"Fag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that an attempt is being made by some of the big boys to introduce a system of fagging into the school, bind ourselves to resist such a proceeding by every means in our power, and under no consideration to obey any boy who may order any of us to fag ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... horse was beginning to fag a bit, but the sun was setting, for the attack had taken place in the afternoon. I kept on till it was too dark for me to make out my pursuers, some of whom were not more than three hundred yards behind me; then, while my horse was going at full gallop I leapt of? without checking ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... the school of "Impressionists," and, although he has a liking for exceptional situations, wherefrom humanity does not always issue without serious blotches, he yet is free from pessimism. He has no nervous disorder, no "brain fag," he is no pagan, not even a nonbeliever, and has happily preserved his wholesomeness of thought; he is averse to exotic ideas, extravagant depiction, and inflammatory language. His novels and tales contain the essential qualities which attract and retain the reader. Some of his works ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... The hour-hand of his watch crept to ten, to eleven, to twelve. Roberts rose occasionally, stretched himself to avoid any chance of cramped muscles, and counted stars by way of entertainment. He had spent more diverting evenings, but there was a good chance that the fag end of this one would be lively enough ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... was coming to look forward to that last hour of the school week, very often to schoolgirls a wasted hour at the fag end of things. ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... "for Number So-and-So." Perhaps one had to nip up to the Creameries to get a slice of salmon, or cutlets, or sausages. Fagging at Harrow—which varies slightly in different houses—is hard or easy according to the taste and fancy of the fag's master. Some of the Sixth Form at the Manor made their fags unlace their dirty football boots. Kinloch, who since he left the nursery had been waited upon by powdered footmen six feet high, now found, to his disgust, that he had to varnish Trieve's patent-leathers ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... there entered the room a little boy, the scion of a noble house, bearing a roasted goose, which he had carried from the kitchen of the opposite inn, the Christopher. The lower boy or fag, depositing his burthen, asked his master whether he had further need of him; and Buckhurst, after looking round the table, and ascertaining that he had not, gave him permission to retire; but he had scarcely disappeared, ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... leisurely and looked about for a comfortable breakfast. There was something stronger than work in the world, especially to-day. He longed to meet the sunlight and earthly blessedness; it was such a small thing to fag one's self out at the laboratory. Half unconsciously he strolled toward the livery stable where he kept his nag. And then a quarter of an hour later he found himself on the turnpike, trotting along the fresh-water meadows, sniffing the air and the scented brooks. He laughed ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... that"—and good, lumbering John Peerybingle, her husband, often so near to something or another very clever, according to his own account, and Boxer, the carrier's dog, "with that preposterous nothing of a fag-end of a tail of his, describing circles of barks round the horse, making savage rushes at his mistress, and facetiously bringing himself to sudden stops,"—all bear upon them unmistakably the sign-manual ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... board yesterday. He looks thin. The fag in a brig is very great; and I see no prospect of his either making prize-money, or being made post, at present: but, ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... happy; and then it would rather be from some special piece of drollery that the joy of the moment would come, than from the discussion of ordinary topics. After so many years his old friends remember the fag-ends of the doggerel lines which used to drop from him without any effort on all occasions of jollity. And though he could be very sad,—laden with melancholy, as I think must have been the case with him always,—the feeling ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... his parents, and without the consent of his master, for a day or half of a day. The boy did not disappear because he was ill, for he was on such occasions outrageously well: nor because he was overburdened by work, for the truants always guarded themselves against brain fag; nor because he wanted to hang about the streets, or smoke in secret places. He was simply seized with the passion of the open air and of the country. To tramp through the bosky woods, hunting for birds' eggs and watching the ways of wild animals; to guddle for trout under the stones of some clear ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... ministerial hacks who represented British constituencies, that they carried this and several other measures to which a similar opposition was offered. The remark that the railway scheme of Sir Charles Wood was the fag-end of Lord George Bentinck's measure, was received with loud cheers by the house, and was repeated much "out of doors." During these debates the grossest ignorance of Ireland, her people, resources, and financial relation to Great Britain, was evinced by English ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... properties as nerve and brain foods. The proprietors of these concoctions seemingly flourish like green bay trees and spend many thousands of pounds per annum in advertising. From which it may be deduced that sufferers from nervous exhaustion and brain fag number millions. And surely only a sufferer from brain fag would suffer himself to be led blindly into wasting his money, and still further injuring his health, by buying and swallowing drugs about whose properties ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel
... dissolved, and to set aside the Protector, who soon afterwards resigned. On the 21st April, Lenthall, the old Speaker, with as many members of the Long Parliament as could be brought together, met in the House, and opened their session. The Parliament thus formed, as being the fag-end of the old Long Parliament, obtained the name of the Rump Parliament. Lambert's hopes and aims were raised by his success against Sir George Booth in the August following, and jealousies soon arose between his party in the army and the Rump. The Parliament would have ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... he positively looks younger than he did when he was a Cabinet Minister. There is colour where there used to be nothing but deadly pallor—freshness where the long and terrible drudgery of official life had left a permanent look of fag and weariness. Sir Charles Dilke has taken up the broken thread of his life just as if nothing had occurred in that long period of exile and suffering. He is never out of his place: attends every sitting as conscientiously as if he were in office and responsible for ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... under a system of cricket, foot-ball, and paper-chases, from four to five days a week, which provided for three lawful cuts of a ground-ash if any boy absented himself from these entertainments. He became a rumple-collared, dusty-hatted fag of the Lower Third, and a light half-back at Little Side foot-ball; was pushed and prodded through the slack backwaters of the Lower Fourth, where the raffle of a school generally accumulates; won his "second-fifteen" cap at foot-ball, enjoyed the ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... indigenous, do duty as summer, the state of things is so evidently beyond a joke, that no idea of trifling therewith enters into the most unsophisticated mind. Life is reduced to something very like a resignation of the sturdy substance of the day, and a diligent employment of the two fag-ends. The intervening hours must be slept away, or read away, or somehow employed without the requisition of corporeal activity. And, considering that these are the hours during which musquitoes vex not, and lesser tormentors ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... are no new thing belonging to the fag-end of this century. Young Adams wrote letters over the "nom de plume" of Pro Bono Publico, and then replied to them over the signature of Rex Americus. He did not adopt as his motto, "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth," for he wrote with both hands and each ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... first meeting in the latter's territory. "Come aboard, sir," occurred to him for a moment as a happy phrase, but he discarded it. To make the situation more awkward, Mr Kay did not observe him at first, being occupied in assailing a riotous fag at the other end of the table, that youth having succeeded, by a dexterous drive in the ribs, in making a friend of his spill half a cup of coffee. Kennedy did not know whether to sit down without a word or to remain standing until Mr Kay ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... popular as it has since become, or perhaps Mr. Dodge had doubts of his ability to render it with accuracy, but, as if to inform all whom it might concern what it was that he was executing, he hummed aloud the fag-end of the tune, keeping time with his fist upon his knee, "Pop goes the weasel, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... by, Mervin leant out of the window to read their names, but was never successful. Cigarettes were smoked, the carriage was full of tobacco fumes and the floor littered with "fag-ends." Rifles were lying on the racks, four in each side, and caps, papers and equipment piled on top of them. The Jersey youth made ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... of the lands appertaining to the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and about three miles, a furlong, and few odd yards from that oft-recorded good town, a dry stone wall, some thirty inches in height, runs from the lofty and perpendicular sea-banks, over a portion of what may be termed the fag-end of Lammermoor, and now forming a separation between the laws of Scotland and the jurisdiction of the said good town; and on crossing to the northern side of this humble but important stone wall, you stand on the lands of Lamberton. Rather more than a stone-throw from ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... estat en greu preyzo Per vostra guerra e n'ai a vostro pro Fag maynt assaut et ars maynta maiso Et a Messina vos cobri del blizo; En la batalha vos vinc en tal sazo Que.us ferion pel pietz e pel mento Dartz e cairels, ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... moribund period of the social solstice when the fag end of the season had fizzled out like a wet firecracker in the April rains; and Geraldine and Kathleen were tired, mentally and bodily. And Scott was buying polo ponies from a British friend and shotguns from a needy gentleman ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards start, and then pass her under way; but always at the fag end of the race she'd get excited and desperate like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side among the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust and raising ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... Violet tells her a story. They are almost to the end when the gentlemen come, but Cecil is exigeant, and the professor politely insists. He is fond of even the fag-end of a story, so that it turns out well; and then he will entertain the little miss. Violet finishes with blushes that make her more charming every moment; and Grandon finds a strange stirring in his soul as he watches this pretty girl. He ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... fag end of the summer, when all his well-laid plans had one by one gone agley, chance brought to Green an adventure—sheer chance and a real adventure. The circumstance of a deranged automobile was largely responsible—that and the added ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... proceed to dust and wash her cherished china. From much loneliness she had formed a habit of talking quietly to herself during these operations; but no one could have understood her, for she only uttered the fag-ends of her ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... indeed, took a real pleasure in some classical authors—Homer and Horace, for example—as any lad who has turned sixteen who has brains, and is not absolutely idle, is likely to do. He was strong, active, popular; he had passed from the purgatorial state of fag to the elysium of fagger. But still his blood seemed turned to champagne, and his muscles to watch-springs, when the cab, which carried him and his portmanteau, passed through the gate into the drive which curved up to the door of Holly Lodge. For Holly Lodge contained ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... yus, there isn't many left that started out so cheerily; There was no bands a-playin' and we 'ad no autmobeels. Our tummies they was 'oller, and our 'eads was 'angin' wearily, And if we stopped to light a fag the 'Uns was on our 'eels. That rotten road! I can't forget the kids and mothers flyin' there, The bits of barns a-blazin' and the 'orrid sights I sor; The stiffs that lined the wayside, me own pals ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... Harrow indicated a clever, but not an extraordinary boy. He formed a few friendships there, in which his attachment appears to have been, in some instances, remarkable. The late Duke of Dorset was his fag, and he was not considered a very hard taskmaster. He certainly did not carry with him from Harrow any anticipation of that splendid career he was destined to ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... were dropping heavy stuff on the station, and he was getting some casualties out of a Red Cross train. A shell burst just down the embankment, and his two orderlies ducked for it under the carriage, but old Drennan never turned a hair. 'Better have a fag,' he said to the Scottie he was helping. 'It's no use letting Fritz put one off ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... say the daughter feels, "It isn't to please myself that I slave at my lessons; mother would be vexed if I didn't; and it's very hard that I should be both hindered in them and made to do other things as well,—it's quite bad enough in term-time to have to fag at lessons." But just consider, for a moment, this "fagging at lessons:" you feel that in so doing you are making a concession to your mother, for which she ought to show unbounded gratitude by all manner of sweetmeats in the holidays. But who profits by these lessons,—your mother, who ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... consummate artist in oratory, who could give such weighty and brilliant expression to the feelings of his hearers and the doctrines of his party, had less originating power, whether of intellect or of will, than any other man of equal eminence that ever lived. He adhered to the fag end of the old party, until it was absorbed, unavoidably, with scarcely an effort of its own, in Adams and Clay. From 1815 to 1825 he was in opposition, and in opposition to old Federalism revived; and, consequently, we believe that posterity will decide that ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... I guess to sort o' pacify him, broke out kinder a singin' in a tone full of fag, "'In Adam's fall, we sinned all.'" ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... began life as the fag of Bishop Ryle at Eton—the one now occupying the Deanery of St. Paul's; the other the Deanery of Westminster, both scholars and the friendship still remaining. He was a shy and timorous boy. No one anticipated the amazingly brilliant career which followed at Cambridge, ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... for?' demanded Peter, still in a tone of remonstrance. Toffy had been his fag at Eton, and Peter had got into the habit of taking care of him. He knew his friend's constitution better than most people did, and he expended much affection upon him, and endeavoured without any success to make him take care of himself. 'Why didn't you sleep in your bed like a Christian?' he ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... laugh at him whenever he could. He bullied him in the play-ground. He proposed to introduce fagging at Mr. Gray's. He praised it as a splendid institution of the British schools, simply because he wanted Gabriel as his fag. He wanted to fling his boots at Gabriel's head that he might black them. He wanted to send him down stairs in his shirt on winter nights. He wanted to have Gabriel get up in the cold mornings and bring ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... my inclination that I fag for the booksellers; but what can I do? My poverty and not my will consents. The income of my office is only reversionary, and my private fortune much limited. My poetical success fairly destroyed my prospects of professional success, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... there is another boat out there somewhere, and she must be prevented from coming alongside at all costs. Light another port-fire forward, there!" as the man in the fore-rigging dropped the fag-end of the first into the water alongside and the blackness of darkness once more enshrouded us ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... into the position of a beautiful satellite. His illness, he assured his visitor with a thin-lipped emphasis, was "quite temporary, quite the sort of thing that might happen to anyone." He had had a queer little benumbing of one leg, "just a trifle of nerve fag did it," and the slight asthma that came and went in his life had taken advantage of his condition to come again with a little beyond its usual aggressiveness. "Elly is going to take me off to Marienbad next week or the week after," he said. "I shall have a ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... after we have ourselves declared that we do not represent the country. Do these gentlemen opposite mean to say that they will legislate on a question affecting the rights of people yet unborn, with the fag-end of a parliament dishonoured by its own confessions of incapacity?" Hincks in his "Reminiscences," printed more than three decades later than this ministerial crisis, still adhered to the opinion that the government was ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... see a little subdivision of the grand Utilitarian Armament come to light even in insulated England? A living nucleus, that will attract and grow, does at length appear there also; and under curious phasis; properly as the inconsiderable fag-end, and so far in the rear of the others as to fancy itself the van. Our European Mechanizers are a sect of boundless diffusion, activity, and co-operative spirit: has not Utilitarianism flourished in high places ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... Him? Grannie's white-headed boy, you mean? Oh, he's all right. (Heavily.) A bit slow on the uptake, of course. I wish he'd occasionally take that fag-end out ...
— Night Must Fall • Williams, Emlyn
... from this sublunary sphere, the Rev. Charles Denham, through the interest of Lord Patronage, whose fag he had been while at Eton, obtained the vacant rectorship. This was considered by the good folks of the district to be a fortunate circumstance, and things went smoothly on as in the good old time. But on the death of her parents Emily Barton, as the reader already knows, ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... I have no other alternative." He walked to the fireplace and warmed himself, humming the fag end of a tune in a rich convivial bass voice. "What does your side say?" he went on; "now pray tell me—what does ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... express the condition of all overworked, ill-paid, badly-housed workers in our cities. It sums up the industrial or economic aspects of the problem of city poverty. Scarcely any trade in its lowest grades is free from it; in nearly all we find the wretched "fag end" where the workers are miserably oppressed. This is true not only of the poorest manual labour, that of the sandwich-man, with his wage of 1s. 2d. per diem, and of the lowest class of each manufacturing trade in East and Central London. It is true of the relatively ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... prowling in sequestered lanes and broken-down barns out of bounds on the off-chance that he might catch some member of his house smoking there. As if the whole of the house, from the head to the smallest fag, were not on the field watching Day's best bats collapse before Henderson's bowling, and Moriarty hit up that marvellous and unexpected fifty-three at the end ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... Dam from all sides. He was counselled to live on meat, to be a vegetarian, to rise at 4 a.m. and swim, to avoid all brain-fag, to run twenty miles a day, to rest until the fight, to get up in the night and swing heavy dumb-bells, to eat no pudding, to drink no tea, to give up sugar, avoid ices, and deny himself all "tuck" and everything else that makes life ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... residence, Allington Street, for so the road is called, turns suddenly round towards the church, and at the point of the turn is a pretty low iron railing with a gate, and with a covered way, which leads up to the front door of the house which stands there, I will only say here, at this fag end of a chapter, that it is the Small House at Allington. Allington Street, as I have said, turns short round towards the church at this point, and there ends at a white gate, leading into the ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... his heart had risen as it rose now. It had been the fag end of a long party, and Donnegan, rousing from a drunken sleep, staggered to the window. Leaning there to get the freshness of the night air against his hot face, he had looked up, and saw the white face of the moon going up the sky; and ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... who passed through Paris. One night at a big dinner at the British Embassy I was sitting next to the Prince of Wales (late King Edward). He said to me: "There is an old friend of your husband's here to-night, who will be so glad to see him again. They haven't met since he was his fag at Rugby." After dinner he was introduced to me—Admiral Glynn—a charming man, said his last recollection of W. was making his toast for him and getting a good cuff when the toast fell into the fire and got burnt. The two men talked together for some time in the smoking-room, recalling all sorts ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... Fag, v. [fag] Desfallecer desmayarse de cansancio; trabajar demasiado por otro. Mapat, mapagal; mapat ...
— Dictionary English-Spanish-Tagalog • Sofronio G. Calderon
... daresay you would like it well enough! Always at me to slave for him with stupid architectural drawings and stuff, as if I was only a sort of clerk or fag! And boring me to read great dull books, and preaching to me about them, expecting to know what I think! ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... face blanched with fear, and his terror was so manifest that the bully, who was threatening him with all manner of evils, began to enjoy himself. Chalkeye, returning from watering the horses, got back in time to hear the intemperate fag-end of the scolding. He glanced at Hughie, whose hands were trembling in spite of him, and then darkly at the brute who was attacking him. But he ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... real scholar, educated at Harrow, and an honor-man at Cambridge, but, having married young, he had to take up the calling of "grinder" and literary fag for a living. Mr. Pocket, when annoyed, used to run his two hands into his hair, and seemed as if he intended to lift himself by it. His house was a hopeless muddle, the best meals and chief expense being in the kitchen. Pip was placed under ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... two or three leagues from shore make the attempt to land a very dangerous piece of business. And another thing, I know. Let the natives boast as they will about their splendid climate, they are visited by the most frightful hurricanes. They get the fag-end of the storms that rage over the Antilles; and the fag-end of a storm is like the tail of a whale; it's just the strongest bit of it. I don't think you'll find a sailor listening much to your poets — your Moores, ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... suppose," he said, "I ought to tell her about it. That ass, Ninian'll be sure to laugh if I tell him!" He sat up suddenly in bed. "Lord," he exclaimed, "I forgot to wash!" He got out of bed and washed himself. "Beastly fag, cleaning your teeth," he murmured, and then ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... the French "fag." When Tommy gets one puff of this article of combustion he never wants another. It is one puff too many. Of course our first race was to ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... organized nation of thirty millions of people into sheer nothingness and impotence. How supremely absurd was the whole national panoply of commerce, credit, coinage, treaty power, judiciary, taxation, militia, army and navy, and Federal fag, if, through the mere joint of a defective law, the hollow reed of a secession ordinance could ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... train or motor-car on to the deck of his yacht, and then, after a spin westward to the Needles or eastward to the Nab or Warner Lightship, soothed by the lapping of the waters, and refreshed by the pure sea air, returns on the Monday to face again the terrors of London heat and "fag." ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... upon my faith as the fine fag-end of a very proper gentleman—thou shalt go back to Stratford town to-morrow if thou wilt but do thy turn with ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... way; then crosses Morven from Kinlochaline to Kingairloch, where he stays the night with the good catechist; that is where I am; next day he is to be put ashore in Appin, and be present at Colin Campbell's death. To-day I rest, being a little run down. Strange how liable we are to brain fag in this scooty family! But as far as I have got, all but the last chapter, I think David is on his feet, and (to my mind) a far better story and far sounder at heart than ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Tis quite a fag, this 'chay' to drag—the babbies too is cross, And Mrs. S is riled. 'Tis quite a bore; the task is more—more fitt'rer for an horse; And vith ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... a woman; "for 'tis best to get your family over and done with as soon as you can, so as to be all the earlier out of the fag o't." ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... mental wealth as books seldom boast; his mind was indeed my library, and whenever it was opened to me, I entered bliss. Intellectually imperfect as I was, I could read little; there were few bound and printed volumes that did not weary me—whose perusal did not fag and blind—but his tomes of thought were collyrium to the spirit's eyes; over their contents, inward sight grew clear and strong. I used to think what a delight it would be for one who loved him better than he loved himself, to gather and store up those handfuls ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... they slighted her, or disapproved of her, or watched her course with misgiving. With a family of good, simple people, who apparently had nothing to strive for with the restlessness which characterized the social fag-ends whom she was now in the habit of meeting, she would have been glad to establish relations; but she never got beyond an occasional bow or smile, generally over some incident connected with the children. Of one man she was ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... be proposed, with the understanding that we should spend more if it was wanted. I wrote to Chamberlain: "We always have two subjects—(a) Conference, (b) Gordon." And he wrote back: "The first always taking up two or three hours; and the second five minutes at the fag ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... larger eyes, and not near so many wrinkles about their eyelids, are often as artful as some of their elders. What little monsters of cunning your frank schoolboys are! How they cheat mamma! how they hoodwink papa! how they humbug the housekeeper! how they cringe to the big boy for whom they fag at school! what a long lie and five years' hypocrisy and flattery is their conduct towards Dr. Birch! And the little boys' sisters? Are they any better, and is it only after they come out in the world that the little darlings learn a ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... brought to the very highest perfection. Never before or since have we tasted anything of its kind so good as a buttered roll toasted. It was a French roll buttered all over outside, and then skillfully grilled until the outside was a rich crisp brown. This was brought by the fag to his master "hot and hot," and, being cut open, eaten with butter. The rooms were warmed by immense open fireplaces, there being no limit to the expenditure of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... kitchen, farm. The senior clergyman of the Mission labours most of all with his own hands at the work which is sometimes described as menial work; and it is contrary to the fundamental principle of the Mission that anyone should connect with the idea of white man the right to fag a black boy. ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said Freddie, "I was saying just before you came in that I had half a mind to pop over. Only it's rather a bally fag, starting. Getting your luggage packed and all that ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... neglected both rules. He was inclined to despise rest. He used to say: "When I want a thing to be done quickly, I always go to a busy man: the unoccupied man never has any time." He, himself, did not know how to be idle; yet he was painfully conscious of overwork and brain-fag. He told his friend Castelli that he was tormented by sleeplessness, but still more by certain ideas which assailed him at night, and which he could not get rid of. He got up and walked about the room, but all was useless; "I am no longer master of my ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... event, though it might be surprising to many people, would not be incredible, nor without many parallel cases. He was poor, a miserable fag, under the control of that mean wretch up there at the school, who looked as if he had sour buttermilk in his veins instead of blood. He was in love with a girl above his station, rich, and of old family, but strange in all her ways, and it was conceivable that he should ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... seed of the market would have cost tim. In short, Ned was never out of a speculation, and whatever he undertook was sure to prove a complete failure. But he had one mode of consolation, which consisted in sitting down with the fag-end of Nancy's capital in his pocket, and drinking night and day with this neighbor and that, whilst a shilling remained; and when he found himself at the end of his tether, he was sure to fasten ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... King's Scholar, the hardships and cruelties he suffered, as a junior boy, from his fag-master, were such as at one time very nearly forced us to remove him from the school. He was taken home for a short period, to recover from his bruises, and restore his eye. His first act, on becoming Captain ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... tossed the fag end of his cigar very neatly into a tub of hydrangeas. "Three thousand years ago in China," he said, "there were men as sad as we are, for ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... they angrily wrench themselves free. Is indifference the best plan? I walk apart with step I try so hard to render careless; but none follows, no little friendly arm is slipped through mine. Should one seek to win one's way by kind offices? Ah, if one could! How I would fag for them. I could do their sums for them—I am good at sums—write their impositions for them, gladly take upon myself their punishments, would they but return my service with a little love and—more important ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... next moment she seemed to repent the nod, for she flared up and snapped: "Oh, shut up, for Christ's sake, cancher? Give any one the fair pip, you do. Ain't I answered enough damsilly questions from ev'body without you? Oo's got a fag?" ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... pass it over to the boys. Doctors are always turning pauper patients over to the youngsters, and so in successful law-offices there is more or less of this semi-charitable work to do. Business houses also have fag-end work that they give to beginners, as kind folks give bones to Fido. Wendell Phillips' law-work was exactly of this contingent kind—big business and big fees only go to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... the most convenient place for pointing out the full meaning of the first scene of "Macbeth," and its necessary connection with the rest of the play. It is, in fact, the fag-end of a witches' sabbath, which, if fully represented, would bear a strong resemblance to the scene at the commencement of the fourth act. But a long scene on such a subject would be tedious and unmeaning at the commencement of the play. The audience is therefore left ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... shall have occasion to make frequent mention, Elijah Impey. We know little about their school days. But, we think, we may safely venture to guess that, whenever Hastings wished to play any trick more than usually naughty, he hired Impey with a tart or a ball to act as fag in the worst part ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... me back. I had struck a snag, And must creep through the battle spume All a flamin' age, with a grinnin' jag In me thigh, for water, or jest a fag. Like a crippled snake I was forced to drag Shattered flesh till the ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... anything or not. Before long you will find that you are writing madly, not waiting for inspiration. And you will have Clavey to criticize you. The rest is only stern self-discipline. Here is another suggestion: when you have brain fag go to bed for two days and starve. The result ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... there is something of everything in this rag bag: bits of stubble, fag ends of rushes, scraps of plants, fragments of some tiny twig or other, chips of wood, shreds of bark, largish grains, especially the seeds of the yellow iris, which were red when they fell from their capsules and are ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... sat among 'em all at my old 33 years desk yester morning; and deuce take me if I had not yearnings at leaving all my old pen and ink fellows, merry sociable lads, at leaving them in the Lurch, fag, fag, fag. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... his varied career Nickie had had ups and downs; true, his "ups" had been brief, but they were frequent enough to keep him almost in touch with respectability. At Winyip, a considerable township in its way, he passed quite easily for a dramatic artist taking rest and change to dissipate brain fag, the result of too studious application to ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... of a worry of both mind and body, to which you add manufacturing of engines, iron puddling, rolling, etc.; a delegate to a national convention, thoughts of the death of a near relative; add to this a security debt to meet during a money panic. By this time the mind begins to fag below the ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... fisted, relentless, give and take fight such as this promised to be is common enough wherever hard men foregather, dirt-common in a country where the fag end of a long winter of enforced idleness leaves restless nerves raw. The uncommon thing about the brief battle or in any way connected with it lay in the attitude of the onlookers. Rarely is a crowd so unanimous both in expectation and desire. George would kill Drennen or would nearly ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... distinguished officer. The younger sons, my juniors, were my school-fellows. Master Frank was two or three years my senior, and before he went to sea, not going to the same school as myself, we got together only during the vacations; when, notwithstanding my prowess, he would fag me desperately at cricket, outswim me on the lake and out-cap me at making Latin verses. However, I consoled myself by saying, "As I grow older all this superiority will cease." But when he returned, after his first cruise, glittering in his graceful uniform, my hopes and my ambition sank below ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... smile to assurance of a sale; the chap evidently had confidence in his musical patter. Martin felt almost sorry as he declined the greatest offer of the century. His brain was already overburdened, he kindly explained, and he dare not risk brain fag by delving into the matchless Compendium. Of course, ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... both the flames and Sir John. "Not all the flagons and apples in the universe might have comforted me; I was wont to sigh like a leaky bellows; to weep like a wench that hath lost her grandam; to lard my speech with the fag-ends of ballads like a man milliner; and did, indeed, indite sonnets, canzonets, and what not of mine ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... blooming cads, with what they call 'intellect,' read up for the exams, and don't give US a look-in; I call it sheer piffle. Then the Guv'nor set me on electrical engineering—electrical engineering's played out. I put no stock in it; besides, it's such beastly fag; and then, you get your hands dirty. So now I'm reading for the Bar; and if only my coach can put me up to tips enough to dodge the examiners, I expect to be called ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... Etta's year; it really is rather a fag to think we shall have her for three weeks. Ethel, it's your turn to take her in tow; I had her ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... called The Moral Philosopher lately published. Is it looked into? I should hope not, merely for the sake of the taste, the sense, and learning of the present age.... I hope nobody will be so indiscreet as to take notice publicly of the book, though it be only in the fag end of an objection.—It is that indiscreet conduct in our defenders of religion that conveys so many worthless books from hand to hand.'—Letter to Mr. Birch in 1737. In Nichols' Literary Illustrations of the Eighteenth ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards start, and then pass her under way; but always at the fag-end of the race she'd get excited and desperate-like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side amongst the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... takes a mighty leap. Unprepared for this. Am cast into the air. Picked up. Can't stand. Something broken. Doctor will say what. Anyhow, clothes torn, bruised, disheartened. Dare not catch the eye of pretty girl. Carried home. Shall give up bicycle riding. Awful fag, and no fun. ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... away, until at last our tense forms filmed over with a dulled consciousness, and we slept, if one might call such a condition by so strong a name—for it was a sleep set with a hair-trigger. It was a sleep seething and teeming with a weird and distressful confusion of shreds and fag-ends of dreams—a sleep that was a chaos. Presently, dreams and sleep and the sullen hush of the night were startled by a ringing report, and cloven by such a long, wild, agonizing shriek! Then we heard—ten ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... all discomforts due to frost and cold for ever. Thus the men thought, though most of our fellows are teetotallers. We get rum now, few (p. 035) drink it; we are sated with cigarettes, and smoke them as if in duty bound; the stolen delight of the last "fag-end" is a dream of the past. Parades are endless, we have never worked so hard since we joined the army; the minor offences of the cathedral city are full-grown crimes under long artillery range; a dirty rifle was only a matter for words of censure a month ago, a dirty rifle now will cause ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... return pelted me with nuts, which I collected, as did the rest; so that even before I had made an end of my bagful of pebbles, I had gotten great plenty of nuts; and as soon as my companions had in like manner gotten as many nuts as they could carry, we returned to the city, where we arrived at the fag-end of day. Then I went in to the kindly man who had brought me in company with the nut- gatherers and gave him all I had gotten, thanking him for his kindness; but he would not accept them, saying, "Sell them and make profit by the price; and presently he ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... gaunt woman of about forty-five whose striding gait caused a hooped and pleated skirt of green silk, surmounted by a bustle, to sway like a lime-tree in a breeze, wore a bodice open in front, with short sleeves, the fag end of some other fashion, but the long draggled-tailed feather boa belonged to the eighties, as did the Marie Stuart bonnet. Her blackened eyebrows and a thickly painted face attracted Dick's attention from afar, and when ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... evening with any approach to "undaunted mettle"—is to shut myself up in absolute silence and rest for several hours before we start. This, alas! means that it would be better for your young ladies (what is left of them, after brain fag and fish dinners!) to return to you by an earlier train, as I could be "no account" to them ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... it has been the habit of writers, both within the order and without, to treat Masonry as though it were a kind of agglomeration of archaic remains and platitudinous moralizings, made up of the heel-taps of Operative legend and the fag-ends of Occult lore. Far from it! If this were the fact the present writer would be the first to admit it, but it is not the fact. Instead, the idea that an order so noble, so heroic in its history, so rich in symbolism, so skilfully adjusted, and with so many traces of remote ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... clever enough in his way, but the fellow you ought to have picked out is the monitor I fag for—Bruce, the head of ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... of the manager, she straightway resumed her professional habit of slightly wilted hauteur—compounded in equal parts of discontent, tired feet, heat-fag and that profound disdain for food-consuming animals which inevitably informs the mind ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... threading the well- known locality, through Bedford Place and across Theobald's Road, soon found himself at the door of his generous patron. Oh! how he hated the house; how he hated the blear-eyed, cross-grained, dirty, impudent fish-fag of an old woman who opened the door for him; how he hated Mr. Jabesh M'Ruen, to whom he now came a supplicant for assistance, and how, above all, he hated ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... the school, ruled over his subjects, and bullied them, with splendid superiority. This one blacked his shoes: that toasted his bread, others would fag out, and give him balls at cricket during whole summer afternoons. "Figs" was the fellow whom he despised most, and with whom, though always abusing him, and sneering at him, he scarcely ever condescended to hold ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... strong and bold, On her banner proudly streaming, California for gold! See a crowd around her gather, Eager all to push from land! They will have all sorts o' weather Ere they reach the golden strand. Rouse to action, Fag and faction; Ho, for mines of wealth untold! Rally! Rally! All for Cali- Fornia in search of gold! Away, amid the rush and racket, Ho for ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... invective, low blackguardism, and Billingsgate abuse of secret organizations, dark lanterns, and Protestant clergymen, will be the order of the day. In this congenial work, all the conglomeration of ignorant men, foreign paupers, and fag-ends and factions, styling themselves Democrats, ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... and apprenticed to the law; but John Ledyard hated the pettifogging of the law, hated roofed-over, walled-in life, wanted the kind of life where men do things, not just dicker, and philosophize, and compromise over the fag-ends of things other men have done. At twenty-one years of age, without any of the prospects that lure the prudent soul, he threw over ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... observe, this Angel was a wag, A novice-friar and a convent fag; Like him the others round had parts to act, And were disguised in dresses quite exact. Our penitent most humbly pardon sought; Said he, if e'er to life again I'm brought, No jealousy, suspicion's ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... one more for little Willie. All I can say is that you're foolish not taking a good fag when it don't cost you nothing. You don't catch me refusing a free fag even when I don't want to smoke. I takes it and puts it in my cap for when I do. Pounds I've saved ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... cur'ous kind o' guess you've made, any way, old stranger," laughed his tormentor, clapping his foot against the companion, and taking the pull of a giant on the reef-tackle as he spoke. "If you ever know'd where to look for the fag-ind of a north-easter at this time o' year, it's more nor you ever larn'd me to do, and that I do say wasn't doin' your honest duty by me. I'd lay a pistreen this breeze would last the Washy, to the south'ard o' the Tortugas, and ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... for the last time, he found That the head of his pick was stuck fast in the ground. 'Cease now!' cried St Cuthman, 'vain is your toil! Come forth from the dyke! Leave your pick in the soil! You agreed to work 'tween sunset and morn, And lo! the glimmer of day is born! In vain was your fag, And your senseless brag.' Dizzy and dazed with sulphureous vapour, Old Nick was deceived by St Ursula's taper. 'The dawn!' yelled the Devil, 'in vain was my boast, That I'd have your soul, for I've lost it, I've lost!' 'Away!' cried St Cuthman, 'Foul fiend! away! See yonder approaches the dawn of ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... conscience he says, "Honesty is a very good thing, perhaps, but it is by no means the best policy,—it is simply no policy at all,—it is sheer stupidity. What can be more politic than for me to pocket this windfall and turn the corner quick?"—So preacheth his crooked fag-end of a conscience, that very, very small still voice, in very husky tones; but he knows that a policeman, walking behind him, saw him pick up the purse, which alters the case,—which, in fact, completely sets aside his fag-end of a husky-voiced conscience, and makes virtue ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... said; "it has been very pleasant to be regarded as a boy, and therefore to act as a sort of general fag to you. I hope you will continue to regard me as so. I have always considered it a privilege to be able to make myself useful to you, and I should be very sorry ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... down into the ranks, beginning on the lowest rung of the ladder, where no one would know of his disgrace or mind it if he did know; his father and mother on the other hand would wish him to clutch on to the fag-end of gentility at a starvation salary and with no prospect of advancement. Ernest had seen enough in Ashpit Place to know that a tailor, if he did not drink and attended to his business, could earn more money than a clerk or a curate, while much less expense by way of ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... mine ain heart begins to tell me what his feels, and chides me for tarrying so long.—I will therefore fly till him on the wings of love and guid news;—for I am sure the poor lad is pining with the pip of expectation and anxious jeopardy. And so, guid folks, I will leave you with the fag end of an auld North-Country wish:—'May mutual love and guid humour be the guests of your hearts, the theme of your tongues, and the blithsome subjects of aw your tricksey dreams through the rugged road of this deceitful world; and may our fathers ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... the bloss; beat the wench; Cant. A fag also means a boy of an inferior form or class, who acts as a servant to one of a superior, who is said to fag him, he is my fag; whence, perhaps, fagged out, for jaded or tired. To stand a good fag; not to ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... that you have been preaching at Chaldicotes," said the archdeacon, still rather loudly. "I saw Sowerby the other day, and he told me that you gave them the fag end of Mrs. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... anger at her obstinacy, and Frank and Die together sought the den of the Justice, to which they were guided by a high voice chanting the fag-end of ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... producible, so far as our experience has gone, in no other way. He is generous enough to hate all oppression in every form, and therefore to hate the oppression exercised by a noble as heartily as oppression exercised by a king. He is a big boy ready to fight anyone who bullies his fag; but with no doubts as to the merits of fagging. But then he never chooses to look at the awkward consequences of his opinion. When talking of politics, an aristocracy full of virtue and talent, ruling on generous principles a people sufficiently educated to ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... his thirty-ninth year to die. He had been unmanageable in youth and his genius for mischief was an inspiration, yet he was hostile to everything pusillanimous, haughty, aspiring, ready to fasten a quarrel on his shadow for running before, at first inclined to reduce his boy brother to a fag, but finally before his death became a great influence in his life. Prominent were the fights between De Quincey and another older brother on the one hand, and the factory crowd of boys on the other, a fight ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... long time after Lonegan left he plunged into his work, but there was no sleep for him afterward. He lay very still, breathing easily, as the fag-end of the night crawled by. At dawn he arose, dressed noiselessly, and went out into ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... joined the men, who were gradually pushing against the foremost cattle on the left so as to turn them to the right. When once the leaders were turned the rest blindly followed and thus, by constantly turning them to the right, the leaders were finally swung clear around, and overtook the fag end ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... be the worse loss. You simple Ethel, you don't think that Charles Cheviot will let her be the dear family fag we ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Mishter Lashness, that Frinch an' the rale ould Oirish is as loike as two pays? Now, there's garsan is as Oirish a worrud for a young bhoy as ye'll find in Connaught. But juty is juty, moy dare sorr, so, as they say in the arrmy, 'Fag a bealach,' lave the way." The sergeant's next discovery was the doctor, borne in the arms of the lawyer and the dismounted parson. He had sprained his ancle in the rapid descent to which his zeal had impelled him, and had thus been compelled to leave the Squire in command. Mr. ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... Three! Three o'clock! How time dragged on. But he did not move from his ambush, though he felt his limbs stiffening and his brain begin to fag. The thoughts of dire punishments had passed from his mind. That, indeed, had become a blank. What was he doing there? He couldn't quite remember at times—all his energies were so centered in his eyes, which not for a second even left that door of ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to paper his thoughts upon men, manners, and things at sea in general; though, sooth to say, his was not an idle life. Being voted by unanimous consent "a junior," he was condemned to offices that the veriest fag in Eton or Harrow had rebelled against. In the morning, under the pseudonym of Mrs. Sparks, he presided at breakfast, having previously made tea, coffee, and chocolate for the whole cabin, besides boiling about twenty eggs at various degrees ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Hawthorne certainly exposes his Puritanic education, and he also places too high a value on the carving of button-holes and shoestrings by Italian workmen. Such things are the fag-ends of statuary. ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... and answered, "You filthy glutton, you run on trippingly like an old fish-fag. I have a good mind to lay both hands about you, and knock your teeth out of your head like so many boar's tusks. Get ready, therefore, and let these people here stand by and look on. You will never be able to fight one who is so much ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... no good,' said Chippy. 'There ain't one in our patrol as touches a fag now. If he did, I'd soon boot 'im. 'Ow are yer goin' to smell an enemy or a fire or sommat like that half a mile off if yer ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... water. Brer Rabbit, he slip up, he did, en he look in. Ole Miss Wolf, she 'uz sailin' 'roun' fryin' meat en gittin' brekkus, en dar hangin' 'cross er cheer wuz Brer Wolf wes'cut where he keep he money-pus. Brer Rabbit rush up ter do' en pant lak he mighty nigh fag out. He rush up, he did, en ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... term that should replace the played-out "gentleman"—were convincingly shown. G. S. Titheradge was the other popular London name in the cast. The rest were adequate, but by no means extraordinary. They taught no lesson of artistic excellence, but at the fag-end of the season, we were not clamoring to be taught anything at all. Lessons were the very last thing in the world that we hankered for. Our desire for light entertainment was amply realized. "The Freedom of Suzanne" was a ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... cellars,—which I doubt, since you never had more than a single flask thereof, presented to you by a returned traveller, who bought it, to my certain knowledge, of a mixer in Congress Street, in Boston. We drank it, O ale-knight, sub teg. pat. fag. more than five years ago, of a summer evening, in dear old Cambridge, then undisfigured by the New Chapel. That it did not kill us as dead as Stilpo of Megara (vide Seneca de Const. for a notice of that foolish old Stoic) was entirely owing to my ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... by ladders leading from the private rooms, and each gives to the pigs of her household the leavings of the meals of the previous day. About the same time the men begin to bestir themselves sluggishly; some descend to bathe, while others smoke the fag ends of the cigarettes that were unfinished when they fell asleep. Then the men breakfast in their rooms, and not until they are satisfied do the women and children sit down to their meal. During all this time the chronically hungry dogs, attracted by the odours of food, make persistent efforts ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... chubby, your day is over! We will make Peggy the message-boy now. Peggy will be a nice, meek little girl, who will like to run messages for her betters! She shall be my fag, and attend to me. I'll give her my stamps ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... Gibbon's twenty years' fag and toil on the materials of the History of the Roman Empire alone, and at a time when there were many aids not existing in Raleigh's day. Gibbon personally ransacked the libraries of Europe. Raleigh had scarcely four years to cover the four most ancient empires and a ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... editor, under a sub-editor, who kept me up to my work, and cut out my fine passages. The editor's duty was to write most of the magazine—to write essays, reviews (of books by the professors, very severe), novels, short stories, poems, translations, also to illustrate these, and to "fag" his friends for "copy" and drawings. A deplorable flippancy seems, as far as one remembers, to have been the chief characteristic of the periodical—flippancy and an abundant use of the supernatural. These were the days of Lord' Lytton's ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... for the English squadron in the Pacific; and doubtless, Wilson meant to put us on board, and send us thither to be delivered up. Should our conjecture prove correct, all we had to expect, according to our most experienced shipmates, was the fag end of a cruise in one of her majesty's ships, and a discharge ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... tall lithe girl had bloomed into full glory' and Valencia St. Just, though not delicately beautiful, was as splendid an Irish damsel as man need look upon, with a grand masque, aquiline features, luxuriant black hair, and—though it was the fag-end of the London season—the unrivalled Irish complexion, as of the fair ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... midday sun, and it was in the evening of the second and last day that the skirts of happy chance led him to an adventure that was to affect his whole future life. He knew a waterhole on the Del Oro, where cows were wont to frequent even in the summer drought, and toward this he was making in the fag-end of the sultry day. While still some hundred yards distant he observed a spiral of smoke rising from a camp-fire at the spring, and he at once made a more circumspect approach. For it might be any one of a score ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... mounds their type and rudiment— And he, the fag-end of creation, Meaningless sculpture of journeymen, Doomed to the curse of extinction. Curious, also, that I, An islander from far-off Britain Should meet them, Or, the rude scrolls of them. Both together in these wilds, Round about ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... had seemed to need. With touching simplicity she determined to follow the course recommended by the Head. Though by the time she had corrected some seventy manuscripts in marble-backed covers, and prepared her lesson for the next day, she had nothing but the fag-end of her brain to give to the healers and regenerators; as for rising, Miss Quincey felt much more like going to bed, and it was as much as she could do to drag her poor little body there. Still Miss Quincey was ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... the most hopeless and uncultivated was always this good man's object. The Falkland Isles were dreary enough, but they were a paradise compared to the desolate fag-end of the American world,—a cluster of barren rocks, intersected by arms of the sea, which divide them into numerous islets, the larger ones bearing stunted forests of beech and birch, on the skirts of hills covered with perpetual ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... fag end of the London season; people were talking about Goodwood and the Ryde week, about grouse and about salmon-fishing. Members of Parliament went about, like martyrs at the stake, groaning over the interminable nature of every debate, and shaking their ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... wuz completely fagged out; it did seem, as I told Tirzah Ann one day in confidence, "that I never knew the meanin' of the word 'fag' before." ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... fag of burying the swag?" said Tommy once they were safe within the shelter of The Cedars gates. "Let's take it to one of your bedrooms. Besides," he added; as if this were quite an afterthought, as indeed it was, "I don't want to spoil the things, and burying them might ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... it a capital idea for Mary Ellen to sleep in the scullery—it would save her the fag of running downstairs in the morning to get breakfast, and Granfa would be conveniently placed for us, in case we wanted a story ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... Byron and Mr. Peel were at Harrow together," says Moore, "a tyrant some few years older, whose name was N——, claimed a right to fag little Peel, which claim Peel resisted. His resistance was vain, and N—— not only subdued him, but determined also to punish the refractory slave by inflicting a bastinado on the inner fleshy side ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Henry began to strip the French realm of provinces as you peel the layers from an onion. By the May of the year of grace 1420 France was, and knew herself to be, not beaten but demolished. Only a fag-end of the French army lay entrenched at Troyes, where King Charles and his court awaited Henry's decision as to the morrow's action. If he chose to destroy them root and branch, he could; and they knew such mercy as was in the man to be quite untarnished by previous using. ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... and as white as flax, which the crew told us was from constant use of holystones. There was no foolish gilding and gingerbread work, to take the eye of landsmen and passengers, but everything was "ship-shape.'' There was no rust, no dirt, no rigging hanging slack, no fag-ends of ropes and "Irish pendants'' aloft, and the yards were squared "to a t'' by lifts and braces. The mate was a hearty fellow, with a roaring voice, and always wide awake. He was "a man, every inch of him,'' as the sailors said; and though "a bit of a horse,'' and "a ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... minute, because it would be grand if I could say when Brian came back, "I have sold your cathedral for you." But I might have saved myself brain fag. Madame Mounet had settled everything in her head, and was merely playing me, like ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... pugnacity and cruelty that civilisation has robbed of their due objects. How we brighten up again at a bye-election, when duels which passed unregarded in the big battle, when towns scarcely noted at the fag-end of the great campaign, become the cynosure of every eye. Through Slocum or Eatonswill the hub of the universe temporarily passes: to its population of four thousand, mostly fools, are entrusted the destinies of the Empire; it is theirs ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... that he has done his duty—with the help of Havana tobacco—in that state of life wherein it has pleased a merciful providence to place him; and St. Peter would never be so churlish as to close the golden gates in the face of an ancient canon who sauntered to them jauntily, with the fag end of a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Let us cultivate our cabbages in the best of all possible worlds; and afterwards—Dieu pardonnera; ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham |
