"Frayed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up, binding together, and joining the individual threads of the fabric, so as to prevent their being scattered to the four winds. The object is not to cut the Gordian knot of Greek culture after the manner adopted by Alexander, and then to leave its frayed ends fluttering in all directions; it is rather to bind it after it has been loosed. That is our task to-day. In the person of Wagner I recognise one of these anti-Alexanders: he rivets and locks together all that is isolated, weak, or in any ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... and thick-soled; one was even patched on the side. The trousers were heavy and rough, of the kind advertised as "wear-resisting fabrics, suitable for youths at school," frayed at the ends, and shiny—shamefully shiny—about ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... too much," said Marion, softly, distressed as she spoke, to notice his frayed collar and cuffs, and the tear in his coat pocket. "And," she added, firmly, "you should make Mrs. Potifer mend ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the document he held, yellow with age, the edges of its folds so frayed and tattered as to render the writing in some places almost illegible. Slowly, in deep, resonant tones, he read the opening words of the old will; words of unusual solemnity, which caused a hush to ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... womanly. One great secret of their joyful married life was found in the perfect frankness each showed the other, and also in the blessed fact that each of them had almost a perfect physical constitution, not frayed nor tortured with ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... inconceivably forlorn. Two of the jailers were lying on their beds smoking opium. There we met the head jailer, of all Chinamen that I have seen the most repulsive in appearance, manner, and dress; for his long costume of frayed and patched brown silk looked as if it had not been taken off for a year; the lean, brown hands which clutched the prison keys with an instinctive grip were dirty, and the nails long and hooked like claws, and the face, worse, I thought, than that of any of the criminal ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... he had suspected so strongly, they had broken away from the anchorage. Doubtless the rope had been frayed by some sharp- edged stone, and when that unusual gust swooped down upon them it ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... you will see how far less imaginative and reflecting, (though shrewd, practical, and humorous,) the English are than any others; you will gain, too, a profound, a deadly conviction that behind them is a fibre like rubber, that may be frayed, and bent a little this way and that, but can ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... finger between his stringy neck and the frayed stand-up collar that would have sawn his head off but for the toughness of his hide. To do Paul honour he had arrayed himself in his best—a wondrously cut and heavily-braided morning coat and lavender-coloured trousers of eccentric shape, and a funny little billycock ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... horizon. A slight heaving and swelling in the grey mass packed it tighter. It was pregnant with rain. Here and there a steaming vapour broke from it as if puffed out by some immense interior commotion. Thin tissues detached themselves and hung like a frayed hem, lengthening, streaming to ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... follow me; but for heaven's sake keep your distance, and don't speak to me again till I speak to you. There—give me a start." And he was off again, a decrepit vagabond, with his hands in his pockets, his elbows squared, and frayed coat-tails swinging raggedly ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... twice—first on the right side as near the raw edge as possible. Cut off all frayed edges, turn the material by folding on the seam or line of sewing, so the seam is folded inside and the second sewing is on the wrong side below the raw edges. This is not a good seam for underwear worn next the body, as it leaves a ridge on the wrong side, but it is useful ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... velveteen trousers; a checked waistcoat, from which depended the brass key of his silver watch by an iron chain which long usage had polished till it shone like steel; a jacket with short tails, also of velveteen, like that of the trousers; and around his neck a printed cotton cravat much frayed by the rubbing ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... approached I heard loud voices, raised as though in altercation, and a hat came hurtling through the open doorway and, bounding into the road, rolled over and over to my very feet. And, looking down at it, I saw that it was a very ill-used hat, frayed and worn, dented of crown and broken of brim, yet beneath its sordid shabbiness there lurked the dim semblance of what it had once been, for, in the scratched and tarnished buckle, in the jaunty curl of the brim, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... stood the stables, and near them the smiddy. The mountains rose grandly on every side, throwing up their great peaks into the sky. The clearing in which the camp stood was hewn out of a dense pine forest that filled the valley and climbed halfway up the mountain sides and then frayed out in scattered and ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... of the people, even if his presence in a fashionable cafe had not of itself made that seem improbable. On the other hand, he wore heavy, coarse shoes; his clothes, though well brushed, were visibly threadbare, and his clean white stock was frayed at the edge and almost worn out. He had taken off his three-cornered hat, and his high peaked head was barely covered with scanty silver-grey hair. When he dropped his paper and looked about him ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... overhanging so much that Dora could not help thinking that a thump from an energetic preacher would send it down on Edmund's head in a cloud of dust. There was the reading-desk below, whence the edges of a ragged Prayer-book protruded, and above it presently appeared a very full but much-frayed surplice, and a thin worn face between white whiskers. The service was quietly and reverently read, but not a response seemed to come from anywhere except from Master Hewlett's powerful lungs, somewhere in the rear, and there was a certain murmur of chattering in the chancel ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... almost started from his seat. "You, Katherine? Bless me! Dear me, dear me!" He put on his spectacles, and examined her as if she had been some curious animal. And he, too, noticed not only her frayed skirt and the worn edges of the fur about her cloak, but the sharp lines of her face and the ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... great painter, gifted with the sense of historic fitness, to place on his canvas the council in the Virginia homestead, two figures only would occupy the foreground: the one weary with travel, white with the dust of many leagues, and bearing on his frayed habiliments the traces of rough bivouacs and mountain roads; the other, tall, straight, and stately; still, for all his fifty years, remarkable for his personal beauty, and endowed with all the simple dignity of a noble character and commanding intellect. In that humble chamber, where the ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... to his gun but as his fingers touched the stock he found himself staring at the uptilted end of Stratton's holster frayed a little at the end so that the glint of a blued steel ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... of data earlier than that of Egypt. The astonishing perfection in art handicrafts of all descriptions which we find in China many hundreds of years before the Christian era shows no vestiges of a manufacture of lace; but, in the tombs of ancient Egypt, garments have been discovered with the edges frayed and twisted into what we may call a primitive lace, and in some of the Coptic embroideries threads have been drawn out at intervals and replaced with those of coloured wools, making an uncouth but ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... general air of determination which gave character to his undistinguished features. He was something above the medium height, broad-set, and with rather more thick black hair than he knew how to arrange advantageously. He wore a shirt which was somewhat frayed, and an indifferent tie; his boots were heavy and clumsy; he wore also a suit of ready-made clothes with the air of one who knew that they were ready-made and was satisfied with them. People of a nervous or sensitive disposition would, without doubt, have found him irritating ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lane. Thus the installation, in point of space, was in keeping with the display and pomp of the old-time princely dignitaries of the Church. But no repairs were ever made, no care was taken of anything, the hangings were frayed and ragged, and dust preyed on the furniture, amidst an unconcern which seemed to betoken some proud resolve to stay the course ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Washington sundaes at the New Melford Dainties Shop the girls discussed the mysterious happening on Dogtown Lane until it was, as Amy said, positively frayed. ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... if they had been dresses of last year's fashion. Most of them, it must be said, recovered quickly enough, but the miserable COPE became a hopeless hypochondriac, and never smiled again. He died the other day, and HERMIONE's sketch of HANKINSON was found, frayed and soiled, in an ancient pocket-book which he always carried about with him. HANKINSON'S fate seemed at first to be worse. He took to poetry, morbid, passionate, yearning, unhealthy poetry, of the skimmed SWINBURNE ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... for the sound of a footstep. Not only the dreamer of dreams in that den of squalor, this Alban Kennedy was her idol to-night as he had been the idol of fifty of her class since he came to live among them. What cared she for his ragged shoes or the frayed collar about his neck? Did not the whole community admit him to be a very aristocrat of aristocrats, a diamond of class in a quarry of ashes, a figure at once mysterious and heroical? And this knight of the East, what irony led ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... man, not unlike my mother, but with a nose more hooked, small dark eyes, and a bald head on which he set a cap of velvet. Even in the heat of summer he was always cold and wore a frayed fur robe, complaining much if he came into a draught of air. Indeed he looked like a Jew, though a good Christian enough, and laughed about it, because he said that this appearance of his served him well in his trade, since Jews were always feared, and it was ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... opening. Susan's one dress was in a deplorable state. The lining hung in rags. The never good material was stretched out of shape, was frayed and worn gray in spots, was beyond being made up as presentable by the most careful pressing and cleaning. She had been forced to buy a hat, shoes, underclothes. She had only three dollars and a few cents left, and she simply did not dare lay it all out in dress materials. Yet, less ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... might see, now, some of the chief characteristics by contrast. There was a wooden leg in the line. Hats were all drooping, a group that would ill become a second-hand Hester Street basement collection. Trousers were all warped and frayed at the bottom and coats worn and faded. In the glare of the store lights, some of the faces looked dry and chalky; others were red with blotches and puffed in the cheeks and under the eyes; one or two were rawboned and reminded one of railroad hands. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... an orderly little person, and at her work that afternoon she stopped frequently to sew on a button here, to mend a rip in this garment or to whip a frayed edge that might mar an otherwise dainty belonging. Singing softly over her task, a timid knock at her door wakened the girl from a ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... anybody, but—I had to let Bushrod go." The little weazened body with its scrawny neck rising out of the gaping rubber collar, the shiny bald head with its fringe of graying hair about the edge, the white shirt sleeves with the frayed cuffs and the skinny brown hands—a most incongruous disguise for Nemesis to ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... crew frayed out in the heat. By night they slept amid tantalizing dreams of food; by day they sprawled in dreary silences under awnings which held heat like sweat boxes. The high metal walls of the dock caught ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... spoken of in reference to household arrangements. They have a splendid wardrobe for company, and a shabby and sordid one for domestic life. A woman puts all her income into party-dresses, and thinks anything will do to wear at home. All her old tumbled finery, her frayed, dirty silks and soiled ribbons, are made to do duty for her hours of intercourse with her dearest friends. Some seem to be really principled against wearing a handsome dress in every-day life; they 'cannot afford' to be well-dressed in private. Now what I should recommend would be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... her head high, her chin lifted, determination in her eyes. Thorned shrubs and stones had left their marks on her strong boots, the little teeth of the range had frayed the hem of her short cloth skirt, but she was as fresh to see as a morning-glory in the sun. Defiance outweighed the old cast of melancholy that clouded her eyes; her lips were fixed in an expression which was denial in itself as she stood looking ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... fish's back; pinioned in the turns upon turns in which, during the past night, the whale had reeled the involutions of the lines around him, the half torn body of the Parsee was seen; his sable raiment frayed to shreds; his distended eyes ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... tail to throat is Frayed and greened — Like a man whose other coat is Being cleaned; Gone for ever round the edging Past repair — Waistcoat pockets frayed with dredging After 'sprats' no ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... flint, he tore some threads from his shirt and frayed them into tow. Then with his cutlas he struck a spark and ignited his threads, carefully nursing the tiny flame until he could find a dry stick. This lasted him until a pine torch was found, and then he crawled along the gallery in search of the ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... another painter who had been sacked for being too slow—stood up and said there was one point that he would like a little more information about. This man had two patches on the seat of his trousers, which were also very much frayed and ragged at the bottoms of the legs: the lining of his coat was all in rags, as were also the bottoms of the sleeves; his boots were old and had been many times mended and patched; the sole of one of them had begun to separate ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... time they heard the bell ringing. It was the patients whom she was bringing in by another way. The guests nudged one another, drawing attention to the windows covered with dust, the stains on the panels, the frayed pictures; and the garden, too, was in a wretched state. Dead wood everywhere! The orchard was barricaded with two sticks thrust into a ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... Joan Tregenza was a careless young woman, it seemed. Her dress had a button or two missing in front, and a safety-pin had taken their place. Her drab skirt was frayed a little and patched in one corner with a square of another material. But the colors were well enough, from the artist's point of view. He noted also that the girl's stockings were darned and badly needed further ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... no one to see it. He has not been shaved since last sheep-shearing, and has a short black pipe in his mouth, and the tobacco smells like nigger-head or pig-tail. He wears a coarse check shirt without a collar, a black silk neck-cloth frayed at the edge, that looks like a rope of old ribbons. His coat appears as if it had once been new, but had been on its travels, until at last it had got pawned to a Jew at Rag-alley. His waistcoat was formerly buff, but now resembles yellow flannel, and the buttons, though complete ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... waited the cat looked up at him, curiously but pleasantly. "Hello, old lady," he said; and she arched her back and rubbed lightly against his nigh leg while the kittens tumbled over his shoes and played frantically with the frayed bottoms of his trousers. ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... fabric off the overplus of cloth at the seams, and worked these little pieces through the holes, and then sewed the cloth down upon them so as to underlay the thumb-worn places. The buttonholes had also frayed out, and ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... contemplation of the teasing, smarting pain where the torn ligaments of his thighs were slowly knitting themselves together. He tried desperately to forget the pain; there was so much he wanted to think out. If he could only lie perfectly quiet, and piece together the frayed ends of thoughts that kept flickering to the surface of his mind. He counted up the days he had been in the hospital; fifteen! Could it be that long? And he had not thought of anything yet. Soon, as Applebaum said, they'd be putting him ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... the eager kindling of the eye, and a certain sort of rest and happiness may come with it; but—they have never gone a-sketching! Hauled up on the wet bank in the long grass is your boat, with the frayed end of the painter tied around some willow that offers a helping root. Within a stone's throw, under a great branching of gnarled trees, is a nook where the curious sun, peeping at you through the ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... his discriminatingly chosen shabby-genteel clothes with a care for the effect he intended them to produce. The collar and cuffs of his shirt were frayed and yellow, and he fastened his collar with a pin and tied his worn necktie carelessly. His overcoat was beginning to wear a greenish shade and look threadbare, so was his hat. When his toilet was complete he looked at himself in the cracked and hazy glass, bending forward to scrutinize his ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... drill shooting-kit, very white at the seams and a little frayed at the wrists. William regarded him thoughtfully, from his pith helmet to his greased ankle-boots. 'You look very nice, I think. Are you sure you've everything you'll need—quinine, ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... still more deeply, and his voice dropped below the regulation whisper in which one is permitted to speak in the Reading Room. Celia glanced at him, and saw that he was poorly dressed, that his shirt-cuffs were frayed, and that he had the peculiar look which is stamped on the countenances of so many of the frequenters ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... closer look at him, and before I've got half through the inspection I've waved a sad farewell to that one twenty-five. From the frayed necktie down to the runover shoes, Tutwater is a walkin' example of the poor debtor's oath. The shiny seams of the black frock coat shouts of home pressin', and the limp way his white vest fits him suggests that he does his own laundry work in the washbowl. But he's ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... or, better still, by vellum, which is a firmer material—otherwise they will rapidly wear off, and the boards will break easily at their corners. As to the relative merits of cloth and paper for the sides of books, cloth is far more durable, though it costs more. Paper becomes quickly frayed at the edges, or is liable to peel where pasted on, though it may be renewed at small expense, and may properly be used except upon the much-read portion of the library. The cloth or paper should always harmonize ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... of the stump of the mainmast, about ten feet above the deck, something like a sleeve seemed nailed; it was supposed to be the relic of a jacket, which must have been fastened there by the crew for a signal, and been frayed out and blown ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... wrist bones to bring forth the contents of his trousers' pockets. The chain kinked time and again as he groped with the undermost hand for the openings; his dumpy, pudgy form writhed grotesquely. But finally he finished. The search produced four cigars somewhat crumpled and frayed; some matches in a gun-metal case, a silver cigar cutter, two five-dollar bills, a handful of silver chicken feed, the leather case of the eyeglasses, a couple of quill toothpicks, a gold watch with a dangling fob, a notebook and some papers. Mr. Trimm ranged these things in a neat row upon a log, ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... fear for Alick's unhappiness should he ask and be refused, the poor mother was in a state of confused feelings and contradictory wishes which did not agree with a nature like hers, given to mathematical certainties and averse to loose ends and frayed edges anywhere. As nothing more was to be got out of Leam at this moment, and as Mrs. Corfield knew that Alick would be impatient, they went into the drawing-room together, Leam carrying her basket of spring flowers for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... could stand comparison with this handsome fellow across the danger line. But to compare any one of the men in Lady Bazelhurst's house party—oh, it was absurd! She looked them over. Dull-eyed, blase, frayed by the social whirl, worn out, pulseless, all of them. They talked automobile, bridge, women, and self in particular; in the seclusion of a tete-a-tete they talked love with an ardor that lost most of its ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... either side. He jumped off as lightly as Moongarr Bill and hitched his horses also to the veranda posts. Except that he was black as a coal, save for the whites of his eyes and his gleaming teeth, he seemed a grotesque understudy of the stockman—moleskins, not too clean and rubbed and frayed in places, fastened up with a strap; faded Crimean shirt exposing a wealed and tattooed breast; old felt hat—not a cabbage tree—with a pipe stuck in its greasy band; an ancient red silk handkerchief with ragged edges, where whip crackers had been torn off, round his neck, and ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... frayed edges," said Frank, laying them together. "You see that these two pieces were ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... holding her skirts, she crossed the grimy floor and stood inspecting with a mingled fascination and dread those ancient beds. Both were destitute of linen, but one was supplied with a tumbled heap of coarse, brown blankets. In the other, beneath a frayed comforter, two small boys were sleeping. Their sun-baked faces were overhung with thatches of streaked blond hair, and one restless arm, throwing off the sodden cover, partly exposed the child's day attire, an unclean denim ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... the Bug tenderly collects Mike, who's in a frayed an' fragmentary condition, an' gently freights him over to us on a buckboard. It's a week before Peets allows he's ag'in ready for the show ring, an' he uses up enough co't plaster on him to kyarpet the Red Light. Little Joolie? We let's ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... bashfulness. But the face and figure she turned towards him were neither young nor fair: a woman past forty, with gray threads and splashes in her brushed-back hair, which was turned over her ears in two curls like frayed strands of rope. Her forehead was rather high than broad, her nose large but well-shaped, and her eyes full but so singularly light in color as to seem almost sightless. The short upper lip of her large mouth displayed her teeth in an habitual ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... articled Mr. Perkins, it must be confessed that it had done its job unevenly, not to say fantastically. His linen was fresh and new, quite conspicuously so, and, therefore, in sharp contrast to the frayed and patched, but scrupulously clean and neatly pressed khaki suit, which set forth rather bumpily his solid figure. A serviceable pith helmet barely overhung the protrusive goggles. His hands were encased in white ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... range, Stafford scrutinized his guest more narrowly. Quickly he took note of his ill-fitting clothes, cheap tie, frayed linen and shabby shoes. He hardly looked the kind of man likely to be burdened with heavy business responsibilities. Nodding sympathetically, so as to encourage confidence, ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... failing. I heard ten o'clock strike. He came up and lumbered on the surface of the pool. Gradually I drew him, plunging ponderously, to the gravelled beach, where I meant to 'tail' him. He yielded to the strain, he was in the shallows, the line was shortened. I stooped to seize him. The frayed and overworn gut broke at a knot, and with a loose roll he dropped back towards the deep. I sprang at him, stumbled, fell on him, struggled with him, but he slipped from my arms. In that moment I knew more than the anguish of Orpheus. Orpheus! Had I, ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... pale-faced little man, with dark eyes and a fine and very black moustache. He had a very stiff, upright collar slightly frayed, that gave him an illusory double chin, and his overcoat (albeit shabby) was trimmed with astrachan. His gloves were a bright brown with black stripes over the knuckles, and split at the finger ends. His appearance, his wife had said once in the dear, dead days beyond ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Mays When the first bee tilts down the lip Of the first blossom, and the drip Of blended dew and honey heaves Him blinded midst the underleaves. For raiment, Fays shall weave for thee— Out of the phosphor of the sea And the frayed floss of starlight, spun With counterwarp of the firm sun— A vesture of such filmy sheen As, through all ages, never queen Therewith strove truly to make less One fair line of her loveliness. Thus gowned and crowned with ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley
... was opened, and another man came in; a striking figure, tall and gaunt, with old and pitifully untidy clothing, and a half month's growth of beard upon his chin. He wore an old black hat, frayed at the edges; but under this hat was a face of such gentleness and sadness that it made you think of Carpenter's own. Withal, it was a Yankee face—of that lean, stringy kind that we know so well. The newcomer's eyes fell ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... frayed bit of rope from a torn pocket, and tied it to the old strap that served as Baldy's collar—handing ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... sticks as for the crown in the preceding lesson, plus the width of the brim, plus six inches for finishing. This is ample to finish both ends of wire, but on account of the ends easily becoming frayed it is better to have a generous allowance. Begin at the crown tip and work down until ready for the headsize wire. The last wire is or should be of the same size as the regular headsize wire. Place the lap ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin
... women, with the last surviving instinct of the female heart, had tried to decorate themselves; and here and there I could observe a bit of bright color on bonnet or apron; but the bonnets represented the fashions of ten years past, and the aprons were too often frayed and darned, and relics of some former, more opulent owners. There were multitudes of children, but they were without the gambols which characterize the young of all animals; and there was not even the chirp ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... the slightest sign about him of any desire to redeem a sinister appearance by attention to the toilet; his threadbare jacket was all but dropping to pieces; a cravat, which had once been black, was frayed by contact with a stubble chin, and left on exhibition a throat as wrinkled as ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... attached to the lashings which had been blown asunder by the explosion; at one end of the coop the ring-bolt had been torn clean out, but at the other it was the cordage that had parted. To the frayed ends I tied my fowls by the legs, with the most foolish pride in my own cunning. Do you not see? It would keep them fresh for my use, and it was a trick I had read of in no book; it was ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... For so many nights to come there would be none of it; but ceaselessly the drumming of the engines, quiver of the screw, and wash of the water against the ship's side.—All the same he did not quite like the colour of the moon or that frayed flattened edge of it westward. Why is there always something a trifle menacing about a waning moon? He did not like the smell of the mud-flats either. It might not be actually unhealthy; but it suggested a certain foulness. He yawned, drew ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Babiloyne the grete: of the whiche I have told zou before, where that alle the langages weren first chaunged. And that is a 4 jorneyes fro Caldee. In that reme, ben faire men, and thei gon fulle nobely arrayed in clothes of gold, or frayed and apparayled with grete perles and precyous stones, fulle nobely: and the wommen ben righte foule and evylle arrayed; and thei gon alle bare fote, and clothed in evylle garnementes, large and wyde, but thei ben schorte to the knees; and longe sleves ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... they reached their destination, their conversation had given out, the M. O. sucking sullenly at his pipe, the bowl upside down. The rear end of the column was very frayed and straggling. Why it is that a perfectly fit company will invariably fray out if placed at the rear of a marching column, no military expert has ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... a daguerreotype case, much worn and frayed along the leather back, and without the little brass hooks which used to fasten it; instead, a bit of ribbon had been tied about it to keep it closed. Mr. Denner did not open it; he patted the faded green bow with ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... affirmed Quain, too discouraged for the obvious retort ungracious. He stooped and caught up a frayed end of rope, exhibiting it in witness to his statement. "Ain't it hell?" ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... each is spliced into the standing part of the other, thus forming a loop or eye in the centre of a rope. Once the short and long splices are mastered, all other splices, as well as many useful variations, will come easy. Oftentimes, for example, one strand of a rope may become worn, frayed, or broken, while the remaining strands are perfectly sound. In such cases the weak strand may be unlaid and cut off and then a new strand of the same length is laid up in the groove left by the old strand exactly as in a long ...
— Knots, Splices and Rope Work • A. Hyatt Verrill
... great forest, during two hundred years, was slowly vanishing. This parent of a new people gave its life to its offspring and passed away. In the early nineteenth century it had withered backward far from the coast; had lost its identity all along the north end of the eastern mountains; had frayed out toward the sunset into lingering tentacles, into broken minor forests, into ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... bird has hidden remains a puzzle. It moves not, it may not blink. Its crafty parent has so nibbled and frayed the edges of the decaying brown leaves among which it nestles that it has become absorbed in the scene. There is nothing to distinguish between the leaf-like feathers and the feather-like leaves. The instinct of the bird has blotted itself out. It is there, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... had vanished, but all adown its front it had been frogged and tasseled magnificently. But now the frogs and tassles were gone. In their stead had been patiently stitched (I surmised by some surviving "black mammy") new frogs made of cunningly twisted common hempen twine. This twine was frayed and disheveled. It must have been added to the coat as a substitute for vanished splendors, with tasteless but painstaking devotion, for it followed faithfully the curves of the long-missing frogs. And, to complete the ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... beautiful fabrics, and must have been of fabulous value when they were made, for they are centuries old, though in excellent order. I saw something like them in Hampton Court, but they were worn and frayed and moth-eaten. But still in none of the rooms is there a mirror. There is not even a toilet glass on my table, and I had to get the little shaving glass from my bag before I could either shave or brush my hair. I have not yet seen a servant anywhere, or heard a sound near the castle except the howling ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... The nervous system is composed of units of structure called neurones or nerve cells. "If we could see exactly the structure of the brain itself, we should find it to consist of millions of similar neurones each resembling a bit of string frayed out at both ends and here and there along its course. So also the nerves going out to the muscles are simply bundles of such neurones, each of which by itself is a thread-like connection between the cells of the spinal cord or brain and some muscle. The nervous system is ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... speaker over. Like all those in the truck, he wore a frayed shirt, a stained and torn coat, and greasy, dirty trousers. The black bristles on his face were long; the back of his neck was covered by thick curls. The brim of his dusty hat was pulled down low. Beneath its shadow his eyes roamed from side to side with the same ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... flagrant imitation of Dickens, and hid it, jackdaw-like, in such places as he could find. In the slattern old office where Paul was learning more or less to be a workman at his trade there was no such thing as a ceiling. Frayed mortar, with matted scraps of cow-hair in it, used to fall frequently into the type-cases whenever a high wind shook the crazy slates, and, to obviate this, some contriving person had nailed a number of sheets of brown paper to the rafters. Paul's ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... rag-buyer, hurried away, With a chuckle of glee at a bargain made, Did you discover, like me, one day, That, hid in the folds of those garments frayed, Were priceless jewels and diadems— The soul's best treasures, the heart's ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... be seen coming down the roads towards the town, not by any means always looking as gay as that first troop. Some of the feathers were as draggled as the old cock's tail after a thunderstorm, some reduced even to the quill, the coats looked threadbare, the scarves stained and frayed, the horses ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thing fit for you. Thomas Gilkan has been too busy to get out, and Fanny she'll fetch nothing unless the mood's on her. If I only had a fish I could turn over." She brushed the end of the table with a frayed sleeve. "You might just take a seat, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... gingerly—as one might have a care against too quick or too long a pull upon a frayed elastic—and, getting to his feet, went blinking to the window and touched the shade so that it flew up, letting in a ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... delight in games and that of the grown-up person. Now, comedy is a game, a game that imitates life. And since, in the games of the child when working its dolls and puppets, many of the movements are produced by strings, ought we not to find those same strings, somewhat frayed by wear, reappearing as the threads that knot together the situations in a comedy? Let us, then, start with the games of a child, and follow the imperceptible process by which, as he grows himself, he makes his puppets grow, inspires them with life, and finally brings them to ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... all by severing them from the frayed traditions of worn plush and sequin, rid them of the so inadequate back drop such as is given them, the scene of Vesuvius in eruption, or the walk in the park at Versailles. They need first of all large plain spaces upon which to perform, and enjoy their own remarkably devised ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... came, these old things of my old self raised their heads for a little time, but they too shall die speedily, if I mistake not. Life is too wonderful, too beautiful to be marred thus by the ends of frayed and worn-out passions, by memories or regrets of you. I have become happy, healthy, and free, free without hardness, and in my freedom and joy I have found my love, my beautiful Terry, whom I may love passionately, tenderly and for ever, the dear ideal one. ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... secret of Lil's attraction for Dicky Graham, anyway?" the soprano voice queried. "She's a good seven years older than he is, and both her past and her youth are rather frayed at ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... the table, his hands gripping tightly. He was thirty-five; almost slim as Pierre himself, with eyes as steely blue as Pierre's were black. There was a time, away back, when he wore a dress suit as no other man in the big western city where he lived; now the sleeves of his caribou skin coat were frayed and torn, his hands were knotted, in his face were the lines ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... sentry, whose uniform consisted of a forage cap, a coat with one sleeve torn off and a pair of frayed trousers, but whose rifle was of the most up-to-date pattern, was at once joined by several others, not ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... door, she showed a room of considerable size, hung with faded frayed tapestry, and containing two huge bedsteads, with four heavy posts, and canopies of wood, as near boxes as could well be. Privacy was a luxury not ordinarily coveted, and the arrangement did not surprise Anne, though she could have wished that on that summer day curtains ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... consent to do as she pleased with the piece of black velvet on the hem of her Sunday skirt, so she passed some time in ripping this off and cleaning it. It would not come as fresh as she desired, and there were some parts of it frayed and rubbed so that the velvet was nearly lost, but other portions were quite good, and by cutting out the worn parts and neatly joining the good pieces she at last evolved a quite passable sash. ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... room I stripped to the skin and unrolled the bundle. There was a pair of baggy striped breeches, a worn and shabby shirtcloak with capacious pockets, a looped belt with half the gilt rubbed away and the base metal showing through, and a scuffed pair of ankle-boots tied with frayed thongs of different colors. There was a little cluster of amulets and seals. I chose two or three of the commonest kind, and strung them ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... with rage and threats he bet, Yet of those fearfull women none durst rize, The Lyon frayed them, him in to let: 165 He would no longer stay him to advize,[*] But open breakes the dore in furious wize, And entring is; when that disdainfull beast Encountring fierce, him suddaine doth surprize, And seizing cruell clawes on trembling brest, ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... expression was further enhanced by poverty and squalor. The mass of this fierce cavalry was wretchedly clothed and disgustingly dirty. Even the showy Mexican costume of Manga Colorada was ripped, frayed, stained with grease and perspiration, and not free from sombre spots which looked like blood. Every one wore the breech-cloth, in some cases nicely fitted and sewed, in others nothing but a shapeless piece of ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... desired to see me. He would not give his name. I directed Antoine to show him up. He was a man of about forty years of age with a very dark complexion, lively features, and whose correct dress, slightly frayed, proclaimed a taste that contrasted strangely with his rather vulgar manners. Without any preamble, he said to me—in a rough voice that confirmed my suspicion as to his ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... rather than compromised. Both his manners and his dress retained the flavour of a social system the exceptional features of which were too often by both friend and foe made to stand for the system itself. His tall beaver, with its curled brim, and his blue broadcloth dress-coat, faded and frayed, with its brass buttons, bore unmistakable evidence of their age and origin, but they seemed to be a reasonable and necessary ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... took advantage of this circumstance to ogle the women. Thanks to the cares of Mousqueton, the exterior was far from announcing the distress of the interior. His hat was a little napless, his feather was a little faded, his gold lace was a little tarnished, his laces were a trifle frayed; but in the obscurity of the church these things were not seen, and Porthos was still the ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... combinations, proceeding outwards, came the corset, a most serious affair. This exceedingly expensive instrument of torture was compounded chiefly of silk (which easily frayed) and whale-bone. Many good women of the middle class have gone to their graves for three hundred years believing that Almighty God had specially created toothless whales of the Family Balaenidae solely for the purpose of providing women with the only possible ingredient for a corset; and for ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... advice to fill her mind with something good and helpful, the old lady vowed to pick up the frayed ends of her life and ask Ruth how to use her money and time to create some lasting good for others. As she smiled contentedly over the idea of her grand-niece of tender years advising and helping her, an old lady of three score and ten, the Bible text flashed into her mind—"And ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... on his words. "Well, sir, you'd orter seen him then. I thought he'd bust. He said something about his brother and his brother's watch. I didn't wait for him to get collected. I then proceeded, with a great deal of caution, to take out of another pocket a long, frayed, yellow envelope. 'This,' said I, 'was given to me by the nigger that night. It had once contained a large sum of money, he said, but you had taken most of it, leaving him just fifty dollars. Do you recognize ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... leaky, heavy, old tub that had to be tracked nearly all the way—carried me the forty miles to Suifu within contract time. The boatmen on board worked sixteen hours without any rest except at two hasty meals; the frayed towrope never parted at any rapid, and only once did our boat get entangled with any other. Towards sundown we were abreast of the fine pagoda of Suifu, and a little later were at the landing. The city is on a high, level shelf of land with high hills ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... examination. It was of very heavy silk, yellow, with a pale blue stripe—and there were nearly a dozen of them. He stared involuntarily at his own shirt-cuffs—they were ragged and linty at the edges and soiled to a faint gray. Dropping the silk shirt, he held his coat-sleeves down and worked the frayed shirt-cuffs up till they were out of sight. Then he went to the mirror and looked at himself with listless, unhappy interest. His tie, of former glory, was faded and thumb-creased—it served no longer to hide the jagged buttonholes of his ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... into the Warrington place jauntily. He wore a tie. Jove ran out and sniffed the frayed hems of his trousers. But like all men of his ilk, he possessed the gift of making friends with dogs. He patted Jove's broad head, spoke to him, and the dog wagged what there was left of his tail. Bill proceeded ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... sympathy due to the marks of honorable valor; but in the peculiar case of Front-de-Boeuf they only added to the ferocity of his countenance and to the dread which his presence inspired. The formidable baron was clad in a leathern doublet, fitted close to his body, which was frayed and soiled with the stains of his armor. He had no weapon, except a [v]poniard at his belt, which served to counter-balance the weight of the bunch of rusty keys that ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... chart now,' and he pulled down a second yet more stained and frayed than the first. 'We had a splendid time then exploring the Zuyder Zee, its northern part at least, and round those islands which bound it on the north. Those are the Frisian Islands, and they stretch for 120 miles or so eastward. You see, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... make it seem more and more needless and foolish. And presently, when we sat at the table, and I saw the king speaking with the Mercians, and noted their admiring looks at him, and their eagerness to listen to him, I thought that Sighard was right, and that I was frayed with shadows of my own making. I knew enough of men by this time to see that here was no thought of ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... people—had allowed this brilliant soldier to rust in inactivity; and now, when all of evil that ill-fortune and want of combination could accomplish had been done in the West, he was singled out, and sent forth to reap the harvest so bitterly sown. He was told, in effect, to take the frayed and scattered ends of armies and campaigns and bind them into a firm and resisting chain of strategy; or—to bear the sins of others upon his shoulders and have the finger of History point to him as the man who ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... from the bank. She had been seized for illegal sealing some years earlier, and it was evident that she had been very little used since then. The paint was peeling from her cracked and weathered side, her gear was frayed and bleached with frost and rain, and only very hard-pressed men would have faced the thought of going to sea in her. Wyllard and his companions were, however, very hard-pressed indeed, and they preferred the hazards of a voyage in the crazy vessel to falling into the Russians' hands. ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... you some ointment—some nice cooling ointment," said he, "to rub on your neck. I saw it was frayed by ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... skin cover off his gun lock, carefully looked to see if things there were all right and ready loosened his knife in its snake-skin sheath; and then we set about hauling poor Silence out, binding him up where necessary with cool green leaves; for he, not having a skirt, had got a good deal frayed at the edges on those spikes. Then we closed up, for the Fans said these pits were symptomatic of the immediate neighbourhood of Efoua. We sounded our ground, as we went into a thick plantain patch, through which we could see a great ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... somber for the next three or four days; she went through her exercises without vim; at her studies she was both stupid and sullen. When Mrs. Ring's patience was exhausted and her frayed nerves finally gave out, Allie rounded upon her with a violence unparalleled. Those previous exhibitions of temper were tame as compared with this one; the girl spat scorn and bitterness and hatred; she became a volcano in ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... Rathburn was congratulating himself; at the end of thirty-seven he was crying, "Down, sir—down!" to a joy-crazed little dog which had come leaping down the mountain-side with eighteen inches of rope dangling at his heels—a rope whose frayed and tattered end showed the marks of sharp ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... deadliest of cancers, want of sympathy, these two excellent grown-up children had moved with the years further and further apart. Love had not died, but want of understanding, not attended to in time, had frayed the edges so that they no longer fitted well together. They have blown in here, thought Rogers as he watched them, like seeds the wind has brought. They have taken root and grown a bit. They think they're here for ever, but presently a wind will rise and blow them ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... place, as does a dog after sleep. He stood for a minute looking at the mountaineer with a reflective yet a furtively sardonic look. He was not above five feet nine inches in height, and he was slim and neat; and though his buckskin coat and breeches were worn and even frayed in spots, he had an air of some distinction and of concentrated force. It was a face that men turned to look at twice and shook their heads in doubt afterward—a handsome, worn, secretive face, in as perfect ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... that had been played Till all its strings were loose and frayed, Joy, Hate, and Fear, each one essayed, To play. But each in turn had found No sweet ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... that along which she was riding, and slacken her pace before coming to its opening. And as she arrived at the intersection, she beheld advancing, mounted on a little rough pony, the spare figure of her brother the Chevalier, in his home suit, so greasy and frayed, that only his plumed hat (and a rusty plume it was) and the old sword at his ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the decline; tabid[obs3]; degenerate; marescent[obs3]; worse; the worse for, all the worse for; out of repair, out of tune; imperfect &c. 651; the worse for wear; battered; weathered, weather-beaten; stale, passe, shaken, dilapidated, frayed, faded, wilted, shabby, secondhand, threadbare; worn, worn to a thread, worn to a shadow, worn to the stump, worn to rags; reduced, reduced to a skeleton; far gone; tacky [U. S.*]. decayed &c. v.; moth-eaten, worm-eaten; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... picture of him when, as plain John Patterdale, having put up the shutters and locked the door of the shop, he would come through into their little living-room behind for his supper. First he would kiss her, and then taking off his best coat, he would put on the old frayed one that always hung in readiness behind the door. And after supper, they would draw up very close together, and dream wonderful dreams about the future. All sorts of beautiful things danced in the flames; but the ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... of his mouth; his teeth were decayed and yellow. He was always dressed in a black tail-coat, shiny at the elbows; and he wore a shabby, narrow black tie, with a false diamond stud in his dickey. His grey trousers were baggy at the knees and frayed at the edges; his boots had a masculine and English breadth of toe. His top hat, of antiquated shape, was kept carefully brushed, but always looked as if it were suffering from a recent shower. When ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... any different. Those who came to town as little children grew into gawky youths knowing no more about other parts of the world than their geography books told them. When any one died, a strand in the Life hanging above the town broke and flapped in the wind, growing more and more frayed with the passing of time, until after a year or so its tatters were noticeable only as a sort of roughness upon the pattern. When a child was born, a thin tentacle from the central mass of strands reached out and fastened itself upon him, dragging out his desire year by year until the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to be somewhat in a daze as he padlocked the cabin door, put on his "sundown" hat, took up his stout stick and tottered down the steps. He wore a frayed sweater with several layers of shirts showing at the cuffs. On the way he recalled the first railroad train that passed ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... seemed to be nothing, no trace, except in one place, where some thick drops of congealed blood were clinging to the frayed edge of his trousers. He picked up a big claspknife and cut off the frayed threads. There seemed to ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... scoff unto Joseph Carnaby, thus accosting him, whom his shirt, being made stiffer than usual for the occasion, rubbed and frayed, - ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... the end of the wharf in one agonized leap. In another second he had the frayed, wet end of ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... seems that we look in vain. You have behaved like a mighty fine skunk, sir. And if you don't see that there's any crying need for a very humble apology, you've got about the thickest hide that ever frayed a horsewhip." ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... dust lay thick upon it, and festoons of cobwebs lay between it and the wall. Sir James handed her a pocket-knife, and she ripped away the brown paper from the back.... The advertisement page of a magazine fell out. Jane picked it up. Holding apart the frayed inner edges she extracted two thin sheets ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... idea of calming frayed nerves, somebody suggested that they should all adjourn for a flutter at lansquenet, then ousting ecarte. The proposal was accepted; and, the revellers having settled down, Saint-Agnan, having the ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... rheum"), prickly heat, and other sources of itching and scratching, is conducive to boils, as the pus germs contained in ordinary dirt are rubbed into the irritated skin. Whenever the skin is chafed by rough clothing, as about the wrists and neck by frayed collars and sweaters, etc., boils are likely to occur. Also when the face and neck are handled by barbers with dirty hands or instruments, a fruitful field is provided for their invasion. While boils are always ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... veil of enchantment was rent; and no needle of earth has ever been ground fine enough to draw its frayed edges together. ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... wings so frayed and soiled and torn! Poor kind wild eyes so dashed with light quick tears! Poor perfect voice, most blithe when most forlorn, That rings athwart the sea whence no man steers Like joy-bells crossed with death-bells in our ears! What far delight has cooled the fierce desire That like ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... poor old woman meant was the workhouse master, and the packet was opened in his presence, and found to contain a child's linen under-garment plainly marked—"Max Vanburgh, 12," and a child's highly-coloured toy picture-book, frayed and torn, and further disfigured by having been doubled in half and then doubled again, so that it would easily go ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... properly upon the line. Fold the cloth over the line six or eight inches at least, and in such a manner as to keep the thread straight, and fasten with three or more clothes pins. Table linen is often sadly frayed at the corners by being pinned so that all strain comes upon the corners, and if left to whip in the wind, is soon ruined. Napkins in summer are much nicer if dried upon the grass. Only the merest trifle of starch, if any, should ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... sigh of regret, it is sad to record that the White Hussars livelily exhibited un-Christian delight and other emotions, hardly restrained by their sense of hospitality. Holmer flung the frayed and yellow regimental rolls on the table, and the ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... toward the frayed edge of the city, where great stretches of sign-plastered vacant lots began to yawn between isolated patches of buildings and the river ran close enough alongside of them to reflect their leftward lights. She smiled, but as if her lips ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... frayed collar and a bosom discoloured with what I took to be ancient blood-stains, was put on me amid a running and apologetic fire of comment. A pair of workman's brogans encased my feet, and for trousers I was furnished with a pair ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... was a long, slim, frayed-out specimen of humanity, with a wearied and expressive droop of the shoulders; the other was a short, stout, florid, rotund individual, and his "too, too solid flesh" was in the very visible act of melting. The newspaper gentlemen were invited to participate in the ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker |
