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Vagabond   /vˈægəbɑnd/   Listen
Vagabond

adjective
1.
Wandering aimlessly without ties to a place or community.  Synonym: rootless.  "A rootless wanderer"
2.
Continually changing especially as from one abode or occupation to another.  Synonyms: aimless, drifting, floating, vagrant.  "The floating population" , "Vagrant hippies of the sixties"



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"Vagabond" Quotes from Famous Books



... I would have managed in two minutes, had you not called me off the chase of yon cut-throat vagabond. But his grace knows the word of a Varangian, and I can assure him that either lucre of my silver gaberdine, which they nickname a cuirass, or the hatred of my corps, would be sufficient to incite any of these knaves to cut the throat of a Varangian, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... by the writers of the English story, were a sort of vagabond soldiers of fortune, who in those ages, under several denominations, infested other parts of Europe as well as England: they were a mixed people, natives of Arragon, Navarre, Biscay, Brabant, and other ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... and vagabond gentlemen. Here and there one finds a vagabond pure and simple, and once in a lifetime one meets a gentleman ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith

... purred the great creature—and Ruth knew well what his villainous smile must look like, although she could not see it. "May the unfortunate vagabond musician speak a ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson

... when married, She's a vagabond, even when housed; And if ever her citadel's carried Her suspicions ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various

... Janet's visit) was, of course, discovered in a touching domestic position! She had a foundling baby asleep on her lap; and she was teaching the alphabet to an ugly little vagabond girl whose acquaintance she had first made in the street. Just the sort of artful tableau vivant to impose on an ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins

... feet deep in dust, and smiled at Urquhart. Rodney watched the two a little cynically from the wall. Peter looked what he was—a limping vagabond tramp, dust-smeared, bare-headed, very much part of the twilight road. In spite of his knapsack, he had the air of possessing nothing and smiling ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... I dare say! And what business had you to think, coming trespassing here on my ground, and breaking the hedges! I'd have you up for that, if for nothing else, you young vagabond!" ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge

... in my life; she's never quiet a minute. I 'ont stand it any longer; now 'tis a subscription for this, now a donation for that, then sixpence for Jack such a one, or a shilling for Sal the other, till I have neither peace nor money. Come you, sir, go and turn that vagabond out directly, or I'll do it before your mother ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... to be empty till I reached Nasirabad, when the big black-browed gentleman in shirt-sleeves entered, and, following the custom of Intermediates, passed the time of day. He was a wanderer and a vagabond like myself, but with an educated taste for whisky. He told tales of things he had seen and done, of out-of-the-way corners of the Empire into which he had penetrated, and of adventures in which he risked his life for ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various

... time before this been received of the death of Wilson, known among the natives by the name of Bun-bo-e. This young man, while a convict, and after he had served the period of his transportation, preferred the life of a vagabond to that of an industrious man. He had passed the greater part of his time in the woods with the natives, and was suspected of instructing them in those points where they could injure the settlers with the greatest effect, and most safety to themselves. In obedience, however, ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins

... held close to the lines of Irving's legend. When the vagabond returns from the mountains after the twenty years' sleep Gretchen is dead. The apex is reached when the old man, sitting dazed at a table in front of the tavern in the village of Falling Water, asks after Derrick Van Beekman and Nick Vedder and other of his cronies. At last, half twinkle ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... of assurance, which he thought best calculated to gain the magistrate's good opinion. "I will tell you all about it, Mr. Burgomaster," said he. "Nothing can be clearer. Such a thing might happen to any one. I do not look like a beggar and a vagabond, do I? And yet—you will understand, that an honest man who ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... billeted upon him, the owner threw open his house, entertained the general and his retinue with unwonted hospitality; though it is said it cost the family a month's scrubbing and scouring to restore all things to exact order, after this military invasion. My vagabond informant seemed to consider this one of the greatest victories ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... brother's soul cries unto me from the ground. And now are you cursed in the blessings of the earth which has received your brother's blood by your hand. When you till the soil it shall not yield unto you her strength. A fugitive and a vagabond shall you be in the earth. And Cain repented and said, "my punishment is greater than I can bear; you have driven me out from among the people, and from your face I shall be hid; and it shall come to pass that if any one should find me that they ...
— The Secret of the Creation • Howard D. Pollyen

... bourgeois gentilhomme[Fr], novus homo[Lat], snob, gent, mushroom, no one knows who, adventurer; man of straw. beggar, gaberlunzie[obs3], muckworm[obs3], mudlark[obs3], sans culotte, raff[obs3], tatterdemalion, caitiff, ragamuffin, Pariah, outcast of society, tramp, vagabond, bezonian[obs3], panhandler*, sundowner[obs3], chiffonnier, Cinderella, cinderwench[obs3], scrub, jade; gossoon[obs3]. Goth, Vandal, Hottentot, Zulu, savage, barbarian, Yahoo; unlicked cub[obs3], rough diamond|!. barbarousness, barbarism; boeotia. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... Rabisson, a vagabond tinker and knife-grinder. He was the only person who knew about "the gold-mine" left to the "miller of Grenoble." Rabisson was murdered for his secret by Eusebe Noel, the schoolmaster of Bout des Monde.—E. Stirling, The Gold Mine, or Miller of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... commander of the first division, fifteenth corps, wrote, February 21: "The town was fired in several different places by the villains that had that day been improperly freed from their confinement in the town prison. The town itself was full of drunken negroes and the vilest vagabond soldiers, the veriest scum of the entire army being collected in the streets." The very night of the conflagration he spoke of the efforts "to arrest the countless villains of every command that were roaming over ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... vagabond, what have you been up to? I beg pardon!"—as he saw Kitty emerge from behind ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... of treachery from these Chawbacons, but we had Enemies in the Chase nevertheless. Here dwelt a vagabond tribe of Bastard Verderers and Charcoal-burners, savage, ignorant, brutish Wretches, as superstitious as the Manilla Creoles. They were one-half gipsies, and one half, or perhaps a quarter, trade-fallen whippers-in and keepers that had been stripped of their livery. They ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... reckoned to be now four or five times more numerous than under the galling system of Nicholas. Political banishments have enormously augmented under his successor. So has the number of the prescribed loose and vagabond class of ordinary criminals, or suspects, who are frequently whisked off to Siberia—for the sake of clearing "Society," as it is called—when the criminals often become mixed up with the political exiles in an indistinguishable mass. This is the very refinement of ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... during the night, until the sixth day after our departure from the ship. By that time we were both considerably changed in health and appearance. Our clothes were torn to rags, our feet and arms were torn and bleeding, and our vagabond air increased with every mile we covered. Of our looks, however, we thought nothing; but we were perforce obliged to think a good deal of our unfortunate stomachs, which had not been either filled or reasonably satisfied since we set foot in those regions. Hunger and privation, in short, were ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher

... and down with agitated steps.) Is it for this that I have sacrificed my nights—that I have mowed down mountains and filled up chasms? For this that I have turned rebel against all the instincts of humanity? To have this vagabond outcast blunder in at last, and destroy all my cunningly devised fabric. But gently! gently! What remains to be done is but child's play. Have I not already waded up to my very ears in mortal sin? Seeing how far the shore lies behind me, it would be madness to attempt ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... had made him cast himself down under a lime-tree in a passion of tears! Why had he resumed hope, why had he struggled on his way to Berlin, since this fate awaited him, this reception was to be meted him? To be refused admission as a rogue and a vagabond, to be rejected of his fellow-Jews, to be hustled out of his dream-city by the overseer of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... only reason she had even considered such an unusual bargain was her contempt for him. He was one who, when he might have remained respected and useful, had deliberately thrown away his chances to become a sot and vagabond. ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... yearlings, are apt to be carried off in the clutches of these birds, in the act of crossing some slope or bare hillside. When they are bigger they have the hounds after them to hunt them down and make away with them. The fleetest-footed would appear to be those of the low marsh lands. The vagabond kind (31) addicted to every sort of ground are difficult to hunt, for they know the short cuts, running chiefly up steeps or across flats, over inequalities unequally, ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon

... groping, ineffectual labor. The head, and face were finely modelled. Unless nature had fashioned them in some vagrant, prankish mood, such elegance of line betokened prior generations in which gentlemen and scholars had played some part—the vagabond scion of a good family, perhaps. A multitude of such had grafted on the pioneer stock of the West, under names that carried no significance in the ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... as personal attendant, or First Lord in Waiting, to the king. At Amboi, one of the Tonga Islands, a vagabond Welshman bends his knee as cupbearer to his cannibal majesty. He mixes his morning cup of "arva," and, with profound genuflections, presents it in a cocoa-nut bowl, richly carved. Upon another island of the same group, where it is customary to bestow ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... swindler; a clever, seedy vagabond, who borrows money or obtains credit by his songs, witticisms, or other expedients.—Kenny, ...
— 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.

... given the King a piece of advice, 'to go to Neuilly'—that is, to rescue himself from the vagabond cortege. ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)

... cause, not the cure, of beggary and wickedness. The monastic foundations, scattered in different countries, could never answer the ends of local and limited succor. Their gates might, indeed, be open to those who knocked at them for alms.... Nothing could have a stronger tendency to promote that vagabond mendicity which severe ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... course, the three came to trust each other more entirely and to speculate upon the strange train of circumstances which had brought them thus remarkably together—the thief, the murderer's accomplice, and the vagabond. ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Synonymy, ii. 358. Mme. D'Arblay (Memoirs of Dr. Burney, ii. 258) says,—'General Paoli diverted us all very much by begging leave of Mrs. Thrale to give one toast, and then, with smiling pomposity, pronouncing "The great Vagabond."' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... kitchen!" cried one of them, turning up his nose as high as he could, and snuffing eagerly. "And, as sure as I'm a half-starved vagabond, I ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... the other beetles, "this fellow whom we received into our family is nothing more than a thorough vagabond. He has gone away, and has left his wife ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... thrust completely through their bodies, and without any serious injury, receive wounds that would prove mortal to the whites. A vagabond who had speared one of those noble rams of ours, of whom honourable mention has been already made, was shot by our shepherd whilst in the act of decamping with the carcase. The ball passed completely through his lungs, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... not to enlist any deserter from the Ministerial army, nor any stroller, negro, or vagabond, or persons suspected of being an enemy to the liberty of America, nor any under eighteen years of age. As the cause is the best that can engage men of courage and principle to take up arms, so it is expected that none but such will be accepted by the recruiting officer. ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... he had bought and paid for before his marriage. He was a cooper by trade, and had set up in business for himself; but his dissolute habit had robbed him of his shop, and reduced him first to a journeyman and then to a vagabond. He earned hardly enough to pay for the liquor he consumed; but, somehow,—and how was the mystery which perplexed everybody who knew the Taylors,—the family always had enough to eat and good clothes to wear. Years before, he had, under the pretence of buying a shop in which to set up in ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic

... The story of a vagabond who flattered your hatred in hope of a reward, the gossip of a distant village, the recollections of ten years back, and finally, your own word, the word of a man who seeks only revenge, the word of a man who swore to make Martin pay dearly for the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... other personal chattel or cattle. If the slaves attempt anything against the masters, they are also to be executed. Justices of the peace, on information, are to hunt the rascals down. If it happens that a vagabond has been idling about for three days, he is to be taken to his birthplace, branded with a redhot iron with the letter V on the breast and be set to work, in chains, in the streets or at some other ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... them both, but he only recognized one. That one was a man named Ralph Temple, generally considered a ne'er-do-well and a vagabond, who lived in a tumble-down shanty in the ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger

... Tou, who is beside me—a snort that seems compounded of mingled laughter and pain, and, looking up, detect Bobby in the act of deftly puncturing one of her long bare legs with a long brass pin, which he has found straying, after the vagabond manner of pins, over ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... hand that Dignam owed Bridgeman the money and if now the wife or the widow contested the mortgagee's right till he near had the head of me addled with his mortgagor under the act. He was bloody safe he wasn't run in himself under the act that time as a rogue and vagabond only he had a friend in court. Selling bazaar tickets or what do you call it royal Hungarian privileged lottery. True as you're there. O, commend me to an israelite! Royal and ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... board). Why, there then—down go bishop and king together. I loathe being beaten; had I fixt my fancy Upon the game I should have beaten thee, But that was vagabond. ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... possible limitation of the franchise is doubtful; it is certain that many who supported it believed, in their ignorance of the practical working of electoral laws, that they were excluding from the franchise only the vagabond and worthless class which has no real place within the body politic. When the electoral lists drawn up in pursuance of the measure appeared, they astounded all parties alike. Three out of the ten millions ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... in these measures, that of local responsibility for local distress, and that of a distinction between the pauper and the vagabond, were more clearly defined in a statute of 1572. By this Act the justices in the country districts, and mayors and other officers in towns, were directed to register the impotent poor, to settle them in fitting habitations and to assess all inhabitants for their support. Overseers were appointed ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... virtue is forgot; Of all those evils which, to stamp men cursed, Hell keeps in store for vengeance, may the worst Light on my head; and in my day of woe, To make the cup of bitterness o'erflow, May I be scorn'd by every man of worth, Wander, like Cain, a vagabond on earth; 200 Bearing about a hell in my own mind, Or be to Scotland for my life confined; If I am one among the many known Whom Shelburne[187] fled, and Calcraft[188] blush'd to own. L. Do you reflect what men you make your ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... from being a robber or a vagabond," replied John, "he is one of the principal landowners in the Hatszegi district. How could I have said such things! He has a castle that is like a fortress. He is like a prince, a veritable prince in his own domains. He is just like a petty sovereign. I must have been downright mad to call ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... neokupata. Vacate forlasi. Vacation libertempo. Vaccinate inokuli. Vacillate sxanceligxi. Vacillating sxanceligxa. Vacuous malplena. Vacuum malplenajxo. Vagabond sentauxgulo, vagisto. Vagary kaprico. Vagrant vagisto. Vague malpreciza. Vain (fruitless) vana. Vain (conceited) vanta. Vain, in vane. Vainly vane. Vale valeto. Valet lakeo, servisto. Valiant brava. Valid ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... you have your share of these too) I dare say not; your vanity has certainly a better taste. And can then the censure of such critics move you?" And Warburton, who had probably been exasperated in the same way, called his History of England the nonsense of a vagabond Scot. ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... King sar berry sorry!" says that Sambo vagabond, then. "Christian George King cry, English fashion!" His English fashion of crying was to screw his black knuckles into his eyes, howl like a dog, and roll himself on his back on the sand. It was trying not to kick him, but I ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens

... one, little and great, Is taught in that vagabond's tragical fate: Of him who is scheming your friend to ensnare, Unless you've ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth

... boy of nine. Now dozing in the warmth of Nature's wine, His face the sun has tampered with, and wrought, By heated kisses, mischief, and has brought Some vagrant freckles, while from here and there A few wild locks of vagabond brown hair Escape the old straw hat the sun looks through, And blinks to meet his Irish eyes of blue. Barefooted, innocent of coat or vest, His grey checked shirt unbuttoned at his chest, Both hardy hands within their usual nest— His breeches pockets—so, he ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... knave, rascal, scamp, rogue, caitiff, reprobate, cheat, swindler, libertine, miscreant, bezonian, vagabond, wretch. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... have a light in your window, the constable will ring the bell, but if you happen to be lying dead in somebody's area, you will be left alone. In this instance as in many others the alarm was raised by some kind of vagabond; I don't mean a common tramp, or a public-house loafer, but a gentleman, whose business or pleasure, or both, made him a spectator of the London streets at five o'clock in the morning. This individual was, as he said, "going home," it did not ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... of one of his stories revealed the fate of all the others, brought far more than a mere disappointment. It brought despair and the recklessness and demoralization which inevitably follow. The public regarded him as a depraved, commonplace vagabond, eminent only in his capacity for evil and meanness, and he now inclined strongly to the same view of himself. True self-respect he had never possessed, and his best substitute, pride, at last gave way. He felt that he was defeated for life, and ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... to harbor Beach," Judge Hargis complained to his wife. "He's tore up our home and he will do the same for Evylee and her husband and for Dr. Hogg's business too. He's a plum vagabond and spoiled. And put on top of that whiskey, and a gun in his hand, the Lord only knows what that ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... admiration of philanthropy because I blew the dirty nose of a little vagabond in the street with my embroidered handkerchief? I wish you could see me cleansing and washing and poulticing the sick women and babies in the infirmary here; I think you would admit that I have what Beatrice commends Benedict for, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... constables at his heels, dismounts the patriot orator from his tub, and hands him over to a plain-spoken business-like justice of the peace, who regards an itinerant Cicero in the same unsympathizing point of view with any other vagabond. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... shedding their last yellow leaves, and the air was full of those faded memories of better days, whirling in wild companies across the road, rushing upward on the breast of some vagabond gust, drifting, spinning, shuddering along the roadside, to lie there at last, quiet, among a host of brothers, with little passing tremors, as if (said Valeria) they were silently sobbing because of their banishment from their ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... short time in the service of Spry, Stromboli & Smith, and my nerves had not yet been exercised by sensitive and eccentric writers. I had led a vagabond career myself, and had frequent reason, in my incipient literary days, to be grieved with publishers' "readers;" and when promoted to the same exalted place, I resolved to be charitable, careful, and obliging—to ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... Whose lot with us was cast, Who saw it out, from first to last: Patient and fearless, tender, true, Carpenter, vagabond, felon, Jew: Whose humorous eye took in each phase Of full rich life this world displays, Yet evermore kept fast in view The far-off ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot

... rattled on baudily; at last after a long silence, something I said made her laugh. I began kissing her, at length she returned it, and next instant I thrust her up against a wall, pushed my hand up her clothes, and my fingers on to her slit, which was as wet as a slop-pail. She cried, "Oh! you vagabond," got my hand away, took to her Heels, and ran off. I after her, ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... pity our professional men do not travel more, especially clergymen, who, though generally learned men, are not deep in the knowledge of their own species. Of course I do not apply this remark to the Methodist clergy; as their vagabond life makes them but too well acquainted with the weaknesses of one portion of the human race, while the alarming and arbitrary dominion they thereby acquire over the minds, bodies, and estates of ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... the town, which struck him as romantic; down every ride of the forest, roseate with the deep and tender glow of sunset;—innumerable and alternative hiding-places, to which would fly simultaneously for refuge, in the uncertain ubiquity of his hopes, his happy, vagabond and divided heart. "We mustn't, on any account," he would warn M. de Forestelle, "run across Odette and the Verdurins. I have just heard that they are at Pierrefonds, of all places, to-day. One has plenty ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... Rogues shall make them, And as such, who ere shall take them, Them shall into prison put; Cupids wings shall then be cut, His Bow broken, and his Arrowes Given to Boyes to shoot at Sparrowes; And this Vagabond be sent, Having had due punishment, To mount Cytheron, which first fed him, Where his wanton Mother bred him, And there, out of her protection, Dayly to receive correction. Then her Pasport shall be made, And ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... admittance into those cities; while proclamation was made by the same arrogant lords, prohibiting any of their vassals from aiding or harboring his Aragonese followers. "A sad spectacle, indeed," exclaims the loyal Martyr, "to behold a monarch, yesterday almost omnipotent, thus wandering a vagabond in his own kingdom, refused even the sight ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... what they please in their reports to their societies, they make no converts to their faith, except the pretended ones of vagrant and vagabond drunkards, who are ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... harmonized in dinginess with the scene. At every barred window, and these were numerous, about a dozen ruffianly heads were thrust together, to regard the chains of their companions.—What a study of physiognomy! The murderer's scowl was there, by the side of the laughing countenance of the vagabond, whose shouts and jokes formed a kind of tenor to the muttered imprecations of the other. Here and there was protruded the fine, open, high-fronted head,—pale, striking, features, and dark looks, of some felon of intellect ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various

... had developed a restless, vagabond spirit in me. I had little heart to work, was unsettled as to my future, and, to add to my other troubles, after reaching Missouri one of my wounds reopened. In the mean time my brother had married, and had a fine farm opened up. He offered me every encouragement and assistance to settle ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... York from New England, I was told by the gentlemen who sent me the Check that a drunken vagabond in the club, having learned something about the two hundred dollars, made the exhibition out of which The Herald manufactured the article quoted by ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... of insects, vagrant and unheeding, Improvident, who of the summer make One long green mealtime, and for winter take No care, aye singing or just merely feeding! Happy-go-lucky vagabond,—'though frost Shall pierce, ere long, your green coat or your brown, And pinch your body,—let no song be lost, But as you lived into your grave go down— Like some small poet with his little ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein

... the door. Prince Augustus, however, did not accept this gracious invitation. He bowed, and said, smiling, "Your majesty will permit me to stand, for my costume is hardly in harmony with gilt chairs, and I believe it behooves a poor vagabond like myself to stand humbly at the door. Moreover, Prussian etiquette requires us to stand in listening to ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... worldly honour to see it succeed. He had idled and misspent too many years, been vaurien and ne'er-do-well too long to be sordid now. Even as the grievous sinner, come from dark ways, turns with furious and tireless strength to piety and good works, so this vagabond of noble family, wheeling suddenly in his tracks, had thrown himself into a cause which was all sacrifice, courage, and unselfish patriotism—a holy warfare. The last bitter thrust of the Duke had touched no raw flesh, his withers were unwrung. Gifted to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... informers who haunted his office was an Irish vagabond who had borne more than one name and had professed more than one religion. He now called himself Taaffe. He had been a priest of the Roman Catholic Church, and secretary to Adda the Papal Nuncio, but had since the Revolution turned Protestant, had taken a wife, and had distinguished ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... welcome, was Corporal Nel. A Boer, he had come up from the Union with Brits. Tiring of war, he chose the nobler part played by the guard that cherishes German captured cattle. Swiftly losing his job owing to an outbreak of East Coast fever among his herd, he took to a vagabond's life. Wanted by the police in the Union, I am told, he avoided his regiment and lived with the natives. Forced to come to me one night with an attack of angina pectoris, he was grateful for the ease from suffering that amyl-nitrite, morphia and brandy gave in that exquisitely painful affliction. ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... was excited. The experience was, to her, almost incredible. Her ideas of Indians had been drawn from newspapers, and from a book or two of narratives of massacres, and from an occasional sight of vagabond bands or families they had encountered in their journey across the plains. Here she found herself sitting side by side in friendly intercourse with an Indian man and Indian woman, whose appearance and behavior were attractive; towards whom ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... continue coaling before 9 A.M. Still we are hurrying the operation, and hope to be able to get through by night. We have all sorts of characters on board, but the crew is working quite willingly; now and then a drunken or lazy vagabond turning up. The sharp fellows thinking I am dependent upon them for a crew are holding back and trying to drive ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... sooner suspect you than him. I never heard the hermit say a word against my uncle, while only yesterday you called him a drunken vagabond." ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger

... at all! Of all the Lacheneurs only Jean remains, and he lives like the vagabond that he is, by poaching and stealing. Day and night he rambles through the woods with his gun on his shoulder. He is frightful to look upon, a perfect skeleton, and his eyes glitter like live coals. If he ever meets me, my account will be ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau

... make him shudder, but it had made of him what he was in the eyes of respectable people, a man careless of common decencies, something between a clever vagabond and a disreputable doctor. But not all respectable people would have had the necessary delicacy of sentiment to understand with what trouble of mind and accuracy of vision Dr. Monygham, medical officer of the San Tome mine, remembered ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... few seamen had as yet entered; but shortly afterwards they came on board in sufficient numbers; and I have sometimes ascribed the facility with which we got the ship manned, not a little to the attractive agency of the diverting vagabond, recently come from town, the fame of whose tricks soon extended over Portsea; such as catching hold of the end of the sail-maker's ball of twine, and paying the whole overboard, hand over hand, from a secure station in the rigging; or stealing the boatswain's ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... heard some one shouting and pounding in the church, and thought it was some drunken vagabond who had stolen in during the service. He came to the door with his keys and called out, "Who ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant

... imaginary authorities, we have really only his unsupported word for the superlative genius of Charles Strickland, the stockbroker who abandoned respectable London to become a Post-impressionist master, a vagabond and ultimately a Pacific Islander. The more credit then to Mr. MAUGHAM that he does quite definitely make us accept the fellow at his valuation. He owes this, perhaps, to the unsparing realism of the portrait. Heartless, utterly egotistical, without conscience or scruple or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various

... fully," answered the woman, "for you will not come inside—not monsieur Goujaud, nor you, nor any other of his vagabond friends. ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... or a sweeper who never sweeps.—This fellow is a vagabond of the first-water, or of the first-mud rather. His stock in trade is an old worn-out broom-stump, which he has shouldered for these seven years past, and with which he has never displaced a pound of soil in the whole period. He abominates ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various

... high trees and pleasant villages should compass you 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... leads to any material benefit," Weston admitted. "After all, I think, one has to be a vagabond before one can ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... piddle among her books then, a vagabond little collection of them. Textbooks, in many cases her initials and graduating year printed in lead pencil along the edges. Rolfe's complete edition of Shakespeare. A large illustrated edition of Omar Khayyam. Several gift volumes of English poets. Complete set of small red ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... for thy good. I would save thee from the life of an outlaw or vagabond, and foresaw that unless I renounced thee utterly, thy love would mar thy fortunes, and bring ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... any vagabond he slept Or outcast from the homes of men, there crept Unto him lying in such sorry sort A something fairer than the kingliest court In all the peopled world had witness of— Even the shadow of the throne ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... most other fellows have. Usually, when a fellow says he has had no chance in life, the fact really is that he has been too lazy to take his chance. But I don't believe that Tag ever had a real, sure-enough chance. He has spent his days with a drunkard and a vagabond." ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock

... should be lugged and hauled through them, "bumped into paths of peace," as Dickens says. Just as justice requires to be tempered by mercy, so energy requires to be tempered by inaction. But the difficulty is for the indolent, the dreamy, the fastidious, the loafer, the vagabond. Energy is to a large extent a question of climate and temperament. What of the dwellers in a rich and fertile country, where a very little work will produce the means of livelihood, and where the temperature does ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... vast height, contrived so that it fell into the parson's hand, which it cut dreadfully. The parson flew into a great rage, more particularly as everybody laughed at him, and, being a magistrate, ordered his clerk, who was likewise constable, to conduct me to prison as a rogue and a vagabond, telling my comrades that if they did not take themselves off, he would serve them in the same manner. So Ned hopped off, and Giles ran after him, without making any gathering, and I was led to Bridewell, my mittimus following at the end of a week, the parson's hand not permitting ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... the pride of this presumptuous beast, Join your Arabians with the Soldan's power; Let us unite our royal bands in one, And hasten to remove Damascus' siege. It is a blemish to the majesty And high estate of mighty emperors, That such a base usurping vagabond Should brave a king, or wear a ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe

... and the orthodox Presbyterians denounced Cennick as a Covenanter, a rebel, a spy, a rogue, a Jesuit, a plotter, a supporter of the Pretender, and a paid agent of the Pope. Again and again he was accused of Popery; and one Doffin, "a vagabond and wicked fellow," swore before the Ballymena magistrates that, seven years before, he had seen Cennick in the Isle of Man, and that there the preacher had fled from the arm of the law. As Cennick was pronouncing the benediction at the close of a service in the market-place at Ballymena, ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... at, you idle, worthless v-vagabond?" said Nestie to Speug. "Come along and give a hand to Moossy," who was so pleased to get some help in the lonely place that he forgot the revealing of his little secret. With Speug in the shafts, who had the strength of a man in his compact little ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... by the necessity of adapting herself to her aunt's habits. She saw that at all costs she must keep Mrs. Peniston's favour till, as Mrs. Bart would have phrased it, she could stand on her own legs. Lily had no mind for the vagabond life of the poor relation, and to adapt herself to Mrs. Peniston she had, to some degree, to assume that lady's passive attitude. She had fancied at first that it would be easy to draw her aunt into the whirl of her own activities, but there ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... what he deemed a great wrong, he gave the letter into the hands of the officials, and now whenever he secures a position the road that employs him is forced to let him go again or have a strike. He is an outcast—a vagabond, so far as the union is concerned. Ah, the scars of that conflict are deep in the souls of men. The blight of it has shadowed hundreds of happy homes, and ruined many ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman

... being ragged by his friends. He persisted: "Lieutenant, you ought to run 'em out as undesirables or under the vagabond law! They're no good—they won't work—and they're the toughest lookin' lot I ever did see! Sure and if I had my way I'd toss the lot into Sears' crocodile hole—the dirty, ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... Till Eulenspiegel, the hero of the tales, is a waggish vagabond who goes about the country,—originally Brunswick, it would seem,—working at this and that and playing pranks on people. The earliest extant edition of the Eulenspiegel stories—that here followed—was printed at Strassburg in 1515. 2: Lauben, 'loggia,' 'balcony' (of the town hall). 3: ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas

... me to be Irish, and I examined him as well as I was able in the darkness. He was what I expected, a bedraggled vagabond with tear-stains on his dirty cheeks and a vast shock of hair which I well knew would look, in daylight, like a burning haycock. And as I examined him he just as carefully examined me. I could see ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane

... merciful to me a sinner"; not at all being sensible either what sin is, or of their need of mercy. And such sinners shall find their speed in the Publican's prayer, far otherwise than the Publican sped himself; it will happen unto them much as it happened unto the vagabond Jews, exorcists, who took upon them to call over them that had evil spirits, the name of the Lord Jesus; that were beaten by that spirit and made fly out of that house naked and wounded. (Acts 19:13-16) Poor sinner, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... whose blood as my blood with the fire of the Spring is aflame, We did well, when the red roads called, that we heeded the call and came— Came forth to the sweet wise silence where soul may speak sooth unto soul, Vine-wreathed and vagabond Love, with the goal of ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis

... you imagine, Tibert," quoth he, "that Reynard ought not to be complained of? The whole world knows that he is a murderer, a vagabond, and a thief." ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown

... rural guard ran to find the key of the prison and the vagabond was locked in and double-locked, not to forget the outside ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... or stands in the trenches, the peasant hedges and ditches, or the mechanic plies his ceaseless task, because the one will not be called a coward, the other a rogue: but let the one turn deserter and the other vagabond, and there is an end of him. The grinding law of necessity, which is no other than a name, a breath, loses its force; he is no longer sustained by the good opinion of others, and he drops out of his place in society, a useless clog! ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... The vagabond took his right to the road, as he had taken his other right to beg his dinner, until, half-way down to the landing, he was met by an opportunity to do a ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard

... that poor Biler's life had been, since yesterday morning, rendered weary by the costume of the Charitable Grinders. The youth of the streets could not endure it. No young vagabond could be brought to bear its contemplation for a moment, without throwing himself upon the unoffending wearer, and doing him a mischief. His social existence had been more like that of an early Christian, than an innocent child of the nineteenth century. He had been stoned ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... last obtained a Letter from our Lord the Pope according to my wishes, I turned homewards again. I had to pass through a certain strong town on my road; and lo, the soldiers thereof surrounded me, seizing me, and saying: "This vagabond (iste solivagus), who pretends to be Scotch, is either a spy, or has Letters from the false Pope Alexander." And whilst they examined every stitch and rag of me, my leggings (caligas), breeches, and even the old shoes that I carried ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... away from home with—for sole wealth—a Blake in one pocket and an Aeschylus in the other. In his struggle for life in London, fragile in body and sensitive in soul, he sank lower and lower, from selling boots to errand-boy, and finally for five years living as a vagabond without home or shelter, picking up a few pence by day, selling matches or fetching cabs, and sleeping under the archways of Covent Garden Market at night. At last, in the very depth of his misery, he was sought out and rescued by the editor of the paper to whom he had sent Health and Holiness ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon

... revolutionary government, of their bloody executions, of their revolutionary tribunal, of the rapid movement of their revolutionary army with the Corps of justice and the flying guillotine before it; forgetting that not one of them is not liable to its stroke on the accusation of the greatest vagabond on board. They asked me with triumph if yesterday had not been Sunday. 'Oh,' said they, 'the National Convention have decreed that there is no Sunday, and that the Bible is all a lie.'" After such an experience it is not difficult to account for the keen and almost ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... Behold the earth What they saw His last letter A dialogue A wish Justice An old song Oh, poor, sick world Praise day Interlude The land of the gone-away-souls The harp's song The pendulum An old-fashioned type The sword Love and the seasons A naughty little comet The last dance A vagabond mind My flower room My faith Arrow and bow If we should meet him Faith The secret of prayer The answer A vision ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... say that the laborer of the olden time did not work, and got along by hook or crook; that, as it was a miracle if he lived with such wages, anyway, he had every inducement to become a vagabond. But all this had "been seen to." Such ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... again—Torpenhow, who was alive and strong, and lived in the midst of the action that had once made the reputation of a man called Dick Heldar: not in the least to be confused with the blind, bewildered vagabond who seemed to answer to the same name. Yes, he would find Torpenhow, and come as near to the old life as might be. Afterwards he would forget everything: Bessie, who had wrecked the Melancolia and so nearly wrecked his life; ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... it, my being in this condition!—I who fluttered my wings so much more than you, I whose imagination was so vagabond! My sins have been greater than yours, and I am the more severely punished. I have bidden farewell to my dreams: I am Madame la Presidente in all my glory, and I resign myself to giving my arm for ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... weather-beaten face which turned sharply towards the bushes as the visitors appeared; they also lighted up the tinker's cart in the background, the browsing pony close by, the implements of the tinner's trade strewn around on the grass. It was an alluring picture of vagabond life, and Neale suddenly compared it with the dull existence of folk who, like himself, were chained to a desk. He would have liked to sit down by Tinner Creasy and ask him about his doings—but the policeman had ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher

... cannot expect to make me swallow any more of them. Our cash box is better furnished than yours, therefore come over to us. Your young man is as much Frescas as I am chevalier and you baron. You picked him up on the frontier of Italy; he was then a vagabond, to-day he is an adventurer, and that's the whole ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac

... "Oh, yes! Oh, we perceive! Oh, no doubt! Oh, my! Oh, goodness! Oh, tempora! Oh, Moses!" Why, the fellow is all O! That accounts for his reasoning in a circle, and explains why there is neither beginning nor end to him, nor to anything he says. We really do not believe the vagabond can write a word that hasn't an O in it. Wonder if this O-ing is a habit of his? By-the-by, he came away from Down-East in a great hurry. Wonder if he O's as much there as he does ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... morsel of gossip from his mouth. The murder out, Uncle Peter's grief is pitiful. How much sharper than a serpent's tooth is a prophecy of evil unfulfilled! It's not that he considers I've gone to work, incorrigible vagabond that I am; it's the fact that my intolerable idling has produced money which sets his teeth on edge—money, the golden calf of ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... by me in calling"—the vagabond had finished his story and was standing, a very abject figure, among the books—"and in giving me the message from your friend. I am truly thankful that he is now labouring—in iron, did you say? and I hope he ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... Lady Murray, an influential lady of high rank there, who takes an extraordinary interest in music, not to mention the many invitations I have received from various parts of England. But I cannot wander about from one place to another like a strolling musician; such a vagabond' life is hateful to me, and not conducive to my health. I intend to remain in Scotland till the 29th of August, on which day I go as far as Manchester, where I am engaged to play in public. I shall play there twice without orchestra, and receive for this 60 [pounds]. The ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... Guamos; nations, proud of their savage independence, whom it is difficult to fix to the soil, or habituate to regular labour. The Spanish missionaries characterise them well by the name of Indios andantes (errant or vagabond Indians), because they are perpetually moving from place to place. To the east of the Orinoco, between the neighbouring sources of the Caura, Cataniapo, and Ventuari, live the Macos, the Salives, the Curacicanas, Parecas, and Maquiritares, mild, tranquil tribes, addicted to agriculture, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... not much mistaken he is in reality a detective—I think I remember him in the Mallory case—and is, doubtless, looking up evidence in regard to the lady's second and most unfortunate marriage, either at the instigation of her vagabond husband or ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... slim knapsacks, and much soiled by a fortnight on the road. I was in knickerbockers and khaki shirt; Mifflin in greasy gray flannels and subfusc Norfolk. Our only claims to gentility were our monocles. Always take a monocle on a vagabond tour: it is a never-failing source of amusement and passport of gentility. No matter how ragged you are, if you can screw a pane in your eye you can awe ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... break the law and extort money, leave my house this instant: and if ever you dare to utter this absurd and malicious slander, you shall lie within four stone walls, and learn what it is for a shabby vagabond to come without a witness to his back, and libel a man of property ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... he was challenged by a soldier, who, having learned he had no passport, carried him before a magistrate, by whom he was forthwith condemned as a vagabond, and remitted to the custody of a recruiting sergeant. This worthy, in turn, introduced him to the commanding officer, who politely gave our traveller the choice of serving his Imperial and Apostolic Majesty, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various

... he was surprised to find the old vagabond of so resolute a temper, and, fearing some fresh violence or treachery, set forth upon his quest for three sure men. The great bulk of the men had now deserted the deck, which was continually wetted with the flying sprays, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of my fairly large acquaintance, is in love with respectability. A street-dog was once adopted by a lady. While still an Arab, he had done as Arabs do, gambolling in the mud, charging into butchers' stalls, a cat-hunter, a sturdy beggar, a common rogue and vagabond; but with his rise into society he laid aside these inconsistent pleasures. He stole no more, he hunted no more cats; and conscious of his collar, he ignored his old companions. Yet the canine upper class was never brought to recognise the upstart, and from that hour, except for human countenance, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson



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