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More "Waif" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... felt as destitute, as desolate as any waif in all that great city. He had been cared for all his life, and now that he was suddenly thrown upon his own resources, he felt helpless, like a rudderless bark on ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... might mean assistance, the waif's howls once more became lingual. "Dey's tryin' to swipe me money, boss," he whined. "Hope I ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... respecter of old privileges, because he had privileges himself; and ready when the French came to take his part in fighting for the old country. There can be no fear for a country, says Scott, where even the beggar is as ready to take up arms as the noble. The bluegown, in short, is no waif and stray, no product of social corruption, or mere obnoxious parasite, but a genuine member of the fabric, who could respect himself and scorn servility as much as the highest members of the social hierarchy. Scott, as Lockhart tells us, was most ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... was speaking of their bodily condition only. I want a model, and should be glad to get it without the nuisance of sketching in the slums. Such a ragged, pinched, eager, and yet stupid child as might sit homeless between the black walls of Newgate and the churchyard of St. Sepulchre,—a waif of the richest and most benevolent society in Christendom, for whom the alternative of the churchyard would ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Besides, everything confirms the hypothesis, for more than one English vessel going and coming from Inverness, or the Orkneys, have been driven on the coast of Norway by a tempest; and you must not forget that the little living waif could not have been floating for a long while, since he had resisted hunger, and all the dangers of his perilous journey. Well, now you know all, and what is your conclusion ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... all comes the feast. Heaven keeps holiday when some poor waif comes shrinking back to the Father. The prodigal had been content to sink his sonship for the sake of a loaf, but he could not get bread on such terms. He had to be forgiven and bathed in the outflow of his father's love before he could be fed; and, being thus ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... large building in Pall Mall, and slunk away out of the pages of "this strange, eventful history." The Baby piped. The door of the house, a club, opened and the baby was taken in. It was the Radical Club, but it was as conservative as it could be in its reception of the waif, and it was only in perfunctory kindness that the Club gave him shelter. The Fogey Club heard of the Baby and bethought itself of making campaign material of him. The Fogies instructed their "organs" to dilate ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... slow-moving swell which followed her. The vast blue-black dome of the heavens above was devoid of the faintest trace of cloud, and the countless stars which spangled the immeasurable vault beamed down upon the tiny waif with a soft and mellow splendour which was repeated in the dark bosom of the scarcely ruffled ocean, where the reflected starbeams mingled, far down in its mysterious depths, with occasional faint gleams and flashes of pale ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... as he was affectionately dubbed by the boys, "the Kid," was a waif who had drifted in among them some months before. Except that his mother was in the hospital, nothing was known about him, which was regular and according to the rule of the house. Not as much was known about ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... was encased in a heavy woolen straight-jacket, and there was a strap around its loins to which a stout cord was attached, running to the Root of All Evil. The pavement was hot, but there with its bare and tender feet on the hot concrete, the sad-eyed little waif painfully moved about, peering far up into the faces of passers-by for sympathy, but all the time furtively and shrinkingly watching its tormentor. Every now and then the hairy old tramp would jerk the monkey's cord, each time giving the frail creature a violent bodily wrench from head to foot. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... each other that it was not possible to say it all at one time, and so it was agreed that the next night Dick should make a visit to the store and keep Mr. Hobbs company. The plan pleased Dick well enough. He had been a street waif nearly all his life, but he had never been a bad boy, and he had always had a private yearning for a more respectable kind of existence. Since he had been in business for himself, he had made enough money to enable him to sleep under a roof instead of ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... think I shall be able to help you. There is the dearest old woman in the village, Mrs. Sullivan. She lives in a pretty cottage quite close to 'The Plough,' and she was only telling me the other day that she wished that she had another child to mother. Sometimes my sister and I have a little East-end waif and stray down for a few weeks in the summer," continued Elizabeth modestly—"some sick child, or occasionally some over-burdened worker, and we always lodge them at Mrs. Sullivan's. It is not much of a place, but we call it ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... third solution that was to satisfy my emotional nature and at the same time give me a reason for existence. I would adopt a little waif as my child, a French or Belgian waif, and I would bring up this child to be a useful and happy man or woman. I would love it, care for it, teach it, and with this responsibility and soulagement, I would be able to endure the loneliness of ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... incongruity of living his life out in the constant heed of the well-being and companionship of a large white cow of the name of "Peninnah Penelope Anne." A more interesting denizen of the pen was a fawn, a waif found there one morning, having prudently adopted as a mother a large red cow, and a heavy brindled calf as a foster-brother. The instant Peninnah admired this incongruous estray, bleating its queer ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... moment and said, "I think he said his name was Gladstone." England's grand old man appears to us in many a charming role, but in none is he more manly and commanding than in this of visiting a little crippled waif in a London attic. ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... expected. Jo had been a little more quiet since his return, but he gave no signs of pining away, and maybe if nothing revived his interest, it might die a natural death. The story Jo had told him of the little waif had made a ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... "I bless the day that you, as a little waif, were taken in by Mrs. Dainty, and that I was asked to come and care for you. I could not love you more if you were ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... few poems which I shall present for your consideration, than by the citation of the Proeem to Longfellow's "Waif": ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... the interesting relic would be promptly and reverently deposited among the other Vestiges of Creation, in the Royal Cabinet. In the course of years, some historian would probably have occasion to turn over these curiosities, and would presently light on the scorched but still legible waif. "Why," says he, in astonishment, "I thought the earth was burnt on the 15th of May! To be sure, it was in the night, and nobody saw it go, [think of that, conceited Worldling!] but it was missed by somebody the day after. But here we have a document from the late unfortunate ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... taste the writer of certain passages in Venus and Adonis could not fall before his genius or his judgment was full-grown. To invent an earlier play on the subject and imagine this scene a surviving fragment, a floating waif of that imaginary wreck, would in my opinion be an uncritical mode of evading the question at issue. It must be regarded as the last hysterical struggle of rhyme to maintain its place in tragedy; and the ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... back with the other Icelandic fishers; and as the men of the Samuel-Azenide afterward picked up in some fjord an unmistakable waif (part of her taffrail with a bit of her keel), all ceased to hope; in the month of October the names of all her crew were inscribed upon black slabs ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... 4th.—3rd start,—But now more humbly and with the aid of an Amanuensis. First one word about page 2. My wife protests against The Waif Woman and I am instructed to report the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "little shepherd" did not know who he was nor whence he came—he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood, seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and mothered this waif about whom there was such a mystery—a charming waif, by the way, who could play the banjo better that anyone else in ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... my account with "N. & Q." were it not that I have an act of justice to perform. When I first lighted upon the two examples of chaumbre in Udall, I thought, as we say in this country, it was a good "fundlas," and regarded it as my own property. It now appears to be but a waif or stray; therefore, suum cuique, I cheerfully resign the credit of it to MR. SINGER, the rightful proprietary. Proffering them for the inspection of learned and unlearned, I of course foresaw that speedy sentence would be pronounced by that division, whose judgment, lying ebb and close to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... two went Christmasing in the throng. Wyoming's Chief Executive knocked elbows with the spurred and jingling waif, one man as good as another in that raw, hopeful, full-blooded cattle era, which now the sobered West remembers as the days of its fond youth. For one man has been as good as another in three places—Paradise before the Fall; the Rocky Mountains before ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... laid his hand on her bowed head as if silently giving a patriarchal blessing; and Mavis watched and admired, and loved him for his noble generosity in taking so much trouble about the poor little waif that had ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... how jolly they seem together; it's good to see! Why can't I have something like that? I, a waif and a stray! I'd never leave such a woman! I'd always have my arms round her, and there'd be no mistake about my loving the little devil! I've never had any luck with women! They don't like ginger hair— women don't. No. She's a woman with fancies, she is! She's a sly little devil! She ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... her laugh As each man from his scanty store shook out a generous half. To kiss the little mouth stooped down a score of grimy men, Until the sergeant's husky voice said,"'Tention squad!" and then We gave her escort, till good-night the pretty waif we bid, And watched her toddle out of sight—or else 'twas tears that hid Her tiny form—nor turned about a man, nor spoke a word, Till after awhile a far, hoarse shout upon the wind we heard! We sent it back, then cast sad eyes upon the scene around; A baby's hand had touched the ties ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... Lamb! O Waif of God! Die Thou for me this night, and give me to look upon the countenance ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... allow her father or her brothers to touch her, and when her mother tried to comfort her, she said "Go away, ma. Don't touch me!" Finally I went to her, and she caught my hand in hers and pressed it, and after I had got her to her feet—the poor ragged waif, as limpsey as a rag, and wearing the patched remnants of the calico dress I had bought for her on the way into Iowa the spring before—she broke down and cried on my shoulder. She sobbed out that I was the only man she had ever known. She wished ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... exemplary old lady plucked a little waif of down from her bombazine dress, and snapped it away jauntily upon the air,—even as, throughout her life, she had snapped from her the temptations of the world. And when, in his Scripture reading that very night, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... a low-brow mechanic. You make me so dreadfully weary when you're mock-humble. As a matter of fact, you're a famous man and I'm a poor little street waif. For instance, the way you talk about socialism when you get interested and let yourself go. Really excited. I'd always thought that aviators and other sorts of heroes ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... wretch!" muttered the doctor as he went away. "A tramp's child—a waif cast up by the way. Ah, Hippetts, I was right, you see: it ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... help to no man; and when Ivan's eyes were opened, it was already too late. This did not come about, however, until, in the spring of the year 1871, something had happened to change Gregoriev's mode of life almost as completely as he had altered that of the waif thrown up at his door out of the troubled sea ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the adventures of a boy waif, who is cast upon the Atlantic shore of one of our Southern States and taken into one of the leading families of the locality. The youth grows up as a member of the family, knowing little or nothing of his past. ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... said Diana. "I hope the old gentleman and lady will be good to him, poor boy! Tell them it was none of his fault, your being stolen away—he's but a poor homeless waif himself; and even if so be as they could do nothing for him, he mustn't come back here. Mick'd be like ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... a different man, count. Like this puppy here, I am a waif and a stray; yet, at the same time, I have my purpose and am part ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... none other, to scrape acquaintance, where, how, and with whom he could. Many a long dull talk he held upon the benches or the grass; many a strange waif he came to know; many strange things he heard, and saw some that were abominable. It was to one of these last that he owed his deliverance from the Domain. For some time the rain had been merciless; ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... where I stand to the sun is a pathway of sapphire and gold, Like a waif of those Patmian visions that wrapt the lone seer of old, And it seems to my soul like an omen that calls me far over the sea— But I think of a little white cottage and one that ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... spoke it," said the knight; "and I thank Heaven I can follow good counsel, though old Nick gives it. And so, friend, touching these same Commissioners, bear them this message; that Sir Henry Lee is keeper of Woodstock Park, with right of waif and stray, vert and venison, as complete as any of them have to their estate—that is, if they possess any estate but what they have gained by plundering honest men. Nevertheless, he will give place to those who have ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... meritorious speed. With him he was bringing the papers that might settle the Cypriani's mission, but Varney, for the moment, hardly gave him a thought. His own affairs were blotted from his mind just then by the tragedy of the little waif before him, luckless victim of another's sin, small flotsam which barely weathered the winters when odd-jobbing was scarce, and only ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... and the wakening to love of the girl who was drowsing away her youth there. It is all, as I say, so simple, and written with such apparent economy of effort, that only afterwards does the amazing cleverness of Mrs. WHARTON'S method impress itself upon the reader. Charity Royall was a waif, of worse than ambiguous parentage, brought up in a community where her passionate and violently sensitive nature was stifled. Two men loved her—dour middle-aged Lawyer Royall, whose house she kept, and Lucius Harney, the young visitor from the city, the fairy-prince of poor Charity's one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... her horrific belongings having been dropped into the dust-bin. Who does he think is going to provide Carlotta with food and shelter and a pink dress? What does he imagine is to become of the poor waif? In all my life I have never heard of a more ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... in and was indifferent to the waif whom his position of great seigneur obliged him to protect. What did I care? I had been hidden among the Indians by kindred or guardians humane enough not to leave me destitute. They should not trouble my thoughts, and neither—I told myself like an ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of laws in simplicity transcendent. By the aid of a microscope, a 'gillyflower' was seen protecting a chrysalis. Warm leaves cherished it, dainty juices aided its digestion, wholesome offshoots nourished it to maturity. Eking out a scant existence between two granite flags, this insignificant waif reared a caterpillar. What man are you, who can say there is ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... ordinarily be looked upon as altogether prohibitory. She was the wife of a poor minister and school-teacher. To eke out the family income she took boarders. She had five children of her own, who were too young to be of any material assistance, and, in addition, she occasionally harbored a waif that besought her protection when fleeing from slavery. Necessarily the most of her time was spent in the kitchen. There, surrounded by meats and vegetables and cooking appliances, with just enough of the common deal table cleared ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... Ben, "our waif of the upper deep is obscured by a cloud; let us see what the misty ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... distinction. Matt had been in the wrong and had shown that he was angry, yet he had a certain discipline which had enabled him to control his temper, and the issue had ended in defeat for the undisciplined waif who might well have been victorious had ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... to be perfectly firm in refusing everything, for reasons obvious even to that poor waif, the meanest capacity; but when it came to this point she was absolutely compelled to give in, and reluctantly received the cap ribbons in her arms, blushing fitfully, and with her lip trembling in a motion which she tried to exhibit as ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... unknown; full of elk and bison, bear and wolf, lynx and glutton, and perhaps of worse beasts still. Worse beasts, certainly, Sturmi and his comrades would have met, if they had met them in human form. For there were waifs and strays of barbarism there, uglier far than any waif and stray of civilization, border ruffian of the far west, buccaneer of the Tropic keys, Cimaroon of the Panama forests; men verbiesterte, turned into the likeness of beasts, wildfanger, huner, ogres, wehr-wolves, strong thieves and outlaws, many of them ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... had yet observed on the outer rim of the crowd the pale slight girl that stood there—blind, dumb, powerless, frail, and so softly beautiful—a waif on the margin of a tempestuous sea. Through the thick barriers of Naomi's senses everything was coming to her ugly and terrible. Her father was there! They ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... life that are sweet and wholesome. But it is too early yet for me to look back upon what has happened with equanimity and say that I am glad to be a wanderer on the face of the earth, a homeless man, a waif." ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... silk attire and sword, I wore a rifle-shirt and skinning-knife; and out of the dawn-born glory of the hills had stepped no silken damsel of romance to pause and worship me—only a slender, ragged, grey-eyed waif who came indifferent as the chilly wind in spring; who went as April shadows go, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... to the dog, who bounced up against her, "I am as much a waif and stray as you are—disowned by my grandfather, who might have made us rich, and taken up by people one day and forgotten the next; but you have drifted into harbour now, my dog, and ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... seriously propound such a scheme! Would you leave this precious waif to be buffeted between the contending waves of truth and error, in the vague hope that by some lucky wind he might finally be cast upon a rock of safety? I protest against all these educational heresies—they are redolent of brimstone. Truth is truth, or there ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... not addressed to me, there was something very gratifying in being so like one who could inspire such long-lived passion.—Yes, it was unexpectedly pleasant and comforting to be so received. And the tender care, the thoughtful solicitude next bestowed on the limp and dishevelled waif of the sea by my beau tenebreux were unmistakably meant for Molly and no one else, whatever his first imaginings may have been, and they were quite as interesting ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... A waif two years of age was taken from a benevolent institution in Boston, and given to a childless sailor, on his way from a voyage to his home in Maine on the Penobscot River. The sailor knew not from what institution the child ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... invention of my own, But something well and widely known To readers of a riper age, Writ by the skilful hand that wrote The Indian tale of Hobomok, And Philothea's classic page. I found it like a waif afloat Or dulse uprooted from its rock, On the swift tides that ebb and flow In daily papers, and at flood Bear freighted vessels to and fro, But later, when the ebb is low, Leave a long waste ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... came to the window to see how I was getting on, and whether I was in want of anything, and was altogether so kind to me that I was quite sorry to part from him when the train reached Eastbury, and left me, a minute later, standing, a solitary waif, on ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... crossed the stony wastes i' the darkness of the night. Then sent I speech to thee in verses such as burn The heart; reproach therein was none nor yet unright; Yet with perfidiousness (sure Fortune's self as thou Ne'er so perfidious was) my love thou didst requite And deemedst me a waif, a homeless good-for-nought, A slave-begotten ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... no longer destitute, no longer friendless. In Barech she had found a friend who never deserted her. Captivated by her voice, he took the little waif into his heart and home, and thenceforth she was protected, cared for, and educated. And he was amply rewarded when, in after-years, the fame of Helen Barech spread over England. No one then ever dreamed that the great singer began her career ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of wood that was his salvation, girding himself to it as firmly as he was able. In this condition, plus a swoon from exhaustion, he was descried by the helmsman of the Pretty Mary, a few miles from Cape Surville, at daylight next morning. Blunt, with a wild hope that this waif and stray might be the lover of Sarah Purfoy, dead, lowered a boat and picked him up. Nearly bisected by the belt, gorged with salt water, frozen with cold, and having two ribs broken, the victim of Vetch's murderous quickness retained sufficient life ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... "Oh! huerfano, waif," Van Dorn murmured, while his blush returned, "take heed thou ever sayest 'No' with courage like that, when cowardice or weak acquiescence would extort thy 'Yes.' This moment, if thou hadst consented, thy heart would be ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... and could not see any way out of their difficulty, neither consenting to make the slightest concession. Ninon, however, calmed the tempest by suggesting a way out of the difficulty through the hazard of the dice. Luck or good fortune for the waif declared in favor of the warrior, who made a better guardian than the Abbe could possibly have done, and brought ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... enjoy seeing how quickly the girls in our Home learn to help each other. Mercedes had been in the Home but ten days when Francesca came—a bit of a waif who had never worn shoes in all her life, nor seen a bed before. Of course she knew nothing about undressing and sleeping between clean, white sheets. She tried to do like the others, but got into bed with her precious new shoes and stockings on. ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... poor waif you were so interested in! My dear child, you are as niggardly with your philanthropies as you are with your favours. Why not be generous with me? And, by the way, can you tell me just why that young ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... have her way. She brought out the clothes our own child had worn and dressed the waif in them, rubbing his chilled limbs, brushing his wet hair, laughing over him, mothering him. She seemed ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the door closed upon the shivering little waif who scratched and whined at the door of his lost Paradise, Jimsy's face, sharpened by disappointment, seemed suddenly thinner and less boyish. Bent upon making the best of things, he reached for ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple
... dusk, Key West had grown small and finally sank below the horizon, leaving only its three skeleton-like towers standing against the sky—standing erect with all nerves strained, watch-dogs of the darkening sea; ears cocked, to catch a distressed cry from some waif ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... orders, and by so doing earned their ill-will, and brought upon himself their persecution. Indeed, so uncomfortable did his new home prove through the malignity of his fellow-pensioners, that the health of the poor waif gave way, and it was found necessary to remove him to the Hotel Dieu of Paris. Here he was noticed by the Abbe de l'Epee, who was attracted by his quiet and aristocratic manners and gentle demeanour, and who at the same time considered that, by ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... looking over the battlements of her palace and seeing this poor waif, takes compassion upon her, and, after giving her refreshments, questions her in regard to her origin. Damayanti simply vouchsafes the information that her husband has lost all through dicing, and volunteers to serve the rani, provided ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... flea-ridden bed of sickness, and began to make a languid personal introspection. I had developed a new sensitiveness, the sensitiveness of an alien in an alien land, in the hands of new-made, faithful friends. Without them I should have been a waif of all the world, helpless in the midst of unconquerable surroundings, leading to an inevitable destiny of death. I seemed declimatized, denationalized, a luckless victim of fate ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... owner came staggering along one of the walks of the cemetery; for all his song, no blue-water sailor-man, but a boisterous denizen of the great river, a raftsman or a keel-boatman, who had somehow found himself in the burial ground and now was beating aimlessly about. How this rollicking waif of the grog shop came to wander so far from the convivial haunts of his kind and to choose this spot for a ramble, can only be explained by ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... experiencing seemed to her a shameful weakness. Must she cease to know the self-respect which comes of conscious perseverance in a noble effort? Must she stand self-condemned, an ignoble nature, incapable of anything good and great—and that, after all her ambitions? Was she a mere waif, at the mercy of the currents of sense? Never before had she felt this condemnation of her own spirit. She had suffered beyond utterance, but ever with a support which kept her from the last despair; of her anguish ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... say of them it was by Beelzebub? Why say it of me? What he claims he freely allows. The Saviour had no tinge of that jealousy of rival teaching—as if truth could be two, and could avoid being one—which makes so many of his followers grasp at any waif of false argument. He knew that all good is of God, and not of the devil. All were with him who destroyed the power ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... Cat's a law-abidin' place. We're all proud of it. We don't let bad-men strut around an' shoot up our citizens, an' we don't let half-grown punchers go crazy an' start hangin' folks without reason. Now do we?" A persuasive smile broke out on the harsh face and transformed it. Every waif, every under-dog, every sick woman and child within fifty miles had met that smile ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... But I—a waif on earth where'er I roam— Uprooted with life's bleeding hopes and fears, From that one heart that was my heart's sole home, Feel the old pang pierce through the severing years, And as I think upon the years to come, That fair star trembles ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... in the drawing-room, waiting for the gong to sound, when Cecil came in with her father. For a moment he did not recognize the soaked waif of the garden whom he had recommended "to go round to ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... to shake my faith in him, Diana; it is not to be shaken. He has told me a little about the past, though I can see that it pains him very much to speak of it. He has told me of his friendless youth, spent amongst unprincipled people, and what a mere waif and stray he was until he met me. And I am to be his pole-star, dear, to guide him in the right path. Do you know, Di, I cannot picture to myself anything sweeter than that—to be a good influence for the person one loves. Valentine says his whole nature has undergone a change ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... his work is known." A piece of honey-comb, one day, Discover'd as a waif and stray, The hornets treated as their own. Their title did the bees dispute, And brought before a wasp the suit. The judge was puzzled to decide, For nothing could be testified Save that around this honey-comb There had been ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... mother's love, and that those who are deprived of this blessing meet at the outset of their pilgrimage a misfortune which can never be remedied. Thus, before I had numbered fifteen years, I found myself thrown a waif on the waters of life, free to follow the bent of my inclination to become ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... sorry for that. But it was a contentment and pleasure for me to recall that I had settled my financial affairs so that my little cousin would never lack money or know any care that I could spare her. Strange, how she had been rated below more beautiful or more clever women until the waif Ethan Vere had set her dearness in full sun for ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... those exquisitely simple and truthful books that win and charm the reader, and I did not put it down until I had finished it—honest! And I am sure that every one, young or old, who reads will be proud and happy to make the acquaintance of the delicious waif. ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... in secret. And for this purpose they gave him to a nobleman named Sir Hector de Bonmaison, who was possessed of a good heart, telling him that the child, though of noble blood, was no better than a waif whose ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... of the years that endure not Whose tide shall endure till we die And know what the seasons assure not, If death be or life be a lie, Sways hither the spirit and thither, A waif in the swing of the sea Whose wrecks are of memories that wither ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... at herself critically in the glass. Her maid Fanchon—a little French waif picked up in the slums of Soho—helped to readjust a stray curl which ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... thought! My seat is safe, And so 'mid general adulation, I'll rescue some poor party waif ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... felt that it was too good for these vagabonds. He consented to receive them only when he learned that the peddler's wife was to be delivered of a child. That very night she became the mother of a girl, who was at first called Elise. So unimportant was the advent of this little waif into the world that the burgomaster of Mumpf thought it necessary to make an entry only of the fact that a peddler's wife had given birth to a female child. There was no mention of family or religion, nor was the record anything ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... It would be a very good plan to place the waif he had picked up as soon as possible in the care of a mother, even such an extraordinary, incredible mother as Mrs. "Bal" MacDonald: a good plan for the girl's sake, and for everybody's sake, because it was arranged to start for Scotland the day after to-morrow. Still, Barrie's impromptu ode to ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... process, Citizen Delessert sought his friend Jean Souday, who lived close by the Fosse des Tanneurs (Tanners' Ditch.) Jean had a somewhat ancient mare to dispose of, which our landed proprietor thought might answer his purpose. Cocotte was a slight waif, sheared off by the sharp axe of the Place de la Revolution, and Souday could therefore afford to sell her cheap. Fifty francs argent metallique would, Delessert knew, purchase her; but with assignats, it was quite another affair. But, courage! He might surely play the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... affairs' do not need to be 'intruded upon,' Southern newspapers and Southern clergymen would with better grace bottle up their indignation upon the terrible evils likely to result from the legitimate intermarriage of the two races."—Newspaper waif. ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... in a horrified tone, "Good God!" Then in a moment, turning almost fiercely to the priest, "Why did she give away her child and let it be thought a foundling? For if the story is true she has been little better than a waif, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... waif, he spoke Shainsan, and spoke it with a better accent than any nonhuman I had ever known—so well that I looked again to be certain. I wasn't too dazed to answer in the same tongue, but I couldn't keep back a spate ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... shall come to see you every day. The guard-house is no place for her to follow you. Tell her so, man, and she will go with us.—Come, Katie, child!" And he bent tenderly over the sobbing little waif. ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... had nearly gone by, and Mildred was growing desperate. Unfitted for most work, either in strength or education, she scarcely knew for what to apply, and went from one place to another at her aunt's recommendation, feeling like a forlorn little waif for whom there was no place ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of Southampton. Having reproved his mother, while still a lad, for murdering his father, she employed Saber to kill him; but Saber only left him on a desert land as a waif, and he was brought up as a shepherd. Hearing that his mother had married Mor'dure (2 syl.), the adulterer, he forced his way into the marriage hall and struck at Mordure; but Mordure slipped aside, and escaped the blow. Bevis was now sent out of the country, and being sold to an Armenian, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... give a facsimile of this early Manuscript, the exact size of the original. The tiny waif affords a delightful specimen of Borrow's extremely beautiful and graceful minute handwriting, of which one or two other examples exist. The paper upon which the lines are written is evidently a leaf ...
— A Bibliography of the writings in Prose and Verse of George Henry Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... a lean-faced, unkempt and haggard waif, I drifted to Great Orme's Head and back again. Senile dementia had already laid its spectral clutch upon my wizened cerebellum when I was rescued by some kindly people, who tell me that they found me scorching down Hays Hill on a cushion-tired ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... investigated by a physician, who learned that the girl had been a waif and had been taken in charge by a Protestant clergyman when she was nine years old and brought up as his servant. This clergyman had for years been in the habit of walking up and down a passage of his house into which ...
— The Trained Memory • Warren Hilton
... 450 leagues to the westward of Cape St. Vincent, and after a westerly gale of many days' duration, a piece of strange wood, sculptured very artistically, but not with iron. Pedro Correa, his own brother-in-law, had seen another such waif near the Island of Madeira, while the King of Portugal had information of great canes, capable of holding four quarts of wine between joint and joint, which Herrera declares the King received, preserved, and showed to Columbus. From the colonists on the Azores Columbus ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... she commanded Jerry. Then she hugged the waif. "Don't cry, dear. Just tell us what's the ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Lenox welcomed the same circle that had met at her home the November before, and Lena's little heart glowed with the soul-satisfying sense of the difference to her. Then she had been a social waif, received on sufferance. Now she was one of them. She could even afford to have her own opinions. The very memory of past discomforts doubled the present blessedness, and Mr. Lenox looked only half the size that he had six months before. It was a long stride to have taken ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms; and his love-story with "The Angel" are ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... Just because of the waif's helplessness was repugnance to her conquered. She had no other redeeming quality. In a certain sense she was fearsome; she required unremitting attention and care; her whimpering fits, in beast-like monotone, shook the nerve of the most ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... dares not fill its place bravely, sure that it will receive its due as trustfully as these little mosses sit among the clouds and find a spring to feed them even in the rock. Now I will make a speedy end of this, pleasant as it is to sit here feeling myself no longer a solitary waif. I shall spare you the stormy scenes I passed through with Ottila, because I do not care to think of my Cleopatra while I hold 'my fine spirit Ariel' in my arms. She had done her best, but had I been still heart-free ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... child's morals are far from good," Miss Barnes said; "but little Edna Conway, who is a dear child, seems to have taken a fancy to this poor little waif." And Miss Barnes told of Edna's trust in bringing Maggie to the Home, of Maggie's love for the little kitten, and all that she knew of the child from ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... morsel of the shroud of Marat. Marat in his youth had had amorous intrigues. This was when he was a member of the household of the Comte d'Artois, in the capacity of physician to the Stables. From these love affairs, historically proved, with a great lady, he had retained this sheet. As a waif or a souvenir. At his death, as this was the only linen of any fineness which he had in his house, they buried him in it. Some old women had shrouded him for the tomb in that swaddling-band in which the tragic Friend of the people had enjoyed voluptuousness. Bruneseau passed on. They left that ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... about; and light fellowships should take you by the arm, and walk with you an hour upon your way. You may see from afar off what it will come to in the end—the weather-beaten red-nosed vagabond, consumed by a fever of the feet, cut off from all near touch of human sympathy, a waif, an Ishmael, and an outcast. And yet it will seem well—and yet, in the air of the forest, this will seem the best—to break all the network bound about your feet by birth and old companionship and loyal love, and bear your shovelful of phosphates to and fro, in town country, until the hour ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who lived in the barn and was never seen of men; but his presence was made known by his many deeds of helpfulness in kitchen and dairy, for which he was rewarded by a daily bowl of milk. Those who have read George MacDonald's story of Sir Gibbie remember how the little waif from the city was mistaken for a brownie because he secretly helped in ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... fabricated into something of deep, romantic, tragical interest; such a character, in such circumstances, in such an age, and such a place: I commend it to those of the Anglo-Gallic school, who love the domestically horrible, and delight in unsunned sorrows: but, I throw not any one topic away as a waif, for the casual passer-by to pick up on the highway. Shadows, indeed, are flung upon the waters, but Phulax still holds ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... private stealing! 55 But yet from Chisholm who despairs of grace? There's no spring-gun or man-trap in that face! Let Moses then look black, and Aaron blue, That look as if they had little else to do: For Chisholm speaks, 'Poor youth! he's but a waif! 60 The spoons all right? the hen and chickens safe? Well, well, he shall not forfeit our regards— The Eighth Commandment ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... for the little waif for a long time, when at last the clock struck eight and daylight came. The snow, had she not trampled it down, would have come up to her shoulders. The old door behind her was covered with it, as if hung with ermine, and it looked as ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... just then rang, no more was said of the little waif until the sleigh was brought to the door, and Frank announced his intention of stopping for the child on his way back from the station, where he was going to meet ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... He was remarkable for his judicial learning, combined with simplicity and purity of character. Born (January 28, 1822) in England, both parents dying when he was a child, having no brother or sister or very near relative, poor, and almost a homeless waif, he, when about ten years of age, came in the hold of a ship to America. From this humble start, through persevering energy and varying vicissitudes he, under republican institutions, acquired an education, won friends, became eminent as a lawyer and jurist, and earned the high esteem of his fellow-men, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... dogs should have selected and followed the same kangaroo was sad and humiliating. And such a waif of a thing, too! Still, they stuck to it. For more than a mile, down a slope, the weedy marsupial outpaced them, but when it came to the hill the daylight between rapidly began to lessen. A few seconds more and all would have been over, but a straggling, stupid old ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... Amanda scornfully. "He's not your uncle. You are a waif. My mother said so, and waifs do not have uncles ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... the moment of its being an increment, has nothing to do with memory or heredity, it is due to the chances and changes of this mortal state. Design comes in at the moment that a living being either feels a want and forecasts for its gratification, or utilises some waif or stray of accident on the principle, which underlies all development, that enough is a little more than what one has. It is the business of memory and heredity to conserve and to transmit from one generation to another that which ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... does not mean "frontier wild-game," but game that, straying out of one precinct into another, gets captured: stray game, or impounded waif. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... for verse from me, the feeble prey Of this self-seeking world, a waif and stray With none to whom to cling; From me—unhappy, purblind, hopeless devil! Who e'en in what is good see only evil In any ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... the inscrutable longing and adoration of a motherless, homeless, companionless boy; the woman who had absorbed the love of his playmate without sharing it with him; who had showered her protecting and maternal caresses on Susy, a waif like himself, yet had not only left his heart lonely and desolate, but had even added to his childish distrust of himself the thought that he had excited her aversion. He saw her more beautiful than ever in her restored ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... had come to Paris in 1423. They gave him a canonry in that little church called "St. Bennets Askew," which stood in the midst of the University, near Sorbonne, where the Rue des Ecoles crosses the Rue St. Jacques to-day. Hither, to his house in the cloister, he brought the boy, a waif whom he had found much at the time when Willoughby capitulated and the French recaptured the city. He had him taught, he designed him for the University, he sheltered him in his vagaries, he gave him asylum. The young man took ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... The animal was well past kitten-hood, lank, thin, disreputable looking. Pieces of both ears were lacking, one eye was temporarily out of repair, and one jowl ludicrously swollen. As for color, if a once black cat had been well and thoroughly singed the result would have resembled the hue of this waif's thin, draggled, unsightly fur. ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... been the first and only occasion in Mr. Hampton's audacious career, he realized his utter helplessness. This mere slip of a red-headed girl, this little nameless waif of the frontier, condemned him so completely, and without waste of words, as to leave him weaponless. Not that he greatly cared; oh, no! still, it was an entirely new experience; the arrow went deeper than he would have willingly admitted. Men of middle age, gray ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... board a ship, he could find but little or nothing to do to pass away the time, and being a married man and a father, his sympathies and good feelings were powerfully excited and strongly attracted towards this "waif of the sea," their new passenger. The boy, on the other hand, to a very handsome face added a mild and amiable disposition, and, like all New-England boys, an education vastly superior to boys of the same age and standing in ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... this kind of thing I would wax rather bitter. Love, I said, was not a lasting thing; but knowledge told me that it was for those of beauty and winsome ways, and not for me. I was ever to be a lonely-hearted waif from end to end of the world of love—an ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... and singular thoughts rushed into his mind, but his first purpose was ever uppermost; and at length, unfolding his girdle of skin, he tied the tough cincture round the chest, and, exerting all his powers, dragged his mysterious waif into the ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... cheat head grain found how treat dead staid ground town beast stead waif hound growl bleat tread rail mound clown preach dread flail pound frown speak thread quail round crown streak sweat snail sound ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... the evening, and sat chatting over the day's shopping, etc., and casually mentioned in the way of conversation that they had heard the child crying, and that it was rather remarkable it should be still alive. Needless to say, Miss Slessor was off, and had that waif home. It was truly in an awful state, but just alive. In a marvellous way it had been left by leopards and snakes, with which this bit of forest abounds, and, more marvellous still, the driver ants had not scented it. Other ants had ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... pat the little Kitty, that is to be pet's play-fellow. And now lame Tim has driven the cows home; and the dew is falling, the stars are creeping out, and the little crickets and frogs have commenced their evening concert, and still little pet hasn't come! Where is the little stray waif? ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... eyes of the boy detected a shade on Jack's face. However, all conversation was suddenly checked by the entrance of Mike, who, in a manner more forcible than ceremonious, dispossessed Bull-dog of his chair and pipe. The little waif soon took his departure, but it was some time before the cloud on Jack's ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... them some of the dangers which assail the dwellers in those solitary little islands. The narrow belts of sea, which divide their ocean-girded homes, have constantly to be ferried across, and many a boat which has gone out manned with a gallant crew has never returned or sent a waif to tell its story. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... mute appeal of this wee waif alone and unloved in the midst of the horrors of the savage jungle. It was this thought more than any other that had sent her mother's heart out to the innocent babe, while still she suffered from disappointment that she had ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... be 'intruded upon,' Southern newspapers and Southern clergymen would with better grace bottle up their indignation upon the terrible evils likely to result from the legitimate intermarriage of the two races."—Newspaper waif. ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... men could have known that the steel box was in that satchel this story might never have been told. But it never entered their heads that the pallid little waif had sense enough to conceal a ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... exhibit in the parlor; and at the same time they became imbued with foreign morals, which they also put on exhibition disagreeably often. When through glaring faults the stylish nursery-maid was dismissed, the obliging keeper of the intelligence office around the corner had another foreign waif just imported, who at a slightly increased sum was ready to undertake the care, and he might add the corruption, of the children in the most approved style. She was at once engaged, and to this alien the children were committed almost wholly, while Mrs. Marsden would ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... his love hadn't worked the miracle he expected. Jo had been a little more quiet since his return, but he gave no signs of pining away, and maybe if nothing revived his interest, it might die a natural death. The story Jo had told him of the little waif had made a deep ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... of the elocution class, recited a poem describing the sad experience of a typical little waif, and his reception in the Home. It was a pretty piece, and had been composed expressly for the Society by a lady who often wrote ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... was enjoying himself. Remembering the description given by Bart, the detective saw that this was the very man who had entered the shop of Aaron Norman. He wore the same dress and looked dirty and disreputable—quite a waif and ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... saved her life. And, boy, you'll be a big man of the U. P. some day. Chief engineer or superintendent of maintenance of way or some other big job. What could be finer? Romance, boy. The little waif of the caravan—you'll send her back to Omaha to school; she'll grow into a beautiful woman! She'll have a host of admirers, but you'll be the king ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... Paris in 1423. They gave him a canonry in that little church called "St. Bennets Askew," which stood in the midst of the University, near Sorbonne, where the Rue des Ecoles crosses the Rue St. Jacques to-day. Hither, to his house in the cloister, he brought the boy, a waif whom he had found much at the time when Willoughby capitulated and the French recaptured the city. He had him taught, he designed him for the University, he sheltered him in his vagaries, he gave him asylum. The young ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... the doctor as he went away. "A tramp's child—a waif cast up by the way. Ah, Hippetts, I was right, you see: it was not ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... ambition in herself, that Bessie Fairfax remained a rustic little maid, without the least tincture of modern accomplishments. Still, the doctor's wife did not forget that her dear drudge and helpful right hand was a waif of old gentry, whose restoration the chapter of accidents might bring about any day. Nor did she suffer Bessie to forget it, though Bessie was mighty indifferent, and cared as little for her gentle kindred as they cared for her. And if these gentle kindred had increased ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... opening and closing daily their minute valves, have kept meanwhile their own register, and with their busy fringed fingers have gathered from the whole Atlantic that small share of its edible treasures which sufficed for them. Plainly this waif has had its experiences. It was Robinson Crusoe's, Annie, depend upon it. We will save it from the flames, and when we establish our marine museum, nothing save a veritable piece of the North Pole shall be held so valuable as ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Something more potent was beneath the tramp's motives—some incentive that was almost a religion. So far, Winthrop was correct. He erred, however, in supposing Overland to be obsessed with a mania for gold for its own sake. The erstwhile sheriff of Abilene had dreamed a dream about an adopted waif and a beautiful young girl. The dream was big. Its fulfillment would require much money. There was more of the poet in Overland Red than his best friend had ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... torrent. Plain enough it had long been to him that he would not be able to govern the wild forces of a reaction which, if it had prevailed, would have brought back a more cruel tyranny than Sylla's. He was now flung as a waif on the shore of a foreign land; and if Providence on each occasion proportioned the penalties of misdoing to the magnitude of the fault, it might have been considered that adequate retribution had been inflicted on him. But the ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... is a nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms; and his love-story with "The Angel" ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... to Mr. Hammond's office. The president of the company invited the hermit into his shack and gave him a seat. He scrutinized the man sharply as he thus greeted him. It was quite true that the hermit did not wholly fit the character he assumed as a longshore waif. ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... satiated, and disgusted, began to yawn, cried, and found out that she had sacrificed her happiness, like a millionaire who has gone mad and has cast his banknotes and shares into the river, and that she was nothing more than a disabled waif and stray. Consequently, she now married again, as the solitude of her home made her morose from morning till night; and then, besides, she found a woman requires a mansion when she goes into society, to race meetings, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... the shroud of Marat. Marat in his youth had had amorous intrigues. This was when he was a member of the household of the Comte d'Artois, in the capacity of physician to the Stables. From these love affairs, historically proved, with a great lady, he had retained this sheet. As a waif or a souvenir. At his death, as this was the only linen of any fineness which he had in his house, they buried him in it. Some old women had shrouded him for the tomb in that swaddling-band in which the tragic Friend of the people had enjoyed voluptuousness. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... rang, no more was said of the little waif until the sleigh was brought to the door, and Frank announced his intention of stopping for the child on his way back from the station, where he was going to ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... very odd of me, I must confess, to talk in this way, and to receive all those tender allusions from a gentleman about whom I had spoken and felt so sharply only the evening before. But Bartram was abominably lonely. A civilised person was a valuable waif or stray in that region of the picturesque and the brutal; and to my lady reader especially, because she will probably be hardest upon me, I put it—can you not recollect any such folly in your own past life? Can you not in as many minutes call to mind at ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... you, you fool, to hope for that, When every mother's son is privileged To jerk the battle-chariot's reins I hold? Think you that fortune will eternally Award a crown to disobedience? I do not like a bastard victory, The gutter-waif of chance; the law, look you, My crown's progenitor, I will uphold, For she shall bear ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... strength. He recognized the intruder with new eyes, not as an enemy, but as a comrade—a comrade marooned on the selfsame island of loneliness and bound to him by the common experience of a kindred adversity. He was like Crusoe discovering the footprint. Here, quite close to him, was a fellow waif who had drunk deep of his own bitter sense of desertion. With a thrill of sympathy, his ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... to the world 'mid double danger, groans, and tears; The toy, the sport, the waif and stray of passions, ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... inspired by fond imaginings that the pinto might have stopped to graze, Sundown stalked down the road. Waif of chance and devotee of the goddess "Maybeso," he rose sublimely superior to the predicament in which he found himself. "The only reason I'm goin' east is because I ain't goin' west," he told himself, ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... had in her own palmetto hut an empty cradle scarcely cold, and therefore a necessity at her breast, if not a place in her heart, for the unfortunate Lufki-Humma; and thus it was that this little waif came to be tossed, a droll hypothesis of flesh, blood, nerve and brain, into the hands of wild nature with carte blanche as to the disposal of it. And now, since this was Agricola's most boasted ancestor—since it appears the darkness of her cheek had no effect to make him less white, or ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... curiously. Here was the creature, just like other boys, who knew less of the look of man's world than any one I had ever encountered. To him this overstretching silent sky, this vacant rolling reach of earth, and home, were all of life. What a waif of existence!—but the ponies being ready, we said our good-byes and drove on along fainter tracks, still northward. We talked for a while in that spacious atmosphere—the cheerful talk, half personal, ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... Sullivan. She lives in a pretty cottage quite close to 'The Plough,' and she was only telling me the other day that she wished that she had another child to mother. Sometimes my sister and I have a little East-end waif and stray down for a few weeks in the summer," continued Elizabeth modestly—"some sick child, or occasionally some over-burdened worker, and we always lodge them at Mrs. Sullivan's. It is not much of a place, but we call it 'The Providence House;' the cottage ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... always interested to observe the benevolent work going on about her and to lend a hand if it were possible. One incident flavored with a strong touch of the ludicrous still lingers in my memory. We had fallen in somewhere with a poor little waif of a boy, one easily to be recognized by the practiced eye of to-day as a good specimen of the street Arab. This little being was taken up by us and brought home. His arrival was looked upon with horror by the servants, who recognized existing ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... which these forms impressed me, that I prayed earnestly for a sign,—that it would lighten in some particular region of the heavens, or that I might find a bunch of grapes in the path, when I went forth in the morning. But no sign was given, and I was left a waif stranded upon the ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... far out of range and leads his fellows in twenty minutes to crags the hunter cannot reach in as many hours. Death crouches in the treacherous snow-crust beneath or the poised avalanche above. A false step or an inch's miscalculation of leap may make him a waif for the laemmergeier or land him among the buried villages of the last century. He toils on until success or starvation sends him home. In the former case he out-generals his shy game after a series of manoeuvres to which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... Citizen Delessert sought his friend Jean Souday, who lived close by the Fosse des Tanneurs (Tanners' Ditch.) Jean had a somewhat ancient mare to dispose of, which our landed proprietor thought might answer his purpose. Cocotte was a slight waif, sheared off by the sharp axe of the Place de la Revolution, and Souday could therefore afford to sell her cheap. Fifty francs argent metallique would, Delessert knew, purchase her; but with assignats, it was quite another affair. But, courage! He might ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... the tender things he had said to her the night before. His words had been more fraternal than lover-like; but she had lost their exact sense in the caressing warmth of his voice. He had made her feel that the fact of her being a waif from the Mountain was only another reason for holding her close and soothing her with consolatory murmurs; and when the drive was over, and she got out of the buggy, tired, cold, and aching with emotion, she stepped ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... ask all about," said his mother, "if any one has lost their child. There must be sore hearts somewhere, I'm afraid," and she lifted the tiny waif for Robin to kiss her ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... unexpected departure of "old David" became known. Angus Reay, returning in the afternoon, reported that he had walked half the way, and had driven the other half with a man who had given him a lift in his trap, right into Minehead, but had seen and heard nothing of the missing waif and stray. Coming back to Weircombe with the carrier's cart, he had questioned the carrier as to whether he had seen the old man anywhere along the road, but this inquiry ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... become exquisitely tender, and his lips, as he whispered the heavenly words, were quite close to her ear. He, a great gentleman, loved the miserable little waif whose kindred consisted of a blind father and two half-starved little brothers, and whose only home was this miserable hovel, whence milor's graciousness and ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... a waif and stray, austerely, from conviction, as others do through drink, from vice, from some weakness of character—with deliberation, as others do in despair. This, stripped of its facts, had been Heyst's life up to that disturbing night. Next day, when he saw the girl called Alma, she managed ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... peasantry as represented in Burns's Cotter's Saturday Night or Scott's Heart of Midlothian, when the poor man was part of a social, political, and ecclesiastical order, disciplined, trained, and self-respecting, not a loose waif and stray in a chaotic welter of separate atoms. These were the facts which really suggested his theory of the 'excrescent' population, produced by the over-speculation of capitalists. The paupers of Glasgow were 'excrescent,' and the 'gluts' ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... slipped over the thick bed of waste leaves and stumps which covered the footway, and was almost suffocated by the powerful odour of crushed verdure. At last he halted in a sort of confused stupor, and surrendered to the pushing of some and the insults of others; and then he became a mere waif, a piece of wreckage tossed about on the surface ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... I heard that the birdie was adopted in the pantry, and was being fed "in the intervals of business." When a few days later I was definitely informed that the birdie waif was a starling, then I confess I did begin to long for another little friend such as my former "Dick" had been, and it ended in my receiving Richard the Second, as we called him for distinction, into my own care and keeping, and month after month I was his much-enduring mother. ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... learned anything conclusive. Sometimes I'm sure he is. Then again I doubt it. I think HE really believes he is—bless his heart! At all events, one thing is sure: he has good blood in him from somewhere. Jamie's no ordinary waif of the streets, you know, with his talents; and the wonderful way he has responded to teaching and ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... your hope, Your sole salvation in a universe Where never other form shall comfort you— A waif except for Him. So have all souls— The holy and the pure—from age to age, Learned, homesick for His home. Their frustrate hopes, Their burdens heavier than by mortal strength Can be sustained, their impotence, bow down Each ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... see him. I began dismally to think that after all the whole thing was at an end. He did not live at Elberthal—he had certainly never told me that he did, I reminded myself. He had gone about his business and interests—had forgotten the waif he had helped one spring afternoon, and I should never see him again. My heart fell and sunk with a reasonless, aimless pang. What did it, could it, ought it to matter to me whether I ever saw him again or not? Nothing, certainly, ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... destitute, as desolate as any waif in all that great city. He had been cared for all his life, and now that he was suddenly thrown upon his own resources, he felt helpless, like a rudderless ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... jewel-case which awaited her when Grace was old enough to be trusted with its contents, and given it to her to wear, so it was her very own. But was not this a worthy occasion for bringing of one's best and most precious things? Might not this pearl locket help to bring some little outcast waif into paths of pleasantness and peace? Yes, the locket should be given to the special collection, Grace resolved; but it might not be wise, to divulge the intention to Margery, who had already replied, when she was asked by Grace if she could lend her any money, that nobody would expect a ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... satisfy the anger of their tortured souls. And his last misery lay in this: that he himself could find no day in his life to admire, no one past dream to cherish, no inmost corner of his heart to love. The lowest tramp, the least-heeded waif of the night, might have some ultimate pride, but he himself had nothing, nothing whatever. He was a ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... arrived in the great city, to which he was a stranger, towards evening. A little waif and stray in London, with only five shillings in his pocket! But no fears assailed him. He was encouraged by the great hope of the meeting on the morrow. His heart began beating at the very thought of the loving arms into ...
— A Little Hero • Mrs. H. Musgrave
... aren't a low-brow mechanic. You make me so dreadfully weary when you're mock-humble. As a matter of fact, you're a famous man and I'm a poor little street waif. For instance, the way you talk about socialism when you get interested and let yourself go. Really excited. I'd always thought that aviators and other sorts of heroes ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... alive, when aught beside the maiden's lily hand would have been hard to come by; whereas, you never thought of such an alliance for your kinsman, till you saw Julian lie dead yonder on the field, and knew his land to be a waif free to the first who could seize it. Come, come, my lord, you do less than justice to your gallant kinsman, in wishing him a bride bred up under the milk-pail; for this girl is a peasant wench in all but the accident of birth. I thought you had more deep respect ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... interesting relic would be promptly and reverently deposited among the other Vestiges of Creation, in the Royal Cabinet. In the course of years, some historian would probably have occasion to turn over these curiosities, and would presently light on the scorched but still legible waif. "Why," says he, in astonishment, "I thought the earth was burnt on the 15th of May! To be sure, it was in the night, and nobody saw it go, [think of that, conceited Worldling!] but it was missed by somebody the day after. But here we have a document from the late ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... owner must be a woman, and hastily removed the ribbon, expecting to find embroidered upon it some such name as "Amelie" or "Leontine." But my examination proved futile, the silver ribbon afforded me no clue to the antecedents of my canine waif. And indeed, as I stood contemplating him in some perplexity, the conviction forced itself on my mind that he was not exactly the kind of animal that Amelie or Leontine would be likely to select for a pet. He was a poodle certainly, but of an ill-bred ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... Not even the thought of the girl—this young unfortunate with her strange devotion, who had kept him straight these last five months, who had roused in him a depth of feeling he had never known before—would have availed against that sudden black defection. Why go on—a waif at the mercy of his own nature, a straw blown here and there by every gust which rose in him? Why not have done with it for ever, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... from Paris, France, or Paris, Illinois, and should chance to be in that neighborhood, you will stop at Tony's news stand to buy your home-town paper. Don't mistake the nature of this story. There is nothing of the shivering-newsboy-waif about Tony. He has the voice of a fog-horn, the purple-striped shirt of a sport, the diamond scarf-pin of a racetrack tout, and the savoir faire of the gutter-bred. You'd never pick him for a newsboy if it weren't for his chapped hands and the eternal ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... cemetery, but the coffin then was borne upon the shoulders of four persons of her own sex. Now and again fatigue brought the bearers to a standstill; then they would change shoulders by changing places. And the white coffin, moving up and down as a waif on the swell of the sea, passed on towards the glowing west, where presently the purple-tinted wings of evening ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... his mind that he would interest himself in the drifting waif of a fellow. As he thought of the big, husky farmer and his houseful of grown sons and daughters, he wondered if in their rough, unthinking way they had not quite broken the spirit of the ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... was investigated by a physician, who learned that the girl had been a waif and had been taken in charge by a Protestant clergyman when she was nine years old and brought up as his servant. This clergyman had for years been in the habit of walking up and down a passage of his house into which the kitchen door opened and at the same time reading to himself ...
— The Trained Memory • Warren Hilton
... to the lower orders, and by so doing earned their ill-will, and brought upon himself their persecution. Indeed, so uncomfortable did his new home prove through the malignity of his fellow-pensioners, that the health of the poor waif gave way, and it was found necessary to remove him to the Hotel Dieu of Paris. Here he was noticed by the Abbe de l'Epee, who was attracted by his quiet and aristocratic manners and gentle demeanour, and who at the same time considered that, by reason of his intelligence, he was likely to prove ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... bounds at home, after he had begun to go wrong, by the weight of opinion, he rushed into all excesses when abroad upon business, till at length the vessel of his fortune went to pieces, and he was a waif on the waters of the world. But in feeling he had never been vulgar, however much so in action. There was a feeble good in him that had in part been protected by its very feebleness. He could not sin so much against it as if it had been strong. For many years he had fits ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... he had married Kedzie because she was a pitiful, heartbroken waif who had lost her job and thrown herself on his mercy. He had married her because he adored her and he wanted to protect her and love her under the hallowing shelter of matrimony. He had given her his money and his love and his toil, and they had not interested ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... artist by his work is known." A piece of honey-comb, one day, Discover'd as a waif and stray, The hornets treated as their own. Their title did the bees dispute, And brought before a wasp the suit. The judge was puzzled to decide, For nothing could be testified Save that around this honey-comb There had been seen, as if at home, ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... Achille Paganini. And as if mystery should still enshroud his memory and this, true to his nature, should be carried out in his last will, there are those who maintain that Achille Paganini was not his son at all—only a waif he had adopted. Yet Achille always stoutly maintained the distinction—but what boots it, since he could not play ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... and began to make a languid personal introspection. I had developed a new sensitiveness, the sensitiveness of an alien in an alien land, in the hands of new-made, faithful friends. Without them I should have been a waif of all the world, helpless in the midst of unconquerable surroundings, leading to an inevitable destiny of death. I seemed declimatized, denationalized, a luckless victim of fate ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... down at a little waif asleep in a doorway, a bundle of evening papers under his arm. ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... each man from his scanty store shook out a generous half. To kiss the little mouth stooped down a score of grimy men, Until the sergeant's husky voice said,"'Tention squad!" and then We gave her escort, till good-night the pretty waif we bid, And watched her toddle out of sight—or else 'twas tears that hid Her tiny form—nor turned about a man, nor spoke a word, Till after awhile a far, hoarse shout upon the wind we heard! We sent it back, then cast sad eyes upon the scene around; ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... overestimated his powers in the directions named, but he was not without talents. He could wash and wipe dishes and, incredible as it may seem, he was also literary. Like attracts like, by some law past understanding. To me it still seems a wonderful thing that this little waif of a man with a taste for Tolstoy and a passion for long words should have just then ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... This hapless waif of good fortune had thrown herself upon his protection and had paid him the highest compliment that a woman could pay a man—a faith in him that was in itself ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... few poems which I shall present for your consideration, than by the citation of the "Proem" to Mr. Longfellow's "Waif": ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... little clicking sound to express disapproval. Anthony thought how moral was this little waif at heart—how completely moral she would still be after the inevitable wave came that would wash her off the ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of wings and happy smiling of familiar faces! The panorama concludes with vision of sleeping waif, upon love-beleaguered cot, illumined by mystic halo, and some high-browed watchers, gazing from child to maiden, uttering strangely significant speech about "one of the ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... winter she was brought to us, from a wild country settlement, by a reputed uncle—a gaunt round- shouldered man, with deep eyes and sallow cheeks and weedy-looking beard, as we curiously watched him from the front window stolidly swinging this little, blue-lipped, red-nosed waif over the muddy wagon-wheel to father's arms, like so much country produce. And even as the man resumed his seat upon the thick board laid across the wagon, and sat chewing a straw, with spasmodic noddings of the head, as some brief further conference detained him, I ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... through the shrubbery back to his own study, where, with a little sigh, he put away his chess-men, and heartily hoped that it might not be his favorite adversary who was coming before him to be sent to jail. For although the good rector had a warm regard, and even affection, for Robin Lyth, as a waif cast into his care, and then a pupil wonderfully apt (which breeds love in the teacher), and after that a most gallant and highly distinguished young parishioner—with all this it was a difficulty for him to be ignorant that the law was adverse. More than once he had ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... 'gillyflower' was seen protecting a chrysalis. Warm leaves cherished it, dainty juices aided its digestion, wholesome offshoots nourished it to maturity. Eking out a scant existence between two granite flags, this insignificant waif reared a caterpillar. What man are you, who can say there ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... be the first American girl she had ever met; but she knew how an English girl would feel about being introduced to a vague waif picked up by a brother in a dressmaker's showroom on shipboard. It would have been ungracious to refuse the offered introduction so well meant, but the fifth dryad was not looking forward to it with ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... you this, for fear it would anger you, but—but there must have been a child on board after all.' He held a little box of toys, carefully packed as if by a mother's hand,—common toys, for she was only the captain's wife, and the schooner a small one; the little waif had floated ashore by itself, and Fog had ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... sea of the years that endure not Whose tide shall endure till we die And know what the seasons assure not, If death be or life be a lie, Sways hither the spirit and thither, A waif in the swing of the sea Whose wrecks are of memories that wither As ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... on the Anniversary of Eddy's Death. Extracts from her Journal. Little Susy's Six Teachers. The Teachers' Meeting. A New York Waif. Summer in the Country. Letters. Little Susy's Little Servants. Extracts from her ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... chatting over the day's shopping, etc., and casually mentioned in the way of conversation that they had heard the child crying, and that it was rather remarkable it should be still alive. Needless to say, Miss Slessor was off, and had that waif home. It was truly in an awful state, but just alive. In a marvellous way it had been left by leopards and snakes, with which this bit of forest abounds, and, more marvellous still, the driver ants had not scented it. Other ants had considerably ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... And now lame Tim has driven the cows home; and the dew is falling, the stars are creeping out, and the little crickets and frogs have commenced their evening concert, and still little pet hasn't come! Where is the little stray waif? ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... very anxious to learn the authorship of the following poem, which is to be found in so many scrap-books, and which ever and anon appears as a newspaper waif: ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... son of a drunken, ill-doing father, he had, in the course of an extensive experience of bringing his paternal parent home from gin-palaces and low theatres, imbibed a good deal of the superficial part of the "waif" character, and, but for the powerful and benign influence of his mother, might have long ago entered the ranks of our criminal population. As it was, he had acquired a knowledge of "the world" of London—its thoughts, feelings, ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... once repealing Five Acts of Parliament 'gainst private stealing! 55 But yet from Chisholm who despairs of grace? There's no spring-gun or man-trap in that face! Let Moses then look black, and Aaron blue, That look as if they had little else to do: For Chisholm speaks, 'Poor youth! he's but a waif! 60 The spoons all right? the hen and chickens safe? Well, well, he shall not forfeit our regards— The Eighth Commandment was not made ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... are you asking me all these questions? I'm no fairy prince under enchantment. Just a waif left alone in New York. There are ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... unkempt and haggard waif, I drifted to Great Orme's Head and back again. Senile dementia had already laid its spectral clutch upon my wizened cerebellum when I was rescued by some kindly people, who tell me that they found ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... largely a figment of my own imagination. It is true some little money had been left to me, and had been lost in the way I have indicated, but without him I could never have gone to Oxford, without him I should have been practically a waif. Besides, he was a man of strong personality, and, as ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... spoke, the exemplary old lady plucked a little waif of down from her bombazine dress, and snapped it away jauntily upon the air,—even as, throughout her life, she had snapped from her the temptations of the world. And when, in his Scripture reading that very ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... the few poems which I shall present for your consideration, than by the citation of the Proem to Longfellow's "Waif":— ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... warm because both contended for the honor and could not see any way out of their difficulty, neither consenting to make the slightest concession. Ninon, however, calmed the tempest by suggesting a way out of the difficulty through the hazard of the dice. Luck or good fortune for the waif declared in favor of the warrior, who made a better guardian than the Abbe could possibly have done, and ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... had heard Nancy's story, and he felt a deep interest in the little girl, who once had been a waif. ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... the astonishment in Towsley's eyes as she thus indifferently declined ice-cream, and was amused by it. A whimsical impulse seized her to furnish the waif with all of the dainty which he could possibly consume, and satisfy his craving for one time, at least. In all her life she had never seen any person eat the cold stuff as he did. His mouth opened like ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... career of ambition. One may shut out many things in life that are sweet and wholesome. But it is too early yet for me to look back upon what has happened with equanimity and say that I am glad to be a wanderer on the face of the earth, a homeless man, a waif." ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... glorious faith, married to a Melchite! The mere idea is sacrilege, is blasphemy; I can give it no milder name! I and your father will die childless before we consent! And it is for the love of this woman, whose heart is so cold that I shiver only to think of it—for this waif and stray, who has nothing but her ragged pride and the mere scrapings of a lost fortune, which never could compare with ours—for this thankless creature, who can hardly bring herself to bid me, your mother, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... park and see them. So he strolled along and turned into a park. The gas-lamps shed a yellow glow on the trees, making circles of feeble light on the walks, and the shadows lay deep on the ground. Most of the benches were vacant; but here and there a waif or a belated homegoer sat in drowsy isolation. The stars were too dim even from this vantage-ground to afford Keith much satisfaction. His thoughts flew back to the mountains and the great blue canopy overhead, spangled with stars, and a blue-eyed girl amid pillows whom he used to worship. An arid ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... up with Cyril, a little waif in rags, the bastard child of a woman who had gone away and left him in infancy to the mercy of others. He had been reared in the hovel of a poor gaucho on the de la Rosa land, but the poor orphan, although the dirtiest, raggedest, most mischievous little beggar in the land, was an attractive ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... piping voice had a strange effect upon Allison. He leaned forward, a sort of guarded astonishment in his attitude, to peer at the childish face in the fire-glow. Then he seemed to remember that it was just a bit of a woods-waif who had spoken. But Caleb, who was lazy-brained in some matters, sensed that Steve had put into words Allison's own unspoken thought, just as Allison at that moment voiced the question which he was ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... centered somewhere in her body. Her mind remained cool, detached, critical, even hostile. She disliked the manner of his wooing—not that there should have been any insult to the pride of a nameless little adventurer, Hudson's barmaid, a waif, in being told that she was a "good girl" and fit to be the mother of this young man's children. But Sheila knew instinctively that these things could not be said, could not even be thought of by such a man as Marcus Arundel. She remembered his words about her mother.... ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... out of this first brush with entire distinction. Matt had been in the wrong and had shown that he was angry, yet he had a certain discipline which had enabled him to control his temper, and the issue had ended in defeat for the undisciplined waif who might well have been victorious ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... different. Four or five miles of cross country is reckoned a sufficient justification for the establishment of an independent company, who, without any consultation with the proprietors of the main line, or enquiry as to their ultimate intentions, seize upon the vacant ground as a waif, and throw themselves confidently upon the public. If the matter does not end in a lease, the unfortunate public will be the losers, since it is manifestly impossible that a little Lilliput line can be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Roxbury I found my way—perhaps half an hour's ride on the electric car from Dover Street. I grew an inch taller and broader between the corner of Cedar Street and Mr. Tetlow's house, such was the charm of the clean, green suburb on a cramped waif from the slums. My faded calico dress, my rusty straw sailor hat, the color of my skin and all bespoke the waif. But never a bit daunted was I. I went up the steps to the porch, rang the bell, and asked for the great ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... did I part from a man who had not scrupled to seize me in distress, as he would a waif on a beach. By manning me, the prize-crew would have fallen into the hands of the enemy; and, making a merit of necessity, Mons. Gallois was disposed to be civil to those whom he could not rob. ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... This poor human waif asked no more than to be allowed to cling to whoever would take pity on her and be kind. She now spoke to Jerome Fandor of her childhood without suspecting in the least that the same Jerome Fandor—Charles Rambert—used to play with her in ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... an' shoot up our citizens, an' we don't let half-grown punchers go crazy an' start hangin' folks without reason. Now do we?" A persuasive smile broke out on the harsh face and transformed it. Every waif, every under-dog, every sick woman and child within fifty miles had met that ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... advantageous alliance; that she would in all probability have accepted him had he offered himself to her in his brother's lifetime. Since his thirtieth birthday he had begun to feel himself something of a waif and stray. There had been mistakes in his life, errors he would be very glad to forget in an utterly new existence. It was pleasant to know himself beloved by a proud and virtuous woman, a woman whose love was neither to be easily won ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... gaff of the New Cut, was not quite unfamiliar with the face of the poet-painter. Hence no man was a better judge than he of the low-life pictures of a writer like F. W. Robinson, whose descriptions of the street arab in ‘Owen, a Waif,’ &c., he would read aloud with a dramatic power astonishing to those who associated him exclusively with ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... friends, I find new treasures in it almost every time I go, for it is almost as full of living things as the heavens are of stars, and the tide as it comes and goes brings many a mother there to find a safe home for her little ones, and many a waif and stray to seek shelter from the troublous life ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... Mr. Crow, I don't like to upset your hopes and calculations," said Barnes soberly. "I did that once before, you remember. That was years ago. You were wrong then, and you are wrong now. Shall I tell you why I am interested in this pretty waif ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... to start not only in the eyes of the little waif, but handkerchiefs were in demand among all who stood listening to the story, forgetful of sales or profits for the moment, and intent only upon feeding the little orphan who ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... of me, Steptoe? Is the best thing I can do to shoot myself? Think it over. I'm ready to. I'm not sure that it wouldn't be a relief to get out of this rotten life. I'm all on edge. I could jump out of that window as easily as not. But it wasn't the girl's fault. She's a poor little waif of a thing. You must look after her and keep me from seeing her again, but she's not bad—only—only—Oh, my God! ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... not know who he was nor whence he came—he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood, seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and mothered this waif about whom there was such a mystery—a charming waif, by the way, who could play the banjo better that anyone else ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... the counter-thought, "This is a man!" And the attempt to realize that fact put him yet farther, put him infinitely away. It was like rebounding from a wall. No form is so foreign as the human, if a bar be placed to the sympathy of him who regards it; and for the time this waif of humanity walked in the circle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... shut it again. She understood that it would be a waste of breath to say anything more. If Miss Salome had made up her mind to put this freckled, determined-looking waif, dropped on her doorstep from heaven knew where, into Johnny's room, that was an end of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the horse-platforms from here. You must have them loaded up early." The young man went away wondering what sort of broken-down waif this might be who talked like a gentleman and consorted with Greek muleteers. Dick felt unhappy. To outface an English officer is no small thing, but the bluff loses relish when one plays it from the utter dark, and stumbles up and down rough ways, thinking ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... And with some warmth, "That I deny; 'T is no invention of my own, But something well and widely known To readers of a riper age, Writ by the skilful hand that wrote The Indian tale of Hobomok, And Philothea's classic page. I found it like a waif afloat Or dulse uprooted from its rock, On the swift tides that ebb and flow In daily papers, and at flood Bear freighted vessels to and fro, But later, when the ebb is low, Leave a long waste of sand ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... him off harshly, but this man had looked straight into his eyes, and had at once stopped and questioned him, had singled out the one true statement from a mass of lies, and had given him—not a stale loaf with the top cut off, a suspicious sort of charity which always angered the waif—but his own food, bought for his own consumption. Most wonderful of all, too, this man knew what it was to be hungry, and had even the insight and shrewdness to be aware that the waif's best chance of eating ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... grips the tiller This young waif of the old sea; When the wind comes harder, only Laughs "Hurrah!" ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... perhaps of worse beasts still. Worse beasts, certainly, Sturmi and his comrades would have met, if they had met them in human form. For there were waifs and strays of barbarism there, uglier far than any waif and stray of civilization, border ruffian of the far west, buccaneer of the Tropic keys, Cimaroon of the Panama forests; men verbiesterte, turned into the likeness of beasts, wildfanger, huner, ogres, wehr-wolves, strong thieves and outlaws, many of them possibly mere brutal ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... it was as possible that she might make the distance as he, with his aching back. But on one point he was determined: when they neared the suburbs of New York he would telephone to a certain gray-haired, aristocratically high-nosed old lady and persuade her to send out her car for this waif. ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... alternative to this philosophy. It is not atheism—which is seldom more than a revulsion from superstition—because the adherents of absolute atheism are so few, if any, and its intellectual position is too precarious ever to be a menace. An atheist, if such there be, is an orphan, a waif wandering the midnight streets of time, homeless and alone. Nor is the alternative agnosticism, which in the nature of things can be only a passing mood of thought, when, indeed, it is not a confession of intellectual bankruptcy, ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... else, Polly Ann?" I faltered, my heart racked with the parting. "You found me a homeless waif, and you gave me a home and a father ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Indeed, the small waif by the fire was emitting a series of noises that seemed a queer mixture of low growls and whines—evidence unimpeachable that he had ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... Jack and you and the rest, he called me a little fool and bade me understand that he had not poisoned me as he was paid to do because it was to his advantage to keep me alive. Courtiers would not assassinate a stray waif, he said; there was wealth for the court's ward somewhere; and when I was restored, I was to remember who had slaved for me. Indeed, indeed, I think that he would have married me, but that he feared it would bar him from any property as ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... find his way home to the heart of that enigma whence he had emerged, a nameless waif astray in grim ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... the poor little waif, woke up, had some supper, and told her story. It was like hundreds of others, only her mother was a beautiful lady. She had seen some one in the street this morning that looked just ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... rejoiced that he sacrificed a pig, which was served upon this extemporaneous platter, and he boasted that there was no such dish in Europe. Twenty other ships with gold on board went down in the storm which swallowed up Garay's waif.[E] ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... form of revolt against God, who had allowed such a blind and cruel sequence of events to wreck the lives of two of His innocent children. When he took refuge in the Vatican he must have been clinging to some waif and stray of hope. It was gone now, and there was no use struggling. The nothingness of man against the pitilessness of fate made all the world ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... The little waif, cast to the mercy of the wind and the flood, did not sink. God watched over it. The wooden cradle became a tiny boat; the baby waked up, stretched out his little hands, and cried; then, in the midst ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... would ordinarily be looked upon as altogether prohibitory. She was the wife of a poor minister and school-teacher. To eke out the family income she took boarders. She had five children of her own, who were too young to be of any material assistance, and, in addition, she occasionally harbored a waif that besought her protection when fleeing from slavery. Necessarily the most of her time was spent in the kitchen. There, surrounded by meats and vegetables and cooking appliances, with just enough of the common deal table cleared away to give space for her writing materials, ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... of a tenement waif who rose by his own ingenuity to the office of mayor of his native city. His experiences while "climbing," make a most interesting example of the possibilities of human ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... solve many a riddle, and will this one. Meanwhile, the waif is well cared for and as happy as she can ever be, I fancy. Best not to ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... to pick up a little ragged barefooted child that was crying in the street, and wrap her furs about it and carry it off, smiling and happy, in her arms, with no more thought of the attention such an action would attract than if she had been alone with her waif in the desert. But many and many a time, and in many a way, she had made glad hearts by deeds like that; and now where was she? And was there never a one in the whole wide world to help her to bear her own sorrow and ease ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... shepherd of king Polybus had unbound the feet of the infant, and in consequence of their being much swollen he called him Oedipus, or Swollen-foot. He then carried him to the king, his master, who, pitying the poor little waif, enlisted for him the kind offices of his wife, Merope. Oedipus was adopted by the king and queen as their own son, and grew up in the belief that they were his parents, until one day a Corinthian noble taunted him at a banquet with not being the son of the king. Stung at this reproach ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... would have been much surprised if she could have guessed how much its emptiness interested other people in Rome; how the dowagers chattered about her over their tea, abusing her mother and all her relations for abandoning her like a waif; how the men reasoned about Baron Volterra's deep-laid schemes, trying to make out that his semi- adoption of Sabina, as they called it, must certainly bode ruin to some one, since he had never in his life done anything without a financial object; how the young girls unanimously declared that the ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... straight-jacket, and there was a strap around its loins to which a stout cord was attached, running to the Root of All Evil. The pavement was hot, but there with its bare and tender feet on the hot concrete, the sad-eyed little waif painfully moved about, peering far up into the faces of passers-by for sympathy, but all the time furtively and shrinkingly watching its tormentor. Every now and then the hairy old tramp would jerk the monkey's cord, each time giving the frail creature a violent bodily wrench from ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... the bank, and afraid to plunge in; then another comes behind him and pushes him into the water, and he strikes out, and finds that it is not as cold as he expected, and forthwith enjoys it. I have cut loose from the past. I have become a rover and a waif, and I feel as lighthearted as ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... house ring with their rejoicings. Zillah was soon on a home footing with this little circle. Miss Chute, though rather sharp and very angular, was still thoroughly kind-hearted, and sympathized deeply with the poor waif whom Providence had thrown under her protection. Her kind care and unremitting attention had a favorable effect; and Zillah grew rapidly better, and regained something of that strength which she had lost during the terrors of her late ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... stood, and the negro was tying Master Philip's hat over his ears, my aunt entered the room, bearing in her arms the poor little waif from the massacre. The child had been washed and warmed, and wore over her dress and feet a sort of mantle, which the good woman had hastily ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... to their destruction against regiments of engineers. Certainly, my dear minister, I shall always be delighted to give you my counsel, you whom I used to call my dear child, and if the observations of a living waif can serve you in anything, count on me. Dispose of me, and if by chance I can be useful to you, I shall feel ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... a new member was added to their club. In The Merriweather Girls, On Campers' Trail, they found Enid, then known as Tilly, The Waif of the Woods. The girls with quick thinking, daring and devotion were able to discover the girl's parents, and as a proof of their gratitude, Judge Breckenridge and his wife had invited them on this lovely ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... The waif is born of emergency, and timidly launched on the rough sea of opinion. Critic, touch it gently; it assumes nothing—has nothing to assume; and your scalpel can only pain ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... have found their way into the state-rooms of the other cabin; particularly a nightcap of Mademoiselle Viefville's, that has been discovered in Captain Truck's room, and which that gallant seaman has forthwith condemned as a lawful waif. As he never uses such a device on his head, he will be compelled to wear it next his heart. He will be compelled to convert it into ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
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