"Fag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upon, & my aunt has bought a beautifull ermin trimming for my cloak. AC stands for Abigail Church. PF for Polly Frazior. I have presented one piece of ribbin to my aunt as you directed. She gives her love to you, & thanks you for it. I intend to send Nancy Mackky a pair of lace mittens, & the fag end of Harry's watch string. I hope Carolus (as papa us'd to call him) will think his daughter very smart with them. I am glad Hon^d madam, that you think my writing is better than it us'd to be—you see it is mended just here. I dont know what you mean by terrible margins vaze. ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... right with a reserve and a sort of sighing patience which one is often moved to admire. And again, the abstract butler never stoops to familiarity. But the coloured gentleman will pass you a wink at a time; he is familiar like an upper form boy to a fag; he unbends to you like Prince Hal with Poins and Falstaff. He makes himself at home and welcome. Indeed, I may say, this waiter behaved himself to me throughout that supper much as, with us, a young, free, and not very self-respecting master might behave to a good-looking chambermaid. ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 a-lyin' ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... non quocunque modo," said Somers, the head of the school, whose fag Walter was, and who, passing by at the moment, caught the last sentence; "what is the ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... the plums? Wot's a ship without a 'elm? It's my opinion, shipmates, that a song without a chorus is no better than it should be. It's wus nor nothin'. It puts them wot listens in the blues an' the man wot sings into the stews—an' sarve him right. I wouldn't, no, I wouldn't give the fag-end o' nothin' mixed in bucket o' salt water for a song without a chorus—that's ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... enough to dig up the coffin and to see what is in it, at night they could do that. No one knows in what soil Robert Emmet was buried, but he was made an end of sure enough. Parnell went through Gort one day, and he called it the fag-end of Ireland, just as Lady Morgan called the ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory
... we did meet 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 ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... winced; fiercely a piece of the shining ware was lifted high, but it sank again. The painted elder cringed. There may have been genuine peril, but the one hot sport in her fag end of a life was to play with this beautiful fire. She held the girl's eye with a look of frightened admiration, murmuring, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... suggesting the possibility of there being hands to grub them up. Opposite to you, is a giant figure carved in stone, reclining, with an urn, upon a lofty piece of artificial rockwork; and out of the urn, dangles the fag end of a leaden pipe, which, once upon a time, poured a small torrent down the rocks. But the eye-sockets of the giant are not drier than this channel is now. He seems to have given his urn, which is nearly upside down, a final tilt; and after crying, like a sepulchral child, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... a fine Gothic stoup into which bucolic rustics now knock the fag-ends of their pipes. The staircase newel is a fine piece of Gothic carving with an embattled moulding, a poppy-head and heraldic lion. Pillared fire-places and other tokens of departed greatness testify to the former beauty of ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... "proteids", notices a slight cloudiness in his urine, and underlines "The Uric-Acid Diathesis" in one of his pamphlets. Then his heart bumps, he diagnoses anew, and so goes on, usually ending by taking phosphorus for his "brain fag". Then he finds he has a disease unknown to the faculty, which discovery interests him as intensely as ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... master a precedent than they did the year before. Whereas formerly they could get the point of a precedent by reading it over once, they must now read it over four or five times. You usually find them the victims of ceaseless toil without rest, of that destroying fretfulness which brain-fag brings, and of some flogger of exhausted nerves, ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... had not shaved and washed its face, and put on a clean shirt for a shocking length of time. It was dark when I reached it; having walked twelve miles after three p.m. There was only one inn, properly speaking, in the town, and since the old coaching time, it had contracted itself into the fag-end of a large, dark, seedy-looking building, where it lived by selling beer and other sharp and cheap drinks to the villagers; nineteen-twentieths of whom appeared to be agricultural laborers. The entertainment proffered on the sign-board over the door was evidently ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... tired if you do go. The change will do you heaps of good, and it will not be a fag. I will ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... man, of a sweet and cheerful temper; and he gave the signal to begin with as patient an interest in the proceedings as if they had caused him no trouble in the past and promised him no difficulty in the future. The two characters which opened the comedy of The Rivals, "Fag" and "The Coachman," appeared on the scene—looked many sizes too tall for their canvas background, which represented a "Street in Bath"—exhibited the customary inability to manage their own arms, legs, and voices—went ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... vessel, 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, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... see a single ball of that match bowled. He was 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 ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... but it is true. And when I was at Harrow, his eldest brother, who is one of the best, was my fag. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... vos 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 ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... of a reserved and rather contemplative disposition. The profession did not appear uncongenial to my taste; and although, from my classical education having been deplorably neglected, there was no small share of grinding and fag before me, I entered readily into my father's views; the more especially, as in them was comprehended the preliminary visit to Germany, the land of my early visions, where I hoped to be on more intimate terms than ever with my old acquaintances, the Spirit of the Brocken, the Wild Hunter, &c. &c.; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... of close order formation which lasted until noon. During this time we had two ten-minute breaks for rest, and no sooner the word, "Pall out for ten minutes," was given, than each Tommy got out a fag and lighted it. ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... study for the field, the Switcher instantly declares his superiority. He had the happiness to practise his craft in its heyday, while Simms knew but the fag-end of a noble tradition. Haggart, moreover, was an expert, pursuing a difficult art, while Simms was a bully, plundering his betters by bluff. Simms boasted no quality which might be set off against the accurate ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... at Westminster. He readily helped Oliver in his exercises, but he made him pay most severely for this assistance, by the most tyrannical usage; and, in all his tyranny, he thought himself fully justifiable, because little Oliver, beside his other misfortunes, had the misfortune to be a fag. ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... displayed few of the well-recognised trade-marks with which the articles of the literary market are invariably branded. As a small matter one noticed the somewhat slovenly use of the editorial we, which at the fag-end of passages sometimes dropped into I. [Upon my remarking upon this to Rossetti he remembered incidentally that a similar confounding of the singular and plural number of the pronoun produces marvellously suggestive effects in a very different work, Macbeth, where the kingly we is ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... grow here, and no green thing gladdens the eye. The birds that fly over the land carry their provisions with them. Only the crow and the raven tarry with us. Our city lies in the midst of a desert of the purest, most unadulterated and uncompromising sand, in which infernal soil nothing but that fag-end of vegetable creation, "sage- brush," ventures to grow.... I said we are situated in a flat, sandy desert—true. And surrounded on all sides by such prodigious mountains that when you look disdainfully down (from them) upon the insignificant village of Carson, in that instant you are ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... furia! I must get over so much writing, or I shall be too late for the summer's printing. If it isn't done by June, what will become of me? I shall go back to Italy in disgrace, and considerably poorer than I need be, which is of more practical consequence. So I fag. Then there's an hour and a half in the morning for Penini's lessons. We breakfast at nine, and receive nobody till past four. This will all prove to you two things, dearest friend—first (I hope) that I'm pardonable for making you wait a few days longer than should have been, and secondly that ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... troops of juveniles who followed the Tumblers or the Monkey, and came up, all on one side, a little too late for everything that was attractive, from Monday morning until Saturday night. Wherever childhood congregated to play, there was little Moloch making Johnny fag and toil. Wherever Johnny desired to stay, little Moloch became fractious, and would not remain. Whenever Johnny wanted to go out, Moloch was asleep, and must be watched. Whenever Johnny wanted to stay at ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... 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
... usual and spilling half his beer on the table and floor. Presently some drunken utterances reached the doctor's ear, and he turned round in a surprised manner and looked at Bogg. The drunkard continued to mutter for some time, and then broke out into something like the fag-end of a song. The doctor walked over to the table at which Bogg was sitting, and, seating himself on the far corner, regarded the drunkard attentively for some minutes; but the latter's voice ceased, his head fell slowly on his folded arms, ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... the ring curls and the red mittens, as also in her French girl with, by the way, a beautiful gown of rich yellow silk Frenchily trimmed in vermilion or orange, I couldn't make out which. The amusing French girl, who having picked up many fag-ends of English from her experience with the soldats Americains—got her "animals" mixed—"you have my goat, I have your goat, et—tie ze bull outside," and so on. I am crossing Irene and Fay here because I think them similar, only I ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... to the other Americans in the hotel. She imagined 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 afraid. She ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... declared constantly that she would rather forego any old social thing than interfere with his work, she never made him go anywhere with her without first asking if his work permitted it. To relieve him of the burthen of such social attentions she even made a fag or so. The making of fags out of manifestly stricken men, the keeping of tamed and hopeless admirers, seemed to her to be the most natural and reasonable of feminine privileges. They did their useful little services until it pleased the ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... Saviour, I charge you be true and tender to mankind.' He goes on to bid me 'live and labor for the fallen, the neglected, the suffering, and the poor;' and finally ends by advising me to help upset any, or all, institutions, laws, and so forth, that bear hardly on the fag-ends of society; and tells me that what he calls 'a service to humanity' is worth more to the doer than a service to anything else, or than anything we can gain from the world. Ah, ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... 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 said not ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... Mary, at Holyrood. I thank no one for endeavoring to enlighten my credulity, on such points of popular belief. It is like breaking up the shrine of the pilgrim; it is robbing a poor traveller of half the reward of his toils; for, strip travelling of its historical illusions, and what a mere fag you make ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... three together that he was happy himself and made others 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 ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... appointed to be the fag of one Loman, and as the story unfolds we begin to see life through the eyes of the older boy. There is an interesting moment when Steevie refuses to do the work of fag to Loman, and is soundly beaten up ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... too hard, dear," she remonstrated. "You must relax a little when you are away from the office, or you'll have—oh, brain-fag, or nervous prostration, or ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... blame of my lateness with me, Mr. Narkom," said Cleek as he tossed aside his hat and threw the fag-end of his cigarette through the open window. "You merely said 'tea-time,' not any particular hour; and I improved the opportunity to take another spin up the river and to talk like a Dutch uncle to a certain young man whom I shall introduce to your notice in due time. It isn't often that ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... prime 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 a quarrel ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... under the necessity of going out nightly into the town for the purpose of executing commissions; but this was not easy, as all the regular outlets were closed at an early hour. In such a dilemma, any route, that was barely practicable at whatever risk, must be traversed by the loyal fag; and it so happened that none of any kind remained open or accessible, except one; and this one communication happened to have escaped suspicion, simply because it lay through a succession of temples and sewers ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... was thus sent to Eton at an age much younger than other boys. He was perhaps a little proud of his birth and breeding; but it was probably more from his inborn hatred of tyranny than from the former reason, that he utterly refused to "fag" for the older boys, and in this way got himself at once into trouble in the school. Neither the cruel vituperation of his fellows nor menaces of punishment upon the part of his superiors could bend his will to an obedience which could only be yielded at the expense of self-respect. He was soon ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... 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 ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... legally 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 ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... perhaps, a man whose heart was weighted by a great woe. You have seen the eye darken, the soul fag, and the spirit congeal under the breath of an icy disaster. At ten-thirty of this particular evening Cowperwood, sitting alone in the library of his Michigan Avenue house, was brought face to face with the fact that he had lost. He ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... sudden and marvellous increase. I seemed to tread on eider-down, and, cigar in mouth, strolled along Fleet-street and the Strand, towards my domicile in Half-Moon street—"nescio quid meditans nugarum"—sometimes humming the fag end of an Irish melody; anon stopping to stare in a print-shop window; and then I would trudge on, chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy as I conned over the various ups and downs that had chequered my life ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... of his troop could live through the swarms of the Arabs around them. That I saw with my own eyes. I and my Spahis just reached him in time. Then who is it that saved the day, I pray you?—I, who just ran a race for fun and came in at the fag-end of the thing, or this man who lived the whole day through in the carnage, and never let go of the guidon, but only thought how to die greatly? I tell you, the Cross is his, and not mine. Take it back, and give ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... one charming person up to London from the country at the latter end of August? The town house long since dismantled for the grand tour now finished—the charms of the season abandoned for peaceful Suffolk—why should Lilian care to return thus at the fag end of London's feast of folly? Has the bronzed and bearded Barndale anything to do with it? Lady Dives Luxor gives a ball; and Lady Dives, being Lilian's especial patroness and guardian angel and divinity, insists ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... 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 ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... the matter with his fielding? It was all right. Make the rest of the team fag about, yes. But not a chap who, dash it all, had got ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... bachelor's face is not so often the result of brain-fag from an overworked mind as of heart-fag ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... which she concealed under the robe and cowl of a monk, Maria slipped through the garden gate next day, met her lover, ran to the shore, where a boat had been tied, crossed with him to Camaya, the ship being promised there for a fag end of cargo, and prayed for a quick departure from the Philippines. In vain. They fell into the hands of unfriendly natives, who, having learned to distrust the Spanish, were always ready to wreak small injuries on ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... 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 that way, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... permitted. Again, to the average young man, the disposition of cigarette butts is of little concern—m'lady's best parlor centerpiece, polished floor or cherished urn usually preferred; woe betide the luckless Buddie who denies his poor dead fag decent burial in the ubiquitous spit kit! To throw butts, gum wrappers, matches or anything but glances overboard, clew to the vulture eye of the lurking submarine, was a positive court martial offense. It was beginning to be evident that Sherman ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... 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 hard ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... and the talking oaks and the nightingales. She wrote briefly to her father, giving him, as he had requested, an account of things; and he wrote back that since she was so contented—she didn't recognise having told him that—she had better not return to town at all. The fag-end of the London season would be unimportant to her, and he was getting on very well. He mentioned that Godfrey had passed his tests, but, as she knew, there would be a tiresome wait before news of results. The ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... Snowy transparent curtains enclosed the bed as a protection against the mosquitoes, a crucifix of delicate workmanship hung above the head of the couch, and the seats were covered with good cloth of various colors, fag-ends from the looms. Pretty straw mats lay on the floor, and pots of plants, filling the little room with fragrance, stood on the window-sill and in a corner of the room where a clay statuette of the Good Shepherd ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Bolton was on 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
... it would throw too much work on you; you're such a conscientious beggar! but of course you wouldn't do for us all the odd jobs you do for poor Bernard. Seems to me," Jack ruminated, "the best plan would be for you to have a car. One gets about quicker like that and it wouldn't be such a fag. There's that little green Napier roadster, she'd come in handy if we stabled her at Nicholson's." He added simply, to obviate any possible misunderstanding, "Garage ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... strides in nature. All was accomplished by subtle change. He dressed 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 ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... 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 and effects he knows absolutely nothing. How much simpler, cheaper, ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel
... bring me down off my moral high horse. And I loathe the high horse. I am in a position of special moral superiority to men who are on the whole as good men as I am or better. That shows all the time. You see the sort of man I am. I've a broad streak of personal vanity. I fag easily. I'm short-tempered. I've other things, as you perceive. When I fag I become obtuse, I repeat and bore, I get viciously ill-tempered, I suffer from an intolerable sense of ill usage. Then that ass, Wagstaffe, who ought to be ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... 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 of the line. ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Sunday borrowed my only decanter, in return, and, hang them, cracked it!—Curse me, say I, if this life is worth having! It's all the very vanity of vanities—as it's said somewhere in the Bible—and no mistake! Fag, fag, fag, all one's days, and—what for? Thirty-five pounds a-year, and 'no advance!' (Here occurred a pause and revery, from which he was roused by the clangor of the church-bells.) Bah, bells! ring away till you're all cracked!—Now ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... of thing to do. If you'll excuse my saying so. Alone! As you say; body fag is no cure for brain fag. Who told you to? No wonder; walking! And the sun on your head, heat, fag, solitude, all the day long, and then, I suppose, you go to bed and try ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... altogether so fine and painstaking, and showed such thought, care, taste and judgment, that, apart from my personal pleasure in it, I felt exceedingly proud, and happy at the complete and beautiful result... I am sorry you do not like "Current Events." To me "Current Topics" means the fag end of everything we know and have been obliged to read about in the papers. "Current Events" has a broader significance, and leaves ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... distinguished of English names, and shared his amusement in seeing Harry talking to them with the same frank unembarrassed ease as when he had that morning shaken hands with their son, in the capacity of Hector Ernescliffe's fag. No one present inspired him with a tithe of the awe he felt for a post-captain—it was simply a pleasant assembly of good-natured folks, glad to welcome home a battered sailor, and of pretty girls, for whom he had a sailor's admiration, but without forwardness ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Peter cleaned plates for him in his study, and Ferris watched him. Ferris was kind and talked about many things out of his great wisdom, and then he asked Peter whether he would always like to be his fag, and ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... still to say, and we found it hard to part from our charming friends; realising, too, that this was the end of our holiday, and that before us lay merely the toil and bustle of a return to commonplace, everyday life. At last, though, the final fag-end of a cheroot was thrown away, the last hand-grips given, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... livery of their lower condition. Everything about it is absurd, from the spurious waterfall pinned to the back of their heads down to the train that sweeps the muddy pavement. Their hair is infested with beads, bits of lace and of ribbons, or mock jewelry. A bonnet is an epitome of fag-ends. The poor crazy creatures in the asylum, who pick up any rag, or wisp of straw, or scrap of tin, they may find, and wear it proudly upon their frocks, are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... mothers were taking care of their children, combing their hair, nursing or "trotting" them; and the passions of all—jealousy, rage, love—were as strongly marked as in men. They had a language as distinct to them as ours to us; and their women were as noisy and as fond of disputation as any fish-fag in Billingsgate. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... that she deserved a slap; but Terry spared the Countess a blush and me the brain fag of a repartee conciliatory alike to parent ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... fagging^, hammering; limae labor [Lat.]; industry, industriousness, operoseness^, operosity^. trouble, pains, duty; resolution &c 604; energy &c (physical) 171. V. exert oneself; exert one's energies, tax one's energies; use exertion. labor, work, toil, moil, sweat, fag, drudge, slave, drag a lengthened chain, wade through, strive, stretch a long arm; pull, tug, ply; ply the oar, tug at the oar; do the work; take the laboring oar bestir oneself (be active) 682; take trouble, trouble ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... he tried and tugged at one of the door-handles. "Sacrament!" he muttered as he at last let go and began hunting in the boot of the coach, under the driver's cushion and in secret nooks and corners, which proved, at the best, mere receptacles for fag-ends of whipcord and cobwebs. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... she will be the worse loss. You simple Ethel, you don't think that Charles Cheviot will let her be the dear family fag we have always made ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... care for theaters—and girls, Howland," he exclaimed banteringly, repeating Howland's words of a few minutes before. "A pretty face affects you a little differently up here, eh? Well, after you've been in this fag-end of the universe for a month ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... up 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
... 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
... wretched JOE, My fag at school, your butt at College. Dull, elephantine, pompous, slow, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., January 3, 1891. • Various
... rather stop here. School in winter is quite tiring enough, but school all the year round would about wear me out. Store work is just play compared with the fag of simple equations ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... in Chile than in any other South American country. A portion of the city of Valparaiso seems to be given over almost entirely to the liquor dealers and the people who throng that district are hard-looking folks. The fag ends of civilization seem to have gathered here. This is the only city in South America where I was accosted by both men and women and they almost try to hold one up in the streets in ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... 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 of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... shook everyone else's and with the same smile made the same remark to her. She tried to say something to bring back her old schoolmate, but Estella turned to the next person and she found herself shoved on. And shoved on she was from that time forth, conscious only of heat and noise and fag and ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... my lateness with me, Mr. Narkom," said Cleek, as he tossed aside his hat and threw the fag-end of the cigarette he was smoking out through the open window. "You said in your note that there was no immediate necessity for haste, so I improved the shining hour by another spin down the river. It isn't often ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... much to destroy in him,' said the Pussum. 'He's so thin already, there's only a fag-end ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... It was the fag end of the week in the Dingy City. A heavy weight of dusty grey cloud lay oppressively inert, vaguely resting on the house and tree tops, and underneath the cloud the air seemed stagnantly confined; ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... back and see all my philosophy refuted, all my prim little opinions lying prone like dolls with the sawdust knocked out of them. All these years I have been judging Judith with an ignorance as cruel as it has been complacent. Verily I have been the fag end of wisdom. So I forbear to ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... 'appy days! An' 'ow they've flown— Flown like the smoke of some inchanted fag; Since dear Doreen, the sweetest tart I've known, Passed me the jolt that made me sky the rag. An' ev'ry golding day floats o'er a chap Like a glad dream of ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis
... 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 nothing if not heroic; night after ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... "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 ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... boundary 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 ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... instead of facts, figures and arguments, bitter 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, ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... commandeered from a pair of civilian trousers that was hanging goodness knows where at the beginning of the war. As for Marthereau's puttees, they are not both of the same hue, for he failed to find two fag-ends of greatcoat equally worn and equally dirty, to be cut ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... way," Mr Ffolliot said in quite a new tone, "you were saying something the other day about your mother's very kind offer to have Mary for some weeks after the May drawing-room. I think it would be a good thing. You don't want the fag and expense of going up to town so soon after you've come home. Let her stay with her grandmother for a bit and go out—see that she has proper clothes—they will enjoy having the child, and she will see something of the world. Let her have ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... impossible that the Army of the Valley might be on its way to Tennessee to take Memphis, or even to Vicksburg, to sweep the foe from Mississippi. The men lounged beneath the trees, or watched the weary Virginia Central bringing in the fag end of things. Fredericksburg was now the road's terminus; beyond, the line had been destroyed by ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... time. Now she's followed him over here, or got here first, tried the same game probably, met with a refusal, and this anonymous note is her revenge. The man she married was a crack-brained weakling who got into the army the fag end of the war, fell in love with her pretty face, married her, then they quarrelled, and he drank himself into a muddle-head. She ran him into debt; then he gambled away government funds, bolted, was caught, and would have been tried and sent to jail, but some powerful relative saved ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... together, but must for ever be a-doing something new, had cut out her images and devised the show to entertain the servants in the kitchen, and that the guests above hearing their merriment had come down in time to get the fag end, which pleased them so vastly that they would have her ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... heroine of his dreams. He had, he said, cast aside his life of ease and luxury; he would devote his days and nights to the service of that gentle lady; he would perform the most menial offices, he would 'fag' for her, he would be her footman— and feel requited by a single smile. A single smile, indeed, he had, but it was of an unexpected kind. Miss Nightingale at first refused to see him, and then, when she consented, believing that he was an emissary sent by Sidney Herbert to ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... That is why they always start groups like TGW, FLT, USA and the like. Structure makes them happy. [...] Warez d00dz will never have a handle like "Pink Daisy" because warez d00dz are insecure. Only someone who is very secure with a good dose of self-esteem can stand up to the cries of fag and girlie-man. More likely you will find warez d00dz with handles like: Doctor Death, Deranged Lunatic, Hellraiser, Mad Prince, Dreamdevil, The Unknown, Renegade Chemist, Terminator, and Twin Turbo. They like to sound badass when they can hide behind their terminals. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... for buying cheap food results in the purchasing of foodstuffs which are deficient in nutrient properties. The main articles of diet are indifferent bread and butter, the fag ends of coarse meat, the outside leaves of green vegetables, and tea, and an occasional pennyworth of fried fish and potatoes. Children who are supplied with milk at school, or who are given breakfast and dinner, respond at once to the better feeding, and show distinct ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... 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 ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... who were tolerably discreet, and found the debate on the White gentility had been resumed. Ivinghoe was philosophically declaring 'that in these days one must take up with everybody, so it did not matter if one was a little more of a cad than another; he himself was fag at Eton to a fellow whose father was an oilman, and who wasn't half ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 — ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... whiskey, put a stop to "the hurly-burly of the flight" and reminded the fugitives that by this time they were in sufficient force to rally; and then they would return "to explore the plundered country and to bury the unfortunate scalped heads in the fag-end of the retreat"; whereas if there had been an appointed rendezvous where all could rally it would have prevented such a flight from what might possibly have been a body of Indians far inferior in numbers to the armed men of the settlements attacked. [Footnote: ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the 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 of the rampant kind are inactive, it is no slight boon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... landlord; and being moreover honoured with the dignity of clerk to the parish, he was deemed by his neighbours a person of no small accomplishment, and no insignificant distinction. He was a little, dry, thin man, of a turn rather sentimental than jocose; a memory well stored with fag-ends of psalms, and hymns which, being less familiar than the psalms to the ears of the villagers, were more than suspected to be his own composition; often gave a poetic and semi-religious colouring to his conversation, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... salaries. And, in the third and last place, she would infallibly secure that, some twenty years hence at furthest, every theological professor of the Free Church should be a pluralist, and able to give to his lectures merely those fag-ends of his time which he could snatch from the duties of the pulpit and the care of his flock. And such, in doubling the Cape Horn of the College question, is all that unanimity of voting could secure ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... 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 ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... as an after-piece. It was a rhymed farce in which the dialogue was sung or chanted by the characters to popular ballad tunes. But after the Restoration the Jig assumed a new and more serious complexion, and came eventually to be dovetailed with the play itself, instead of being given at the fag end of the entertainment. Mr. W.J. Lawrence, the well-known theatrical authority to whom I owe much valuable information contained in this note, would (doubtless correctly) attribute the innovation to Stapylton and Edward Howard, both of whom dealt pretty freely ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... 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 churchyard by a ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... 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 or ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... how it started, but it's been going on for two or three years now. It's a School House feud really, but Dexter's are mixed up in it somehow. If a School House fag goes down town he runs like an antelope along the High Street, unless he's got one or two friends with him. I saved dozens of kids from destruction when I was at school. The St Jude's fellows lie in wait, and dash out on them. I used to ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... heard two or three of the bridesmaids, to say nothing of the maid of honor and the bridegroom's mamma, tapping their gentle hammers, at my expense, at the breakfast. It was a year afterward that I began to fag ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... elephant-snares. There fell into my hands recently certain valuable documents in the meanest of contemporary swindles, which reveal the connection of the National City Bank, certain of its officers and other important financial interests, with a plot to fleece the fag ends of the public. The details of the Munroe & Munroe-Montreal & Boston conspiracy have been widely published, and the world is well acquainted now with the two Munroes, graduates of a "gents' furnishing-goods" shop in Montreal, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Latin tep (of tepere, tepefacere), Slavonic tepl, topl (for tep or top), in modern Persian tab. Thymele refers to the hearth as the place of smoke ([Greek], thus, fumus), but familia denotes household from famulus for fagmulus, the root fag being equated with the Sansk. bhaj, servira. Lucan's Hesus or Esus may fairly be compared with the Welsh Hu Gadarn by legitimate process, but no letter-change can justify his connection with Gaisos, the spear, not the sword, Virgil's gaesum, A. S. gar, our verb to gore, retained ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... limbs get moor feeble an waik, An aw know sooin mi race will be run; Mi heart ommost feels fit to braik, When aw think what aw've left all undone. Nah, aw've nobbut th' fag end o' mi days To prepare for a world withaat end; Soa its time aw wor changin mi ways. For ther's noa time like the ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... say?" replied the ostler, removing the fag-end of a cigarette from his lips. "Why, she's gone! I harnessed her only five ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... together, will smell," answered his dragoman. "You cannot avoid it. What with old clothes, patchouli, petrol, fried fish and the fag, those five essentials of human life, the atmosphere of Turner ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... even then they were so interesting. I mean the fish were. Or—or the things where they fixed them. And, beg pardon, Mrs. Stark, even if you looked at that water all day long you couldn't make it into a 'sea.' It's only a Basin, the fag end of Annapolis Basin. Yonder, where there are so many sails and steamers, is the Bay of Fundy, and to get to the really truly sea you must go beyond that. The reason I'm so wise, if you want to know, is that I've been here twenty-four hours longer than ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... 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 him his breakfast in bed. ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... power of a young, compact, vigorous, and thoroughly 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
... heard, the fag-end of the "British Grenadiers," whistled very much out of tune, came floating in at ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... a great smoker. He gets a fag issue from the government, if he is lucky, of two packets or twenty a week. This lasts him with care about two days. After that he goes smokeless unless he has friends at home to send him a supply. I had friends in London who sent ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... the Neck, "thou shalt part easily with thy little fag-end of life. I can play upon my harp a strain of such surpassing sadness that no human heart that hears it but must break. And yet the pain of that heartbreak shall be such that thou wilt not know it from rapture. Moreover, when the ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... on his head, was ever on the look-out for some petty jobs among architects, outside his studies at the School of Arts. As for Claude, thanks to his thousand francs a year, he had his full liberty; but the latter days of each month were terrible enough, especially if he had to share the fag-end of his allowance. Luckily he was beginning to sell a little; disposing of tiny canvases, at the rate of ten and twelve francs a-piece, to Papa Malgras, a wary picture dealer. After all, he preferred starvation to turning his art into mere commerce by manufacturing ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Postoffice. Must answer. Fag today. Send her a postal order two shillings, half a crown. Accept my little present. Stationer's just here ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... engagements to come." Betty's eyes sparkled and she lifted her head with a motion peculiar to her when reminded that she was the favoured of the gods. "I suppose there is a good deal of fag about this sort of life to you, but it has all the charm of the undiscovered country ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... when they 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 ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... not 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 ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... neither of us spoke. But in his handsome, unmoved face I read my fate and death-warrant; and with every breath I cursed my folly and my cowardice in coming to him at all. Because he had been kind to me at school, when he was captain of the eleven, and I his fag, I had dared to look for kindness from him now; because I was ruined, and he rich enough to play cricket all the summer, and do nothing for the rest of the year, I had fatuously counted on his mercy, his sympathy, his help! ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... full speed. Dean's Yard was but a few minutes' run distant. He dashed through the little archway into the yard, down the side, and then in at another archway into Little Dean's Yard, where some elder boys were playing at racquets. A fag was picking up the balls, and two or three others were standing at the top of the ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... was coming to look forward to that last hour of the school week, very often to schoolgirls a wasted hour at the fag ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... 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 ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... be backing down directly, sir," he announced, "but I am sorry to say that we hear very bad accounts of the line. They say that this is only the fag-end of the storm that we are getting here, and that it's been raging for nearly twenty-four hours on the east coast. I doubt whether the Harwich boat will be able to ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... nodded. The 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
... 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 coal, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... 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 ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... 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 now black ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... realised it was the cigarette to which I had helped myself from the beautifully chased silver casket I had taken from the mantelpiece. I eyed the thing and concluded it was made of the very cheapest tobacco, and was what the street urchin calls a "fag." I learned afterwards that I was right. She purchased them at the rate of six for a penny, and smoked them in enormous quantities. For politeness' sake I continued to puff at the unclean thing until I nearly made myself sick. Then, simulating ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... Everything is all right if—if—Longworth is dealing honestly with us. If he is not, then everything is all wrong, and I should feel a great deal easier if we had in our possession another three months' option of the mine. We are now at the fag-end of this option, and, it seems to me, as protection to ourselves, we ought either to write to Von Brent—By the way, have you ever ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... modesty and assurance. From an early age he will have been noted for the qualities which in after-life render him humbly celebrated in subordinate positions. At school he will have had the good fortune to be attached as fag to a big boy who occupied an important place as an athlete, and whose condescending smiles were naturally an object of greater ambition to the small fry than the approval of the school authorities. For him he performed with much assiduity the various duties of a fag, happy to shine ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... Mr Pancks, 'and neither will you find in Grubbers like myself, under Proprietors like this, pleasant qualities. I've been a Grubber from a boy. What has my life been? Fag and grind, fag and grind, turn the wheel, turn the wheel! I haven't been agreeable to myself, and I haven't been likely to be agreeable to anybody else. If I was a shilling a week less useful in ten years' time, this impostor would ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... fag end of my paper, to answer your question about Leonora Lavagna. I think, beyond all doubt, the sentiment Schiller makes her express as occurring to her at the altar perfectly natural. When the character and ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... a 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 well you ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... the lighted match from any sniper's eye. The other seven men came crawling out of the bushes to light up their "woodbines" and fag-ends. ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... think," he went on in a passionate undertone, "that I am fit for nothing but Edmonson's fag? I tell you Edmonson—" he ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... committing 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 ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... in early life, how much happier I should have been and would be now. From want of training, I am all slip-shod, and all I do, whether learning or teaching, is done slip-shod fashion. However, I must try and use the fag-end of me that is left, ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... 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 of ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... writers. That this noble and fashionable creature could descend to writing wrappers, and to waiting his turn with a bank-book in the long train of a sordid teller, passed all speculation and astonishment. He made a sorry fag of the office boy, and advised us every day to beware of cutting the files, as if that were the one vice of authors. To him we stole, with humiliated faces, and begged a trifling advance of salary. He sternly requested us not to encroach behind ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... and revolutionary type would be great, if only I could feel as I should so much like, that the Christian socialism to which you have consecrated the whole prime of your life, and the Marxian socialism, to which I have consecrated all of the little that remains of mine, the fag-end, are not utter incompatibilities, so much so that it is absolutely impossible that they can co-exist and co-operate to ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... Russian divisions at Nossi Be, Madagascar, January 9, 1905, came news of the fall of Port Arthur. The home government now concluded to despatch the fag-ends of its navy, though Rojdestvensky would have preferred to push ahead without waiting for such "superfluous encumbrances" to join. Ships, as his staff officer Semenoff afterward wrote, were needed, but not "old flatirons and galoshes"; guns, but not "holes surrounded by iron."[1] ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... 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
... see the clapper shake— Meddle with Priests, you'll find the barrack wake— Ah! Princes know the People's a tight boot, March 'em sometimes to be shot and to shoot, Then they'll wear easier. So let them preach The righteousness of howitzers; and teach At the fag end of prayer: "Now, slit their throats! My holy Zouaves! my good yellow-coats!" We like to see the Holy Father send Powder and steel and lead without an end, To feed Death fat; and broken battles ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo |
