is again so sluggish, that the sun's attraction is once more predominant, and able to recall the truant towards its realms of light. Such is the history ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... ordered abroad as yet; and Captain Dobbin had not seen George. "He was with his sister, most likely," the Captain said. "Should he go and fetch the truant?" So she gave him her hand kindly and gratefully: and he crossed the square; and she waited and waited, but George ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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. For the ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... when (Ah, joy!) our singer For his truant string Feels with disconcerted finger, What does cricket else but fling Fiery heart forth, sound the note Wanted ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... of refugee and "skedaddler" life abroad during the war ever published, its preservation may one day be useful in the socialistic archives of the South, to whose posterity slavery will seem almost a mythical thing. With as little bias in the second tale, I have etched the young Northern truant abroad during the secession. The closing tale, more recently written, in the midst of constant toil and travel, is an attempt to recall an old suburb, now nearly erased and illegible by the extension of a great city, and may be considered a home American picture ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... To scratch and write Upon a three-legged stool; Nor mourn the joys Of truant boys Who ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... along, Came dainty Zephyrus humming a song, And pausing—the truant—to kiss each flower That blushed in garden, or field, or bower. But no one was left to be merry with him, So he danced with the leaves till the light grew dim, And, as Twilight was going to sleep in the west, He, too, fell asleep ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... which Bertrande owned herself to have been wrong, and left his house and family. He was sought and awaited in vain. Bertrande spent the first month in vainly expecting his return, then she betook herself to prayer; but Heaven appeared deaf to her supplications, the truant returned not. She wished to go in search of him, but the world is wide, and no single trace remained to guide her. What torture for a tender heart! What suffering for a soul thirsting for love! What sleepless nights! What restless vigils! Years passed thus; her ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... fraught That upon my pulses wrought: I too felt the air of June Humming with a merry tune, I too reckoned, like a boy, Less of Time and more of Joy: Till, as homeward I was wending, I perceived my back unbending, And before the mile was done Ran beside my truant son. ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... been swallowed up in a hum of truant inattention, and as the heralded speaker made his appearance upon the platform Claire Robson, leaning forward, ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... of Mark Twain and 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
... at this time at once my true school and favourite play-ground; and if my master did wink at times harder than master ought, when I was playing truant among its woods or on its shores, it was, I believe, whether he thought so or no, all for the best. My uncle Sandy had, as I have already said, been bred a cartwright; but finding, on his return, after his seven years' ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... He should have come ere this: The promised hour is past: he is not here! I love him—yes, my maiden heart is his; I sigh—I languish when he is not near. The truant! Wherefore tarries he? His love, Were it like mine, would woo him to my side— Or does he—dares he—merely seek to prove The doubted passion of his promised bride? Do I not love him? But does he love me? He swore so yester-eve, when last ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... one friend always reappears, A good ghost, not to be forsaken; Whereat she laughs and has no fears Of what a ghost may reawaken, But welcomes, while she wears and mends The poor relation's odds and ends, Her truant from a tomb of years— Her power of youth so ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... been luxuriating and feasting for the past half hour while waiting for a truant ward. Jerome took pity upon me and fed me to keep me in ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... on the subject of the American War, without further reference to the truant who stood by them in the covert of the dusk, thrilling with happiness and the sense ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not free— And it may be Life is too tight around my shins; For, unlike you, I can't break through A truant ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... produced. The Venetians became alarmed in their turn (as, indeed, they had need to be) and issued an edict, ordering the lace-workers to return forthwith, or, failing this, the nearest relative would be imprisoned for life, and steps would be taken to have the truant lace-worker killed. If, however, he or she returned, complete forgiveness would be extended, and work found them for life at handsome remuneration. History does not tell us the result of this decree, but it evidently failed to destroy the lace ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... Madge's rest hour, as she called it,—and there was unmistakable gladness in her voice, when Olivia's tall figure appeared on the threshold. "Welcome, welcome, little stranger," she said, merrily; "do you know, Livy, that you have played truant for four whole days. I was just thinking of sending Deb round this evening to know if anything were the matter. Oh, I see," as her bright, penetrating glance read her niece's face. "You have something wonderful ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... 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 ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the race. The widespread nature of the movement may be illustrated by the school strike of the spring of 1912, during which every boy and girl above the age of fourteen in most of the primary and secondary schools of Croatia, Dalmatia, and Bosnia played truant as a protest against the misgovernment of Croatia. On that occasion a crowd of 5000 school children paraded the streets of Agram shouting "Down with Cuvaj" (the Ban or Governor of Croatia), and cheering the police when they tried ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... long time, and was obliged to return without her. So he took extra care of the plant, and it grew to be the pride of the garden; while the seed that had her own way was roaming over the world. The truant one soon lost all her influence over the winds, who finally refused to carry about a good-for-nothing seed while they had so much needful work to perform. A cold northern blast was the last one she could persuade to bear her, and he dropped her ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... groatsworth of wit, Stephen said, and no truant memory. He carried a memory in his wallet as he trudged to Romeville whistling The girl I left behind me. If the earthquake did not time it we should know where to place poor Wat, sitting in his form, the cry of hounds, the studded bridle and her blue windows. That ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... possession of Gaston with the ready intimacy of one's equal in age, fresh at every point; and he experienced what it is the function of contemporary poetry to effect anew for sensitive youth in each succeeding generation. The truant and irregular poetry of his own nature, all in solution there, found an external and authorised mouthpiece, ranging itself rightfully, as the latest achievement of human soul in this matter, along with the consecrated poetic voices ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... reconciling mind. The world grows big enough to include within its scheme both the instructive political economist and the truant mechanic. But that trick of truly logical behavior seems harder to the man than to the child. For example, I climbed up to my den under the eaves last night—a sour, black sea-fog lying all about, and the December sleet crackling against the window-panes—in order to ...
— Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry
... that became a warrior, and all that a maid might love. Clothing their ideas in the most remote and subtle images, they betrayed, that, in the short period of their intercourse, they had discovered, with the intuitive perception of their sex, the truant disposition of his inclinations. The Delaware girls had found no favor in his eyes! He was of a race that had once been lords on the shores of the salt lake, and his wishes had led him back to a people who dwelt about the graves of his fathers. Why should not ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... like a truant schoolboy to Versailles, and the Marquise brought in her boy with an expression that seemed to say, "This is your boy! He is the one in whose ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... remember Chapelizod 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 of descending steps losing themselves ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... they require to be fastened in order to keep them, and if they are not fastened they will play truant and run away. ...
— Meno • Plato
... great prospect of satisfaction, but my young rogue of a son is the most ungovernable little rake that ever played truant," Lady Mary wrote to Lady Mar in July, 1727, when the boy was fourteen and the ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... One voice, one shape, which to Anglantes' peer Seemed his Angelica, beseeching aid. Seemed to Rogero Dordogne's lady dear. Who him a truant to himself had made: If with Gradasso, or with other near He spake, of those who through the palace strayed. To all of them the vision, seen apart, Seemed that which each had singly most ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... now-a-days. Your cousin Egbert is a big humbug! I never see him strutting about, with his shoulder-straps and his red sword-belts, but I have a mind to take the first off his shoulders, with claws like a cat, and use the second to strap him with, like a truant school-boy!" ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... and shall, I hope, come to myself and business again, after a small playing the truant, for I find that my interest and profit do grow daily, for which God be praised and keep me to my duty. To my office, and anon one tells me that Rundall, the house-carpenter of Deptford, hath sent me a fine blackbird, which I went to see. He tells me he was offered 20s. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... lived under the green bowers. She delights too in calling him fondly by such names as Little Green, Pretty-Wood, Greenwood; after the little madcap's favourite haunts. He had hardly seen a thicket when he took to playing the truant.[3] ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... things, to which you, do not attend, your handwriting is one, which is indeed shamefully bad and illiberal; it is neither the hand of a man of business, nor of a gentleman, but of a truant school-boy; as soon, therefore, as you have done with Abbe Nolet, pray get an excellent writing-master (since you think that you cannot teach yourself to write what hand you please), and let him teach you to write a genteel, legible, liberal hand, and quick; not the hand of a ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... of his wife soon called his thoughts back to misery. Health had wandered away, and the smiling truant strayed so long, that hope of her return had almost ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... had reported noticing one of the Briarcroft boarders in Mansfield Road on several successive evenings could give no account of the truant's personal appearance. It had been dusk at the time, and they had only seen a girl in a sailor hat with a blue-and-white striped band hurrying rapidly past, as if anxious to escape observation. They thought she had dark hair, and that she ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... two-winged doorway slow doth close. The birds begin to twitter and to sing. All nature waketh and on pointed toes Young truant Morpheus stealeth gently in. Oh, happiness of reinstalled repose, And balsam for thy cold and sweated skin! 'Twas worse than all the nightmares, blessed wight; This vigil with these ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... grassy swarth, close cropped by nibbling sheep, And skirted thick with intertexture firm Of thorny boughs: have loved the rural walk O'er hills, through valleys, and by river's brink, E'er since a truant boy I passed my bounds To enjoy a ramble on the banks of Thames. And still remember, nor without regret Of hours that sorrow since has much endeared, How oft, my slice of pocket store consumed, Still hungering penniless and far from home, I fed on scarlet hips and stony ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... is or could have been one truant fluttering murmur of the heart against the reality of glory. And partly for these reasons: 1st, That, hoc abstracto, defrauding man of this, you leave him miserably bare—bare of everything. So that really ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... 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 ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... had a sequel full of sin and of sorrow. Jean Jacques was now forwarded to Turin, to become inmate of a sort of charity school for the instruction of catechumens. The very day after he started on foot, his father, with a friend of his, reached Annecy on horseback, in pursuit of the truant boy. They might easily have overtaken him, but they let him go his way. Rousseau explains the case on behalf of ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... he was soon aware of something else being wrong, for Brookes was rating the three blacks, who had thoroughly enjoyed their truant holiday, and would have stayed away for days in the myall scrub, but the bush in wet weather is to a blackfellow not pleasant, from the showers of drops falling upon his unclothed skin. Consequently the storm had sent them back, and ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... has gone to Drury Lane "to shave the Sultan in the New Entertainment." On the other hand, the Ghost of Queen Common-Sense appears before she is killed, and is with some difficulty persuaded that her action is premature. Part of "the Mob" play truant to see a show in the park; Law, straying without the playhouse passage is snapped up by a Lord Chief- Justice's Warrant; and a Jew carries off one of the Maids of Honour. These little incidents, together with the unblushing realism of the Pots of Porter that are made to do duty for wine, and the ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... and summer greenness. Or, as just then, in the gorgeous October coloring of the whole landscape that lies below, across the farm, which stretches on through an intervale of beautiful meadows and pastures to the woods that skirt the valley of the little truant river, as it ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... ratty old shepherd or sundowner, that's gone mad of heat and loneliness—like the old codger we met back yonder—he could sit by the lagoon in the cool of the evening and fish to his heart's content with a string and a bent pin, and dream he's playing truant from school and fishing in the brook near his native village in England about fifty years ago. It would seem more real than fishing in the dust as some mad old ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... 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 in ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... and we take leave both of the book and its accomplished author, with much respect and gratitude. Before doing so, however, and having said much in commendation, Captain Widdrington will perhaps permit us to offer him a slight and well-intended hint in the contrary sense. When next the truant-fit comes over him, and he favours us with the result of his researches and observations in Spain or any other country—and we hope it will not be long before he does thus favour us—may he be able to devote ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... first tee for a couple of hours before he can get away, and when he looks over the crowded dining-room at night—well, he comes to the conclusion that most of the school have deserted and are playing truant, too! ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp
... grass Where the truant had to pass; And they wriggled through the rushes And the reeds of the morass, Where they danced, in rapture sweet, O'er the leaves that laid a street Of undulant mosaic for The touches ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... 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 ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... something, for he retained, to old age, the memory of some of the scenes through which he used to pass on his way to and from this school. For want of the necessary preliminary training, he could do little or nothing with letters: he rather preferred playing truant and roaming the meadows in listless idleness, wherever his fancy led him. This could not last. His father soon set him to work in the foundry; and with this advantage, that the lad stood on better terms ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... attracted attention. Of the gaiety of autumn, only the red bunches of the sumach were left as a parting present to welcome winter in. The querulous note of the quail had long been heard calling to his truant mate, and reproaching her for wandering from his jealous side; the robins had either sought a milder climate or were collected in the savin-bushes, in whose evergreen branches they found shelter, and on whose berries they love to feed; and little ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... the glowing midsummer his truant brother returned, and my new-born interest vanished like snow before ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... in fact, but one member of the household he did not exclusively claim. This was the married daughter, Salina, whose life had been embittered by a truant husband,—no other, in fact, than the erring son of the worthy Mrs. Sprowl. The day when the infatuated girl made a marriage so much beneath the family dignity, Toby, in great grief and indignation, gave her up. "I washes my hands ob her! ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... Chia Cheng 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 ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... against us with Egyptian exactness and Spartan severity, and the most vexatious and grievous fact of all is, that the strong arm of the law of the land loses its power when it comes our turn to receive justice. The law either plays truant, or openly acknowledges that it has no power to defend us. But the God of law and {pg 199} justice, who broke down one form of slavery, will break down this, too. Still, there is a part for us to do. On this line, as on others, the ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various
... du uns erschreckt hast! Wie es mich freut dich zu finden!" (Oh, my truant sister! What a scare you have given us! How glad I am to find you!) ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... on his return from abroad he had found both Sir Everard and his brother in custody on account of Edward's reported treason. He had, therefore, immediately started for Scotland to endeavour to bring back the truant. He had seen Colonel Gardiner, and had found him, after having made a less hasty inquiry into the mutiny of Edward's troop, much softened toward the young man. All would have come right, concluded Colonel Talbot, had it not been for our hero's joining ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... ceased immediately, but at first the man could not locate the truant. Finally he discovered Black Bruin away up in the top of the tree, where he was well screened by ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... 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, and in ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... 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, very suspicious, and inexorable with hypocrites. The observances ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... but beware of making marriage a mere convenience. There may be folly in calling each truant inclination that deep sentiment and secret sympathy which firmly knits heart to heart, and doubtless a common fortune may bind the worldly-minded together; but this is not the holy union which keeps noble qualities in a family, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... the verra 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
... 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 ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... young gentleman? And was it for this that you took fencing lessons, to run poor travellers through the body for the sake of a dollar, or stab women in the back? Go! go! You have played truant to your nurse because she shook ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... The presence of ladies may have an effect in preventing the use of very intemperate 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 ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... Absence.— N. absence; inexistence &c. 2[obs3]; nonresidence, absenteeism; nonattendance, alibi. emptiness &c. adj.; void, vacuum; vacuity, vacancy; tabula rasa[Lat]; exemption; hiatus &c. (interval) 198; lipotype|!. truant, absentee. nobody; nobody present, nobody on earth; not a soul; ame qui vive[Fr]. V. be absent &c. adj.; keep away, keep out of the way; play truant, absent oneself, stay away; keep aloof, hold aloof. withdraw, make oneself ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... me there," said George, self-defensively. "I played moocher," he continued,—by which he meant truant,—"and then they whopped I, and a went home to mother, and she kept un ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of Southampton," roared the bosun in reply, "run a-truant from Doggy-Trang. And who ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... The attendance or truant officers of the schools know home conditions better than teachers. They have a general knowledge of the city and the peculiarities of the different sections that is most helpful in the selection of places for home libraries or deposit stations. Their knowledge of the home life ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... change it? I'm distress'd. From home I must play truant, lest I meet my brother. My father too, ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... answered to his name at call-over next morning as if he had never missed a day this term. And as Dr Ringwood and the other masters were present, and made no remark, it was generally concluded that the truant had turned up over-night, and had had it out with ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... boys started off for school But loitered by the way, Until at last 'twas quite too late To go to school that day. Ah naughty, naughty, truant boys! But listen what befell! Close by a wicked ogress lived, Down in ...
— Careless Jane and Other Tales • Katharine Pyle
... from beyond the tomb, from another world; all is strange to me; I am, as it were, outside my own body and individuality; I am depersonalized, detached, cut adrift. Is this madness? No. Madness means the impossibility of recovering one's normal balance after the mind has thus played truant among alien forms of being, and followed Dante to invisible worlds. Madness means incapacity for self-judgment and self-control. Whereas it seems to me that my mental transformations are but philosophical experiences. I am tied to none. I am but making psychological investigations. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... no doubt spent in Norfolk; and we learn from his own lips that he plucked geese, played truant, and whipped top, and that he did not escape beating. That he had brothers and sisters we know; for he tells us that he is John with them and Sir John with all Europe. We do not know the dame or pedant who taught his young idea how to shoot and formed his manners; ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... now, how oft soe'er the task Of truant verse hath lightened graver care, From Muse or Sylvan was he wont to ask, In phrase poetic, inspiration fair; Careless he gave his numbers to the air, They came unsought for, if applauses came: Nor for himself prefers he now the prayer; Let but his verse befit a hero's fame, ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... balls. We are now all determined to rob the tree. It has no business to be displaying its round wealth so temptingly. And, beside, it will, if let alone, most probably entice boys from the little black school-house out yonder to "play truant." So it is unanimously voted that Benning, who is light and active, should climb the tree. Up he goes, like one of those little striped woodpeckers that are so often seen in the woods tapping up the trees, and immediately his hands and feet make the branches dance, whilst ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... OF THIS LEGISLATION. One of the results of all this legislation has been to throw, during the past quarter of a century, an entirely new burden on schools everywhere. Such legislation has brought into the schools not only the truant and the incorrigible, who under former conditions either left early or were expelled, but also many children who have no aptitude for book learning, and many of inferior mental qualities who do not profit by ordinary classroom procedure. Still more, they have brought into the school ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... dais which overhung his head. Shading his eyes, the King glanced up and perceived that there was an opening in the canopy. One bird was missing from its post. In great displeasure Solomon demanded of the Eagle the name of the truant. Anxiously the Eagle called the roll of all the birds in his company; and he was horrified to find that it was Solomon's favorite, the Hoopoe, who was missing. With terror he announced the bird's desertion to ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... Truant Bards! where are the Triumphal Odes and the Congratulatory Poems which should have greeted Mr. PUNCHINELLO, who, after deserting his beloved Italy, after a stormy voyage and unspeakable sea-sickness, has arrived here with a view of settling and of becoming a citizen (having already filed his first ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... Cumshaw in the city would be as hard to find as the proverbial needle in a bundle of hay, but in the bush it would be much easier to locate him, Bryce considered. So he drove the car along at a low speed, keeping all the time a watchful eye out for any signs of the truant. As he progressed he was surprised and not a little pleased to find that his New Guinea woodcraft was coming back to him by degrees. The joy of the chase was his, and he experienced again the same keen ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... of bees, having recently fallen, the mother with two more cubs was feasting on the dainty food that this accident had placed within her reach; while the first kept a jealous eye on the situation of its truant and reckless young. ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... oft in glee Came a truant boy like me, Who loved to lean and listen to your lilting melody, Till the gurgle and refrain Of your music in his brain Wrought a happiness as keen to him ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... and there is no sufficient reason why those who are ever present in the spirit should be materially separated. Thou hast only to say a word, to whisper a hope, to breathe a wish, and I will throw myself a repentant truant at thy feet and implore thy pity. When united, however, we will not lose ourselves in the sordid and narrow paths of selfishness, but come forth again in company to acquire a new and still more powerful hold on this ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... interest than most men. It embodies, from observation, what may be regarded as THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FISHERMAN, and describes some curious scenes and appearances which I witnessed many years ago when engaged, during a truant boyhood, in prosecuting the herring fishery as an amateur. Many of my observations of natural phenomena date from this idle, and yet not wholly ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... confirming Ascanio's appointment, which is dated January 1, 1495, is still preserved in the archives of the city. At the beginning of the year 1499, however, Alexander again assumed control of Nepi by compelling the castellan, who commanded the fortress for the truant Ascanio, to surrender it to him. He now invested his daughter with the castle, the city, and the domain of Nepi.[66] September 4, 1499, Francesco Borgia, the Pope's treasurer, who was also Bishop of Teano, took possession of ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... sacred window's round disgrace, But yield to Grecian groups the shining space. . . Thy powerful hand has broke the Gothic chain, And brought my bosom back to truth again. . . For long, enamoured of a barbarous age, A faithless truant to the classic page— Long have I loved to catch the simple chime Of minstrel harps, and spell the fabling rime; To view the festive rites, the knightly play, That decked heroic Albion's elder day; To mark the mouldering halls of barons bold, And the rough ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... not followed by performance; and he still favored to the utmost the truant Frenchmen who made Albany their resort, and often brought with them most valuable information. This drew an angry letter from Denonville. "You were so good, Monsieur, as to tell me that you would give up ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... morning for military service, just having got back to Dresden. So I went to the Platz and there sat an officer as big as a hogshead. And I hope not as full. He began treating me as if I were a truant school boy. 'Stand up! Sit down! Stand up again!' So the examination commenced. I knew I was not fit for the army. I did not want to go. I hate it. But they were ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... am a Lad of about fourteen. I find a mighty Pleasure in Learning. I have been at the Latin School four Years. I don't know I ever play'd [truant, [1]] or neglected any Task my Master set me in my Life. I think on what I read in School as I go home at noon and night, and so intently, that I have often gone half a mile out of my way, not minding whither I went. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Martha and her slow-moving servant Eli, the house of her brother Lazarus of Bethany was set in order three days before the expected arrival of Passover guests. Followed by Eli, who was girt about with a long towel, Martha made a last survey of the large and well furnished living-room, looking for a truant speck of dust. She paused for a moment at a table containing writing materials and bade the servant wipe it carefully and place it, with a case of scrolls, at one end of the wide, latticed window-couch, for here on the comfortable cushions Lazarus spent much time reading. She ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... impulse was to run towards the house, calling his father and the mill-hands as he went. His second, and the one upon which he acted, was to mend the broken boom and capture the truant logs himself. "There is no need of troubling father, and I can do it alone better than any number of those clumsy mill-hands," he thought. "Besides, there is no time to spare; for if the boom once lets go of that snag, we shall lose half the ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... bottom, and to push the boat ashore. "Oui, Monsieur," said the rogue, with a leer, for he remembered the francs, and we soon had our adventurer safe on terra firma again. Then began the tender expostulations, the affectionate reproaches, and the kind injunctions for the truant to remember that he was a husband and a father. Edouard, secretly cursing the punt and all rivers in his heart, made light of the matter, however, protesting to the last that he had ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... he would have pressed the young hero to his breast; but Edwin, trembling with emotion, slid down upon his knees, and clasping the earl's hand, said, in a hardly audible voice, "Receive and pardon the truant son of ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... guard, and the rifled chest was found hidden under a tomb in the adjacent burial ground. Three persons, and the sentinel, were tried for the offence; but on the second day, the crown prosecutor was not in his place. This truant lawyer was enjoying a breakfast, while the court and prisoners were watching the door of entrance. The patience of the judge gave way, and he directed a verdict of "not guilty" to be entered. The crown relieved the treasurer from his responsibility ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... Hardcastle's mild assertion that it could equally well be viewed and studied at a more reasonable hour did not move Tamara, and while her friend slumbered comfortably in her bed at Mena House, she had set off, a self-conscious feeling of a truant schoolboy exalting and yet ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... hatched. Some few years ago I put a male stickleback in a basin of water in charge of his nest. When the young ones were hatched it was most curious to notice his anxiety for their welfare. Of course young sticklebacks, like young children, are of an inquisitive turn of mind, and apt to play truant too occasionally; but should some little fellow wander too far from the nest, Father Stickles hurries after him, takes the little truant in his mouth, and spits him out right over the nest. This I repeatedly witnessed myself, and I have no ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... up to the cottage, Mrs. Curlydovvn assured him that it was quite a cure for sore eyes to see him. Sophia, the elder of the two daughters at home, told him that he was a false truant; and Jemima surmised that the great attractions of the London season had prevented him from coming down to Enfield. 'It isn't that, indeed,' he said. 'I am always delighted in running down. But the Caldigate affair has been ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... inhabitants of 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 each ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... 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 had an ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... eye; what do you mean by that expression?' 'A painter's eye,' replied Gainsborough, 'is to him what the lawyer's eye is to you.' As a boy at the Grammar School of his native town, it is to be feared he loved to play truant. One day he went out to his usual sketching haunts to enjoy the nature which he loved heartily, previously presenting to his uncle, who was master of the school, the usual slip of paper, 'Give Tom ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... and plunged into hot water. Between four and five he was sent to school, his parents thinking to keep him out of mischief of this kind. But he had not the least interest in school knowledge, and constantly played truant; and when he did come to school he brought with him all kinds of horrid insects, reptiles, and birds. One morning during prayers a jackdaw began to caw, and as the bird was traced to the ownership of Thomas Edward, he was dismissed from the school in great disgrace. ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... 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 worthy lads thirsting for ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... host's polite attention, together with the letter-writing pretence, passed away the afternoon—the longest afternoon he had ever spent; and of weariness he had had his share. Lunch was lingering in the dining-room, left there for the truant Mr Hickson; but of the children or Ruth there was no sign. He ventured on a distant ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... 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 well ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... suspension of hostilities; when pop went a third gun, followed as before with a yell. After this, for nearly two hours nothing occurred worthy of comment, save some straggling shouts from the hillside, sounding like the halloos of a parcel of truant boys who had lost ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... 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 he greeted ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... their offers of service. The next day she repaired to one of these kinsfolk,—a person in a large way of business,—and returned home with two great books in white sheepskin. And when Losely looked in to dine, she said, in the suavest tones a tender mother can address to an amiable truant, "Jasper, you have great abilities; at the gaming-table abilities are evidently useless: your forte is calculation; you were always very quick at that. I have been fortunate enough to procure you an easy piece of task-work, for which you will be liberally remunerated. A friend of mine wishes to ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... night young Cupid lost his way, And came to me to find it. He'd been a truant all the day, But didn't ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... glee Came a truant boy like me, Who loved to lean and listen to your lilting melody, Till the gurgle and refrain Of your music in his brain Wrought a happiness as keen to him ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... had correctly observed her governess. Miss Minerva's heavy eyebrows lowered; her lips were pale; her head was held angrily erect, "Carmina!" she said sharply, "you shouldn't encourage that child." She turned round, in search of the truant pupil. Incurably stupid at her lessons, Zo's mind had its gleams of intelligence, in a state of liberty. One of those gleams had shone propitiously, and had lighted her out ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... gather wild flowers, and to pick up smooth little pebbles which had been washed clean by the rain, while Robert walked on reading his book. At last, John, calling after his brother, said, "I do not see what is the use of going to school this fine morning; let us play truant." ...
— Child's New Story Book; - Tales and Dialogues for Little Folks • Anonymous
... day wet and rainy, though not uniformly so. No temptation, however, to play truant; so this will make some amends for a blank day yesterday. I am far in advance of the press, but it is necessary if I go to Drumlanrig on Wednesday as I intend, and to Lochore next week, which I also meditate. This will be no great interruption, however, if I can keep the Canongate ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... quit the churchyard at once for some place where he was not likely to be seen; he had never played truant before, and for the next hour or two was thoroughly miserable as he slunk about the premises of a neighboring farm, and finally took refuge in a shed, and began to consider his position. He would ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... SPECTATOR, I am a Lad of about fourteen. I find a mighty Pleasure in Learning. I have been at the Latin School four Years. I don't know I ever play'd [truant, [1]] or neglected any Task my Master set me in my Life. I think on what I read in School as I go home at noon and night, and so intently, that I have often gone half a mile out of my way, not minding whither ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... mother that her other sons shall comfort her old age, For I was aye a truant bird, that thought his home a cage. For my father was a soldier, and, even when a child, My heart leaped forth to hear him tell of struggles fierce and wild; And when he died, and left us to divide ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... school kept by two very nice rather young Quaker ladies in Walnut Street. It was just opposite a very quaint old-fashioned collection of many little dwellings in one (modelled after the Fuggerei of Augsburg?) known as the Quaker Almshouse. One morning I played truant, and became so fearfully weary and bored lounging about, that I longed for the society of school, and never stayed from study any more. Here I was learning to read, and I can remember "The History of Little Jack," and discussing with a comrade the question ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... verra 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
... that we are de Soyecourts, you and I," he repeated, in a new voice. "After all, I cannot drag you to Noumaria by the scruff of your neck like a truant school-boy. Yes, let us recognize the fact that we are de Soyecourts, you ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... disappeared from all the southerly slopes, and the wind was toward the Camp, so that the sounds he hated came dulled and hushed to his ear, Amberley ventured a few rods down the hillside in search of a missing calf. The truant was a pretty, white-nosed creature, a special pet of his master's, with great brown, confiding eyes, and ample ears, and Amberley had named him Simon. Not a usual name for a calf, as Simon was well aware, but somehow it gave the lonely man a peculiar ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... boy's impetuosity he wished to rush on and meet the truant pilgrim from the sea, but Hermione held him back. She could not bear to lose that sweet sound, the foot-fall on the stones, ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the provision for the school population of the country is, in places, fearfully inadequate. In our large cities, if the truant and labor laws were properly enforced, the lack of school provision would be still more apparent. In New York City alone more than 100,000 children are attending school ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... any moment; they would greet him cordially, and then suddenly assume an air of deep concern. The poor plutocrat's face changed instantly, and he would ask, "What is the matter?" The joker then made answer, "You are a little flushed. You should rest." This was enough. The truant imagination of the unhappy butt went far afield in search of terrors; neither food, nor wine, nor the pleasures of the theatre could tempt him, and he remained in a state of limpness until the natural buoyancy of his spirits asserted itself. What a life! How ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... of fact, I was alone in the world, dependent upon my own resources for whatever little truant ray of sunshine I might get from the golden flood that illuminated the world outside me, and forced by rigid, arbitrary circumstances to train my growing convictions into many a hazardous channel, left to myself to grope among the dawning ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... fight was mainly for decent schoolhouses, for playgrounds, and for a truant school to keep the boys out of jail. If I was not competent to argue over the curriculum with a professor of pedagogy, I could tell, at least, if a schoolroom was so jammed that to let me pass into the next room the children in the front seat had to rise and stand; or if there ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... foreign accent, was startled by a heavy hand which descended with full weight on his shoulder, while the discordant voice of Peter Peebles, who had at length broke loose from the well-meaning Quaker, exclaimed in the ear of his truant counsel—'Aha, lad! I think ye are catched—An' so ye are turned chamber-counsel, are ye? And ye have drawn up wi' clients in scarfs and hoods? But bide a wee, billie, and see if I dinna sort ye when my petition and complaint comes ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... she never went on thin ice, (she didn't venture till the other girls had tried it,) she would have broken through. Her caution, I must say, was of the right kind; it always preceded her undertaking. She had such a 'wholesome fear of consequences,' that she never played truant, as one whom I could mention did. Indeed, antecedents and consequents were always associated in her mind. She never risked any thing for herself or any one else.... Of course, she is still Miss ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... 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
... orbit with certainty, and the planet disappeared in the sun's rays. Gauss published an approximate ephemeris of probable positions when the planet should emerge from the sun's light. There was an exciting hunt, and on December 31st (the day before its birthday) De Zach captured the truant, and Piazzi ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... Such kindness is not to be forgotten during life."—"The Inkyo[u] an hotoke; Iemon Dono and O'Hana are the husband and wife not present?" The question came from some one in the room. "O'Hana San is very ill. Her state is serious. Iemon does not leave her." Akiyama answered for the truant ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... first waywardness of a child is in truancy from school, which, if it cannot be handled by the teacher, is turned over to the local truant officer. In many cases the truant officer is appointed because of his availability for such work rather than his special competency, and the enforcement of the truancy law is handled in a most perfunctory ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... I 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. I picked up some ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... unaccounted for, I suppose any one is at liberty to sport a few conjectures on the subject. May not, for instance, the practice of burning the "holly boy" have its origin in some of those rustic incantations described by Theocritus as the means of recalling a truant lover, or of warming a cold ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... raised above the ground, Sent me by stealth a ray divinely fair; But still her jealous hair Broke the bright beam, and veiled her from my gaze. She, born and nursed in heaven for angels' praise, No sooner saw this wrong, than back she drew, With hand of purest hue, Her truant curls with kind and gentle mien. Then from her eyes a soul so fiery keen, So sweet a soul of love she cast on mine, That scarce can I divine How then I 'scaped from burning utterly. These are the first fair signs of love to be, That bound my heart with ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... duty of the principal to reduce the enrolment per schoolhouse to the lowest point. Therefore, when a zealous Sunday-school teacher finds that one of her little charges has gone to work under age, the offices of the city's solitary factory inspector being out of the question, she hunts up a truant officer, who takes the child before a magistrate, who, in view of the want of school accommodations, promptly discharges the truant. Behind our local municipal administration lies our whole system of capitalistic production, calling for cheap ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... be realised, as the truant emerged from the thicket and entered upon an open plain clothed with low heath,—the Erica vestila, loaded ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... had also been inherited by him. In manner he was neither so austere and taciturn as his father, nor so gentle and amiable as his mother. He was by no means a scholar, and only the strong hand of his father had kept him as a boy in fear of the penalties incurred by the truant. Courage and resolution were his ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... folk behint them, and twal o'clock chappit?" Then approaching the Master, he craved pardon for having permitted the rest of his people to go out to see the hunt, observing, that "They wad never think of his lordship coming back till mirk night, and that he dreaded they might play the truant." ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... through the 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 ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... 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 ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... we have gone abroad in the middle of October, and returned for Christmas and the New Year," she finished, "but we have made up our minds to remain in England this year. Why, here comes the truant, and it ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... counted, they say, Rather a bad stick anyway, Splintered all over with dodges and tricks, Known as "the worst of the Deacon's six"; I, the truant, saucy and bold, The one black sheep in my father's fold, "Once on a time," as the stories say, Went over the hill on a winter's day— Over the hill to ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... 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 her eyes, ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... to his garden and his thoughts. How fresh and sweet and welcoming the garden looked on that calm, lovely summer day! How brightly the morning dewdrops twinkled on the leaves, like a sprinkling of liquid diamonds! Every flower seemed to greet him with silent laughter: "Aha, you've been playing truant, have you? Straying into alien precincts, roving in search of something newer and gaudier than anything you have here? Sunlight palls on you; gas is so much more festive! The scents of the fields are vulgar; finer the hot smells of the playhouse, more meet for a cultured nostril!" ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... admired its crisp thickness. To her maiden fancy something of his strong virility had escaped even to this wayward little lock of hair. She had wondered then how the Senorita Valdes could keep from loving this splendid fellow if he cared for her. All the more she wondered now, for her truant heart was going out to him with the swift ardent passion of her race. It was as a sort of god she looked upon him, as a hero of romance far above her humble hopes. She found herself longing for chances ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... will, but accident and necessity made me a truant from my promise. I was to have left Merton, in Surrey, at half-past eight on Tuesday morning with a Mr. Hall, who would have driven me in his chaise to town by ten; but having walked an unusual distance ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... landing-place under the bridge, we found the detachments that had gone by road, awaiting us. Joining company, we proceeded together to the park, and set about our picnic in the usual harum-scarum fashion, chasing truant children, losing one another, finding one another, making merry over the most dire mishaps, and enjoying the whole thing hugely—elders, juveniles, and all—from beginning ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... minds of their authors. Similarly, the richest pages of Byron's work—from the date of The Curse of Minerva to that of the "Isles of Greece"—are brightened by lights and adorned by allusions due to his training, imperfect as it was, on the slopes of Harrow, and the associations fostered during his truant years by the sluggish stream of his "Injusta noverca." At her, however, he continued to rail as late as the publication of Beppo, in the 75th and 76th stanzas of which we find ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... beautiful face, on which the man at her side gazed with open admiration. The close-fitting cap, with its bright red bow, indicated that the girl had not yet reached her eighteenth year. Here and there peeped out little truant locks of the glossy black hair, whose richness and abundance the close covering could not entirely conceal or fetter. The broad, intellectual brow; the delicate, pencilled lashes, from the shadow of which shone forth lustrous black eyes that flashed with intelligence and spirit; the arched ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... I am very glad to see you: good euen Sir. But what in faith make you from Wittemberge? Hor. A truant ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... repented her harshness and had set herself to make amends. The sparkle came back to Celia's eyes and the lilt to her voice. The children who had been models of deportment while the cold lasted, developed a frisky unruliness, resulting in Malcolm's playing truant and Algie's coming home with a black eye, trophy of his first fight. Persis was too thankful over being able to raise every window in the house and have the sweet spring air flooding in upon her, to take these enormities very much to heart. Indeed, she was almost too busy to deal with the culprits ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... nest again," and that suffices Cio-Cio-San. But when Sharpless comes with a letter to break the news that his friend is coming back with an American wife, he loses courage to perform his mission at the contemplation of the little woman's faith in the truant. Does he know when the robins nest in America? In Japan they had nested three times since Pinkerton went away. The consul quails at that and damns his friend as a scoundrel. Now Goro, who knows Butterfly's pecuniary plight, brings Yamadori to her. ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... 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 ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... complicated facts 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 takes ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... his wife soon called his thoughts back to misery. Health had wandered away, and the smiling truant strayed so long, that hope of her ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... in Smithfield, where he hath a shop—I suppose, a booth. Presently after dinner to the office, and there set close to my business and did a great deal before night, and am resolved to stand to it, having been a truant too long. At night to Sir W. Batten's to consider some things about our prizes, and then to other talk, and among other things he tells me that he hears for certain that Sir W. Coventry hath resigned to the King his place of Commissioner ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... did I play truant from Parkhurst, and that transgression was attended with consequences so tragical that to this day its memory is as vivid and impressive as if the event I am about to record had happened only last week, instead of a quarter of a ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... could she be except next door?" mademoiselle questioned; "and when I went to ask, Monsieur Dubois was seated with his sons having supper, and no signs of the truant. He had seen or heard nothing of her, ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... 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. For the most part, thanks to ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... from that town Felix was suddenly missed, and a brief colloquy elicited the melancholy fact that the boy had been left behind at Potsdam. The tutor thereupon turned back in one of the carriages, whilst the rest proceeded to the next stopping-place. In the course of an hour he returned with the truant seated by his side, dusty and footsore, but otherwise as fresh as when he had started. He had, it appeared, strayed from the party at Potsdam, and returned to the starting-place in time to see the carriages disappearing in the distance enveloped in a cloud of dust. ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... fair have caught Some fresher fancy's gleam; My truant accents find, unsought, The old ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... worked his way to New York and back again to Chicago before he was quite fourteen years old, skilfully escaping the truant officers as well as the police and special railroad detectives. He told his story with great pride, but always modestly admitted that he could never have done it if his father had not been a locomotive engineer so that he had played ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... ye, where be these truant lords? There be some of ye who can reply; aye, and by good St. Edward, reply ye shall. Gloucester, my lord of Gloucester, stand forth, I say," he continued, the thunderstorm drawing to that climax which made many tremble, ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... "A faithless truant to the classic page, Long have I loved to catch the simple chime Of minstrel-harps, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... family. It was unjustifiable, as he remarked twenty times a day, unfeeling, unheard-of, unaccountable. He rang for the servants at his private residence every quarter of an hour or so to learn if the truant had returned. He questioned the boy at the office sharply and repeatedly as to orders left with him by Mr. Ryfe before he went away, only to gather from the answers of this urchin, who would, indeed, have forgotten any number of such directions, that he looked on the present period of anxiety in ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... of the matter was that Jose and Patch, who had gone a-hunting, had not returned when the party had left for Bell Hammer. It was possible that, during their absence, the dogs had come back, and Anthony did not like to think that truant Patch might be wandering around the house, seeking admission in vain. Consequently, after the car had been noiselessly bestowed—out of consideration for their employers' rest, the four had alighted ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... true reason down in the record book. And there it will stay always. My nice little boy was a truant-player. And we shall all be so ashamed. What will your father say? And he was so afraid last night ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... he and Mrs. Dolman invited her to their house, where she was found by Mr. Linley, on his arrival in pursuit of her. After a few words of private explanation from Sheridan, which had the effect of reconciling him to his truant daughter, Mr. Linley insisted upon her returning with him immediately to England, in order to fulfil some engagements which he had entered into on her account; and a promise being given that, as soon as these engagements ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... of a 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
... 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 Dream A Snow Storm To Nova Scotia ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... 'bound for me for the L500, which I stand in danger to the Widow Smith for.' At last the wind became more accommodating. Ralegh, whom carping gouty Anthony Bacon pretended to suspect of having contributed to the delay from underhand motives, collected the truant ships and seamen. On June 1, 1596, the ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... husband and wife have their separate acquaintance, and pursue their separate amusements, undisturbed by domestic squabbles: when they meet in the evening, it is with perfect good humour, and in general, perfect good breeding.—When an English wife plays truant, she soon becomes abandoned: it is not so with the French; they preserve appearances and proper decorum, because they are seldom attached to any particular man. While they are at their toilet, they receive the visits of their male acquaintance, and he must be a man of uncommon discernment, ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... a night in his father's office and discovered there a murdered man. This was a true incident. The man had been stabbed that afternoon and carried into the house to die. Sam and John Briggs had been playing truant all day and knew nothing of the matter. Sam thought the office safer than his home, where his mother was probably sitting up for him. He climbed in by a window and lay down on the lounge, but did not sleep. Presently he noticed what appeared to be an unusual shape ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... how, a fatherless, truant schoolboy, he had drifted into their adventurous, nomadic life, itself a life of grown-up truancy like his own, and became one of that gypsy family. How they had taken the place of relations and household in his boyish fancy, filling it with the unsubstantial pageantry of a ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... came a message from the schoolmaster that the boy was absent too often. The message was repeated. Ditte could not understand it. She had a long talk with the boy, and got out of him that he often played truant. He made a pretense of going to school, hung about anywhere all day long, and only returned home when school-time was over. She said nothing of this to Lars Peter—it would only ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... had written 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 ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... who had reported noticing one of the Briarcroft boarders in Mansfield Road on several successive evenings could give no account of the truant's personal appearance. It had been dusk at the time, and they had only seen a girl in a sailor hat with a blue-and-white striped band hurrying rapidly past, as if anxious to escape observation. They thought she had dark hair, and that she must be about fourteen or fifteen ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... 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 ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... deserve it! I have been nothing but a truant and a vagabond. I have never obeyed anyone and I have always done as I pleased. If I were only like so many others and had studied and worked and stayed with my poor old father, I should not find myself here now, in this field and in the darkness, taking the place of a farmer's watchdog. Oh, ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... still. Has slept here every night for a month. Before that slept in Covent Garden Market or on doorsteps. Been sleeping out six months, since he left Feltham Industrial School. Was sent there for playing truant. Has had one bit of bread to-day; yesterday had only some gooseberries and cherries, i.e., bad ones that had been thrown away. Mother is alive. She "chucked him out" when he returned home on leaving Feltham because he could'nt find her ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... full-orbed moon shed her soft refulgence over the unrivalled scene, and gave it a silvery lustre which sweetly harmonized with the silence of the night. The clock's iron tongue, in a neighboring belfry, proclaimed the hour of twelve, as the truant and unfaithful husband seated himself by the side of his devoted and loving wife, and inquired if she ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... and of sorrow. Jean Jacques was now forwarded to Turin, to become inmate of a sort of charity school for the instruction of catechumens. The very day after he started on foot, his father, with a friend of his, reached Annecy on horseback, in pursuit of the truant boy. They might easily have overtaken him, but they let him go his way. Rousseau explains the case on behalf of his ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... dough-balls. Makers of rice-wine, said Heywood; as he strode along explaining, he threw off his surly fit. The brilliant sunlight, the breeze stirring toward them from a background of drooping bamboos, the gabble of coolies, the faint aroma of the fermenting no-me cakes, began, after all, to give a truant sense of holiday. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... and proved himself a law-breaker, just as Ben Lindsey was when he inaugurated the juvenile court and waived the entire established legal procedure, even to the omission of swearing his witnesses, and believed in the little truant even though he lied. Froebel told the little other-mothers to come to school anyway and bring the babies ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 a ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... "telling tales." From that time, she began to obtain influence over all, more or less, according to their different characters; and as she insensibly gained their affection, her own interest in them was increasing. But one day, at the children's dinner, the small truant of the stable-yard, in a little demonstrative gush, said, putting his hand in hers, "I love 'ou, Miss Bronte." Whereupon, the mother exclaimed, before all the children, "Love the ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... begun. You must all come in, and bow 'way down to the ground, and say, 'O, respected teacher, grant us knowledge.' They are very polite in India.—All but Prudy, she may stay behind and play truant." ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... 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.' 'The ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... hedge and called to him, asking if he had brought a ball with him, for they had lost theirs. He threw his ball to him. But aren't you coming to play with us? Not to-day, Joseph answered. I'm on my way to school. Well, to-morrow? Not to-morrow. I may not play truant from learning, Joseph answered sententiously, walking away, leaving his former playmates staring after him without a word in their mouths. But by the next day they had recovered their speech and cried out: the fishmonger's son is going by to his lessons ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... unwilling to perform, but let no one 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? Many ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... to start early enough, he would walk there with his little daughter, her hand tucked within his arm. With her he was never savage, and rarely irritable; on these walks his mood would be playful and jocose, and they would incite each other to play the truant from office and school, and pretend they were off on a ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... but the apologies of the boatmen saved the young men the unpleasantness of blows, and, elated at his success, Frank handed Lizzie into the truant boat and paddled out into the stream. When he had got out of earshot and out of the notice of the boat-house he rested on his oars. "Did you see me ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... the stout traveller picked him up by the collar, and dropped him like a puppy dog into Ulick's arms, just as the train was getting into motion; and a head protruded from every window to see the truant, who was pommelling Ulick in a violent fury, and roaring, 'Let me go; ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... man was angry with them for playing truant. He said slowly, "N—no. She didn't exactly send us; but I don't think she'll mind our having come if we get back in time for supper. Mamma never forbid our going mumming, ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... have come back to us, truant?" she said, laughing. "And now that you have returned, we shall keep you prisoner. We won't let him run away again, will ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... her father discovered and prevented her scheme. Then followed her experiences as nursery-governess, her evening lessons under self-selected masters, and her ultimate rise to a higher grade among the teaching sisterhood. Next came another epoch. To the mansion in which she was engaged returned a truant son, between whom and the heroine an attachment sprang up. The master of the house was an ambitious gentleman just knighted, who, perceiving the state of their hearts, harshly dismissed the homeless governess, and rated ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... into action, and quick as a flash the truant lines recurred to her, and to the great chagrin of her rival in the wings, she went on with her part ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... long day, and all to myself. What do you think of Harry playing truant?'" (Here we may imagine, what they call in France, or what they used to call, when men dared to speak or citizens to hear, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... joy!) our singer For his truant string Feels with disconcerted finger, 45 What does cricket else but fling Fiery heart forth, sound the note Wanted by ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... before the gods Thou didst proclaim? Alas! Death will not come, Except at his appointed time to men, And therefore for a little I shall live, Whom thou hast lived to leave. Nay, 't is a jest! Ah, Truant, Runaway, enough thou play'st! Come forth, my Lord!—I am afraid! Come forth! Linger not, for I see—I spy thee there; Thou art within yon thicket! Why not speak One word, Nishadha? Nala, cruel Prince! Thou know'st me, lone, and comest ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... 'Where is this truant husband of thine, my lady?' asked the marquis, as soon as Dr. Bayly had said grace. 'Know you whether he eats at all, or when, or where? It is now three days since he has filled his place at thy side, yet is he in the castle. ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... said was of no moment;—but they had met as lovers, and any of the family who had allowed themselves to imagine that even yet the match might be broken, now unconsciously abandoned that hope. "Was he always such a truant, Lady Fawn?"—Lizzie asked, when it seemed to her that no one ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... age of ten her life was sketchy. A passionate scramble for food, beatings, tears, slumber, a swift transition from one childish ailment to another that kept her forever out of reach of the truant officer. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... Sunday silks had ceased in the corridor outside, she caught up a book and a cushion, and, creeping down by the side stairs, set gaily out across the sunlit lawn, with the deliciously guilty thrill of a truant little boy who has run ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... Hail, truant with song-troubled breast— Thou welcome and bewildering guest! Blithe troubadour, whose laughing note Brings Spring into a poet's throat,— Flute, feathered joy! thy painted ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... intemperate 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 ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... in all places and at all times. Most likely you will carry it many a day and never give it a single look, but, even so, a book in the hand is always a companionable reminder of that happier world of fancy, which, alas! most of us can only visit by playing truant from the real world. As some men wear boutonnieres, so a reader carries a book, and sometimes, when he is feeling the need of beauty, or the solace of a friend, he opens it, and finds both. Probably he will ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... thing," said Gunson, as we drew near our resting-place; and I believe now he said it to try and cheer me on. "Perhaps while we have been away the truant may have returned." ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... their privileges, he was far from intending to permit their interference with his own interests;[318] and so thoroughly did he enslave the mind of the young King, that while Louis, like a schoolboy who had played truant, and who was resolved to enjoy his new-found liberty to the uttermost, was constantly changing his place of abode, and visiting in turn St. Germain, Fontainebleau, Villers-Cotterets, and Monceaux, without one care save the mere amusement ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... 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 foliage of ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... Cyprus' heavenly 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 ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... that instead of taking 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 each ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... 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. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... directions, of Kinney and the young man with the real hat-band. Both were excited and disturbed. At the sight of the young man, Stumps turned appealingly to the golden-rod girl. He groaned aloud, and his expression was that of a boy who had been caught playing truant. ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... of Bethany was set in order three days before the expected arrival of Passover guests. Followed by Eli, who was girt about with a long towel, Martha made a last survey of the large and well furnished living-room, looking for a truant speck of dust. She paused for a moment at a table containing writing materials and bade the servant wipe it carefully and place it, with a case of scrolls, at one end of the wide, latticed window-couch, for here on the comfortable cushions ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... 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 chiding ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... hunted, she rode, she played lawn-tennis, and, when at the seaside, golf; when all failed, she walked resolutely four or five miles on the high-road, swinging along at a healthy pace, and never pausing save to counsel an old woman or rebuke a truant urchin. On such occasions her manner (for we may not suppose that her physique aided the impression) suggested the benevolent yet stern policeman, and the vicar acknowledged in her an invaluable assistant. By a strange coincidence she seemed to suit the house she lived in—one of those large ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... Sofa, may I never feel: For I have loved the rural walk through lanes Of grassy swarth, close cropped by nibbling sheep, And skirted thick with intertexture firm Of thorny boughs: have loved the rural walk O'er hills, through valleys, and by river's brink, E'er since a truant boy I passed my bounds To enjoy a ramble on the banks of Thames. And still remember, nor without regret Of hours that sorrow since has much endeared, How oft, my slice of pocket store consumed, Still hungering penniless and far from home, I fed on scarlet hips and stony ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... with the American is to educate children. This is carried to the extent of making it an offense not to send those above a certain age to school, while State or town officers, called "truant police," are on the alert to arrest all such children who are not in school. The following was told me by a Government official in Washington, who had obtained it from a well-known literary man who witnessed the incident. The literary man was invited to visit a Boston school of the lower ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... shadows—proceeding, 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 ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... got up in the morning. So naughty, frightened little Goldilocks jumped; and whether she broke her neck in the fall, or ran into the wood and was lost there, or found her way out of the wood and got whipped for being a bad girl and playing truant, no one can say. But the Three Bears never saw anything ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... one and then at the other of her truant charges. Then—'Well?' she almost screamed, 'is ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... ever truant daughter so whimsically circumstanced as I am? I have sent my intended husband to look after my lover—the man of my father's choice is gone to bring me the man of my own: but how dispiriting is this interval ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... sweet laughter became audible among the trees. His heart beat fast; he advanced a few steps and stopped. In a moment more the nymph of the island appeared, in her white robe, ascending the cliff in pursuit of her truant bird. She saw the strange man, and suddenly stood still; struck motionless by the amazing discovery that had burst upon her. The Captain approached, smiling and holding out his hand. She never moved; she ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... announcement had been swallowed up in a hum of truant inattention, and as the heralded speaker made his appearance upon the platform Claire Robson, leaning forward, said ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... 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 with ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... truant, thou art here again, I see! For in a season of such wretched weather I thought that thou hadst left us altogether, Although I could not choose but fancy thee Skulking about the hill-tops, whence the glee Of thy blue laughter peeped at times, or rather Thy bashful awkwardness, as ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... no intention of playing the truant or traitor, and does his duty bravely and successfully. But the new King has a niece and the Count himself has a mother, who, motherlike, is convinced that her son's mysterious love is a very bad ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Her pride would not allow her to admit that she was glad to see him, relieved to be overtaken like a truant from school. And Bill did not seem to expect a reply. He slung his rifle into the crook ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... plot, a plot!" Will our own party 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 ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... When the truant waggons came up we marched on a few miles, following the road, which is just a hard track across the veldt, and bivouacked for the night, the out-spanned waggons ranged in rows in a rough square, as far as I could see, but it was very dark, ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... run off before I arrived," said the Count, laughing boisterously. "Played truant, the ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... how to write. I should never learn then! I must stop where I was! How I longed now for the wasted time, for the classes when I played truant to go birds'-nesting, or to slide on the Saar! The books which I was used to find so wearisome, so heavy to carry—my grammar, my history—now seemed to me old friends whom I was very sorry to part with. The same ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... of the buggy, smothering his laughter, and leaving the two to argue the question, he went after the truant horse which might help to establish his master's lost identity. Lawyer Ed dismounted and helped him hitch it, and apparently satisfied by its reappearance, Peter stretched himself on the seat and went soundly ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... that although they had never moved since they sat down, they were now quite close together; both presenting faces of a very heightened colour to the eyes of Mr Edward Hugh Bloomfield. That gentleman, coming up the river in his boat, had captured the truant canoe, and divining what had happened, had thought to steal a march upon Miss Hazeltine at her sketch. He had unexpectedly brought down two birds with one stone; and as he looked upon the pair of flushed and breathless culprits, the pleasant human instinct of the ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... of 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 each ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... 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. For the most part, thanks ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... 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 ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... father's office; and sometimes, if it pleased him to start early enough, he would walk there with his little daughter, her hand tucked within his arm. With her he was never savage, and rarely irritable; on these walks his mood would be playful and jocose, and they would incite each other to play the truant from office and school, and pretend they were off ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... lives. One day! In all their lives, one day! And for the rest of the days, as the boy told a certain bishop, "At ten we 'ops the wag; at thirteen we nicks things; an' at sixteen we bashes the copper." Which is to say, at ten they play truant, at thirteen steal, and at sixteen are sufficiently developed hooligans to ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... 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 ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... him, and procure for him a badge, that he may display his energies for the benefit of old mas'r. This done, she orders the servant to show him his bed in one of the "yard houses;" bids the old man an affectionate good night, retires to her room, and watches the return of her truant swain. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... bending eagerly over a book and talking earnestly. They were interesting looking people, and she hovered near, hoping that she had at last found the "children" who would "play" with her—a remembrance of one of her nursery stories coming to her just then, and a ludicrous sense of her resemblance to the truant boy who spent the long, bright day in the woods searching for one not too busy ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... So you have come, monsieur. I can tell you that you have been expected. Oh! we have heard about you at last—heard twice over—and we are all thinking of playing truant and running away to the forest of Vincennes or Monceaux. That last is better, for it is nearer Paris——" But here her breathless chatter was cut short by a "Hush!" from the salon, and then we heard the strings of a ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... tumultuously, fetid, muddy, dusty, ragged, dishevelled, playing hide-and-seek, and crowned with corn-flowers. All of them are little ones who have made their escape from poor families. The outer boulevard is their breathing space; the suburbs belong to them. There they are eternally playing truant. There they innocently sing their repertory of dirty songs. There they are, or rather, there they exist, far from every eye, in the sweet light of May or June, kneeling round a hole in the ground, snapping marbles with their thumbs, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... that the boy had been left behind at Potsdam. The tutor thereupon turned back in one of the carriages, whilst the rest proceeded to the next stopping-place. In the course of an hour he returned with the truant seated by his side, dusty and footsore, but otherwise as fresh as when he had started. He had, it appeared, strayed from the party at Potsdam, and returned to the starting-place in time to see the carriages disappearing in the distance enveloped in a cloud of dust. He began to run, but seeing ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... And was it for this that you took fencing lessons, to run poor travellers through the body for the sake of a dollar, or stab women in the back? Go! go! You have played truant to your nurse because she shook the rod ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... on a little kink; he was no longer so cheerful over his work, and he often played the truant, loafing about the streets instead of going to the factory. Sometimes he could not be got out of bed in the morning; he crept under the bedclothes and hid himself. "I can't work with my bad hand," he would say, crying, when Marie wanted to drag him ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... main boom, he ordered all hands forward. At the end of the line there was a large iron hook, which, with a dexterous throw, he succeeded in fastening to the block. The sail was then hauled down, and the truant sheet ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... with schools after his docile childhood. When he began to run wild with the other boys he preferred their savage freedom; and he got out of going to school by most of the devices they used. He had never quite the hardihood to play truant, but he was subject to sudden attacks of sickness, which came on about school-time and went off towards the middle of the forenoon or afternoon in a very strange manner. I suppose that such complaints are ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... of reception fall upon the poor old gentleman, and drive him to futile wrath, and to sending off many loud and desperate messages to his truant heir. However, to do him justice, the poor old soul is hospitality itself, and treats his guests, not only to the best food, drink, and fiddling in his power, but also to all his primest anecdotes. No less than three times in the course of the evening do I hear him go through that remarkable ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... and as fresh as if they were laid on but yesterday. Would that my old friend and master, Otho Venius, was here! At least I will carry back to Antwerp that in my coloring which shall prove to him that I have not played truant to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... the subject of the American War, without further reference to the truant who stood by them in the covert of the dusk, thrilling with happiness and the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... absence; inexistence &c. 2[obs3]; nonresidence, absenteeism; nonattendance, alibi. emptiness &c. adj.; void, vacuum; vacuity, vacancy; tabula rasa[Lat]; exemption; hiatus &c. (interval) 198; lipotype|!. truant, absentee. nobody; nobody present, nobody on earth; not a soul; ame qui vive[Fr]. V. be absent &c. adj.; keep away, keep out of the way; play truant, absent oneself, stay away; keep aloof, hold aloof. withdraw, make oneself scarce, vacate; go away ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... hair. 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. ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... Chamvu. To the question "Quid muliere levius?" the scandalous Latin writer answers "Nihil," for which I would suggest "Niger." At the supreme moment the interpreter, who had been deaf to the charmer's voice (offering fifty dollars) for the last three days, succumbed to the "truant fever." He knew something of Portuguese; and, having been employed by the French factory, he had scoured the land far and wide in search of "emigrants." He began well; cooked a fowl, boiled some eggs, and made tea; after which he cleared out ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... enterprise that 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 elasticity ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... fatherless, truant schoolboy, he had drifted into their adventurous, nomadic life, itself a life of grown-up truancy like his own, and became one of that gypsy family. How they had taken the place of relations and household in his boyish fancy, filling it with the unsubstantial pageantry of a child's play at ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... prevaricate, for this is but a device by which the childish mind attempts to achieve an indirect purpose and at the same time keep his peace with his conscience. It is when he already has a certain fear of lying, and is not yet thoroughly sincere and truth-loving, that he will come home from the truant fishing party and ingeniously tell you that a "friend of Harry's" caught the fish, instead of saying that he himself did it. His conscience is quite satisfied with the reflection that he is a friend ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... Similarly, the richest pages of Byron's work—from the date of The Curse of Minerva to that of the "Isles of Greece"—are brightened by lights and adorned by allusions due to his training, imperfect as it was, on the slopes of Harrow, and the associations fostered during his truant years by the sluggish stream of his "Injusta noverca." At her, however, he continued to rail as late as the publication of Beppo, in the 75th and 76th stanzas of which we find ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... world and the profession of letters with the merest shadow of an 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 sleep, ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... ago—it seems to me As fresh as yesterday—being then a lad No higher than my hand, idle as an heir, And all made up of gay and truant sports, I flew a kite, unmatched in shape or size, Over the river—we were at our house Upon the Brenta then; it soared aloft, Driven by light vigorous breezes from the sea Soared buoyantly, till the ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... piece of learning in the world, and he always talks it away whenever he finds a scholar in company; but I know the rogue, and will catch him yet.' Though I was already sufficiently mortified, my greatest struggle was to come, in facing my wife and daughters. No truant was ever more afraid of returning to school, there to behold the master's visage, than I was of going home. I was determined, however, to anticipate their fury, by first ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... balconies, hither and thither, after the manner o' my little lady on her most unquiet days, till at last, for the sake o' peace, I did slyly lead him in the direction o' the great nursery. There, catching sight o' a little red petticoat, he enters, where stand my truant elves confessed, Mistress Marian frowning and biting o' her dark hair, but my little lady like to stifle, with both hands over her mouth to hide her smiles, and her blue eyes dancing a very Barley Break o' mirth among the yellow sheaves o' ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... ye daughters of celestial Virtue, point not the scoffing glance at these, her truant children, as ye pass them by—but pity, and afford them a gleam of cheerful hope: so shall ye merit the protection of Him whose chief attribute is charity and universal benevolence. And ye, lords of the creation! commiserate their misfortunes, which owe their origin to the baseness of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... 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 ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... 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 ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... to dream the old dreams over is a luxury divine— When my truant fancies wander with ...
— An Old Sweetheart of Mine • James Whitcomb Riley
... owned herself to have been wrong, and left his house and family. He was sought and awaited in vain. Bertrande spent the first month in vainly expecting his return, then she betook herself to prayer; but Heaven appeared deaf to her supplications, the truant returned not. She wished to go in search of him, but the world is wide, and no single trace remained to guide her. What torture for a tender heart! What suffering for a soul thirsting for love! What sleepless nights! What restless vigils! Years passed thus; her son was growing ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... more. The lilac buds are bursting with the joy of the new spring. A veil of silver-gray floats over Moose Hillock. The idle brook, like a truant boy, dances in the sunshine, singing to itself as it ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... waited in the main reception-room for the truant expedition. He was hoping against hope. Orders had been given that Popova, Kalora and the whole disobedient crew should be brought before him as soon as they arrived. His wrath had not cooled, but somehow his confidence ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... Master No-book, having played truant all day from school, was lolling on his mother's best sofa in the drawing-room with his leather boots tucked up on the satin cushions, and nothing to do but to suck a few oranges, and nothing to think of but how much sugar to put upon them, when suddenly an event took ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... sons," by which name we are universally distinguished, have our own crosses as well. It is generally agreed that much ought to be expected of us and little obtained. Let one of us play truant from school, or use a naughty word in play, or make marbles a source of revenue, or fight on the common when provoked, or steal a cherry, and the fact travels our town over like a telegram. We once suffer greatly in repute by selling our neighbor's old iron and brass to an itinerant pedler, and ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... to school, He, playing truant, plays the fool: Or else he goes, with sloven looks And hands unclean, to spoil the books— To spill the ink, or make a noise, Disturbing good and studious boys; Till all who find what Jack's about Within the school, must wish ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... A, Band C! The rest of the song is D: That is all my lore. I came late yesterday, I played truant by my fay! I am a foul sinner. Good master, after ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... elastic wires. 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 ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... things and—irresistible, simply irresistible. You must have a red leather motor coat. You will be adorable in one. But you'll have to shake Nolan, dear. You stand no chance in the world if you are constantly herded by a disagreeable young lawyer, guardianing you from every truant glance." ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... prevented him from writing home till he had secured himself a position in which he could maintain himself. When he did communicate with Thursley, it was through Mehetabel, because Simon had forbidden any allusion to the truant boy, and Mrs. Verstage was not herself much of a scholar, and did not desire unnecessarily to anger her husband by having letters in his handwriting come to her ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... thus sweetly employed, his neglected guests were dispersing, not without satirical comments on their truant host. Two or three, however, remained, and slept in the house, upon special invitation. And that invitation came from Squire Peyton. He chose to conclude that Griffith, disappointed by the will, had vacated the premises ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... wave a greeting. And once, when she had the fever, and Dr. Hawkins came twice a day to see her, I had no heart for school, but sat on that stile the livelong day, looking at the gabled house where she was lying ill. And Mr. Glennie never rated me for playing truant, nor told Aunt Jane, guessing, as I thought afterwards, the cause, and having once been young himself. 'Twas but boy's love, yet serious for me; and on the day she lay near death, I made so bold as to stop Dr. Hawkins on his horse ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... only boys could hope to excel. One day, when she was about fourteen years old, the Princess Woo was missing from the Nestorian mission-house, by the Yellow River. Her troubled guardian, in much anxiety, set out to find the truant; and, finally, in the course of his search, climbed the high bluff from which he saw the massive walls, the many gateways, the gleaming roofs, and porcelain towers of the Imperial city of ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... disease, nor Stillicide a crime. But though I would not willingly part with such scraps of science, I do not set the same store by them as by certain other odds and ends that I came by in the open street while I was playing truant. This is not the moment to dilate on that mighty place of education, which was the favourite school of Dickens and of Balzac, and turns out yearly many inglorious masters in the Science of the Aspects of Life. Suffice it to say this: ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... himself a pretty talent for playing on the oaten reed, a little flute of that period. He played on it agreeably, as also on the chiffonie, a sort of beggar's hurdy-gurdy, mentioned in the Chronicle of Bertrand Duguesclin as the "truant instrument," which started the symphony. These instruments attracted the crowd. Ursus would show them the chiffonie, and say, "It is called organistrum ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... groves and Gallic beauties of Belle Etoile his truant thoughts will fly once more. He wonders why he threw up his law studies under his uncle, Judge Valois, to ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... 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 ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 he ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... disappearance. He answered to his name at call-over next morning as if he had never missed a day this term. And as Dr Ringwood and the other masters were present, and made no remark, it was generally concluded that the truant had turned up over-night, and had had it out ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... through lanes Of grassy swarth, close cropped by nibbling sheep, And skirted thick with intertexture firm Of thorny boughs: have loved the rural walk O'er hills, through valleys, and by river's brink, E'er since a truant boy I passed my bounds To enjoy a ramble on the banks of Thames. And still remember, nor without regret Of hours that sorrow since has much endeared, How oft, my slice of pocket store consumed, Still hungering penniless and far from home, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... is most provoking," he interrupted. "I really ought not to stay. But I certainly mean to hear this." He turned irritably to the servant. "Tell the hansom to wait," he commanded, and, with an air of a boy who is playing truant, slipped guiltily ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... hat, for occasionally the boisterous wind lifted that trifling appendage right into the air, and deposited it over a wall or a fence, and Will Locke was not half so quick as Dulcie in tracing the region of its flight, neither was he so active, however willing, in recovering the truant. Why, Dulcie found his own hat for him, and put it on his head to boot one day. He had deposited it on a stone, that he might the better look in the face a dripping rock, shaded with plumes of fern and tufts of grass, and formed into mosaic by tiny sprays of geranium faded into crimson and gold. ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... that time, she began to obtain influence over all, more or less, according to their different characters; and as she insensibly gained their affection, her own interest in them was increasing. But one day, at the children's dinner, the small truant of the stable-yard, in a little demonstrative gush, said, putting his hand in hers, "I love 'ou, Miss Bronte." Whereupon, the mother exclaimed, before all the children, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... intention of playing the truant or traitor, and does his duty bravely and successfully. But the new King has a niece and the Count himself has a mother, who, motherlike, is convinced that her son's mysterious love is a very bad person, if not an actual maufes or devil, and is very anxious that he shall marry the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... the fort. 2. A steamer trip. 3. How I played truant. 4. Kidnapped. 5. The misfortunes of our circus. 6. Account for the situation shown in a picture that ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... ever try calling the rooster back, when he starts to play truant, with all that mouthful of words?" ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... found the French window leading into the garden open; but Honor was well round the corner, and running fast towards the cricket field. Vivian was very much disturbed and distressed. She scarcely knew what she ought to do. She ventured a little way into the grounds, but not a trace of any truant was to be seen, so she thought it useless to search far. One of the girls must have gone out; on that point she ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... shrinking—the children in bed upstairs; and outside the dark fields, the shadowy contours of the land on the starry background of the universe, with the crude light of the open window like a beacon for the truant who would never come back now; a truant no longer but a downright fugitive. Yet a fugitive carrying off spoils. It was the flight of a raider—or a tractor? This affair of the purloined brother, as I had named it to myself, had a very puzzling physiognomy. The girl must ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... dances lightly over the St. Peter's, and her companions try in vain to keep up with her. Soon her clear voice is heard as she sings, keeping time with the strokes of the axe she uses so skilfully. A peal of laughter rouses the old woman, her mother, who goes to bring the truant home, but she is gone, and when she returns, in time to see the red sun fade away in the bright horizon, she tells her mother that she went out with two or three other girls, to assist the hunters in bringing in the deer they had killed. And her mother for once does not scold, ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... 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 during those long years, every evening, ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... to make up his sixpence for the hospital-cot collection at the children's service last Sunday. He had only fourpence halfpenny. I remember it all now. Oh, how stupid I've been, to be sure!' It was an intense relief to have chased successfully the truant halfpence. 'Now, Queenie,' went on Theo gleefully, 'in five minutes I shall be ready for you, and we are going to have a good time in the boat. Get your ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... park watching the game, which proved not so interesting as he had anticipated. "Shall we go to school?" he asked. "We shall have time to get there before it opens." "No," I replied; "you have persuaded me to come here, and now I shall stay." We both did. I never played truant again after this day. Did the schoolmaster become acquainted with this breach of discipline? No; or I am afraid he would not have given me such a testimonial as I ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... prettiest shade of colour,—just enough; not a hue too much. And there is Sir Miles's valet gone to the rectory, and the fat footman puffing away towards the village, and I, like a faithful warden, from my post at the castle, all looking out for the truant." ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... some distance. He immediately followed her; a loud barking of dogs 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; ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... monotonous side, that the dreary time flew more swiftly if they sought to amuse themselves and be happy. They allowed themselves to be comforted, in the absence of their husbands, by their lovers, and they felt no reproach of conscience; for they were convinced that their truant husbands were doing the same thing in their long separation—were making love to 'the lips ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... 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
... spared neither time nor pains with his pupil, who was about three years old when his learned education commenced; and at length he made such progress in language, as to be able to articulate no less than thirty words. It appears, however, that he was somewhat of a truant, and did not very willingly exert his talents, being rather pressed into the service of literature, and it was necessary that the words should be first pronounced to him each time before he spoke. The French Academicians who mention this anecdote, add, that unless ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... direction for the runaway couple, till information is at length obtained that Clitophon has been seen in Egypt. His father, Hippias, is therefore preparing to set sail for Alexandria to bring back the truant, when Clinias, thinking it would be as well to forewarn Clitophon of what had occurred in his absence, starts without delay, unknown to Hippias, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... where he applied himself with the greatest assiduity. He copied all the great frescos of Raffaelle in the Vatican several times; he next turned his rapid pencil against the works of Annibale Caracci in the Farnese palace. Meantime, his father divining the direction which the truant had taken, followed him to Rome, where, after a long search, he discovered him sketching in ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... gone to Drury Lane "to shave the Sultan in the New Entertainment." On the other hand, the Ghost of Queen Common-Sense appears before she is killed, and is with some difficulty persuaded that her action is premature. Part of "the Mob" play truant to see a show in the park; Law, straying without the playhouse passage is snapped up by a Lord Chief- Justice's Warrant; and a Jew carries off one of the Maids of Honour. These little incidents, together with the unblushing realism of the Pots of Porter that are made to do duty for wine, ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... lots of 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 ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... this the only member of his family. It was unjustifiable, as he remarked twenty times a day, unfeeling, unheard-of, unaccountable. He rang for the servants at his private residence every quarter of an hour or so to learn if the truant had returned. He questioned the boy at the office sharply and repeatedly as to orders left with him by Mr. Ryfe before he went away, only to gather from the answers of this urchin, who would, indeed, have forgotten any number of such directions, that he looked on the present period ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... very nice rather young Quaker ladies in Walnut Street. It was just opposite a very quaint old-fashioned collection of many little dwellings in one (modelled after the Fuggerei of Augsburg?) known as the Quaker Almshouse. One morning I played truant, and became so fearfully weary and bored lounging about, that I longed for the society of school, and never stayed from study any more. Here I was learning to read, and I can remember "The History of Little Jack," ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... 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 to perform as to ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... in metaphor," rejoined Brandon, smiling; "they who begin it always get the worst of it. In plain words, dear Lucy, I can give no more time to my own ailments. A lawyer cannot play truant in term-time without—" ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... their cabins and independence. Once a young Algonquin was thus attacked by home-sickness; the Mothers did their best to comfort and encourage her, but all in vain. The melancholy mood grew deeper and darker—so dark at last, that, unable to bear the restraint any longer, the truant jumped through the window, leaped the cloister palisade, and fled in the direction of the woods. In a few minutes she looked back, expecting to see a persuer, but, finding that her flight had caused no concern, ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... except next door?" mademoiselle questioned; "and when I went to ask, Monsieur Dubois was seated with his sons having supper, and no signs of the truant. He had seen or heard nothing ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... to visit me. Day after day passed and he did not come; and yet I knew that he was in the village. At length I could no longer conceal my distress from my old friend; who, being very indignant at this treatment, called my truant lover to account." ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... we never more Sit hand in hand, as we were wont to sit, Over some book of ancient chivalry Stealing a truant holiday from school, Follow the huntsmen through the autumn woods, And watch the falcons burst their tasselled jesses, When ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... 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
... another. They complain that by thus nibbling at every blade of grass on the way-side we shall never get to the end of our journey; and there is some truth in what they say. Still, I will whisper to you in excuse that I thought we might play truant a little bit while we were on familiar ground, where naturally you were sure to feel a particular interest in everything. The hand, the tongue, the teeth—these are all old friends of yours—and I thought you would like to hear all about them. By-and-bye we shall be in the little black hole, ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... evening afterwards several voices mingled in the shrubbery adjoining the garden. Maude was conversing in animated tones with Fanny Trevelyan. Geoffrey Seymour had played truant to his lady love by ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... and feasting for the past half hour while waiting for a truant ward. Jerome took pity upon me and fed me to keep me ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... ladies may have an effect in preventing the use of very intemperate 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 ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... marriage, and much searching went on before she was found. She was unearthed at last. The gardener had seen her shrink away into the shrubbery when the carriage-wheels were heard coming up the road, and he gave information to the cook, by whom the truant was tracked ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... To her maiden fancy something of his strong virility had escaped even to this wayward little lock of hair. She had wondered then how the Senorita Valdes could keep from loving this splendid fellow if he cared for her. All the more she wondered now, for her truant heart was going out to him with the swift ardent passion of her race. It was as a sort of god she looked upon him, as a hero of romance far above her humble hopes. She found herself longing for chances to wait upon him, to do little services that would draw the approving ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 her eyes, but ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... 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. No one can ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
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