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Urchin   Listen
noun
Urchin  n.  
1.
(Zool.) A hedgehog.
2.
(Zool.) A sea urchin. See Sea urchin.
3.
A mischievous elf supposed sometimes to take the form a hedgehog. "We 'll dress (them) like urchins, ouphes, and fairies."
4.
A pert or roguish child; now commonly used only of a boy. "And the urchins that stand with their thievish eyes Forever on watch ran off each with a prize." "You did indeed dissemble, you urchin you; but where's the girl that won't dissemble for an husband?"
5.
One of a pair in a series of small card cylinders, arranged around a carding drum; so called from its fancied resemblance to the hedgehog.
Urchin fish (Zool.), a diodon.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Urchin" Quotes from Famous Books



... minutes the boy came back and told her what she wanted to know; the friar had disappeared within the doors of a little church by the sea-shore, not many yards distant, a church under the charge of an austere religious, Father Hieronymus. Delighted, Lysidice gave the urchin his piece of silver ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... moment at the word "gal," which came with innocent frankness from the lips of the ragged urchin before her. But the next moment she remembered that it was only the old Hilda who cared about such trifles; so ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... been already said, was a robust and combative urchin, and at the age of four began to struggle against the yoke and authority of his nurse. That functionary was a good-hearted, tearful, scatter-brained girl, lately taken by Tom's mother, Madam Brown, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... The small urchin, Tommy, had apparently not suffered seriously from his immersion in the waters of Sunrise Lake. Perhaps he was to some extent accustomed to tumbling overboard; though this time the consequences might have been most serious only for the lucky presence of the Bird ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy

... at present such familiar forms as the crinoid, the starfish, and the sea urchin. The structure of echinoderms is radiate. Their integument is hardened with plates or particles ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... however, not disposed to personal irony when speaking of her. It is otherwise in his case and a general fling at the sex we may deem pardonable, for doing as little harm to womankind as the stone of an urchin cast upon the bosom of mother Earth; though men must look some day to have it returned to them, which is a certainty; and indeed full surely will our idle-handed youngster too, in his riper season; be heard complaining of a strange assault of wanton missiles, coming on him he knows not whence; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... An urchin creeping in beholds The tyrant slumber-smitten, And in his pocket's ample folds He thrusts ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... cotch them any how," said the urchin, as he disengaged himself from his wet saddle, and stood upon the ground; "and it is not my fault that the coach is ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... by one another. See here, Phoebe, it began when I was as green as yourself, a mere urchin, and she a little unconscious thing of the same age. Well, when I got away, I saw what a folly it was—a mere throwing myself away! I might have gone in for rank or fortune, as I liked; and how did I know that I was such a fool ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of arrest here, round about his old home, was enormous, and he drew the Bedouin kefie well round his face, skulking from the station to the "Fen", northward, where he got an urchin to buy him a paper lantern in a general shop, and now trudged up to Priddlestone, then down through meadows to the beech-wood, the ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... the creatures they produced. It would seem however that there were very few things that spoke shellfish except the shellfish themselves. Still, the porpoises grew a little more hopeful when they discovered a very old sea-urchin (a funny, ball-like, little fellow with long whiskers all over him) who said he could not speak pure shellfish, but he used to understand starfish—enough to get along—when he was young. This was coming nearer, even ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... improved plan. In correcting the position of the adjective clauses in the two examples above, observe the caution for the phrase modifiers, Lesson 41. He was an independent small farmer. The mind knows feels and thinks. The urchin was ragged barefooted dirty homeless and friendless. I am some tired. This here road is rough. That there man is homely. pshaw i am so Disgusted. Whoa can't you stand still. James the gardener gave me a white lily. Irving the genial writer lived ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... while gentle sleep The urchin eyelids kiss'd, Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn, Through the cold and heavy mist; And Eugene Aram walk'd between, ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... see his heels," cried Swinton, laughing; "he has fallen into an ant-eater's hole, depend upon it; that mischievous little urchin might ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat

... earnest, but indistinct hum of the two children's voices, as Violet and Peony wrought together with one happy consent. Violet still seemed to be the guiding spirit; while Peony acted rather as a laborer, and brought her the snow from far and near. And yet the little urchin evidently had a proper understanding of ...
— The Snow-Image - A Childish Miracle • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Look at them this minute! See how they gloat upon that chubby little fellow, who seems instinctively to fear them. Lucky for the urchin it's broad daylight, or he might get chucked under one of those ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... with his pitiful tale, Till Vulcan the weapon restored; "There, take it, young sir; try it now—if it fail, I will ask neither fee nor reward." The urchin shot out, and rare havoc he made, The wounded and dead were untold; But no wonder the rogue had such slaughtering trade, For the ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... fishing-pole branches, from which dangled articulated figures, bodied like men, but with heads of foxes, tortoises, and other less likelybeasts, —bewitching objects in impossible evolution to a bald-pated urchin who stood gazing at it with all his soul. The peddler sat with his eyes riveted on the boy, visions of a possible catch chasing themselves through his brain. I watched him, while the crowd behind stared at me. We made quite a ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... shoulders; small black boys learned on their back little brothers equally inky, and, gravely depositing them, shook hands. Never had I seen human beings so clad, or rather so unclad, in such amazing squalid-ness and destitution of garments. I recall one small urchin without a rag of clothing save the basque waist of a lady's dress, bristling with whalebones, and worn wrong side before, beneath which his smooth ebony legs emerged like those of an ostrich from its plumage. How weak is imagination, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... professor bend over the coils, rose in his bench and, clacking noiselessly the fingers of his right hand, began to call with the voice of a slobbering urchin. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... of his serious little people, who play with a certain demure gaiety that those who have watched French children in the Gardens of the Luxembourg or Tuileries, or a French seaside resort, know to be absolutely truthful. For the Gallic bebe certainly seems less "rampageous" than the English urchin. A certain daintiness of movement and timidity in the boys especially adds a grace of its own to the games of French children which is not without its peculiar charm. This is singularly well caught in M. de Monvel's delicious ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White

... in bands, and wearing white waists—not only Louise, who had become a good musician, had made the piano submit to long tortures, but her sister Maria, and Amedee also, already played the 'Bouquet de Bal' or 'Papa, les p'tits bateaux'. Rosine, too, in her character of street urchin, knew all the popular songs, and spent entire hours in picking out the airs with one finger upon ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... such as these poor devils of Medici 100 Have given their hearts to—all at eight years old. Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure, 'Twas not for nothing—the good bellyful, The warm serge and the rope that goes all round, And day-long blessed idleness beside! 105 "Let's see what the urchin's fit for"—that came next. Not overmuch their way, I must confess. Such a to-do! They tried me with their books; Lord, they'd have taught me Latin in pure waste! Flower o' the clove, 110 All the Latin I construe is "amo," ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... associate with the Duchess of Urbino illustrate that of his middle time. The dignity and rhythmic outline of Eros in the Danae of Naples have been given up in favour of a more naturalistic conception of the insinuating urchin, who is in this Venus and Cupid the successor of those much earlier amorini in the Worship of Venus at Madrid. The landscape in its sweeping breadth is very characteristic of the late time, and would give good reason for placing the picture ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... assembling there, I had not taken my stand under either banner: that of the Caseys was a sod of turf, stuck on the end of a broken fishing-rod—the eagle of the Murphy's was a Cork red potato, hoisted in the same manner. The turf was borne by an urchin, who afterwards distinguished himself in fairs and markets as a builla batthah (* cudgel player) of the first grade, and from this circumstance he was nicknamed Parrah Rackhan. (* Paddy the Rioter) The potato was borne by little Mickle M'Phauden Murphy, who afterwards took away ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... the nightcap?' sang out a shrill voice from below, as a boy with a basket on his arm went down the street. He drew back from the window, realising that he was a sight for all admirers. Tossing the end of his cigarette in the direction of the cheeky urchin, he settled himself again in the arm-chair before ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... his own cabin he threw off his coat and hat, lighted his pipe, and tried to realize just what this all meant for him. He was in charge—in charge of the greatest railroad building job on earth—he, Jack Howland, who less than twenty years ago was a barefooted, half-starved urchin peddling papers in the streets where he was now famous! And now what was this black thing that had come up to threaten his chances just as he had about won his great fight? He clenched his hands ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood

... I'll just say this one thing more before I've done:—your way of punishing the boy for his behavior in church is, in my opinion, about as bad and dangerous a one as could possibly be devised. Why not give him a thrashing, if you must punish the miserable little urchin for what's his misfortune as much as his fault? Why not stop his pudding, or something of that sort? Here you are associating verses in the Bible, in his mind, with the idea of punishment and being locked up in the cold! You may make him get ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... understood by the outsider. Slight differences of pronunciation are noticeable in different parts of the country: the people of Seibo are inclined to use the vowel "i" instead of the consonant "r" and say "poique" instead of "porque," somewhat as the New York street urchin says "boid" for "bird"; the people of Santiago sometimes drop the "r" entirely and say "poque," as the Southern negro in the United States says "fo" for "four"; the peasants of Puerto Plata show a tendency to use the "u" ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... travelled seven hundred miles with us. In a year and a half Cuckoo had grown immensely, and being in a good suit of clothes, he was with difficulty recognized by his savage-looking parent, who had parted with him as a naked, ash-smeared little urchin of between ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... two children, but he did not adore them. The fond father had hoped to delight in them, and he had been disappointed. Instead of the son he had dreamed of—a regular boy, a mischievous little urchin, one of those handsome little dare-devils with whom an old soldier could live over again his own youth and hear once more, as it were, the sound of gunpowder—M. Mauperin had to do with a most rational sort of a child, a little boy who was always good, "quite a young lady," ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... right. Don't go so fast," remarked Gershom, as they ascended the steps. "It ain't going to run away from you." Bending down he picked up a crying urchin from the steps. "Lost your ball, have you? Well, I expect if you dig deep enough in my pocket, you can find it again. Hello! You've got a punch, ain't you, sonny? A regular John L., I reckon." Putting the child down, he continued sheepishly ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... shelter of the cave, in company with his lieutenant, Dillon, both armed with rifles, and, without saying a word, singling out the tree on which Chub had perched himself, took deliberate aim at the head of the unfortunate urchin. He saw the danger in an instant, and his first words were characteristic: "Now don't—don't, now, I tell you, Mr. Guy—you may ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... sentence, "suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not," several of those little volumes with gay bindings, and marvellous contents of fay and giant, which delight the hearth-spelled urchin, and which were "the source of golden hours" to the old man's grandchildren, in their respite ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... tale of Thrawn Janet, and Black Andy's story of Tod Lapraik in Catriona, are grotesque imaginations of the school of Tam o' Shanter rather than of the school of Shakespeare, who deals in no comedy ghosts. They are turnip-lanterns swayed by a laughing urchin, proud of the fears he can awaken. Even The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the story of The Bottle Imp are manufactured bogeys, that work on the nerves and not on the heart, whatever ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh

... "Majesty of Justice" that I have ever witnessed. A little boy was being taken to the magistrate, or to prison (probably for picking a pocket). The achievement of this feat had been entrusted to two soldiers in full uniform, who were solemnly marching, one in front of the poor little urchin and one behind, with bayonets fixed, of course, to be ready to charge in case he ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... leisure hours to trace out the criminal history of his destined victim. In the gallery he found numbered and classified photographs; in the Bertillon bureau, finger prints; and in the records, what else he lacked of information—as an urchin, so many years spent in the protectory; as a youth, so many years in the reformatory; as a man, a year on Blackwell's Island for a misdemeanour and a three-year term at Sing Sing for a felony; also he dug up the entry of an indictment yet standing on which trial ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... from the little ragged population of "Barlow's Settlement," on the "Barrens," with quantities of whortleberries for sale. "Want any huckleberries to-day?" was heard all over. You couldn't stir abroad without some urchin with a smirched face—a tattered coat, whose skirts swept the dust, showing, evidently, its paternal descent, and pantaloons patched in the most conspicuous places, more picturesque than decent—thrusting a basket of the rich fruit into your very face, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... and they had lighted a great fire, and on it was their caldron; and one of the trees slanting o'er the fire, a kid hung down by a chain from the tree-fork to the fire, and in the fork was wedged an urchin turning still the chain to keep the meat from burning, and a gay spark with a feather in his cap cut up a sheep; and another had spitted a leg of it on a wooden stake; and a woman ended chanticleer's pride ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... like his little charge to look too poor. Later he used to say "Well, if we're poor, why, after all, shouldn't we look it?" and he consoled himself with thinking there was something rather elderly and gentlemanly in Morgan's disrepair—it differed from the untidiness of the urchin who plays and spoils his things. He could trace perfectly the degrees by which, in proportion as her little son confined himself to his tutor for society, Mrs. Moreen shrewdly forbore to renew his ...
— The Pupil • Henry James

... his Greek cook. Eh bien, mon maitre, all was going on remarkably well, and I felt almost reconciled to my new situation when who should rush into the kitchen but le fils de la maison, my young master, an ugly urchin of thirteen years, or thereabouts. He bore in his hand a manchet of bread, which, after prying about for a moment, he proceeded to dip in the pan where some delicate woodcocks were in the course of preparation. You know, mon maitre, how sensitive I am on certain points, ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow

... rod, not in a spirit of revenge, but for the benefit of the culprit and the good of society. Now, Sir, the opportunity has been thrown in your way of slipping out of the pillory without risk of serious injury; but, like an obstinate urchin, you have chosen to quarrel with your opportunity and remain there, and thus you compel me to deal with you as schoolmasters used to do with stupid boys in bygone days—that is to say, you force me to the use of the critic's rod, compel me ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... young again every spring, yet is of great age, the wrinkled woman of the Homeric hymn, who becomes the nurse of Demophoon. Other lighter, errant stories nest themselves, as time goes on, within the greater. The water-newt, which repels the lips of the traveller who stoops to drink, is a certain urchin, Abas, who spoiled by his mockery the pleasure of the thirsting goddess, as she drank once of a wayside spring in her wanderings. The night-owl is the transformed Ascalabus, who alone had seen Persephone eat that morsel ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... singular school for young children. Among its many peculiarities was that of carrying "moral suasion" to such lengths, as a solitary means of discipline, that the master occasionally publicly submitted to the castigation earned by a refractory urchin, probably by way of reaching the latter's moral sense through shame or pity. This was, doubtless, rather interesting to the pupils, whether or not it was corrective. Mr. Alcott's peculiarities did not stop here, however, and Boston parents, when he began to publish the Colloquies on the ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... crumbs gathering upon her lips. You could see how thin she was when her arm was raised. Yet she made a few little dancing steps as she ate, and her face was not without a comical air of mischief. She was an urchin, and she looked it. She was unscrupulous, and a liar; but she knew a great deal for her years, and she never shrank from knowledge, because she was athirst for it. Knowledge which could be turned to account was her preoccupation. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton

... SEA-URCHIN. The Echinus, an animal of the class Echinodermata, of globular form, and a hard calcareous outer covering, beset with movable spines, on the ends of which ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... nearer, another Indian, who had been, I concluded, sleeping, and just awakened by the tramp of our horses, crawled out of the tent to have a look at us. It was a perfect scene of Indian domestic life. Near the chief, his wife sat on the ground playing with her child, a fat little urchin; a second woman was busy chopping wood; a third was coming in, axe in hand, with a huge bundle of sticks on her back, and a child clinging round her neck while a dog was too busy gnawing a bone to turn round ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston

... success. For I shall hardly be able to allude to the formula of the Radiates, for instance,—the abstract idea that includes all the structural possibilities of that division of the Animal Kingdom,—without recalling to my readers a Polyp or a Jelly-Fish, a Sea-Urchin or a Star-Fish. Neither can I present the structural elements of the Mollusk plan, without reminding them of an Oyster or a Clam, a Snail or a Cuttle-Fish,—or of the Articulate plan, without calling up at once the form of a Worm, a Lobster, or an Insect,—or of the Vertebrate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... and the rest seem entrancing. The glamour of mountain scenery and trout effectually obliterates the brave signs of poverty and struggle from before the irresponsive eyes of the man of city leisure. He carelessly gives the urchin, mutely pleading in front of the unpainted farm-house, a few cents for his corrugated cake of maple-sugar, and asks the name of a distant peak. If he should notice, how would he know the meaning ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various

... Dexter drove them off with words, until at last, an unlucky urchin striking his elbow and making him mar his sketch, he laid down his sketching-box, and, clubbing his campstool, made a rush at the crowd. They fled before him, in their hurry tumbling one over the other, and then, scrambling ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... latch-key, and sitting down to read the paper until the family awoke, I was nearly brained by the butler. He supposed me a belated burglar, and had armed himself with the poker. The most flattering experience of the kind was voiced by a small urchin who plucked at his mother's sleeve: "Look, mamma!" he exclaimed in guarded but jubilant tones, "there's ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... said an urchin, "she's Joe Cough's wife. I seed her going down the street with a great big bundle, and Mam said, she looked like she was going ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... pair of eyes belonged to a boy of twelve, though he looked older—a street urchin—dirty, ragged, with a pinched face and a starved, ill-clad form. A look of sheer desperation came into these eyes when their owner saw the money, and he trembled with excitement as a certain bold and wicked thought ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer

... when Merrick returned from a visit home, he brought with him a singularly feeling and suggestive bas-relief of a thin, faded old woman, sitting and sewing something pinned to her knee; while a full-lipped, full-blooded little urchin, his trousers held up by a single gallows, stood beside her, impatiently twitching her gown to call her attention to a butterfly he had caught. Steavens, impressed by the tender and delicate modeling of the thin, ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... trees and half-a-dozen lordly white-oaks. The spot is famous as a picnicking ground, and in the heat of summer is as cool a place as may be found in the county. And here, paddling in the brook like an urchin, we found Bumblepuppy. His eyes sparkled as they fell upon the face ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... know my urchin was so advanced," he said. "Well done, old son!" He scanned him keenly. "He doesn't sit ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce

... fell out of the window again, and stuck out her tongue like an impudent urchin. "A pair of smarties," she scoffed. "Come home and fret our ears with your ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose

... Come, show thy tricks and sportive graces, Thus circled round with merry faces. Backward coiled, and crouching low, With glaring eyeballs watch thy foe. The house wife's, spindle whirling round, Or thread, or straw, that on the ground Its shadow throws, by urchin sly, Held out to lure thy roving eye. Then, onward stealing, fiercely spring Upon the futile, faithless thing. Now, wheeling round with bootless skill, Thy bo-peep tail provokes thee still, As oft beyond thy curving side Its jetty tip is seen to glide. Whence hast thou, then, thou ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous

... urchin made his appearance from the inside of the cart, "you stand by the cattle while I put ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson

... din, and let me hear the lady speak!' addressing herself, in no very gentle voice, to a little urchin of about a year old. She apologetically continued to Margaret, 'He's always mithering me for "daddy" and "butty;" and I ha' no butties to give him, and daddy's away, and forgotten us a', I think. He's his father's darling, he is,' said she, with a ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... antique brass knocker contended for recognition. Alike rusty as these were, it became a problem as to which would best secure communication with the interior. While the matter still seemed indefinite, it was set at rest by the advice of an obliging street-urchin, who volunteered his information ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various

... the swimming. A little urchin would hang to his pony's long tail, while the latter, with only his head above water, glided sportively along. Finally the animals were driven into a fine field of grass and we turned our attention ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman

... busy preparing the habiliments of the guysers—whose modes of masking and disguising were often regulated by the characters they were to assume, or the songs they had learned to chant for the occasion. Nor were these mimes limited to the urchin caste; for, in these days, wisdom had not got so conceited as to be ashamed of innocent mirth; and gaucy queens and stalwarth chiels exhibited their superiority only in acting a higher mask, and singing a loftier strain. The gossips did ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... quiet and snug retreat. (Sensation.) From the moment when he was roused from his slumbers in the early morning by Sweeps who came to attend to somebody else's chimneys—(cries of "Shame!")—to a late hour, frequently close on eleven at night, when a loud-lunged urchin bawled out a false alarm of a local murder in the "latest edition," his whole life was one continual contest with organs, with or without monkeys or babies, shouting fern-vendors, brass bands, broken-winded concertinas, Italian brigands, choruses of family beggars, tearing milk-carts, itinerant ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various

... these things had been accomplished Chandrapal was again in Deadborough—a guest at the Rectory. It was Billy Rowe, an urchin of ten, who informed me of the arrival. Billy had just been let out of school, and was in the act of picking up a stone to throw at Lina Potts, whom he bitterly hated, when the Rectory carriage drove past the village green. At once every hand, ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... schoolhouse, where they left Charley, and came back more drearily than they went. Well, on this particular morning, Charley had forgotten his slate, and he and the girl returning to search for it left Harry at the gate to await their return. The little urchin, just at that precise moment, spying Harry solus, and impelled by the agreeable prospect of a playfellow, rushed across the street, at the imminent danger of being run over, to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... measure of common sense directed her views of art in general. Works such as the Farnese Hercules and the group about the Bull she looked upon much as she regarded the wall-scribbling of some dirty-minded urchin; the robust matron is not horrified by such indecencies, but to be sure will not stand and examine them. "Oh, come along, Jacob!" she exclaimed to her husband, when, at their first visit to the Museum, he went to work at the antiques with his Murray. "I've ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... harm it will do him to be hungry, thin!" says the culprit's mother, with an angry voice, but with visible signs of relenting in her handsome eyes. "Be off wid ye now, I tell ye." This is the last burst of the storm. As the urchin creeps crestfallen towards the doorway her rage dies, its death being as sudden as its birth. "Come back here!" she cries, inconsistently. "What d'ye mane be takin' me at me word like that? Come back, I tell ye, an' go an' ate something, ye crathur. ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... and to the urchin he had left in charge of it? He owed a thousand dollars on its purchase, which he had promised to pay yesterday. Then, too, he had neglected his house account at the University Club, and it was long overdue. That remittance ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... dead? or is it merely a threat, or some device of that urchin? He is a forward child, and would not hesitate to speak ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... was the urchin who must needs traverse the correspondence through the seeming Tibbott, and so got Antony removed from about us. A stout lubberly Yorkshire lad, fed on beef and pudding, a true Talbot, a mere English bull-dog who will have lost all the little breeding he had, while committing spulzie and piracy ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... surrounded by ponderous volumes, gravely investigating the teaching of departed commentators, or joining with quiet fervour in the family devotions. But had they seen him running down the stairs with an urchin on his shoulders, laughing like a schoolboy, they would have refused to credit the evidence ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... rider. Just as, in those dim old days in the pasture, when the short brown legs of the boy could not encompass him enough to gain a secure grip, he used to halt gently, and turn gently, for fear of unseating the urchin. How far more cautious was his maneuvering now! Here on his back was the power which had saved him from the river. Here on his back was he whose trailing fingers had ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... that ever were made to me, this is the strangest!" exclaimed Charles. "An urchin like this weary of life! What next? So," with a wink to his companions, "Peregrine Oakshott, we condemn thee for high treason against our most sacred Majesty's beaver and periwig, and sentence thee to die ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... most unholy triumph. Sir George (who always stood during prayers, like a military man) fairly sank down among the hassocks, and Lady Gorgon was heard to sob as audibly as ever did little beadle-belaboured urchin. ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... when the dredge was down. No sieve having been supplied, we were obliged to sift the contents of the dredge through our hands—a tedious and superficial mode of examination. Still some fine specimens of a curious flat sea-urchin (Encope marginata) and a few shells, encouraged us to persevere. Two days after, Mr. Huxley and myself set to work in Botafogo Bay, provided with a wire-gauze meat cover, and a curious machine for cleaning ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... before, in order to continue my servitude elsewhere. I was free. I could go out into the sunshine and look my fellow-man in the face, free from the haunting, demoralising sense of incapacity. I was free. Until that urchin's shriek I had not realised it. My teeth chattered with ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... hostility of some, and the too evident ridicule of others, the disagreeable surprise of all, were too palpable for him not to see it, and to be hurt by it, and it was still worse when a street urchin said to him in a jeering voice, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... sharply, feeling justly incensed. Of course, he knew what it was—some good-for-nothing urchin finding a vent for his excited feelings. His parlor-maid, who was never in any hurry to open the door,—she had once kept him waiting ten minutes when he had forgotten his latch-key,—would certainly take no notice of this unseemly noise, but he, James Tapster, would himself hurry out ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... morning, and dossed on Banstead Downs that night. Next day they joined the great stream of traffic rolling out of London Epsomward. Young Joe, whose strength lay in his powers of sympathetic intuition, let Monkey drive. And the urchin took his place with pride in that vast stream of char-a-bancs, 'buses, hansoms, and drags rolling southward; and no four-in-hand coachman of them all held up his hand to stay the following traffic, or twiddled his whip with lordlier ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... my home, generally laden with a basket of provisions and various household necessities. Milk was brought to us daily from the above-mentioned cottage by a little toddler who seemed just able to carry the small tin bucket which held a lacteal pint. If the urchin had been the child of rich parents, as Euphemia sometimes observed, he would have been in his nurse's arms—but being poor, he was scarcely weaned before he began to carry milk around ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton

... The owner the fag of thinking: it's the listeners Who get the headache. And yet, I could talk At one time to some purpose—didn't dribble Like a tap that needs a washer: and, by carties, It's talking I've missed most: I've always been Like an urchin with a withy—must be slashing— Thistles for choice: and not once, since I came, Have I had a real good shindy to warm ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

... still in the field, fighting for his freedom and right) was lodging with one of her relations, when, two days later, after she had given birth to a baby boy, she was visited by seven warriors, or so-called Tommy Atkins; the young urchin was taken away from its mother by its two legs, by the so-called noble British, and his head battered in against the bed-post until it had breathed its last, and thereupon thrown out by the door as if it was the carcase of a cat or dog. Then ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... perfumed shade of an adjacent rick; "that's his stable voice assumed for the occasion, and, between you and me, I can't think how he does it. Egad! he's the most remarkable boy that ever wore livery, the sharpest, the gamest. I picked him up in London, a ragged urchin—caught him picking my pocket, Been with me ever since, and I wouldn't part with him for his ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... time this urchin, your favourite, has shown his impudence by twisting other people's words," said ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... companions, and spoke to them from time to time, was their servant: a boy travelled on foot to show them the different turns which their road made necessary to them; and though, when chosen for the duty, he had received numerous injunctions as to the speed with which he should travel, the urchin on foot had hitherto found no difficulty in keeping up with the equestrians. The two ladies were Madame de Lescure and her sister-in-law, and the servant was our trusty friend Chapeau. And we must go back a little to recount as quickly as we ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... don't mean to say they've got fireworks!" exclaimed Diana. "Then I'm not going back till I've bought some. Here, sonny!"—catching a bare-headed urchin by the shoulder—"tell me where you got those squibs, and I'll give you my last bit of candy. Mrs. Cobbes's in Beck Street? Where's Beck Street? Is it far? You ought to come and show us for that big ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... Suddenly one dusky urchin rose with a whoop of delight, bearing aloft the torn paper with several lumps of sweet stuff, discolored with dirt, sticking to it. With one accord the little mob broke. The triumphant child fled away to the bluff pursued by the rest of her howling companions. ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... considerably mitigated by the receipt, a couple of days after my last talk with the general, of a note from Mordaunt Heatherstone. This was brought us by a little, ragged urchin, the son of one of the fishermen, who informed us that it had been handed to him at the avenue gate by an old woman—who, I expect, must have been the ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle

... of birds. On one occasion, Speke having given Mtesa a rifle, the king, after examining the weapon, loaded it and told a page to go out and shoot some one, to ascertain if it would kill well. In a moment a report was heard, and the urchin came back grinning with delight at his achievement, just like a schoolboy who has shot his first sparrow. Nothing was heard about the unfortunate wretch who had served as a target, the murder of a man being by far too common an incident to ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... its load of soiled clothing he had just overturned into the mud of the street. The man was making pitiful attempts to gather up his bundle, but his poor old frame, stiffened and twisted with rheumatism, refused to bend. The urchin shouted with laughter, and his victim leaned against a wall whimpering helplessly. The sight of him hurt Elizabeth even more than the little girl's hungry face. She thought of her own father, and felt a hint of the anguish it would mean if ho should one day be ill-treated. The tears came, ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... urchin playing in the street got in the way of a horse, and just saved himself from being run over by a quick jump; he threw up his arms and in a most cheerful voice called out, "It's all right, only different!" If the horse had ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call

... than half a century before, Daniel Herbert, then a country urchin tending cattle on the hillside where now stood his turreted stone mansion, had decided that some day when he should be rich he would return and buy that hillside and the great reach of flat river-bottom that lay adjacent to it, and there build his home. His ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester

... all had been told to keep away from the ditch at the bottom of the field; but, notwithstanding this injunction, one little urchin, of the name of Jarvis, seeing a flower in the hedge on the opposite bank, which he wished to gather, crept nearer ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker

... naughty boy," exclaimed Madame de Villefort, snatching the mutilated book from the urchin's grasp, "you are positively past bearing; you really disturb the conversation; go, leave us, and join your sister Valentine in dear ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... epithet sometimes from the flower, (violaceum, cruciforme), and sometimes from the seed vessel, (elatum, echinosum, corniculatum). Guarding this distinction, however, we may perhaps be content to call the six last of the group, in English, Urchin Poppy, Violet Poppy, Crosslet Poppy, Horned Poppy, Beach Poppy, and Welcome Poppy. I don't think the last flower pretty enough to be connected more directly with the ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... carried me thus far when I became aware of a small, furtive figure, dodging from one patch of shadow to another. Leaning from the window, I made out the form of a somewhat disreputable urchin, who, dropping upon hands and knees, proceeded to crawl towards me over the grass with a show ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol

... and Paul, putting the unfinished letter in his pocket, went round to see Pash in his Chancery Lane office. He was stopped in the outer room by a saucy urchin with an impudent face and a bold manner. "Mr. Pash is engaged," said this official, "so you'll 'ave to wait, ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume

... hillock above the river. Here I entered some of the houses, and found considerable comfort, plenty of dirt, and a good many pigs, who seemed on the best possible terms with the children. An Irishwoman, standing at her door, her eldest son in her arms, a fine bright-eyed urchin, told me, in return for my compliments on the healthy appearance of the child, that she 'had been afther bathing him; for sure he had made himself dirty with playing ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... mask or goggles, take along a gig or some slender stick and feel your way along so you don't fall into a hole you can't see in the deceptive near-tropical waters. If, despite precautions, you get a sea urchin's needlelike spine broken off in your skin, soak the wound in vinegar which will dissolve the fragments and stop the pain in a ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company

... should hence Learn to make a Spiritual Improvement of the Snow." And then with a closing volley of every text winch figures under the head of "Snow" in the Concordance, the discourse comes to an end; and every liberated urchin goes home with his head full of devout fancies of building a snow-fort, after sunset, from which to propel consecrated missiles against imaginary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... by counting that he would have enough without disturbing his beloved gold-piece, and the shop-keeper strapped the three articles on his back, drawing the grater around to his side, and the happy Fritz set out for the depot, when a street urchin slipped up behind him and blew a shrill blast upon the trumpet. Fritz turned quickly and at that moment he heard a call, "Pixy! Pixy!" and the dog turned joyously and looked back at a tall policeman who laid his hand upon the ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang

... dog paused a moment, wagging his tail, and seeking to read the urchin's eyes. Then, barking joyfully, he set off down the slope to the village. Abbe Mouret and Brother Archangias followed him, chatting. A hundred yards further Vincent surreptitiously bolted, and again glided up towards the church, keeping a watchful ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... exclaimed with a deep sigh, "that is one of the many instances of the ingratitude of human nature; I confided those boots to the boy whom you must have seen come with me to fetch yours and the other gentlemen's shoes or clothes for brushing, etc. Well, sir, that young urchin is a protege of mine; I took him, sir, from the lowest obscurity and made him what he is; I taught him my profession, I endowed him with all the benefit of my experience, and with respect to blacking shoes, I have initiated him into all the little mysteries of the art, and can ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... my father said, When I was an urchin vain;— God rest his soul, in his narrow bed These ten long years he hath lain. When I think one drop of the blood he bore This faint heart surely must hold, It may be my fancy and nothing more, But the faint ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... the third glass rises a little winged urchin, who cannot certainly be called an angel child, for there is goblin blood in his veins, and he has the spirit of a goblin—not wishing to hurt or harm you, indeed, but very ready to play off tricks upon you. He'll sit at your ear and whisper merry thoughts ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... and the redoubtable 'Tammy'—a very round and chubby urchin, as unlike a denizen of the slums as could well be imagined—were sitting at tea by the cosy hearth, and there was a warm welcome and a cup for the ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... found a detachment of the infant population of the quarters busily crabbing; all of whom, save two little Indians who fished stoically on, scrambled to their feet, and pulled a forelock. The overseer touched one urchin upon the shoulder with the butt end of ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston



Words linked to "Urchin" :   fry, youngster, ragamuffin, sea urchin, nipper, child, minor, edible sea urchin, kid, nestling



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