"Batten" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gentlemen who do not bet and who want no man's money, partly of perfectly honest fellows who have no judgment, no real knowledge, and no self-restraint, and who serve as prey on which the bookmakers batten. ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... to dancing, the first time that ever I did in my life Have been so long absent that I am ashamed to go I took occasion to be angry with him Justice of God in punishing men for the sins of their ancestors Lady Batten to give me a spoonful of honey for my cold My great expense at the Coronacion She hath got her teeth new done by La Roche That I might not seem to be afeared The monkey loose, which did anger me, and so I did strike her Was kissing my wife, which I did not like We are ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... that's what's the matter with you. You got your heart's desire too easily. You think this world is your own damn playground. And it isn't. Understand? You're put here to work, not play; to develop yourself, not batten on other people. You won her like a man in the face of desperate odds. You paid a heavy price for her. But even so, you don't deserve to keep her if you forget that she has paid too. By Heaven, Piers, she must have loved you a mighty lot ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... can't city governments be clean? Is human nature normally and habitually corrupt when it comes to governing a city? The Mayor and all his appointees are simply wading through the vast quagmire of the common citizen's indifference, fought every step by the vile creatures who batten on the administration of the city's affairs. Do you suppose that if the schools laid tremendous stress on clean citizenship and began in the kindergarten to teach children how to govern in the most practical way, it would help? I believe it would. I'm going to tuck that thought in the back ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... put in the potatoes. Another layer of sea-weed, then the roasting-ears. After that come the fish, wrapped in paper. Then the mussels, clams or anything else you want. When you get them all in, cover the whole thing with a lot of heavy kelp and batten it down with a big piece of canvas. The whole trick is knowing just when to open the oven. Nothing can burn so it's better to leave it too long than to try to ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... camp life proved to be monotonously dreary. Ivan was not of the type of man to press his popularity and batten upon it. Rather, flattery, and the inevitable toadyism of weaker natures, revolted him; and he began once more to retire into himself, and to live again with dreams, which now formed themselves round any one of three topics: first and highest, his music, at ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... some time past had been very unsettled. This afternoon the wind blew fresh from the north-west, which occasioned the sea to break very high across the Dolphin bank; and in the night such a heavy broken sea came into the bay that we were obliged to batten all the hatchways down, and to keep everybody upon deck all night though the rain came down in torrents. The ship rolled in a most ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... didn't work, the whole blooming bunch of middlemen who batten and fatten between the factory and the family could be eliminated, and the arrogant retailer, wholesaler, factor and agent be placed on the retired list through the Mail-Order Plan. Or, aye again, the consumers' wants could be anticipated as they ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... If thou openest thy lips in speech, who will believe thy word? If thou hast need of aught, none shall satisfy thee. What sane man will venture to join thy rablle rout? Ill indeed are thy revellers to look upon, young men impotent of body, and old men witless in mind: in the heyday of life they batten in sleek idleness, and wearily do they drag through an age of wrinkled wretchedness: and why? they blush with shame at the thought of deeds done in the past, and groan for weariness at what is left to do. During their youth they ran riot through their sweet things, and laid up for ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... fork, repeated it. "One thing! In Potsdam, on that cloudless July night, when the world, on which he proposed to batten, slept, toiled, feasted, fasted, occupied with its futile loves and hates, that thing must ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... a spike, is forcibly driven against the skull, the weapon simply crashes through the bone, disintegrating it at the point of entrance, and cracking or splintering it for a variable, but limited, distance beyond. On the other hand, when the head is struck by a "blunt" object—for example, a batten falling from a height—the force is applied over a wider area and the elastic skull bends before it. If the limits of its elasticity are not exceeded, the bone recoils into its normal position when the force ceases to act; but if the bone is bent beyond the point from which ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... daughter, but she had run away from them to batten on the husks of city life, and had prospered exceedingly. It was her parents who heard of her fame and had journeyed to the city to ask her forgiveness and throw themselves on her neck. Kedzie was now wonderful before the nation under the nom ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... to work. I've tried other things, but my thoughts always come back to the Hands. I'm proud of your success you know. I want to—to batten on it. And I want to carry it on. I have ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... across three planks laid close together side by side, while I nailed a fifth athwartships on the deck at the point where I intended to rear my planks. The length of the battens being three inches more than the combined width of the three planks, the projecting ends of the top batten afforded me a very convenient shoulder for the support of my shrouds and stay, which I cut from my coil ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... to console herself for those and similar bitternesses by the knowledge that on the whole the world honours those who battle against ill-fortune without complaint far above the needy crowd of spongers who strive to batten without effort on the crumbs that fall from ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... Even then, as a mere boy, I was struck by the grand symmetry of that ample basin: the break water—then unfinished—lying across the centre; the heights of Bovisand and Cawsand, and those again of Mount Batten and Mount Edgecumbe, left and right; the citadel and the Hoe across the bottom of the Sound, the southern sun full on their walls, with the twin harbours and their forests of masts, winding away into dim distance on each side; and behind all and above all, the purple range of Dartmoor, with ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... now gaining rapidly on the schooner; I could see the brass glisten on the tiller as it banged about; and still no soul appeared upon her decks. I could not choose but suppose she was deserted. If not, the men were lying drunk below, where I might batten them down, perhaps, and do what ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... yere auger holes an' lets it cool. It gets good an' hard, this arsenic-tallow does, an' then Coyote drags the timber thus reg'lated out onto the plains to what he regyards as a elegible local'ty an' leaves it for the wolves to come an' batten on. Old Coyote will have as many as a dozen of these sticks of timber, all bored an' framed up with arsenic-tallow, scattered about. Each mornin' while he's wolfin', Coyote makes a round-up an' skins an' counts up his prey. An' son, you hear me! ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... had been placed over the hatchway. Perhaps the crew were about to batten down the hatches. In vain I tried, while this was going forward, to strike the cask. I had not sufficient strength to do it. A fearful faintness was coming over me. Perhaps the movement of the ship ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... a jolly, turbulent set they were. They decorated the ship from stem to gudgeon in all sorts of unexpected places, and almost disorganized my Lascars, snatching them off duty to pose as models. I had to threaten to driven 'em below at the rope's end, and batten down the hatches, to bring them to reason. But they made fun for us the whole voyage, and I was sorry to see the last of ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... house on house, than anything else I can think of, at this moment." In a later letter he was even less tolerant. "What would I give that you should see the lazzaroni as they really are—mere squalid, abject, miserable animals for vermin to batten on; slouching, slinking, ugly, shabby, scavenging scarecrows! And oh the raffish counts and more than doubtful countesses, the noodles and the blacklegs, the good society! And oh the miles of miserable streets and wretched occupants,[99] to which Saffron-hill or the Borough-mint is a kind of ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... valuable and curious selection which will be welcomed by readers of all ages.... The illustrations by Mr. Batten are often clever and irresistibly humorous. A delight alike to the young people ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... over whom he was to rule. He spoke no Spanish, and he was surrounded by greedy Flemish courtiers dressed in outlandish garb, speaking in a strange tongue, and looking upon the realm of their prince as a fat pasture upon which, locust like, they might batten with impunity. The Spaniards had frowned to see the great Cardinal Jimenez curtly dismissed by the boy sovereign whose crown he had saved; they clamoured indignantly when the Flemings cast themselves upon the resources of Castile and claimed the ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... music, provided by the calculating liberality of the gaming-house keepers, and to loiter round the brunnens of more or less nauseous flavour, the pretext of resort to this rendezvous of idlers and gamblers. The waiters had disappeared to batten on the broken meats from the public table, and to doze away the time till the approach of supper renewed their activity. My interlocutor, with whom I was alone in the deserted apartment, was a man ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Tories, vibrates between coffee-house and tea-table. He annoys his daughter by sometimes calling her 'Belinda,' and astonishes his wife with his mock-heroic apostrophes to her hood and patches. He reads his Spectator at breakfast while other people batten upon newspapers only three hours old. He smiles over the love-letters of Richard Steele, and reverences the name and the writings of Joseph Addison. Indeed, his devotion to Addison is so radical that he has actually been guilty of reading The ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... the men to batten down the curtains on the weather side. But the boat rose gracefully on the billows, and did not scoop up any water in doing so. Boxes, barrels, and other movable articles were secured, and the captain was delighted with the working of ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... Oriental stories most acceptably, and Mr. Batten's remarkable illustrations are all that can be desired. His genii are genii indeed, and his fairy princesses ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... heddle sticks has been already described; in addition to these the threads are further controlled by a reed board which acts both as warp spacer and beater-in. All being ready for the weaving, the shed is opened by raising one of the heddle sticks, and a heavy knife-shaped batten of wood is slipped into the opening. This is turned sideways to enlarge the shed, and a shuttle bearing the weft thread is shot through. By raising and lowering the heddle rods the position of the warp is changed as desired, while from time to time the weft threads are forced up against the fabric ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... cross of Cain blazes upon her brow. Realizing that she is a social outcast, a moral pariah, she becomes reckless, defiant, and finally glories in betraying the fool who trusts her. No matter how fair the mountain upon which she has leave to feed, she will batten on the moor. Love was her excuse when first she went astray, and she hugs the delusion to her heart that Cupid can sanctify a crime; but where honor spreads not its wings of snow love perishes in the fierce simoon of lust. The man ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the Merovingians, the Franks, the Swedes,—all had their grievances, which they would hasten to wreak on the Goths when they learned that the dreaded king was gone. Dreary would be the land of the Goths; on its battle-fields the wolves would batten; the ravens would call to the eagles as ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... been steamed. The boards were steamed by wrapping them in burlap for a distance of 2 feet from the forward end, and pouring boiling water over them, as was done with the snow shoes (page 39). Before bending the boards we had fixed screw eyes in the ends of each batten, except the forward one; a rope had been strung through these screw eyes and the ends were now tied to the head piece and drawn tight so as to bend the boards into a graceful curve. In this way the ropes ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... shouted Dan as they struggled out of the hold. "You've done all I can ask. Hurry! Get out!" and they got out and then turned to batten the hatch cover down. But the rush of fire was too swift to be denied. A thick-bodied pillar choked through the opening and spouted to the top of the funnel—great gouts of the devouring element pulsed softly, but with lightning swiftness, down the deck, and shrivelled a life raft. Long tongues ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... sea a skipper will order his men to trim, batten down the hatches, and clear the deck of all litter. The barometer says nothing, neither the sky nor the water; the skipper has the "feel" that out yonder there's a big blow moving. Now the doctor ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... of the Plague that is Scarlet—moaned and cried out and turned in her misery.... But ye failed me. Then my peoples were weaklings and their hearts all were craven; the Scarlet Evil dismayed them; they fled from its power and left it to batten on ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... the palisades from one to the other, presenting a blank wall without, broken only by loopholes for musketry, had been scaled by the crafty Cherokees, swarming over the roofs, and attacking the English settlers through the easy access of the unglazed windows and flimsy batten doors that opened upon the quadrangle. Although finally beaten off, the Indians had inflicted great loss. Her father had been one of the slain settlers who thus paid penalty for the false sense ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... although Home Rulers, agree that the destinies of the country should not be trusted to either or any of the jarring factions, which like unclean birds of evil omen hover darkling around, already disputing with horrid dissonance possession of the carcase on which they hope to batten. At the Station Hotel, Limerick Junction, a warm Nationalist said to me, "The country will be ruined with those blackguards. We have a right to Home Rule, an abstract right to manage our own affairs, and I believe in the principle. But I want such men as Andrew Jameson, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... insolence," said Thirkle. "We've got to get out of here. Give him lip, Buckrow, so he'll come down, or he'll batten down on us until morning, and ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... forme indeed, Where euery God did seeme to set his Seale, To giue the world assurance of a man. This was your Husband. Looke you now what followes. Heere is your Husband, like a Mildew'd eare Blasting his wholsom breath. Haue you eyes? Could you on this faire Mountaine leaue to feed, And batten on this Moore? Ha? Haue you eyes? You cannot call it Loue: For at your age, The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble, And waites vpon the Iudgement: and what Iudgement Would step from this, to this? What diuell was't, That thus hath cousend ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... "—he pointed to a shrivelled rhizome—"was not identified. It may be a Palaeonophis—or it may not. It may be a new species, or even a new genus. And it was the last that poor Batten ever collected." ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... is the general name for a curtain of canvas—painted to represent some scene and stretched on a batten—a long, thick strip of wood—pocketed in the lower end to give the canvas the required stability. Sets of lines are tied to the upper batten on which the drop is tied and thus the drop can be raised or lowered to its place on the stage. There are sets of lines in the rear boundaries ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... paper back finally—which is often only after much bush grumbling, accusation, recrimination, and denial—he severely and carefully re-arranges theme pages, folds the paper, and sticks it away up over a rafter, or behind a post or batten, or under his pillow where it will safe. He wants that paper to ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... sacrifices could not be carried on into his cult, if Waitz-Gerland (vi. 811) are right in saying that the Australians have no ancestor-worship. The Kurnai ghosts 'were believed to live upon plants,'[13] which are not offered to them. Chill ghosts, unfed by men, would come to waning camp-fires and batten on the broken meats. The Ngarego and Wolgal held, more handsomely, that Tharamulun (Darumulun) met the just departed spirit 'and conducted it to its future home beyond the sky.'[14] Ghosts might also accompany relics of the body, such as the dead hand, carried about by ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... be left for the carrion crow, Or the wolf to batten o'er thee: Or the coward insult the gallant dead, Who in life had trembled ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... side. 'See the gray pennons I prepare, To seek my true love through the air! I will not lend that savage groom, To break his fall, one downy plume! No!—deep amid disjointed stones, The wolves shall batten on his bones, And then shall his detested plaid, By bush and brier in mid-air stayed, Wave forth a banner fail and free, Meet signal ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... one point after another that catches the eye suggests a fresh train of ideas. To the east is Sutton Pool, with its coasting vessels and fishing-boats; south, across the Cattewater, lies Mount Batten, whose round tower recalls the long and resolute defence of the town in the Civil War. Still farther south are the high grounds of Plymstock and Bovisand, with their modern fortifications; to the north stretches the town and far in the distance the heights of Dartmoor; and ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... Leanna were staying when we arrived at Sutter's Fort was part of a long, low, single-story adobe building outside the fortification walls, and like others that were occupied by belated travellers, was the barest and crudest structure imaginable. It had an earthen floor, a thatched roof, a batten door, and an opening in the rear ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... It is most unreasonable to flee the knowledge of good like the infection of a horrible disease, and batten and grow fat in the real atmosphere of a lazar-house. This was my first thought; but my second was not like unto it, and I saw that our satirist was wise, wise in his generation, like the unjust steward. ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... see in detail, even this lengthy account may have justification. The Army Commander's opinion was shown not alone by his congratulatory message, but by the immediate honours awarded. To the Leicestershires fell one Military Cross[4] and four Military Medals, one of the latter going to Sergeant Batten, Marner's platoon-sergeant. The water-tank leans against the station no longer, and they have repaired the crumbled walls. But the cracks and fissures in the great fort lift eloquent witness to the way both armies desired it, and ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... Since the beginnings of the world. Ring upon awful ring uprose That obscure heritage of foes, The exceeding bitter heritage Which still a jealous God bestows From inappellable age to age, The ghostly worms that softly move Through every grey old corse of love And creep across the coffined years To batten on our blood and tears; And there were hooded shapes of death Gaunt and grey, cruel and blind, Stealing softly as a breath Through the woods that loured behind The City; hooded shapes of fear Slowly, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... into the sea, living or dead," said Mr. Thompson, with an ominous lift of his eye, "you go with her, Mr. Batten. Remember who brought her here and ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... nation is encouraged and justified. It is then that the diplomatists who lied and schemed to bring on the monstrous event, that all the politicians who exploit and foster the nation's madness and misery to enhance their own reputations, that those who batten on the slaughter, and that those who glorify the carnage at a safe distance and fight the enemy with their lying tongues, are justified. They all are justified. But if, instead of victory, there ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... steady, and remember there's no danger, for we can make land any time in the boats if worse comes to worse. Mr. Gibbs, have the men get their dunnage up out of the forecastle, and then close the hatch and batten it." ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... he sighed; and he raised himself a little more, and then, as he thrust out one hand to get a fresh hold of the bamboo batten, he stopped short, silent and motionless, and with cold perspiration breaking out all over his face, for his hand had closed upon one of the battens, which felt cold and scaly; and but for the fact that his left arm was hooked ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... dead for two hundred years: the Athenian populace knew little of her except that she had been great and that she had been unhappy; and the descendants of the men who had thronged the theatre to see the Oedipus of Sophokles, sickening with that strange disease which makes the soul crave to batten on the fruits that are its poison, found a rare feast furnished forth in the imaginary history of the one great woman of ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... them from afar, seemed the only possible threatening of evil in all the world. He hastened to stiffen his resolve. He had need of it. Tyler Sudley had said that he did not know how the law stood, and for himself, he was not willing to risk his liberty on it. He gazed apprehensively upon the little batten shutter of the window of the room where Nehe-miah Yerby slept, expecting to see it slowly swing open and disclose him there. It did not stir, and gathering resolution from the terrors that had beset him when he fancied his opportunity threatened, he ran like a frightened deer fleetly down ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... birth, that is, prevent it from showing itself anywhere. A king, for example, who put his finances in such good order that no malversation was ever committed, would thus display more hatred for the wrong done by factionaries than if, after having suffered them to batten on the blood of the people, he had ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... church at St. Olave's where a poor dull sermon from a bawling Scotman, and Sam'l to sleep, a thing unseemly in the Church, but I awake and did fix in my mind the pattern of my Lady Batten's Hood, the which I would not ask of her for that we do of late a little make ourselves strange to her and her family, but the less matter because I now have it in my Eye. Mrs Lethulier masqued, which methought a strange thing to be seen at Worshipp, though the great Ladies do now ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... Hazard o' life! As if a man would turn from his course for them! Spiders o' hell! I'll strike my topmast to Death himself first—so the devil go with them! The blind gods may crush—they shall not conquer! They may kill—but I snap my fingers in their faces to the death! A pretty pickle, indeed! Batten down the hatches, Ramsay. Lend Jean a hand to get the guns under cover. ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... farm-houses in the parishes nearest to the town. Yet, as a warning that all was not their own, four frigates and two line-of-battle ships, with a commission from the rebel government of London, and flying the broad pennant of Admiral Batten, cruised between Jersey and Guernsey, never far from sight, although giving for the most part a wide berth to both the island castles, whose gunners ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... only glazedly Reflected. Upwards, upwards through the shadows, Through the lush sponginess of deep-sea meadows Where hare-lipped monsters batten, let ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... communications became one of the decisive factors in Russia's disasters. And it was heightened by the conduct of, shall we say, the prussianized officials,[123] who are reported to have disposed of waggons for large sums to greedy merchants, who used to raise the prices of the merchandise and batten on the misery ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... again she returned to the attack. Could she but pierce the skin, her paralyzing venom would quickly do its work. Then the murderous task would be easy. Eggs would be laid deep in the wound; grubs would hatch from them, and batten luxuriously on their unwilling host, sapping his strength, but cunningly avoiding his vitals, until they were full-fed. As they turned to pupae he would die, and from caterpillar, or may be chrysalis, there would ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... batten on their own devilries, And mark what heaven-born splendours they could quell, She held him quivering in ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... knees, vile dog! nor speak to me of parents! Such evil hast thou done me, that I could devour thee raw! Not for thy weight in gold would I give thee to thy queenly mother, to mourn over thee; but dogs and birds shall batten on thy flesh!" ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... for such ware. And is it not after all a hopeful sign for the age that even the most questionable literary tastes must nowadays ally themselves with religion—that the hotbed imaginations which used to batten on Rousseau and Byron have now risen at least as high as the Vies des Saints and St. Francois de Sales' Philothea? The truth is, that in such a time as this, in the dawn of an age of faith, whose future magnificence ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... being apt to batten or fatten those that eat it. The cove has hushed the battner; i.e. has ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... those of the English accounts. The Dutch hamlet of Saratoga, surprised by Marin, was near the mouth of the Fish Kill, on the west side of the Hudson. There was also a small fort on the east side, a little below the mouth of the Batten Kill.] Albany was left uncovered, and the Assembly voted L150 in provincial currency to rebuild the ruined fort. A feeble palisade work was accordingly set up, but it was neglected like its predecessor. Colonel Peter Schuyler was stationed there with his regiment in 1747, but was forced ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... it up and scattered it in the dust. And let him send the news to the Mullahs in the Hills. I know that soft-handed brood with their well-fed bodies and their treacherous mouths. If only they would let me carry on the road!" he cried passionately, "I would drag them out of the houses where they batten on poor men's families and set them to work till the palms of their hands were honestly blistered. Let the Mullahs have a care, Safdar Khan. I go North to-morrow ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... had found opportunity to show Tressady that morning a paragraph from one of the numerous papers that batten on the British peer, his dress, his morals, and his sport. The paragraph, without names, without even initials, contained an outline of Lord Ancoats's affairs which Harding, who knew everything of a scandalous nature, declared to be well informed. It had made George whistle; ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mystic, and to a large amount of credulity, has made Russia for two hundred years the happy hunting-ground of charlatans and impostors of various sorts claiming supernatural powers: clairvoyants, mediums, yogis, and all the rest of the tribe who batten on human weaknesses, and the perpetual desire to tear away the veil from the Unseen. It so happened that my chief at Lisbon had in his youth dabbled in the Black Art. Sir Charles Wyke was a dear old man, who had spent most of his Diplomatic career in Mexico and the ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton |
