"Rag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all that sort of thing—if I could handle something that reminded me of you." Then, tossing back his head rather proudly, as he caught Tom winking to Bill, he added, "You value that flag at your masthead for what it reminds you of—not its mere money value. I might call it a dirty old rag, but you price it highly. I dare say you see what I mean now. I'm not ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... gales of laughter, and a few are described as showing an almost morbid reluctance to wear anything upon the feet, or even to having them touched by others.... Several almost fall in love with the great toe or the little one, especially admiring some crease or dimple in it, dressing it in some rag of silk or bit of ribbon, or cut-off glove fingers, winding it with string, prolonging it by tying on bits of wood. Stroking the feet of others, especially if they are shapely, often becomes almost a passion with young children, and several adults confess a survival ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... one Sceva, a Jew, was it not, who tried to exorcise an evil spirit? But he 'leapt upon them and overcame them, so that they fled out of the house naked and wounded.' You mean that I use my friends like that, strip off their reputations, belabour them, and leave them without a rag of virtue or honour?" My companion frowned, and said: "Yes; that is more or less what I mean, though I think your illustration is needlessly profane. My idea is that we ought to make the best of people, and try as far as possible to be blind to their faults." "Unless ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... I could be grieved, But that I'll not outlive you: choose your death; For, I have seen him in such various shapes, I care not which I take: I'm only troubled, The life I bear is worn to such a rag, 'Tis scarce worth giving. I could wish, indeed, We threw it from us with a better grace; That, like two lions taken in the toils, We might at last thrust out our paws, and wound The ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... a while, sang a popular rag-time, strummed again and, so Starr explained his silence, went to bed. Estan began again to talk, now and then lifting his voice, speaking earnestly, as though he was arguing or protesting, or perhaps expounding a theory of some sort. Starr could not catch the words, though he knew in ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... in a gay new rag, and dropped him into the copper kettle of boiling water that was on ...
— Denslow's Humpty Dumpty • William Wallace Denslow
... warning against spoiling one's patients. I wouldn't have them and their whole tag-rag and bobtail about my ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... worked as stiff as it conveniently can be. In building such work the stones should be in height equal to an exact number of brick courses. It is a common practice in erecting buildings with a facing of Kentish rag rubble to back up the stonework with bricks. Owing to the great irregularity of the stones, great difficulty is experienced in obtaining proper bond between the two materials. Through bonding stones or headers should be frequently built ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... quite a diversion to the Lady of Shalott to see how many different ways of doing a disagreeable thing seemed to be practicable to that scuttle. Besides the bed on which the Lady of Shalott lay, there was a stove in the palace, two chairs, a very ragged rag-mat, a shelf with two notched cups and plates upon it, one pewter teaspoon, and a looking-glass. On washing-days Sary Jane climbed upon the chair and hung her clothes out through the scuttle on the roof; or else she ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... recalled as an interesting, although not an agreeable item, that in the days of the French Revolution there was a notorious brood of Mother Carey's chickens in Paris. They were the female rag-tag-and-bobtail of the city, whose appearance in the streets was understood to forebode a fresh political tumult. What an insult to our feathered friends to bestow their honoured name on such ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... the Boer is distinct among individualists. "Oom Paul" Kruger was a type. A fairly familiar story will concretely illustrate what lies within and behind the race. On one occasion his thumb was nearly severed in an accident. With his pocket-knife he cut off the finger, bound up the wound with a rag, and went ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... he bent over the appalling shroud, opened it with the knife which Faria had made, drew the corpse from the sack, and bore it along the tunnel to his own chamber, laid it on his couch, tied around its head the rag he wore at night around his own, covered it with his counterpane, once again kissed the ice-cold brow, and tried vainly to close the resisting eyes, which glared horribly, turned the head towards the wall, so that the jailer might, when ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... kitchen — it was hardly larger than a cupboard — washing the plates and glasses, the forks and spoons, giving the knives a rapid polish on the knife-board; and then putting everything away, giving the sink a scrub, and hanging the dish-cloth up to dry — it was there still, a gray torn rag; then looking round to see that everything was clean and nice. He saw her roll down her sleeves and remove her apron — the apron hung on a peg behind the door — and take the bottle of oxalic acid and go with ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... first I thought they had been mortal foes: Monimia rag'd, Castalio grew disturb'd: Each thought the other wrong'd; yet both so haughty, They scorn'd submission, though love all the while The rebel play'd, ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... to walk back toward Toby they saw a funny sight. The little Shetland pony started to come toward them, and in his mouth was a white rag. ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue and Their Shetland Pony • Laura Lee Hope
... an hour until it could be induced to move. Gipsies passed, better mounted and worse clad than other folk, some of them half naked. Many soldiers had walked through their opankies and their feet were bound up with rag. Why in this country of awful mud has the opankie been invented? It is a sole turned up at the edges and held on by a series of straps and plaited ornamentations useless in mud or wet, which penetrates through it ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... I just? I'll give away every rag I brought with me from New Zealand. They'll come in for that rummage sale ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... become chums. A chance in their freshman year had brought them together. Watts, with the refined and delicate sense of humor abounding in collegians, had been concerned with sundry freshmen in an attempt to steal (or, in collegiate terms, "rag") the chapel Bible, with a view to presenting it to some equally subtle humorists at Yale, expecting a similar courtesy in return from that college. Unfortunately for the joke, the college authorities had had the ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... steal a dish-rag out of the house, without anybody's knowledge, and go out of doors in the first of the moon, rub the dish-rag on the wart, and say: "Here, new moon! take away my new wart." Then throw the dish-rag away where no one can find it, and ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... with rag rugs on the painted floor and crisp, worn curtains. The table and chairs were cream-color, and the table wore an embroidered flour-sack cover. Grandpa pottered with a loose door-latch until Grandma wrung the suds from her hands and cried fiercely, "What's the use ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... the Fifth Cavalry have mutinied; so have these rag-tag Auxiliaries. That mob down there's part of them." He was puffing under the double effort of running and talking. "Whole thing blew up in seconds; no chance ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... salt; put the beaten egg yolks in the milk, and add the melted butter, the flour and last the beaten whites of the eggs. Make the waffle-iron very hot, and grease it very thoroughly on both sides by tying a little rag to a clean stick and dipping in melted butter. Put in some batter on one side, filling the iron about half-full, and close the iron, putting this side down over the fire; when it has cooked for about two minutes, turn the iron over without ...
— A Little Cook Book for a Little Girl • Caroline French Benton
... questioned his companion concerning the character of the fox-hunter; but gained little information, as he had been called to that office while Dinmont was making the round of the Highland fairs. 'He was a shake-rag like fellow,' he said, 'and, he dared to say, had gipsy blood in his veins; but at ony rate he was nane o' the smaiks that had been on their quarters in the moss; he would ken them weel if he saw them ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the luck of Heaven," he said, "in the whole exploit. We'd been prospecting for months. As a sort of try in a back-water we rowed over one night to an island and pitched tents. Not a dozen yards from where we camped was a rose-tree-think of it, Belgard, a rose-tree on a rag-tag island of Lake Superior! 'There's luck in odd numbers, says Rory O'More.' 'There's luck here,' said I; and at it we went just beside the rose-tree. What's the result? Look at that prospectus: a company with a capital ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... change could not make worse." The men who fought so valiantly against the Indians and Berkeley's forces, braved the King's anger, faced death on the gallows were called in contempt "the bases of the people," "the rabble," the "scum of the people," "idle and poor people," "rag, tag, and bobtail." The Council reported that there were "hardly two amongst them" who owned estates, or were persons of reputation. Berkeley complained that his was a miserable task to govern a people "where six parts of seven at least are poor, ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... not what you mean by that, but I am sure Caesar fell down. If the tag-rag people did not clap him and hiss him, according as he pleas'd and displeas'd them, as they use to do the players in the theatre, I am ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... away—not if I could prevent it—until he confessed to her the truth. I ran back into the ell, fearful now that he had escaped through a window, yet determined to examine that last room. There was a rag carpet along the back hall, and, in the semi-darkness, I tripped, falling heavily forward, striking the floor with a crash, my revolver flying from my hand, and hitting the side wall. I was on my knees in an instant, thoughtless of everything except that ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... the wings and tails of owls.—Ah! as I am but a miserable, half-sighted, trapper, it is a band of the accursed Siouxes! To cover, lads, to cover. A single cast of an eye this-a-way, would strip us of every rag of clothes, as surely as the lightning scorches the bush, and it might be that our very lives ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... hands and lips with glycerine before going to bed at night. A good oil is made by simmering: Sweet oil, one pint; Venice turpentine, three ounces; lard, half a pound; beeswax, three ounces. Simmer till the wax is melted. Rub on, or apply with a rag. ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... away after giving me the purse; and I also went my ways having wrapped my hand in a piece of rag and thrust it into my bosom. My whole semblance had changed, and my colour had waxed yellow from the shame and pain which had befallen me. Yet I went on to my mistress's house where, in extreme perturbation of spirit I threw myself down on the carpet bed. She saw me in this ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... had my gun, which was a flint one, so that by rubbing some slightly moistened gunpowder on a piece of rag, which I tore from my shirt for the purpose, and snapping the lock over it there was a possibility of a spark catching, but unfortunately the flint was a much worn one which I had chipped away to such an extent during the ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... can borrer every stitch we want," said Lydia Vesey. "Borrer of the dead an' borrer of the livin'. I know every rag o' clo'es that's been made in this town, last thirty years. There's enough laid away in camphire, of them that's gone, to fit out three-four old ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... rag from my pocket and wiped blood from my mouth. I'd figured out, in Shainsa, why the mistake was logical. And here in Charin I'd been hanging around in Rakhal's old haunts, covering his old trails. Once again, mistaken identity ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... the Dons, buffeted and derided by his fellow undergraduates. Especially had Carfax and Cardillac made his life a burden to him, and whenever it seemed that there was nothing especial to do, the cry arose, "Let's go and rag Bunning," and five minutes later that fat body would tremble at the sound of many men climbing the wooden stairs, at the loud banging on his wooden door, at the cry, "Hullo, Bunning—we've ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... of "The Melon Eaters" is known far and wide as a great masterpiece, and yet the boys were little rag-a-muffins, the pests of the market people. Murillo knew the joys and sorrows of those boys because he too at that time was very poor and hungry and no one was giving him a helping hand. Do you suppose that ...
— The Children's Book of Celebrated Pictures • Lorinda Munson Bryant
... speech!" "What's he saying?" was the burthen of the public mind, and an opinion was abroad that he was drunk. "Hi, hi, hi," bawled the omnibus-drivers, threading a dangerous way. A drunken American sailor wandered about tearfully inquiring, "What's he want anyhow?" A leathery-faced rag-dealer upon a little pony-drawn cart soared up over the tumult by virtue of his voice. "Garn 'ome, you Brasted Giant!" he brawled, "Garn 'Ome! You Brasted Great Dangerous Thing! Can't you see you're a-frightening the 'orses? Go 'ome ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... bought a doll to give to her little niece on Christmas-day, and seeing at once what a treasure this costume would be, she took it off, did it up as fresh as new, and made the doll she had bought look quite like a princess in it. So the old broken-armed doll had not a rag left of its former glory. But luck sometimes comes ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the old Irish. It was very natural that the Gipsies, observing that the sun and moon were always apparently wandering, should have identified their own nomadic life with that of these luminaries. It may be objected by those to whom the term 'solar myth' is as a red rag that this story, to prove anything, must first be proved itself. This will probably not be far to seek. If it can be found among any of the wanderers in India, it may well be accepted, until something better turns up, as the possible origin of the greatly disputed Zingan. It ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... another, and filled up the town—Abe Cohen, the Jew clothing dealer, Barringer, the druggist, Dr. Barton, rival of Dr. Smelter and a far more highly skilled practitioner, Jake O'Flaherty, the saloon-keeper, Widow Stokes, rag carpet weaver and gossip, Jeremy Whitling, town carpenter, and his golden-blonde daughter Lucy, school-teacher, Dr. Sohmer, dentist. Every small community needs these various souls. No sooner is the earth scraped clean for a new village than they come, one by one, until the town is ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... fight. I may say that the sport is, in my opinion, a most barbarous one, and likely to operate unfavourably on the national morals; the arena is sometimes drenched in the blood of bulls, horses, and even of the unfortunate picadores and matadores, whose sole defence is the red rag with which ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... surgeon of the army of the Republic; established as a druggist at Angouleme during the Empire. He was engrossed in trying to cure the gout, and he also dreamed of replacing rag-paper with paper made from vegetable fibre, after the manner of the Chinese. He died at the beginning of the Restoration at Paris, where he had come to solicit the sanction of the Academy of Science, in despair at the lack of result, leaving a wife ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... forehead. For all this, she was a picturesque little thing, even through whose childish timidity there was a certain self-sustained air which is apt to come upon children who are left much to themselves. She was holding under her arm a rag doll, apparently of her own workmanship, and nearly as large as herself,—a doll with a cylindrical head, and features roughly indicated with charcoal. A long shawl, evidently belonging to a grown person, dropped from her shoulders, and swept ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... that," replied the trapper, "mebbe he do be afther thinkin' discretion was the better part av valor. Ye say, he had one av his hands wrapped up in a rag, and I suspect he ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... of a sudden, right to the wind'ard of 'em, this old ship loomed up, driftin' in with the wind and flood-tide. They couldn't make her out, and I guess for a minute the old cap'n didn't know but it was the Flyin' Dutchman; but she hadn't a rag o' sail on her, and as she got nearer they could see there wan't a man on board. The cap'n didn't like the looks of her, but he knew she wan't no phantom, and he and one of his boys down with the punt and went alongside. 'Twan't more 'n a ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... shabby wig. 'What shall we do with him?' said I. 'Hustle him out!' cried he; 'hustle him out! he didn't get his liquor here: I've no room for such company!' I then endeavored to put my companion upon his feet, but his legs bent under him, and his whole body seemed as limber and lifeless as a wet rag. 'You can't do any thing with him in that way,' continued the landlord; 'if you want to get him home to-night, you must take him on your back and carry him there yourself. He'll be bright enough in the morning.' I saw no other way of proceeding; and so, being strong and athletic ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... the young men had a rag tied round his thumb, I asked him if he had hurt his hand. He replied that when he dived for the turtle it caught him by the thumb, and if his friends hadn't gone to his aid he might have drowned. He told it as though it would have ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... adj.; much, muckle^, well, indeed, very, very much, a deal, no end of, most, not a little; pretty, pretty well; enough, in a great measure, richly; to a large extent, to a great extent, to a gigantic extent; on a large scale; so; never so, ever so; ever so dole; scrap, shred, tag, splinter, rag, much; by wholesale; mighty, powerfully; with a witness, ultra [Lat.], in the extreme, extremely, exceedingly, intensely, exquisitely, acutely, indefinitely, immeasurably; beyond compare, beyond comparison, beyond measure, beyond all bounds; incalculably, infinitely. [in a supreme ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and a rather miserable-looking man shuffled out. There was a bloody rag on his head, and he seemed to have made more of an effort to escape than Koku described, for he appeared to have suffered ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... understand the answer puts another. His desire to be informed torments himself and every man of his acquaintance, which is almost every man he meets; yet, though he lives inquiring, he will die consummately ignorant. His brain is a kind of rag shop, receiving and returning nothing but rubbish. It is as difficult to affront as to get rid of him; and though you fairly bid him begone to-day, he will knock at your door, march into your house, and if possible keep you answering his unconnected fifty times answered ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... our ship. And what's more, if you don't mind, I can't stop chawing the rag here; Captain Barry and Mr. Little are in danger o' their lives, ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... and Rosie dried them and Lizbeth packed them off to the cupboard, about the strange man. 'He laid powerful admiration on our little girls.' Levicy was wipin' off the oilcloth on the table with her soapy dish rag. 'He had them line up in a row to see which was tallest, whilst I set him a snack. "Shut your eyes," sez he, "and open your mouth." They did, and bless you, Captain Anderson, what did he do but ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... the coveted window the scene between Julia and Sir George; a scene which gave her the profoundest satisfaction. What she could not see—her eyes were no longer all that they had been—she imagined. In five minutes she had torn up the last rag of the girl's character, and proved her as bad as the worst woman that ever rode down Cheapside in a cart. Lady Dunborough was not mealy-mouthed, nor one of those who ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... wild turban made of dried grass and tall sedgy leaves; then he put several patches of red and white earth on his black face, as well as on his body in various places, and fastened a number of loose pieces of rag, torn from a handkerchief, and bits of tattered leaves to his arms and legs in such a manner as to give him an extremely wild and dishevelled appearance. I must say that when his hasty toilet was completed he seemed to me the most horrible-looking demon I had ever ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... her sky-scraping cap at the back of her head, so different from the craft in general, he was very much inclined to board her; but when she boomed him off in that style, my father, who was quite the rage and fancy man among the ladies of Sally Port and Castle Rag, hauled his wind in no time, hitching up his white trousers and turning short round on his heel, so as to present his back to her whenever they happened to meet. For a long time he gave her a wide berth. Now this fact of my father returning her disdain had the usual ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... of the most beautiful and instructive of physiological spectacles—the circulation in the web of the foot. No one could undertake to affirm that a frog is not inconvenienced by being wrapped up in a wet rag and having his toes tied out, and it cannot be denied that inconvenience is a sort of pain. But you must not inflict the least pain on a vertebrated animal for scientific purposes (though you may do ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... say that He does not send His angels to comfort and sustain them who from love to Him go out into rightous warfare. But I don't believe they come through a seansy. I don't, honestly. I don't believe Daniel would have felt strengthened a mite, by seein' a materialized rag-baby hung out by a wire in front of a hemlock box, and ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... on a shady bench under the trellis, nodded as she seeded the raisins for the frozen pudding of the six-o'clock dinner; the waiter had succumbed in clearing the lunch-table and made mesmeric passes with the dish-rag in a fantasy of washing the plates; the stable-boy slumbered in the hay, high in the loft, while the fat old coachman, with a chamois-skin in his hand, dozed as he sat on the step of the surrey, between the fenders; the old dog snored on the veranda floor, and Mrs. Keene's ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... your finger on. Same old rag-chewin' going on up at Cat Biggs's and the other waterin' troughs about how you've got to be done up, if ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... the hunters poured volley after volley of lead into the forest. Suddenly a white rag tied to a stick was thrust out ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... conceived Miss Caroline to be a formidable person whom Little Miss resembled, Clem said, "as aigs look lahk aigs." No further detail could I elicit from him save that his Mistress was "not fleshily inclahned," and that Little Miss was "sweetah'n honey on a rag!" ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... the tatter'd ensigns of Rag-fair,[245] A yawning ruin hangs and nods in air;[246] Keen hollow winds howl through the bleak recess, Emblem of music caused by emptiness; Here in one bed two shivering sisters lie, The cave of Poverty ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... cunning plans to this very end. Emmy Lou understood nothing of all this. She only pitied Billy. And presently, when public attention had become diverted, she proffered him the hospitality of a grimy little slate rag. When Billy returned the rag there was something in it—something wrapped in a beautiful, glazed, shining bronze paper. It was a candy kiss. One paid five cents for six ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... the press who would do me a favor. The press is a great engine, of course, but its influence is vastly overrated. It has the credit of leading public opinion, when it only follows it; and look at the rag-tag-and-bobtail that contribute to it. Even the London 'Times' only lives for a day. My books have made their way in spite ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... In my defence of the lines running into each other, instead of closing at each couplet; and of natural language, neither bookish, nor vulgar, neither redolent of the lamp, nor of the kennel, such as I will remember thee; instead of the same thought tricked up in the rag-fair ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... meditating in this wise, Fra Giovanni saw that the Mountain side was torn open, and that men were dragging great stones from its flank. And one of the quarrymen was lying by the wayside, with a rag of coarse cloth for all covering; and his body was disfigured by bitter marks of the biting cold and scorching heat. The bones of his shoulders and chest showed all but bare beneath the meagre flesh; and Despair looked out grim and gaunt from the ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... getting time for real work; the Brick Moon, a story of a projectile built and launched into space, to revolve in a fixed meridian about the earth and serve mariners as a mark of longitude; the Rag Man and Rag Woman, a tale of an impoverished couple who made a competence by saving the pamphlets, advertisements, wedding-cards, etc., that came to them through the mail, and developing a paper business on that basis; and the Skeleton in the Closet, which shows how the fate of the Southern Confederacy ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... I unlocked the door of the stuffy little cabin and called the old rag-picker. He came shuffling along with his head bent, but raising his eyes as he approached me, he threw up ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... (What a woman it is!) HOW could they be worth more? Think for yourself. They are so much loss to you—so much loss, do you understand? Take any worthless, rubbishy article you like—a piece of old rag, for example. That rag will yet fetch its price, for it can be bought for paper-making. But these dead souls are good for NOTHING AT ALL. Can you name anything that they ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... nonplussed. "May I have this?" she asked at last, picking up a bit of rag from a pile of things untidily heaped on a chair. Mrs. Lang, though, was gone, and did not hear her. Jessie looked at the rag, and pondered. At last, however, the temptation to wipe off some of the dust became too much for her, and she ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... projected outside the hole. The other eight cartridges were then broken up, and the powder moistened; and a train some two feet long laid, from the fuse towards the entrance of the hole. Then a piece of rag was wrapped round one end of the ramrod; and this, again, was tied to a long rod that had, the night before, been cut by one of the boys, who had slipped out noiselessly from the entrance. The rag had been moistened, and ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... they changed unasked his tattered vestments for new; and he used to have them darned and patched, as long as they would hold together. Now this good archbishop knew that the late Sieur de Poissy had left a daughter, without a sou or a rag, after having eaten, drunk, and gambled away her inheritance. This poor young lady lived in a hovel, without fire in winter or cherries in spring; and did needlework, not wishing either to marry beneath her or sell her virtue. Awaiting the time when he should be able to find a young husband ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... standing me up against a wall with my head in a rag—they'd make it a holiday and ring all ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... had risen above the shoulders of the crowd, nearly opposite Mr. Brooke, and within ten yards of him, the effigy of himself: buff-colored waistcoat, eye-glass, and neutral physiognomy, painted on rag; and there had arisen, apparently in the air, like the note of the cuckoo, a parrot-like, Punch-voiced echo of his words. Everybody looked up at the open windows in the houses at the opposite angles of ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... his eye, an' give him the length o' my tongue. Me blood was up whin I seen this spalpeen wid his dirty set o' vagabones waitin' to murther me if they ketched me unbeknownst. 'Michael Hegarty,' says I, 'where did ye scour up yer thievin' set o' rag-heaps?' says I. 'Ye'd bate me wid blackthorns, would ye? Come on, you and your dirty thribe, till I put sivin shots into yez. Shure I could pick the eye out o' yez shure I could shoot a louse off yer ear,' says I. 'Anger me,' says ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... much—twenty shillings or ten pounds, according to the needs of the exchequer—you could be drafted into His Majesty's service and sent to sea. The money you paid was nominally to hire a substitute, but no one but King Charles and Attorney-General Noy, who fished out the precious precedent from the rag-bag of the past, knew ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... generalize in regard to them. I have found them built entirely of grass-roots, with much sheep's wool, lined with hair and feathers, or solidly woven of silky vegetable fibre, mostly that of the putsun (Hibiscus cannabinus), in which were incorporated little pieces of rag and strips of the bark of the wild plum (Zizyphus jujuba); but I think that most commonly thorny twigs, coarse grass, and grass-roots form the body of the nest, while the cavity is lined with feathers, hair, ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... feet, pallid and limp as a rag. "Don't tempt me," he cried hoarsely. "I tell you I can't do ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... children. All this confusion, seen by the moon's light, presented a striking coup d'oeil; the half shadow enlarged every detail, and the light, that flatterer which only attaches itself to the polished side of things, courted upon each rusty musket the point still left intact, and upon every rag of canvas the whitest and least ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of rag-time and turkey-trotting, but they too are manifestations. In those queer exasperated rhythms I find greater promise of a popular art than in revivals of folk-song and morris-dancing. At least they bear some relationship to the emotions of those who sing and dance them. In ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... his earnestness. "There is only one end," she whispered, and pointed to his picture. Clayton comprehended, and seizing a paint-rag would have ruined it, but the woman ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... It made a beautiful picture—the little mite with her father's merry eyes and her mother's rosebud mouth, sitting on the torturer's knee, her golden hair mingling with his beard. And how her silvery laugh brightened the place as she played her favourite game of stretching her rag doll on a toy model ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... rags, like those that we innocently place in our gardens in seed-time to scare the sparrows. The gulls soon recover from their alarm, if they ever feel any; and it is somewhat suggestive of irony to watch a gull calmly wiping his beak on a piece of rag intended to scare him away. Whether meant as insulting or not, such conduct does not provoke the inhabitants to severe reprisals; the gulls are an institution of the place, to be grumbled at sometimes but always to be tolerated. And all the grumbling is not on one side, as one may judge from the ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... with his fists. He was in a way of learning that without long delay, for ever since he was a little shaver he had had to fight his own way, and sometimes his mother's. He was thirteen when I met him, and most of his time had been put in around the Rag Gang's quarters, along First Avenue and the river front, where that kind of learning was abundant ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... commenced to reload his rifle. With great care he poured the powder into the palm of his hand, measuring the quantity with his eye—for it was an evidence of a hunter's skill to be able to get the proper quantity for the ball. Then he put the charge into the barrel. Placing a little greased linsey rag, about half an inch square, over the muzzle, he laid a small lead bullet on it, and with the ramrod began to push the ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... top of the house, handsome chapel, and seven or eight distinct apartments, besides closets and conveniences without end. Then it is covered with portraits, crammed with old china, furnished richly, and not a rag in it under forty, fifty, or a thousand years old; but not a bed or chair that has lost a tooth, or got a gray hair, so well are they preserved. I rummaged it from head to foot, examined every spangled bed, and enamelled pair of bellows, for such there are; in short, I do not believe ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... build up your auld Babel of iniquity, as in the bluidy persecuting saint-killing times? I trow, gin ye werena blinded wi' the graces and favours, and services and enjoyments, and employments and inheritances, of this wicked world, I could prove to you, by the Scripture, in what a filthy rag ye put your trust; and that your surplices, and your copes and vestments, are but cast-off garments of the muckle harlot that sitteth upon seven hills and drinketh of the cup of abomination. But, I trow, ye are deaf as adders upon that side of the head; ay, ye are deceived with her ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the author read, he has painted with historical truth, both in regard to circumstances and the spirit of the age, a well-known but unsuccessful court-cabal against Cardinal Richelieu. It is a political comedy, in which the rag-gatherer and the king express themselves in language suitable to their stations. The poet has, with the greatest ingenuity, shown the manner in which trivial causes assist or impede the execution of a ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... or to make his testimony incompetent for the will contest. So, when the ex-lunatic returned from Europe a year ago, our friend Honeywell here, in some way located him at the Caronia. He matured his little scheme. Through a letter broker who deals with the rag and refuse collectors, he got all the second-hand mail from the Caronia. Meantime, William Honeywell Robinson had moved away, and as chance would have it, William Hunter Robinson moved in, receiving the pinprick ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... it blew half a gale, it blew a gale: little they cared, these sons of Ares, these cousins of the broad daylight! There mere no men on earth save these two who would not have got her under a trysail and a rag of a storm-jib with fifteen reefs and another: not so the heroes. Not a stitch would they take in. They carried all her canvas, and cried out to the north-east wind: "We know her better than you! She'll carry away before she capsizes, and she'll burst long before she'll carry away." ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... way; because she has happened to meet him in the garden in the old way; because he has taken her hand in the old way; because they have whispered to one another behind the old curtain (the gaping old rag, as if everybody could not peep through it!); because, in this delicious weather, they have happened to be early risers and go into the park; because dear Goody Jenkins in the village happened to have a bad knee, and my lady Maria went to read to her, and ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... until latter days very contemptuous in his behavior towards Frenchmen. He has a natural antipathy to pomp, and swagger, and fierce demeanor. But now that the guardsmen are gone to war, and the dandies of "The Rag"—dandies no more—are battling like heroes at Balaklava and Inkermann* by the side of their heroic allies, Mr. Punch's laughter is changed to hearty respect and enthusiasm. It is not against courage and honor he ...
— John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character • William Makepeace Thackeray
... griefs are to be mine—till fate call us. And I have a thousand things to tell you, to bless you for, to consult you about. There is not a thought in my mind that you shall not know—bad, good, and indifferent—if you care to turn out the rag-bag. Shall I begin with the morning—my experiences at the club, my little nieces at the Zoo?" He laughed, but suddenly grew serious again. "No, your story first; you owe it me. Let me know all that concerns you. Your past, ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stands in offensive contrast with the momentous nature of the subject, and the dignity of the ministerial office; as if a preacher having chosen the Prophets for his theme should entertain his congregation by exhibiting a traditional shaving rag of Isaiah's with the Prophet's stubble hair on the dried soap-sud. And yet, on the other hand, there is an innocency in it, a security of faith, a fulness evinced in the play and plash of its overflowing, that at other times give one the same sort of pleasure ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... this lonely threnody, she was dragging out of the recesses of her bosom what appeared to be a red rag. This she placed on the table, whilst I watched her with interest. She then commenced to unroll this mummy, taking off layer after layer of rags, until she came to a crumpled piece of brown paper, all the time muttering her Jeremiad ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... protested a voice. "He won't listen to reason. Now take that rag off your face and handle this thing yourself. ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... be among good companions; but if an evil angel crosses his path, he will go to the very depths of hell. 'Tis a brilliant assemblage of good qualities embroidered upon too slight a tissue; time wears the flowers away till nothing but the web is left; and if that is poor stuff, you behold a rag at the last. So long as Lucien is young, people will like him; but where will he be as a man of thirty? That is the question which those who love him sincerely are bound to ask themselves. If I alone had come to think in this way of Lucien, I might perhaps have spared ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Indian wars, and of their ancestors, long ago, in old England. Those same great fires that were the joy of winter were also one of its troubles. Once lit, with all the difficulty attendant upon flint and steel and burnt rag, they had to be kept alight from morning till night and from night till morning. If a fire went out it was a woful business to start it again with the reluctant tinder-box. There was, indeed, another way, an easier way, of going round to a neighbor and borrowing a shovelful ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... against the wall with her hands behind her, watching the manoeuvres of the leathern rag as it flashed up and down the nickel spokes and around and about the hubs, guided by the dexterous hand ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... out to get me into trouble, and the plan they adopted was delightfully simple and easy. It is the rule on retiring from the manege to make the grooming of one's horse the first duty, though an old soldier will take the precaution on wet or muddy days to run an oily rag rapidly over the burnished portions of the horse's fittings in the first instance. This is a labour-saving practice and is almost universally followed. But I saw one of my enemies with a sidelong eye upon me, and tackled my horse at once. ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... exaggerated about the Irish than is to be expected. Their poverty is not exaggerated; it is on the extreme verge of human misery; their cottages would scarce serve for pig-styes, even in Scotland, and their rags seem the very refuse of a rag-shop, and are disposed on their bodies with such ingenious variety of wretchedness that you would think nothing but some sort of perverted taste could have assembled so many shreds together. You are constantly fearful that some knot or loop will give, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... did not doubt you would join the scarlet host against mewomen, like turkeys, are always subdued by a red ragBut what says Sir Arthur, whose dreams are of standing ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the spot where and the manner in which she had found the bit of cloth. While she was speaking, the eye of the Quartermaster was not quiet for a moment, glancing from the rag to the face of our heroine, then back again to the rag. That his suspicions were awakened was easy to be seen, nor was he long in letting it be known ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper |
