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More "Imp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... delightful home you have," Pliny said, eagerly, as the two young men lingered together in the hall; and then his face darkened as he added: "It is the first table I have sat down to in many a day without being tempted on every side by my faithful imp, starting up in some shape or other, to coax me to ruin. I tell you, Mallery, ...
— Three People • Pansy
... I've won! Ouf! What a difficult little old imp he is! Figaro understands him. I found myself lying, and that made me awkward; and he has eyes for everything! On my honor, if the letter hadn't inspired me he'd have thought me a fool!—Ah, how they are disputing in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... do," was the charm that lured us on board the "Balaklava," and now "nothing to do," was with us like the Bottle-Imp, an incubus, still crying out: "You may yet exchange me for a smaller coin, if such there be!" "Nothing to do," is an imposture. Something to do is the very life of life, the beginning and end of being. "Picton," said I, "one thing we must do, at ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... down. Another family was afflicted in a different manner, two of its number pining away and losing strength daily, as if a prey to some consuming disease. In a third, another child was sick, and vomited pins, nails, and other extraordinary substances. A fourth household was tormented by an imp in the form of a monkey, who came at night and pinched them all black and blue, spilt the milk, broke the dishes and platters, got under the bed, and, raising it to the roof, let it fall with a terrible crash; putting them all in mental terror. In the next cottage ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the nail from the bladder, and gave a squeeze; when, as sure as I am living, a little imp spurted out from the hole upon the palette, and began laughing in the most singular and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... suppose," he went on, "that genius is a beneficent little imp, or genie, lodged in the brain of the fortunate or unfortunate, who is all-powerful, and always at hand to give strength, emit a flash of light, or pour inspiration into the faculties, nor does ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... be sure, as they called the house of that imp of Satan, the Baroness. I was the wash-lady there, for it's not Mrs Conner the landlady as is above spakin' of the days when she wasn't as high in the world as she is now; and many is the cheerin' cup of coffee or tay from your own mother's hand, that I've had in the forenoon, to chirk me up and ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the old gentleman again, moving off, 'you will please amuse yourself until I return'; but seeing me look wild, said, 'You have seen too much of me to feel alarmed for your own safety. Take this imp for your guide, and if he is impertinent, put him through; and for fear the exhibitions may overcome your nerves, imbibe of this cordial,' which I did, and everything danced before my eyes, and I wasn't ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... in this experiment, we began to seek for the opportunity of making others, and offered a reward for any person who would show us a specimen of imp or spirit. One man was produced, who was stated to be of considerable fame. He said he would show me a spirit; but I must go out with him three nights running to a cross road at midnight, and perform divers ceremonies and lustrations which he proceeded to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... healthy soul. As they sped up the long drive they were joined by a galloping horseman, who shouted to Bertie to put on speed and flogged his animal furiously when the car drew ahead. He looked like a demon to Dot in the half-light—a black imp mounted on a black mare riding to perdition. She was glad to leave ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... for my own part in the fray, when I recognized in the five-feathered chieftain of the three that copper-hued imp of Satan who had been the merciless master of ceremonies at the torturing of my poor black Tomas, the decent meed of mercy which even a seasoned soldier may cherish died within me, and I made sure the steel would find ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... won't keep still. No, Sir, he won't keep still unless he is made to. Once let him get started there is no knowing where he will stop. Peter Rabbit had just seen Jimmy Skunk disappear inside an old barrel, lying on its side at the top of the hill, and at once the Imp of Mischief began to whisper to Peter. Of course Peter shouldn't have listened. Certainly not. But he did. You know Peter dearly loves a joke when it is on some one else. He sat right where he was and watched to see if Jimmy would come out of the barrel. Jimmy didn't come out, and after ...
— The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk • Thornton W. Burgess
... they might expect him any day. Oh, the two beautiful hours that we passed together! Derossi and Coretti are the two jolliest boys in the school; my father fell in love with them. Coretti had on his chocolate-colored tights and his catskin cap. He is a lively imp, who wants to be always doing something, stirring up something, setting something in motion. He had already carried on his shoulders half a cartload of wood, early that morning; nevertheless, he galloped all ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... fine demon! It's simply a little nasty, scrofulous imp, with a cold in his head, one of the unsuccessful ones. But you have something you don't dare ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... "Beware of that imp of Tolobon!" Joe Johnson muttered. "How I wish you could kill him, Van Dorn. He's got to be a senator; some day he'll be chief-justice of Delaware: then, what'll ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... think a kelpy would look like that?" said the girl dreamily. "I don't. I think it is a wild, wicked little sea imp, malicious and mocking and cruel, and it sits here and watches ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... half work. These were the weeks for disputes, for quarrels, for disagreeables, for scrapes. During these weeks poor Miss Nelson's hair became more gray, and her face more wrinkled and anxious; but she dreaded the holidays, not because Basil was at home, but on account of Eric, who was a perfect imp of mischief, and because all the home children were more or less demoralized by ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... hunger to come into his eye that she caught her breath. The imp of perversity made her ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... your irons; and ye, stout mariners, ring me in, that I may in some sort revive a noble custom of my fisherman fathers before me. O men, you will yet see that—Ha! boy, come back? bad pennies come not sooner. Hand it me. Why, now, this pewter had run brimming again, were't not thou St. Vitus' imp—away, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... across it in front of him, and to charge afresh through the storm of musket-balls, and ride on thus burdened, was the work of ten seconds with "Bel-a-faire-peur." And he brought the boy safe over a stretch of six leagues in a flight for life, though the imp no more deserved the compassion than a scorpion that has spent all its noxious day stinging at every point of uncovered flesh would merit tenderness from the hand ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... So, so, my run-a-ways! I shall nab you, shall I?" exclaimed Purley in triumph, as he beckoned the negro imp ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... his nature and threatened to wreck a carefully-built life. It was his first meeting with the little demon that rebels in a man after he thinks his character and his reactions thoroughly established, and he shuddered as he realized how close the strange imp had pulled him to the precipice. Yesterday, that precipice had seemed a new paradise; now it was a yawning chasm—and ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... Malachi, and he's got the best o' me. I'm not going to church any more." When his brother Frank was told, he threatened to "lick the young sinner." "That's about the best can be said for you Protestants," said the young imp. "You lick us when you're strong enough." But the father, when he heard the tidings, declared that he would not have his son molested. No doubt he would live to see his mistake. It was to be hoped that ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... meeting. Tim attended, but an imp of perverseness seemed to rule him. It was the first time he had seen the patrol as a group since Friday night. At first he looked hot and uncomfortable. After a while he began to scrape his feet and drum on the table. He seemed anxious to have it understood that, ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... features of the girl at whom he had been looking that very day with more than ordinary attention. Once already, when Jacqueline was hardly out of baby-clothes, the great painter had made an admirable sketch of her tousled head, a sketch in which she looked like a little imp of darkness, and this sketch Madame de Nailles took pains should always be seen, but it bore no resemblance to the slender young girl who was on the eve of becoming, whatever might be done to arrest her development, a beautiful young woman. Jacqueline disliked to look at that ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... the fog around St. James's Palace stood an Imp, clad in patched trousers and a pepper-and-salt jacket turned up about the neck, gazing with admiring eyes ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... 'Vie de Jeanne d'Arc, d'apres les documents nouvellement publies (avec des cartes d'itineraire).' Paris, Firmin-Didot (imp. ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... platanes, et spare des ateliers par un vaste jardin. C'est l que je suis venu au monde et que j'ai pass les premires, les seules bonnes annes de ma vie. Aussi ma mmoire reconnaissante a-t-elle gard du jardin, de la fabrique et des platanes un imprissable souvenir, et lorsqu' la ruine de mes parents il m'a fallu me sparer de ces choses, je les ai ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... venerable priest, Our frequent and familiar guest, Whose life and manners well could paint Alike the student and the saint; Alas! whose speech too oft I broke With gambol rude and timeless joke; For I was wayward, bold, and wild, A self-willed imp, a grandame's child; But half a plague, and half a jest, Was still ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... and crack! off flew the lid of the snuff-box; but there was no snuff inside, only a little black imp—that was the ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... and over rivers and rocks, they alight at one of the rear portals of the City of Destruction which opens upon a murky region—the chambers of Death. On all hands are myriads of doors leading into the Land of Oblivion, each guarded by the particular death-imp, whose name was inscribed above it. The Bard passes by the portals of Hunger, where misers, idlers and gossips enter, of Cold, where scholars and travellers go through, of ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... "Madonna della Famiglia Alva," (now in the Imp. Gal., St. Petersburg), and in his Madonna of the Vienna Gallery, Christ gives the cross to St. John. In a picture of the Lionardo school in the Louvre we have the same action; and again in a graceful ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... let th'unpleasant quyre of frogs still croking Make us to wish theyr choking. 350 Let none of these theyr drery accents sing; Ne let the woods them answer, nor theyr eccho ring. [Ver. 341.—The Pouke (Puck is a generic term, signifying fiend, or mischievous imp) is ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... with a younger daughter's license. She was a statuesque young woman with a pose, ripe lips, flashing white teeth, laughing eyes with an imp of mischief in them, and an exquisitely turned-up nose that was neither the Brentwood, which was severely classic, nor the Grimkie, which was pure ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... morning, after an early breakfast, I set off to explore the virgin forests of Aru, anxious to set my mind at rest as to the treasures they were likely to yield, and the probable success of my long-meditated expedition. A little native imp was our guide, seduced by the gift of a German knife, value three-halfpence, and my Macassar boy Baderoon brought his chopper to clear the ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Oh, he was an imp. He turned the keep doors out of dortoirs while we had him. He sang foul songs, learned in the Barons' camps—poor fool; he set the hounds fighting in hall; he lit the rushes to drive out, as he said, the fleas; he drew his dagger on Jehan, who threw ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... rebellion. "Nay, good father," he said decisively, "the maiden was no fiend; if her companion be an imp of darkness, as well she may, be it my task to rescue her from the evil snare into which she has fallen!" He had indeed a vivid recollection of the soft, human hand to which he had ventured to give a gentle pressure when he had assisted in placing the wreath on the fair, ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... from thy first institution, At so light motions. To one that thus hath swerved, What a lord art thou, to give such retribution! I, damnable wretch, deserved execution Of terrible death, without all remedy, And to be put out of all good memory. I am enforced to rejoice here inwardly, An imp though I be of hell, death and damnation, Through my own working: for I consider thy mercy And pitiful mind for my whole generation. It is thou, sweet Lord, that workest my salvation, And my recovery. Therefore of a congruence From hence thou must have my heart ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... south sea bridal The Ban The Missionary Devil-work Night in the bush The Bottle Imp ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is grown a casuist compared to those partitioners. Well, let US Simple individuals keep our honesty, and bless our stars that we have not armies at our command, lest we should divide kingdoms that are at our biens'eance! What a dreadful thing it is for such a wicked little imp as man to have absolute power!—But I have travelled into Germany, when I meant to talk to you only of England; and it is too late to recall My text. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Nonna to look into the glass; she, however, spent many hours each clay in following the miserable experiences of her unfortunate child. Sometimes indeed it seemed to her as if a little happiness were mixed with the misery of his existence, and it also struck her that her little imp of a George was gradually growing to be a tall, distinguished-looking man with a noble forehead and flashing eyes, whereas Wendelin, despite his beauty and his grey lock, had become fat and red in the face, and looked like ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... name Napoleon, there is a curious though unimportant confusion. We have already seen the forms Nabulione, Nabulion, Napoleone, Napoleon. Contemporary documents give also the form Napoloeone, and his marriage certificate uses Napolione. On the Vendome Column stands Napolio. Imp., which might be read either Napolioni Imperatori or Napolio Imperatori. In either case we have indications of a new form, Napolion or Napolius. The latter, which was more probably intended, would seem to be an attempt to recall Neopolus, a recognized saint's name. The absence of the name Napoleon ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... thing he did not say. Whatsoever was thrusting him this way and that, speaking through his speech, leading him to do things he had not dreamed of doing, should have its will with him. He had been fastened to the skirts of this beggar imp and he would go on to the end and do what was to be done this day. It was part ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... soul, Edgar Allan Poe, found among the springs of human nature the quality of perverseness, the disposition to do wrong because it is wrong; in reality, however, Poe's Imp of the Perverse is active far beyond the boundaries of the human soul; his disturbances pervade the whole world, and nowhere are they more noticeable than in the printing office. This is so because elsewhere, when things fall out contrary to rule, the result may often be neutral or even advantageous; ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... myself there came old Sru and the imp Toka, who at once set to work and found us some small crayfish for bait. Our rods were slender bamboos, about twelve feet long, with lines of the same length made of twisted banana fibre as fine as silk, and equally as strong. ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke
... The king's a bawcock,[3] and a heart of gold, A lad of life, an imp of fame;[4] Of parents good, of fist most valiant: I kiss his dirty shoe, and from my heart-strings I love the lovely bully. What's ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... I just hot, though!" she said, half aloud, as she flung off her sacque. "And what a changeling imp of a creature Dot is, after all! An imp of genius.—well, she's every right to that, as one knows when one looks at James Colthurst's pictures. He'd genius. He didn't shirk living. My stars! there was a man capable of adding to the number of one's emotions! And she's inherited his gifts on her own ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... imp who goes about, concocting horrible practical jokes, and stirring up contretemps, seemed to take possession of the field; for, just at the moment when he should have been at least five miles away, Doctor Heath, unannounced, appeared at the drawing-room door,—smiling, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... times. Goethe would have no word that does not cover a thing. The same measure will still serve: "I have never heard of any crime which I might not have committed." So he flies at the throat of this imp. He shall be real; he shall be modern; he shall be European; he shall dress like a gentleman, and accept the manner, and walk in the streets, and be well initiated in the life of Vienna, and of Heidelberg, in 1820,—or he shall not exist. Accordingly, he stripped him ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Hermione Curtis, and maid." Some imp of adventure moved him to inscribe "Pekin" in the column for visitors' home addresses. But the clerk was obviously impressed by Hermione's title, no less than the singularly remote locality the couple hailed from. He leant back, and took a ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... "You brazen imp, you," screamed the woman, and rushed at Grace, who stood perfectly still, looking the angry woman in the face with such open scorn in her gray eyes that Miss Brant drew back and stood scowling at her, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... escaped prosecution. They could not hang her, though she deserved the gallows, and her child was born three months after she came here. Looks innocent as a wax doll doesn't she? Eve Werneth she calls herself; and she is well named after the original mother of all sin. She is Satan's own imp, and we chain her every night, for she boasts that when things grow tiresome to her she always burns her way out. I think she is the worst case we have, except the young mulatto—I don't see her here just now—who was sent up for life, for poisoning a baby she ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... imperceptibly on with them, though to me, who long for stream and cataract, it seemed absolutely to stand still. I meditated returning to Shepherd's Bush, and began to think, with some hankering, after little Benjie and the rod. The imp has ventured hither, and hovers about to catch a peep of me now and then; I suppose the little sharper is angling for a few more sixpences. But this would have been, in Joshua's eyes, a return of the washed sow to wallowing in the mire, and I resolved, while I remained ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... which if she submits not, she is then bound with cords. There she is watched and kept without meat or sleep for the space of four-and-twenty hours; for (they say) that within that time they shall see her imp come and suck. A little hole is likewise made in the door for the imp to come in at; and lest it should come in some less discernible shape, they that watch are taught to be ever and anon sweeping the room, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... dposoient leurs offrandes sur l'autel de leurs divinits tutlaires;—je ne fais qu'imiter leur exemple. Vous tes pour tous les Polonois cette divinit, qui la premire ait leve sa voix, du fond de l'impriale, ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... to the legend of Sakhr al-Jinn), a famous fiend cast by Solomon David son into Lake Tiberias whose storms make it a suitable place. Hence the "Bottle imp," a world-wide fiction of folk-lore: we shall find it in the "Book of Sindibad," and I need hardly remind the reader of Le Sage's "Diable Boiteux," borrowed from "El Diablo Cojuelo," the Spanish novel by Luiz Velez ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the cell of his rest with imp, dragon and devil; But the Saint never lifted his eyes from the Book Till the tempter appeared in the guise of a woman; And her voice was so sweet that he ventured one look, And the devil rejoiced that the Saint had ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... dem ain't some oh de old missis' spoons; dat good-fo'-nothin' brack imp must a' snuck one ebbery time I takes him to visit de lady. Oh! he kotch it fo' dis, you better ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... take the true measure of a man is not the market-place or the amen-corner, not the forum or the field, but at his fireside. There he lays aside his mask and you may learn whether he's imp or angel, king or cur, hero or Humbug. I care not what the world says of him —whether it crown him with bays or pelt him with bad eggs; I care never a copper what his reputation or religion may be: If his babes dread his ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... me no names, Tania," the woman cried, dragging at the child's thin skirts. "Jest you come along home with me and you'll git what is comin' to you, you good-for-nothin' little imp." ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... same—except in that particular matter of the eyes. At the thought, he risked another look, hung on the sharp edge of betrayal, and was snatched back, not by the manly instinct of self-preservation, but by some imp of mockery lurking in ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... Procopius, Persic. l. ii. c. 1. We are ignorant of the origin and object of this strata, a paved road of ten days' journey from Auranitis to Babylonia. (See a Latin note in Delisle's Map Imp. Orient.) ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... Adieu to genial DICKENS, gentle HOOD! Hail to the peddling pessimistic brood Whose "nimini-pimimi" mouths, too small by half To stretch themselves to a Homeric laugh, Mince, in a mirror, to the "Paphian Mimp!" MOMUS is dead, and e'en that tricksy imp Preposterous Puck hath too much native grit To take the taste of OSRICK turned a wit. Humour baccilophil, microbic merriment, Might suit him better. He will try the experiment. His mirth's a smirk and not a paroxysm; "Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism" Do not disturb ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... and they have no respect for anyone or anything. If strangers pass through the valley the Imps jeer at them and make horrid faces and call names, and often they push travelers out of the path or throw stones at them. Whenever Imp Olite or Imp Udent or Imp Ertinent comes here to bother us, I and my family run into the house and lock all the doors and windows, and we dare not venture out again until ...
— Little Wizard Stories of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Badgers' Feet, And Badger-like bite till your Teeth do meet; Help ye, Tart Satyrists, to imp my Rage, With all the Scorpions that should whip this Age. But that there's Charm in Verse, I would not quote The Name of Scot without an Antidote, Unless my Head were red, that I might brew Invention there that might be Poison ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... at it that way it's easy enough to handle him," Sudden observed. "I've been thinking myself the young imp showed mighty little thought for you. Of course you don't want to ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... murder! Madness and misconception! Any one of the subjects—not the whole. Oh, blessed star of early morning, what do you think I am made of, that I should, on the part of any man, prefer such a pig-headed, calf-eyed, donkey-eared, imp-hoofed request! ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... meet again the fair Toinette? Saints! but I must look my best at such a time, not worn and haggard from tramping through the sand. She was ever a most critical maid in such matters, and has not likely changed. 'T is curled too high upon the right brow, you black imp! and, as I live, there is one ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... "cash" to be used in the purchase of eggs and chickens, and the mats of rice that would form the principal article of "chow-chow" for the crew. Everybody in China has a boy, and Charley had his; a regular young imp of a fellow of about his own age. Aling was his name; Charley used to call him Ting-a-ling, and would jabber horrible Chinese to him by the hour. Aling jumped down the steps, two at a time, with Charley's traveling bag; but Aho, ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... prince got rid of his ailments, and grew fat, and rosy, and strong, and how he had two rows of ivory teeth in less time than any other little fellow, before or since. Instead of the palest, and wretchedest, and puniest imp in the world (as his own mother confessed him to be when Ceres first took him in charge), he was now a strapping baby, crowing, laughing, kicking up his heels, and rolling from one end of the room to the other. All the good women of the neighborhood crowded to the palace, and held ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... seven years agone, a noble earl found shelter here from the outlaws, from whom he was delivered by the self sacrifice of a woman, and the guidance of her son, an imp ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... knew me so well. She had seen that when she read stories of fairies, witches and goblins out of my books to Sue and me, while Sue, though two years younger, would sit there like a little dark imp, her black eyes snapping over the fights, I would creep softly out of the room, ashamed and shaken, and would wait in the hall outside till the happy ending was in plain view. So my mother had gradually toned ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... This most unpleasant imp of strife Pursues us everywhere. There's scarcely one whole day of life He does not cause us care; Small woes and great he brings the world, Strong ships are forced to sink, And trains from iron track are hurled, ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... her merriment. "But, Juliet, I can't trust him with a nurse. Why, you told me only the other day that your faithful old Fanny called Elizabeth an 'imp of Satan.'" ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... at me. Sitting on the edge of the bed I stared at her, filled with baudy curiosity and the appreciation of novelty. "Why won't you have the other gal?" said she. "I don't want her, nor want two,—and she is a dirty little imp." "No she ain't dirty, she washes herself like me,—let her come up." "No,—come you here." "She is quite clean,—I wash her myself sometimes." "No, come here I ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... doing that, you know! You're not! You're not! I see through you like a pane of glass. Sometimes you forget yourself and get natural, like you did in the cafe this time back; then, all of a sudden, some imp of suspicion shakes his tail at you and says, 'Look here, young man, put that Irishman in his place! Keep him at a respectable arm's length!' Now, isn't ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... upset thi basin o' stew! All ovver thisen an mi cleean scarrd flooar:— Tha clumsy young imp; what next will ta do? Tha'd wear aght job's patience, ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... are beholden to any lad in the school who will do your sums, and write your exercises for you, and then you take upon yourself to ridicule us if we cannot pronounce our well learnt lessons to your fancy! You saucy imp, who don't know what labour and good conduct are, and who have nothing to boast of, but the powers which a monkey possesses to a greater extent than yourself!" Fancy Joachim's rage! He, the admired wit! the popular boy! nothing better than ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... irresponsible imp, Steve Gillis, who was again in Virginia, conceived a plan which would make it not only necessary for him to lecture again, but would supply him with a subject. Steve's plan was very simple: it was to relieve the lecturer of his funds by a friendly highway robbery, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... him. He ought to be," Leighton replied. His cool glance measured Allesandro Trujillo, standing hard by. "I'll have that dusky imp for an exercise boy," he announced. "He's built like an ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... could change the dreaming heart of the little woman—for herself or even for her big Danny; they were for her fine lad, a man now, and Beryl, working so earnestly for her ambition, and little Robin, who would always be little Robin, and the imp of a ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... by Mortimer, who had been as frolicsome as any imp in the Gardens, in the character of the Devil, but who had lost sight of the Dandy Officer and the Nun, whom he had so ingeniously hooked together. The wine was good, and after enjoying their repast, Tom and Mortimer enshrined themselves in dominos ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... his Worship. "Sly; so sly!" (Again he drooped his dexter eye) "I've read you thro'; I've marked you well. You're cunning as an imp from Hell . . . Nay, keep your temper; for I can Withal ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... goaded him to self-contempt; he despised himself for his weakness; his social instincts and training, his sense of duty, and the amenities of life that proud men hold dear tugged steadily, untiringly at his reason, while the little imp of impulse sat grinning wickedly, ready to pop out and upset all his high resolutions. It raised such a tumult in his ears that he could not hear the other voices; it stirred his blood till it leaped and pounded, and then ran off with him to find ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... regular young imp; so full of mischief that he corrupts the other boys. Can't say a word in his favour; and, ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... had been clear and Jack Frost had got busy. All the preceding day the clouds had hung low and kept the air chill so that the night was good for that arch-imp of Satan who has got himself enshrined in the hearts of little children. At dawn Jason saw the robe of pure white which the little magician had spun and drawn close to the breast of the earth. The first light turned it silver and showed it decked with flowers and jewels, that the old mother might ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... Adige's flowery bank him bore, Sophia the fair, spouse to Bertoldo great, Fit mother for that pearl, and before The tender imp was weaned from the teat, The Princess Maud him took, in Virtue's lore She brought him up fit for each worthy feat, Till of these wares the golden trump he hears, That soundeth glory, fame, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... Danes is much better customers to me; but since you walked so far I won't refuse. Hand that flail," says he to a young imp; and he winked the far-off eye at the same time. So, while some were barring the gates, the young devil climbed up, and took down the flail that had the handstaff and booltheen both made out of red-hot iron. The little vagabond was grinning to think ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... An imp touched Nana Sahib, and he said: "I'd swear there was Rajput blood in that girl. If I knew of some princess having been stolen I'd say she stood yonder. The eyes are simply ripping; baby eyes, that, when roused, assist in driving a knife under a man's fifth rib. I've seen a sambhur doe with just ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... I could tell you what an imp of mischief Kate is," she said. "She is the most daring creature that ever drew the breath of life. Dear Mr. Ingram, forgive me for even doubting you for a moment. I might have known that you would only introduce my daughter ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... his manifold accomplishments. When he is taken home and presented to a prim lady, he of course gives her samples of the language used by the sailors on the voyage home; and, even when his morals are cured and his language is purified by discipline, he is a terrible creature. The imp lurks in his eye, and his beak—his abominable beak—is like a malicious vice. But I allow that Polly, when well behaved, gives a charming appearance to a room, and her ways are very quaint. Lonely women have amused themselves ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... would look like an imp if you had been made to hoe in the fields all day long with the sun right overhead for the best part of half-a-year. I am an officer like yourself, and will not stand an insult, that I can tell you!" This reply was received with a burst of ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... Mademoiselle rolled a pair of speaking eyes to heaven. "The things that child thinks of! She is one little imp." ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... plead for him, intimating who had caused it. 'Take my colt, Gipsy, then!' said young Earnshaw. 'And I pray that he may break your neck: take him, and he damned, you beggarly interloper! and wheedle my father out of all he has: only afterwards show him what you are, imp of Satan.—And take that, I hope he'll kick ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... any excitement at all," thought Sammy Jay in disappointment, for he had hoped to see a fight between Reddy Fox and Johnny Chuck. Just then Sammy looked over to Farmer Brown's house, and there was Farmer Brown's boy getting ready to saw wood. The imp of mischief under Sammy's pert cap gave him an idea. He flew over to the old apple-tree, just over Reddy's head, and began to scream at the top of ...
— The Adventures of Johnny Chuck • Thornton W. Burgess
... Sikes clapping his hand upon his pocket. 'Burn my body, if he isn't more trouble than a whole family of Dodgers. Drink it, you perwerse imp; drink it!' ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... talked, the blacksmith had put his iron in the fire, and again stood blowing the bellows, when his attention was caught by the gestures of the little red-eyed imp, Tommy, who was making rapid signs to him, touching his forehead with one finger, nodding mysteriously, and pointing at Clare with the thumb of his other hand, held close to his side. He sought to indicate thus that his companion was an innocent, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... asylum, you imp!" exclaimed the old man; then, turning to Herbert, he continued: "Yes, lad; I will do as I say; and as for the poor ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... idol hewn in stone? Or imp from witch's lap let fall? Or a gay ring of shining fairies, Such as pursue their brisk vagaries In sylvan bower ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 40, Saturday, August 3, 1850 - A Medium Of Inter-Communication For Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, • Various
... him that I was none other than poor Lappo Lappi, and I pinched a silver coin from my pocket and gave it to him, and he handed me the missive and grinned again, and whistled and slipped away from me along the street, a diminished imp of twinkling gilt. And I opened the letter then and there, and read in it that Monna Vittoria very gracefully gave me her duty, and in all humility thanked me for my verses—Lord, as if that ample baggage could ever be humble!—and would be flattered beyond praise if my ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... pleasure in displaying his dexterity and showing off my discontent. You can form no idea of the extent to which this petty insolence vexed and disquieted me. Even in my sleep, the clumsy and grinning features of this tormenting imp haunted me like a spectre: my visions were nothing but chins and cricket-bats; walking-sticks, sustaining themselves upon human excrescences, and pokers dancing a hornpipe upon the tip of a nose. I assure you that ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a moment blinking in confusion. A score lay on the ground about him. Whether dead or wounded, he knew not, nor cared. The sight of Don Mario's supporters in full flight fascinated him. He broke into a chuckle. It sounded like the gloating of an imp of Satan. Then the force of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... fact; every fisherman knows that fish will seize and swallow spoon-bait and other objects that glitter. The text is the Talmudic version of Solomon's seal-ring. The king of the demons after becoming a "Bottle-imp," prayed to be set free upon condition of teaching a priceless secret, and after cajoling the Wise One flung his signet into the sea and cast the owner into a land four hundred miles distant. Here David's son ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... two splendid horses in plated harness, driven along the sandy road. There were a gentleman and a young lad on the front seat, and on the back seat a handsome pale lady with a little girl beside her. Behind, on the rack with the trunk, was a colored boy, an imp out of a story-book. John was told that the black boy was a slave, and that the carriage was from Baltimore. Here was a chance for a romance. Slavery, beauty, wealth, haughtiness, especially on the part of the slender boy on the front seat,—here was an opening into a vast realm. The high-stepping ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and wisely compensated them for the bruises they had received in his fall. Then giving no more thought to Madame de Belle-Ile, who sat awaiting him eagerly, he returned gloomily to his hotel, reflecting on the carelessness which had delivered him into the hands of an indefatigable imp of mischief. The upshot of his reflection was a resolve to press his wooing to an immediate conclusion. The next day and the day after, therefore, he redoubled his lamentations that the smallness of his means prevented him from going, as his natural honesty dictated, ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... was in this production had reference to the season, the house in which it was performed, and temporary events. Egomet, an imp, most piquantly personified by Mr. John Barrow, opened the affair in a moralising strain prophetically applicable to ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... wander into the conservatory, and the imp of mischief that possessed her was prompting her to find new ways of teasing and testing him. The conservatory was in semi-darkness, but as Myra entered with Tony she located Don Carlos, for he happened to strike a match at that moment to light a cigarette, before seating ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... in burning intensity. So as to hide a smile I lit a cigarette. I know not what little imp in motley possessed me that evening. He seemed to hit me over the head with his bladder, and counsel me to play the fool like himself, for once in my life before I died. I ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... the com. ever allow that five-year-old imp to travel with men?" grunted Joyce disgustedly, as he sat down again and now realized that the nickel was under him ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... Nick had put a little cunning young devil under the balance, who, following the dictates of his senior, kept clinging to the scale, and swaying it down with all his might and main. The saint sent the imp to his proper place in a moment, and instantly the burthen of transgression was seen to kick ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... with exquisite colours, sprinkled their shimmering light over the fashionable assemblage and lent a false radiance to the faces of the men, while in the hair and the jewels of the women each ray seemed to dance like an imp with its mate. ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... jumps, Bill," gasped the other, "the 'orrors—they've got me and no mistake. As I'm a livin' man, as I was a shovin' of that there truck, I saw a imp—a gashly imp, Bill, stick its hugly 'ed over the side and say, 'Tommy,' it ses, jest like that—it ses, 'Tommy, I wants you!' I dursn't go near it, Bill. I'll get leave, and go 'ome and lay up—it glared at me so 'orrid, Bill, and grinned—ugh! I'll take the pledge after this 'ere, I ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... mind, but I have a whole brood of pet weaknesses running about that I hate to destroy. The other day when I was going over to Nice to try my luck with the Flying Fish for the first time, I'm ashamed to say I chucked that little red-eyed, grinning imp five francs for luck—my luck, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... ascribed to poetic temperament. Byron was banished; Shelley was judged unfit to rear his own children; Keats was advertised as an example of "extreme moral depravity"; [Footnote: By Blackwoods.] Oscar Wilde was imprisoned; Swinburne was castigated as "an unclean fiery imp from the pit." [Footnote: By The Saturday Review.] These are some of the most conspicuous examples of a refusal by the British public to countenance what it considers a code of morals peculiar to poets. It is hardly to be wondered at that verse-writers ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... you little imp! (Bony vanishes) Where are you hurt, Tatsy? (She moans bitterly) Poor little girl! Her foot is twisted. A sprain perhaps. (Picks her up and carries her to sofa) Never mind! I've got a fairy in a bottle will cure ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... He tore the arrow out, and rushed forward. Fairly pushing Mr. and Mrs. Illingway up on deck before him, Tom followed. Tomba was capering about his master and mistress, and he swung his big club savagely. He had not been idle, and many a red imp had ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... failure; he stood for nothing in the world of achievement; for all the difference that his going made, he might never have been born. Then a thought as startling as the tangible appearance of some ironic, grinning imp flashed to his mind. Who was he, Bruce Burt, to criticise his partner, Slim? What more had he accomplished? How much more difference would his own death make in anybody's life? His mother's labored words came back with painful distinctness: "I've had such hopes for you, my little ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... call him, Janet," was my response, "for he is neither more nor less than an imp of the devil, come to torment me for COPY, for so the printers call a supply ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... ruggedest; Before so meriting a person 375 Cou'd get a grant, but in reversion, He serv'd two prenticeships, and longer, I' th' myst'ry of a lady-monger. For (as some write) a witch's ghost, As soon as from the body loos'd, 380 Becomes a puney-imp itself And is another witch's elf. He, after searching far and near, At length found one in LANCASHIRE With whom he bargain'd before-hand, 385 And, after hanging, entertained; Since which h' has play'd a thousand feats, And practis'd all mechanick cheats, Transform'd ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... St. Nicholas; Black Andie's Tale of Tod Lapraik, in Stevenson, David Balfour; History of Hallowe'en, in Stevenson, Days and Deeds (prose); Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and Rip Van Winkle Irving; Macbeth, Shakespeare; The Bottle Imp, in Stevenson, Island Nights' Entertainments; The Devil and Tom Walker, Irving; The Fire-King, Scott (poem); The Speaking Rat, in Dickens, Uncommercial Traveller, ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... passing recollection of the death of Mrs. Manners, and of the child's being sent to school; but since then she had heard no more of her. She could hardly believe that the elegant creature before her was the little ragged imp of a child whom she had once seen staring idly down the river. However, she asked no questions, but helped to soothe the girl, and to restore, as far as possible, peace and composure to ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Ferdinand—thou hast incurred Great perils for thy mistress. Go again And show this signet to the Seneschal, And tell him that no greater courtesy Be shown to any guest than to my Page. This from myself—or I perchance will send, Shall school their pranks. Away, my faithful imp, And tell me how ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... that side, so that the Christian heart winces a little, here and there, at the bright resoluteness with which he pursues his course when it involves, for instance, death to the little foster-father, unrighteous imp though he be, or horror to Bruennhilde, captured by violence and offered to his friend. Whereas Parsifal, when Gurnemanz now makes plain to him the cruelty of his thoughtless action, when he points out the glazing eye, the blood dabbling the snowy plumage of the noble ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... there—in the after-cabin too—just as there are specimens of the refined in the fore-cabin. But, taking them all in all, they are a remarkably harmonious band, the inhabitants of this iron palace, from the captain to the cabin-boy inclusive. The latter is a sprightly imp; the former is—to use the expression of one of the unrefined—"a brick." He is not tall—few sea-captains seem to be so— but he is very broad, and manly, and as strong as an elephant. He is a pattern captain. Gallant to the lady passengers, chatty with the gentlemen, polite to the unrefined, ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... of one talk under the overhanging bushes of the shrubbery—I on the park side of the stone wall, and the lady of my worship a little inelegantly astride thereon. Inelegantly do I say? you should have seen the sweet imp as I remember her. Just her poise on the wall comes suddenly clear before me, and behind her the light various branches of the bushes of the shrubbery that my feet might not profane, and far away and high behind her, dim and stately, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... thousand guilders gash; I vill let you have it for one thousand or, if you vant it for nuddings, he shall bring id to your house. God knows I abbrejiate you highly, Baron; you are a nize man, a brave man." With that he is a little, thin gray imp of a man, the patriarch of his tribe, but a poor man in his palace, childless, a widower, cheated by his servants, and ill-treated by aristocratically Frenchified and Anglicized nephews and nieces who will inherit his treasures without gratitude and without love. Good-night, my angel. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... me,' said Monks, rising boldly, 'what then? Fraud and robbery are high-sounding words—justified, you think, by a fancied resemblance in some young imp to an idle daub of a dead man's Brother! You don't even know that a child was born of this maudlin pair; you don't even ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... Hazlitt's translation, pp. 251, 252. As to the grotesques in mediaeval churches, the writer of this article, in visiting the town church of Wittenberg, noticed, just opposite the pulpit where Luther so often preached, a very spirited figure of an imp peering out upon the congregation. One can but suspect that this mediaeval survival frequently suggested Luther's favourite topic during his sermons. For Beza, see his Notes on the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... modest but commodious house in the Quartier Latin. His domestic affairs were administered by a respectable-looking elderly man, who performed the part of cook, to his own honor and the entire satisfaction of his master; while a smart but mischievous imp of a boy ran of errands, tended the fires, swept the rooms, and kept old Dominique in a continual fret, by his tricks and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Paul's Epistles to the first three, while he declares the Gospel of St. John above the rest to be beautiful, true, and worthy of mention in the first place,—thereby enrolling even the Apostles, so far as in him lay, as having a hand in his quarrels. Who taught him to do that? The Spirit. Nay this imp of a friar has not hesitated in petulant style to assail Luke's Gospel because therein good and virtuous works are frequently commended to us. Whom did he consult? The Spirit. Theodore Beza has dared to carp at, as a corruption and perversion of the original, that mystical word ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... "You lie, imp of a Jew!" shouted Taras, beside himself. "You lie, dog! I will kill you, Satan! Get away from here! if not, death awaits you!" So saying, Taras ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... say yes, like a shot, if he's a normal boy. And if the uncle's away, it will be nobody's business even if they see the marabout's son having a ride behind me on my horse, as he might with his own father. Trust me to lure the imp on with us afterward, step by step, in a dream of happiness. I was always a born lurer—except when I wanted a thing or ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... promotion, with leave to order his elder about, you may guess there were heart-burnings. Add to this that it kept these good citizens chafing to note how often (and indeed regularly) advancement passed them over to light on some young gentleman of family or 'imp,' as they growled, 'from the ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Lake (poem); All-Hallow-Eve Myths, in Our Holidays Retold from St. Nicholas; Black Andie's Tale of Tod Lapraik, in Stevenson, David Balfour; History of Hallowe'en, in Stevenson, Days and Deeds (prose); Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and Rip Van Winkle Irving; Macbeth, Shakespeare; The Bottle Imp, in Stevenson, Island Nights' Entertainments; The Devil and Tom Walker, Irving; The Fire-King, Scott (poem); The Speaking Rat, in Dickens, ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... tricksy Puck! With antic toys so funnily bestuck, Light as the singing bird that wings the air— (The door! the door! he'll tumble down the stair!) Thou darling of thy sire! (Why Jane, he'll set his pinafore on fire) Thou imp of mirth and joy, In Love's dear chain so strong and bright a link, Thou idol of thy parents—(drat the ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... voyages were described for the first time, after the accounts of Zivolka, by the academician K.E. v. Baer in Bulletin scientifique publ. par l'Acad. Imp. des Sciences de St. Petersburg, t. ii. No. 9, 10, 11 (1837). Before this there does not appear to have been in St. Petersburg any knowledge of Pachtussov's voyages, the most remarkable which the history of Russian Polar Sea exploration has to ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... lov'st to dart, (Thou skating imp! Thou rolling joker!) And hit in some projecting part The lawyer staid, or solemn broker. Does pity never mar thy glee, When upright men with torture double? Oh, let our one petition be That thou may'st come to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... said Sikes clapping his hand upon his pocket. 'Burn my body, if he isn't more trouble than a whole family of Dodgers. Drink it, you perwerse imp; drink it!' ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... of good Cousin Peter since I was an imp of a boy!" he smiled. "Cousin Peter was my chart whereby to steer through the shoals of boyish mischief into the haven of our Uncle George's good graces. Oh, I have heard over much of you, cousin, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... a tormenting little imp. She could not help reminding him every now and then that all her maneuvers and all his love were to end in disappointment. These discouraging comments had dashed poor David's spirits more than once; but he was beginning to ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... made in the exact image of the Americans," explained the peasant vendor, offering a pale blue imp, with a long, red tongue and a phenomenal tail, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... run, but Pomp wuz out ahoein' A leetle patch o' corn he hed, or else there aint no knowin' He would n't ha' took a pop at me; but I hed gut the start, An' wen he looked, I vow he groaned ez though he'd broke his heart; He done it like a wite man, tu, ez nat'ral ez a pictur, The imp'dunt, pis'nous hypocrite! wus 'an a boy constrictur. "You can 't gum me, I tell ye now, an' so you need n't try, I 'xpect my eye-teeth every mail, so jest shet up," sez I. "Don't go to actin' ugly now, or ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... such was the charitable interpretation. Harry strongly suspected that the imp had been a concealed spectator all the time, and had particularly relished the mischief of the discomfiture, which, after all, was much greater on the part of the Vicar than any one else, as he was a rather stiff, ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... time" to join his men. As he neared the trenches he raised his head to look for his company. Not a soldier was in sight. As he stood in wonderment it seemed that the gates of the infernal regions were standing ajar and the inmates escaping toward him. Two hundred black devils, every imp of them screaming and yelling at each leap forward, were coming for him, armed with bolos and other death-dealing weapons, to mince him in a thousand pieces. He knew his men had been massacred to a man. He alone remained to face this ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... who have just returned from the lake there were six others in the camp at Sunrise Hill, their guardian, Miss McMurtry and one small imp or angel, according to one's way of looking at things. For Margaret Everett had joined the summer campers and, in order to accomplish it, had brought her small brother, Horace Virgil Everett, along with her. You see, the girls felt they simply ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... all that was happening to him was true. In a sort of haze that floated before him as he walked along hung Lucy's face. He wished to go on forever thus. He found no fault in her—he refused to. Some imp whispered to him that his fifteen dollars and fifty cents would last forever. He did not actually believe this, but he refused to worry over the matter. Fate was kind. He was living a dream—and who needs ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... Such an imp! with long pointed ears, flat nose, and enormous restless eyes and mouth. It instantly began to yell and talk in some unknown language, at the noise of which the father looked into the room, and told the sage femme that she should not ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... first three years Booverman responded in a manner to delight imp and devil. When standing thirty-four for the first six holes, he sliced into the jungle, and, after twenty minutes of frantic beating of the bush, was forced to acknowledge a lost ball and no score, he promptly sat down, tore ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr along the body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... lands sake, if dem ain't some oh de old missis' spoons; dat good-fo'-nothin' brack imp must a' snuck one ebbery time I takes him to visit de lady. Oh! he kotch it fo' dis, ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... was not inquisitive. I was only vastly hipped for want of knowing what to do with myself. And I ran to bid her ladyship good morning, for it was close upon one o'clock; but she frowned at me, and pushed me aside with a 'Go to your bed, troublesome imp! What business have you up at this hour?' 'As much business as you have riding about in your coach,' I had a mind to say, mais je me tenais coy; and made her ladyship la belle Jennings' curtsy instead. She sinks lower and rises straighter than any of the other ladies. ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... all that you said in your last letter. 'The imp of secession can't reenter its mother's womb.' It is merely childish to talk of the Union 'as it was.' You might as well bring back the Saxon Heptarchy. But the great Republic is destined to live and flourish, I can't doubt. . . . Do you remember that wonderful scene in Faust ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... "Imp of Satan," exclaimed Boivin, grinding his teeth, "I have never enjoyed ease or quietness since the first ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... certain point. I am now here to recruit, and restore my wasted energies, and possibly to heal (observe, I say possibly) my wounded affections in the intimacy of my family circle. That reminds me that that little ungrateful imp Molly has not yet made the slightest demonstration of joy at my arrival. Where is she?" and without waiting for an answer, which he was well aware would not be forthcoming, Charles rose and strolled towards the house with his ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... to obey, and presently returned accompanied by a dwarfed creature, black as the blackest soot and clad in raiment as dusky as himself. It was the Chief Imp, a trusted messenger ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... too busy thinking, but Ben went on telling about other cruises with 'friends.' Oh, a steam-yacht can be a first-class imitation of hell if the right imp owns her. Henry got speaking of one time down along the ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... reproduce, no stage manager prodigal of expense. If on earth there ever was a hell, that tiny frontier room with the smoke-blackened ceiling and the single kerosene lamp sputtering on the wall, was the place. Not an imp thereof, but Satan himself, stood in the misshapen boots of Cowman Pete; doubly vicious in the aftermath of a debauch, Pete with the lust of blood in his veins. And against him, scant hope to those who watched, was a man; tall, but not ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... Notre Dame devil," Miss Reid said, following my glance; "the other is the Lincoln Cathedral devil." She nodded at a wide-mouthed imp, clawing at a door-top. ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... old gentleman again, moving off, ‘you will please amuse yourself until I return’; but seeing me look wild, said, ‘You have seen too much of me to feel alarmed for your own safety. Take this imp for your guide, and if he is impertinent, put him through; and for fear the exhibitions may overcome your nerves, imbibe of this cordial,’ which I did, and everything danced before my eyes, and I ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... be a perpetual snowball for him to pelt his big brother with, and yet (like a critic) be scarcely fair object for a hiding. In season out of season, upstairs down-stairs, even in the breakfast and the dinner chambers, this young imp poked clumsy splinters—worse than thorns, because so dull—into the tender poetic side; and people, who laugh at the less wit the better, laughed very kindly, to please the boy, without asking whether they vexed the man. And the worst of it was that ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... ought I not rather to say my imp of evil?—you have, without meaning it, grieved me sorely. I would say wounded were we not one soul. And yet it is possible ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... atrocious scenes, based on his jealousies of her, which some imp in her would lead her to provoke, notwithstanding that even as she spoke she regretted, and reached back for ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... vaguely. So delicate are the oscillations of the imaginative imp, that it is hard to say just where he swings his slaves into determined self-delusion. If you had shaken Caroline severely and demanded of her in the character of an impatient adult the name of ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... said, "it is black sorcery against one who is a god, and will bring my soul to hell. Find some other instrument, or place the waxen imp in the bed of Pharaoh ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... to something better than you, you poor-spirited imp!" said Tom, lighting up immediately at Philip's fire. "You know I won't hit you, because you're no better than a girl. But I'm an honest man's son, and your father's ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... were on me as he spoke, bright with imp-like malice. He looked so like a mischievous schoolboy that it was hard to take him seriously. Yet everything warned me to do so, and his allusion to the Paris newspapers explained much. For the second time a reporter had caught Father Beckett, and ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... however, as soon as the leaves have fallen, the world is restored to cheerfulness. The withering tree seems a sufferer. The fallen leaf is an imp, an adventurer. As the wind sweeps round a bend in the road, leaf after leaf is up and performing cart-wheels down the road as if Christmas Day had come. Thousands of them, borne along in a dance of this kind, advance with the beflustered, orderly air of a procession of starlings. The world ceases ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... more of them perish, you shall go to the infernal regions to keep company with the imp that ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... in broken Arabic and lingua Franca, and presently he came in, shaking with suppressed laughter. 'If ever we get home,' said he, 'we'll make a pilgrimage to Tarascon! Blessings on good St. Martha that put that sweet little imp in my way! The rogues think he is the very genie that the fisherman let out of the bottle in Mademoiselle's book of the Thousand and One Nights, and thought to see him towering over the whole place. And a fine figure he ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were her dreams—for nothing could change the dreaming heart of the little woman—for herself or even for her big Danny; they were for her fine lad, a man now, and Beryl, working so earnestly for her ambition, and little Robin, who would always be little Robin, and the imp of a Susy, ruddy ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... to be asleep. He stood up and looked down at her. The colour had faded from the one cheek visible. For a while he listened to her quiet breathing, then, the imp of perversity seizing him, and intensely diverted by the situation, he bent over her, touched her cheek with his lips, put on his hat, took box and suitcase, and went out to spend the remaining hour or two in the smoking room, leaving ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... flew away for Jacob's ladder, (Peter was still asleep), And placed it safely, where from Heaven to Imp-land The way ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... had not responded to the imperious summons, the other self had been suffering the terrors of a siege, and the garrison had grown starved and weakly. What would be the end of it? And the little cynical imp that peeped among her thoughts, as a monkey among forest boughs, gibbered his customary "What matters it? One woman's destiny is but a small affair. If I were you I would make less fuss about it." The Professor would understand that she did not wish to make a fuss. He would not ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... mind, Pepperbottom," said the boy, giving the imp the name he had richly earned by repeated flagellations. "Never you mind. I am not ashamed to show my naked hide, you know. But it is against orders in these seas to go overboard, unless with a sail underfoot; so I sha'n't run the risk of being tatooed by the boatswain's mate, like ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... Zachariah Lathrope, of Providence, Rhode Island, an American gentleman of a particularly inquisitive nature, but who, professing some knowledge of medical craft, was really of some use in this instance, as there was no regular ship surgeon on board; and, secondly, young Master Negus, a "born imp of mischief," whose acquaintance will be further improved as the voyage proceeds; while, Llewellyn, the steward, summoned courage at last to descend the companion, in company with his wife the stewardess, who had been forward to the cook's galley in search of some early tea for ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... clays Some years ago were hobblin' An elderly ghost of easy ways, And an influential goblin. The ghost was a sombre spectral shape, A fine old five-act fogy, The goblin imp, a lithe young ape, A fine ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... instinctive one—was a dumb protest against the movement she had made to withdraw. And as such Lilith read it; more potent in its impulsiveness than any words could have been. "Listen!" he went on. "I suppose there is a sort of imp of scepticism sitting ever upon one shoulder, and that is what you saw. Something in my thoughts suggested a droll contrast, that was all. So far from boring me, you have afforded me ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... you went past," said Billie mischievously. Then as they paused at the foot of the steps she looked up at him with an imp of laughter showing all the dimples about her mouth. "What were you thinking so hard about, Teddy?" ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... happened that a cunning clown Was by an imp observed, without the town, To turn the earth, which seemed to be accurst, Since ev'ry trench was painful as the first. This youthful devil was a titled lord; In manners simple:—naught to be abhorred; ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... in the effect his words now had. For a moment he feared all the men were going to rise up against him as Jude had done. A silence fell upon the group. Filmer gave one keen glance at the imp on the doorstep, and then refilled his pipe and leaned ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... they had received in his fall. Then giving no more thought to Madame de Belle-Ile, who sat awaiting him eagerly, he returned gloomily to his hotel, reflecting on the carelessness which had delivered him into the hands of an indefatigable imp of mischief. The upshot of his reflection was a resolve to press his wooing to an immediate conclusion. The next day and the day after, therefore, he redoubled his lamentations that the smallness of his means prevented him from going, as his natural honesty dictated, straight to Claire's ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... was being taken to prison for no fault of his, that imp Pinocchio, finding himself free from the clutches of the soldier, ran off as fast as his legs could carry him. That he might reach home the quicker he rushed across the fields, and in his mad hurry he jumped high banks, thorn hedges and ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... as Donacha Dhu said, the Whistler was a born imp of Satan, and therefore he should never leave him. Accordingly, from his eleventh year forward, he was one of the band, and often engaged in acts of violence. The last of these was more immediately occasioned by the researches which the Whistler's real father made after him ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... a rage. I have to laugh. She teases him about it—the little imp. She offered to teach him to dance to-night. If he didn't love her so ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... conjecture went abroad that he was none other than some malicious imp of darkness let loose upon their frolics, to disquiet and perplex their commemoration of the Blessed Nativity. Yet was it an unusual occurrence upon Yule night, when these disturbers were supposed ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Who let him in only his visit to rue. I hope you've not listened to enemies' strictures, They've warned you, perhaps, against letting me pass, I shan't soil your ceiling, I shan't spoil your pictures, Or make nasty smells like that dirty imp, Gas! You're prejudiced clearly, and that is a pity, Why, bless you, I'm spreading all over the place! My spark is pervading the whole of the City; The dingy old Gas-flame must soon hide its face. I'm brilliant, and clean, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... a pause. The Chevalier, nothing if not quick to take in a situation, began to yawn like a sleep-ridden mortal. Gracefully he made his excuses and went, with as little mind to sleep as to go and drown himself. The imp Curiosity kept the Chevalier wide awake, and with airy fingers plucked away the cotton wool ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... no imp of sin: No crimes had ever known. They took the shaggy stranger in, And rear'd him as ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... left now," continued the Imp; and thrusting a hand into the pocket of his knickerbockers he drew forth six inches or so of slimy worm and held it out to me upon ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... daughter-in-law," said Madame de Villefort to Monte Cristo, leaning back on her sofa and motioning towards Valentine with her hand. "And M. de Monte Cristo, King of China, Emperor of Cochin-China," said the young imp, looking slyly ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... skipper, rubbing his nose with an air of rueful surprise. "No honor among thieves, Jack. I thought him loyal to Blackbeard. I have considered attempting something of my own when the weather permits but this news quickens me. This young imp o' Satan that ye call Joe,—he will side ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... permissible to cover human beings up like canaries when you had tired of them, or send them away like children when they had prattled enough, Angela cuddled down among her cushions and rugs, glad to be let alone for the first time in her life. But there was a young mother with a small imp of a curly-haired girl, who fascinated her, and made her think. Once, when the imp fell on the deck, to be caught up and kissed until a wail ended in a laugh, Angela said to herself, "If my mother had been ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... like that infernal Bottle-Imp running us," he said hastily, and would hear of no concerted action for the end he had in view. "I'd rather not ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... and visit the rector, he absolutely refused, saying he was a wicked old Pharisee, inside whose doors he would never set his foot. The doctor wrote me a letter, warning me against the deplorable errors of this young imp of perdition, as he called him; and I could see that there was no love lost between them. But it appeared that, if not agreeable to the gentry of the country, young Bullingdon had a huge popularity among the common ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it in front of him, and to charge afresh through the storm of musket-balls, and ride on thus burdened, was the work of ten seconds with "Bel-a-faire-peur." And he brought the boy safe over a stretch of six leagues in a flight for life, though the imp no more deserved the compassion than a scorpion that has spent all its noxious day stinging at every point of uncovered flesh would merit tenderness from ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... had witnessed his struggles with a smile of gratified vengeance; "I had forgotten the accursed imp in this confusion. Take it," he cried, lifting the babe from the bottom of the boat, and flinging it ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... A little imp with a nasty sneering voice that jabbed like a hot needle perched itself on his shoulder and kept dinning into ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... let us add Richard Bancks, who, in 1600, at his office, "the sign of the White Hart," printed that exquisite fairy poem, Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream." How one envies the "reader" of that office, the compositors—nay, even the sable imp who pulled the proof, and snatched a passage or two about Mustard and Pease Blossom in a surreptitious glance! Another great Fleet Street printer was Richard Grafton, the printer, as Mr. Noble says, of the first correct folio English translation ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... pelisse, the small swansdown boa, the white bonnet—the whole holiday toilette, in short, was the gala garb of a cherub but too well known, of that tadpole, Desiree Beck—and Desiree Beck it was—she, or an imp ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... he sprawled backward, and I stood up, ready for battle, my fingers tingling, my heart pounding. The imp was up again, in half a breath, pushed forward by his friends to take revenge, and I could hear Sir Samuel or her ladyship wrestling vainly with the window behind me. What would have happened next I can't tell, except that I was in a mood to fight ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... suggested Uncle Remus. "Well, dey er yer," he continued, "but dis ain't no climate whar de rice-birds flies inter yo' pockets en gits out de money an' makes de change derse'f; an' de isters don't shuck off der shells en run over you on de street, an' no mo' duz de s'imp hull derse'f an' drap in yo' mouf. But dey er yer, dough. De ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... oaths—"You infernal villain, if you do not lay on harder the next time I command you, I'll have you put in irons." The boy limped away, writhing in every joint, and crying piteously, when the commander called at him, "Silence there, you imp—or I'll give you a second edition." One of the first things the commander did after we left Barbadoes, was to have a man flogged, and the last order we heard him give as we left the steamer at Kingston, was to put two of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... there, I was conducted to a long, deserted, barn-like building, where I waited half an hour before the proper officer came. When the latter had taken his private toll of my contraband cigars, the brown imp conducted me to Blanco's English Hotel, a neat and comfortable ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... setting and motive. "The Island Nights' Entertainments" is as good in its way as the earlier "New Arabian Nights"—far superior to it, indeed, for finesse and the deft command of exotic material. Judged as art, "The Bottle Imp" and "The Beach of Falesa" are among the triumphs of ethnic interpretation, let alone their more external charms of story. And another masterpiece of foreign setting, "A Lodging for The Night," is further proof ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... once affeard: Ne let th'unpleasant quyre of frogs still croking Make us to wish theyr choking. 350 Let none of these theyr drery accents sing; Ne let the woods them answer, nor theyr eccho ring. [Ver. 341.—The Pouke (Puck is a generic term, signifying fiend, or mischievous imp) is Robin Goodfellow. C.] ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... just before them. Immediately after Archie and Eddie were swept in amid the foam, and Junkie himself—who, like his brothers, could swim like a cork—came careering in on the top of a wave, like a very water-imp! With all the energy of his nature he turned, the moment his feet touched ground, to lend a hand to his friend Tonal', who was not ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... her healthy soul. As they sped up the long drive they were joined by a galloping horseman, who shouted to Bertie to put on speed and flogged his animal furiously when the car drew ahead. He looked like a demon to Dot in the half-light—a black imp mounted on a black mare riding to perdition. She was glad to leave ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... d'Arc, d'apres les documents nouvellement publies (avec des cartes d'itineraire).' Paris, Firmin-Didot (imp. a Mesnil), ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... him believe that," laughed Miss Warren, who evidently believed in tonic treatment and counter-irritants. "He would much prefer sultry New York and an imp ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... 'No one has seen the children. The mandarin of this district is my friend, and I can make it all right. You don't suppose I want to adopt the children? You (turning to An Ching) would like to keep that pale-faced little foreign imp, I suppose, ...
— The Little Girl Lost - A Tale for Little Girls • Eleanor Raper
... shouted Monsieur Joseph, very angry. "Go to bed this instant, little imp, or I shall come upstairs with a birch rod. You will gain nothing by your dishonourable listening. I shall send you to Mademoiselle Moineau to-morrow, to ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... her to destruction at last. I tell you, sir, we are a pack of cowards hunting down an angel. You and I and that pretty imp of satan. I came to tell you this: bad as I am, her goodness has touched me with human feelings. If she is here and alive, justice shall be done her, and for once the truth shall be spoken under this roof. That woman has ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... Reginald fiercely, "if we are to hear what my father says at second hand through an imp like you—" ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... talk idly," said the third. "I am quick as the thought of a woman." The worthy prelate chose the third. The hour being late, he bargained that he should be carried to Rome and back before cockcrow, the price for the service to be his saintly soul. The imp flew well, and returned to the valley of the Rhone long ere dawn. Joyous at his gain, he was about to bound over the wall of the episcopal city of Sion, when St. Theodule roared lustily, "Coq, chante! Que tu chantes! Ou que jamais plus tu ne chantes!" Every cock in Sion awoke at his ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... him, Janet," was my response, "for he is neither more nor less than an imp of the devil, come to torment me for COPY, for so the printers call a supply of manuscript for ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... of Mr. Purt,[3] (By this time all the parish know it,) Had told that thereabouts there lurked A wicked imp they call a poet: Who prowled the country far and near, Bewitched the children of the peasants, Dried up the cows and lamed the deer, And sucked the eggs ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... this cell of the condemned. Had I not been thus prolix, you might either have misunderstood me altogether, or, with the rabble, have fancied me mad. As it is, you will easily perceive that I am one of the many uncounted victims of the Imp ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... told about the way in which Snarleyyow first made his appearance in the vessel, added to the peculiarly diabolical temper of the animal, had often been the theme of midnight conversation, and many of them were convinced that it was an imp of Satan lent to Vanslyperken, and that, to injure or to attempt to destroy it would infallibly be followed up with terrible consequences to the party, if not to the vessel and all the crew. Even Short, Coble, and Jansen, who were the boldest and leading men, although when their ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... or two soldiers were habitually kept in the hall with us, during the day. The turnkey, who was the presiding imp in that wing—the ghoul of our part of the catacombs—was rarely absent, but passed back and forth, prying and suspicious. Scott (familiarly Scotty) was the name of the interesting creature who officiated as our immediate keeper, for the first four months of our confinement in this place. ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... walked the sober earth again soberly. I assured him that I was none other than poor Lappo Lappi, and I pinched a silver coin from my pocket and gave it to him, and he handed me the missive and grinned again, and whistled and slipped away from me along the street, a diminished imp of twinkling gilt. And I opened the letter then and there, and read in it that Monna Vittoria very gracefully gave me her duty, and in all humility thanked me for my verses—Lord, as if that ample baggage ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the doctor had to allow. "But I took my stick to them next morning. Besides, they were Thrums folk, while you had never set eyes on that imp of mischief before." ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... memoriae Conradini de Stovffen, vltimi ex sva progenie Sveviae dveis, Conradi Rom. Regis F. et Friderici II, imp. nepotis, qui cvm Siciliae et Apvliae regna exercitv valido, vti hereditaria vindicare proposvisset, a Carolo Andegavio I. hvivs nominis rege Franco caeperani in agro Palento victvs et debellatvs extitit, deniqve captvs cvm Frederico de Asbvrgh vltimo ex linea Avstriae dvce, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the French Revolution. That has the great fighting value of being an unexpected argument; it takes the other pugilist's breath away for one important instant. To take the other case, Mr. Shaw has found himself, led by the same mad imp of modernity, on the side of the people who want to have phonetic spelling. The people who want phonetic spelling generally depress the world with tireless and tasteless explanations of how much easier it would be for children or foreign bagmen if "height" ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... near me, yet remoter Than a star—a blue-eyed, bashful imp: On her lap she held a happy bloater, 'Twixt her lips a yet ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Ye imp o' death, how durst ye dwell Within this pure and hallow'd cell, Thy purposes I ken fu' well Are to destroy, And wi' a mortal breathing spell, To blast ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... he may prove just a big Benefactor, And if he should work on the cheap, kill Corruption, and kick out the knavish Contractor, Without piling Pelion on Ossa (of rates) on my back, till my legs with the "tottle" limp, I shall "learn to love him" as Giant Beneficent, not a big, blundering Bottle-Imp! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... small tablecloths, in every direction, to screen the two children, so that they really did look rather like flapping wings.) "I have prayed to the Big Idol," he continued, addressing the woman, "ever since this imp of wickedness here set fire to my beautiful pig-tail and burned it off, to send one of his strong dragons to carry off my tormentor. And now my prayers are answered, and the Red Dragon, strongest of all, is here! Hokkaloo! hokkaloo!" and he danced ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... Dad. I said I have come to save you. It will be fun, after working for the Government so long, to work against it. There's a certain red-headed imp in this neighborhood who is the daughter of our assistant chief, John O'Gorman. Her name is Josie O'Gorman and she's in training for the same profession of which I'm an ornament. I won't sneer at her, for she's clever, in a way, but I'd like to show O'Gorman that Nan Shelley—that's ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... served to turn him suddenly from a clever, scatterbrained imp of mischief into a serious student. It happened that the whole school met on an equality in one subject—Scripture History. The head of that class, therefore, enjoyed a peculiar prestige among his fellows, ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... years in peace," but as the sun goes down the bats come out and flap the black skinny wings of the sins of other days in your affrighted face. If you are a student you may drop your books like Dr. Faust and hurry to the country, but the imp of restlessness will dog your steps and snare your pathway and you will carry home with you a Mephisto ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... "The Changeling," at once the most oppressive and impressive effort of his genius. The character of De Flores in this play has in it a strangeness of iniquity, such as we think is hardly paralleled in the whole range of the Elizabethan drama. The passions of this brute imp are not human. They are such as might be conceived of as springing from the union of animal with fiendish impulses, in a nature which knew no law outside of its own lust, and was as incapable of a scruple as of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... this MS. except its readings of names given in the Table appended to the Geographic Text. It then belonged to the Comte d'Artois. Lazari has it entered as belonging to the Bibl. Imp., I know not if correctly. [I have been unable to find it ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... brooding. Kedzie wanted to say something nice about Charity and was afraid to. The poor child always distrusted her generous impulses. She thought it cleverer to withhold trust from everybody, lest she misplace it in somebody. At length an imp of perversity taught her how to get rid of the credit she owed to Charity. She spoke after a ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... voice mingling with the uproar of other childish voices, and have distinguished and unravelled her own darling's tones, amid all the entangled outcry of a group of sportive children. But this could never be. Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants. Nothing was more remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with which the child comprehended her loneliness: the destiny that had drawn an inviolable circle round about her: the whole peculiarity, in short, of ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... scarcely believe their ears, so much was I, a four-year-old child, their superior in learning. Some of them were not certain that I was not an imp of Satan, so utterly did my performance exceed credibility. My beauty too at this age was uncommon; my limbs were straight and strong, my cheeks of the purest red and white, and my full flaxen hair hung in short ringlets down my neck. The mistress and bar-maid kissed me, the men gave me ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... too," answered Archer, with a laugh; "I will, too, if you go wish it, though you are not a spaniel, nor any thing else half so good. And why, pray, should I not scourge this wild little imp? he ran slap into the best pack of ruffed grouse I have seen this two years—fifteen or sixteen birds. I wonder they're not scattered—it's full late ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... see that he had to make the ch'ice atween doing nothing at all or tackling the younker? The Sioux is such an imp and is so crazy for revenge that he made up his mind to chance it the least he could, and he went for the tenderfoot that ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... 3, 4, William IV, c. 73 (Imp.). One result of this Act is exceedingly curious and to the philosophical lawyer exceedingly interesting. Slaves which had been real estate, as soon as the act was passed ceased to be such, and the benefit to be obtained from their labor until fully enfranchised and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... moments, and just as Betty was beginning to fancy that the long, dark eyelashes worn curling downward in sleepy comfort the dark blue eyes opened, and a dancing imp of mischief gleamed from their depths in ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... beware of that little green imp we read of," laughed Mrs. Douglas. "You have been too thoroughly 'monarch of all' thus far. Can you not share your realm with ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... of that boy—a merry, mischievous young imp—to Mr. Craven; but she never did so. Perhaps because the clerks always gave her rapt attention; and an interested audience was very pleasant to ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... though!" she said, half aloud, as she flung off her sacque. "And what a changeling imp of a creature Dot is, after all! An imp of genius.—well, she's every right to that, as one knows when one looks at James Colthurst's pictures. He'd genius. He didn't shirk living. My stars! there was a man capable of adding to the number ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... she deserved the gallows, and her child was born three months after she came here. Looks innocent as a wax doll doesn't she? Eve Werneth she calls herself; and she is well named after the original mother of all sin. She is Satan's own imp, and we chain her every night, for she boasts that when things grow tiresome to her she always burns her way out. I think she is the worst case we have, except the young mulatto—I don't see her here just now—who was sent up for life, for poisoning ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... sate him down, in London town, 10 Before earth's morning ray; With a favourite imp he began to chat, On religion, and scandal, this and that, Until the dawn ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... "single book" treating of the Caesars, which Vopiscus says Tacitus wrote, must have been the "History," ten copies of which the Emperor Tacitus ordered to be placed every year in the public libraries among the national archives. (Tac. Imp. x.) Orosius, the Spanish ecclesiastic, who flourished at the commencement of the fifth century, has several references to Tacitus in his famous work, Hormesta. This great proficient in knowledge of the ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... He won't keep still. No, Sir, he won't keep still unless he is made to. Once let him get started there is no knowing where he will stop. Peter Rabbit had just seen Jimmy Skunk disappear inside an old barrel, lying on its side at the top of the hill, and at once the Imp of Mischief began to whisper to Peter. Of course Peter shouldn't have listened. Certainly not. But he did. You know Peter dearly loves a joke when it is on some one else. He sat right where he was ...
— The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk • Thornton W. Burgess
... engine with murderous blood was damp And was brilliantly lit with a brimstone lamp; An imp, for fuel, was shoveling bones, While the furnace rang with ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... coals of fire and his skin felt as though it had been sand-papered, when he would have sold his soul for a bath and actually began to get his things together in readiness for the next wagon out, it was Pat, who, with the devilish ingenuity of an Irish imp, mocked and jeered at him for a quitter, "fit to act only as lady's maid or to serve soft dhrinks in a corner drug-sthore," until his fainting heart took fire and, cursing his tormentor with all the oaths he could muster, he offered to whip, ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... not laugh, but he grew rosy, like a girl. Even his little ears turned pink, under his absurd mop of chestnut curls. "You have no right to insist upon mine," retorted he, in the honey-sweet contralto which tried in vain to make of a pert imp, an angel. ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... same good people who were now so much concerned about his welfare had many times in the past referred to him as "that long-legged imp who ought to be taught better manners at home;" for Colon as a younger boy had been ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... nor imp of sin, No crimes he'd ever known. They took the shaggy stranger in, And rear'd him as ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... other small girls with us; the Imp—but her name is a libel, she reformed some months ago—and Tangles, who ties herself into knots whenever she makes a remark. These three have many an argument (for Indian children delight in discussion), and sometimes the things that are brought to me would shock the orthodox. This is the last, ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... the end of the village street, smiling insanely at a white gate-post. With a happy sigh he turned homeward, his hands in his pockets, his head thrown back, and his lips pursed for a tune that forgot to come. A few steps brought him opposite the Doctor's house and the imp of mischief whispered in his ear. Wade laughed aloud. Then he crossed the street under the dark canopy of the elms and-pulled the office bell till it jangled wildly. A head came out ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... and shook his head. Tormenting whispers of "'Fraid cat! 'Fraid cat!" carried to where he stood, and some imp of mischief began that ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... drizzling rain in the little cemetery, the few neighbors standing about, a narrow fringe of slaves back of them, the lowering of the coffin, and the hollow sound of earth falling on the box; and Neb, his Aunt Caton's house servant, a black imp of good humor, who begged so hard to be taken back with him to the war. Why, the boy had held his stirrup the next morning when he rode away. The sudden rush of recollection seemed to bridge the years, and that black face became familiar, a memory ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... wrapped in mulberry leaves; but all these treasures could not avail to comfort him for loss of the sweet companionship he had enjoyed—for the apples he had crunched in the big dog's kennel when hiding with another little imp from the nurse—for the common possession they had enjoyed of some young rats dug out of the bank of the stream, and more than all, for the tender confidences there had been between them as to the endless pranks they spent their lives in, and all the mischief they had done ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... went for nothing, even in the moment in which they were made. She had suffered for meddling; that was bad: it was worse to the Imp not to meddle; inactivity was the one ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... wouldn't knock," whispered Siller, tearing her back hair. "Hear 'em rattle that door! That was what it meant when I saw that black cat, just before sundown, worritting the doctor's dog. I thought then it was an imp." ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... "Get up, now, Duke, you imp!" And the leader, balking suspiciously at the explosive machine, felt a smart touch of the whip. He plunged, sidled against the bluff and broke by. There was barely room to make that turn; the tailboard of the wagon, grating, left a long blemish on the bright body of the car, ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... "A man?" Little imp! She relished impaling him upon the shafts of her ridicule. Her sport was interrupted by the arrival of Spawn. He had left me at the mine and come directly back home. Jetta heard his heavy tread on the garden path, then ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... again mentioning Quinones, referred to Grijalva, and added as an additional source for his information Tomas de Herrera. Sicardo [35] added nothing new. Herrera, not cited directly by Beristain, may however have been the source from which the "Imp." of his entry came. ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... devil living in all of us. It makes the child break his own toys; it makes the husband strike the helpless wife; it makes the man beat the cringing, whining dog. The greatest of American writers has called it the Imp of the Perverse. And that devil came in Jerry Strann and made his heart small and cold. If he had been by nature the bully and the ruffian there would have been no point in all that followed, but the heart ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... water, Momay hot springs, (vol. ii., chap. xxii).—When the bottle was uncorked, a strong smell of sulphuretted hydrogen was perceived. The water contains about twenty-five grains per imp. gallon, of chloride of sodium, sulphate and carbonate of soda; the reaction being strongly alkaline when ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... imply of the hunt, what of the predatory dark? The kitten grows alert at the same hour, and hunts for moths and crickets in the grass. It comes like an imp, leaping on all fours. The children lie in ambush and fall upon one another ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... eyes were the cause of no little alarm, I can assure you, when darkness swooped down upon Roberta and Polly and Dilsy, playing Lady-come-to-see in the old parlor in childlike unconsciousness of the passage of time. Polly, the imp, would always insist upon singing "Lady Jane Grey," as they tiptoed backward out of the room. They did not dare to look away, for fear those terrible men would fly at them when they were not looking and throttle ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... arrival in Apia, Stevenson's tale of "The Bottle Imp" had been translated into Samoan by the missionaries. When the natives discovered he was its author they immediately named him Tusitala, The Teller-of-Tales. He still owned the bottle, they said; it was that gave him the wealth to cruise about in a great boat and build ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... of the coast, do you think he will be able to beach the ship?" went on Gray, some humorous imp prompting him, even in that tense moment, to draw the expected answer from his new friend ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... seen Don Carlos wander into the conservatory, and the imp of mischief that possessed her was prompting her to find new ways of teasing and testing him. The conservatory was in semi-darkness, but as Myra entered with Tony she located Don Carlos, for he happened to strike a match at that moment to light a cigarette, before seating ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... in his small way, played a part in the Probationer's life, such as occasionally scrubbing porches or borrowing a half dollar or being suspected of stealing the eggs from the henhouse. But that Johnny Fraser had been a wicked, smiling imp, much given to sitting ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that vulgar imp yclept Fun—known by his broad grin, by his loud tone, and by his rude banter. Head foremost forcing himself in, came he, and brought with him a heap of coarse caricatures, and ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... him; the princess loves him; and then there is this Duchess of Richmond, who will by all means be his wife! This much, however, is certain, he is a traitor who deceives both, because to both he has made the same confession of love. And there again is that imp, chance, which compels me to be the confidant of both these women. But I will be well on my guard against executing both my commissions to this sorcerer. Let him at any rate become the husband of the princess; perhaps this would be ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... rapid driving brought the carriage to the hall-door of the chateau, and its wealthy, but, perhaps, after all, not very much to be envied, master conducted his familiar imp, Blassemare, into a saloon, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... sharp thou lov'st to dart, (Thou skating imp! Thou rolling joker!) And hit in some projecting part The lawyer staid, or solemn broker. Does pity never mar thy glee, When upright men with torture double? Oh, let our one petition be That thou may'st ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... noticing his hands, the quality of his linen, his astonishingly "good" appearance on the only occasion that she had seen him in evening dress; she almost groaned aloud when she recalled the manner of her son's departure from Bristol, and some imp in her heart raked the burnt ashes of the fire that had devoured her when she heard why Captain Devar was requested to resign his commission. Of course, this proud young aristocrat recognized him at ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... would have conquered if some imp had not whispered, "What about that purple envelope, addressed in a woman's handwriting? Maybe it was from her, hinting to see him again, and that is what has put this plan into his head. Perhaps he brought up the subject of the Countess on purpose ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the shape of Mr P—t, (By this time all the parish know it), Had told that thereabouts there lurk'd A wicked imp they call a Poet, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... returned Barbara, whose flushed face looked lovely childlike in its indignation beside the furious phiz of the tormenting imp. ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... I could not abide these antics, I thanked him abruptly, pulled my still-trembling horse another way, and thought I would seek some other adventure, or perhaps go home; for during my wild gallop the sun had passed his meridian, and was now declining westward. But the little imp sprang round like lightning, and stood in front ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... exact image of the Americans," explained the peasant vendor, offering a pale blue imp, with a long, red tongue and a ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... perhaps somewhere in his make-up there lay a spot, call it instinct or what you please, that vibrated in response to the distress of the human creature he carried. Perhaps the fact that she was in trouble drew his sympathy, wicked little willful imp though he usually was. Certain it is that he began to slacken his pace decidedly, until at last he was walking, and finally stopped short and turned his head about with a troubled neigh as if to ask ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... existing government. One subject after another was dismissed—politics, law, love, and religion—they abused every thing, and agreed marvellously. It was getting very near midnight, the hour at which, it is said, devils are let loose upon earth for mischief—when a rascally little imp crawled up to Planner's ear, and put it into his head to talk about the amusements of the poor, and their effects ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... Man pound (IMP), also known as the Manx pound note: the British pound is also legal tender, but change is ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... idea of truth even when he mistook falsehood for it. In the Terror he said there was no God, because he believed there was none, but he never said that France was God so that he might encourage her to conquer the world. Voltaire was an imp of destruction perhaps, but with what a divine lightning of laughter would he have struck the Teutonic Antichrist, and how the everlasting soul of France would have risen in him if he could have seen her most sacred church, ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... felt as though it had been sand-papered, when he would have sold his soul for a bath and actually began to get his things together in readiness for the next wagon out, it was Pat, who, with the devilish ingenuity of an Irish imp, mocked and jeered at him for a quitter, "fit to act only as lady's maid or to serve soft dhrinks in a corner drug-sthore," until his fainting heart took fire and, cursing his tormentor with all the oaths he could muster, he offered to whip, single-handed, the ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... Gyp, the imp, the one who apparently had no feeling, stooped, and peeping into the lovely little face, spoke ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... horses; and with an occasional crown from me, and what he earns otherwise, it cannot be said that he costs his brother anything in money; but in other respects he is always getting him into trouble, for he is a very imp of mischief. Two or three times his brother has obtained places for him, but he always comes back at the end of a week, and sometimes sooner, with bitter complaints from his master that he has set the household in a turmoil with his ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... at its sharpest, brightest, wittiest, most fantastic, most wilful, most devout, saint and imp sported in one, toying with the tricks of the Deity, taking them now with extreme profundity, then tossing them about like irresistible toys with an incomparable triviality. She has traced upon the page and with celestial indelibility that fine line ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... fighting bantam cock and the stable cat into a barn, and left them fighting furiously; he locked one of the farm-labourers in a hayloft, and pulled away the ladder, so that he was not released for hours, and he proved such an imp of mischief in the house that even his mother meditated handing him over to ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... Myths, in Our Holidays Retold from St. Nicholas; Black Andie's Tale of Tod Lapraik, in Stevenson, David Balfour; History of Hallowe'en, in Stevenson, Days and Deeds (prose); Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and Rip Van Winkle Irving; Macbeth, Shakespeare; The Bottle Imp, in Stevenson, Island Nights' Entertainments; The Devil and Tom Walker, Irving; The Fire-King, Scott (poem); The Speaking Rat, in Dickens, ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... been atrocious scenes, based on his jealousies of her, which some imp in her would lead her to provoke, notwithstanding that even as she spoke she regretted, and ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... ombrage de platanes, et spare des ateliers par un vaste jardin. C'est l que je suis venu au monde et que j'ai pass les premires, les seules bonnes annes de ma vie. Aussi ma mmoire reconnaissante a-t-elle gard du jardin, de la fabrique et des platanes un imprissable souvenir, et lorsqu' la ruine de mes parents il m'a fallu me sparer de ces choses, je les ai positivement ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... strive to wound his breast, That bears that talisman; and when he meets The eloquent eye of TENDERNESS, and hears The bosom-thrilling music of her voice; The joy he feels shall purify his Soul, And imp ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... minaca. Immobility senmoveco. Immoderate malmodera. Immodest nemodesta. Immolate oferbucxi. Immoral malbonmora. Immorality malbonmoreco. Immortal senmorta. Immortality senmorteco. Immovable senmova, nemovebla. Immutable nesxangxebla. Imp diableto. Impair difekti. Impart komuniki, sciigi. Impartial senpartia. Impartiality senpartieco. Impatience malpacienco. Impatient malpacienca. Impassive kvietega, stoika. Impeach kulpigi, denunci. Impediment baro. Impel antauxen pusxi. Impend minaci. Impenetrable ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... at the window of the squire's study, took out his things,—his desk and chair, his footstool, the screen he always kept between him and the fire, and dear knows what all,—and loaded them up on the wagon. They worked twice as hard at that imp's doing as they would at honest work, you may be bound. Then they drove down to the parsonage with the load, and tried round till they found a window unfastened, and in they carried every single thing, into the elder's study, and then loaded up with his rattletraps, and back to the Homestead. ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... the charitable interpretation. Harry strongly suspected that the imp had been a concealed spectator all the time, and had particularly relished the mischief of the discomfiture, which, after all, was much greater on the part of the Vicar than any one else, as he was a rather stiff, old-fashioned gentleman. ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reflecting, Triboulet, like an imp, began to dance before them, slapping his crooked knees with his ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the same, you young imp, if you'd had the chance," answered the pie-vender, with more truth than gratitude. "Clear out, the whole on ye. I've had ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... In Scandinavia he was always associated with water either in sea or lake, river or waterfall, his picture being changed to that of a horrid-looking creature, half-child and half-horse, the horse's feet being shown the wrong way about. Sometimes, again, he was shown as an old black man like an imp, sitting on a rock and wringing the dripping water ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... peer into the gloom. Then, suddenly, that black curtain was rent by jagged spurts of red and yellow flame. Dazed for an instant, her heart throbbing wildly to the sharp reports of the rifles, she shrank cowering back, her fascinated gaze fixed on those imp-like figures leaping forward from rock to rock. Almost with the flash and sound Hampton sprang hastily back and ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... know now. You said awhile ago that I was to blame for your mother being—as she is. You're liable to say that again." A horror greater than sudden passion was in the deliberate explanation and in the slow way he rose to his feet. "I'm going to fix you so you can't say it again, you old-man imp!" ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... the very imp of mischief seemed to get into old Mr. Possum's head. Yes, Sir, it certainly did seem that way. And when you see Mischief trotting along the Lone Little Path, if you look sharp enough, you'll see Trouble following at ...
— Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... threatened to complain of that boy—a merry, mischievous young imp—to Mr. Craven; but she never did so. Perhaps because the clerks always gave her rapt attention; and an interested audience was very pleasant to ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... think he's all right; it seems he galloped something under forty miles with Porter before he came a cropper. But I understand they had an imp of a boy, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... young Rhine-sprite, thou water-imp, run to the wood for another bundle of fagots! Away, haste thee, or I 'll give thee back to thy elfin kinsfolk, who are ever ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... end, a shrewd conjecture went abroad that he was none other than some malicious imp of darkness let loose upon their frolics, to disquiet and perplex their commemoration of the Blessed Nativity. Yet was it an unusual occurrence upon Yule night, when these disturbers were supposed to be prevented from ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... yesterday, and did not I miss it? Does not every child of ten years old know, that this is a world in which things have a wonderful knack of falling out just in the way least wished for? If I were an infidel, I should believe that some spiteful imp of the perverse had the guidance of the affairs of humanity. I know better than that: but for my knowledge I have to thank Revelation. But is it philosophical, is it common sense, in a man who rejects Revelation, and who must be guided in his opinions of a future life by ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... an early breakfast, I set off to explore the virgin forests of Aru, anxious to set my mind at rest as to the treasures they were likely to yield, and the probable success of my long-meditated expedition. A little native imp was our guide, seduced by the gift of a German knife, value three-halfpence, and my Macassar boy Baderoon brought his chopper to ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... tricksy Puck! With antic toys so funnily bestuck, Light as the singing bird that wings the air— (The door! the door! he'll tumble down the stair!) Thou darling of thy sire! (Why, Jane, he'll set his pinafore a-fire!) Thou imp of mirth and joy! In Love's dear chain so strong and bright a link, Thou idol of thy parents—(Drat the boy! ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... the lid of the inkstand with an air of as great satisfaction as if he had been the fisherman in the Arabian story corking up the wicked afrite. With his finger still pressing the leaden cover, as though he were afraid the imp of toil would get out again, he was suddenly impressed by the fact that he had seen very little ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... you imp of the world?" cried the dame. "Get in with you, and say no more on the matter; be a bob-cull,—drop the bullies, and you shall ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mouths with envy or with praise, And all her jealous monarchs with amaze, And rumours loud that daunt remotest kings, Thy firm unshaken virtue ever brings Victory home, though new rebellions raise Their Hydra-heads, and the false North displays Her broken League to imp their serpent wings: O yet a nobler task awaits thy hand, For what can War but endless war still breed, Till Truth and Right from Violence be freed, And public Faith cleared from the shameful brand ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... prelate, suit admirably with his disposition. They mark him out as a lower kind of Saint Dominic, differing from the fierce and gloomy enthusiast who founded the Inquisition, as we might imagine the familiar imp of a spiteful witch to differ from an archangel of darkness. When we read His Grace's judgments, when we read the report which he drew up, setting forth that he had sent some separatists to prison, and imploring the royal aid against others, we feel a movement of indignation. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... calculating full-blooded man. Whitney, for his part, seemed almost fascinated by her gaze. He rose as she bowed, and, for a moment, I thought that he was going over to speak to her, as if drawn by that intangible attraction which Poe has so cleverly expressed in his "Imp of the Perverse." For, clearly, one who talked as Whitney had just been talking would have to be on his guard with that woman. Instead, however, he returned her nod and stood still, while Kennedy bowed at a distance ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... and tragedy worked hard together to silver her hair and line her face, so did a veritable imp of mischief, bred of her desolation, seem to possess the old darling. She cared not a brass farthing for the opinion of her neighbours, so that after the death of the great Queen, who had been her staunchest friend, she had ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... landed just before them. Immediately after Archie and Eddie were swept in amid the foam, and Junkie himself—who, like his brothers, could swim like a cork—came careering in on the top of a wave, like a very water-imp! With all the energy of his nature he turned, the moment his feet touched ground, to lend a hand to his friend Tonal', who was not ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... 1st Chiefs we gave a medal with the Imp. of the President of the U S. To the 2d Chiefs a medal of weaveing & Domestic animals. To the 3rd Chiefs a medal with the impression of a ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... state that Jack Ruddy and Pepper Ditmore were close chums, living, when at home, in the western part of New York State. Jack was slightly the older of the two and was of rather a serious turn of mind. Pepper was full of fun, and on that account was frequently called "The Imp." ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... father had shown so marked a preference. It consists of the arms granted to Paulus in 1571 by the Emperor Maximilian II. (in which the Aldine anchor occupies a subordinate place) surrounded by a border of heavy ornament with the addition: Ex privilegio Maximiliani II. Imp. Caes. Aug. When his father's death had made him the head of the press he continued for some years to employ the same device. For the Livy of 1592, much inferior to the present edition, and of interest only as showing the decline into which the Aldine press, and the Italian ...
— Catalogue of the William Loring Andrews Collection of Early Books in the Library of Yale University • Anonymous
... carried away a part of it, making his way through the crowd, and down below with the speed of an arrow. The infuriated boatswain, finding he had passed so rapidly from the sublime to the ridiculous, through the instrumentality of this imp of a youngster, could vent his rage in no way but by making his glazed hat spin full force after his tantalizer, with a "G—d d——n your young eyes and limbs." The hat, however, fell far short of young Bruce, and the noise and half burst of laughter the trick occasioned ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... neck with one arm, its naked body half extant from the coarse blanket which, drawn round her shoulders, is secured at her bosom by a skewer. Though tender of age, it looks wicked and sly, like a veritable imp of Roma. Huge rings of false gold dangle from wide slits in the lobes of her ears; her nether garments are rags, and her feet are cased in hempen sandals. Such is the wandering Gitana, such is the witch- wife of Multan, who has come to spae the ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... seeing Val, "do you smell the death-damp yet, that you're here? Is the putrefaction of my filthy old carcase on the wind yet? Here Lanty, you imp," he said turning his eyes on the ripe youth as he brought in a large jug of the "Boyne"—in other words of St. Patrick's Well water—"I say you—you clip, do you smell the putrefaction of my ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the child begins to cry; the doctor's appearance had no doubt frightened the poor little imp. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the stern mandates of his mother, with everything out of doors calling him, Willie could not sleep and then when darkness fell hunger gnawed at his vitals and sleep refused to put an end to his misery. He counted to a thousand then half drifted into the land of dreams. A wicked little green imp whispered in his ear. "Conclusive Evidence," whispered it so loudly Willie awoke, then he thought, or tried to think of some plan of revenge on his heartless mother. He could think of none that would not return to himself fourfold, then he reasoned that ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... me, yet remoter Than a star—a blue-eyed, bashful imp: On her lap she held a happy bloater, 'Twixt her lips ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... perfunctory work at the office, unsatisfactory talks with busy doctors and impatient nurses, and long apprehensive hours in what had been home. In "Little Venice," in the best powder-blue jar and the rest, he found no solace, on the contrary, the occasion of revolting suggestions. There was an imp that whispered that she must die and that he should resume collecting. With horror he fled the evil place, and spent an endless night on tolerance within hearing of ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... Moquin-Tandon gives a list of plants which, when growing near the sea-shore, have their leaves in some degree fleshy, though not so elsewhere. In his work on "Animals and Plants under Domestication,"[68] Mr. Darwin refers to M. Costa as having (in Bull. de la Soc. Imp. d'Acclimat. tome viii. p. 351) stated "that young shells taken from the shores of England and placed in the Mediterranean at once altered their manner of growth, and formed prominent diverging rays like those on the shells of the ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... this visit to Damelioc to lay his demon of restlessness; had supposed this monthly account of his stewardship, punctually rendered, to be the business weighing on his mind. But no: as he passed out through the park gates, the imp perched itself again behind his crupper, urging him forward, tormenting him with the same vague sense ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... stunning, Hal," was her jovial uncle's warm greeting. "Who'd ever have thought, to see the ugly little imp of a small child you were, that you would grow up into a fashionable, striking woman? I congratulate you. When's ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... than the canvas of the master. His nymph, accurately drawn, from the undressed proportions of the model, down to the waist, terminated in the scales of a fish. The forked branches of the trees stretched weird and imp-like as the hands of skeletons. Polyphemus, peering over the rocks, had the leer of a demon; and in his gross features there was a certain distorted, hideous likeness of the grave and symmetrical lineaments of ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... two or three minutes longer, if he had not come in just in time to prevent Elsie's making the explanatory and soothing answer that was on her tongue, events would probably have been entirely different, and a good deal of trouble might have been saved. But in he came, as if some perverse imp had been waiting to give him the signal, and the interview between Captain Jerry and the young lady whom he had unwittingly offended broke off ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the poor, young runaway's heart, and out came a passionate burst of tender home-sick feeling, though he did it as well as he could, smothering it up in his coonskin cap. But soon again, bethinking him how he had been mocked and fooled by the imp in the moccasins, he summoned back the pride of his young heart and the strength of his young will, and checked his tears, lest his weakness of feeling, like his vanity, should be made the provocation of derision. In this condition ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... calls:] Alice! [Still in the door.] Come on! Help me put up my iron bar with a double lock before the door, Alice! [He comes forward.] Any one else who dares to interrupt our Sunday quiet—anathema sit! Here! You imp! Where are you, Alice? [He observes the bottle and lifts it against the light.] What? Half empty! The little scamp! [From behind the door of the library a pleasant woman's voice is heard singing ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... old companions in arms, he had no interval of repose between these terrible and repeated shocks, all beating upon his heart at the same time. One could have feared that the blow might prove mortal, and poor Fougas die in the first hour of his recovered life. But the imp of a fellow yielded and recovered himself in quick succession like a spring. He cried out with admiration on hearing of the five battles of the campaign in France; he reddened with grief at the farewells of Fontainebleau. The return from the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... her cream, stalked off for a pail and cloth, and set herself to wash the floor, muttering curses as she did so. Never a glance did she cast at the corner by the fire where little Jan still lay by the hearth-stone, motionless and strangely quiet; he, the restless imp, who was usually so full of life. Never a glance, until, the centre of the floor being at last clean again, Moll, on her knees, came with her pail of soap-suds to the white river that surrounded the corner ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... succeeded; and had the story not come to my ears, I conclude he would have kept up the farce till the ship got into port. I ask, my men, do you think it possible that God, who made this mighty universe, and governs it by just and wise laws, would allow a mischievous imp, who could do no harm while alive, to return to earth, merely for the sake of wreaking his own petty malice, or for troubling and frightening a number of grown men such as you are. To believe such ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... at all," thought Sammy Jay in disappointment, for he had hoped to see a fight between Reddy Fox and Johnny Chuck. Just then Sammy looked over to Farmer Brown's house, and there was Farmer Brown's boy getting ready to saw wood. The imp of mischief under Sammy's pert cap gave him an idea. He flew over to the old apple-tree, just over Reddy's head, and began to scream at ...
— The Adventures of Johnny Chuck • Thornton W. Burgess
... much, being too busy thinking, but Ben went on telling about other cruises with 'friends.' Oh, a steam-yacht can be a first-class imitation of hell if the right imp owns her. Henry got speaking of one time down along the ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... bottle imp!" yelled the bereaved one, "don't I know ye?" and seizing a tin pannikin, in his wrath, he threw it at the small monkey's head with a force that would, had it been well directed, have smashed that ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... driven her to destruction at last. I tell you, sir, we are a pack of cowards hunting down an angel. You and I and that pretty imp of satan. I came to tell you this: bad as I am, her goodness has touched me with human feelings. If she is here and alive, justice shall be done her, and for once the truth shall be spoken under this roof. That woman has bribed me to shield another ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... commodore? So I told him, general, that we had Baptists, and Quakers, and Universalists, and Episcopalians, and Presbyterians, old-lights, new- lights, and blue-lights; and Methodists——. 'Stop,' said the Devil, 'that's enough; you imp, be nimble with that horse.—Let me see, commodore, what, part of the country did you say you came from?' I told him the name more distinctly ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... the head of his enemy, who, after placing him and his three sons in the upper chamber of a strong tower near Florence, threw the key of it into the moat and left them to perish with hunger. Grinning in mockery of these ice-bound sufferers, A BLACK IMP [biggest extra black capitals] is seated on a rock, dandling a young monster. On the edge of the opposite side of the frozen lake stands a spirit, who is just about to endure the frozen torment; and his attitude and countenance express the agony of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... laughing, when they saw it lift up its ears, as if the sport had liked them. One of them would call it her little dille, her staff of love, her quillety, her faucetin, her dandilolly. Another, her peen, her jolly kyle, her bableret, her membretoon, her quickset imp: another again, her branch of coral, her female adamant, her placket-racket, her Cyprian sceptre, her jewel for ladies. And some of the other women would give it these names,—my bunguetee, my ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... and were almost afraid to enter ourselves, so stately and beautiful it was! There are two of these creatures,—a girl about our age, some sort of dreadful cripple, who goes about in a bath-chair, and a freckled imp of a boy. The girl is at —— Hospital for treatment, but spends every Sunday at the Grahams', and Hilda devotes most of her spare time to her. The boy is at school,—one of the best schools in the city. 'But who are these people?' ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... that wither'd imp, Wi' a' his noise an' caperin'; An' tak a share wi' those that bear The budget and the apron; [tool-bag] And, by that stoup, my faith an' houp! [hope] And by that dear Kilbaigie, [a kind of whisky] If e'er ye want, or meet wi' scant, [dearth] May I ne'er ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... does not remember the prototypes of any other "cathedraly" characters—Crisparkle and the rest—but he quite agrees with the general opinion previously referred to as to the origin of Mr. Sapsea. He considers "Deputy" (the imp-like satellite of Durdles and the "Kinfreederel") to be decidedly a street Arab, the type of which is more common in London than in Rochester. He thinks that the fact of the rooms over the gatehouse having once been ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... now in sudden rush of memory—the drizzling rain in the little cemetery, the few neighbors standing about, a narrow fringe of slaves back of them, the lowering of the coffin, and the hollow sound of earth falling on the box; and Neb, his Aunt Caton's house servant, a black imp of good humor, who begged so hard to be taken back with him to the war. Why, the boy had held his stirrup the next morning when he rode away. The sudden rush of recollection seemed to bridge the years, and that black face became ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... interruptions are worse than futile. As an ex-student of his, I know. So I permitted my thoughts to drift to certain personal problems of my own, particularly Tips Alva, who was the most pressing problem of the moment. Yes, I mean Tips Alva the 'vision dancer, the little blonde imp who entertains on the Yerba Mate hour for that Brazilian company. Chorus girls, dancers, and television stars are a weakness of mine; maybe it indicates that there's a latent artistic ...
— The Ideal • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... The young imp, in the next day's practice, worked up the grandmamma to a state of great excitement, urging her to take a cool and determined aim at the looking-glass. "Cover him well, gran," ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... pleased than was Sigismondo with the acquisition of this Father of the Neopagan faith. Upon the tomb we still may read this legend: 'Jemisthii Bizantii philosopher sua temp principis reliquum Sig. Pan. Mal. Pan. F. belli Pelop adversus Turcor regem Imp ob ingentem eruditorum quo flagrat amorem huc afferendum introque mittendum curavit MCCCCLXVI.' Of the Latinity of the inscription much cannot be said; but it means that 'Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, having served as general against the Turks in the Morea, induced by the great love ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Betty's dress and said "Come on," urgingly; but the man was already letting down two slip-rails a little way from the crazy gate, and his eyes rested on the second barefooted imp. ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... Saxon. You've got some wild notion out of a boot-legger's bottle. Straighten up now. It's an infamous thing in a college town like Lagonda Ledge, where neither a saloon nor a joint would be allowed, that some imp of Satan should forever be bringing you whisky. Who does ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Jessie's, and found an imp of mischief dancing there. She was enjoying the predicament in which he found himself. Out of the tail of that same eye he discovered that two more flat-footed squaws were ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... best, In hell are us'd the ruggedest; Before so meriting a person 375 Cou'd get a grant, but in reversion, He serv'd two prenticeships, and longer, I' th' myst'ry of a lady-monger. For (as some write) a witch's ghost, As soon as from the body loos'd, 380 Becomes a puney-imp itself And is another witch's elf. He, after searching far and near, At length found one in LANCASHIRE With whom he bargain'd before-hand, 385 And, after hanging, entertained; Since which h' has play'd a thousand feats, And practis'd all mechanick cheats, Transform'd himself to th' ugly shapes ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... girls looked at me very sharply, but I stood at the back of an arm-chair so that no one could see my feet. But that little imp Tizzy walked round deliberately, looked at my heels, and then walked back again. It was clear that she was in ...
— The O'Conors of Castle Conor from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... her mark on a slip of parchment with her own blood. Sometimes on this occasion also the witch uses the ceremony of putting one hand to the sole of her foot and the other to the crown of her head. On departing he delivers to her an imp or familiar. The familiar, in shape of a cat, a mole, miller-fly, or some other insect or animal, at stated times of the day sucks her blood through teats in different parts of her body.[47] If, however, the proper vulgar witch is an old woman, the younger and fairer of the sex were not by ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... who sticks to her lord and master in mud and powder-smoke until there is precious little time to spare, when she makes straight for a strange land, in a fishing-smack, with no other protector than a peasant; and now, with an imp of a black-eyed infant to her breast (Sally Mearson's got the other; you remember Sally, your own nurse's daughter?), looks like a chit of seventeen. That's what you'll see, sir. And when she sails downstairs for dinner, dressed up, powdered and high-heeled, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... without first making our readers know Panurge by, at least, a few traits of his character and conduct. Panurge was a shifty but unscrupulous adventurer, whom Pantagruel, pious prince as he was, coming upon him by chance, took and kept under his patronage. Panurge was an arch-imp of mischief,—mischief indulged in the form of obscene and malicious practical jokes. Rabelais describes his accomplishments in a long strain of discourse, from which we purge our selection to follow,—thereby transforming Panurge into a ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... Eblis, shaitan^, succubus, succuba; Frankenstein's monster; Titan, Shedim, Mephistopheles, Asmodeus^, Moloch, Belial, Ahriman^; fury, harpy; Friar Rush. vampire, ghoul; afreet^, barghest^, Loki; ogre, ogress; gnome, gin, jinn, imp, deev^, lamia^; bogie, bogeyman, bogle^; nis^, kobold^, flibbertigibbet, fairy, brownie, pixy, elf, dwarf, urchin; Puck, Robin Goodfellow; leprechaun, Cluricaune^, troll, dwerger^, sprite, ouphe^, bad fairy, nix, nixie, pigwidgeon^, will-o'-the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... her chin and was silent, with a warm blush on her cheek and a lurking imp of laughter in her eye. The schoolmaster frowned ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... wisely compensated them for the bruises they had received in his fall. Then giving no more thought to Madame de Belle-Ile, who sat awaiting him eagerly, he returned gloomily to his hotel, reflecting on the carelessness which had delivered him into the hands of an indefatigable imp of mischief. The upshot of his reflection was a resolve to press his wooing to an immediate conclusion. The next day and the day after, therefore, he redoubled his lamentations that the smallness of his means prevented him from going, as his natural honesty dictated, straight ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... Geppetto was being taken to prison for no fault of his, that imp Pinocchio, finding himself free from the clutches of the soldier, ran off as fast as his legs could carry him. That he might reach home the quicker he rushed across the fields, and in his mad hurry he jumped high banks, thorn hedges and ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... could hear. "I learned that long ago about niggers. They'd say to me, 'For God's sake, don't talk to our niggers like that. Some night you'll have your house set afire.' But I said, 'Pet a nigger, and you've got a spoiled nigger.' I'd say, 'Nigger, don't you give me any of your imp, or I'll kick the breeches off you.' And they knew I was a gentleman, and they ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... so it's you, 'Joannes Frollo de Molendino!'" cried one of them, to a sort of little, light-haired imp, with a well-favored and malign countenance, clinging to the acanthus leaves of a capital; "you are well named John of the Mill, for your two arms and your two legs have the air of four wings fluttering on the breeze. How long have you ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Longchamp, as elsewhere, we remark for one thing, that dame and cavalier are waited on each by a kind of human familiar, named jokei. Little elf, or imp; though young, already withered; with its withered air of premature vice, of knowingness, of completed elf-hood: useful in various emergencies. The name jokei (jockey) comes from the English; as the thing ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Playmate uttered scream after scream, for the head continued coolly to stare at her, as if fixed alive over the gateway by the craft of some cave-dwelling imp of ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... labours of to-day, I should have thought you would have been glad to go to bed," I said. "You imp!" And I laughed. There is something very disarming about ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... it, I'll warrant," said Jucundus; "a pert, forward imp. 'Twas Gete against Briton. Much good comes of schooling! He's a wicked one already. Ah, the new generation! I don't know where the ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... catch him," sighed Neddy, watching the little imp whisk about in the garden among the currant-bushes, chasing hens and tossing green apples round in ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
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