London with her towers, her roofs and chimneys-smoke and mist and haze weaving a web-and then beneath it, humming, buzzing, turning, all the lives, all the comedies, all the tragedies-Kings and princes, guttersnipes and duchesses, politicians and newsboys, criminals and saints- Waiting, that golden top, for some hand to set it humming.
"Fortitude"
Hugh Walpole
Unfurl yourselves under my banner, noble savages, illustrious guttersnipes-" "Down wid him!"
"Sketches New and Old, Part 1."
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Now Master Michael, though absolutely deficient in education-his class, a sort of aristocracy of guttersnipes, was so in the pre-Board-School fifties,-was as sharp as a razor already even in the days of Dave Wardle's early accident, and had added a world of experience to his stock in the last few months.
"When Ghost Meets Ghost"
William Frend De Morgan