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More "Ruffian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Smee, an oddly genial man who stabbed, so to speak, without offence, and was the only Nonconformist in Hook's crew; and Noodler, whose hands were fixed on backwards; and Robt. Mullins and Alf Mason and many another ruffian long known and ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... time Driggs had sunk into one of the chairs. Ab. dragged the boy to him and the other ruffian ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... Miss Cynthia, she was what they call an Apache, or some such name—a Frenchified sort of cut-throat, I take it to be. A real sight she looked. You'd never have believed a pretty young lady like that could have made herself into such a ruffian. Nobody would ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... a sight of any original or of any evidence of any kind; but thought only of intimidating me by noise and threats, till my last answer,—that I would not be deterred from detecting what I thought a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian—put an end ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... have the wicked reign, Instead of help will find his bane. The Doves had oft escaped the Kite, By their celerity of flight; The ruffian then to coz'nage stoop'd, And thus the tim'rous race he duped: "Why do you lead a life of fear, Rather than my proposals hear? Elect me for your king, and I Will all your race indemnify." They foolishly the Kite believed, Who having now the pow'r received, Began upon the Doves ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... about it, and puffed furiously at his cigar for some minutes. The eyes of the other ruffian wandered alternately from Dick Merton to myself. I knew that I was in the presence of a desperate man, that a quiver of my lip might be the signal for him to plunge a weapon into my heart, but I betrayed more self-command ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of yours have quite upset, But aught of base or mean hath never yet Been charged by any in reproach to you. Your deeds are open proof in all men's view; For you went forth injustice to abate, And for your pains sore drubbings did you get From many a rascally and ruffian crew. If the fair Dulcinea, your heart's queen, Be unrelenting in her cruelty, If still your woe be powerless to move her, In such hard case your comfort let it be That Sancho was a sorry go-between: A booby he, hard-hearted ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Miss Sampson? Swore you'd never come back? Well, after he had gone, when Sally said he'd meant you'd be killed, Miss Sampson felt bad about it. She said she ought to be glad if someone killed you, but she couldn't be. She called you a bloody ruffian, yet she ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... trunk stand the officer and a brigand. The officer has a large wound across the temple, and attempts to rescue his wife, who is being dragged away by one of the brigands in the background; he stretches out his arms towards, and looks upon her, but is kept from her by the strong arm of the ruffian at his side, who grasps him by the collar, and holds a bloody sword above his head; the brigand partially faces the audience; the officer stands in a side position; the wife is seen kneeling in the background, with hands clasped ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... wounded so deeply one so generally beloved as Edward O'Connor was a thorough ruffian. His answer to Edward's query sprang not from love of O'Grady, nor abhorrence of taking human life, but from the opportunity of retort which the occasion offered upon one who had once checked him ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... Laura, to Mr. Gilmore's partner, who has offered to help us in any fresh emergency. Little as I know of the law, I am certain that it can protect a woman from such treatment as that ruffian has inflicted on you to-day. I will go into no details about Anne Catherick, because I have no certain information to give. But the lawyer shall know of those bruises on your arm, and of the violence offered to you in this room—he shall, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... dress, did not become popular. The verses by his female friend, in which the lady is made to be the sufferer by misplaced affection, and commencing, "Stay, my Willie, yet believe me," though published, remain likewise in obscurity. "Roy's Wife" was originally written to an old tune called the "Ruffian's Rant," but this melody is now known by the name of its favourite words. The sentiment of the song is peculiarly pleasing. The rejected lover begins by loudly complaining of his wrongs, and the broken assurances of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... Hildebrand, leading his priests to worship at a shrine. At the head of the other was Cencius, a Roman noble. In one of the pauses in the roar of the tempest, when the Pope was heard blessing his flock, the arm of Cencius grasped his person, and the sword of a ruffian inflicted a wound on his forehead. Bound with cords, the Pope was removed to a mansion in the city, from which he was the next day to be removed to exile or to death. A sword was aimed at the Pontiff's bosom, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... myself, feared to jump from the bed lest I be seized by invisible hands of the desperate villain. Then came shouts and pounding upon the door by neighbors aroused by the uproar. Encouraged by the reinforcements, I struck a light but the ruffian had escaped through the open window on to a piazza roof, thence by a ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... he had passed a rainy season at Panama, and a yellow-fever season at Vera Cruz, and had been carried far into the interior of Peru by a tidal wave during an earthquake season; he was in the Border Ruffian War of Kansas, and he clung to California till prosperity deserted her after the completion of the Pacific road. Wherever he went, he carried or found adversity; but, with a heart fed on the metaphysics ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... London citizen. I think to-night's work will cure her of that. This fellow evidently made himself out to her to be a nobleman of the Court. Now she sees that he is neither a nobleman nor a gentleman, but a ruffian who took advantage of her vanity and inexperience, and that she would have done better to have jumped down the well in the yard than to have put herself in his power. Now we can go up to bed. There is no more probability of our waking the Captain ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... its stable, and trying to get indoors that cold night for warmth. Laugh as we might, and as you may, the test of courage was all the same; and if this donkey story is pounced upon by some critic or comic as a weak link in my chain of autobiography, I only hope he will behave as bravely if a real ruffian tries his doors and windows by night; by no means an improbable hypothesis in ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... entered King Haakon Bay and he reached Peggotty Camp in a boat. The three men were delighted beyond measure to know that we had made the crossing in safety and that their wait under the upturned 'James Caird' was ended. Curiously enough, they did not recognize Worsley, who had left them a hairy, dirty ruffian and had returned his spruce and shaven self. They thought he was one of the whalers. When one of them asked why no member of the party had come round with the relief, Worsley said, "What do you mean?" "We thought the Boss or one of the others would come round," they ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... Rutherford! Suppose they were to elect to office some wild and reckless demagog... take, for instance, that ruffian you were telling us about... down there on the Bowery... [HAGEN starts, and listens] and he were to defy the law and the courts? He is preaching just that to the mob... striving to rouse the elemental wild beast in them! And some day they will ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... that, I have been getting along a little farther;—I've been to the Library, looking somewhat ahead in the completer edition. I find that 'Will,' who flung his cloak over his shoulder, 'like a ruffian,' and got his ears boxed for it, was no mere temporary serving-man, but lived on with Pepys for years and became the most intimate and trusted of his friends. And 'Gosnell,' who lasted three days, you remember, ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... eyes fixed on her good-looking English lover, firmly keeping down the shudder of loathing which went right through her when she saw those awful men coming nigh her. There was one especially whom she abominated worse than the others, a bandy-legged ruffian, who regarded her with a leer that caused her an almost physical nausea. He did not take part in the perquisition, but sat down in the centre of the room and sprawled over the table with the air of one who was in authority. The others addressed him as "citizen ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... yet I was put out, for I thought his bold glances would have made her angry. But my dear Flavia was a woman, and so—she was not put out. On the contrary, she thought young Rupert very handsome—as, beyond question, the ruffian was. ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... presumed to violate the hallowed sanctity of private life, and to refer in a manner not to be misunderstood, to the personal affairs of our late candidate—aye, and notwithstanding his base defeat, we will add, our future member, Mr. Fizkin. What does our dastardly contemporary mean? What would the ruffian say, if we, setting at naught, like him, the decencies of social intercourse, were to raise the curtain which happily conceals His private life from general ridicule, not to say from general execration? What, if we were even to point out, and comment on, facts and circumstances, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... to retreat behind his table to avoid the first thrust; but as Gryphus continued, with horrid threats, to brandish his huge knife, and as, although out of the reach of his weapon, yet, as long as it remained in the madman's hand, the ruffian might fling it at him, Cornelius lost no time, and availing himself of the stick, which he held tight under his arm, dealt the jailer a vigorous blow on the wrist of that ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... some solace drew, And prostrate, pardoned heaven. On Libyan soil (2) Fresh fury gathering (3), next, when Fortune smiled The prisons he threw wide and freed the slaves. Forth rushed the murderous bands, their melted chains Forged into weapons for his ruffian needs. No charge he gave to mere recruits in guilt Who brought not to the camp some proof of crime. How dread that day when conquering Marius seized The city's ramparts! with what fated speed Death strode upon his victims! plebs alike And nobles perished; far and near the sword Struck ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... "some account will, I suppose, have to be given of yon ruffian's death. The two runaways are scarcely likely to appear as witnesses, so, for Mistress Waynflete's sake, I must ask you, should an explanation become necessary, to conceal my share in ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... wind. He saw that it was printed—was interested professionally in seeing what it was like. He chased the flying scrap and overtook it. It was a leaf from some old history of Joan of Arc, and pictured the hard lot of the "maid" in the tower at Rouen, reviled and mistreated by her ruffian captors. There were some paragraphs of description, but the rest ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... resumed, but without its old accompaniment of murder. It is at present carried on with great activity in spite of the efforts of the police to put a stop to it. The North River front of the city is troubled with but one gang of these ruffian's, which has its headquarters at the foot of Charlton street. This front is lined with piers which are well built, well lighted, and well guarded, being occupied chiefly by steamboats plying on the river, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... their descendants, straggling weakly among the nettles, and mullein, and other wild stuff, but making all together a pretty good screen, through which I could get a safe side-view of the bottom of the timber gangway. So I took off my hat, for some ruffian fellows like foreign sailors were standing below, throwing out their arms, and making noises in their throats, because not allowed to scream as usual. It was plain enough at once to any one who knew the place, that a large hole had been cut in the solid castle wall, or rather, a loophole had been ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... were hurled upward, seeking to crush us at whatever sacrifice, by sheer force of numbers. We met them with the point, in the good old Roman way, thrusting home remorselessly, fighting with silent contempt for them which must have been maddening. I even heard Brennan laugh, as he pierced a huge ruffian through the shoulder and hurled him backward; but at that moment I saw Craig knock aside a levelled gun and press his way to the front of the seething mass to assume control. His face was inflamed, his eyes bloodshot; drink had changed him into a ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... the young woman! She says it's all a mistake.—My good girl, I'm sorry for the old gentleman; but he oughtn't to behave like a ruffian. Really, now, you know, a fellow can't stand that sort of thing! A downright assault! I'm sorry I struck him, though—devilish sorry! I'll pay the damage with pleasure. (Puts his hand in ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... than villain! who would, with a thousand artifices, make himself beloved by a young, unsuspecting, and beautiful girl, but then to leave her to the bitterness of regret, that she had ever given such a man a place in her esteem. The heartless ruffian!" ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... those in whom order and method are strongly developed,—qualities which give even to neediness a certain dignity. As the room and its owner met the eye of Gabriel, on whose senses all externals had considerable influence, the ungrateful young ruffian recalled the kind, tattered, slovenly uncle, whose purse he had just emptied, without one feeling milder than disgust. Olivier Dalibard, always careful, if simple, in his dress, with his brow of grave intellectual power, and his mien imposing, not only from its ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Some of these have secret passages connecting them with other buildings, and are used for purposes of crime, or they have hiding places known only to the initiated, where the offender against the law may hide from the police, or where a ruffian may conceal or imprison his victim, without fear of detection. Rum, gin, whisky, and other liquors of the vilest kind, are used in profusion here. Some of these wretches never leave their dens, but remain in them "the year round," stupefied with liquor, to procure which their wives, children, ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... am unworthy of having such an angel," replied the old man, "but unless you were a cruel and a heartless ruffian, you would not at this moment mention her, or bring the thoughts of ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... cargo of guano, manned by a crew of many races—deserters from the English navy, bargemen from Valparaiso, Peruvian Indians, black sheep of every family, all under command of a Catalonian, a niggardly ruffian, more prodigal with blows than with the mess. The outbound trip was uneventful, but on the return voyage, after passing the Straits of Magellan, they ran into the calms, and the frigate lay motionless ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... occasion, when Colonel Baker and myself were both battling together in the Whig cause, at a convention held in Springfield, I made a speech at the State House, which I think now, looking back at it from this point, was the very best I ever made in my life. While I was addressing the vast assembly some ruffian in the galleries flung at me a gross personal insult accompanied with a threat. Lincoln and Colonel Baker, who were both present and were warm personal and political friends of mine, anticipating that I might be attacked when I left the State House, came upon the stand ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... absorbing adventure of misapplied sexuality, must be adventures that really lead up to the highest and best things of life. It was only when he found an empire to save that Clive ceased to be a young ruffian. Nothing lower than "politics" ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... was marvellously nimble; although Jack made a dart after him pistol in hand, meaning to wreak summary vengeance upon him, the ruffian contrived ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... for the dearest of little Quaker ladies opened to her, with such an air of peace and good-will that the veriest ruffian, coming to molest or make afraid, would have found it impossible to mar the tranquillity of that benign old face, or disturb one fold of the soft muslin crossed ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... stairs of Shepherd's Inn, swore and blasphemed at Ned as the most infernal villain, and traitor, and blackguard, and coward under the sun, and wished Ned was in his grave, and in a worse place, only he would like the confounded ruffian to live, until Frank Clavering had had his ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thing he would sell the prospector meat and at night steal it all back. And the old chap was shot at in the dark and threatened until he gave up after putting in several months working on the claims. So you needn't expect any help from that ruffian," stormed Ma Patten. ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... and our aims are just! Behold, we seek Not merely to preserve for noble wives The virtuous pride of unpolluted lives, To shield our daughters from the ruffian's hand, And leave our sons their heirloom of command, In generous perpetuity of trust; Not only to defend those ancient laws, Which Saxon sturdiness and Norman fire Welded forevermore with freedom's cause, And handed scathless ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... And said,—"You're just in time for supper." They led him to the smoking board. And placed him next to the castle's lord. He looked around with a hurried glance: You may ride from the border to fair Penzance, And nowhere, but at Epsom Races, Find such a group of ruffian faces, As thronged that chamber; some were talking Of feats of hunting and of hawking, And some were drunk, and some were dreaming, And some found pleasure in blaspheming. He thought, as he gazed on the fearful crew, That the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... how it might seem justifiable to the people over there that one should take the law into one's own hands in such an exceptional case. You might do that, Evelyn, for the sake of the Society. The people over here don't know what a ruffian he is, and how he is beyond the ordinary reach of the law, or how the poor people have groaned under his iniquities. Don't seek to justify me; I shall be beyond the reach of excuse or execration by that time; but you ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... spirit, capacity, and love of their country, which providentially happened at this time, could ward off the ruin of the kingdom. Such Athelstan was; and such was his brother Edmund, who reigned five years with great reputation, but was at length, by an obscure ruffian, assassinated in his own palace. Edred, his brother, succeeded to the late monarchy: though he had left two sons, Edwin and Edgar, both were passed by on account of their minority. But on this prince's death, which happened after a troublesome reign of ten years, valiantly supported against ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... proceeded to make triumphal progress through Romagna. Their joy was dashed by hearing that Fra Paolo had not been killed. The Venetian bando filled them with fears and mutual suspicions, each man's hand being now set against his comrade, and every ruffian on the road having an interest in their capture. Yet after some time they continued their journey to Rome, and sought sanctuary in the palace of Cardinal Colonna. Here their reception was not what they had anticipated. Having failed in the main object and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... about a pair of socks. He could be heard saying impressively, in the darkness amidships: "You don't deserve a kindness. I've been drying them for you, and now you complain about the holes—and you swear, too! Right in front of me! If I hadn't been a Christian—which you ain't, you young ruffian—I would give you a clout on the head.... Go away!" Men in couples or threes stood pensive or moved silently along the bulwarks in the waist. The first busy day of a homeward passage was sinking into the dull peace of resumed routine. Aft, on the high poop, Mr. Baker walked ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... ruffian threats for more suitable occasion, such as you will find among your friends the Goths.' She spoke coldly and deliberately. 'If enslavement to a yellow-haired barbarian had not muddled your wits, you would long ago have seen who it was ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... much as the clergy. And if they know no more about the other world than they do about this, it is not worth mentioning. How do they answer all this? They say that God "permits it." What would you say to me if I stood by and saw a ruffian beat out the brains of a child, when I had full and perfect power to prevent it? You would say truthfully that I was as bad as the murderer. That is what you would say. Is it possible for this God to prevent it? Then, if He doesn't, He is a fiend; He is not good. But they say He "permits ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... strangled the little ruffian where he sat. The thought of his cabin civility and cabin tips filled me with indignation. I glanced at O'Reilly; he was pale and quivering, and looked like assault and battery, every inch of him. But we had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... standing on the opposite bank with a gun over his shoulder and a bottle of whiskey in his uplifted hand. By his side was his henchman, Patsy Clark. The situation was a trying one for Dic. He could not fight the ruffian in Rita's presence, and he had no right to tell him to move on. So he paid no attention to Doug's hail, and in a moment that worthy Nimrod passed up the river. Dic and Rita were greatly frightened, and when Doug passed out of sight into the forest they started home. They soon reached ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... the Junior Warden (who represents JUBELA, one of the ruffians), who exclaims, "Who comes here?" [The room is dark, or the candidate hoodwinked.] The conductor answers, "Our Grand Master, Hiram Abiff." "Our Grand Master, Hiram Abiff!" exclaims the ruffian, "he is the very man I wanted to see (seizing the candidate by the throat at the same time, and jerking him about with violence); give me the Master Mason's word, or I'll take your life." The conductor replies, "I cannot give it now, but if you ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... man that used to talk Latin and fetch our bowls? How tall thou art grown! I protest I should have known thee anywhere. And so you have turned ruffian and fighter; and wanted to measure swords with Mohun, did you? I protest that Mohun said at the Guard dinner yesterday, where there was a pretty company of us, that the young fellow wanted to fight him, and was the better man of ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... on record, in a posthumous work of 1592, his malicious feelings towards Shakspeare, could not have failed to notice it. For, be it remembered, that a judicial flagellation contains a twofold ignominy. Flagellation is ignominious in its own nature, even though unjustly inflicted, and by a ruffian; secondly, any judicial punishment is ignominous, even though not wearing a shade of personal degradation. Now a judicial flagellation includes both features of dishonor. And is it to be imagined that an enemy, searching with the diligence ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... proud of their strangeness and of the reputation of their fighting brother, their protector and chief. No doubt he was an unspeakable ruffian, and although I was accustomed to ruffians even as a child and did not find that they differed much from other men, this one with his fierce piercing eyes and cloud of black beard and hair, somehow made me uncomfortable, ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... Stirling, at dawn. While the mercenaries are quarreling and singing at the close of a night of debauch, the sentinels introduce Ellen and the minstrel Allan-bane—who are come in search of Douglas. Ellen awes the ruffian soldiery by her grace and liberality, and is at length conducted to a more seemly waiting place, until she may obtain audience with the King. While Allan-bane, in the cell of Sir Roderick, sings to the dying chieftain of the glorious battle which has just been waged by his clansmen against the ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... that I saw but one bonnet rouge, which I had supposed would be the revolutionary headdress. It was worn by an ill-looking ruffian, who sat with his back to the Quai, his legs straddled across the foot-walk, his drunken head fallen forward on his naked, hairy breast, a broken pipe between his knees, his doubled fists upon the stones at ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... paralleled by any of the like kind we meet with in history. Caesar's murder being performed in the Senate, comes nearest to the case; but that was an affair concerted by great numbers of the chief senators, who were likewise the actors in it, and not the work of a vile, single ruffian. Harry the Third of France was stabbed by an enthusiastic friar,[5] whom he suffered to approach his person, while those who attended him stood at some distance. His successor met the same fate in a coach, where neither he nor his ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... were genuine, that he felt. There was nothing playful or mocking in her tone at the moment. She saw him as he was, a reckless, vengeful young ruffian, and as such she ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... before greater trouble comes. I could not hold out for another fight. I am almost finished. Let the king fight the battles of his friends. The ruffian that escaped will return with re-enforcements, and I am not able to fight ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... foreheads when they saw the Khan. The timid or peaceably disposed among them, dreading the consequences, either from the Russians or the Khan, to which this rencontre might expose them, exhibited much discomfiture at the question; but the idle, the ruffian, and the desperate—for all beheld with hatred the Russian domination—crowded turbulently round him with delight. They hurriedly told ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... frigates, where the privilege of having theatricals was allowed to the crew. What was their chagrin, then, when, upon making an application to the Captain, in a Peruvian harbour, for permission to present the much-admired drama of "The Ruffian Boy," under the Captain's personal patronage, that dignitary assured them that there were already enough ruffian boys on board, without conjuring up any ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... clattered into the cobbled street, we found a solitary Bashi-Bazouk armed with a Winchester repeating rifle. Him, the sergeant of my escort questioned. "Had he fired a shot lately?" "Evvet," said the insolent ruffian, with a grin, answering in the affirmative. "What had he fired at?" asked the sergeant. "A small bird," was the answer. "Had he fired in the direction of the highway?" the sergeant asked him again. "Evvet," once more. "And had he seen a party coming along the ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... have been that rascal's wife by this time. The priest was here. They would have been married as sure as you're born. You, ma'am, would have had to see this poor, trembling, broken-hearted, despairing girl torn from your arms, and bound by the marriage tie to a ruffian and a scoundrel whom she loathed. And now, ma'am, I save her from this. I have my priest too, ma'am. He ain't a Roman Catholic, it is true—he's an orthodox parson—but, at the same time, I ain't particular. Now I propose to avail myself this day of his invaluable services at the earliest ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... for the whirlpool," muttered the ruffian, with a cruel laugh, "and, when he's missed, they'll think the reward tempted him. I'm quits at last with his father for the thrashing ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... sleepy and fatigued withal, did deme it but paltry stuff, and was the more discomforted in that ye blody bucanier had got his wind again, and did turn his mind to farting with such villain zeal that presently I was like to choke once more. God damn this windy ruffian and all his breed. I wolde that ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... were not of the best type. Being outlaws in every sense, these men sought shelter from the Indian in the wilderness; and he learned of their ways about his lodge-fire, or in battle, often provoked by the white ruffian in the hope of gain. They lied to the Indian—these first white acquaintances, and in after-years, the great Government of the United States lied and lied again, until he has come to believe that there is no truth in the white man's heart. ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... Bart calmly, but every word ringing out as clear as the tone of a bell, "I am no ruffian, and I hate violence, but if you lift that cane ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... reached for my sword, to make the discovery that I had forgotten it. Regaining my full senses, I struck the man nearest me a blow that sent him sprawling in the dirt. A blade gleamed under the sickly light of the fish-oil lamp overhead, but a man crashed through from behind and caught the ruffian's sword-arm and flung him back in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... straight for the Cuban coast, making disposition of what remained of the passengers on the way, and I knew that my great-grandfather had been one of these doomed survivors, and that he had been shot and murdered under orders of the ruffian that now sat before me. All this, as retailed by one who sailed for a season under Hardman to save his skin, is matter of old private history; and of common report was it that the monster buccaneer, after years of successful trading in the ship he had stolen, went into secret ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... mad-brained ruffian of quality, with a splendid equipage, came driving by with four in hand, and exclaimed as he flew past, in an affected tone,—"All! Tom, my dear fellow,—why where the devil have you hid yourself of late?" The speed of his cattle prevented the possibility of reply. "Although you see him in ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... was a judge and was holding court in a small settlement, a border ruffian, a murderer and desperado, came into the court-room with brutal violence and interrupted the court. The judge ordered him to be arrested. The officer did not dare to approach him. "Call a posse," said the judge, "and arrest him." But they also shrank in fear from the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... that you may remember from the North Pass." The speaker dragged from the crowd a red-faced, perspiring ruffian who had hung back with the bashfulness of a small boy. "He's the fellow you dug out of the ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... His brow darkened with anger. For a moment he lost even the superficial semblance of a gentleman, and showed himself a ruffian in tone ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... followers—mostly rollicking and arrogant foreign adventurers—who robbed and devastated the land, and thrashed and even mutilated passers-by for fun, people looked forward with great fear to the accession of such a ruffian. A few years of responsibility, and failure, soon changed him into the noblest and most law-abiding of the Plantagenets. It was Wales which gave him his first lesson. He first tried his hand at the reorganisation of the "Middle Country," making it "shire-land," introducing the ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... "Well," resumed the ruffian, "you will sleep at Rogga with the missionary and his wife. In the morning, when you and your people awake, the missionary and his wife will be dead. Then you will hurry to this place; you will go on board the ...
— The Tapu Of Banderah - 1901 • Louis Becke
... one of the episodes of the civil war then raging in Kansas, out of which it had in reality grown, and with which it was intertwined in motive, act, and comment. In result the incident was extremely damaging to the South, for it tended more than any single Border-Ruffian crime in Kansas to unite hesitating and wavering opinion in the North against the alarming flood of lawlessness and violence, which as a rule found its origin and its defense in the ranks of the pro-slavery party. Certainly no phase of the transaction ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... was at the same game. You have got the proof in your hands. There's a group of nine men—Salak and his eight friends. Well, of his eight friends every man jack is now doing time for burglary, in some cases with violence—that second ruffian, for instance, he's in for life—in some cases without, but in each case the crime was burglary. And why? Because Salak in the centre there set them on to it. Because Salak nine years ago wasn't the big swell he is now. Because ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... a darksome den, Now, gay in hope, explore the paths of men: See from his cavern grim Oppression rise, And throw on Poverty his cruel eyes; Keen on the helpless victim see him fly, And stifle, dark, the feebly-bursting cry: Mark Ruffian Violence, distained with crimes, Rousing elate in these degenerate times, View unsuspecting Innocence a prey, As guileful Fraud points out the erring way: While subtle Litigation's pliant tongue The life-blood equal sucks of Right ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... this belonged to a dark, close-shaved ruffian, with silver rings and a yellow handkerchief, who scowled and prowled about her, and looked as if he was likely enough to beat her when they got home. But she hands up an ivory bowl for contributions amongst the young dandies ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... place in a hurry! As for you, my young scamps, I don't think the skipper will be very hard on you; but, Teddy, you ought to have told me of the treatment you three poor beggars were receiving at that ruffian's hands all the voyage. Old Bill Summers, the boatswain, confirmed every word that Jones said, and was ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... you now I am whipped," said Elam, gazing back at his line of foes, and trying to estimate how many warriors there were in the lot. "It's the Cheyennes, and they belong two hundred miles from here. Some ruffian has stolen their back pay, and they are going to have revenge for it. Keep close, there, or ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... to affect a value for them, and to regret his violence; but they had consented to his exile; and careless of decency, and oblivious of the chances of the future, he used his opportunity to burst out upon them in language in which the foulest ruffian in the streets would have scarcely spoken of the first magistrates of the Republic. Piso and Gabinius, he said, were thieves, not consuls. They had been friends of Catiline, and had been enemies to himself, because he had baffled the conspiracy. Piso could not pardon the ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... Christendom. Let us first conquer this infamous proconsul, this adversary of our Redeemer, and then we shall see. It may be that heaven will then permit me to detect this Comte de la Foret in some particularly abominable heresy. For this long-legged ruffian looks like a schismatic, and would ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... me now! Here's a young ruffian for you! My chicken, you'll leave this jolly sharp. I used to keep you about out of niceness. Yes, I did! You may stare! Did you think I was going to be your mamma till I died? I've got better things to do than to ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... because of its history and celebrity: Caravaggio, of whom it was said that he always painted like a ruffian, because he was a ruffian, was also a genius in his way, and for a few months he became the fashion at Rome, and was even patronized by some of the higher ecclesiastics. He painted for the church of la Scala in Trastevere a picture of the Death of the ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... from his sleeve, the ruffian plunged it deeply into the poor creature's flesh. Nance winced, but she set her teeth hardly, and repressed the cry that must otherwise have been wrung ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... paramour. Her murderer, for such he was, was arrested and placed on trial for his misdemeanour, in accordance with the rough justice of the white man in his dealings with the native. In the night the poor dying woman crawled painfully to the tree against which the ruffian lay bound, cut his cords, and set him free. It was her last act in this life; in the morning she was found lying dead on the spot whence the prisoner had fled. This particular story may or may not be true, but the same kind of thing has been true a million times ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... Parisina, composed after his marriage in the summer and autumn of 1815, appeared in the following year. The former is founded on the siege of the city, when the Turks took it from Menotti; but our attention is concentrated on Alp the renegade, another sketch from the same protoplastic ruffian, who leads on the Turks, is in love with the daughter of the governor of the city, tries to save her, but dies. The poem is frequently vigorous, but it ends badly. Parisina, though unequal, is ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... to me much older than he probably really was, comparing, as I naturally did, his fare with those on which I was most accustomed to look. Though his features were rough, he was tolerably well dressed, and did not look like a common ruffian who designed to rob me. For more than a minute he held my rein in the attitude of forcing back my pony, and ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... my people, and appointed a guardian over them, to whom I committed the charge of great and small directing him to sell my house and estates. Then I set out at once on my travels, that I might be free of this ruffian, and came to settle in your town, where I have lived for some time. When you invited me and I came hither the first thing I saw was this accursed pimp seated in the place of honour. How, then, can I be at my ease and ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... that her name had already been bandied about from a ruffian's lips. Lee winced at that even as he had winced at the remembrance of having been brutally rough with her himself. But what was past was past; Quinnion had talked and ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... free or a slave state. Settlers were rushing in from all parts of the country, and the North was favouring those who were opposed to slavery, while the South sought to strengthen the slave-holding element. The result was a constant clashing, resulting in what came to be known as the Border Ruffian War, in which John Brown first appeared as a national figure. In the difficulty of provisioning such a new country, all sorts of supplies were rushed in, including ammunition and Bibles. Mr. Beecher told his congregation that just then a Sharps rifle was as ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold
... they were mutually dealing, had already cruelly injured the helpless object of the contest! Snatched from the arms of the Burgundian soldiers by the fierce arm of a German musketeer, a deadly blow, aimed at the ruffian against whom she was wildly but vainly defending herself; had lighted on one of the fairest of human forms! Cloven to the bone, the blood of this innocent being, scarce past the age of childhood, was streaming on her assailants; and when, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... venom'd lips What hast thou utter'd, wretch, to rouse at once A whirlwind in my soul, which roots up pity, And destroys my peace! Let him this instant to the block be led. [Exit NOTTINGHAM. Upbraid me with my fatal fondness for him! Ungrateful, barbarous ruffian! O, Elizabeth! Remember now thy long-establish'd fame, Thy envy'd glory, and thy father's spirit. Accuse me of injustice too, and cruelty!— Yes, I'll this instant to the Tower, forget My regal state, and to his face ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... rather pursy form of her natural protector walk away into the depths of a mirror at the forward end of the car, and so vanish. And in this same mirror she beheld, seated only two sections behind her, the scowling ruffian! ...
— A Border Ruffian - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... bundle of that stuff ye spend your nights and days writing; taking the flesh off your bones, and making that face of yours so black and yellow; it's your father's face, too—ay—well it's like him now, indeed—the ruffian. I wish I had never seen him, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... low bows of affected reverence, coarser and worse in the ruffian of inferior grade, and the knight complimented Pilpignon on being a lucky dog, and hoped he had made the best use of his time in spite of the airs of his duchess. It was his own fault if he were not enjoying such fair society, while they, poor ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... defence of the prisoner. This language has many dialects. The sly dexterity of the pickpocket, the brutal ferocity of the footpad, the more elevated career of the highwayman and the deadly purpose of the midnight ruffian is each strictly appropriate in the terms which distinguish and characterize it. I have ever been of opinion that an abolition of this unnatural jargon would open the path to reformation. And my observations ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... "Insolent ruffian!" muttered Tharon this day, frowning above her daddy's pipes on the desk top. "He's goin' t' get one run for his money from now till one of us is whipped. It may be me, but I'll leave my mark on him, ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... scarred Irishman, who seemed periodically to be possessed by a very demon of violence, and to be actually running over with bad blood. He had been in irons for some time before the vessel arrived at Rio, for having one day sworn on deck that he would murder the captain. It was with this ruffian that Salve had first to measure himself, the boatswain ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... cried Percy, after the passengers had passed out of hearing. "We'll see if the village will allow a ruffian like you to tend ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... go to Australia expecting every other man they meet to be a convict, and every convict a ruffian in felon's garb, will assuredly find themselves mistaken. And if contemplating a residence in Sydney or Melbourne they need not anticipate the necessity of living in a tent or a shanty, nor yet of accepting the society of convicts or negroes as the only alternative to a life of solitude. Neither ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... black ruffian regained consciousness, Dick was still sitting on the edge of the table, calmly swinging his feet, but in his hand ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... for ever haunt mankind, And glare upon the darken'd mind! Whene'er thou enterest a breast, Thou robb'st it of its joy and rest; And terrible, and strange to tell, On what that mind delights to dwell. The ruffian's knife with reeking blade, The stranger murder'd in his bed: The howling wind, the raging deep, The sailor's cries, the sinking ship: The awful thunder breaking round: The yauning gulf, the rocking ground: The precipice, whose low'ring ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... retreat in the back drawing-room, watched her ways. She was kind to Miss Bramble. She was kind to that old ruffian Partridge whose neck he would willingly have wrung. She was kind, good Heavens! yes, she was kind to Soper. When the commercial gentleman approached her with his infernal box of bon-bons, she took one. He could have murdered Soper. He was profoundly ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... my Silver-arrowed, you must promise that you will use only means worthy of you, and that you will not act as would act such a ruffian as Ares, for instance, or even, speaking between ourselves, as acts our common father, the ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... Lincolnshire county jail. One morning there was to be a hanging; and the usual little crowd of witnesses, consisting of the sheriff, the governor, three or four reporters, a magistrate, and a couple of warders, was assembled in the prison. The condemned man, a brutal ruffian who had been found guilty of murdering a young girl under exceptionally revolting circumstances, was being pinioned by the hangman and his assistant; and my uncle was employing the last few moments at his disposal in trying to break ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... motionless for a moment—but he, as if also surprised, drew back; I felt quite sick with sudden terror—I really thought some ruffian had broke into the house, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... at that moment; but, as the third fellow caught him by the wrist, the young man wrenched his head on one side, and heaved himself up, so that he partially dislodged the ruffian who held him down. At the same time he swung the sabre round, driving the third back, and striking the principal adversary so sharp a blow that he slipped aside, and Capel leaped to ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... about this time that the bull-gnu appeared, tramping steadily towards them; a rugged, rough renegade of the wilderness; a ruffian kicked—or, rather, horned—out of some herd forever, and, for his sins, doomed always to face the risks of life alone, or in the companionship of other male outlaws of soured temper like himself—almost always male; the female wild seems guiltless ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... a Turkish sect, once received a blow in the face from a ruffian, and rebuked him in these terms, not unworthy of Christian imitation: "If I were vindictive, I should return you outrage for outrage; if I were an informer, I should accuse you before the caliph: but I prefer putting up a prayer to God, that in the day of ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... Johnson, who, in his Journey to the Hebrides, lashes Macpherson for his imposture, and his insolence in refusing to show the original. Johnson was threatened by Macpherson with a beating, and he answered: "I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian ... I thought your book an imposture; I think it an imposture still ... Your rage I defy ... You may ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... staff collected, excitedly discussing the news. One of the Vigilance Committee prisoners, a notorious bully and ruffian, detained as a criminal and a witness, had committed suicide in his cell. Fortunately this was all reportorial work, and the services of Mr. Breeze were not required. He hurried back, ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... romantic when they were brutal, brave when they were foolhardy, heroes when they were only bullies and blackguards. This man, Abe Barrow, the prisoner at the bar, belongs to that class. He enjoys and has enjoyed a reputation as a 'bad man,' a desperate and brutal ruffian. Free him to-day, and you set a premium on such reputations; acquit him of this crime, and you encourage others to like evil. Let him go, and he will walk the streets with a swagger, and boast that you were afraid ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... your oars, bullies!" cried the ruffian at the bow, who was still standing up like an evil genius who had taken momentary command over events. "Lay on your oars, bullies; they'd better ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... a boy might use? How I trembled to touch thy scoured tins, that hung in appalling brightness! with what awe I asked for a basket to pick strawberries! and where in the house could I find a place to eat a piece of gingerbread? How like a ruffian, a Tartar, a pirate, I always felt, when I entered thy domains! and how, from day to day, I wondered at the immeasurable depths of depravity which were always leading me to upset something, or break or tear or derange ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... to educate the greater part of the community according to the present system of the Public Schools, and rest assured we shall soon have a hell upon earth—society will be stabbed to the heart by the ruffian assassin called godless Public School education—it will reel, stagger, and sink a bleeding victim to the ground, expiring, like the suicide, by the wound itself has inflicted. I truly believe that if Satan was presented with a blank sheet of paper, and bade ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... more than ever deserve death!!" Then turning again towards Pei Ming, "You ruffian!" he said, "what are ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... "Whimzies" were an Almanac-maker, a Ballad-monger, a Decoy, an Exchange-man, a Forester, a Gamester, an Hospital-man, a Jailer, a Keeper, a Launderer, a Metal-man, a Neater, an Ostler, a Postmaster, a Quest-man, a Ruffian, a Sailor, a Traveller, an Under-Sheriff, a Wine-Soaker, a Xantippean, a Jealous Neighbour, a Zealous Brother. The collection was enlarged by addition under separate title-page of "A Cater-Character, thrown out ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... had fallen through his violence into some terrible misfortune at Paris, had been brought before a public judge, and his name and his infamy had been made notorious in every newspaper in the two capitals. After that he had fought a ruffian at Newmarket, and had really killed him with his fists. In reference to this latter affray it had been proved that the attack had been made on him, that he had not been to blame, and that he had not been drunk. After a prolonged investigation he had come forth from that affair without disgrace. ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... passing seconds, then scoring each departed minute with his fingers, of which he had exhausted four and a thumb, the entire complement of one hand; and all the while his eyes were riveted with intense vigilance upon the growling ruffian on the seat ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... except of being what the time would have called King of the Black Guard. As for Tom Jones, he does not come into comparison with "Perry" at all, and he would doubtless have been most willing and able—competent physically as well as morally—to administer the proper punishment to that young ruffian by drubbing him within ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... her grandfather. Then, horror for herself beat upon her spirit. But a memory of her first resolve came to her. From stark necessity, she put her whole reliance on an effort to temporize. She felt that her only recourse in this emergency must lie in deceiving the ruffian who thus beset her. Much as she abhorred him, she had no choice. There was none to whom she could appeal for succor. She must depend absolutely upon her ability to beguile him. She must hide the revulsion inspired by his mere presence. She must arm herself with the world-old ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... by the slightest insult to that clergy whose willing slave she had become, that the only method of reclaiming the sinner had been long forgotten, in genuine horror at his sin. "Is it not enough," she went on, sternly, "that you should have become the bully and the ruffian of all the fens?—that Hereward the leaper, Hereward the wrestler, Hereward the thrower of the hammer—sports, after all, only fit for the sons of slaves—should be also Hereward the drunkard, Hereward the common fighter, Hereward the breaker ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... Captain Toplift, you don't mean to say that he is to remain on board with us and not take the oath," said a surly-looking ruffian. "In spite of you, he shall take the oath, ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... and Scipio, though in the turn which affairs took he seems to have been willing enough to accept the office himself when it came in his way. Milo and Clodius had often fought in the streets of Rome, each ruffian attended by a band of armed combatants, so that in audacity, as Asconius says, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... "Horror!" "Tyranny!" "Liberty!" "Rights!" "Taxes!" "Death!" "Destruction!" and a host of other patriotic phrases, were bolted forth before he had time to close his lips. Peter took no notice of the skulking throng, but strode up to the brawling, bully-ruffian, and pulling out a huge silver watch, which might have served in times of yore as a town-clock, and which is still retained by his descendants as a family curiosity, requested the orator to mend it and set ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... They stared in helpless anger at the small shop, which had suddenly become the most important in their ken. Already they saw their families brought to the gutter by this hunchback ruffian, who hit them below the belt in the most ungentlemanly fashion in preference to starving. But the simple manoeuvre of cutting down the prices of his rivals was only a taste of the unerring instinct for business that was later to make him as much feared as respected in the trade. By ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... inhabitants in 1664, and when the Tatars plotted against their victorious enemy, Peter the Great.[1] Swedish attacks without and popular uprisings within rendered the Polish pan (dubbed among Jews poriz, rowdy or ruffian) as reckless as he was irresponsible. The Jew became for him a sponge to be squeezed for money, and a clown to contribute to his brutal amusements. The subtle and baneful influence of the Jesuits succeeded, besides, in introducing ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... use of the sand-bag, his own recent experience and the stealthy movement of the man behind convinced him that mischief was intended. He would have been excusable if, being but a boy and no match for an able-bodied ruffian, he had got out of the way. But Joe had more courage than falls to the share of most boys of sixteen. He felt a chivalrous desire to rescue the unsuspecting stranger from the peril that ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... "Dolt! ass! inhuman brute! If I had the kicking of you—" here he recovered his silence; found pebbles to kick, and pursued them savagely up one path and down another. A mental flash-light showed him the ruffian who had wounded this bright creature; had led her on to love him, and then—either betrayed his brutal nature so that hers rose up in revolt, or—just as likely—that kind of man would do anything—gone off and left her. His picture ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... undoubtedly possessed that drove him to commit fraud in company with Clark and Houseman, and then, with the help of the latter, murder the unsuspecting Clark? The fact of his humble origin makes his association with so low a ruffian as Houseman the less remarkable. Vanity in all probability played a considerable part in Aram's disposition. He would seem to have thought himself a superior person, above the laws that bind ordinary men. He showed at the end no consciousness ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... loose in my intellects,—and that involved the probable loss of a boarder. A severe-looking person, who wears a Spanish cloak and a sad cheek, fluted by the passions of the melodrama, whom I understand to be the professional ruffian of the neighboring theater, alluded, with a certain lifting of the brow, drawing down of the corners of the mouth and somewhat rasping voce di petti, to Falstaff's nine men in buckram. Everybody looked up. I believe the old gentleman opposite was afraid I should seize the carving-knife; ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... course at once discharged the ruffian from his employ. The man afterwards became a noted desperado, and was quite conspicuous ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... bloom, thou lovely gem, Unscath'd by ruffian hand! And from thee many a parent stem Arise to deck ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... over the iron railing, and presented himself at the gate with the orange rosette on his coat and the stick in his right hand. He was just in time, for yells of "Psalm-singing old hypocrite!" were already in the air, and the fence was being stormed. George administered to the foremost ruffian a blow on the shoulder which felled him on the path outside, and then, standing on the low brick wall on which the railings rested, showed his rosette, brandished his club, and made some kind of inarticulate ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... mademoiselle," replied I, "we suffer fops sometimes very patiently for the sake of their extravagances." This man was notoriously foppish and extravagant. My answer pleased, and we soon got rid of him at the Palace of Chevreuse. But he thought to have despatched me, for he hired one Grandmaison, a ruffian, to assassinate me, who apprised me of his design. The first time I met M. d'Aumale, which was at the Duc d'Orleans's house, I did not fail to let him know it; but I told it him in a whisper, saying that I had too much respect for the House of ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... not, my lord?" rejoined the ruffian with bitter irony. "The evidence, you know, was irresistible; the crime as clear as the sun at noonday; and if in such plain cases, the just and necessary law was not enforced, society would be dissolved, and there would be no security for property! These were your words, I think. How on that occasion ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... the man whom he has so persistently and cruelly persecuted, and then to have him show the change of heart that one would expect in him in the circumstances, will be far more dramatic and gripping in the eyes of an intelligent audience than to have your hero "hurl the black-hearted ruffian to his doom" over a ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... titled man of recent date, the difference, if any, is in favor of the last. Suppose them both raised for merit, (here, indeed, we do come to theory!) the benefits that society has received from him are nearer us.... Some of us may look back six or seven centuries, and find a stout ruffian at the beginning." In England, where the institutions are such that a title of nobility is considered by the majority to be the highest reward attainable by merit, it is not surprising that the great god of Rank should be worshipped at the family altar ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... legitimate representative of the traditionary highwayman who levied toll at Highgate, or stopped the post-boy and captured the mailbags in Epping Forest. The real, living bushranger is, however, more of a ruffian and less of a hero than our ideal highwayman; for time, like distance, softens down the harsh and the coarse, and gives dignity ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... that you disbelieve this gentleman, who, at the risk of his life, arrested this ruffian and prevented ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... O'Rourke, while a low, vulgar, border ruffian, had what even the lowest of his kind generally appear to possess: a lingering sense of respect for a good woman. Until the night of the attack upon her by the hoboes in the railroad yard, he had never dared to presume to the extent of speaking to Donna Corblay, even when paying for his meals, ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... you cannot indeed really believe that this vulgar ruffian, this grim scarecrow, this Guy ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... the attitude this ruffian took with a respectable and ostensibly married woman! And she had mistaken him for a gentleman! She had even begun to feel a reluctant sort of liking for him; at any rate, an interest in his ambiguous and perplexing personality. Now—how dared he! ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... "The young ruffian! he's making sport of me," said the lady. "I said birrd: b-e-a-r-d, birrd. And it's all tinged grey and black. That's ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... very best thing that could be done for you at this moment, you unfortunate individual, would be to buy you a saddle-horse and a revolver, and start you tomorrow for the Rocky Mountains, with distinct instructions to treat any man as a Border Ruffian who should venture to allude to the subject of disease ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... their prisoners through the doorway of a dingy-looking old house, and then Andre saw that he was not at the regular police-station. The whole party entered an office, where a superintendent and two clerks were at work. The ruffian who had assaulted Andre changed his manner directly he entered the office; he threw his tattered cap upon a bench, passed his fingers through his hair, and shook hands with the superintendent; he then turned ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... to endure, and much to complain of, to the disgrace of England be it said—of England, in general so kind and bountiful:—rations of carrion meat and bread, from which I have seen the very hounds occasionally turn away, were unworthy entertainment even for the most ruffian enemy, when helpless and a captive. And such, alas! was ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... held his peace until later in the evening, when it became his turn to speak. When Beecher arose he said: "When I came to this hall to-night I saw an old, crippled woman wending her way across the crowded street on crutches. When she had reached about midway, a burly ruffian came along and knocked the crutches out from under her, and she fell splash into the mud." Turning to Ingersoll, he said, "What do you think of that, Colonel?" "The villain!" replied Ingersoll. Beecher, pointing to Ingersoll, ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... as it was too good a joke to be repeated. Seor ——- pointed out to us the other day a well-known robber captain, who was riding on the high road with a friend. He had the worst-looking, most vulgar, and most villainous face I ever saw; a low-lived and most unpoetic-looking ruffian; fat and sallow. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... the people wanted! As for Wilson, it was good to hear the lusty shouts of the "Giovani Fiumani": "Down with Wilson! down with redskins!" Some of the demonstrators, after shouting that Wilson was a donkey, a horse, a ruffian, would acclaim the new suggestion, that their enemy was not Wilson at all but Rudolf of Austria, who was still alive. Another very good idea would be to have great posters made with Wilson's head crowned by a German helmet, and now, of course, the Hotel Wilson ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... word. Fergus was almost unnerved by the incredible ease of his conquest over so redoubtable a ruffian. His stolid Scottish blood stood by him; but still he made grim apology ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... desperate-looking ruffian he is! I don't dare to come too near. How did you break ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... that of a stout, broad-shouldered, sturdy-chested man; and we knew at once, as anybody would, who glanced at that broad-skirted green coat, with the large metal buttons, that its wearer seldom walked forth without a dog at his heels, and some idle ruffian, the very counterpart of himself, at his side. The vices of the boy had grown with the man, and we fancied his home then—if such a place deserve ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... to suppose that every effort is made by the small traders of the interior to avoid these savage press-gangs. The poor wretches are not only subjected to annoying vassalage by ruffian princes, but the blockade of the forest often diverts them from the point they originally designed to reach,—forces them to towns or factories they had no intention of visiting,—and, by extreme delay, wastes their provisions and diminishes their frugal profits. It is surprising ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... scale,—troubles, indeed, which the Emperor Barbarossa laid out for all Italy. In Carlyle's History of Frederick the Great you can read a pleasanter account of the Emperor's business at Roncaglia about this time than our Italian chroniclers will give you. Carlyle loves a tyrant; and if the tyrant is a ruffian and bully, and especially a German, there are hardly any lengths to which that historian will not go in praise of him. Truly, one would hardly guess, from that picture of Frederick Redbeard at Roncaglia, with the standard set ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... The ruffian advanced toward me as he spoke. Suddenly he paused. His jaw dropped; his hair seemed literally to stand on end; his white lips quivered; he shook, as with an ague; his whole form appeared to shrink. I stared in amazement at the awful change. A strange thrill shot through me, ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... handled firearms. Caterna has his hat shot through, and it will be remembered that it is his village bridegroom's hat, the gray beaver, with the long fur. He utters a gigantic maritime oath, something about thunder and portholes, and then, taking a most deliberate aim, quietly shoots stone dead the ruffian who has taken such a liberty with ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... the schoolboy felt sorry for him, for his silver bristles, for the broad arrows on his poor legs, until he found out who it was. Then he shuddered. It was Charles Peace. He had first heard of Charles Peace from the nice governess aforesaid; and here under his nose were the old ruffian's revolver, and the strap that strapped it to his wrist, with the very spectacles he had wiped and worn. The hobbledehoy was almost as timorously entranced as he had been in infancy by untimely tale of crime. He stood gloating over the gruesome relics, over ropes which ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... noted in a letter in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1791, vol. lxi., part ii. p. 1169: "Early in the morning of the first of January the Faex Populi assemble together, carrying stangs[86] and baskets. Any inhabitant, stranger, or whoever joins not this ruffian tribe in sacrificing to their favourite Saint day, if unfortunate enough to be met by any of the band, is immediately mounted across the stang (if a woman, she is basketed), and carried, shoulder height, to the nearest public-house, where the payment of sixpence immediately ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... shet 'em up inter a prison for three or thirteen yeers, an' ye'd see w'at an impression et'd make, now. Thar'd be siveral less massycrees a week, an' ye wouldn't see a rufyan onc't a month. W'y, gentlefellows, thar'd nevyar been a ruffian, ef et hedn't been fer ther cussed Injun tribe—not one! Ther infarnal critters ar' ther instignators uv more deviltry nor a cat ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... compartment system is all wrong. If nobody comes into your compartment it's lonesome, and if anybody does come in it's too damn sociable. And if you try to stretch out and get some sleep, some ruffian begins singing in the next compartment, or the conductor keeps butting ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... butcheries committed by the Indians so maddened the frontiersmen that they forgot their civilization and resorted to methods as inhuman as did the Indians. Peaceable, friendly Indians were massacred by bands of ruffian borderers, organized for vengeance as well as protection. Even men in high places forgot their usual humanity. The commander-in-chief of the army, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, and Colonel Henry Bouquet planned to send smallpox among ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... iron,—no chains, and little dying, but very liberal running away. Thus ended the war in Kansas. It seems impossible that Slavery should not make in this case a rather better fight, where all is at stake. But it is well to remember that no Border Ruffian of Secession can now threaten more loudly, swear more fiercely, or retreat more rapidly, than his predecessors ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... great men. Sulla was passionately fond of them. Admitted to the stage, they naturally took the place of interludes or afterpieces. When a man imitated e.g. a muleteer (Petr. Sat. 68), he had his mule with him; or if he imitated a causidicus, or a drunken ruffian (Ath. 14, 621, c.), some other person was by to play the foil to his violence. Thus arose the distinction of parts and dialogue; the chief actor was called Archimimus, and the mime was then developed after the example of the Atellanae. When several actors took part in a piece, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... just in time for supper." They led him to the smoking board. And placed him next to the castle's lord. He looked around with a hurried glance: You may ride from the border to fair Penzance, And nowhere, but at Epsom Races, Find such a group of ruffian faces, As thronged that chamber; some were talking Of feats of hunting and of hawking, And some were drunk, and some were dreaming, And some found pleasure in blaspheming. He thought, as he gazed on the fearful crew, That the lamps that burned on the walls burned blue. They brought him ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... hours. But that one sat with a steady eye and an erect front, as if superior to all suffering. I had seen Marie Antoinette, the most splendid figure, in all the splendours of her court. I had seen her unshaken before vast popular assemblages, in which any rash or ruffian hand might have taken her life at the instant; but she now gave me an impression of a still higher order. Sitting in calm resignation and unstained dignity, her stately form and countenance, pale and pure as marble, looked like some noble statue on a tomb; or rather, sitting in that chamber of death, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... The venerable Blanqui was seated at a table on the tribune; before him were two assessors. One an unwholesome citizen, with long blond hair hanging down his back, the other a most truculent-looking ruffian. The hall was nearly full; many were in blouses, the rest in uniform; about one-fifth of the audience was composed of women, who either knitted, or nourished the infants, which they held in their arms. A citizen was speaking. ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... the keen old saying about the man who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before. How much more worthy of thankfulness is the man who gives us a harmless, devout citizen in place of a ruffian, a hale and capable seaman in place of an agonized cripple, a quiet abstainer in place of a dangerous debauchee, a seemly well-spoken friend of society in place of a foul-mouthed enemy of society? Up till very recent years the ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... hot about it, and puffed furiously at his cigar for some minutes. The eyes of the other ruffian wandered alternately from Dick Merton to myself. I knew that I was in the presence of a desperate man, that a quiver of my lip might be the signal for him to plunge a weapon into my heart, but I betrayed more self-command than I should have given myself credit for under such ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... an insolent lot of young ruffians!" he snapped, "and Merriwell is the biggest ruffian of ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... cause—to be excluded from every office, State and National, and in many instances to be banished from the States they so faithfully laboured to save; it abandons the four millions of colored people to such treatment as the ruffian class of the South, educated in the barbarism of slavery and the atrocities of the rebellion, may choose to give them; it leaves the obligations of the Nation to her creditors and to the maimed soldiers and to the widows and orphans of the war, to be fulfilled by men who hate the cause ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... or false, it was intolerable in the banker's eyes, and it took a great deal of eloquence to persuade him that his nephew was worth a second trial. Fighting in Tibb's Alley over a gipsy's dog, and coming back looking like a ruffian! Mr. Goldsmith wished him no harm, but it would be a disgrace to the concern to keep him on, and Miss Goldsmith, whom Mr. Kendal heartily wished to gag, chimed in with her old predictions of the consequences of ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Leonard began to plunge and to double his fists. But he could not keep this up, for the man whose arm was round him quickly retired and stood a few paces off, looking wan and haggard, and very unlike a thief or ruffian. ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... impaired. This distinction was made to me by the late Professor Gaubius of Leyden, physician to the Prince of Orange, in a conversation which I had with him several years ago, and he expanded it thus: 'If (said he) a man tells me that he is grievously disturbed, for that he imagines he sees a ruffian coming against him with a drawn sword, though at the same time he is conscious it is a delusion, I pronounce him to have a disordered imagination; but if a man tells me that he sees this, and in consternation calls to me to look at it, I ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Acton to the South Western is to commence. Willesden has been rendered classic ground, for the Hero-worshippers who take highwaymen within the circle of their miscellaneous sympathies, by Mr. Harrison Ainsworth's "Jack Sheppard,"—the "cage" where this ruffian was more than once confined still remains ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... my mother," screamed the boy. The ruffian caught the saree with a fearful oath and turning on him said: "Now I can deal with you. I will fetch a brick from yonder kiln and pound the breath out of you," With these words he strode forward, tying the jewels in the saree as he went. Now her sorely-tried ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... and a barrister, or how much farther than poles asunder is the future Lord Chancellor, pleading before the Lords Justices at Lincoln's Inn, from the gentleman who, at the Old Bailey, is endeavoring to secure the personal liberty of the ruffian who, a week or two since, walked off with all your silver spoons. In the States no such differences are known. A lawyer there is a lawyer, and is supposed to do for any client any work that a lawyer may be called on to perform. But though this is the theory—and as regards ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... Plummer's gang, who was the opposite of Plummer in every way except the readiness to rob and kill. Boone Helm was bad, and nothing in the world could ever have made him anything but bad. He was, by birth and breeding, low, coarse, cruel, animal-like and utterly depraved, and for him no name but ruffian ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... had got a little bewildered between the dark night and the strange road, and, seeing the light in the church, I had just ridden up to inquire my way, when to my astonishment I saw you within, before the altar, struggling in the grasp of that ruffian. And you know the rest! And now let us ride on quickly, for I have a strong presentiment that Major Warfield is suffering the tortures of a lost soul through anxiety upon your account," concluded ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... doubly sweet and cool The welcome margin of some rush-grown pool, The wild duck's lonely haunt, whose jealous eye Guards every point; who sits prepared to fly, On the calm bosom of her little lake, Too closely screened for ruffian winds to shake; And as the bold intruders press around, At once she starts and rises with a bound; With bristles raised the sudden noise they hear, And ludicrously wild and winged with fear, The herd decamp with more than swinish ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... now arose in her mind the disquieting problem whether or not it would be allowed to remain with her. She cogitated over the situation and tried to work out the mental arithmetic of it. Trains were infrequent on the Russian railways, and she had no means of estimating when the burly ruffian who had planned and executed the robbery would get back to St. Petersburg. There was no doubt that he had not the right to open the letter and read its contents; that privilege rested with some higher official in St. Petersburg. The ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... of this life her husband will have acquired the reputation of a domestic ruffian. Friends will shake their heads, and wonder how long his sweet wife will bear up against his treatment. It will be reported, on the authority of imaginary eye-witnesses, that he has thrown a soup-plate at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... A tall ruffian, copper-brown face damp with perspiration and body oil, grabbed him by the jacket and slammed him back against the lockers. As he shifted his weight to keep his footing someone drove a fist into his face. He started to raise his ...
— Monkey On His Back • Charles V. De Vet
... Wou'd you be quit of their insipid noise, And vain pretending take a Fool's advice; Of the faux Braves I've had some little trial, There's nothing gives 'em credit but Denial: As when a Coward will pretend to Huffing, Offer to fight, away sneaks Bully-Ruffian, So when these Sparks, whose business is addressing, In Love pursuits grow troublesom and pressing; When they affect to keep still in your eye, | When they send Grisons every where to spy, | And full of Coxcomb dress and ogle ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... should have anticipated that, had such a difficulty happened to him, his first act would have been to knock the man down, and to call out for the police; and next, if he was worsted in the conflict, he would not have given the ruffian the information he asked, at whatever risk to himself. I think he would have let himself be killed first. I do not think that he ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... there was a screw loose in my intellects,—and that involved the probable loss of a boarder. A severe-looking person, who wears a Spanish cloak and a sad cheek, fluted by the passions of the melodrama, whom I understand to be the professional ruffian of the neighboring theatre, alluded, with a certain lifting of the brow, drawing down of the corners of the mouth, and somewhat rasping voce di petto, to Falstaff's nine men in buckram. Everybody looked up. I believe the old gentleman opposite ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... at me; the ruffian Anra Mainyu, the deadly, wrought against me nine diseases and ninety, and nine hundred, and nine thousand, and nine times ten thousand diseases. So mayest thou heal me, O Holy Word, thou ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... "noisy"; the word has also, with less probability, been derived from the Dutch boel, and Ger. Buhle, a lover), originally a fine, swaggering fellow, as in "Bully Bottom" in A Midsummer Night's Dream, later an overbearing ruffian, especially a coward who abuses his strength by ill-treating the weak; more technically a souteneur, a man who lives on the earnings of a prostitute. The term in its early use of "fine" or ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... forcible than a volley of texts. Thus the High-toby-crack swaggered it with insolent gaiety, knowing no worse misery than the fear of the Tree, so long as he followed the rules of his craft. But let a touch of brutality disgrace his method, and he appealed in vain for sympathy or indulgence. The ruffian, for instance, of whom it is grimly recorded that he added a tie-wig to his booty, neither deserved nor received the smallest consideration. Delivered to justice, he speedily met the death his vulgarity merited, and the road ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... were in my mind, the cringing, foul-mouthed, brutal, contemptible ruffian who had caused all this misery stood within two paces of me! I could have reached out my hand, and, with half an effort, have crushed him, and—I did not do it! Some invisible Power held my arm, for murder was in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... slowly up the steep hillside, he said to himself, "That young woman does not seem to have the slightest spark of gratitude in her composition. Here I have been good-natured enough to share my canoe with her, yet she treats me as if I were some low ruffian instead of a gentleman." ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... said Bart calmly, but every word ringing out as clear as the tone of a bell, "I am no ruffian, and I hate violence, but if you lift that ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... have seen the girl at the studio," he said, "when Lightmark was painting her. It's certainly a striking likeness, and that's what astonished me, you know. Almost like seeing a ghost. Ah, that little fellow used to sit for Lightmark in Rome—little sunburnt ruffian. We picked him up on the Ghetto, almost starving, and he got quite an artistic connection before we left. He was positively growing too fat; prosperity spoiled him as ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... opening all the door, of which the ruffian wind made wrong by casting her figure in high relief—and yet a pardonable wrong—"father, you are quite wise to come home, before your dear nose is quite cut off.—Oh, I beg your pardon, sir; ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... taking Washington, the air was to be darkened with the gibbeted carcasses of dogs and caitiffs. Pollard, in the first volume of his Southern History of the War, prints without comment the letter of a ruffian who helped butcher our wounded in Sudley Church after the first battle of Manassas, in which he says that he had resolved to give no quarter. In Missouri the Rebels took scalps as trophies, and that they made personal ornaments of the bones of our unburied dead, and ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... conventional cadence, and instantly extorted from him—amid all his dazedness—the corresponding 'Goodbye'. When he turned and saw it was Mr. Glamorys who had come in, his heart leapt wildly at the nearness of his escape. As he passed this masked ruffian, he nodded perfunctorily and received a cordial smile. Yes, he was handsome and fascinating ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... Louis Napoleon is stronger, and it tends more to unanimity every day. The Orleans confiscation has, I think, almost too much weight given to it. After his other crimes the mere robbery of a single family, ruffian-like as it is, is ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... calmly, "like something out of a book. Yes, my dear, that was your parent, a dissolute ruffian whom you will do well to forget. I heard John Millinborn tell his lawyer that your mother died of a broken heart, penniless, as a result of your father's cruelty and unscrupulousness, and I should imagine that ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... had been at sea, and shipwrecked on several islands in the Pacific; he had passed a rainy season at Panama, and a yellow-fever season at Vera Cruz, and had been carried far into the interior of Peru by a tidal wave during an earthquake season; he was in the Border Ruffian War of Kansas, and he clung to California till prosperity deserted her after the completion of the Pacific road. Wherever he went, he carried or found adversity; but, with a heart fed on the metaphysics of Horace Greeley, and buoyed up by a few wildly interpreted maxims of Emerson, he ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... once," returned the ruffian, "he'll not escape by refusing to do so; we'll search every corner till we ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... Crow once told us about some of his little-boy adventures, as you may remember. Well, I found Cousin Redfield and told him what had happened, and he said he would go with me and help me fight that spread-shouldered ruffian, and asked me what were his weak points. I said I hadn't noticed any, and we decided that we wouldn't bother with him, and went to visit a honey-tree that Cousin Redfield had found and thought of robbing, ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... every window and roaring and shooting high in air from the brush-heaped roof of Moreno's ranch,—there stood the Concord wagon, stalwart men clinging to the heads of the plunging and excited mules, a big ruffian already in the driver's seat, whip and reins in hand; there beside it was the paymaster's ambulance, into which three of the gang were just shoving the green-painted iron safe,—the Pandora's box that had caused all their sorrows; ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... right," said Duane, laughing, "even when you jeer at my gymnastics on skis. Oh, Lord! but I'm hungry. Scott, are you going to take all those sausages and muffins, you bespectacled ruffian! Kathleen, heave a ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... you! The girl is gone! If you want to know where she is, apply to the police. Now, don't show your lying face here again! I will have you arrested! You are a child stealer! You and your ruffian had better never darken ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... very easy man, but would work you hard and never allow you any chance night or day; he was a farmer, about fifty, stout, full face, a real country ruffian; member of no church, a great drinker and gambler; will sell a slave as quick as any other slave-holder. He had a great deal of cash, but did not rank high in society. His wife was very severe; hated a colored man to ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... the conveyance was empty. His gorge rose at the thought that Irene might be near him at that moment, yet prevented by some ruffian from making known her presence. The belief was torturing; it impelled him to a deed which, in calmer mood, he would have declared ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... "The ruffian!" He reached into his pocket and produced a gold cigarette- case, repeatedly snapping the heavy sides together with vicious force. When he attempted to light a match it broke in his fingers, then in a temper he threw the cigarette from him and hurried away, ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... "You do more than ever deserve death!!" Then turning again towards Pei Ming, "You ruffian!" he said, "what ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... her loyalty to him was the most precious thing of his life, Therefore, the thought of that swarthy ruffian hunting her down as a hound hangs to the trail of a doe awoke in him a terrible anger. Second only to his hatred for the guerrilla chief was his bitterness against the traitor, Pancho Cueto, who had capped his villainy by setting this new peril upon them; and since Rosa's safety and his own ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... him, and will requite him. Be chearful, madam; (To Mrs. Beverley) and for the insults of this ruffian, you shall ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... absent; Sarah, seeing the troopers gallop toward the house, poured a prayer over her babe, as it lay asleep in the crib, and fled in terror, hoping that sweet infancy would appeal to their hearts. A ruffian rushed in, and grasping the babe, shouted, "The nurse is not far away." He made it scream, to bring the mother back. She heard its pitiful cry; her heart was breaking, yet she was utterly powerless. She might expose herself, but ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... Hussein was a well-known employee of Abou Saood. This ruffian was an Arab. He was a tall, wiry fellow, with a determined but brutal cast of countenance, who was celebrated as a scoundrel among scoundrels. Even his fellows dreaded his brutality. There was no crime that he had not committed; and as his only ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... spirits; the ruffian with whom I saw you struggling, has fled across the Heath; but his speed prevented my saving your property. Was your money, too, in the parcel with ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... not only was the light of genius extinguished then, and a heroic spirit lost to earth—as kindly and as noble a heart as was ever warmed by the constant presence of generous emotions was stilled by a ruffian's bullet. ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... to the Junior Warden (who represents JUBELA, one of the ruffians), who exclaims, "Who comes here?" [The room is dark, or the candidate hoodwinked.] The conductor answers, "Our Grand Master, Hiram Abiff." "Our Grand Master, Hiram Abiff!" exclaims the ruffian, "he is the very man I wanted to see (seizing the candidate by the throat at the same time, and jerking him about with violence); give me the Master Mason's word, or I'll take your life." The conductor replies, ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... feet foremost, by her arms suspended: When asking if she had the skill to leap, The traitor, with a laugh, his hands extended. And plunged his helpless prey into the deep. "And thus," exclaimed the ruffian, "might I speed With thee each sucker ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... to use his power. He may have removed the restrictions on grain, and did proclaim Sulla and Metellus outlaws; but, though he should have bent every energy to hinder Sulla's return, he did worse than nothing, and, instead of Sertorius, sent the incapable Flaccus and the ruffian Fimbria against the general who had just taken Athens and defeated Archelaus. The miscarriage of their enterprise will be told in the next chapter. When Cinna suddenly became alive to the fact that the avenger was at hand, and ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... into port a month before and had reported three men missing from her papers. There were no witnesses; but the sight of the rest of the crew told the story of the disappearance of their shipmates, and the skipper had been clapped into jail. I had heard of the ruffian's sinister record before, and inwardly hoped he would get his deserts for his brutality, although I knew there was little chance for it. He belonged to the class of captains that was giving American packets the hard name they were getting, so I ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... type of ruffian to be found, particularly in Paris, who affects this sort of theatrical trade-mark—did you know that?" asked ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... me, sir?" said the doctor; and when the ruffian had told him, with another oath, that this was so, replied, "I have only one thing to say to you, sir, that if you keep on drinking rum, the world will soon be quit of ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with their tomahawks, and when a passage was thus opened, one of them attempted to enter through it. The heroic Mrs. Merril, in the midst of her screaming and affrighted children, and her groaning suffering husband, seized an axe, gave the ruffian a fatal blow, and [301] instantly drew him into the house. Supposing that their end was now nearly attained, the others pressed forward to gain admittance through the same aperture. Four of them were in like manner despatched by Mrs. Merril, before their comrades were aware that any opposition was ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... prisoner, whom one guarded at the pistol's point, while the other pushed on, buried the box in another place, and then they conveyed the ruffian to Columbus. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... of former days, he told how he had fainted and fallen on the breast of his master, how he had lain all night on the battle-field among the dead and dying, how he had been stripped and left for dead by the ruffian followers of the camp, and how at last he had been found and rescued by one of the ambulance-wagons of the ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... side, and gently lifted the pirate's head with one hand while with the other he held the bundle of flags to shove under it as Alphonse gently pulled away the case. All depended on the movement being regular. A sudden jerk would have awakened the man, who was a fierce-looking ruffian. One of his hands lay over the hilt of his dagger, which he seemed capable of using with effect at a moment's notice. The manoeuvre required great nerve and courage, scarcely to be expected in such young lads. It was not found wanting in them. With intense satisfaction ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... Agamemnon, Nestor shall apply Thy latest words. In the reproof of chance Lies the true proof of men. The sea being smooth, How many shallow bauble boats dare sail Upon her patient breast, making their way With those of nobler bulk! But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage The gentle Thetis, and anon behold The strong-ribb'd bark through liquid mountains cut, Bounding between the two moist elements Like Perseus' horse. Where's then the saucy boat, Whose weak untimber'd sides but ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... She says truly: conquest over her, by any but brutal means, is impossible—Shall I be brutal?—And more brutal even than my own ruffian agents? ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... from Springfield. After the sale was over and speechmaking had begun, a fight—a 'general fight' as one of the bystanders relates—ensued, and Lincoln, noticing one of his friends about to succumb to the attack of an infuriated ruffian, interposed to prevent it. He did so most effectually. Hastily descending from the rude platform, he edged his way through the crowd, and seizing the bully by the neck and the seat of his trousers, threw him by means of his great ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... Aldam was concerned in a recent murderous assault upon me, or that he harbors a certain flat-nosed ruffian who led it," Sir ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... attitude this ruffian took with a respectable and ostensibly married woman! And she had mistaken him for a gentleman! She had even begun to feel a reluctant sort of liking for him; at any rate, an interest in his ambiguous and perplexing ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... I myself—infant as I was—for not learning a spelling-lesson properly, was subjected to a caning which would have been cruel if inflicted on a convict or sailor. In the lower story this man's sister kept a girls' school, and the ruffian was continually being called downstairs to beat the larger girls. My mother knew nothing of all this, and I was ashamed to tell that I had been whipped. I have all my life been opposed to corporal punishment, be it in schools or for criminals. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... same throbbing impulse, off he went, and within an hour presented his petition to Mr. Turnbull, who received him in his usual kind way, which caused the redoubtable ruffian to melt into tears, and volubly to confess all his murderous intentions towards the man he now believed to be the only agency on earth that could ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... were inclined to speak to him as man to man,—an inference of equality that he regarded with great displeasure. His nephew's penniless fiancee, instead of himself, received all the attentions. Even the burly ruffian who was to guide them looked at her as if she were ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... to know, I'll keep quiet. Well, sir, to my surprise, the Arab—he speaks in bad English, whereby I came to suppose the other was an Englishman, but, if he is, the climate must have spoiled him badly, for I never did see such a ruffian to look at. But he only laughed, and didn't speak, so I couldn't be sure. Well, to come to the pint, sir, the Arab said he'd got hold of two shipwrecked Englishmen, whom he meant to put on board of his dhow, at that time lyin' ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... the play. He also began, as Mrs Todgers said, to slip home 'in his dinner-times,' and to get away from 'the office' at unholy seasons; and twice, as he informed Mrs Todgers himself, he received anonymous letters, enclosing cards from Furniture Warehouses—clearly the act of that ungentlemanly ruffian Jinkins; only he hadn't evidence enough to call him out upon. All of which, so Mrs Todgers told Miss Pecksniff, spoke as plain English ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the way she had abandoned this very arm and hand to the white-haired ruffian. It rendered me ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... up with easy and somewhat swaggering bearing,—a good many roughs, with here and there a ruffian. Several, as they approached, swung and tossed, for mere overplus of strength, the sledges with which they had been tapping at the bald shiny pates of their anvils. Several wielded their long pokers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... like glass eyes, the ruffian!" he muttered to himself, "but I will not have the mockery. I will fill the sockets and sew up the eyelids, and the face shall be as ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... refuge under the shadow of thy wings." That mercy which we see in the complex arrangements of the animal creation, extending down to the minutest portions of their frames—that same Divine mercy it is which we are bid to imitate. He whose soul burns with indignation against the brutal ruffian who misuses the poor, helpless, suffering horse, or dog, or ass, or bird, or worm, shares for the moment that Divine companion wrath which burns against the oppressors of the weak and defenceless everywhere. He who puts forth his hand to save from ill treatment, or add to the happiness of any ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... lost thy honour. Give me this hand, this hand by which I caught thee From the bold ruffian in the massacre, That would have stained thy almost infant honour, With lust, and blood;—dost ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... as one that was prepared to bear with my interruptions. "Nor he of yours," he answered. "Now, as they talked thus, our Simone stirred in his stupor, and swore that if this were true he would marry the maiden. Vittoria laughed, and her laughter so teased the ruffian that he swore a great oath he would take any wager he would wed this ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... I was cursed for writing! When it came out no word was bad enough for me! I was a blackguard, a ruffian and an atheist! You will live to have as great a contempt for literary critics and the public as I ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... were chained to the stakes, and the ruffian assistants hurried forward with faggots. We shouted—we implored the people to face the guards, and to rescue the prisoners. All our efforts, we feared, would be in vain. The magistrates shouted to the executioners to bring forward the torches. ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... staggered. They stared in helpless anger at the small shop, which had suddenly become the most important in their ken. Already they saw their families brought to the gutter by this hunchback ruffian, who hit them below the belt in the most ungentlemanly fashion in preference to starving. But the simple manoeuvre of cutting down the prices of his rivals was only a taste of the unerring instinct for business that was later to make him as much feared as respected in the trade. By a single ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... broad-shouldered ruffian of the type known in England as "unemployed"—looked round with triumphant head well thrown back. From his attitude it was obvious that he had been the salvation of the countries named, and had now come to Russia to do the same for her. He spoke with the throaty accent of the Pole. It was ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... pretty battle it is, and in a good cause, too! Waste no pity on that big black ruffian. He is a villain and a thief, an egg-stealer, an ogre, a devourer of unfledged innocents. The kingbirds are not afraid of him, knowing that he is a coward at heart. They fly upon him, now from below, now ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... it?" sang out a deriding voice that set the crowd jeering anew. "You'll git promoted, you will! See it in all the evenin' papers—oh, yus! ''Orrible hand-to-hand struggle with a desperado. Brave constable has 'arf a quid's worth out of an infuriated ruffian!' My hat! won't your missis be proud when you take her to see ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... found himself talking to the blue larkspur. "Beast!" was what he called this beautiful plant. "Dolt! ass! inhuman brute! If I had the kicking of you—" here he recovered his silence; found pebbles to kick, and pursued them savagely up one path and down another. A mental flash-light showed him the ruffian who had wounded this bright creature; had led her on to love him, and then—either betrayed his brutal nature so that hers rose up in revolt, or—just as likely—that kind of man would do anything—gone off and left her. His picture revealed ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... very moment by thy doors, And found them guarded by a troop of villains; The sons of public rapine were destroying. They told me, by the sentence of the law, They had commission to seize all thy fortune: Nay more, Priuli's cruel hand had sign'd it. Here stood a ruffian with a horrid face, Lording it o'er a pile of massy plate, Tumbled into a heap for public sale; There was another, making villanous jests At thy undoing: he had ta'en possession Of all thy ancient, most domestic, ornaments, Rich hangings intermix'd and ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... group, her tambourine outstretched, begging for coppers. Once she struck an insulting youth across the face, but when she reached Ferval and met his inquiring look, she dropped her eyes and did not ask for alms. A red-headed Sibyl, he thought discontentedly, a street beggar, the daughter of an old ruffian. And as he walked away rapidly he remembered her glance, in which there lurked some touch of antique ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swoln parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuft cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manning-tree ox with the pudding in his belly, that reverend vice, that grey iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years? wherein is he good, but to taste sack and drink it? wherein neat and cleanly, but to carve a capon and eat it? wherein cunning, but in craft? wherein crafty, but in villainy? wherein ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... officer had, however, been hurled from the high wall, his brains beaten out as with a club, and his gun was missing. Further inquiries showed that one of the cells was empty; it had been occupied by a rather sullen ruffian giving his name as Oscar Rian. He was only temporarily detained for some comparatively trivial assault; but he gave everyone the impression of a man with a black past and a dangerous future. Finally, when daylight had ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... and even in a sense enjoyable. When we clattered into the cobbled street, we found a solitary Bashi-Bazouk armed with a Winchester repeating rifle. Him, the sergeant of my escort questioned. "Had he fired a shot lately?" "Evvet," said the insolent ruffian, with a grin, answering in the affirmative. "What had he fired at?" asked the sergeant. "A small bird," was the answer. "Had he fired in the direction of the highway?" the sergeant asked him again. "Evvet," once more. "And had he seen a party coming along the highway?" ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... impressively, in the darkness amidships: "You don't deserve a kindness. I've been drying them for you, and now you complain about the holes—and you swear, too! Right in front of me! If I hadn't been a Christian—which you ain't, you young ruffian—I would give you a clout on the head.... Go away!" Men in couples or threes stood pensive or moved silently along the bulwarks in the waist. The first busy day of a homeward passage was sinking ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... not so successful with another soldier, who came up soon after, brandishing his sword, and preparing to plunge it into the body of the prostrate commander. It was in vain that the latter endeavored to turn the ruffian from his purpose. He was a convict,—one of those galley-slaves whom Don John had caused to be unchained from the oar, and furnished with arms. He could not believe that any treasure would be worth so much to him as the head of the pasha. Without further hesitation he dealt him a blow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... the Lord of Hosts! I'm a small man—a little G.P. in an obscure Highland village in rather shabby tweed knickerbockers and Inverness cape (yes, the same ones—still no new clothes! What would be the use in wasting money on adorning an old ruffian like me?) But I went up to him, sort of shaking at the knees, after the second lecture, and discussed a point with him. The point was not what I was wanting to know about. I was wanting, very much, to ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... when the door was opened and a drunken ruffian entered, I awoke from my troubled slumbers. "Hi, Dutchy, and have yez any tin?" he threatened. "Kind sir," I replied, "when I departed for the West I left all my wealth behind me." Verily, now I was ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... will rest here. When you have found the ruffian and murdered him, I shall be glad to hear ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... "Yes, and the ruffian may open on you again at any moment," warned Jack, keeping an anxious glance turned in the direction whence came the disturbing voice ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... the worst society in the world. In sketching, as he sometimes did, for the general amusement, the characters of the various prisoners with whom he had associated—from the sneaking pick-pocket and the murderous ruffian, to the simple Highland smuggler, who had converted his grain into whisky, with scarce intelligence enough to see that there was aught morally wrong in the transaction—he sought only to be as graphic and humorous as he could, and always with ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... as much sense as that 'fool dawg,' Max!" retorted the first speaker, who was none other than the swarthy ruffian, Harry Mole. "Somethin's going on over there at the settlement or the dog wouldn't bark. Come on, hurry; Branks may ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... quick there with the sack!" cried this worthy, as they rolled on the path together. Another ruffian seized Antoine by the throat. A weapon gleamed before his eyes; but in that moment a quick patter of feet sounded in the roadway, followed by two reports like the sudden breaking of a cocoa-nut. Crack! crack! and the ruffian's body fell heavily against the fence, as two shadows—the two shadows ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... the Fifth is crowned; up, vanity! Down royal state! all you sage counsellors, hence! And to the English Court assemble now, From every region, apes of idleness! Now, neighbor confines, purge you of your scum; Have you a ruffian, that will swear, drink, dance, Revel the night; rob, murder and commit The oldest sins, the newest kind of ways! Be happy, he will trouble you no more; England shall double gild his treble guilt; For the Fifth Harry from curbed license plucks The muzzle of restraint, ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... into immoderate laughter. "Cadet," said he, "you are, when drunk, the greatest ruffian in Christendom, and the biggest knave when sober. Let the lady sleep in peace, while we drink ourselves blind in her honor. Bring in brandy, valets, and we will not look for day until midnight booms on the old clock ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Here had we two expatriated Frenchmen engaged in an ill-regulated combat like the battles of beasts. Here was he, who had been all his life so great a ruffian, dying in a foreign land of this ignoble injury, and meeting death with something of the spirit of a Bayard. I insisted that the guards should be summoned and a doctor brought. "It may still be possible to save ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bands numbering from five to twenty-five, each led by a bold, unscrupulous, energetic scoundrel. We now called them "Raiders," and the most prominent and best known of the bands were called by the names of their ruffian leaders, as "Mosby's Raiders," "Curtis's Raiders," "Delaney's Raiders," "Sarsfield's ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... what seemed minutes to the silent, motionless congregation, his raised hand came down on the shoulder of the leader with the exact, resistless precision of the tiger's paw, and the ruffian was snatched from his seat to the floor sprawling. Before he could rise, the steel-like grip of the roused preacher sent him halfway to the door, and then out into ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... was promptly followed up. Several of the accomplices of Moxica were condemned to death and thrown in irons to await their fate. Before the conspirators had time to recover from their astonishment, Pedro Riquelme was taken, with several of his compeers, in his ruffian den at Bonao, and conveyed to the fortress of San Domingo; where was also confined the original mover of this second rebellion, Hernando de Guevara, the lover of the young Indian princess. These unexpected acts of rigor, proceeding from a quarter which ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... the little drama closely, saw that the ruffian was plainly taken off his feet by this. He had not expected—or so it seemed clear—that he would encounter any opposition in carrying out his rascally plan of playing off the safety of a boy and a girl who had never wronged him for the sake of gaining ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... was in pursuit, but it was some moments before she realised that it was not relief she experienced, but something akin to disappointment. She was in the ugliest mood of which her nature was capable, and that was saying much. With one exception, better forgotten, this blond ruffian who had insulted her was the only man who had ever desired her; doubtless, she reflected bitterly, even Trennahan might be excepted. And when an unprepossessing woman of starved affections and implacably controlled passions ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... brought the steel cane with her. In a second the ruffian had vanished, and a big black crow was flying about the room, crying ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... charge of the execution of this order was a stern and ruffian-like officer named Sir Richard Ratcliffe. This man is quite noted in the history of the times as one of the most unscrupulous of Richard's adherents. He was a merciless man, short and rude in speech, and ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... visitors, in a foreign language of which Hiram understood nothing. Neither of the two strangers spoke a word to Hiram: the little man shot him a sharp look out of the corners of his eyes and the burly ruffian scowled blackly at him, but beyond that neither vouchsafed him ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... peevish. " Oh, nothing, nothing. But that young Coke is a regular ruffian. He had gotten him. self into some tremendous uproar with Coleman. When I arrived he seemed actually trying to assault him. Revolting! He had been drinking. Coleman's behaviour, I must say, was splendid. Recognised at once the delicacy of my position-he not ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... eye beaming with kindliness and benevolence, but that could blaze with anger when aroused; and with his full, square jaw and chin, that evidently could shut as tight as Sherman's or Grant's when necessary. With nothing of the swashbuckler or Buffalo Bill—of the border ruffian or the cowboy—about him, his manners were as gentle, and his voice as soft and sympathetic, as a woman's. What impressed one most about his face was its rare kindliness and charity—that here, at last, was a natural gentleman, simple as a child but brave as a ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... Proculejus rushed upon her, seized her arm, and wrested the weapon from her grasp. His tall figure concealed her from me. But when, struggling to escape from the ruffian's clutch, she again turned her face towards the hall, what a transformation had occurred! Her eyes—you know how large they are—were twice their usual size, and blazed with scorn, fury, and hatred for the traitor. The cheering light had become a consuming fire. So I imagine the vengeance, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... I think I know you. Aren't you the chap that torn my coat sometime ago? Answer me, sir," giving me a vigorous shake on the shoulder. "You are the very d——n young ruffian that did it, and I am going to give you such a thrashing as you will ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... what he was up to well enough, and, when within a few feet of the smuggler, he suddenly threw himself forward and grappled with the ruffian. ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... already named George Dexter; a man who, with little sagacity and but moderate cunning, had yet acquired a lead and notoriety among his fellows, even in that wild region, simply from the reckless boldness and fierce impetuosity of his character. It is useless to describe such a person. He was a ruffian—in look and manner, ruffianly—huge of frame, strong and agile of limb, and steeled against all fear, simply from a brute unconsciousness of all danger. There was little of preliminary matter ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... flogged themselves. Such was the character of the frenzied host, which progressed slowly through the streets, while every now and then, when there was an interval in the hubbub, the words "Christianos ad leones" were thundered out by some ruffian voice, and a thousand others ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Agnes, the story runs, was seized and stripped, but immediately her hair grew quickly and covered her like a garment. Dragged to a den of shame, she appeared transfigured, a wonderful light shining from her body, and no one dared to harm her. At length one bold ruffian came near her, but was struck dead at her ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... you take his side. You cheapen and degrade yourself and you bring shame upon your brother and me by your disgraceful affair with this ruffian. Don't look shocked! You meet him secretly, I know—how much farther you have gone with him I don't know. It is ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... of the menial witness. The white figure, bearing in her arms a sleeping child, glides to the tapestried wall, and vanishes through it, into the Chamber of the Crown Prince, a babe of fourteen days. She returns carrying another unconscious infant form, she places it in the hands of the ruffian Sauerbeck, she disappears. The miscreant speeds with the child through a postern into the park, you hear the trample of four horses, and the roll of the carriage on the road. Next day there is silence ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... lists of them, drawings if possible, but I never could indoctrinate anybody with my affection. Either history is only a lesson, or they know a great deal too much, and will prove to you that the Cid was a ruffian, and the Black Prince ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nothing, from seven and twenty to seven and forty? But that second volume is very good for you as far as it goes. It is a great advance, and a thoroughly straight and swift one, to be led, as it is the main business of that second volume to lead you, from Dutch cattle pieces, and ruffian-pieces, to Fra Angelico. And it is right for you also, as you grow older, to be strengthened in the general sense and judgment which may enable you to distinguish the weaknesses from the virtues of what you love: else you might come to love both alike; ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... did kill that man for touching the ark to save it from falling, what do you think of him—as a God? I can tell you what you would think of him as a man. You would think he was a ruffian and a murderer—that is what you would think of him as ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... animals,—as I live, sir, they are the divinest things I see in the world! I have but one, and that is love to my poor old father; that's all the religion I have as yet: but I tell you, it alone has kept me from being a ruffian and a blackguard. And I'll tell you more," said Tom, warming, "of all diabolical dodges for preventing the parsons from seeing who they are, or what human beings are, or what their work in the world is, or anything else, the neatest ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... her breath quickly. She knew the big ruffian's methods, and with good reason feared for her old friend, should he even unconsciously incur the ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... a good Injun he is, an' he's got a crude sort o' notion he's protectin' that dear little bird. She may be scared o' him, an' he knows it; but bedad, I'd not want to be the border ruffian that went prowlin' in there ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... for her alone. The flood of light brought out the opulence of her form and the vigour of her youth in a glorifying way. She went by perfectly motionless and as if lost in meditation; only the hem of her skirt stirred in the draught; the sun rays broke on her sleek tawny hair; that bald-headed ruffian, Nicholas, was whacking her on the shoulder. I saw his tiny fat arm rise and fall in a workmanlike manner. And then the four cottage windows of the Diana came into view retreating swiftly down the river. The sashes were up, and one of the white ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... British author tells his own story he tries to make himself respectable, and the more respectable a man is the less interesting does he become. Rousseau may prove himself a maudlin degenerate. Cellini may stand self-convicted as an amorous ruffian. If they are not respectable they are thoroughly human and interesting all ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... those kind Quaker ladies had known the character of this house and the neighborhood around it, they would not have placed me here. Heaven only knows what I have suffered, and still suffer. I live in constant dread that some ruffian, instigated by my landlady, who wishes to gratify both her avarice and malignity, may break in upon me some time when I am off my guard, and make me the victim of a brutal outrage. This fear keeps me awake nights, ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... If there is a military mutiny in Egypt, or a Jehad in the Soudan, it is still Great Britain who has to set it right. And all to an accompaniment of curses such as the policeman gets when he seizes a ruffian among his pals. We get hard knocks and no thanks, and why should we do it? Let Europe ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... kidnapped the Queen and Maitland—not one of his supporters-with her. A scandalous divorce was pronounced between him and his wife, and Mary wedded him. The only credible explanation is that she was over-mastered by a passion for the daring ruffian who at least had always stood by her. The lords—accomplices in the murder with the rest—were almost immediately in arms to "rescue" the Queen, who took the field by her husband's side. The opposing forces met at Carberry Hill; Bothwell, seeing ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... shows Prince Sinodal, encamping for the night with his suite; the roughness of the way has delayed his coming to Tamara. Near the camp is a chapel, erected in memory of one of his ancestors, who was slain there by a ruffian and the Prince's old servant admonishes him to pray for his soul. To his destruction he postpones it till morning, for during his sleep the Demon brings up his enemies, the Tartars, and the Prince's caravan is robbed and he ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... that ethical laws are common both to dogs and men; and that with both a single deliberate violation of the conscience loosens all. "But while the lamp holds on to burn," says the paraphrase, "the greatest sinner may return." I have been cheered to see symptoms of effectual penitence in my sweet ruffian; and by the handling that he accepted uncomplainingly the other day from an indignant fair one, I begin to hope the period of STURM UND ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Colonel Napier pushes on—gets into the vicinity of Ibrahim—his rabble rout turn tail, in case of being swallowed alive by the ferocious pasha, whose reputation for cruelty and all manner of iniquities seems well deserved, and having ascertained the movements of that formidable ruffian, he returned to Naplouse to take the command of 1500 half-tamed, undisciplined savages, with whom to oppose his retreat. Luckily, the ratification of the convention come in the nick of time; for it is very evident that the best cudgels that were ever cut in "the classic woods of Hawthornden," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... with easy and somewhat swaggering bearing,—a good many roughs, with here and there a ruffian. Several, as they approached, swung and tossed, for mere overplus of strength, the sledges with which they had been tapping at the bald shiny pates of their anvils. Several wielded their long ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... which Spenser wrote. In Ireland, he had before his eyes continually, the dreary world which the poet of knight errantry imagines. There men might in good truth travel long through wildernesses and "great woods" given over to the outlaw and the ruffian. There the avenger of wrong need seldom want for perilous adventure and the occasion for quelling the oppressor. There the armed and unrelenting hand of right was but too truly the only substitute for law. There might be found in most certain and prosaic reality, the ambushes, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... though Billy moved like one in a dream. Her father was engaged in placating Dusty Rhodes and in explaining their agreement to the rest, and she still felt surprised that she had ever consented to accompany so desperate a ruffian. Yet as he knocked off a chunk of ore and showed her the specks of gold, scattered through it with such prodigal richness, she felt her old sense of security return; for he had never been rough with her. It was only with Old Whiskers, the grasping Blackwater saloon-keeper, and with the equally avaricious ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... an' there was a fight about it. Matters got t' such a pass that pistols were fired, an' th' captain would have been shot, an' killed, only a fellow named Mike Tullane, a rough character, an' one of the leaders of th' mutiny, stepped up sudden like an' saved th' captain's life by knockin' aside th' ruffian's gun. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... moving picture company was getting to work on the important scenes of "Brighteyes." Besides, she felt a trifle anxious because Mr. Hammond himself did not chance to be here under the present circumstances. He might be better able to handle Dakota Joe if the ruffian made trouble. ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... checked less by the exasperation, by the authority in the speaker's tone, than by the fact that the entire complexion of the affair had changed. The ruffian, who had entered so confidently, was no longer the aggressor; a mere look, a word, a gesture from this aged, unknown person had put him upon the defensive. More extraordinary still was the fact that his power of initiative was for the moment completely paralyzed, and that ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... "that accounts for it. There has been an unkempt ruffian marching up and down watching this house. They are on your track, Simkins, my boy, and when they discover that you are a reporter, and therefore necessarily a traitor, you will ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... "That's right. They were engaged when I met her. She didn't know the sort of ruffian he is till I proved it. She's afraid of ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... Warden (who represents JUBELA, one of the ruffians), who exclaims, "Who comes here?" [The room is dark, or the candidate hoodwinked.] The conductor answers, "Our Grand Master, Hiram Abiff." "Our Grand Master, Hiram Abiff!" exclaims the ruffian, "he is the very man I wanted to see (seizing the candidate by the throat at the same time, and jerking him about with violence); give me the Master Mason's word, or I'll take your life." The conductor ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... of Free-Soil and the friends of Slavery, for the possession of Kansas, which convulsed the whole Country for years, and moistened the soil of that Territory with streams of blood, shed in numerous "border-ruffian" conflicts. ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... of the bold, lion-like scout of former days, he told how he had fainted and fallen on the breast of his master, how he had lain all night on the battle-field among the dead and dying, how he had been stripped and left for dead by the ruffian followers of the camp, and how at last he had been found and rescued by one of the ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... out of what was left of the village with his prisoners and captives, all neatly tied up. Boh Na-ghee was first, and one of the villagers, as soon as he found the old ruffian helpless, began kicking him quietly. The Boh stood it as long as he could, and then groaned, and we saw what was going on. Hicksey tied the villager up and gave him a half a dozen, good, with a bamboo, to remind him to leave ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... rage, scorn, and indignation were concentrated into that moment, and, smarting at the blow, he sprang upon the schoolmaster, wrested the weapon from him, and, pinning him by the throat, beat the ruffian until ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... almanack-maker; a ballad-monger; a corranto-coiner; a decoy; an exchange man; a forrester; a gamester; an hospitall-man; a iayler; a keeper; a launderer; a metall man; a neuter; an ostler; a post-master: a quest-man; a ruffian; a sailor; a trauller; an vnder sheriffe; a wine-soaker; a Xantippean; a yealous neighbour; ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... le Comte," said Camusot, "let us complete our work. We have a very dangerous man on our hands. He is Jacques Collin—and you know it as well as I do. The ruffian ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... fellow blushed up to the eyes, and said, Oui, son nom etoit Joseph aussi bien que le mien, "Yes, he was called Joseph, as I am." I did not think proper to prosecute the inquiry; but did not much relish the nature of Joseph's connexions. The truth is, he had very much the looks of a ruffian; though, I must own, his behaviour was very ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... I'll tend to him. He is dead as a stone; bullet went right through here," and he turned the dead man's face toward the train, so all could see the blood pouring from the temple which the finger of the rebel ruffian touched. ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... speaks of wot I wants to know, I'll keep quiet. Well, sir, to my surprise, the Arab—he speaks in bad English, whereby I came to suppose the other was an Englishman, but, if he is, the climate must have spoiled him badly, for I never did see such a ruffian to look at. But he only laughed, and didn't speak, so I couldn't be sure. Well, to come to the pint, sir, the Arab said he'd got hold of two shipwrecked Englishmen, whom he meant to put on board of his dhow, at that time lyin' up a river not ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... as escort an Afghan or Pathan, a soldier of the Maharajah's irregular force of foreign mercenaries, who had been sent to meet me when I entered Kashmir. This man, Usman Shah, was a stage ruffian in appearance. He wore a turban of prodigious height ornamented with poppies or birds' feathers, loved fantastic colours and ceaseless change of raiment, walked in front of me carrying a big sword over his shoulder, ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... Lal," murmured the Lord Mayor, "dear, faithful, loving soul, these are the first tears I have ever known you shed. Are they tears of gratitude because we have rescued you from this ruffian with a knife, who would have destroyed your noble sight? Or are they tears of pity? Speak to me, Lal; if they are tears of pity, they will ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... a bigoted Roman catholic, and a desperate ruffian, to undertake the enterprise. He, therefore, obtained leave to raise a regiment in the following six towns: Lucerne, Borges, Famolas, Bobbio, Begnal, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... The burly ruffian tried to kick him as he had promised, but with his disengaged hand Matt caught his foot, and after dancing about to regain his balance, the man came down heavily across ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... the dark and bawl back, "All's well here too"; and all night long the two sentries bawl back and forward to each other through the dark. Sometimes, too, though strictest orders are issued against such ruffian warfare by both Van Rensselaer and Brock, the sentries chance shots at each other through the dark. Drums beat reveille at four in the morning, and the rub-a-dub-dub of Queenston Heights is echoed by rat-tat-too ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... to work out their sentences. Thus did the practical settlers attempt to carry out one of Sir Thomas More's Utopian notions. Upon the whole, I think I should rather have a Nipmuck squaw cooking in my kitchen, or a Pequot warrior digging in my garden, than to have a white burglar or ruffian in either situation. ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... country should not be without the means of defence. It is quite true that arms may do you a bad turn, either by tempting you to a hasty display, or by being of so costly a character as to excite the cupidity of some ruffian. But it is just as true that any other thing you possess may do you the like ill turn among men who would shoot you for the value of your skin. The golden mean is to be armed usefully, but not showily; and, above all things, to be very discreet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... "I shall prefer to do it in print,—though I must own that the temptation to adopt the manual violence of a ruffian is great, very great, very great indeed." But he resisted the temptation and walked down the stairs, concocting his article as ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... classical. The libretto deals with the vengeance wreaked by a villainous Neapolitan street loafer upon a woman who has played him false—a vengeance which takes the form of ruining her son by drink and play, and of attempting to seduce her daughter. In the end this egregious ruffian is murdered in the street by the mother of his two victims, just in time to prevent his being knifed by the members of a secret society whom he had betrayed to justice. The music is not without dramatic vigour, and it has plenty of melody of a rough and ready kind. There is technical ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... stories you hear of this man, I hope," he said to his wife and sister, one morning; "he is some inhuman ruffian, who is disgracing, by his cruelty, the cause which he has joined, for the sake ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... horrible thought keeps recurring to me," I whispered. "Halsey, Gertrude probably had your revolver: she must have examined it, anyhow, that night. After you—and Jack had gone, what if that ruffian came ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... he is a ruffian in his style, Withouten bands or garters' ornament: He quaffs a cup of Frenchman's [51] Helicon, Then roister doister in his oily terms, Cuts, thrusts, and foins at whomsoever he meets... Tut, what cares he for modest close-couch'd terms, Cleanly to gird ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... people grow absolutely insufferable," said the Black Rat. "There is a local ruffian who answers to the name of Mangles—a builder— who has taken possession of the outhouses on the far side of the Wheel for the last fortnight. He has constructed cubical horrors in red brick where those deliciously picturesque ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... the young ruffian's family the credit they deserve," she stated. "The whole connection despises his keeping ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... would give so much to know. The kindly, charitable, good old governor—how could he have fallen into the clutches of such a ruffian! But I am so glad that you have come, Holmes. I trust very much to your judgment and discretion, and I know that you will advise me ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... foolhardy, heroes when they were only bullies and blackguards. This man, Abe Barrow, the prisoner at the bar, belongs to that class. He enjoys and has enjoyed a reputation as a 'bad man,' a desperate and brutal ruffian. Free him to-day, and you set a premium on such reputations; acquit him of this crime, and you encourage others to like evil. Let him go, and he will walk the streets with a swagger, and boast that you were afraid to touch him—afraid, gentlemen—and children ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... recollections connected with the war of the Revolution,—the noble declaration of independence, for truly noble it was: no dark compact of a crew of ruffian conspirators, but a generous bond that their aggrieved country should be freed, given by a band of citizen gentlemen, husbands, fathers, and brothers, to the fulfilment of the which they pledged unto each other their lives, their fortunes, and their ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... that an astronomer from the Imperial Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg was near by, engaged in laying out the route of a canal from the Volga to the Don, he ordered him to be brought before him. When the peaceful astronomer appeared, the brutal ruffian bade his men to lift him on their pikes "so that he might be nearer the stars." Then he ordered him ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... with an account of him, but he did, after this first meeting, in some sort attach himself to me. I never learned his name nor where he lived; he was I should suppose an absolutely abominable plunderer and pirate and ruffian. He would appear suddenly in my room, stand by the door and talk—but talk with the ignorance, naivete, brutal simplicity of an utterly abandoned baby. Nothing mystical or beautiful about the Rat. He did not disguise from me in the least that there was no crime that he had not committed—murder, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... When the black ruffian regained consciousness, Dick was still sitting on the edge of the table, calmly swinging his feet, but in his hand ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... of flowers; natural history increases the pleasure with which we view society and the justice with which we judge it. An instinctive sympathy, a solicitude for the perfect working of any delicate thing, as it makes the ruffian tender to a young child, is a sentiment inevitable even toward artificial organisms. Could we better perceive the fine fruits of order, the dire consequences of every specific cruelty or jar, we should grow doubly considerate toward all forms; for we exist through form, and the love of form is ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Union cause—to be excluded from every office, State and National, and in many instances to be banished from the States they so faithfully laboured to save; it abandons the four millions of colored people to such treatment as the ruffian class of the South, educated in the barbarism of slavery and the atrocities of the rebellion, may choose to give them; it leaves the obligations of the Nation to her creditors and to the maimed soldiers and to the widows ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... cried Mrs. Forrester. "An injured lady, half a million in treasure, a black cannibal, and a wooden-legged ruffian. They take the place of the conventional dragon or ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... is it strange. Your house is grown a nuisance to its neighbours, Where twice in every week, if not more frequent, A motley crowd at midnight hour assembles; Whose ruffian-like attendants in the street, Alarm the peaceful, and disturb ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... him as he stepped into the room. The act of robbery which he found them coolly perpetrating in broad daylight, instantly set his irritable temper in a flame. He rushed at the younger of the two men—being the one nearest to him. The ruffian sprang aside out of his reach; snatched up from the table on which it was lying ready, a short loaded staff of leather called "a life-preserver;" and struck him with it on the head, before he had recovered himself, and could face ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... very good for you as far as it goes. It is a great advance, and a thoroughly straight and swift one, to be led, as it is the main business of that second volume to lead you, from Dutch cattle pieces, and ruffian-pieces, to Fra Angelico. And it is right for you also, as you grow older, to be strengthened in the general sense and judgment which may enable you to distinguish the weaknesses from the virtues ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... door was opened and a drunken ruffian entered, I awoke from my troubled slumbers. "Hi, Dutchy, and have yez any tin?" he threatened. "Kind sir," I replied, "when I departed for the West I left all my wealth behind me." Verily, now I was proving myself the worthy scion of valiant men, who had laid aside hauberk, sword, ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... impudence. How on earth among you could you let George marry the daughter of a low-bred ruffian like that,—a man that never ought to have been allowed to put his ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... forehead, the arched brows, the tremulous lips, the rounded chin, and the whole face glorified by that wonderful mass of hair, I only know, without weapon or design, she dealt me a wound which I bear to this day. What a ruffian I had been! I was ashamed, and my eyes fell before hers. If a libation of blushes could appease an offended goddess, I was livid evidence of repentance. I felt myself flooded in a sudden heat of shame. She ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... the only one of the crew remaining on board, hastily belayed the clewline at the fife-rail, hauling it just taut enough to hold Bitts, without choking him to death. As the ruffian leaped into the boat, to which he had been assigned, Perth gave the order to shove off, and the runaways pulled with all ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... rode through the country, accompanied by his two hundred followers—mostly rollicking and arrogant foreign adventurers—who robbed and devastated the land, and thrashed and even mutilated passers-by for fun, people looked forward with great fear to the accession of such a ruffian. A few years of responsibility, and failure, soon changed him into the noblest and most law-abiding of the Plantagenets. It was Wales which gave him his first lesson. He first tried his hand at the reorganisation of the "Middle Country," making it "shire-land," ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... gained the admiration of Isabella, and the heart and soul of her brother: acquisitions that flattered her from the first—for she was full of ambition—and led her to adopt a double character without exactly intending to deceive any one. In the place where she heard Heathcliff termed a 'vulgar young ruffian,' and 'worse than a brute,' she took care not to act like him; but at home she had small inclination to practise politeness that would only be laughed at, and restrain an unruly nature when it would bring ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... unmingled thence that drop again, Without addition or diminishing, As take from me thyself, and not me too. How dearly would it touch thee to the quick, Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious, 130 And that this body, consecrate to thee, By ruffian lust should be contaminate! Wouldst thou not spit at me and spurn at me, And hurl the name of husband in my face, And tear the stain'd skin off my harlot-brow, 135 And from my false hand cut the wedding-ring, And break it with a deep-divorcing vow? ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... was all in the good cause,' responded a sullen voice, as a grim red and scarred face was seen on a ruffian held ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to be discussed not long since, in which I took a part. We had been speaking of the beauty of truth, and that nothing could justify the slightest deviation from the plain letter of it. This was doubted; and the case supposed was, that of a ruffian or a madman pursuing an innocent person with intent to murder. You see the flight and pursuit; the pursuer is at fault, and questions you as to the way taken by the fugitive. Are you justified in deceiving ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... laurel crown, which had been thrown to her, but which she rightly felt to be his due, who had given her all, and brought her from darkness into light! Instead of this, what part was this he was really playing? Anderson the kidnapper; Anderson the villain, the ruffian, the invader of peaceful homes, the bogy to scare naughty children with. He did not say all this to himself, perhaps, because he was not, save when carried away by professional enthusiasm, an imaginative man; but he felt thoroughly uncomfortable, and, above all, absolutely at sea, not knowing which ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... furnace—I'm always in liquor, A ruffian—a bully—a sot; I'm sure I should thrash her, perhaps I should kick her, I am such a very bad lot! I'm not prepossessing, as you may be guessing, She couldn't endure me a day! Recall my professing, when you are assessing The damages Edwin ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... after what seemed minutes to the silent, motionless congregation, his raised hand came down on the shoulder of the leader with the exact, resistless precision of the tiger's paw, and the ruffian was snatched from his seat to the floor sprawling. Before he could rise, the steel-like grip of the roused preacher sent him halfway to the door, and then out into the dirt of ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... place, we must bear in mind that he lived in the woods. The West of that day was not wild in the sense of being wicked, criminal, ruffian. Morally, and possibly intellectually, the people of that region would compare with the rest of the country of that day or of this day. There was little schooling and no literary training. But the woodsman has an education of his own. The region was wild in the sense that it was almost uninhabited ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... rear of his retinue, conversing with some of the officers of the court. As the party was issuing from a little chapel contiguous to the royal saloon, and just as the king was descending a flight of stairs, a ruffian darted from an obscure recess in which he had concealed himself early in the morning, and aimed a blow with a short sword, or knife, at the back of Ferdinand's neck. Fortunately the edge of the weapon was turned by a gold chain or collar which he was in the habit of wearing. It inflicted, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... And daily where he goes, of late, he spies The scowls of sullen and revengeful eyes; 'Tis what he knows with much contempt to bear, And serves a cause too good to let him fear: He fears no poison from incensed drab, No ruffian's five-foot sword, nor rascal's stab; Nor any other snares of mischief laid, Not a Rose-alley cudgel ambuscade; From any private cause where malice reigns, Or general pique all ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... was during these daily rounds that I witnessed with sadness the evil effects of sending boys or lads to prison for a few days or weeks for some petty theft, and placing them in constant contact and association with the habitual and reputed scoundrel and ruffian. These men are always willing to make a convert, and they generally succeed, for the battle is half won ere they bring their forces on the field. It is here that the juvenile offender is nursed in villainy, ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... was a fair specimen of that class, known in more modern parlance as a "Border Ruffian." Such as are at this time endeavoring, by their swaggering and bullying, to cast on the fair fields of Kansas the deep curse of Slavery—a curse which, like the poison of the deadly Upas, blights all within its influence: the colored and the ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... was a very easy man, but would work you hard and never allow you any chance night or day; he was a farmer, about fifty, stout, full face, a real country ruffian; member of no church, a great drinker and gambler; will sell a slave as quick as any other slave-holder. He had a great deal of cash, but did not rank high in society. His wife was very severe; hated a colored man to have ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... his rifle by the barrel as he spoke the words and, bringing it down crash, he cleaved the skull of a great ruffian whose face was already glowering down from the turret's rim. Nothing, I swear, in all that night was more wonderful than the sang-froid of this great Irishman (as he would call himself in fighting moods) or the merry ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... shrieked in frantic terror; Harold sprung at the throat of the foremost; another advanced, Harold left his present prey and attacked the new assailant. The brave dog did wonders, but the odds were fearful; and the men had bludgeons, were enraged, and had already wounded him. One ruffian had grasped the arm of Sybil, another had clenched her garments, when an officer covered with dust and gore, sabre in hand, jumped from the terrace, and hurried to the rescue. He cut down one man, thrust away another, and placing his left arm round Sybil, he defended ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... protection against the son of a butcher or of a day-labourer. Boxing and fisticuffs were entirely forbidden among students, so that there remained nothing to a young student who wanted to escape from the insults of a young ruffian, but to call him out. As soon as a challenge was given, all abuse ceased at once, and such was the power of public opinion at the universities that not another word of insult would be uttered. In this way much mischief is prevented. Besides, every precaution is taken to guard against ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... their insipid noise, And vain pretending take a Fool's advice; Of the faux Braves I've had some little trial, There's nothing gives 'em credit but Denial: As when a Coward will pretend to Huffing, Offer to fight, away sneaks Bully-Ruffian, So when these Sparks, whose business is addressing, In Love pursuits grow troublesom and pressing; When they affect to keep still in your eye, | When they send Grisons every where to spy, | And ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... his hypocritical jargon: but it was unworthy of me to combat in words with the ruffian; and my answer was cool; while, far from being possessed with fear, methought, even at the worst, a man true to himself, courageous and determined, could fight his way, even from the boards of the scaffold, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... rumbling volcanic Is heard in the Radical Press, And Presidents tremble in panic And Wardens their terrors confess: How each with anxiety shivers, The Dean with his fines and his gates, The ruffian who ragged me in Divvers, The pedant ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... suffer fops sometimes very patiently for the sake of their extravagances." This man was notoriously foppish and extravagant. My answer pleased, and we soon got rid of him at the Palace of Chevreuse. But he thought to have despatched me, for he hired one Grandmaison, a ruffian, to assassinate me, who apprised me of his design. The first time I met M. d'Aumale, which was at the Duc d'Orleans's house, I did not fail to let him know it; but I told it him in a whisper, saying that I had too much respect for ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... poor to help the poorest," objected the woman, "and I don't like your luggage, sir." And she wondered why she had sirred a cut-throat looking ruffian such as this. ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... and much to complain of, to the disgrace of England be it said—of England, in general so kind and bountiful. Rations of carrion meat, and bread from which I have seen the very hounds occasionally turn away, were unworthy entertainment even for the most ruffian enemy, when helpless and a captive; and such, alas! was the fare in ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... Scoundrel! Ruffian! Why do you go sniffin' around me now! Who are you? What has I done? You stuck to my heels! You followed me an' baited me an' snapped at me ... Rascal ... worse'n ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... a cat, he leapt upon him, felled him to the earth with a single blow, tore the dagger from his hand, and sprang to his feet again just in time to strike his new weapon full into the third pursuer's face. The man put his hand to his head, and recoiled against a fellow-ruffian, who was close on his heels. Philammon, flushed with victory, took advantage of the confusion, and before the worthy pair could recover, dealt them half a dozen blows which, luckily for them, came from an unpractised hand, or the young monk might have had more than one ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... the Land League here?" said Robert, shoving the yellow horse into the crowd; "let the hounds through, boys, can't ye? No, Captain, but 'tis Saint November's Day, as they call it, a great holiday, and there isn't a ruffian in the country but has come out with his blagyard ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... guess he was about to be used in a game he did not understand? He would have stopped all work to beg for extra pay at the merest suggestion of such a thing; but as it was he raised both fists and lapsed into his own tongue to apostrophize the ruffian who dared jostle King. A Northerner who did not seem to understand Punjabi almost cost King his balance as he thrust broad shoulders between him ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... is always something to look at, for there are canoes constantly going up and down, and there is plenty of variety among them—from the sluggish dhows, laden with up country produce, to the long canoes with a score of paddlers and some picturesque ruffian sitting in the stern. It adds to the interest when you know that the crews are cutthroats to a man, and would make but the shortest possible work of you if they had got you in ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... watch-case to a common larum-bell? Wilt thou, upon the high and giddy mast, Seal up the shipboy's eyes, and rock his brains In cradle of the rude imperious surge; And in the visitation of the winds, Who take the ruffian billows by the top, Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them With deaf'ning clamours in the slipp'ry shrouds, That with the hurly Death itself awakes: Can'st thou, O partial Sleep! give thy repose To the wet seaboy in an hour so rude, And in the ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... pardon!" he breathlessly exclaimed. "I was just taking the short cut! I had no idea—Here, Mungo, you ruffian!" as the Skye was ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... MacConachie, and try to be like him?' And now, when one of them has taken his advice, if ye dinna turn round on the street and half kill him, till he had to be brought home half faintin' to his father's house! Fine-like conduct for a magistrate! Ye bloodthirsty old ruffian! ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... their wives, recollecting that the cottage formed part of the glebe, went off to inquire of Parson Morth, "than whom," as the tablet to his memory relates, "none was better to castigate the manners of the age." He was a burly, hard-riding ruffian, and the tale of his great fight with Gipsy Ben in Launceston streets is yet told on ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... quieting effect upon poor Jim, who immediately closed his lips. Silent but watchful he eyed the half-breed's face. There was something very familiar about the thin cheeks, high cheek-bones, and about the great hooked nose. He was struggling hard to locate the man. At this moment the third ruffian approached with three horses. The other had been busy fixing a gag in Jake Bond's mouth. Jim Bowley saw the horses come up. And, in the now brilliant moonlight, he beheld and recognized a grand-looking golden chestnut. There was no mistaking that glorious beast. Jim was no tenderfoot; ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... Marston saw through wrong, and which he had intended to carry out,—is now beyond his power. Stripped of those comforts he had enjoyed, his offspring carried off as trophies of avarice,—perhaps for sale to some ruffian who would set a price upon their beauty,—he sits down, sick at heart, and weeps a child's tears. The mansion, so long the scene of pleasure and hospitality, is like a deserted barrack;-still, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... "Well," was the ruffian's reply; "women of all ages are fools: what is it to you whether this young fellow is shot or hanged? He was taken in arms against the Republic—one and indivisible. All the enemies ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... no yearning to pluck out the heart of the mystery. La Motte, a needy adventurer fleeing from justice, takes refuge on a stormy night in a lonely, sinister-looking house. With startling suddenness, a door bursts open, and a ruffian, putting a pistol to La Motte's breast with one hand, and, with the other, dragging along a beautiful girl, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... I made friends with the ruffian set to watch over me, and I plied him with wine until he fell on the grass and was unable to rise. I then dammed the stream, and climbed down its empty bed. It was difficult work, as the rocks were wet and the night was very dark. I was covered with ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... Allyne was usually a gentleman, but in his cups he became little short of a ruffian in ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... himself from his sad musings at the supper-hour, to arrange his hair, and assume the ordinary dress of gentlemen in the evening; though Philip laughed at the roses adorning his shoes, and his fresh ruff, as needless attentions to an old ruffian like the Chevalier. However, Philip started when he entered the hall, and beheld, not the Chevalier alone, but with him the beautiful lady of the velvet coach, and another stately, extremely handsome dame, no longer ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be disappointed. Here, come forward," said he, to some of his men, who were, armed with axes. "Hew the ruffian from ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... young man, "nothing can cure my grief; this day my dear mistress is to be sacrificed to a rich old ruffian of a husband ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... admirable make-up, though only a policeman of very melodrama could have missed that brilliant pate as it shone balefully over the inadequate chair in which he sat concealed while his subordinate was bullying the hapless Anna. Also I doubt whether so stout a ruffian would have succumbed so promptly to such a simple pin-prick. But perhaps the surprise, annoyance and keen disappointment broke his soldierly heart. Anyway, living or dying, the Baron was a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... greater trouble comes. I could not hold out for another fight. I am almost finished. Let the king fight the battles of his friends. The ruffian that escaped will return with re-enforcements, and I am not able ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... and, with a smile, put it into her arms, and told her that she was now at liberty to return to her home or go where she pleased. The joy expressed by the girl and by all who witnessed this scene was very great; for they had all considered him to be a mere ruffian, incapable of anything ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... at this time, there was one carter who had none, and Regina knew it, for he was one of her chief admirers. He was the hardest-drinking ruffian of all the men who came and went on the Frascati road, and he had been quite willing to sell his dog in the street to a gentleman who admired it and offered him fifty francs for it, though that is a small price for a handsome "lupetto." But Mommo happened to be deeper in debt than usual, took the ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... nor shall you be able to complain that they are not recent, as well as of longer standing. Your conduct in the case of poor honest M'Evoy here is black and iniquitous. He must be restored to his farm, but by other hands than yours, and that ruffian instantly expelled from it. From this moment, sir, you cease to be my agent. You have betrayed the confidence I reposed in you; you have misled me as to the character of my tenants; you have been a deceitful, cunning, cringing, selfish and rapacious tyrant. My people you ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... majority as inadequate to account for the phenomenon. They inclined, rather, to adopt an alternative and alluring theory propounded by the Commissioner's lady. This theory laid it down that the American was bargaining for the Count's daughter, a pretty girl whom the old ruffian had shut up in a convent somewhere in anticipation of the day when a purchaser, rich enough to content his inordinate lust for gold, should present himself. Van Koppen was that purchaser. They had now been haggling, she said, for two or three years; a DENOUEMENT might be expected at ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... the morning, and hanged him in the evening of the same day. Fifty thousand people stood around the columns of the national capitol, shouting themselves hoarse at the presidential inaugural, and in four months so great were the antipathies that a ruffian's pistol in Washington depot expressed the sentiment of a great multitude. The world sits in its chariot and drives tandem, and the horse ahead is Huzza, and the horse behind is Anathema. Lord Cobham, in King James' time, was applauded, and had thirty-five thousand ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... the rakes and bullies of the time; "For when they expected the most polished hero in Nemours, I gave them a ruffian reeking from Whetstone's Park." Dedication to Lee's "Princess of Cleves." In his translation of Ovid's "Love Elegies," Lib. II, Eleg. XIX. Dryden mentions, "an easy ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... to his diocese. I asked a member of another Balkan nationality whether he knew this ancient cleric of the extremely venerable aspect, and whether he knew what kind of political and religious propaganda had brought about his downfall. "I know all about that old ruffian," he replied. "He stole over fifty pigs and one hundred sheep, and about twenty-five cows and 200 lb. of fat." Anyhow, if his lordship had heard that these accusations had been repeated in many places, he would have been ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... nervous movement of my gun, pressing gently on the trigger at the same time. Never was a man nearer his death than was Asmani during those few moments. I was reluctant to shed his blood, and I was willing to try all possible means to avoid doing so; but if I did not succeed in cowing this ruffian, authority was at an end. The truth was, they feared to proceed further on the road, and the only possible way of inducing them to move was by an overpowering force, and exercise of my power and will in this instance, even though he might pay the penalty ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... you all about that afterwards," said Dennis grimly. "I'm going to save you now." And, cutting the cord, he threw the knife into the basin and proceeded to make a slip-knot. "We must make this old ruffian secure first." ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... I'd see this ruffian at Halifax first, if you ask me." The angry color flushed his face again as he thought of the insult to which ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... had charge of the execution of this order was a stern and ruffian-like officer named Sir Richard Ratcliffe. This man is quite noted in the history of the times as one of the most unscrupulous of Richard's adherents. He was a merciless man, short and rude in speech, and reckless in action, destitute ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... so melodramatic,' he answered. 'I'll give you a fair chance on the ground; but, if you do not move out of my path now, I'll shoot you as I would any other disagreeable ruffian,' and he put his hand into his breast, where, I knew, he ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... caught her breath quickly. She knew the big ruffian's methods, and with good reason feared for her old friend, should he even ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... of her word, and that an undrained cabbage would be the signal for the execution of her threat. From the first she had assumed despotic power over Wiggleswick, of whose influence with his master she had been absurdly jealous. But Wiggleswick, bent, hoary, deaf, crabbed, evil old ruffian that he was, like most ex-prisoners instinctively obeyed the word of command, and meekly accepted Zora ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... however, Diether sprang up from a ditch, seized the frightened boy, and ran back toward the mill. The girl had but little time in which to decide on a course of action. If she barricaded herself in the mill, might not the ruffian slay the child? On the other hand, if she waited to meet him, she had no assurance that he would not kill them both. So she retired to the mill, locked the door, and awaited what fate had in store for her. In vain the robber threatened to kill the child and burn the mill over ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... optimism. He had been at sea, and shipwrecked on several islands in the Pacific; he had passed a rainy season at Panama, and a yellow-fever season at Vera Cruz, and had been carried far into the interior of Peru by a tidal wave during an earthquake season; he was in the Border Ruffian War of Kansas, and he clung to California till prosperity deserted her after the completion of the Pacific road. Wherever he went, he carried or found adversity; but, with a heart fed on the metaphysics of Horace Greeley, and buoyed up by a few wildly interpreted maxims of Emerson, he had always ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... arranging books with the huge patriarch of all the rats dangling by his tail! Three hopeful families were destroyed; rooms, vaults, and cellars examined and cleared; and Petty declared the race to be exterminated, picturesque ruffian that he was, in his shapeless hat, rusty velveteen, long leggings, a live ferret in his pocket, and festoons of dead ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... apartments like a palace, all covered with gold and ivory, which the king kept as a pleasure-yacht for his own use. Exasperated against Gonzalez for his treachery, the king ordered the nephew of that lawless ruffian, who was in his power as a hostage, to be be impaled. But Gonzalez, being a person utterly devoid of honour, cared not at whose cost he advanced his own interests; yet the guilt of so many villanies began to prey upon his conscience, and he became ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... dastardly falsehoods of the malignant slanderer who vilified Mr. De—ce-ce, and beg to offer that gentleman the only reparation in our power for having thus tampered with his unsullied name. We disbelieve the RUFFIAN and HIS STORY, and most sincerely regret that such a tale, or SUCH A WRITER, should ever have been brought forward to the readers of ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... enterprising lad was Tom the Bootblack. He was not at all ashamed of his humble calling, though always on the lookout to better himself. The lad started for Cincinnati to look up his heritage. Mr. Grey, the uncle, did not hesitate to employ a ruffian to kill the lad. The plan failed, and Gilbert Grey, once Tom the bootblack, came into a comfortable fortune. This is one of Mr. Alger's ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... "The owdacious young ruffian!" ejaculated Mrs. Fox. "To beat my poor, dear Joel so! Never mind. Joel, dear, I'll give you a piece of pie and some cake. As for that boy, he'll be ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... MRS BAR. You disobedient ruffian, careless wretch, That said your father lov'd me but too well? I'll think on't, when thou think'st I have forgot it: Who's with thee else?—How now, minion? you! With whom? with him!—Why, what make you ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... I handled that situation rightly?" he asked himself between chuckles. "One thing I know—if that old ruffian plays another trick on me—one more of any kind—Ill show my teeth. There's a thing known as ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... more sacred than a man's family and his children. It would not be possible for a man to do public violence to a family circle without vindictive penalty. Let him separate a mother from her daughters, let him employ a hireling ruffian to carry off the boys into the country and parcel them out there—let him scatter the flock, and leave the children motherless, and the parents childless, and what do you think would become ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... the good sense of rushing to the front door and shouting for the police. I'm an orphan, your Worship, and that's why I'm here to seek protection from the court. All the same, I haven't a word to say to my husband, the cowardly ruffian, only for his love of poteen, ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... through a justice-of-peace marriage with Jean Armour. Burns, with all his faults, was an honest and a high-spirited man, and he loved the mother of his children. Had he hesitated to make her his wife, he must have sunk into the callousness of a ruffian, or that misery of miseries, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... struggle. There are times when what should exasperate a people, strikes them with terror. The population of Paris felt that a ruffian had his foot upon his throat. It no longer offered any resistance. That same evening Mathieu (of the Drome) entered the place where the Committee of Resistance was sitting and said to us: 'We are no longer in Paris, we are no longer under the Republic; ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... wait for either of these questions to be answered. He sprang into action with all the agility and ferocity of a young panther. The handle of his cane was a huge knob of carved ivory. He brought it directly on the head of the ruffian in a blow of tremendous force, and as the fellow staggered, Mr. Dootleby grasped the poker, turning it so that its heated end touched his antagonist's arm. Of course, the man loosened his hold, and in an instant more dropped ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... terms, and those terms incorrect. We are amazed to find a writer usually thoughtful, if not accurate, thus indolently adopting the worn-out falsities of our weakest writers on Taste. Does he—can he for an instant suppose that the ruffian Caravaggio, distinguished only by his preference of candlelight and black shadows for the illustration and re-enforcement of villainy, painted nature—mere nature—exclusive nature, more painfully or heartily than John Bellini or Raphael? Does he not see that whatever men imitate ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... inmates to endure, and much to complain of, to the disgrace of England be it said—of England, in general so kind and bountiful. Rations of carrion meat, and bread from which I have seen the very hounds occasionally turn away, were unworthy entertainment even for the most ruffian enemy, when helpless and a captive; and such, alas! was the fare in those casernes. And then, those visits, or rather ruthless inroads, called in the slang of the place 'strawplait-hunts,' when in pursuit of a contraband ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Beastlinesse, that swolne Parcell of Dropsies, that huge Bombard of Sacke, that stuft Cloakebagge of Guts, that rosted Manning Tree Oxe with the Pudding in his Belly, that reuerend Vice, that grey iniquitie, that Father Ruffian, that Vanitie in yeeres? wherein is he good, but to taste Sacke, and drinke it? wherein neat and cleanly, but to carue a Capon, and eat it? wherein Cunning, but in Craft? wherein Craftie, but in Villanie? wherein Villanous, but ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the arms) of a stranger, his first impulse is to show fight. Naturally Leonard began to plunge and to double his fists. But he could not keep this up, for the man whose arm was round him quickly retired and stood a few paces off, looking wan and haggard, and very unlike a thief or ruffian. ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... and the ends knotted similarly about the waists of the man before me and the man behind me. Agathemer was made secure in a like fashion. When he lay down to sleep, after he had composed himself to rest, a blanket was spread over him and a burly ruffian lay down on either side of him, the edges of the blanket under them. I slept similarly guarded. On day marches Caburus kept Agathemer close to him; I was never out of sight ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... being smooth, How many shallow bauble boats dare sail Upon her patient breast, making their way With those of nobler bulk! But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage The gentle Thetis, and anon behold The strong-ribb'd bark through liquid mountains cut, Bounding between two ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... he listened to the last words, and with emotion almost equalling that which excited his host. He had just been thinking about the portrait upon the wall, and how beautiful the original must be. Now hearing her name coupled with that of the ruffian whose blow he had felt, and whose blood he had spilled, he almost regretted not having ended that duel by killing his ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... unless it were the Irishman, Sarsfield. But not only was the light of genius extinguished then, and a heroic spirit lost to earth—as kindly and as noble a heart as was ever warmed by the constant presence of generous emotions was stilled by a ruffian's bullet. ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... Men, and the most exposed to the Malignity or Wantonness of the common Voice, is the Trader. Credit is undone in Whispers. The Tradesman's Wound is received from one who is more private and more cruel than the Ruffian with the Lanthorn and Dagger. The Manner of repeating a Man's Name, As; Mr. Cash, Oh! do you leave your Money at his Shop? Why, do you know Mr. Searoom? He is indeed a general Merchant. I say, I have seen, from the Iteration ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... neck in order to break its master's. But he was equal to the occasion; and when Steamboat staggered again to its feet Bannister was still in the saddle. It was a daring and magnificent piece of horsemanship, and, though he was supposed to be a desperado and a ruffian, his achievement met with a breathless gasp, followed by ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... hurried from me and sold to the highest bidder, or doomed to any drudgery her master might put her to, and even flogged at will. There was only one remedy that could be applied; and the specific was dollars. My friend was so kind as to negotiate with the ruffian. One thousand was demanded, and cheerfully paid. I carried the manumission home to my sorrowing Mary. From her I learned, as she lay in bed—her beautiful face buried in the clothes, and her voice choked by sobs—that the wretch who had called on me was ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... What! I warrant me, you thought it would be an easy matter, and no sin, to rob and murder a parson on his way home from dinner. You said to yourself, doubtless, "We'll waylay the fat parson (you irreverent knave), as he waddles home (you disparaging ruffian), half-seas-over, (you calumnious vagabond)." And with every dyslogistic term, which he supposed had been applied to himself, he inflicted a new bruise on his rolling and roaring antagonist. "Ah, ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... yellow gleam of a Jew's head in the crowd, and called upon him to fling him his cap. It was hurled from hand to hand. Fra Giuseppe held it up in the air. "Men of Rome, Sons of Holy Church, behold the contumelious mark we set upon our fellow-men, so that every ruffian may spit upon them. Behold the yellow—the color of shame, the stigma of women that traffic in their womanhood—with which we brand the venerable brows of rabbis and the heads of honorable merchants. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the Russian peasant, mild and kindly. I do not intend to take up much space here with an account of him, but he did, after this first meeting, in some sort attach himself to me. I never learned his name nor where he lived; he was I should suppose an absolutely abominable plunderer and pirate and ruffian. He would appear suddenly in my room, stand by the door and talk—but talk with the ignorance, naivete, brutal simplicity of an utterly abandoned baby. Nothing mystical or beautiful about the Rat. He did not disguise from me in the least that there was no crime that he ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... less familiar to the people of England is the career of Jack Sheppard, as brutal a ruffian as ever disgraced his country, but who has claims upon the popular admiration which are very generally acknowledged. He did not, like Robin Hood, plunder the rich to relieve the poor, nor rob with an uncouth sort of courtesy, like ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... of outraged respectability, with here and there an epithet distinguishable like a plum in a pudding. "Ruffian," they called him, "assassin," "robber," and so forth, the innocuous amateur abuse of men who have learned their bad language from their newspapers. It was not till he had gone a hundred yards, and the noise of their lamentation had a little died down, that there emerged out of the blur of it ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... "Daphne, I'm a ruffian! forgive me! you must, Daphne! Look here, I want you to marry me. I've nothing to offer you, of course; I'm a poor man, and you've all this horrible money! But I—I love you!—and I'll make you a good husband, Daphne, that I'll swear. If you'll take ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... aboard fairly slimed over, in addition, with all that had ever been told or guessed against Buck Vliet's missionary. The stories didn't agree about his sect: but they agreed that Vliet, though a ruffian, hadn't marooned the man just for fun—that he must have been a hard case somehow. The stories might vary concerning Vliet's reasons: but they agreed that the man hadn't come to it by sheer over-prayerfulness: and the conclusion was—reasonable ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ramp leading to the summit of the wall almost immediately in front of the little group. There was a gleam of steel in his hand. With one long ringing whistle, Humfrey bounded from his place, and at the moment when the ruffian was on the point of assailing the Queen, he caught him with one hand by the collar, with the other tried to master the arm that held the weapon. It was a sharp struggle, for the fellow was a trained soldier in the full strength of manhood, and Humfrey ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... resent the supposition of being heretical to thy creed, and yet how few truly adhere to the purity of thy precepts! How few are sincere in the expression of their adoration!—nay, how limited the number of those who really understand the essence of thy doctrine! The sanguinary ruffian considers himself as zealous in the service of honor, as the high minded and courageous man who has a sword to avenge the wrongs of his country, and a heart to sympathise with the picture of human misery. All are swayed by the magic ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... frightful smile—and laid a very strong emphasis on those two words, "Somebody else." There is evidently a third ruffian, a nameless ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... to the feet of the old woman; in a while it mounted to her knees, then to her waist, then to her chin, then to her lips; and when she was almost stifled by the rising waves, and the bubbling groan of her last agony was reaching her fellow-martyr farther up the beach, one heartless ruffian stepped up to Margaret Wilson, and, with a fiendish grin and mocking laugh, asked her, 'What think you of your friend now?' And what was the calm and noble reply? 'What do I see but Christ, in one of his members, wrestling there? Think you ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... boys!" cried the prostrate ruffian, who had lost a tooth and bled freely at the nose. The other two prepared to pile, when the schoolmaster faced one of them, and kept him off. It is hard to say how matters would have gone, had not a tornado entered the bar room ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... troop of villains; The sons of public rapine were destroying. They told me, by the sentence of the law, They had commission to seize all thy fortune: Nay more, Priuli's cruel hand had sign'd it. Here stood a ruffian with a horrid face, Lording it o'er a pile of massy plate, Tumbled into a heap for public sale; There was another, making villanous jests At thy undoing: he had ta'en possession Of all thy ancient, most domestic, ornaments, Rich ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... risked all—and many of whom have lost all but life in upholding the Union cause—to be excluded from every office, State and National, and in many instances to be banished from the States they so faithfully laboured to save; it abandons the four millions of colored people to such treatment as the ruffian class of the South, educated in the barbarism of slavery and the atrocities of the rebellion, may choose to give them; it leaves the obligations of the Nation to her creditors and to the maimed soldiers and to the widows and orphans of the war, to be fulfilled ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... to the rescue! Here is a desperate young ruffian seeking to murder the Queen's subjects in broad daylight! Help, I say, and take the young braggart before the magistrates! Cannot peaceable citizens walk the streets without being set upon by such bullies ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... a cuirass! What a fortunate thing, dear Monsieur Chicot; and you were saying that the ruffian ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... war against America broke out, his gaiety all forsook him. The idea of a ruffian soldiery overrunning his native land, preyed incessantly on his spirits, and threw him into those brown studies which cost his lady full many a tear. Unable to bear his disquietude, he fled at length from his wife and infant family, to fight for his country. ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... her role, but dispensed with the business of tearing her hair. "O my husband!" she cried, stretching her arms across the water. "Shall I never see thee more? What foul ruffian has treated thee thus?" ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... Vallandigham, though less valuable, is of the same purport, that "it is vain to underrate either the man or his conspiracy.... He is the farthest possible removed from the ordinary ruffian, fanatic, or madman." ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... on earth among you could you let George marry the daughter of a low-bred ruffian like that,—a man that never ought to have been allowed to put his foot ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... policeman of very melodrama could have missed that brilliant pate as it shone balefully over the inadequate chair in which he sat concealed while his subordinate was bullying the hapless Anna. Also I doubt whether so stout a ruffian would have succumbed so promptly to such a simple pin-prick. But perhaps the surprise, annoyance and keen disappointment broke his soldierly heart. Anyway, living or dying, the Baron was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... aware of Durand. The man was not alone. He had with him a hulking ruffian whose heavy, hunched shoulders told of strength. There was a hint of the gorilla in the way the long arms hung straight from the shoulders as he leaned forward. Both of the men were watching the cowpuncher as steadily as ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... material out of which he was expected to manufacture serviceable troops." "Swaggering ruffians from the disreputable haunts of London" "were not the men to be intrusted with the honor of England at a momentous crisis." "Our simplest men in show have been our best men, and your gallant blood and ruffian men the worst of all others." (The Italics again are the author's.) Yet, said the muster-master, "there is good hope that his Excellency will shortly establish such good order for the government and training of our nation, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... dame. Not for a king's ransom would I have thus jostled thee in such unseemly haste!" And Ginger, instead of giving Keith a slap when he teasingly penned her up in a corner, to make her divide some nuts with him, said, in a most tragic way, "Unhand me, villain, or by my troth thou'lt rue this ruffian conduct sore!" ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... such a calf after all;' and then Roland heard him mutter something about 'an acquisition to the band.' The words made the matter clear enough now to our hero. This ruffian had not saved him because he had shot Ham, but because he wanted an addition to his force. Knowing that there was a price upon Roland's head, he believed that he would find little difficulty in bending him to his ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... Colonel Baker and myself were both battling together in the Whig cause, at a convention held in Springfield, I made a speech at the State House, which I think now, looking back at it from this point, was the very best I ever made in my life. While I was addressing the vast assembly some ruffian in the galleries flung at me a gross personal insult accompanied with a threat. Lincoln and Colonel Baker, who were both present and were warm personal and political friends of mine, anticipating that I might be attacked ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... and very plain clothes, would certainly give him the appearance of a vulgar person, if the impression was not counteracted by his evil soldierly carriage, and the peculiar manner of his walking, which is confident, theatrical and a little ruffian like, for he stamps the ground at every step, and at the same time twists his body a little. He was dressed that day in a green coat, turned up with a dirty white, &c. &c. &c. His neck is short, his shoulders very broad, and his chest open * ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... crew alive with his fiddle forward, and even Dan Hoolan looked somewhat less surly than usual; at the same time Larry kept out of his way, and never trusted himself at night on deck when I was not there. Whether he was right in his suspicions or not was uncertain, but at all events Hoolan was a ruffian, and a traitor to ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... pennywise parsimony had left himself defenceless, made a feeble and wholly vain attempt to put the city in a state of defence. The corrupt and cowardly citizens could not have opposed any valid resistance to the ruffian hordes who were slowly but surely, like an advancing conflagration, coming upon them, even if they had been willing to do their best. But the trembling Pope's appeal to them to defend the walls fell on the ears of as sorely trembling men, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... he came here, heroic resolutions followed him. He had thrashed a ruffian who struck a woman, and narrowly escaped with his life for doing so. Henceforth he could but assent to a truce which implied mutual toleration; and yet he understood that his presence was not without its influence ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... the dark on a moor, he follows a light, and enters an old lonely house. He is seized by ruffians, locked in, and expects to be murdered, which he knows that he cannot stand, for he is timid by nature. In fact, a ruffian puts a pistol to La Motte's breast with one hand, while with the other he drags along a beautiful girl of eighteen. "Swear that you will convey this girl where I may never see her more," exclaims the bully, and La Motte, with the ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... silent, but betraying no agitation; and he roused himself from his sad musings at the supper-hour, to arrange his hair, and assume the ordinary dress of gentlemen in the evening; though Philip laughed at the roses adorning his shoes, and his fresh ruff, as needless attentions to an old ruffian like the Chevalier. However, Philip started when he entered the hall, and beheld, not the Chevalier alone, but with him the beautiful lady of the velvet coach, and another stately, extremely handsome ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... present to a clever and muscular ruffian one of the most formidable weapons of offence he could possibly possess, as he can, and frequently does, inflict the deadliest blows upon his captor. Another great drawback is the fact that these handcuffs do not fit all wrists, and often the officer is nonplussed by having ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... And found them guarded by a troop of villains; "The sons of public rapine were destroying." They told me, by the sentence of the law They had commission to seize all thy fortune: Nay, more, Priuli's cruel band had signed it. Here stood a ruffian, with a horrid face, Lording it o'er a pile of massy plate, Tumbled into a heap for public sale: There was another making villainous jests At thy undoing: he had ta'en possession Of all thy ancient, most domestic ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... Amanda, stepping to the verandah, "why have you ventured here again so soon,—or, rather, why so late? for are there not ruffian robbers on the road, and all the ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... I may say that if my hand was an index to my general appearance, I must have looked the most abject ruffian under heaven. ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... to go to the butcher's for a bit of meat for dinner. The crippled lad had just rounded the corner, and, forced to give all his attention to his own halting steps, did not grasp the situation but continued his dragging way across the path of the drunken and enraged bully. The ruffian, seeing the lad ignore his loud commands, strode heavily forward with menacing fists, heaping foul epithets upon the head of the ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... in ruffian anger Raised its bloody steel against Beauty so divinely fashioned? Sorrow, ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... stage they want lighter matter to amuse them at home; but they can hardly appreciate, even if they could find, the loftier flights of social romance. Sam Weller to-day has joined a union, and reads his Henry George. Rawdon Crawley of our own generation is a mere drunken ruffian, only fit to point the moral in a lecture on the drink traffic. And Becky Sharp is voted to be a stupid libel on the social destiny of the ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... its mouthpiece in the faction of the legislature. Property will be at the mercy of the idle, the desperate, and the rapacious—Law will be a dead letter—Religion a mockery—Right superseded by violence—and the only title to possession will be the ruffian heart and the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... concealed themselves. There is sometimes in the social order a favouring shadow thrown over iniquitous trades, in which they thrive. In our own day we have seen an association of the kind in Spain, under the direction of the ruffian Ramon Selles, last from 1834 to 1866, and hold three provinces under terror for thirty ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... dearly, you struggle frantically, hitting out right and left with arms and legs, and yelling lustily the while, and at last something gives way, and you find your head in the fresh air. Two feet off, you dimly observe a half-dressed ruffian, waiting to kill you, and you are preparing for a life-and-death struggle with him, when it begins to dawn upon ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... the tact which he possessed, had been chosen as general regulator of the whole prize- fighting body, by whom he was usually alluded to as the Commander- in-Chief. He and Belcher went across now to the table upon which Berks was still perched. The ruffian's face was already flushed, and ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... who had charge of the execution of this order was a stern and ruffian-like officer named Sir Richard Ratcliffe. This man is quite noted in the history of the times as one of the most unscrupulous of Richard's adherents. He was a merciless man, short and rude in speech, and reckless in action, destitute alike of all ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... gets abroad of his cock-and-bull story, and the true history of the loss of his teeth, he will not be able to show his face in public for some time; but he will be none the less dangerous. Through that notorious ruffian, Captain Copper, he can dispose of half the cutthroats about the town, and I should advise you not to go out after dark until you have put the seas between you and him, and even then you had better be cautious ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... captured crew of an unarmed merchant vessel which he had sunk, destroyed their boats, took from them their life-belts, carried them miles away from any floating wreckage, and then projected them into the sea to drown, this unspeakable monarch approved the awful deed and decorated the ruffian for his infamous cruelty. ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... his feeble witticism, and Brett instantly took his measure as a member of the gang of flash thieves which infest Paris. He knew that such a ruffian was both pitiless and cowardly. Whatever the outcome of the situation which faced him, he would not stoop to conciliatory ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... ladies had known the character of this house and the neighborhood around it, they would not have placed me here. Heaven only knows what I have suffered, and still suffer. I live in constant dread that some ruffian, instigated by my landlady, who wishes to gratify both her avarice and malignity, may break in upon me some time when I am off my guard, and make me the victim of a brutal outrage. This fear keeps me awake nights, and makes my days ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... victory to be as fruitless as it was brilliant. The ruffian troops, by whom it was gained, became immediately self-disbanded; threw off all authority; hastened to possess themselves of Antwerp; and threatened to proceed to the most horrible extremities if their pay was longer withheld. ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... complex arrangements of the animal creation, extending down to the minutest portions of their frames—that same Divine mercy it is which we are bid to imitate. He whose soul burns with indignation against the brutal ruffian who misuses the poor, helpless, suffering horse, or dog, or ass, or bird, or worm, shares for the moment that Divine companion wrath which burns against the oppressors of the weak and defenceless everywhere. He who puts forth his hand to save from ill treatment, or add to the ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... eyes as round and sparkling as those of the children going to Christmas parties. He stole glances at her as if her fresh innocent looks were an absolute treat to him, and when he talked, it was of Robert in his boyhood. 'I remember him at twelve years old, a sturdy young ruffian, with an excellent notion of standing ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... result was disappointing. Only one noble had his head cut off. Few executions were carried into effect, many were on paper. One of the latter, a ruffian steeped in blood, defied the sentence and was banished. Flechier in his amusing and instructive book, Les grands Jours d'Auvergne, has given us a dramatic ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... Sally. "Why, I saw this young ruffian pommeling him. And look! Martha is bound in her ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... Sonora to supply some of the guerilla insurgents operating in the wilds of that state. Once they were safe in Mexico the cattle would be sold to old Pasquale for a fraction of their real value, the money received in exchange for them having been wrung by that old ruffian from some prisoner he had put to the torture to give ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... the realm. I never saw but Humphrey Duke of Gloster Did bear him like a noble gentleman. Oft have I seen the haughty cardinal, More like a soldier than a man o' the church, As stout and proud as he were lord of all, Swear like a ruffian and demean himself Unlike the ruler of a commonweal.— Warwick my son, the comfort of my age, Thy deeds, thy plainness, and thy housekeeping, Hath won the greatest favour of the commons, Excepting none but good Duke Humphrey;— And, brother York, thy acts in Ireland, In bringing them to civil discipline, ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... probably was the most depraved of outcast men; but the presence of a girl like her, however it affected him, must also have brought up associations of a time when by family and breeding and habit he had been infinitely different. His action here, just like the ruffian Bill's, was instinctive, beyond his control. Just this slight thing, this frail link that joined Kells to his past and better life, immeasurably inspirited Joan and outlined the difficult game ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... that afterwards," said Dennis grimly. "I'm going to save you now." And, cutting the cord, he threw the knife into the basin and proceeded to make a slip-knot. "We must make this old ruffian secure first." ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... sputtered Mr. Downes. "You see, Mary, what this young ruffian has done to poor Paul? Stand still, will you?" he added, jerking Paul around as he tried to untie the cod line. Paul began to snivel; I reckon his father pulled the line so tight that it cut ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... both, whether to kill or imprison was not yet determined. John was absent; Sarah, seeing the troopers gallop toward the house, poured a prayer over her babe, as it lay asleep in the crib, and fled in terror, hoping that sweet infancy would appeal to their hearts. A ruffian rushed in, and grasping the babe, shouted, "The nurse is not far away." He made it scream, to bring the mother back. She heard its pitiful cry; her heart was breaking, yet she was utterly powerless. She might expose herself, but she could not help the infant. They carried it away. ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... he has been described as a ruffian and villain of irredeemable depravity—desperate to the last degree. James P. Casey was a young man of bright, intelligent and rather prepossessing face, neat in his person, inclined to fine clothes, but not flashy or gaudy in his attire. He was of low stature, slender frame, lithe and ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... at nightfall left the cottage in Danny's company. Two hours afterwards Hardress himself arrived in a fit of compunction. On learning that they had departed, he swore to himself that if this his servant exceeded his views, he would tear his flesh from his bones, and gibbet him as a miscreant and a ruffian. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the equally sanguinary royal governor of Chili, Sanchez, carrying on a most horrid and cruel war of extermination against the republican inhabitants of the southern part of Chili. Into the hands of this murderous ruffian and his ragamuffin gang the Swan was delivered; but the villany of her piratical crew was soon to receive its just punishment. Benavidas, who suspected them of having kept back no trifling part of the plunder, with very little privacy and no formality, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... pin from his sleeve, the ruffian plunged it deeply into the poor creature's flesh. Nance winced, but she set her teeth hardly, and repressed the cry that must otherwise have ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... have long been singing the praises of your Caesar. Believe me, he is very close to my heart, and I am not going to let him slip from his place. Now for the history of the Ides (13th). It was Caelius's tenth day.[584] Domitius had not obtained a full panel. I am afraid that foul ruffian, Servius Pola, will appear for the prosecution. For our friend Caelius has a dead set made at him by the Clodian gens. There is nothing certain as yet, but I am afraid. On the same day there was a full house ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... with remorse, as he shut the door upon himself, was:—"I have departed from my character—from the sacred character, and the dignity of my profession and sentiments—I have departed from myself. I am no longer the philosopher, but the ruffian—I have treated with an unpardonable insult a young nobleman, whose only offence was love, and a fond desire to insinuate himself into the favour of his mistress. I must atone for this outrage in whatever manner he may choose; ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... father had returned home, a man named Sharpe, who disgraced the small office of justice of the peace, rode up to our house, very much the worse for liquor, and informed mother that his errand was to "search the house for that abolition husband of yours." The intoxicated ruffian then demanded something to eat. While mother, with a show of hospitality, was preparing supper for him, the amiable Mr. Sharpe killed time in sharpening his bowie-knife on the sole ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... answer—'Many men, many women, and many children.' Macpherson wrote offensively and violently to Dr. Samuel, who replied heartily enough—'I received your foolish and impudent letter ...I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian ...I thought your book an imposture. I think so still. Your rage I defy,' etc. etc. What was all this to Runciman? He had no learning—he cared nothing for antiquarianism. He took for granted that Ossian was authentic. ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... ever haunt mankind, And glare upon the darken'd mind! Whene'er thou enterest a breast, Thou robb'st it of its joy and rest; And terrible, and strange to tell, On what that mind delights to dwell. The ruffian's knife with reeking blade, The stranger murder'd in his bed: The howling wind, the raging deep, The sailor's cries, the sinking ship: The awful thunder breaking round: The yauning gulf, the rocking ground: The precipice, whose low'ring brow O'erhangs the horrid deep below; And tempts ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... all over the United States to whom the mere mention of the word mountaineer evokes a fantastic picture—a whiskey-soaked ruffian with bloodshot eyes and tobacco-stained beard, wide-brimmed felt cocked over a half-cynical eye, finger on the trigger of a long-barreled squirrel rifle. He is guarding his moonshine still. Or he may be lying in wait behind bush or tree to waylay his deadly enemy ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... tonight at Brattleburn—that's my chief town, and an infernal Tory stronghold. I had got the Colonial ex-Premier fellow, Crumpleton, coming to speak for me tonight, and had the thing tremendously billed and the whole place ground-baited. This afternoon I had a wire from the ruffian saying he had got influenza at Blackpool, and here am I left to do the whole thing myself. I had meant to speak for ten minutes and must now go on for forty, and, though I've been racking my brains for three ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... a time unconscious of the lowly ruffian's presence, Swithin presently took it into his head that he was being guyed. He laid his whip-lash across the mares flank. The two chariots, however, by some unfortunate fatality continued abreast. Swithin's yellow, puffy face grew red; he raised his whip to lash the costermonger, but was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that second volume is very good for you as far as it goes. It is a great advance, and a thoroughly straight and swift one, to be led, as it is the main business of that second volume to lead you, from Dutch cattle-pieces, and ruffian-pieces, to Fra Angelico. And it is right for you also, as you grow older, to be strengthened in the general sense and judgment which may enable you to distinguish the weaknesses from the virtues ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... fact, it is probable that the majority of genuine French names belong to a later period; for, although the baron who accompanied the Conqueror would in many cases keep his old territorial designation, the minor ruffian would, as a rule, drop the name of the obscure hamlet from which he came and assume some surname more convenient in his new surroundings. Local names of Old French origin are usually taken from the provinces and larger ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... said Belsize. "Is that the cane you strike your wife with, you ruffian!" Belsize seized and tore him out of the saddle, flinging him screaming down on the pavement. The horse, rearing and making way for himself, galloped down the clattering street; a hundred people were round Sir ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of his love; Wide as his will, extends his boundless grace; Nor lost in time nor circumscribed by place. Happier his lot, who, many sorrows' pass'd, Long labouring gains his natal shore at last; Than who, too speedy, hastes to end his life By some stern ruffian, or adulterous wife. Death only is the lot which none can miss, And all is possible to Heaven but this. The best, the dearest favourite of the sky, Must taste that cup, for man is born ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... in unlaced gymnasium shoes, "leathers," and a brown sweater (warranted not to show the dirt), looked quite definably what he was, a Commercial Road ruffian; and his foreheadless face, greasy cow-lick "quiff" (or fringe), and truculent expression, inspired more disgust than confidence ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... possibly a murderer, from the gallows, simply and solely because I had eaten ham and rice in his company. Had I not betrayed my guide, who was supporting the cause of law and order? Had I not exposed him to a ruffian's vengeance? But then, what about the ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... that is well, for the American article answers almost exactly to the vagrant and criminal tribes of India, being a predatory ruffian who knows too much to work. 'Bad place to beg in after dark—on a farm—very—is Vermont. Gypsies pitch their camp by the river in the spring, and cooper horses in the manner of their tribe. They have the gypsy look and some of ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... breakers of all laws human and divine,—the makers of counterfeit money, the forgers of land titles, the stealers of horses, robbers, murderers, thieves and criminals of every sort and condition, the fine gentleman and the ruffian, the duelist and the assassin—all these were now flocking to Rogue's Harbor. Once there, they were not long content merely to find a hiding place from the wrath of broken law and outraged civilization. They were soon seeking and ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... does it matter if he can? Are we to delay every time that lazy ruffian spying a shadow makes it an excuse to stop to yawn and scratch? Go on, you plankful of lubbers, or I'll give you something worth thinking about!" And joyfully, oh, so joyfully, we heard the sullen dip ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... at table, lashed to their chairs, pale and trembling, while six of the most ruffian-looking scoundrels I ever beheld stood on the opposite side of the table in a row fronting us, with the light from the lamps shining full on them. Three of them were small but very square mulattoes; one was a South American Indian, ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... respectable Teachers of ———— has had any participation in this scurrilous transaction, as I consider them to be sober, moral, exemplary well-conducted men, possessed of excellent literary abilities; but this expatriated ruffian and abandoned profligate, being aware of the marked and unremitting attention which I have heretofore invariably paid to the scholars committed to my care, and the astonishing proficiency which, generally speaking, will be an accompaniment ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... But he was at the same game. You have got the proof in your hands. There's a group of nine men—Salak and his eight friends. Well, of his eight friends every man jack is now doing time for burglary, in some cases with violence—that second ruffian, for instance, he's in for life—in some cases without, but in each case the crime was burglary. And why? Because Salak in the centre there set them on to it. Because Salak nine years ago wasn't the big swell he is now. Because Salak wanted money to start his intrigues. That's the way he ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... second volume is very good for you as far as it goes. It is a great advance, and a thoroughly straight and swift one, to be led, as it is the main business of that second volume to lead you, from Dutch cattle pieces, and ruffian-pieces, to Fra Angelico. And it is right for you also, as you grow older, to be strengthened in the general sense and judgment which may enable you to distinguish the weaknesses from the virtues of what you ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... as it is no secret why he and Miss Bates parted, I enlightened the company on the subject of his antecedents. He threatened to challenge me! Ho! ho!—fight with a nigger—that is too good a joke!" And laughing heartily, the young ruffian leant back in his chair. "I want some money to-morrow, dad," continued he. "I say, old gentleman, wasn't it a lucky go that darkey's father was put out of the way so nicely, eh?—We've been living in ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... sudden rage the ruffian soldier bore, Or drenched the pavements with his vital gore; Deliberate thought did all our souls compose, Till veiled in gloom ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... Stephen's ear, are accused of ruining. Not a vestige of truth in it, I can safely say. History, would you be surprised to learn, proves up to the hilt Spain decayed when the inquisition hounded the jews out and England prospered when Cromwell, an uncommonly able ruffian who in other respects has much to answer for, imported them. Why? Because they are imbued with the proper spirit. They are practical and are proved to be so. I don't want to indulge in any because you know the standard works on the subject and then orthodox as you ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... strongly, James; but, under the circumstances, I can't blame you much. The boy is evidently a ruffian." ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger
... There are times when what should exasperate a people, strikes them with terror. The population of Paris felt that a ruffian had his foot upon his throat. It no longer offered any resistance. That same evening Mathieu (of the Drome) entered the place where the Committee of Resistance was sitting and said to us: 'We are no longer in Paris, we are no longer ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... who cuts off another man's hands is a ruffian. The man who cuts off a woman's hands is a scoundrel. There is no excuse for him—none whatever. And the kinder he is the worse he is. I repeat that you are the worst sort of scoundrel. Your family mourns you, and every member of it says what an angel of a father you were. But you were ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... Losberne came, and begged them to accompany him to the patient's room, they dreaded to comply with the request, but finally yielded to his demand. What was their astonishment when the bed-curtains were drawn aside, instead of a black-visaged ruffian, to see a mere child, worn with pain, and sunk into a deep sleep. His wounded arm bound and splintered up, was crossed upon his breast. His head reclined upon the other arm, which was half hidden by his long hair, as it streamed over the pillow. The boy smiled in his sleep as ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... solemnly believe that the very best thing that could be done for you at this moment, you unfortunate individual, would be to buy you a saddle-horse and a revolver, and start you tomorrow for the Rocky Mountains, with distinct instructions to treat any man as a Border Ruffian who should venture to allude to the subject of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... in the foreground, nor star that kept alive a promise in the distance, violently refused to be comforted. It is beside an awful aggravation of such afflictions, that the lady herself might have co-operated in the later stages of the tragedy with the purposes of the imperial ruffian. Lamia had been suffered to live, because as a living man he yielded up into the hands of his tormentor his whole capacity of suffering; no part of it escaped the hellish range of his enemy's eye. But this ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... answered the young man, "nothing can cure my grief; this day my dear mistress is to be sacrificed to a rich old ruffian of a husband who ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... forgive my transgressions!—he knows whom to fall upon. The old men that are a bit richer, or've more children, he doesn't touch, the red-headed devil! but there's all the difference here! Why he's sent Antip's sons for recruits out of turn, the heartless ruffian, the cur! ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... difference, if any, is in favor of the last. Suppose them both raised for merit, (here, indeed, we do come to theory!) the benefits that society has received from him are nearer us.... Some of us may look back six or seven centuries, and find a stout ruffian at the beginning." In England, where the institutions are such that a title of nobility is considered by the majority to be the highest reward attainable by merit, it is not surprising that the great god of Rank should be worshipped at the family altar of Form. In England, too, it must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... hold a gun, he said, must come to the help of civilization against barbarism. These dreadful outrages are happening thousands of miles away, but that makes them none the less real. Humanity is being attacked by a bully, a ruffian,—how can any man stay at home? Let no consideration of family life keep you from doing your duty. Every human being must give an account of himself to God. What did you do in the great day of testing? will be the question asked you in that great day of reckoning ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... the parish and the despair of his pious mother, who, whenever he sallied forth upon adventure bent, rang the bell of the chateau, to give the alarm to the surrounding peasantry. The ballad which tells of the infamous deeds of this titled ruffian, and which was composed by one Tugdual Salauen, a peasant of Plouber,[46] opens upon a scene of touching domestic happiness. The Clerk of Garlon was on a visit to the family of ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... many a day, never failed to cause merriment. His costume rose to the height of Desert-fashion, described when pourtraying Shaykh Khizr the Imrni; his manners were those of a gentleman below the Pass, and above it he became an unmitigated ruffian, who merited his soubriquet El-Kalb ("the Hound"). On one side sat his son Slim, a large, beardless lad, who had begun work by presenting us with a sheep—Giorgi (cook) said it cost us 40. On the other was his eldest brother and ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... old ruffian here as a joke. Directly I set eyes on him I knew he ought to have been in quod himself! Come now, what do you say? Look here! I'll make a bargain with you. I'll give you the thing when ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... be provided in so desolate a spot. The unprepossessing look of everything was completed when the host came in and took his seat at the head of the table. A bear out of the woods could hardly have been rougher, with his unshaven hair and unkempt beard. He answered to the type of border ruffian, and his appearance suggested the dark deeds that might be done here in secret, and hidden in the forest gloom. Imagine the astonishment of the travellers when this rough backwoodsman rapped on the table and bowed his head. And such a prayer! "Never," says Mr. St. John, "did I hear ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... of a butcher or of a day-labourer. Boxing and fisticuffs were entirely forbidden among students, so that there remained nothing to a young student who wanted to escape from the insults of a young ruffian, but to call him out. As soon as a challenge was given, all abuse ceased at once, and such was the power of public opinion at the universities that not another word of insult would be uttered. In this way much mischief is prevented. Besides, ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... that made them peculiarly acceptable to me; but discipline is discipline, and must be maintained, at all hazards, even when a crew has been picked up in such irregular fashion as mine had been; and I was determined to at once impress upon this Irish ruffian the fact that I was skipper of the brig, and that I intended to exact from him the respect and deference of manner due to the position. So I ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... expected, he carried her off to England, where he did not wait to be drunk in order to maltreat her. She was not free from his cruelty night or day. Before she was sixteen, she had run the whole gamut of human suffering; and that, not at the hands of a coarse, common ruffian, but from an elegant, handsome, luxury-loving gentleman, whose taste in dress was so nice he would sooner fling a garment of hers into the fire than see her go into company clad in a manner he did ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... well in the front rank of the combatants, and was carrying himself right manfully, when he saw one of his countrymen slip and fall in a pool of blood, losing his sword as he fell. A burly black-bearded ruffian, whom he had been engaging, instantly set his foot on the prostrate body, and shortened his hanger to thrust him through; but Roger, who was engaged with another pirate, nimbly evaded the blow aimed at him, and, with one spring, like a young leopard, ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... Joined by his fellow ruffian he fell upon Harry, but they were no match for the Royalist colonel. After a few rapid thrusts and parries he ran his first assailant through the body and cut down the man called Marlow, with a sweeping blow which nearly cleft ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... glory? Was the Fate that forced us to fight for the mastery of the world, of our making? Am I Julius Caesar, or am I a wolf, that you fling to me the grey head of the old soldier, the laurelled conqueror, the mighty Roman, treacherously struck down by this callous ruffian, and then claim my gratitude for it! (To Lucius Septimius) Begone: you ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... been made romantic when they were brutal, brave when they were foolhardy, heroes when they were only bullies and blackguards. This man, Abe Barrow, the prisoner at the bar, belongs to that class. He enjoys and has enjoyed a reputation as a 'bad man,' a desperate and brutal ruffian. Free him to-day, and you set a premium on such reputations; acquit him of this crime, and you encourage others to like evil. Let him go, and he will walk the streets with a swagger, and boast that you were afraid ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
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