"Patching" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the wagon wheels was broken, and in the course of an hour or two, Willis and I succeeded in patching up the shattered body sufficiently to hold the hogs. But how to get the heavy brutes off the ground and up into the wagon was a task beyond our resources. When you try to take a live hog off its feet, he is likely to bite as well as to ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... for herself; and even afterwards, when she could breathe more freely and began to frame her own laws, these, since they were blended with ancient ordinances which were bad, could not themselves be good; and thus for the two hundred years of which we have trustworthy record, our city has gone on patching her institutions, without ever possessing a government in respect of which she could truly ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... great joy at the thought of living with "Miss Agnes," seemed to have forgotten the painful circumstance which compelled her to leave home. But on the day that her mother finished patching her few clothes, tying them up and telling her she might go at once to her new home, there came sad tidings from the hospital. They need never hope to have the husband and father home again, unless to take one last look before they buried him ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd
... pressed by the favouring gale, meeting the sun each day a long span earlier, making daily four degrees of longitude. It was the time, on these bright days, to forearm with dry clothing against future stormy weather. Boxes and bags were brought on deck, and drying and patching went on by wholesale in the watch below, while the watch on deck bestirred themselves putting the ship in order. "Chips," the carpenter, mended the galley; the cook's broken shins were plastered up; and in a few days all was well again. And the sailors, moving cheerfully ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... treason, on its wages, and its fame! ye countless gatherers and disposers of other men's stuff; chiels amang us takin' notes, an' faith, to prent 'em too, perpetually, without mitigation or remorse; ye men of paste and scissors, who so often falsely, feebly, faithlessly, and tastelessly are patching into a Harlequin whole the disjecta membra of some great hacked-up reputation; can such as ye are tell me what it is to write? Writing is the concreted fruit of thinking, the original expression of new combinations of idea, the fresh chemical product of educational ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... "This island land is the most productive in the world. This section of California is like Holland. You wouldn't think it, but this water we're sailing on is higher than the surface of the islands. They're like leaky boats—calking, patching, pumping, night and day and all the time. But ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... where his men worked. David pointed with the whip. "Life is a husk," he said, "and we men of affairs who take ourselves so seriously because the fates have been good to us have odd silly little fancies. See what this fellow has been at, patching away, striving to create beauty on the shell of things. He is like McGregor you see. I wonder if the man has made himself beautiful, if either he or McGregor has seen to it that there is something lovely inside the husk he wears around ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... feeling in the Camp that evening and none of us lingered round the fire after supper as usual. Sangree and I busied ourselves with patching up the torn tent for our guest and with finding heavy stones to hold the ropes, for Dr. Silence insisted on having it pitched on the highest point of the island ridge, just where it was most rocky and there was no earth for pegs. The place, moreover, was midway between the men's and women's tents, ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... establishments, and paused to take a slight survey of the premises before entering. The doorway was hung with coats of every fashion of the last twenty years, and all in various stages of decay. Some of them looked quite respectable, from much cleaning and patching; and others presented a reckless and forlorn aspect, as their worn and ragged sleeves swung about in the evening air. Old hats, some of which were, in all probability, worn at a period anterior to the Revolution, kept company with the well-blacked shoes that were ranged on ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... spite of the efforts of the sagest lawgivers, it has always remained imperfect, because it was the work of chance, and because, inasmuch as it was ill begun, time, while revealing defects and suggesting remedies, could never repair its vices; people went on incessantly repairing and patching, instead of which it was indispensable to begin by making a clean surface and by throwing aside all the old materials, just ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... [FOOTNOTE: "Grosses Concert in E moll. Op. 11." Bearberet von Carl Tausig. Score, pianoforte, and orchestral parts. Berlin: Ries and Erler.] I shall only say that his cutting-down and patching-up of the introductory tutti, to mention only one thing, are not well enough done to excuse the liberty taken with a great composer's work. Moreover, your emendations cannot reach the vital fault, which lies in the conceptions. A musician may have mastered ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... much disheartened by his uncle's dilapidated farm, as he was annoyed by the beggarly way the old man lived, and the assiduous desire he seemed to manifest for Lev to be stirring around, gathering chips, patching fences, cutting brush; from morn till night, he and the two superannuated cuffies; and the old man barely raising enough to keep soul and body of ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... well distributed throughout. The wet concrete was well spaded in an effort to secure a smooth surface next to the forms. This was generally accomplished, but some rough places which showed after the removal of the forms required patching up. ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... rags: the weeds gather, and the dogs scratch about their foundations; yet there are no luxuriant weeds, for their ragged leaves are blanched with lime, crushed under perpetually falling fragments, and worn away by listless standing of idle feet. There is always mason's work doing, always some fresh patching and whitening; a dull smell of mortar, mixed with that of stale foulness of every kind, rises with the dust, and defiles every current of air; the corners are filled with accumulations of stones, partly broken, with crusts of cement sticking to them, and blotches of nitre oozing ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... the perspiration from her steaming face. "Come on; let's get out of this Inferno for a while and do our patching in the shade. I shall melt if I stay here a minute longer." And the two were soon seated in their low chairs on the cool porch, with a big basket ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... all of you: here's a lad that has been half-killed for standing by his colors to-day. Look here, Armstrong, would you mind going for Dr. Maverick? this poor chap needs some patching-up. And, Kit, give me some water and a napkin: we'll get his face a little ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... cobbler. On the following day, going again to see her, I find this cobbler there. I remonstrate with her, but in vain. And what is worse, she had sent to him the shoes I made, to be repaired. He was patching my own work! I swallowed my ire and went back to my shop. A week later, to be brief, I went there again, and what I beheld made my body shiver. She, the wench. Forgive me, Allah! had her hands around his neck and her lips—yes, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... first, from too close consideration of his relation to Bessy. He had yielded up his dearest hopes at her wish, and for the moment his renunciation had set a chasm between them; but gradually he saw that, as he was patching together the ruins of his Westmore plans, so he must presently apply himself to the reconstruction ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... size, the hut was frail, and the winter wind blew coldly through its many cracks; but compared with the soldier's billets, it was a cozy palace. The Salvationists spent hours each week sitting on the roof in the driving rain patching leaks ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... he who cannot rise above his own compilations and compositions, which he has been long patching and piecing, adding some and taking away some, may be justly called poet or ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... With this experience, it will not be long before she will begin to take an interest in her own clothes, and so will not need to be warned that a button is coming off or that the hem of her skirt is coming out. But, of course, she could not begin by sewing or patching her own clothes, nor by mending intricate tears. First see that she sews on buttons correctly and then let ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... taxes on banks. Attempts to deal with the difficulty without clear perception of its cause took the form of legislative tinkering and patching. Taxes were gathered from corporations by any device that seemed workable. The banks, being the earlier important corporations, were first experimented upon. Taxes on capital stock and on circulation were ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... boy had made it up in his. He had decided that Jan was a nobleman in disguise, and that his father was a duke, or a "jook," as he called him. Jan's active imagination could not quite resist the influence of this romance, and he lay awake at night patching together the hunchback's reference to the nobs, and the incredulous glance of the dark-eyed gentleman who had given him the half pence, and who was certainly a nob himself. And never did he leave the house on an errand for the painter that the bow-legged boy did not burst forth, ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the former may be conceived. The wheel was an utter smash. No patching however thorough, no care however tender, could place it on its edge again a perfect wheel. A hill rose before them, behind which the Spaniards, hitherto their companions, had disappeared half an hour previously, and were now ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... reading, but he liked to turn the pages, look at the illustrations if they were illustrated, and mend the bindings. He welcomed wet days because on them he could stay at home without pangs of conscience and spend the afternoon with white of egg and a glue-pot, patching up the Russia leather of some battered quarto. He had many volumes of old travels, with steel engravings, and Mrs. Carey quickly found two which described Palestine. She coughed elaborately at the door so that Philip should have time to compose himself, she ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... anyhow?" he snarled with his lips drawn back from his teeth. "Piddling with bugs—Me! Patching up their dinky little wings and stretching out their dam' little legs and feelers—me being what I am, and they being what they are! Say, I've got to quit this, once for all I've got to quit it. I'm not a man any ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... a change, where the stream darts along swiftly, after having escaped from a weir, and still streaked with foam. The shore rises like a sea beach, and on the pebbles men are patching and pitching old barges which have been hauled up on the bank. A skiff partly drawn up on the beach rocks as the current strives to work it loose, and up the varnish of the side glides a flickering light ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... walking in his fields, is brought to a stand-still and overcome with annoyance to see an opening which his cattle have made in his fences, and which he must be at the pains of repairing: so these vacuities in thought require to be botched by the fancy of the reader; the patching may not be the requisite thing to be done: accordingly the gaps cause difficulties in rightly apprehending the meaning of the writer, who, in some passages may, possibly, never ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... death-awaiting men and women who fill this huge, palpitating world of ours! It would be worth while to pass a week or a month among the plain, average people of Stratford. What is the relative importance in human well-being of the emendations of the text of Hamlet and the patching of the old trousers and the darning of the old stockings which task the needles of the hard-working households that fight the battle of life in these narrow streets and alleys? I ask the question; the ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... of making everybody laugh. I remember once seeing him patching his trousers with a Union Jack, and singing, "We'll never let ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... patching an old coat, Lulu an apron, Gracie a doll's dress; Eva and Rosie each had a worn stocking drawn over her hand, and was busily engaged in darning it; the other girls were mending gloves, the boys old shoes; and as they ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... little note in a sandbag. You say that you hope the sandbag stops a bullet. Well, to tell the truth, I hope it don't, as I have been patching ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... do not understand what I call poetry, we talk in a foreign language to each other. Indeed, many of these gentlemen appear to me to be a sort of tinkers, who, unable to make pots and pans, set up for menders of them, and, God knows, often make two holes in patching one. The sixth canto is altogether redundant; for the poem should certainly have closed with the union of the lovers, when the interest, if any, was at an end. But what could I do? I had my book and my page still on ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... and hurried me into a big, warm igloo, while most of the men ran out and helped the sled in. They built our igloo in short order, and during the time we were with them did everything in their power to contribute to our comfort. It seemed as if some one was on the roof of our igloo all the time patching up holes, and they changed the direction of the doorway every time the wind changed, and that kept them ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... the Christ Triumphant into its present state, patching up what "the lither lad" from Pistoja had boggled. Buonarroti, who was sincerely attached to Varj, and felt his artistic reputation now at stake, offered to make a new statue. But the magnanimous Roman gentleman replied that he was entirely ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... to Henry! He answers for our patching Leonard up for next week; and I have great faith in ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a pair of shoes had to be condemned as "not worth mending," he endeavoured to retain them for a purpose of his own, sometimes paying a few pence for them as "old leather." When summer came round he set to work patching the derelicts as best he could, and would sometimes have thirty or forty pairs in readiness by the end of June. This was the season when the neighbourhood was annually invaded by troops of pea-pickers—a very miscellaneous collection of humanity comprising ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... darkness with all belt lights out, but he groped his way to the Connie Dowst had been patching, felt for his helmet, and put his own against it. He yelled, ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... be false and deceitful, that will not undergo all the Trials and Tests made of them by Experiments. And therefore such as will not come up to the desired Apex of Perfection, I rather wholly reject and take new, then by piecing and patching, endeavour to retain the old, as knowing such things at best to be but lame and imperfect. And this course I learned from Nature; whom we find neglectful of the old Body, and suffering its Decaies and Infirmities to remain without repair, and altogether sollicitous ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... the breaking of the defenders. But he knew it was like patching rotten material. His influence could not last without Bill and his reinforcements. He plied his guns with a discrimination which no heat or excitement could disturb, and the first invaders fell under his attack amidst a din of fierce-throated ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... acquaintance; for occasionally a flash of foreign individuality would break through the husk of satisfaction in which he had inclosed himself, compelling him to feel that another man might have claims. And hitherto he had been very successful in patching up and keeping entire his eggshell of conceit. But that affair with Alec was a very bad business. Had Beauchamp been a coward, he would have suffered less from it. But he was no coward, though not quite so courageous as Hector, who yet turned and fled before Achilles. Without the upholding ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... it not better to let the race die out, instead of laboriously piecing and patching at a too old garment, and so leave room for a new race to come up, which the fruit of experience, both sweet and bitter, left behind in books, might enable to ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... that remains On the plains, By the caper overrooted, by the gourd Overscored, While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks Through the chinks— Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time Sprang sublime, And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced As they raced, And the monarch and his minions and his dames Viewed ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... provide, in the face of endless obstacles (for he had to dance attendance on scores of intriguing factors and brokers ashore), the requisite stores for the fleet, Paul sat in his cabin in a half-despondent reverie, while Israel, cross-legged at his commander's feet, was patching up some ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... Silverado, when we were full of business, patching up doors and windows, making beds and seats, and getting our rough lodging into shape, Irvine and his sister made their appearance together, she for neighbourliness and general curiosity; he, because he was working for ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Humphreys received orders to give up his advanced position and fall back to the ridge itself. There he turned at bay. Hancock, who had been placed in command of the First, Second, and Third Corps, was indefatigable in his vigilance and personal supervision, "patching the line" wherever the enemy was likely to break through. His activity and foresight probably preserved the ridge from capture. Toward the last Meade brought forward Lockwood's Maryland brigade from the right and ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... Albans to visit Jerusalem, China, the country of the five thousand islands, he journeys and sails through Pliny, Marco Polo, Odoric de Pordenone,[675] Albert d'Aix, William of Boldensele, Pierre Comestor, Jacques de Vitry, bestiaries, tales of travels, collections of fables, books of dreams, patching together countless marvels, but yet, as he assures us, omitting many so as not to weary our faith: It would be too long to say all; "y seroit trop longe chose a tot deviser." With fanciful wonders are mingled many real ones, which served to make the rest ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... cooking at his master's house. The slaves stopped work every Saturday afternoon about three o'clock; then his mistress would have his mother to patch their clothes, as she did not like to see their clothes needing patching. "We used to have lots of fun," he said, "more than the children do now. As children, we used to play marbles around the house; but no other ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... enters the city gate in the morning, and commit the kingdom to his charge." It happened that the first man that presented himself at the city gate was a beggar, who had passed his whole life in scraping broken meat and in patching rags. The ministers of state and nobles of the court fulfilled the conditions of the king's will, and laid the keys of the treasury and citadel at ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... storm and darkness, combated by doubt, irony, the absence of all sympathy, all example, all brotherly aid, all protection and countenance in high places? Try yourselves to speak to your brethren heart to heart, conscience to conscience! Try it! but you cannot, busied as you are with watching and patching up in all directions your dykes which the flood is invading: the material existence of this society of yours absorbs all your cares, and requires more than all your efforts. Meanwhile the powers of human thought are growing ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... on knees; colored binding round his jacket, scarlet edging at the bottom of his trousers; and the sunshine made him look extremely gay and wonderfully neat withal, because you could see how beautifully all this patching had been done. A beardless, boyish face, very fair, no features to speak of, nose peeling, little blue eyes, smiles and frowns chasing each other over that open countenance like sunshine and shadow on a windswept plain. 'Look out, captain!' ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... cannot soon forget:—a wide, low, little house, whose motherly roof reached over and sheltered a snug little porch. There we sat, after the long hot drive, drinking cool water,—the talkative little storekeeper who is my daily companion; the silent old black woman patching pantaloons and saying never a word; the ragged picture of helpless misfortune who called in just to see the preacher; and finally the neat matronly preacher's wife, plump, yellow, and intelligent. "Own land?" said the wife; "well, only this house." Then she added quietly. "We did buy seven ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... over the eastern cliffs while Andy was patching me up." He carried one arm in a sling, and his other ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... without reason, the worst was over. As I went off the campus the top of my hat was hanging over my left ear, my collar and cravat were turned awry, my trousers gaped over one knee. I was talking with a fellow sufferer and patching the skin on my knuckles, when suddenly ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... his battered chest when Goodwin unhooked the fo'c'sle door and entered. A globe-lamp that hung above him shed its light upon his silver head as he bent over his work of patching a pair of dungaree overalls, and he looked up in mild welcome of the other's return. His placidity, his venerable and friendly aspect, gave somehow to the bare forecastle, with its vacant bunks like empty coffin-shelves in a vault, an air ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... have thrice your income. There may be in this case some little mixture of pretension in your life and behavior. You certainly DO put on a smiling face whilst fortune is pinching you. Your wife and girls, so smart and neat at evening parties, are cutting, patching, and cobbling all day to make both ends of life's haberdashery meet. You give a friend a bottle of wine on occasion, but are content yourself with a glass of whiskey-and-water. You avoid a cab, saying that of all things you like to walk home after dinner (which you know, my good ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... altogether sheer madness, for the old boat was barely fit for a day's fishing in fine weather, and though Barney nearly killed himself overhauling her, and patching her sails, I doubt if he knew very well what he was after. I've been thinking, Jack, that his mind was not what it was. He was always a bit obstinate, if he got a notion into his head, but of late the squire himself couldn't turn him. When he wanted to do a thing about the place that Barney didn't ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... enters, is a stone-cutter and mason, much employed in patching dilapidated graves and cutting inscriptions, and popularly known in Bumsteadville, on account of the dried mortar perpetually hanging about him, as "Old Mortarity." He is a ricketty man, with a chronic disease called bar-roomatism, and ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... to the sharp corner curves of both the other ribs, face against iron afterwards, inside against it. Mind, as is your true shape to mould, so will your ribs be when it comes to be attached to the back; and there is no patching or trickery allowed here; so do your best. After this, fix the three sections into the mould, and keep them in position by means of cramp 2, and the centre one with block 33, held firmly ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... the matter; if they do tear up the system, then shall we all have reason to rejoice at these disasters, apart from our sympathy with individual sufferings. More good will have been done by this one great shock to the heart of England than by fifty years' more patching, and pottering, and knocking impotent heads together. What makes me most angry is the ministerial apology. 'It's always so with us for three campaigns,'!!! 'it's our way,' 'it's want of experience,' &c. &c. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... been busy for weeks, in fact, ever since the show in the cellar, patching, sewing, and putting together old rag carpet, canvas, heavy with paint, that had been ripped from the hurricane deck ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... meat, or even a bit of loaf-bread itself for them, ma'am. And when she's sitting late at night, as the doctor's telling me, and all the rest of the village dark, darning little Liza's stockings, and patching little Willie's coat, or maybe nursing the baby when it's down with the measles, the Lord is as pleased with her, I'm thinking, as with some of your nun bodies in their grand blue cloaks taking turn and turn ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... him to keep his nerve and he would come through all right. He was a very strong, clean-living young man and I really thought he had a chance. He did not think so, saying he was afraid the doctors would have some difficulty in patching up such a hole. He did not cry out nor make the slightest complaint but kept assuring me ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... the opposite corner, napping; and a middle-aged man, with spectacles on his ebony nose, reading slowly aloud from an ancient grease-covered book opened before him on the old pine table; and a middle-aged woman patching a jacket; and a girl washing dishes, which another girl was wiping: representatives of four generations: and they all quitted their occupations at once, to see what sort of a devil Bill had ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... activity by the radiance of morn; by the sweet smelling air filled with the perfume of a multitude of opening flowers which had drunk again the dew of heaven; by the sight of flitting clouds across the bluest of skies, patching the green earth with moving shadows, and sweetest of all, by the twittering, calling, musical sounds of love and joy which came to the ear from the throats of the feathered throng. How pleasant to lie prone on one's back on the cool grass, and gaze upward through the shady ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... Whenever they observed this dubious expression gather upon his countenance, accompanied with a glance that fixed now upon the sleeve of his coat, now upon the knees of his breeches, where he probably missed some antique patching and darning, which, being executed with blue thread upon a black ground, had somewhat the effect of embroidery, they always took care to turn his attention into some other channel, until his garments, 'by the aid of use, cleaved to their mould.' The only remark he was ever known to make on the ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... might by giving Winnie little jobs to do for him while he was gone, and by setting her about what courses of self-improvement her delicate system of mind and body was able to bear. He managed it so that all was for him; not more the patching and knitting and bits of writing which were strictly in his line, than the pages of history, the sums in arithmetic, and the little lesson of Latin, which were for Winnie's own self. He knew that affection, in every one of them, would steady the nerves and fortify the will ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... a broken septuagenarian, but still retaining a sort of bankrupt bel air. To Wycherley, who could not tear himself from his favorite St. James's, the youthful Pope wrote literary letters, being even decoyed into patching and revising the old beau's senile verses. Another of his correspondents was Henry Cromwell—Gay's "honest, hatless Cromwell, with red breeches," who at this time was playing the part of an elderly Phaon to the Sappho of a third-rate poetess, Mrs. Elizabeth ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... streets, shivering and looking the very picture of absolute wretchedness. Amongst these, a few old women may be seen sitting by the side of the streets, earning a scanty subsistence by mending and patching the clothes of people as poor as themselves. These poor women, having all undergone the barbarous operation of cramping the feet during infancy, are consequently unable to undertake any thing but sedentary employment to gain their bread. The very small size to which the feet ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... it was a roll of canvas, carefully soiled, and garnished with needles and thread, cobblers' wax, buttons, and other such articles. These things were most useful in lands where tailors abound not; besides which, the sight of a man darning his coat or patching his slippers teems with pleasing ideas of humility. A dagger, a brass inkstand and penholder stuck in the belt, and a mighty rosary, which on occasion might have been converted into a weapon of offense, completed my equipment. I must not omit to mention ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... hospital! My first! We were within earshot of the front—that is to say, we could hear the platoon firing. And when the wounded came in we thought only of patching them up temporarily—sewing, bandaging, and plastering them into travelling order, and sending them down to the headquarters at the coast. It was a weary journey across the desert, and I am afraid a few were buried on ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... be a famous surgeon some day, I feel sure," Roxanne said, as she began on another interminable job of stocking-patching. "And Douglass is going to be a Supreme Judge of the United States while I help him. Just as soon as the money comes we shall all go to college, Lovey, Douglass, Uncle Pomp and I, to get ready for ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Mandement de Monseigneur l'Archeveyue; it is very well drawn, and becoming an archbishop. But pray do not lose sight of a much more important object, I mean the political disputes between the King and the parliament, and the King and the clergy; they seem both to be patching up; but, however, get the whole clue to them, as ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... was patching the lot fence, with Buck sunning himself near the woodpile, came Old Man Thornycroft. Davy recognized his buggy as it turned the bend in the road. He quickly dropped his tools, called Buck to him and got ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... Patching your shoes, eh? Then if you can't see to do that by the same light that does for me, you may take yourself off with your pare into the bath-house or behind it ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... than the patching up of the barricades in which we assisted must be taken if Borth is to remain permanently in the roll of Welsh villages. Our storm-wave was but part of a system of aggression which the sea is carrying out upon these coasts. Older residents remember a coach-road under the promontory, ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... her frock at the neck; a full-fledged Quaker girl, with certain lines of severity hardly meet for so young a face. Mother Lois sat beside the fire knitting. She had never been quite so strong since her fever, and Faith had a basket of woolen pieces out of which she was patching some shapely blocks for a ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... all about their great work? I hope it'll be finished by the end of the year. The bits they have sent me will do very well indeed. I knew they had it in them to put sentences together. Now I want them to think of patching up something or other for The English Girl; ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... a good many distresses in my time (continued Mr. Bung), and in course I wasn't long in finding, that some people are not as much to be pitied as others are, and that people with good incomes who get into difficulties, which they keep patching up day after day and week after week, get so used to these sort of things in time, that at last they come scarcely to feel them at all. I remember the very first place I was put in possession of, was a gentleman's house in this parish here, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... expecting that she would sink or burn down to the water's edge, and pursued the Palsgrave and Dolphin, which, however, effected their escape. The brave crew of the Lion, having put out the fire, succeeded in patching her up sufficiently to reach Ormuz, where they received every assistance they required from the Sultan. They were in hopes of being relieved by other English ships, when Rufero with his frigates came rowing towards them. The Lion lay in such a position that she could only bring ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... would have induced me to confess it then. He had served in the Crimea, and seemed to regard a dilapidated body very much as I should have regarded a damaged garment; and, turning up his cuffs, whipped out a very unpleasant looking housewife, cutting, sawing, patching and piecing, with the enthusiasm of an accomplished surgical seamstress; explaining the process, in scientific terms, to the patient, meantime; which, of course, was immensely cheering and comfortable. There was an uncanny sort of fascination in watching him, as ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... completeness, less than a century old. No historical fact is, however, better established than that till nearly the end of the nineteenth century it was the general belief that the ancient industrial system, with all its shocking social consequences, was destined to last, with possibly a little patching, to the end of time. How strange and wellnigh incredible does it seem that so prodigious a moral and material transformation as has taken place since then could have been accomplished in so brief an interval? The readiness with which men accustom themselves, as matters of ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... a day one who has gotten the true perspective? Here is the outer side: a humble home, a narrow circle, tending the baby, patching, sewing, cooking, calling; or, measuring dry goods, chopping a typewriter, checking up a ledger, feeding the swift machinery, endless stitching, gripping a locomotive lever, pushing the plow, tending the stock, doing the chores, tiresome examination ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... doings here to-day. For weeks past all the Conservative Ladies of Billsbury have been hard at work, knitting, sewing, painting, embroidering, patching, quilting, crocheting, and Heaven knows what besides, for the Bazaar in aid of the Conservative Young Men's Club and Coffee-Room Sustentation Fund. You couldn't call at any house in Billsbury without being nearly smothered in heaps of fancy-work of every kind. When I was ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... two dogwood forks, rested the long rifle with its fishtail sight and the brass plate on the stock for the bullets and the "patching." Below it hung the old powder-horn, its wooden plug dangling from a string,—tools of the long ago. Closing one's eyes one could see the tall grandsires fighting in the beech forest, a brown patch of hide sighted ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... storm cleared the two old hulls lay shattered but safe on the surface of the ice-pack. The whole larboard side of the Dorothea was smashed, but they brought her somehow to Spitzbergen, and there by wonderful patching enabled her to ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... is concluded should be of a permanent nature; no perfunctory patching up should be permitted. The horror of all the civilized nations of the Old World slaughtering one another, every one convinced of the perfect righteousness of their own cause—a recurrence, if it could not be avoided absolutely, should be made most ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... in particular, quite daft. This one is never done talking about her husband, her baby, her experience, her theory, her friends who are about to marry, or who want to marry, or who can't marry. She can't see two persons together without patching ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... compromise is ever totally right," said Polly. "You keep patching up things that always have flaws in them. That's how government is." She chuckled, looked up at Orne. "All right, Lewis. We accept." She glanced at Spencer, who shrugged, nodded glumly. Polly looked ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert
... no dress and make it, but I can use a needle on patching and quilting. Can't nobody beat me doin' that. I can knit, too. I can make stockings, gloves, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... sylvan or rural in the immediate village, and is as ugly a place as mortal man could contrive to make, or to render uglier through a succession of untidy generations. The fashion of paving the village street, and patching one shabby house on the gable-end of another, quite shuts out all verdure and pleasantness; but, I presume, we are not likely to see a more genuine old Scotch village, such as they used to be in Burns's time, and long before, than ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... difficulties, all the carpenters whom he had brought with him from England had died, before their services were needed. But undismayed at this most untoward occurrence, he determined to make the most of his scanty materials. With the aid of a single soldier, by patching together all the three, after eighteen days, he constructed a boat, forty feet in length, and six in breadth, which he termed the schooner Joliba. Before he left Sansanding, he met with a more severe misfortune than any he ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... year, indeed, every one goes a-fishing along the old canal—men, women, boys, and girls. That is in spring, when the canal is emptied for repairs, the patching up of leaks, and so forth. Then the fish lie glittering in the shallow pools, as good as caught, and happy children go home with strings of sunfish,—"pumpkin-seeds" they call them,—cat-fish, and the like picturesque ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... had a long and confidential talk; and I perceived that, though he had finally given up all intention of getting me into the church, in the hopes of patching up the holes in the old roof with a mitre, he had fully made up his mind on the subject of a widow. I rejoiced that Mrs Coutts was already disposed of. He talked a long time of jointures, three per cents, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... made the best job they could of patching up Jan's wounds a little against the frost and the rub ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... with sprigs and arabesques upon the arms and especially the breasts of women. "Kataba" would also be applied to striping the fingers with Henna which becomes a shining black under a paste of honey, lime and sal-ammoniac. This "patching" is alluded to by Strabo and Galen (Lane M. E. chapt. ii.); and we may note that savages and barbarians can leave nothing of beauty unadorned; they seem to hate a plain surface like the Hindu silversmith, whose art is ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... instrument down immediately he would tear it from our hands and pitch it outside. If we DID lay it down quietly he would snatch it up and heave it out just as hard. The next evening he would devote all his time to patching the ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... cast. They certainly ought to be preserved, after striking out one or two which have been sophisticated, I suppose by Mr. Buchan himself, which are easily distinguishable from the genuine ballads.[24] No one but Burns ever succeeded in patching up old Scottish songs ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... concentrating its power. Behind him that nation was patching up its one great quarrel, and now a gray phantom stalked out of the past to the music of drum and fife, and Crittenden turned sharply to see a little body of men, in queer uniforms, marching through a camp of regulars toward him. They were old ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... It was to her a simple enough matter to fashion herself a dress which should be in form and line all that could be desired. To do it out of unbroken yards of material, without necessity for piecing and patching, was a delightful novelty. To accomplish it in three days was only a matter of working at top speed, with fingers which flew at the behest of a brain which also worked like ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... it was serenely unconscious of such a thing. As to our side of the street, I think we may have been the only people at all interested in the affair now so imminent. The others had something more sensible to do, I fancy, than patching up ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin |
