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More "Waif" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stood and gazed for a little space Down on his pallid and careworn face, And a smile of scorn went round the band As they touched alternate with foot and hand This mortal waif, that the outer space Of dim mysterious sky and sand Flung with so little of Christian grace Down ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... lonely wanderer upon the earth am I, The waif of nature—like uprooted weed Borne by the stream, or like a shaken reed, A frail dependent of the fickle sky. Far, far away, are all my natural kin; The mother that erewhile hath hush'd my cry, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... other mothers' children in pieces. A hen has no such checks; her motherhood exists without any qualification. Her intense love for her own brood is softened by no social requirements. If a poor lost waif from another coop strays into her realm, no pity, no sympathy springing from the memory of her own offspring, moves her to kindness; but she goes at it with a demoniac fury, and would peck its little life out, if fear did not lend it wings. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... those exquisitely simple and truthful books that win and charm the reader, and I did not put it down until I had finished it—honest! And I am sure that every one, young or old, who reads will be proud and happy to make the acquaintance of the delicious waif. ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Ann?" I faltered, my heart racked with the parting. "You found me a homeless waif, and you gave me a home and a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sometimes every drop of water must be sought at a distant hydrant, and carried up two or three rickety flights of stairs before available for use. This makes it so precious that they learn to do without it. Joyce never forgot the picture of one little waif of two years, brought in from the streets, taking its first warm bath in a tub, an embodiment of delight, splashing, laughing, dipping, screaming, in a very ecstasy of happiness. Repeatedly, the attendant tried to ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... lower orders, and by so doing earned their ill-will, and brought upon himself their persecution. Indeed, so uncomfortable did his new home prove through the malignity of his fellow-pensioners, that the health of the poor waif gave way, and it was found necessary to remove him to the Hotel Dieu of Paris. Here he was noticed by the Abbe de l'Epee, who was attracted by his quiet and aristocratic manners and gentle demeanour, and who at the same time considered that, by reason of his ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... standing in his pajamas at a port-hole and trying to see the Noxon home, imagining Charity there. He was denied her presence and was as miserable as any waif in a poor farm attic. Money seemed to make no visible difference ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... unable to restrain his mirth at the astounding satin decollete worn by his leading woman in the scene where she, a street waif, pleads with him to give her a farthing that she and her widowed mother may not starve, turned his back to the audience. So uncontrollable were his chuckles that his shoulders heaved up and down, and his head shook, and his neck got ...
— A Book Without A Title • George Jean Nathan
... experienced his brutality and physical power. To him I was but a chattel, an incumbrance. He had assumed charge of me because the law so ordained, but I had found nothing in his nature on which I could rely for sympathy. I was his sister's child, yet no more to him than some Indian waif. More, he was honest about it. To his mind he did well by me in thus finding me a husband. I sank on my knees, and hid my face, shuddering at the thought of the sacrifice demanded. Cassion! never before ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... islands. The narrow belts of sea, which divide their ocean-girded homes, have constantly to be ferried across, and many a boat which has gone out manned with a gallant crew has never returned or sent a waif to tell ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... his hood over his head and the child held closely in his arms under his cloak, he felt strangely warm and comfortable, and breathed a prayer that he might be spared to carry the little waif he had rescued, in ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... in the South during the Civil War, and the hero is a waif who was cast up by the sea and adopted by ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... suggested that he was probably a heretic, and did not hide their suspicion that he was in love with the master's only daughter, Marietta. All these matters were against him, and people wondered why old Angelo kept the waif in his service, since he would have engaged any one out of a hundred young fellows of Murano, all belonging to the almost noble caste of the glass-workers, all good Christians, all trustworthy, and all ready to promise that the lovely Marietta should never ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... well clothed and shod for the winter, passed heedlessly before the unknown child. One of them, even, the son of one of the principal men in the village, looked at the waif with an expression in which could be seen all the scorn of the rich for the poor, the well-fed for ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... the rise of the curtain and leave it for scarcely more than two minutes at a time until the fall. This was by no means her first show. Before that she had been pantomime fairy, orphan child in melodrama, waif in a music-hall sketch, millionaire's pet in a Society play, a mischievous boy in a popular farce, dancer in a big ballet, and now the lead in a famous fairy play, at a salary of ten pounds a week. No ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... help the good-natured couple in the care of the homeless waif, albeit somewhat doubtful of their religious methods, the schoolmaster said he would be delighted to number her among his little flock. Had she already received ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... where the wind blew raw, With a drooping ear, and a trembling paw, And a mournful look in his pleading eye, And a plaintive sniff at the passer-by That begged as plain as a tongue could sue, "Oh, Mister, please may I follow you?" A lorn, wee waif of a tawny brown Adrift in the roar of a heedless town. Oh, the saddest of sights in a world of sin Is a little lost pup with his ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... have known that the steel box was in that satchel this story might never have been told. But it never entered their heads that the pallid little waif had sense enough to conceal a button ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... "little shepherd" did not know who he was nor whence he came—he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood, seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and mothered this waif about whom there was such a mystery—a charming waif, by the way, who could play the banjo better that anyone else in ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... are far from good," Miss Barnes said; "but little Edna Conway, who is a dear child, seems to have taken a fancy to this poor little waif." And Miss Barnes told of Edna's trust in bringing Maggie to the Home, of Maggie's love for the little kitten, and all that she knew of the child from ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... first brush with entire distinction. Matt had been in the wrong and had shown that he was angry, yet he had a certain discipline which had enabled him to control his temper, and the issue had ended in defeat for the undisciplined waif who might well have been victorious had they ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... of them it was by Beelzebub? Why say it of me? What he claims he freely allows. The Saviour had no tinge of that jealousy of rival teaching—as if truth could be two, and could avoid being one—which makes so many of his followers grasp at any waif of false argument. He knew that all good is of God, and not of the devil. All were with him who destroyed the power ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... magnificence of cities. I could not but look at him curiously. Here was the creature, just like other boys, who knew less of the look of man's world than any one I had ever encountered. To him this overstretching silent sky, this vacant rolling reach of earth, and home, were all of life. What a waif of existence!—but the ponies being ready, we said our good-byes and drove on along fainter tracks, still northward. We talked for a while in that spacious atmosphere—the cheerful talk, half personal, half literary, lightly humorous, too, ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... and casually mentioned in the way of conversation that they had heard the child crying, and that it was rather remarkable it should be still alive. Needless to say, Miss Slessor was off, and had that waif home. It was truly in an awful state, but just alive. In a marvellous way it had been left by leopards and snakes, with which this bit of forest abounds, and, more marvellous still, the driver ants had not scented it. Other ants had ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... carelessly was swept into my path, as a stray waif, that man who would in one little moment change my whole life! It is always so. Our life sweeps onward like a river, brushing in here a little sand, there a few rushes, till the accumulated drift-wood chokes the current, or some larger tree falling across it turns ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... A babe—a waif with tawny tangled locks, And great blue eyes with wonder brimming o'er; Of all the human freight wrecked on the rocks, The only living thing ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... where I stand to the sun is a pathway of sapphire and gold, Like a waif of those Patmian visions that wrapt the lone seer of old, And it seems to my soul like an omen that calls me far over the sea— But I think of a little white cottage and one that is dearest ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... man's wife, whom Meriem had christened "My Dear" from having first heard her thus addressed by Bwana, took not only a deep interest in the little jungle waif because of her forlorn and friendless state, but grew to love her as well for her sunny disposition and natural charm of temperament. And Meriem, similarly impressed by little attributes in the gentle, cultured woman, reciprocated ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... ribbon knotted about its neck, and vicious, amber-colored eyes that were a perpetual challenge, had fled from the tender mercies of Dick to the city of refuge under Beryl's cot; and community of suffering had kindled an attachment that now prompted the lesser waif to spring into the girl's folded arms, and rub its head against her shoulder. Mechanically Beryl's hand stroked the creature's ear, while it purred softly under the caress; but suddenly its back curved into an ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... as a mechanic as well? Was I unfit for anything? The other fellows at the shop had a definite foothold in life, while I was a waif, a ne'er-do-well, nearly two years in America with nothing ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... five miles of cross country is reckoned a sufficient justification for the establishment of an independent company, who, without any consultation with the proprietors of the main line, or enquiry as to their ultimate intentions, seize upon the vacant ground as a waif, and throw themselves confidently upon the public. If the matter does not end in a lease, the unfortunate public will be the losers, since it is manifestly impossible that a little Lilliput line can ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... occasionally worn by Kate. Of this, however, he was not sufficiently certain; so, thrusting it into his pocket, he turned away, more perplexed than ever with the mystery that surrounded him. Hurrying to the Rock with the waif as soon as he could, he submitted it to his friends, when it was at once recognized as being similar to a set of buttons worn by Kate, and which belonged to a dress that, it was believed, she wore on the night of her disappearance. ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... or Paris, Illinois, and should chance to be in that neighborhood, you will stop at Tony's news stand to buy your home-town paper. Don't mistake the nature of this story. There is nothing of the shivering-newsboy-waif about Tony. He has the voice of a fog-horn, the purple-striped shirt of a sport, the diamond scarf-pin of a racetrack tout, and the savoir faire of the gutter-bred. You'd never pick him for a newsboy if it weren't for his chapped ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... had been in a dream, he said to himself; he would conquer it and be only hers; he would go away with her into the forests and green fields she loved, or he would share in the life of usefulness for which she yearned. But then, what was he to do with this little waif from the heart's tropics,—once tampered with, in an hour of mad dalliance, and now adhering in-separably to his life? Supposing him ready to separate from her, could she be ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... for verse from me, the feeble prey Of this self-seeking world, a waif and stray With none to whom to cling; From me—unhappy, purblind, hopeless devil! Who e'en in what is good see only ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... added to five days in the dungeon and eighty hours in the jacket, oppressed by the calamity of human fate, apprehensive of what was to happen to me from what I had seen happen to the others—I, a wavering waif of a human man and an erstwhile professor of agronomy in a quiet college town, I hesitated to accept the ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... camp-fire, dreaming back along that trail over which he had struggled and fought and blundered; back to the time when he was a waif in Enright, his only companion a lean yellow dog . . . Pete nodded and his eyes closed. He turned lazily and ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... mementoes from the deceased lady's scant leavings, was one who had in her own palmetto hut an empty cradle scarcely cold, and therefore a necessity at her breast, if not a place in her heart, for the unfortunate Lufki-Humma; and thus it was that this little waif came to be tossed, a droll hypothesis of flesh, blood, nerve and brain, into the hands of wild nature with carte blanche as to the disposal of it. And now, since this was Agricola's most boasted ancestor—since it appears the darkness of her cheek ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... ambition. One may shut out many things in life that are sweet and wholesome. But it is too early yet for me to look back upon what has happened with equanimity and say that I am glad to be a wanderer on the face of the earth, a homeless man, a waif." ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his sorrows, no man need be made worse by them. That depends upon how we take the things which come storming against us. The set of your sails, and the firmness of your grasp upon the tiller, determine whether the wind shall carry you to the haven or shall blow you out, a wandering waif, upon a shoreless and melancholy sea. There are some of you that have been blown away from your moorings by sorrow. There are some professing Christians who have been hindered in their work, and had their peace and their faith ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... between Blue Bonnet and an unfortunate little waif grew, cementing with each visit, reaching out into a future that meant much to the helpless lad; much to the young girl whose character was strengthened and broadened ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... waif, the big house was a very wonderful place. The fine old furniture, the silver plate of which Uncle Rufus took such loving care, the happy, merry girls, benevolent Mrs. MacCall and her odd sayings, even ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... when Ivan's eyes were opened, it was already too late. This did not come about, however, until, in the spring of the year 1871, something had happened to change Gregoriev's mode of life almost as completely as he had altered that of the waif thrown up at his door out of the troubled sea of ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... fingers and hold them on the lips they had scarcely touched. But the impulse was lost in the thrill of seeing the dining-room door thrown open and a great bulk of a man cross the floor of the office and stand beside Bland's chair. At his side was a thin waif who had not unjustly been termed ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... the open door, and the Editor stood for a moment looking regretfully after him. He liked his little protege ever since that unfortunate child—a waif from a Chinese wash-house—was impounded by some indignant miners for bringing home a highly imperfect and insufficient washing, and kept as hostage for a more proper return of the garments. Unfortunately, ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... was affectionately dubbed by the boys, "the Kid," was a waif who had drifted in among them some months before. Except that his mother was in the hospital, nothing was known about him, which was regular and according to the rule of the house. Not as much was known about most of its patrons; few of them knew more themselves, or cared to remember. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... Her person, her voice, her exquisite utterance, were one strong appeal to belief and tenderness. Yet what had been the history which had brought her to this desolation? He was going on a strange errand—to ask shelter for this waif. Then there occurred to him the beautiful story Plutarch somewhere tells of the Delphic women: how when the Maenads, outworn with their torch-lit wanderings, lay down to sleep in the market-place, the matrons came and stood silently ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... the wind. The deep loneliness made Flor tremble; the water that upbuoyed her was blackness itself; the way before her was impenetrable; far up above her opened that rent of sky,—so far, that she, a little dark waif among such tremendous shadows, was all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... girding himself to it as firmly as he was able. In this condition, plus a swoon from exhaustion, he was descried by the helmsman of the Pretty Mary, a few miles from Cape Surville, at daylight next morning. Blunt, with a wild hope that this waif and stray might be the lover of Sarah Purfoy, dead, lowered a boat and picked him up. Nearly bisected by the belt, gorged with salt water, frozen with cold, and having two ribs broken, the victim of Vetch's ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... favorite among her children, but this little waif was so completely orphaned, so desolate and destitute, and withal so puny, fragile and lifeless that Marian took her to her own heart day and night, imparting from her own fine vital temperament the warmth and vigor that ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... power to startle, as if the crime were a new thing, not as old (so all religions tell us) as the first brothers. As a meteoric stone falls on our planet, strange and unexplained, a waif of the universe, from a nameless system, so the horror of murder descends on us, when we meet it, with an alien dread, as of an intrusion from some lost star, some wandering world ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... baith gowd and gear, Wi' thee I ne'er gat nane; I got thee as a waif woman, I'll leave thee ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... Gotthold, "does any man respect himself? To this poor waif of a soldier of fortune we may seem respectable gentlemen; but to ourselves, what are we unless a pasteboard portico and a deliquium ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... none can clearly know; Athwart the mountains and immense wild tracts, Or flung a waif upon that vast sea-flow, Or down the river's boiling cataracts: To reach it is as dying fever-stricken 5 To leave it, slow faint birth intense pangs quicken; And memory swoons in both the ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... Think it over. I'm ready to. I'm not sure that it wouldn't be a relief to get out of this rotten life. I'm all on edge. I could jump out of that window as easily as not. But it wasn't the girl's fault. She's a poor little waif of a thing. You must look after her and keep me from seeing her again, but she's not bad—only—only—Oh, ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... of the years that endure not Whose tide shall endure till we die And know what the seasons assure not, If death be or life be a lie, Sways hither the spirit and thither, A waif in the swing of the sea Whose wrecks are of memories that wither ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... other Vestiges of Creation, in the Royal Cabinet. In the course of years, some historian would probably have occasion to turn over these curiosities, and would presently light on the scorched but still legible waif. "Why," says he, in astonishment, "I thought the earth was burnt on the 15th of May! To be sure, it was in the night, and nobody saw it go, [think of that, conceited Worldling!] but it was missed by somebody the day after. But ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... It is something like saying that children would be better off and have more strength of character if they learned to look after themselves. But you can start that theory too young and have the child die on your hands, or turn into a gutter waif. The child needs entire looking after up to a point where he can begin little by little to look after himself. And after he has learned to dress himself it does not necessarily mean he can select his own food, his ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... the old man to Mr. Hammond's office. The president of the company invited the hermit into his shack and gave him a seat. He scrutinized the man sharply as he thus greeted him. It was quite true that the hermit did not wholly fit the character he assumed as a longshore waif. ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... its due as trustfully as these little mosses sit among the clouds and find a spring to feed them even in the rock. Now I will make a speedy end of this, pleasant as it is to sit here feeling myself no longer a solitary waif. I shall spare you the stormy scenes I passed through with Ottila, because I do not care to think of my Cleopatra while I hold 'my fine spirit Ariel' in my arms. She had done her best, but had I been still heart-free I never ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... in to the fire, and the hot coffee; you are frozen with the wind and snow. Glory be, that I am still here to make comfortable for the waif on my doorstep." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Sacramento, I beheld on the platform Captain John A. Sutter. Memories both painful and grateful were evoked. It was he who had first sent food to the starving travellers in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It was he who had laid his hand on my head, when a forlorn little waif at the Fort, tenderly saying, "Poor little girl, I wish I could give back what ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... her father and his inmost soul responded. But aloud he exclaimed in a horrified tone, "Good God!" Then in a moment, turning almost fiercely to the priest, "Why did she give away her child and let it be thought a foundling? For if the story is true she has been little better than a waif, a ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... backward glance, inspired by fond imaginings that the pinto might have stopped to graze, Sundown stalked down the road. Waif of chance and devotee of the goddess "Maybeso," he rose sublimely superior to the predicament in which he found himself. "The only reason I'm goin' east is because I ain't goin' west," he told himself, ignoring, with warm adherence to ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... of the girl who was drowsing away her youth there. It is all, as I say, so simple, and written with such apparent economy of effort, that only afterwards does the amazing cleverness of Mrs. WHARTON'S method impress itself upon the reader. Charity Royall was a waif, of worse than ambiguous parentage, brought up in a community where her passionate and violently sensitive nature was stifled. Two men loved her—dour middle-aged Lawyer Royall, whose house she kept, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... A waif two years of age was taken from a benevolent institution in Boston, and given to a childless sailor, on his way from a voyage to his home in Maine on the Penobscot River. The sailor knew not from what institution the child was ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... very, very strange, and then the Major almost laughed at the absurdity of the idea. The name Buford was all over the State. The boy had said, with amazing frankness and without a particle of shame, that he was a waif—a "woodscolt," he said, with paralyzing candor. And so the Major dropped the matter out of his mind, except in so far that it was a peculiar coincidence—again saying, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... made my way down the southern declivity of the mountain for a short distance. Again my ear was greeted with that loud, ringing chirp, and now the bird uttering it obligingly alighted on a stone not too far away to be seen distinctly through my binocular. Who was the little waif that had chosen this sky-invading summit for its summer habitat? At first I mistook it for a horned lark, and felt so sure my decision was correct that I did not look at the bird as searchingly as I should have ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... people who admire outlawry. The second year the couple settle down into complete dislike of each other. The third year they separate and seek for divorce, or, as is more probable, the man becomes a drunkard, and the woman a blackened waif of the street. "Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... her laugh As each man from his scanty store shook out a generous half. To kiss the little mouth stooped down a score of grimy men, Until the sergeant's husky voice said,"'Tention squad!" and then We gave her escort, till good-night the pretty waif we bid, And watched her toddle out of sight—or else 'twas tears that hid Her tiny form—nor turned about a man, nor spoke a word, Till after awhile a far, hoarse shout upon the wind we heard! We sent it back, then cast sad eyes upon the scene around; A baby's hand ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... Nancy was a waif, who had been sent out by the same thin little old lady who had sent Jack out. She was very pretty, and possessed of delightfully amiable domestic qualities. She grew up to be a very handsome girl, and was a very bright sunbeam in the homestead. But Jack did not fall in love with her. All unknown ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... sawing wood, rolling casks, or doing what labor he might, to support himself and young family; four years he brooded over the scars which slavery and semi-slavery had inflicted upon his body and soul; and then, with his wounds yet unhealed, he fell among the Garrisonians—a glorious waif to those most ardent reformers. It happened one day, at Nantucket, that he, diffidently and reluctantly, was led to address an anti-slavery meeting. He was about the age when the younger Pitt entered the House of Commons; like Pitt, too, he stood ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... with rapacious eyes. But, eyes no less rapacious had watched the growth of the Mounds in years bygone, and had vigilantly sifted the dust of which they were composed. No valuables turned up. How should there be any, seeing that the old hard jailer of Harmony Jail had coined every waif and stray ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... makes a dash at some waif drifting astern. "What a fearful thing it would be to fall overboard there—in the midst of those horrid creatures! One wouldn't have the slightest chance of being saved. Only to think how little space there is between ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... on the outer rim of the crowd the pale slight girl that stood there—blind, dumb, powerless, frail, and so softly beautiful—a waif on the margin of a tempestuous sea. Through the thick barriers of Naomi's senses everything was coming to her ugly and terrible. Her father was there! They ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... shake my faith in him, Diana; it is not to be shaken. He has told me a little about the past, though I can see that it pains him very much to speak of it. He has told me of his friendless youth, spent amongst unprincipled people, and what a mere waif and stray he was until he met me. And I am to be his pole-star, dear, to guide him in the right path. Do you know, Di, I cannot picture to myself anything sweeter than that—to be a good influence for the person one loves. Valentine says his whole nature has undergone a change since he has known ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... married to a Melchite! The mere idea is sacrilege, is blasphemy; I can give it no milder name! I and your father will die childless before we consent! And it is for the love of this woman, whose heart is so cold that I shiver only to think of it—for this waif and stray, who has nothing but her ragged pride and the mere scrapings of a lost fortune, which never could compare with ours—for this thankless creature, who can hardly bring herself to bid me, your mother, such a civil good-morning—by Heaven it is the truth—as I can say ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... cheat head grain found how treat dead staid ground town beast stead waif hound growl bleat tread rail mound clown preach dread flail pound frown speak thread quail round crown streak sweat snail ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... very kind to the little waif and taken him to her motherly childless heart, and in spite of her excitement over this wonderful event, or because of it, she could not refrain from a few tears. Jim was not indifferent to the fact—any more than he had been to the lark's song, but he secretly thought it very ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... mother both died when I was still a great awkward boy; and I, being the only thing they had to bequeath, became the property of a distant relation. I do not know how it happened, but I had no near relations. I was a kind of waif upon the world from the beginning; and I suppose it was owing to my having no family anchorage that I acquired the habit of swaying to and fro, and drifting hither and thither, at the pleasure of wind and tide. Not that my guardian was inattentive or unkind—quite ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... disappeared from the columns of the newspapers, as the remembrance of that ghastly enigma faded from the minds of their readers, and solicitude about it ceased to occupy the police. The tide of life, rolling that poor waif amid its waters, had swept on. Yes; but I, the son? How should I ever forget the old woman's story that had filled my childhood with tragic horror? How should I ever cease to see the pale face of the murdered man, ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... On the whole, the Waif fared better, having fallen to the hands of a vagabond philosopher, than if she had drifted to those of a respected philanthropist. The latter would have had her glistening hair shorn short, as a crown with which that immortal and inconsistent ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... one little child, whom no one knew and for whom no one cared, was of less than no account; it made a small paragraph in the newspapers—it had caused some little commotion on the pier—just a little hurry at the work-house, and then it was forgotten. What was such a little waif and stray—such a small, fair, tender little creature to ...
— The Tragedy of the Chain Pier - Everyday Life Library No. 3 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... and as the door closed upon the shivering little waif who scratched and whined at the door of his lost Paradise, Jimsy's face, sharpened by disappointment, seemed suddenly thinner and less boyish. Bent upon making the best of things, he ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple
... microscope, a 'gillyflower' was seen protecting a chrysalis. Warm leaves cherished it, dainty juices aided its digestion, wholesome offshoots nourished it to maturity. Eking out a scant existence between two granite flags, this insignificant waif reared a caterpillar. What man are you, who can say ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... intrigues. This was when he was a member of the household of the Comte d'Artois, in the capacity of physician to the Stables. From these love affairs, historically proved, with a great lady, he had retained this sheet. As a waif or a souvenir. At his death, as this was the only linen of any fineness which he had in his house, they buried him in it. Some old women had shrouded him for the tomb in that swaddling-band in which the tragic Friend of the people had enjoyed voluptuousness. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... was indeed well received that winter's morning, and in the course of the day a poor waif rang timidly at the door of the happy home, and presented a paper ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... the wife of a poor minister and school-teacher. To eke out the family income she took boarders. She had five children of her own, who were too young to be of any material assistance, and, in addition, she occasionally harbored a waif that besought her protection when fleeing from slavery. Necessarily the most of her time was spent in the kitchen. There, surrounded by meats and vegetables and cooking appliances, with just enough of the common deal table cleared away ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... the sufficient intelligence all things always are, and are rational. To say there is something yet to be which never was, not even in the sufficient intelligence wherein the world is rational and not a blind and orphan waif, is to ignore all reason. Aught that might be assumed as contingently coming to be could only have 'freedom' for its origin; and 'freedom' has not fertility or invention, and is not a reason for any special thing, but the very vacuity of a ground for anything in preference to its room. Neither ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... them by continual eating! The soldier stops, 'Oh lord, she is neat!' He wants to return her flowery compliment with a similar one; but, Tu bleu! one can't buy bouquets on four sous a day income—even in Rome: so he looks around for a waif, and spies on the pavement something green; he gallantly throws it up, and with a smile and, wave of the hand like a Chevalier Bayard on a bender, he bids adieu to the fair maiden. He threw up half a head ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the fishermen seized the boat as a waif, and towed it into their own fleet, filling the air with cries of triumph. Curiosity led a few to enter the hearse-like canopy, whence they immediately reissued dragging forth ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... pampered daughter of a frivolous mother. Her dislike for the rugged life of Girl Scouts is eventually changed to appreciation, when the rescue of little Lucia, a woodland waif, becomes a problem for ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... was a waif of the London slums, hard and wise beyond his years, who had been starved and abused ever since he could remember. He had fled from cruel taskmasters ashore to endure the slavery of the sea and to be kidnapped into piracy was no worse than other things he had suffered. A gangling lad, with a grin ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... similar loss; others have felt for me, in vain, what I, in vain, felt for him! I sent them all away, because I could not bring myself to endure the thought of marrying any other man, and so I pass my days alone—a waif and stray, without anything or anyone ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... him out of the church; and he said to the bystanders that he was well, and had never been ill: he, the heavily afflicted, the waif cast forth upon the world, remembered nothing of his sufferings. And the Lord our Creator is wise and full of ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... that his place in the world was marked as such, but the simple burgher who, had he not been entitled to call himself so, would have been little better than a pariah, one whom all might have kicked because he had no friends, a mere waif on the turbulent current of the surging and unruly life of those days, felt in every fibre of his being, and from his cradle to his grave, that what he was in the world, and what all that he cared for in the world depended on, was the fact ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... poets of war, as it were, who hurled themselves to their destruction against regiments of engineers. Certainly, my dear minister, I shall always be delighted to give you my counsel, you whom I used to call my dear child, and if the observations of a living waif can serve you in anything, count on me. Dispose of me, and if by chance I can be useful to you, I shall ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... Citizen Delessert sought his friend Jean Souday, who lived close by the Fosse des Tanneurs (Tanners' Ditch.) Jean had a somewhat ancient mare to dispose of, which our landed proprietor thought might answer his purpose. Cocotte was a slight waif, sheared off by the sharp axe of the Place de la Revolution, and Souday could therefore afford to sell her cheap. Fifty francs argent metallique would, Delessert knew, purchase her; but with assignats, it was quite another ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... you. There is the dearest old woman in the village, Mrs. Sullivan. She lives in a pretty cottage quite close to 'The Plough,' and she was only telling me the other day that she wished that she had another child to mother. Sometimes my sister and I have a little East-end waif and stray down for a few weeks in the summer," continued Elizabeth modestly—"some sick child, or occasionally some over-burdened worker, and we always lodge them at Mrs. Sullivan's. It is not much of a place, but we call it 'The Providence House;' the cottage is really our own property, ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... cry, so that I trembled for fear and turned to go away, when there came forth a man from under the earth and followed me, crying out and saying, "Who and whence art thou, and what caused thee to come hither?" "O my lord," answered I, "I am in very sooth a waif, a stranger, and was left to drown with sundry others by the ship we voyaged in; but Allah graciously sent me a wooden tub, so I saved myself thereon, and it floated with me till the waves cast me up on this ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... odes relates how the poet was awakened on a rainy midnight by the cry of a child begging shelter. The little waif proved to be Cupid in disguise. After being warmed and dried by the fire, the boy artfully craved permission to try his bow, to see if the rain had injured its elasticity. The arrow flew straight at the poet's heart with a sweet pain, and away flew ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... be some way to reach a case like this, and there is, I am sure. From what you say, it is more than probable that this poor little waif may have drifted out of some pleasant home, where love would bless it with the tenderest care, into this hell of neglect and cruelty. It should be rescued on the instant. It is my duty—it is yours—to see that it is done, and that without delay. ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... happy thought! My seat is safe, And so 'mid general adulation, I'll rescue some poor party waif By Chiltern ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... well. They were sometimes just, sometimes very unjust; but when I was out of my time, and receiving a salary, I found I was a valued employee. Then it came into my mind that I should like to found a business—a great business. It seemed rather a 'vaulting ambition' for so humble a waif as myself. But I began to save even shillings and sixpences. I tried to kill my heart with these duller, lower aims, it ached so always for what it could not find. I began to think I was growing so useful to madame that she might make me a partner; for even in millinery ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... those "older and wiser" than herself; finally, after his arguments and admonitions, he laid his hand on her bowed head as if silently giving a patriarchal blessing; and Mavis watched and admired, and loved him for his noble generosity in taking so much trouble about the poor little waif that had no real ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... of watchdog on the doorstep at home, and saw once more the loved forms of wife and children springing joyfully from the cheery fireside to meet his outstretched arms. A few tossed restlessly, and frequent incoherent mutterings wandered, waif-like up and down the room, sometimes rousing Andrew, who once or twice lifted his head to listen, and then sank back ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... them first of all in reformatories, and afterwards, at intervals during their lives, in prisons. If they grow up without shaking off the terrible mental darkness of their starveling childhood, we must provide for them in asylums. A thoroughly neglected waif costs this happy country something like fifteen pounds per year for the term of his natural life. Very good. At this point some hard-headed person says, "What about the workhouses?" This brings us face to face with another astounding problem to solve ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Year. Lines on the Anniversary of Eddy's Death. Extracts from her Journal. Little Susy's Six Teachers. The Teachers' Meeting. A New York Waif. Summer in the Country. Letters. Little Susy's Little Servants. Extracts from her Journal. "Alone ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... unscrupulously acquired, a tale of murder was strangely blended. Abigail's husband had been a smuggler, and she herself was a daring and keen-eyed wrecker. For a season both throve. He had escaped detection in many a heavy run of contraband goods; and she had come in for many a valuable 'waif and stray' which the receding waters left upon the slimy strand. It was, however, her last venture, which, in her neighbors' language, had made her. Made her, indeed, independent of her fellows, but a murderer before her God!... About day-break in a thick misty morning in April, a vessel, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... say to what depths of bad taste the writer of certain passages in Venus and Adonis could not fall before his genius or his judgment was full-grown. To invent an earlier play on the subject and imagine this scene a surviving fragment, a floating waif of that imaginary wreck, would in my opinion be an uncritical mode of evading the question at issue. It must be regarded as the last hysterical struggle of rhyme to maintain its place in tragedy; and the ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... divers vestments of the ladies have found their way into the state-rooms of the other cabin; particularly a nightcap of Mademoiselle Viefville's, that has been discovered in Captain Truck's room, and which that gallant seaman has forthwith condemned as a lawful waif. As he never uses such a device on his head, he will be compelled to wear it next his heart. He will be compelled to convert it ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Evidently his work for the day was over, and he was enjoying himself. Remembering the description given by Bart, the detective saw that this was the very man who had entered the shop of Aaron Norman. He wore the same dress and looked dirty and disreputable—quite a waif and ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... directions named, but he was not without talents. He could wash and wipe dishes and, incredible as it may seem, he was also literary. Like attracts like, by some law past understanding. To me it still seems a wonderful thing that this little waif of a man with a taste for Tolstoy and a passion for long words should have just then ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... his work is known." A piece of honey-comb, one day, Discover'd as a waif and stray, The hornets treated as their own. Their title did the bees dispute, And brought before a wasp the suit. The judge was puzzled to decide, For nothing could be testified Save that around this honey-comb There had been seen, as if at home, Some longish, brownish, buzzing creatures, ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... Scott Two Years Before the Mast Dana Midshipman Easy Marryat Captains Courageous Kipling The Flying Cloud Morley Roberts The Cruise of the Cachalot Frank T. Bullen Log of a Sea Waif Frank T. Bullen The Salving of a Derelict Maurice Drake The Grain Carriers Edward Noble Marooned Clark Russell Typhoon Conrad Toilers of the Sea Hugo An Iceland Fisherman Loti The Sea Surgeon ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... the latter, you may well believe. Obscure and poverty-stricken, the world passed on, and forgot even her existence, after a way it has. She did not "keep up with the times," and she was left by the receding tide, a lonely waif upon unknown shores. What lay before her, God alone knew. Clemence felt grieved, too, to find that she was not liked by the village people. Old Mrs. Wynn took care to inform her of that, with a due amount of exaggeration. Her crime consisted in minding her own business, and letting others ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... encased in a heavy woolen straight-jacket, and there was a strap around its loins to which a stout cord was attached, running to the Root of All Evil. The pavement was hot, but there with its bare and tender feet on the hot concrete, the sad-eyed little waif painfully moved about, peering far up into the faces of passers-by for sympathy, but all the time furtively and shrinkingly watching its tormentor. Every now and then the hairy old tramp would jerk the monkey's cord, each time ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... of wings and happy smiling of familiar faces! The panorama concludes with vision of sleeping waif, upon love-beleaguered cot, illumined by mystic halo, and some high-browed watchers, gazing from child to maiden, uttering strangely significant speech about "one of the ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... child. They themselves had been evolved from a previous generation of promiscuously acquired wealth into the repose of inherited property, but it was currently accepted that Sarah had "cast back" and reincarnated some waif on the deck of an emigrant ship at ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... resumed at the orders and with the permission of government. The more and more avowed materialistic theories revolted his shrewd and sensible mind; without caring to go to the bottom of his thought and contemplate its consequences, he clung to the notion of Providence as to a waif in the great shipwreck of positive ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Mountains, and out of your stage-windows you can see, from Laramie Plains, the Lander's Peak which Bierstadt has made immortal); that stream runs into the sea from whose historic shores you came; you might drop a waif upon its ripples with the hope of its reaching New Orleans, New York, Boston, or even Liverpool. To-morrow you will be ferried over Green River, as near its source,—a stream whose cradle is in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... only in dreams. In all the world then surely was but one Song; as in heaven at highest one sceptred sun Regent, on earth here surely without fail One only, one imperious nightingale. Dumb was the field, the woodland mute, the lawn Silent; the hill was tongueless as the vale Even when the last fair waif of cloud that felt Its heart beneath the colouring moonrays melt, At high midnoon of midnight half withdrawn, Bared all the sudden deep divine moondawn. Then, unsaluted by her twin-born tune, That latter timeless morning of the moon Rose past its hour of moonrise; clouds gave way To the old ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... to his own study, where, with a little sigh, he put away his chess-men, and heartily hoped that it might not be his favorite adversary who was coming before him to be sent to jail. For although the good rector had a warm regard, and even affection, for Robin Lyth, as a waif cast into his care, and then a pupil wonderfully apt (which breeds love in the teacher), and after that a most gallant and highly distinguished young parishioner—with all this it was a difficulty for him to be ignorant that ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Nell was no longer destitute, no longer friendless. In Barech she had found a friend who never deserted her. Captivated by her voice, he took the little waif into his heart and home, and thenceforth she was protected, cared for, and educated. And he was amply rewarded when, in after-years, the fame of Helen Barech spread over England. No one then ever dreamed that the great singer began her career years ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... been asked in marriage by Mr. Warwick, and have accepted him. Signify your approval, for I have decided that it is the wisest thing a waif can do. We are to live at The Crossways for four months of the year, so I shall have Dada in his best days and all my youngest dreams, my sunrise and morning dew, surrounding me; my old home for my new one. I write in haste, to you first, burning to hear from you. Send your ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fellowships should take you by the arm, and walk with you an hour upon your way. You may see from afar off what it will come to in the end—the weather-beaten red-nosed vagabond, consumed by a fever of the feet, cut off from all near touch of human sympathy, a waif, an Ishmael, and an outcast. And yet it will seem well—and yet, in the air of the forest, this will seem the best—to break all the network bound about your feet by birth and old companionship and loyal love, and bear your shovelful of phosphates to and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... all proud of it. We don't let bad-men strut around an' shoot up our citizens, an' we don't let half-grown punchers go crazy an' start hangin' folks without reason. Now do we?" A persuasive smile broke out on the harsh face and transformed it. Every waif, every under-dog, every sick woman and child within fifty miles had met that smile and warmed ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... as destitute, as desolate as any waif in all that great city. He had been cared for all his life, and now that he was suddenly thrown upon his own resources, he felt helpless, like a rudderless bark on ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... I thought you didn't care, that you were just trying to carry on the ghastly game they call flirtation up here, I wouldn't be so angry with you. I'm not Willa Murdaugh down inside of me, and you know it!—I'm just Gentleman Geoff's Billie, a waif raised by the greatest-hearted man that ever lived, but I've got some pride myself. I don't want any man who hasn't s-spunk enough ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... little ragged barefooted child that was crying in the street, and wrap her furs about it and carry it off, smiling and happy, in her arms, with no more thought of the attention such an action would attract than if she had been alone with her waif in the desert. But many and many a time, and in many a way, she had made glad hearts by deeds like that; and now where was she? And was there never a one in the whole wide world to help her to bear her own sorrow and ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... the little waif, And said, "What dost thou here?" "Sapristi, Citizen captain! I'm a ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... right have you, you fool, to hope for that, When every mother's son is privileged To jerk the battle-chariot's reins I hold? Think you that fortune will eternally Award a crown to disobedience? I do not like a bastard victory, The gutter-waif of chance; the law, look you, My crown's progenitor, I will uphold, For she shall bear a race ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... heard that the birdie was adopted in the pantry, and was being fed "in the intervals of business." When a few days later I was definitely informed that the birdie waif was a starling, then I confess I did begin to long for another little friend such as my former "Dick" had been, and it ended in my receiving Richard the Second, as we called him for distinction, into my own care and keeping, and month ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... house ring with their rejoicings. Zillah was soon on a home footing with this little circle. Miss Chute, though rather sharp and very angular, was still thoroughly kind-hearted, and sympathized deeply with the poor waif whom Providence had thrown under her protection. Her kind care and unremitting attention had a favorable effect; and Zillah grew rapidly better, and regained something of that strength which she had lost during the terrors of her late adventure. She was most anxious to go to Naples; but Obed ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... fingers and to approach the stranger where she lurked bodeful under her tree. My passage toward her lay over the rank vegetation of the garth, in whose coarse herbage here and there I stumbled upon a limp white form stretched out—a waif the less in the world! I don't say it was a happy passage for me: it was made to the visible consternation of her I wished to befriend. Her piteous yellow eyes searched mine for sympathy; she wanted to tell me something and ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... bloody knave; my visionary lands and riches all had vanished; instead of silk attire and sword, I wore a rifle-shirt and skinning-knife; and out of the dawn-born glory of the hills had stepped no silken damsel of romance to pause and worship me—only a slender, ragged, grey-eyed waif who came indifferent as the chilly wind in spring; who went as April shadows ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... was as if from all eternity he had loved this helpless little waif of Time, with its small, thin, blue-gray, gin-drugged face; this tiny life, so hopeless, so miserable, yet so uncomplaining: the thing that was, was the thing for it to bear; it had come into the world ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... to get it without the nuisance of sketching in the slums. Such a ragged, pinched, eager, and yet stupid child as might sit homeless between the black walls of Newgate and the churchyard of St. Sepulchre,—a waif of the richest and most benevolent society in Christendom, for whom the alternative of the churchyard would ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... be the first American girl she had ever met; but she knew how an English girl would feel about being introduced to a vague waif picked up by a brother in a dressmaker's showroom on shipboard. It would have been ungracious to refuse the offered introduction so well meant, but the fifth dryad was not looking forward to ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... Chantilly alone taking precedence of it. It is to the duc de Morny that Deauville owes the existence of its "hippodrome," but the choice of this bit of sandy beach, that seemed to have been thrown up and abandoned by the sea like a waif, cannot be called a happy one. It may be, however, that the duke's selection of the site was determined by its proximity to the luxuriant valley of the Auge, so famous for its excellent pasturage and for the number of its stables. The Victor stud belonging to M. Aumont, that of Fervacques, the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... the waters," said Calton, oracularly. "The kindness of Miss Frettlby to that poor waif is already bearing fruit—gratitude is the rarest of qualities, rarer ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... I knew what I was going to do. And I knew that, sink or swim, never again was I going to "put it under." I told them to wait. I taxied opulently home. My waif was curled up in my kimono, feeding my fan-tailed goldfish. "Hurry up," I said, briskly. "You're holding ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... there was the mute appeal of this wee waif alone and unloved in the midst of the horrors of the savage jungle. It was this thought more than any other that had sent her mother's heart out to the innocent babe, while still she suffered from disappointment that she had been ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... kissed each other," he went on, speaking so quietly that it seemed almost a whisper. "We were almost children then. I was a poor little chap, who gave drawing lessons to Herman and his sisters. You were a little waif, fed cake and tea at the millionaire's table. There we met, a beggar boy and a beggar girl, thrown together in a palace. We looked at each other, ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... and seven the next morning, this mute ghostly waif from Palestine, with the half-century old dust of a pomegranate flower in its keeping, had come up that dark stairway. It appeared now that the letters were always found on the fourth stair from the top. This fact had not before been elicited, but there seemed little ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... a nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms; and his love-story with "The Angel" are full of ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... a unique place, a Devil's Antechamber, where almost anything except what is decent and orderly may happen. It is not so much a prison or penitentiary as a human pound, where every variety of waif and stray turns up and sojourns for a while; murderers, pickpockets, political scapegoats, confidence men, old professionals, first-time offenders, even suspects afterwards to be proved innocent. There is nothing that I know of to prevent thorough-going ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... meritorious, merely because he has done right. Who thinks of praising the young mother for feeding and washing her first-born? Who shakes the hand of the Sunday-school teacher and congratulates him upon having stolen nothing for a week? But the waif from the gutter who wanders through a department-store and resolutely takes nothing, emerging exhausted with the struggle, we slap upon the back ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... mouth and shut it again. She understood that it would be a waste of breath to say anything more. If Miss Salome had made up her mind to put this freckled, determined-looking waif, dropped on her doorstep from heaven knew where, into Johnny's room, that was an end of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Christian Science Journal has "already fallen into her hands" by that act, though it "seems" to her to have met with that accident; so she would like to have the matter decided by a formal vote. But whether there is a doubt or not, "I see the wisdom," she says, "of again owning this Christian Science waif." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... recognized the intruder with new eyes, not as an enemy, but as a comrade—a comrade marooned on the selfsame island of loneliness and bound to him by the common experience of a kindred adversity. He was like Crusoe discovering the footprint. Here, quite close to him, was a fellow waif who had drunk deep of his own bitter sense of desertion. With a thrill of sympathy, his ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... Quickly undressing she lay down and closed her eyes. A succession of images passed with processional steadiness before her mind; the carriage in the Forest of Fontainebleau and Tante in it looking at her; Tante in the hotel at Fontainebleau, her arm around the little waif, saying: "But it is a Norse child; her name and her hair and her eyes;" Tante's dreadful face as she tottered back to Karen's arms from the sight at the lake-edge; Tante that evening lying white and ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... his skilfully shaped and padded clothes the man was a mere waif of a man—as unbelievably slight as if he were the victim of a wasting disease. Ste. Marie held the body in his arms as if it had been a child, and carried it across and laid it on the bed; but it was many months before he forgot the horror of that awful thing shaking and twitching ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... dinghies from the respectable precincts of Brammo Bay, and having philandered with them for a while, cynically abandoned them with a bump on the mainland beach, and only once has he sent a punt in return—a poor, soiled, tar-besmirched, disorderly waif that was reported to the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... repeated Amanda scornfully. "He's not your uncle. You are a waif. My mother said so, and waifs do not have ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... "waif of weary moments" to some warm-hearted, watchful spirit, who might shelter it from the pitiless assaults of the wide, wide world. But will not our simple booklet prove too insignificant a mark for ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... good as to assist me in shepherding this obstinate little waif? It has been running hither and thither for nearly half an hour, taking every direction but the right one. If you will either walk on and lower the bars for me or drive this lamb while I go forward, you will greatly oblige me. ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... value to life." They passed an evening at Casa Guidi, and Mrs. Hawthorne recorded that in the corridor, as they entered, was a little boy who answered in the affirmative as to whether he were "Penini," and who "looked like a waif of poetry, lovelier still in the bright light of the drawing-room." Mr. Browning instantly appeared with his cordial welcome, leading them into the salon that looked out on the terrace, filled with growing plants. From San Felice there came the chanting of music, and the flowers, the melody, ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... well-born but friendless waif, thrown at the age of thirteen upon the charity of Dr. Peters, an eccentric bachelor. She cares for his house and for him in quaint, womanly fashion, very bewitching, until she is grown. The suit of another and a younger man, makes the doctor know, to his cost, how well he loves her. He ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... is widely different. Four or five miles of cross country is reckoned a sufficient justification for the establishment of an independent company, who, without any consultation with the proprietors of the main line, or enquiry as to their ultimate intentions, seize upon the vacant ground as a waif, and throw themselves confidently upon the public. If the matter does not end in a lease, the unfortunate public will be the losers, since it is manifestly impossible that a little Lilliput line can be cheaply worked, independent of the larger ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... himself trying to study out what they were—the taller one he understood immediately must be in command, for his whole appearance indicated it, while the shorter chap was of the calibre not unlike himself, bronzed from a life in the open, and with a cheery manner that drew the waif ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... the years that endure not Whose tide shall endure till we die And know what the seasons assure not, If death be or life be a lie, Sways hither the spirit and thither, A waif in the swing of the sea Whose wrecks are of memories that wither As ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the earth am I, The waif of nature—like uprooted weed Borne by the stream, or like a shaken reed, A frail dependent of the fickle sky. Far, far away, are all my natural kin; The mother that erewhile hath hush'd my cry, Almost hath grown a mere fond memory. Where is my ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... what purpose you best know; but I think with none consistent with your present assumption of cruelty. Come, come—eyes that are so intelligent can laugh with delight, as well as gleam with scorn and anger. You are here a waif on Cupid's manor, and I must seize on you in ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... where she lurked bodeful under her tree. My passage toward her lay over the rank vegetation of the garth, in whose coarse herbage here and there I stumbled upon a limp white form stretched out—a waif the less in the world! I don't say it was a happy passage for me: it was made to the visible consternation of her I wished to befriend. Her piteous yellow eyes searched mine for sympathy; she wanted to tell me something and I wouldn't ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... motherless waif lived among the old monks at the White Cross on the hill, thriving and growing apace until he had reached eleven or twelve years of age; a slender, fair-haired little fellow, with a strange, quiet ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... saw herself in the queerly-fashioned brown dress that had seemed very nice back at Miller's Notch, but very funny when contrasted with the pretty, simple serge dresses that the other girls at Highacres wore. Perhaps they had all thought she was a "charity girl," a waif brought here by Uncle Johnny. To be sure, her schoolmates had welcomed her into all their activities, but perhaps they had felt sorry for her and, anyway, it had been after Uncle Johnny had given her the ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... knew now that every good mother, when her first child is born, takes it in her arms, and, all her agony gone, and the ineffable peace of delivered motherhood come, speaks the name of its father, and calls it his child. But—she remembered it now—when her child was born, this little waif, the fruit of a man's hot, malicious hour, she wrapped it in her arms, pressed its delicate flesh to the silken folds of her bosom, and weeping, whispered only: "My child, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... himself; he would conquer it and be only hers; he would go away with her into the forests and green fields she loved, or he would share in the life of usefulness for which she yearned. But then, what was he to do with this little waif from the heart's tropics,—once tampered with, in an hour of mad dalliance, and now adhering in-separably to his life? Supposing him ready to separate from her, could ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... with a scarcely perceptible swinging motion over the long stately slow-moving swell which followed her. The vast blue-black dome of the heavens above was devoid of the faintest trace of cloud, and the countless stars which spangled the immeasurable vault beamed down upon the tiny waif with a soft and mellow splendour which was repeated in the dark bosom of the scarcely ruffled ocean, where the reflected starbeams mingled, far down in its mysterious depths, with occasional faint gleams and flashes ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... get him back to his mother?" I pleaded, but as I spoke I allowed the little fingers to slip from mine and I pushed the waif towards Charlotte with the greatest confidence, which evidently communicated itself to both him and the dog, for they left me simultaneously and went towards the ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... drop of water must be sought at a distant hydrant, and carried up two or three rickety flights of stairs before available for use. This makes it so precious that they learn to do without it. Joyce never forgot the picture of one little waif of two years, brought in from the streets, taking its first warm bath in a tub, an embodiment of delight, splashing, laughing, dipping, screaming, in a very ecstasy of happiness. Repeatedly, the attendant tried to remove her, only to yield to her ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... trustfully as these little mosses sit among the clouds and find a spring to feed them even in the rock. Now I will make a speedy end of this, pleasant as it is to sit here feeling myself no longer a solitary waif. I shall spare you the stormy scenes I passed through with Ottila, because I do not care to think of my Cleopatra while I hold 'my fine spirit Ariel' in my arms. She had done her best, but had I been still heart-free I never could have married her. She is one ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... "I'd marry the Empress of China for one bowl of chop suey. I'd commit murder for a plate of beef stew. I'd steal a wafer from a waif. I'd be a Mormon for a bowl ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... success, the fishermen seized the boat as a waif, and towed it into their own fleet, filling the air with cries of triumph. Curiosity led a few to enter the hearse-like canopy, whence they immediately reissued dragging forth ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... you fool, to hope for that, When every mother's son is privileged To jerk the battle-chariot's reins I hold? Think you that fortune will eternally Award a crown to disobedience? I do not like a bastard victory, The gutter-waif of chance; the law, look you, My crown's progenitor, I will uphold, For she shall bear a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... has a good chance to inspect this waif that's been sort of wished on us. Such a sharp, peaked little face she has, and such bright, active eyes, that it gives her a wide-awake, live-wire look, like a fox terrier. Then the freckles—just spattered with 'em, clear across the bridge of her nose ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... be able to help you. There is the dearest old woman in the village, Mrs. Sullivan. She lives in a pretty cottage quite close to 'The Plough,' and she was only telling me the other day that she wished that she had another child to mother. Sometimes my sister and I have a little East-end waif and stray down for a few weeks in the summer," continued Elizabeth modestly—"some sick child, or occasionally some over-burdened worker, and we always lodge them at Mrs. Sullivan's. It is not much of a place, but we call it 'The Providence House;' the cottage is really our own property, ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... not know who he was nor whence he came—he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood, seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and mothered this waif about whom there was such a mystery—a charming waif, by the way, who could play the banjo better than ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... first of all a while in the stable yard or garage before he goes into the gentleman's house, and he is neat and tidy at all times for messages. We have seen many of them in our young days; and even the waif has been picked up by a good master, and began in the stables and worked his way up to be a respected valet in the same household, and often and often told the story of his waif life ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... given it to her to wear, so it was her very own. But was not this a worthy occasion for bringing of one's best and most precious things? Might not this pearl locket help to bring some little outcast waif into paths of pleasantness and peace? Yes, the locket should be given to the special collection, Grace resolved; but it might not be wise, to divulge the intention to Margery, who had already replied, when she was asked ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... the Persians and rooted up the Mede. Browning has gathered into one picture and one sound the whole spirit of the story. Pan and Luna is a bold re-rendering of the myth that Vergil enshrines, and the greater part of it is of such poetic freshness that I think it must be a waif from the earlier years of his poetry. Nor is there better imaginative work in his descriptive poetry than the image of the naked moon, in virginal distress, flying for refuge through the gazing heaven to the succourable ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... stillness: not a waif of a cloud From gray-blue east sheer to the yellow west— No film of mist the utmost slopes ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... of the barrens—"straight north—between the Mackenzie and the Bay," where Snowdrift, waif of the Arctic, Indian bred, bearing a false but heavy burden of shame, and Carter Brent, Southerner, find their great happiness ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... jungle was encased in a heavy woolen straight-jacket, and there was a strap around its loins to which a stout cord was attached, running to the Root of All Evil. The pavement was hot, but there with its bare and tender feet on the hot concrete, the sad-eyed little waif painfully moved about, peering far up into the faces of passers-by for sympathy, but all the time furtively and shrinkingly watching its tormentor. Every now and then the hairy old tramp would jerk the monkey's cord, each time giving the frail creature a violent ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... Not so long a time as has elapsed since you met a waif of the streets and chastised him for some petty annoyance. But both events, the great and the little, have been well remembered here in Shelby; and when Mrs. Scoville came amongst us a month or so ago, with her late but substantial proofs ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... man, Count. Like puppy, here, I am a waif and a stray; yet, at the same time, I have my purpose and am part ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... the deceased lady's scant leavings, was one who had in her own palmetto hut an empty cradle scarcely cold, and therefore a necessity at her breast, if not a place in her heart, for the unfortunate Lufki-Humma; and thus it was that this little waif came to be tossed, a droll hypothesis of flesh, blood, nerve and brain, into the hands of wild nature with carte blanche as to the disposal of it. And now, since this was Agricola's most boasted ancestor—since it appears the darkness of her cheek had no effect to ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... if from all eternity he had loved this helpless little waif of Time, with its small, thin, blue-gray, gin-drugged face; this tiny life, so hopeless, so miserable, yet so uncomplaining: the thing that was, was the thing for it to bear; it had come into the world to bear it! Ready to die, even Death would not have it; it must live where it was not wanted, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... incident did not damage his credit with her. However, after the little waif had been sufficiently petted and praised to gratify Master Marmaduke's paternal feelings, they came home, and, instead of holding their tongues, began to tell all our people what a dear little child Marmaduke had, and how they considered that it ought not ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... Cephalonian waif and adventurer had now mounted to the zenith, and was safe to shine for many years with unabated brilliancy; to this day he is remembered by the expressive term Vicha-yen, "the cool wisdom." The ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... certain bounds at home, after he had begun to go wrong, by the weight of opinion, he rushed into all excesses when abroad upon business, till at length the vessel of his fortune went to pieces, and he was a waif on the waters of the world. But in feeling he had never been vulgar, however much so in action. There was a feeble good in him that had in part been protected by its very feebleness. He could not sin so much against it as if it had been strong. For many years he had fits of shame, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... over the cantle and swung down to go on one knee to my stout challenger. I can never make you understand, my dears, how the sight of this helpless waif appearing thus unaccountably in the heart of the great forest mellowed and softened me. 'Twas a little maid, not above three or four years old, and with a face that Master Raphael might have taken as a pattern for one ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... Aquitaine and Vasconia was much more keenly disputed and for a much longer time uncertain. Duke Waif re was as able in negotiation as in war; at one time he seemed to accept the pacific overtures of Pepin, or, perhaps, himself made similar, without bringing about any result; at another, he went to seek and found even in Germany allies who caused ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... the rock the prize he sought for. It had been, as he conceived, carried away by an eddy of the stream and was borne, as a true prisoner-of-war, within my grasp. I avow that from this moment my interest in the scene became considerably heightened; such a waif as a bottle of champagne was not to be despised in circumstances like mine; and I watched with anxious eyes every gesture of the impatient Frenchman, and alternately vibrated between hope and fear, as he neared or ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... mute appeal of this wee waif alone and unloved in the midst of the horrors of the savage jungle. It was this thought more than any other that had sent her mother's heart out to the innocent babe, while still she suffered from disappointment that she had been deceived in ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... once repealing Five Acts of Parliament 'gainst private stealing! 55 But yet from Chisholm who despairs of grace? There's no spring-gun or man-trap in that face! Let Moses then look black, and Aaron blue, That look as if they had little else to do: For Chisholm speaks, 'Poor youth! he's but a waif! 60 The spoons all right? the hen and chickens safe? Well, well, he shall not forfeit our regards— The Eighth Commandment was ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... little about the child I adopted," she said. "The poor waif was deserted, and as to the wrench now, why, life has taught me, also, George, to take what joy one can and be willing to pay for it. We cannot afford to let a great blessing slip because we may have to do ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... he, jumping with excitement also, for the boat Carette had sighted was evidently astray, and, moreover, it was, as they could easily see even at that distance, no Island boat, but a stranger, a waif, and so lawful prey and treasure-trove if they ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... in the great city, to which he was a stranger, towards evening. A little waif and stray in London, with only five shillings in his pocket! But no fears assailed him. He was encouraged by the great hope of the meeting on the morrow. His heart began beating at the very thought of the loving arms into which ...
— A Little Hero • Mrs. H. Musgrave
... pride if you want to! If I thought you didn't care, that you were just trying to carry on the ghastly game they call flirtation up here, I wouldn't be so angry with you. I'm not Willa Murdaugh down inside of me, and you know it!—I'm just Gentleman Geoff's Billie, a waif raised by the greatest-hearted man that ever lived, but I've got some pride myself. I don't want any man who hasn't s-spunk enough to ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... verse from me, the feeble prey Of this self-seeking world, a waif and stray With none to whom to cling; From me—unhappy, purblind, hopeless devil! Who e'en in what is good see only evil ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... no reason for becoming, to a sufficient intelligence. In the sufficient intelligence all things always are, and are rational. To say there is something yet to be which never was, not even in the sufficient intelligence wherein the world is rational and not a blind and orphan waif, is to ignore all reason. Aught that might be assumed as contingently coming to be could only have 'freedom' for its origin; and 'freedom' has not fertility or invention, and is not a reason for any special ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... Nan Sherwood could scarcely do less than enjoy herself during the week they remained in Tillbury. Inez, the waif, had become Inez, the home-body. She was the dearest little maid, so Momsey said, that ever was. And how ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... of England. 'And to think that I have come to this,' he added emphatically. 'Even them boys knock me about now, and 'alf a century ago I could 'ave cleared the bloomin' place.' There was a merry little waif from the circus who loved to come and sit with Hubert. She had been a rider, she said, but had broken her leg on one occasion, and cut her head all open on another, and had ended by running away with some one who had deserted her. 'So here I am,' she remarked, with a burst of laughter, 'talking to ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... destruction against regiments of engineers. Certainly, my dear minister, I shall always be delighted to give you my counsel, you whom I used to call my dear child, and if the observations of a living waif can serve you in anything, count on me. Dispose of me, and if by chance I can be useful to you, I shall feel ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... of a microscope, a 'gillyflower' was seen protecting a chrysalis. Warm leaves cherished it, dainty juices aided its digestion, wholesome offshoots nourished it to maturity. Eking out a scant existence between two granite flags, this insignificant waif reared a caterpillar. What man are you, who can say there ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... out. The horror of the whole thing had crept into her blood like poison. Life was once more a dreary, profitless struggle. All the wonderful dreams, which had made existence seem almost like a fairy-tale for this last week, had faded away. She was once more a mournful little waif among ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... head struck the metal. Garay was so rejoiced that he sacrificed a pig, which was served upon this extemporaneous platter, and he boasted that there was no such dish in Europe. Twenty other ships with gold on board went down in the storm which swallowed up Garay's waif.[E] ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... daughter of a frivolous mother. Her dislike for the rugged life of Girl Scouts is eventually changed to appreciation, when the rescue of little Lucia, a woodland waif, becomes a problem ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... light fellowships should take you by the arm, and walk with you an hour upon your way. You may see from afar off what it will come to in the end—the weather-beaten red-nosed vagabond, consumed by a fever of the feet, cut off from all near touch of human sympathy, a waif, an Ishmael, and an outcast. And yet it will seem well—and yet, in the air of the forest, this will seem the best—to break all the network bound about your feet by birth and old companionship and loyal love, and bear your ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not come back with the other Icelandic fishers; and as the men of the Samuel-Azenide afterward picked up in some fjord an unmistakable waif (part of her taffrail with a bit of her keel), all ceased to hope; in the month of October the names of all her crew were inscribed upon black ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... not only in the eyes of the little waif, but handkerchiefs were in demand among all who stood listening to the story, forgetful of sales or profits for the moment, and intent only upon feeding the little orphan ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... I stand to the sun is a pathway of sapphire and gold, Like a waif of those Patmian visions that wrapt the lone seer of old, And it seems to my soul like an omen that calls me far over the sea— But I think of a little white cottage and one that is dearest ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... But I—a waif on earth where'er I roam— Uprooted with life's bleeding hopes and fears, From that one heart that was my heart's sole home, Feel the old pang pierce through the severing years, And as I think upon the years to come, That fair star trembles ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... population, and they leave behind them traces of their march. Fleets move through a desert over which wanderers flit, but where they do not remain; and as the waters close behind them, an occasional waif from the decks may indicate their passage, but tells nothing of their course. The sail spoken by the pursuer may know nothing of the pursued, which yet passed the point of parley but a few days or hours before. Of late, careful study of the winds and currents of the ocean has laid down certain advantageous ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... understand. She would have been much surprised if she could have guessed how much its emptiness interested other people in Rome; how the dowagers chattered about her over their tea, abusing her mother and all her relations for abandoning her like a waif; how the men reasoned about Baron Volterra's deep-laid schemes, trying to make out that his semi- adoption of Sabina, as they called it, must certainly bode ruin to some one, since he had never in his life done anything without a financial ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... got separated, at which time the mustang had been shut up for four days in the cellar of a ruined convent with no other food than stones and mortar! How Twidget came by his name is not clear. Perhaps it was some waif of the rider's ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... for Wingo of the Cree tribe, a waif among the Athabascas, whose father had been slain as they travelled, by a wandering tribe of Blackfeet. Never was there a braver rivalry, although the odds were with the Indian—in lightness, in brutal strength. With the mikonaree, however, were skill, and that sort of strength ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... Spanish or Italian blood, I think. However, I am going from my story. I hesitated what to do, but the man was in such trouble, and so insistent, repeating over and over the necessity of propitiating the "good spirit," that I called my wife, and she decided we must take the little waif, or it would die ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... for a little space Down on his pallid and careworn face, And a smile of scorn went round the band As they touched alternate with foot and hand This mortal waif, that the outer space Of dim mysterious sky and sand Flung with so little of Christian grace Down ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... Feliu's waif should never be identified;—diligent inquiry and printed announcements alike proved fruitless. Sea and sand had either hidden or effaced all the records of the little world they had engulfed: the annihilation of whole families, the extinction of races, had, in ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... of these graineries, ably administered, the crown was enabled to acquire the estates of the great feudatories, and thus the whole social system of Egypt was changed. And Joseph, from being a poor waif, cast away by his brethren in the wilderness, became the foremost man in Egypt and the means of settling his compatriots in the province of Gotham, where they still lived when Moses fled from Egypt. Such facts had made a profound impression upon the mind ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... first time, in this beautiful waif of the big city he had found a mixture of warmth and coldness, of straightforward simplicity and boldness, which opened his eyes as to there being in her sex an attraction he had previously denied. He felt as he looked at her that he wanted her; that he could not go away and forget ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... could it be an act of spite against Aurora Googe? Was it a final answer to any expectations of her nephew, Champney Googe, her husband's namesake and favorite? Was this little alien waif to be made a catspaw for her revenge? She was capable of such a thing, was Almeda Champney. He knew her; none better! Had not her will, thus far in her life, bent everything with which it had come in contact; crushed whatever had opposed it; broken ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... and for whom no one cared, was of less than no account; it made a small paragraph in the newspapers—it had caused some little commotion on the pier—just a little hurry at the work-house, and then it was forgotten. What was such a little waif and stray—such a small, fair, tender little ...
— The Tragedy of the Chain Pier - Everyday Life Library No. 3 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... promptly and reverently deposited among the other Vestiges of Creation, in the Royal Cabinet. In the course of years, some historian would probably have occasion to turn over these curiosities, and would presently light on the scorched but still legible waif. "Why," says he, in astonishment, "I thought the earth was burnt on the 15th of May! To be sure, it was in the night, and nobody saw it go, [think of that, conceited Worldling!] but it was missed by somebody the day after. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... was swept into my path, as a stray waif, that man who would in one little moment change my whole life! It is always so. Our life sweeps onward like a river, brushing in here a little sand, there a few rushes, till the accumulated drift-wood chokes the current, or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... "attacked again, and from time to time added to their number" in 1893, Mr. Balfour says: "The reference to Odin [Fable XVII] perhaps is due to his reading of the Sagas, which led him to attempt a tale in the same style, called 'The Waif Woman.'" ...
— The Waif Woman • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Mint, got out of the party he supported those of Registrar to the Court of Chancery in the Island of Barbadoes, a sinecure done by deputy, Surveyor of the Crown Lands, and Paymaster to the Board of Works. The wits of White's added the title of 'Receiver-General of Waif and Stray Jokes.' It is said that his hostility to Sheridan arose from the latter having lost him the office in the Works in 1782, when Burke's Bill for reducing the Civil List came into operation; but this is not at all probable, as his dislike was shown long before that period. Apropos ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... saved her life. And, boy, you'll be a big man of the U. P. some day. Chief engineer or superintendent of maintenance of way or some other big job. What could be finer? Romance, boy. The little waif of the caravan—you'll send her back to Omaha to school; she'll grow into a beautiful woman! She'll have a host of admirers, but you'll be the king ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... rose a hair's breadth on an almost imperceptible swell of the water, swung round, floated clear, and reached the strand. All this the young man noted, but it neither quickened his pulses, nor hastened his hand. If any one had been lying in wait for the arrival of the waif, he must be seen, and the utmost caution in approaching the shore became indispensable; if no one was in ambush, hurry was unnecessary. The point being nearly diagonally opposite to the Indian encampment, he hoped the last, though the former was ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... propound such a scheme! Would you leave this precious waif to be buffeted between the contending waves of truth and error, in the vague hope that by some lucky wind he might finally be cast upon a rock of safety? I protest against all these educational heresies—they are redolent ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... scene of explanation, in which, seconding one another's efforts, striving to hit upon simpler analogies, plainer terms, Paul the doctor, and Miss Ludington sought to make clear to this waif from eternity, so strangely stranded on the shores of Time, the conditions and circumstances under which she had resumed ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... also that he had not come out of this first brush with entire distinction. Matt had been in the wrong and had shown that he was angry, yet he had a certain discipline which had enabled him to control his temper, and the issue had ended in defeat for the undisciplined waif who might well have been victorious had they come ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... finally sank below the horizon, leaving only its three skeleton-like towers standing against the sky—standing erect with all nerves strained, watch-dogs of the darkening sea; ears cocked, to catch a distressed cry from some waif out in the ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... Just because of the waif's helplessness was repugnance to her conquered. She had no other redeeming quality. In a certain sense she was fearsome; she required unremitting attention and care; her whimpering fits, in beast-like monotone, shook the nerve of the most patient of her attendants. She was ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... then rang, no more was said of the little waif until the sleigh was brought to the door, and Frank announced his intention of stopping for the child on his way back from the station, where he was ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... furnished houses at her feet—a man of gentlemanlike bearing, good-looking, well-informed, well-spoken, with no signs of age in his well-preserved face and figure; a man whom any woman, friendless, portionless, a mere waif upon earth's surface, at the mercy of all the winds that blow, ought proudly and gladly ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Marat in his youth had had amorous intrigues. This was when he was a member of the household of the Comte d'Artois, in the capacity of physician to the Stables. From these love affairs, historically proved, with a great lady, he had retained this sheet. As a waif or a souvenir. At his death, as this was the only linen of any fineness which he had in his house, they buried him in it. Some old women had shrouded him for the tomb in that swaddling-band in which the tragic Friend of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... head upon his breast and put a little hot hand into his own. A great tenderness toward her filled his whole being and brought a sense of happiness very foreign to him lately. How gentle and kindly this little waif of fortune had ever been. And how even those few weeks of a better schooling had improved her. She had shed all the old vulgarities—she was just a simple schoolgirl as he would ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... and admonitions, he laid his hand on her bowed head as if silently giving a patriarchal blessing; and Mavis watched and admired, and loved him for his noble generosity in taking so much trouble about the poor little waif that had ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... . dust to dust." . . . The clock turned back and he stood in a church by an Irish hill. White and terrified, Kenny remembered what in its vivid agony of detail he would fain have forgotten. Why, now, when Joan was slipping into his life, a lonely waif of a girl in a black gown he hated, why must he think years back to that soft-eyed Irish girl and Brian? Had he broken his pledge to her, driving her son away with a passion of self no less definite for its careless gayety? Eileen's son! Eileen's son! Sadness tore at Kenny's heart and ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... so much has been made of the humble circumstances in which Grover made his start in life that the unwary reader might easily imagine that the future President was almost a waif. Nothing could be farther from the truth. He really belonged to the most authentic aristocracy that any state of society can produce—that which maintains its standards and principles from generation ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... he arrives there none can clearly know; Athwart the mountains and immense wild tracts, Or flung a waif upon that vast sea-flow, Or down the river's boiling cataracts: To reach it is as dying fever-stricken 5 To leave it, slow faint birth intense pangs quicken; And memory swoons in ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... welcomed the same circle that had met at her home the November before, and Lena's little heart glowed with the soul-satisfying sense of the difference to her. Then she had been a social waif, received on sufferance. Now she was one of them. She could even afford to have her own opinions. The very memory of past discomforts doubled the present blessedness, and Mr. Lenox looked only ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... and he did not intend to be deceived. He found the little fellow had not departed from the facts in the least particular. He belonged to nobody; but every one who knew him had a kindly word for him. He was known as an honest, good-natured little waif, with a reputation for hitting the bull's-eye every time any one would lend him a ...
— A Little Dusky Hero • Harriet T. Comstock
... these two went Christmasing in the throng. Wyoming's Chief Executive knocked elbows with the spurred and jingling waif, one man as good as another in that raw, hopeful, full-blooded cattle era, which now the sobered West remembers as the days of its fond youth. For one man has been as good as another in three places—Paradise ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... by a physician, who learned that the girl had been a waif and had been taken in charge by a Protestant clergyman when she was nine years old and brought up as his servant. This clergyman had for years been in the habit of walking up and down a passage of his house into ...
— The Trained Memory • Warren Hilton
... was the first representative sent from Cumberland to the Legislature at Halifax, and was a member of the Winslow family, so distinguished in colonial history. He was engaged at Chignecto with Capt. Huston, in the commissary business. The latter in one of his trips to Boston picked up a waif in the person of Brook Watson, a young man who had had one of his legs bitten off by a shark in West-Indian waters. Watson was trained under Winslow, and the foundation of his success was hereby laid. General Joshua was Commissary-General of the British in Nova Scotia. He left Fort Cumberland ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... having none other, to scrape acquaintance, where, how, and with whom he could. Many a long dull talk he held upon the benches or the grass; many a strange waif he came to know; many strange things he heard, and saw some that were abominable. It was to one of these last that he owed his deliverance from the Domain. For some time the rain had been merciless; one night after another he had been obliged to squander fourpence on a bed and ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... finished my work, I hope to come back; to spend the residue of my earthly days, and to die here, a faithful Umilta Sister of the 'Anchorage', which opened its arms when I was a needy and desolate waif." ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... husband in cold blood: and can only think of her as having been throughout a victim. It does not absolve Violante, but it allows something for honest parental feeling in the old couple's desire for a child; and something for the good done to this human waif by its adoption into a decent home. According to this version, it is the Count and his brother who lay the matrimonial trap, and the Comparini parents and child who fall into it. "The grim Guido is at first kept in the background. Abate Paolo makes the proposal. He is oily and deferential, ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... drew her from the heights, Like witch's demon-spell, that fearful moan. She knew that somewhere in the green abyss His body swung in curves of watery force, Now in a circle slow revolved, and now Swaying like wind-swung bell, when surface waves Sank their roots deep enough to reach the waif, Hither and thither, idly to and fro, Wandering unheeding through the heedless sea. A kind of fascination seized her brain, And drew her onward to the ridgy rocks That ran a little way into the deep, Like questions asked of Fate by longing ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... Ah, senor, a waif of the wind, adrift on the night's Plutonian shore; but an hour or two ago, the gale caught me up in Spain and swept me over the seas. Regard me as a voice, merely a voice that would hold speech with so ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... silly, triumphant laugh, and thrust the child forward against the carriage step. The poor waif, drenched, dazed, tottering without his crutch, caught at the plated handle for support. Honoria gazed down on him with eyes which took slow and pitiless account of the deformed little body, ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... her little waif, wondering silently why it did not gain strength and agility as did the little apes of other mothers. It was nearly a year from the time the little fellow came into her possession before he would walk alone, and as for climbing—my, but how ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Julian to meet the child. The woman's heart, hungering in its horrible isolation for something that it might harmlessly love, welcomed the rescued waif of the streets as a consolation sent from God. She caught the stupefied little creature up in her arms. "Kiss me!" she whispered, in the reckless agony of the moment. "Call me sister!" The child stared, vacantly. Sister meant nothing to her mind but ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... As each man from his scanty store shook out a generous half. To kiss the little mouth stooped down a score of grimy men, Until the sergeant's husky voice said,"'Tention squad!" and then We gave her escort, till good-night the pretty waif we bid, And watched her toddle out of sight—or else 'twas tears that hid Her tiny form—nor turned about a man, nor spoke a word, Till after awhile a far, hoarse shout upon the wind we heard! We sent it back, then cast sad eyes upon the scene around; ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... become of me, Steptoe? Is the best thing I can do to shoot myself? Think it over. I'm ready to. I'm not sure that it wouldn't be a relief to get out of this rotten life. I'm all on edge. I could jump out of that window as easily as not. But it wasn't the girl's fault. She's a poor little waif of a thing. You must look after her and keep me from seeing her again, but she's not bad—only—only—Oh, my God! ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... play-fellow. And now lame Tim has driven the cows home; and the dew is falling, the stars are creeping out, and the little crickets and frogs have commenced their evening concert, and still little pet hasn't come! Where is the little stray waif? ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... world 'mid double danger, groans, and tears; The toy, the sport, the waif and stray of passions, ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... to a Melchite! The mere idea is sacrilege, is blasphemy; I can give it no milder name! I and your father will die childless before we consent! And it is for the love of this woman, whose heart is so cold that I shiver only to think of it—for this waif and stray, who has nothing but her ragged pride and the mere scrapings of a lost fortune, which never could compare with ours—for this thankless creature, who can hardly bring herself to bid me, your mother, such a civil good-morning—by Heaven it ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... beginning of wisdom. It means caution, independence, honesty and veracity. Faith means negligence, serfdom, insincerity and deception. The man who never doubts never thinks. He is like a straw in the wind or a waif on the sea. He is one of the helpless, docile, unquestioning millions, who keep the world in a state of stagnation, and serve as a fulcrum for the lever of despotism. The stupidity of the people, says Whitman, is always inviting the insolence ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... how much it is to ask of you—I know, for I have been in your place, I have lived your life, and there is no man before me here tonight who knows it better. I have known what it is to be a street-waif, a bootblack, living upon a crust of bread and sleeping in cellar stairways and under empty wagons. I have known what it is to dare and to aspire, to dream mighty dreams and to see them perish—to see all the fair flowers of my spirit trampled into the mire by ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... makes me safe— I am, immediate, Of one that lives; I am no waif That haggard waters toss and chafe, But ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... take the slave away, And keep her safe for yet another day, And on the morning will I think again Of some fresh task, since with so little pain She doeth what the gods find hard enow; For since the winds were pleased this waif to blow Unto my door, a fool I were indeed, If I should fail to use her for my need." So her they led away from that bright sun, Now scarce more hopeful that the task was done, Since by those bitter words she knew full well Another tale the ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... work is known." A piece of honey-comb, one day, Discovered as a waif and stray, The Hornets treated as their own. Their title did the Bees dispute, And brought before a Wasp the suit. The judge was puzzled to decide, For nothing could be testified Save that around this honey-comb There had been seen, as if at home, Some longish, ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... Souday, who lived close by the Fosse des Tanneurs (Tanners' Ditch.) Jean had a somewhat ancient mare to dispose of, which our landed proprietor thought might answer his purpose. Cocotte was a slight waif, sheared off by the sharp axe of the Place de la Revolution, and Souday could therefore afford to sell her cheap. Fifty francs argent metallique would, Delessert knew, purchase her; but with assignats, it was quite another affair. But, courage! He might surely play the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... looking over the battlements of her palace and seeing this poor waif, takes compassion upon her, and, after giving her refreshments, questions her in regard to her origin. Damayanti simply vouchsafes the information that her husband has lost all through dicing, and volunteers to serve the rani, provided she is never expected to eat the food left ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
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