"Rag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... coorse, or something nearly as bad, before you. Oh! go to the wake as soon as you like, an' to the dance, too. Find some one that'll take you off of my hands; that'll put a house over your head—give you a bit to ait, an' a rag to put on you; an' may God pity him that's doomed to get you! If the woeful state of the country, an' the hunger an' sickness that's abroad, an' that's comin' harder an' faster on us every day, can't tame you or keep you down, I dunna ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... choice. His gift of tongues would enable him better than any of us to persuade, and if need were, compel. We had left our rifles leaning by the wall at the castle entrance, and in his cartridge bag was my oil-can and rag-bag. I asked him for them, and he threw them to me rather clumsily. Trying to catch them I twisted for the second time the ankle I had hurt that morning. Fred mounted and rode out through the echoing entrance without a backward glance, and I sat down and ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... luck to thee as much as luck can be found: so I will flit it to thee this wise, that I will do it up in a piece of cloth and tie it to the head of this arrow (which is of no account), and shoot it over to thee." And therewith he knelt down and fell to wrapping it up in the rag. ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... (which should be powdered,) rub it on the silver, and let it remain until dry; then rub it off with a clean dry cloth. When chalk will not remove spots, hot ashes will. Britannia-ware should be rubbed with a flannel rag dipped in sweet or linseed oil, if spotted, then washed in soap-suds, and wiped dry. To give it a polish, rub it over with dry powdered chalk or whiting, using a clean ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... a rag to her back when she came here. I'd be ashamed to be dressed as she was. You should have seen the one she goes ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... then smil'd, as one would smile Upon a child, that eyes the fruit and yields. Into the fire before me then he walk'd; And Statius, who erewhile no little space Had parted us, he pray'd to come behind. I would have cast me into molten glass To cool me, when I enter'd; so intense Rag'd the conflagrant mass. The sire belov'd, To comfort me, as he proceeded, still Of Beatrice talk'd. "Her eyes," saith he, "E'en now I seem to view." From the other side A voice, that sang, did guide us, and the voice Following, with heedful ear, we issued forth, There where the path led ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... I see of you," said Mr. Iff, removing his coat, "the more qualities I discover in you to excite my admiration and liking. As in this instance when with thoughtfulness for my comfort"—he tore from his neck the water-soaked rag that had been his collar—"you combine a prudent, not to say sagacious foresight, whereby you plan to place the Cadogan collar far beyond my reach in event I should turn out to ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... Mac knelt down and pulled away the furs. "God bless me! you only got this one rag on? God bless me!" He pulled off his muffler and wound the child in it mummy-wise, round and round, muttering the while in a surly way. When it was half done he stopped—thought profoundly with a furrow cutting deep into his ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... the sprawling body, and come and drawn Pomfrette inside the house. He rubbed the face and hands and ears of the unconscious man with snow till the whiteness disappeared, and, taking off the boots, did the same with the toes; after which he drew the body to a piece of rag carpet beside the stove, threw some blankets over it, and, hurrying out, cut up some fence rails, and soon had a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in an uncomfortable dungeon? (Calling.) What ho! within there! RICH. Hold—we are prepared for this (producing a Union Jack). Here is a flag that none dare defy (all kneel), and while this glorious rag floats over Rose Maybud's head, the man does not live who would dare to lay unlicensed hand upon her! ROB. Foiled—and by a Union Jack! But a time will come, and then—- ROSE. Nay, let me plead with him. (To Robin.) Sir ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... your mother is not a lady; there are no ladies in America—born ladies, such as we have in the United Kingdom. And pray what have you Yankees done, except to make money, that you should all be so infernally proud of your country and that rag?' ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... none of a 'prentice should speak ill - He stole from the till all the gold, And ate the lump-sugar and treacle. In vain did his master exclaim, Dear George, don't engage with that dragon; She'll lead you to sorrow and shame, And leave you the devil a rag on. ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... flesh is good enough for her!" Miranda groaned to Jane. "She'll ride with the rag-sack-and-bottle peddler just as quick as she would with the minister; she always sets beside the barefooted young ones at Sabbath school; and she's forever riggin' and onriggin' that dirty Simpson baby! She reminds me of a puppy that'll always go ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Nellie was preparing to go to the city, Betty had lessons in sewing. Nellie would bring down an old garment, so faded and worn that it would seem only fit for the rag-bag. She would rip and wash, dye with a mysterious little package of stuff, press, and behold, there would come forth pretty breadths of cloth, blue or brown or green, or whatever color was desired. It seemed ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... closely to his breast, he mounted the shaky stairs until he reached the garret. Pushing open a door here, he entered a neat little room with only one window in it, but that a dormer facing the south. The floor of this room was bare, with the exception of two or three round rag mats, and the walls were decorated in the oddest manner with pictures cut from old papers and magazines, bits of colored glass, strips of glittering tin twisted into grotesque shapes, and red and green motto-papers fashioned into some ...
— Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... fellow like you would be sure to be able to pick up a wife with money. My thoughts don't incline that way. I look forward to the Rag as the conclusion of my career. There you meet fellows you know, lie against each other about past campaigns, eat capital dinners, and have your rub of whist, regularly, ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... and put his hands up to something round his head. He was now lying out in the light, with a cold bandage round his forehead, and a moist rag ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... stalking: planets trying, or acting, to capture comets; rag pickers and the Christian religion, and a cat down headfirst in a garbage can; nations fighting for more territory, sciences correlating the data they can, trust magnates organizing, chorus girl out for a little late supper—all ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... if one had chanced to look, and separated only by an iron fence with sparse, fluttering vines from a mass of tired, quarrelsome, desperate men. Why! any of them might have run us through in a flash as one would lunge at a white rag for the amusement of his companions. Indoors the family were frantic, not daring to open a crack of the door for fear of violent ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... and lax now, shivering in the chill under the reaction from his excitement, turned away, stepped back to his own lodge, and contrived a little light, after the frontier fashion—a rag wick in a shallow vessel of grease. With this uncertain aid he bent down closer to read the finely written ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... more familiar with tinder-boxes and their working than I am, that no material was better for making tinder than an old cambric handkerchief. However, as I have no cambric handkerchief to operate upon, I must use a piece of common linen rag. I want you to see precisely what takes place. I set fire to my linen (which, by the bye, I have taken care to wash carefully so that there should be no dirt nor starch left in it), and while it ...
— The Story of a Tinder-box • Charles Meymott Tidy
... vagabonds, that strip the dead soldier on the field of glory, came and took every rag off me; they wrought me no further ill, because there was ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... be a rag on me body nor a whole bone in me skin when we get out of this!" he gasped, as they reached high ground between two spreading deeps of mingled weeds and water. "The sight of us'd frighten the whole rebel army, if we don't come on them aisy loike, as the fox ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... entirely unnecessary, for the dreadful cat lay like a rag, flattened out, with nose close to the ground and claws wedged in the grass—almost without a quiver. The bursting bullet had torn out the back of its head and the nape of its neck. Above its eyes, gory, torn, white convolutions ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... soldiers fought on, and the women helped as best they might, giving their stockings as bags for grape-shot, and tearing up their clothes to bind up wounds, till they had scarcely a rag to cover them. One, the gallant wife of a private of the 32nd, Bridget Widdowson, stood, sword in hand, over a number of prisoners tied together by a rope. Not one of their movements passed unnoticed by her; her gun was instantly levelled at the ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... the knees again, and had to sit down on the old chest. Not a word escaped his lips; a deep sigh burst from the pent-up boiler of his remorse. With an agonized countenance he seized a piece of rag which he had used as a shaving towel, and wiped away a repentant tear. His soul was subdued within him. He went to meeting, but declined officiating in any capacity, pleading a pain in his stomach as an excuse. At dinner he found it impossible to finish the remaining quarter of ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... very sarcastic like, "I must say you were very brave to kill that wooden figure. I'm not afraid of snakes, but I'd certainly be afraid of a wooden figure. Tell me, did you ever kill a rag doll?" ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... expression and how persistently she applied a slate rag, asked Susie, who sat near the table, to change places with him, and moving the chair near Mary's took the slate and by a few suggestions gave just the needed assistance; and in such a concise way that the quick though untrained mind of the girl found no further difficulties in ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... are often carelessly exposed to cold water and inclement weather. Very cold water should never be used to bathe the ears and nostrils. Bathe moderately and gently in lukewarm water, using a wash-rag in preference to a sponge; dry gently and thoroughly. Children's ears are often rudely washed, especially in the auditory canal. This is not at all necessary to cleanliness, and may result in a ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... small. Put in a very small head of cabbage, cut into little pieces. If you have any objection to cabbage, substitute a larger proportion of the other vegetables. Put in also a bunch of sweet marjoram, tied up in a thin muslin rag to prevent its floating on ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... had been diligent both in London and Paris; he possessed diplomas or some such things bearing names which were bound to have weight with a Department of Public Instruction anywhere. I felt particularly thankful for this, for I was committed to him if he had not a rag ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... suddenly, limp as a rag. His mouth filled with water—a cold, sickening moisture that rendered him speechless for a moment. He swallowed painfully. His eyes swept the little room as if in search of something to prove that this was the place for Phoebe—this quiet, ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... in the Mall and walked with him to the Rag., where he left me. A most diverting man. He told me a capital story about a curate ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... RAG-BOLTS. Those which are jagged or barbed, to prevent working in their holes, and to make them hold more securely. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... newspaper, 'is a Carlist and revolutionary rag whose readers are scarcely likely to be interested for a good motive in the movements of ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... ancient, but strong as if designed for eternity; with its saints and virgins, and martyrs and relics, its gold and silver and precious stones, whose value would buy up all the spare lots in the New England village; the lpero with scarce a rag to cover him, kneeling on that marble pavement. Leave the enclosure of the church, observe the stone wall that bounds the road for more than a mile; the fruit trees overtopping it, high though it be, with their loaded branches. This is the convent orchard. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... to defend the rising generation? Who has ever looked with content upon the young, save only Plato, and he lived in an age of symmetry and order which we can hardly hope to reproduce. The shortcomings of youth are so pitilessly, so glaringly apparent. Not a rag to cover them from the discerning eye. And what a veil has fallen between us and the years of our offending. There is no illusion so permanent as that which enables us to look backward with complacency; there is no mental process ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... of the stations he saw a crowd collected, rag-pickers and countrywomen. Doubtless some drama of the night about to reach its denouement before the Commissioner of Police. Ah! if Frantz had known what that drama was! but he could have no suspicion, and he glanced at the crowd indifferently from ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... had to wait often half an hour until it could be induced to move. Gipsies passed, better mounted and worse clad than other folk, some of them half naked. Many soldiers had walked through their opankies and their feet were bound up with rag. Why in this country of awful mud has the opankie been invented? It is a sole turned up at the edges and held on by a series of straps and plaited ornamentations useless in mud or wet, which penetrates through it ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... nothing left for him but to resign himself to the accomplished fact; for, one fine day, his two other victims, Ganimard and Holmlock Shears, made their reappearance. Their return to the life of this planet, however, was devoid of any sort of glamor or fascination. An itinerant rag-man picked them up on the Quai des Orfevres, opposite the headquarters of police. Both of them were gagged, bound ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... were insignificant; he could not bother about them when there was something infinitely more important to occupy him. Rose's friends used to come in to tea in the study sometimes or sit about when there was nothing better to do—Rose liked a crowd and the chance of a rag—and they found that Philip was quite a ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... children. There is one good broad road passing the bungalow which leads away to the Back of Beyond, but we prefer the little tracks worn by the feet of the natives, which criss-cross everywhere. Jean won't stir a step without a horrid, dilapidated rag doll called Topsy. I do dislike the faces of rag dolls, their lack of profile is so gruesome, and Topsy is a most depressing specimen of her kind; but Jean lavishes affection on her. A woman-child is an odd thing. I remember being ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... assured in his own mind concerning his future. He had counted costs. In that May, Bewsher, who from school had gone to Sandhurst, came up on a visit with two or three other fledgling officers, and they had a dinner in Morton's rooms. It turned into rather a 'rag,' as those things do, and it was there, across a flower-strewn, wine-stained table, that Morton had his second revelation. He wasn't drunk—he never got drunk; the others were. The thing came in upon him slowly, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Melrose looked weatherbeaten. His graying hair was pulled here and there like a rag mop that's dried dirty—stiff. He had a freshly lit cigarette between his lips. He grinned nervously when he saw me, butted the cigarette, said in a thin voice, "This is it, Anders. Ship goes up ...
— The Very Black • Dean Evans
... detailed for guard-duty, walks off; his voice grows fainter and fainter in the distance, and we call forth our poet. One eye is bandaged with a dirty cotton rag. He is bareheaded, and his hair resembles a dismantled straw stack. His elbows and knees are out, and his pants, from the knee down, have a brown-toasted tinge imparted by the genial heat of many a fire. His toes protrude themselves prominently ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... or less inflammation, causing nervous fretfulness, and the impulse to put everything into the mouth. Usually there is disturbed sleep, a slight fever, and greater flow of saliva; this is often relieved by letting the child have ice to bite, tied in a rag. ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... only drawback to Allan's enjoyment was that he obviously wanted to take the records out of her unaccustomed fingers and adjust them himself. He knew how, it appeared, and Phyllis naturally didn't. However, she managed to follow his directions successfully. She had bought recklessly of rag-time discs, and provided a fair amount of opera selections. Allan seemed equally happy over both. After the thing had been playing for three-quarters of an hour, and most of the records were exhausted, Phyllis rang for tea. ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... later the leg bone of the buck was spitting and sputtering on the glowing coals, and Watty smiled as he felt in his pockets and brought out a tobacco box, which, on being opened, proved to contain two pieces of rag, which he also opened, and displayed about a dessert-spoonful of salt and about half ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... in his eyes, and I beckoned the daughter to follow me. We passed into the parlor, drew the curtain over the doorway—and there was nothing but that rag ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... warning that the mistress was returning to the house Mashutka quickly took off her dirty apron and wiped her hands on a towel or a bit of rag, as the case might be. Spitting on her hands she smoothed down her dry, rebellious hair, and covered the round table with the finest of clean tablecloths. Vassilissa, silent, serious, of the same age as her mistress, buxom, but faded with much confinement indoors, would bring in ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... this gang: "Africa for the Africanders. Sweep the English into the sea." With an alluring cry like this, it will be readily understood how easy it was to inflame the imagination of the illiterate and uneducated Boer, and to work upon his vanity and prejudices. That pernicious rag, Carl Borckenhagen's "Bloemfontein Express," enormously contributed to spreading this doctrine in the Orange Free State. I myself firmly believe that the "Express" was subsidised by Kruger. It was no mystery to me from where Borckenhagen, a full-blooded ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... prey to violent despair. There, where the wished-for stores on which he had counted ought to have been, there ruin, pillage and destruction had been before him. Who had done it? Animals would only have attacked the provisions, and there did not remain a single rag from the tent, a piece of wood or iron, and, more terrible still, not a fragment of coal! It was evident that the Esquimaux had learnt the value of these objects from their frequent relations with Europeans; since the departure of the Fox they had fetched ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... watch the game. The Chicago stocks had a blackboard to themselves, and this was covered with the longest lines of figures. Iron, Steel, Tobacco, Radiators, Vinegar, Oil, Leather, Spices, Tin, Candles, Biscuit, Rag,—the names of the "industrials" read like an inventory of a country store. "Rag" seemed the favorite of the hour; one boy was kept busy in posting the long line of quotations from the afternoon session of the Exchange. A group of spectators watched ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... 'it's up to you, Miss Stein!'" the quivering voice jerked out in bitter mimicry. "Up to me, indeed! And he gives me this rag bag!" ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... as they were sauntering home from a starlight ramble, that they came on Johnnie Vautrin crouched in the hedge with Marielihou, and Marielihou had her hind leg bound up in a piece of white rag. ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... says them with brutal frankness and considerable vigor. He may even use profanity and call names. He is especially impatient with and exasperated by excuses, since his passion is for results. An excuse to him is like a red rag flaunted in a bull's face. His irritation is relieved by speech. Afterward he passes on and probably forgets all about the incident. Certainly he does not hold ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... three days their position was one of the greatest danger. With only a rag of sail set they ran before the gale from the south-west. Every wave as it overtook them threatened the destruction of the ship; but the Dragon, light and buoyant, and ably handled, rode safely over the waves. ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... will take her off at the full of the moon. Sambo 's been playing 'possum again. Said he'd cut his foot with his hoe so badly that he couldn't stand upon it. Said I could see that by the blood on the rag that tied it up. I made him take off the rag and wash the foot, and there wa'n't no cut there. The blood was puccoon. If he'd waited a bit he could 'a' had all he wanted to paint with, for I gave him the rope's end, lively, until Mistress Patricia heard him yelling and ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... army of the Republic; established as a druggist at Angouleme during the Empire. He was engrossed in trying to cure the gout, and he also dreamed of replacing rag-paper with paper made from vegetable fibre, after the manner of the Chinese. He died at the beginning of the Restoration at Paris, where he had come to solicit the sanction of the Academy of Science, in despair at the lack of result, leaving a wife and two children ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... our mourning are ended, The lean years of famine are fled, When, sick for a spoonful of aught that was tuneful, We've sorrowed as over the dead For Music, forlorn and unfriended, Gone down into glimmerless gloom, While rude "rag-time" revels were dancing a devils' ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... cry, and falling on her knees, emptied the basket out on the floor, and both she and Calton were soon as busy among the fragments of paper as though they were rag-pickers. ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... bodily damage. I know him. If ye meet him man to man, ye'll find he'll meet ye half-way in everything but theology. He'll be the sort of friend ye'll need at Lone Moose. But dinna wave the Cloth in his face. For some reason that's to him like the proverbial red rag tae a bull. The last missionary tae Long Moose cam' awa wi' a lovely pair o' black eyes Sam Carr bestowed on him. I'm forewarnin' ye for yer ain good. Ye can decry material benefits a' ye like, but it'll be a decided benefit if ye ha' Sam Carr for a ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... have plastered it on thick; they look like living statues. Not a rag on them except 'breech-clouts.' Hello, there comes a troop around that mound to the right. Must be ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... a rag of meaning, Cecilia! I love your name. I love this too: this is mine, and no one can rob me ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I tell ye about leavin' ye, Maud? 'tis the only thing I can't compass for yer sake. I'm jest a child in yere hands, I am, ye know. I can lick a big fellah to pot as limp as a rag, by George!'—(his oaths were not really so mild)—'ye see summat o' that t'other day. Well, don't be vexed, Maud; 'twas all along o' you; ye know, I wor a bit jealous, 'appen; but anyhow I can do it; and look at me here, jest a child, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... moreover, I saw her burning with anxiety; so I knew that the patient was her husband.[FN447] As for his strangerhood, I noted that the dress of the woman differed from that of the townsfolk, wherefore I knew that she was a foreigner; and in the mouth of the phial I saw a yellow rag,[FN448] which garred me wot that the sick man was a Jew and she a Jewess. Moreover, she came to me on first day;[FN449] and 'tis the Jews' custom to take meat puddings[FN450] and food that hath passed the night[FN451] and eat them on the Saturday their Sabbath, hot and cold, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... our plates on an old sock or a rag or a piece of newspaper and packed them into our haversacks together with our mugs and rations for the day—a chunk of bread and a dirty piece of cheese. I tied up my boots—the laces were covered with liquid clay—and put on my puttees which were hard and stiff with caked ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... the Southern inhabitants; for the bohea tea used by a Northern freeman will pay more tax than the whole consumption of the miserable slave, which consists of nothing more than his physical subsistence and the rag that covers his nakedness. On the other side, the Southern States are not to be restrained from importing fresh supplies of wretched Africans, at once to increase the danger of attack and the difficulty of defence: nay, they are to be encouraged to it by an assurance ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... glass, when it was emptied of every article, and the shelves half-split, and half-thrust back crooked. Letters, labeled by the boys "Private," were strewn over the floor; they opened every armoir and drawer, collected every rag to be found and littered the whole house with them, until the wonder was, where so many rags had been found. Father's armoir was relieved of everything; Gibbes's handsome Damascus sword with the silver ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... number of the people one meets there having hardly a rag to cover them; and the more the swarming goes on, the more it promises to revive this old story. And when the story is perfectly revived, the swarming quite completed, and every cranny choke-full, then, ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... her sickness—which I am bound to add were kind and unremitting—were such as such beings bestow in charity on mortals made of humbler stuff. She came out of her stateroom the next evening as limp as a rag, and clinging to the little bantam as if letting go would be sure death. Seasickness had completely changed the manner and carriage of the two people. I could not help wondering if the bantam saw his advantage as I saw it, and whether, now that he had ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... had a Napoleon here, some think, his master mind might arrest this Vandalism, infuse some system into our rag-bag cities, and make each a Paris. But have we not Public Opinion, stronger than any despot? Let a little of this current, guided by taste, be turned into the channels of art, and the results will soon be forthcoming. We seem to be hampered, as yet, with ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... There is never an hour, from nine at night until three in the morning, when the prisoners' bench in Jefferson Market Court is without its full quota of women. Old—prematurely old, and young—pitifully young; white and brown; fair and faded; sad and cynical; starved and prosper ous; rag-draped and satin-bedecked; together they wait ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... and fatten the land. Moses and Aaron differ indeed a little in which shall dispense the manna, and both struggle for their separate tribes. Earl Gower is privy seal, the Lords Darlington and Dublin joint paymasters, Lord Gage paymaster of the pensions, Mr. O'Brien in the treasury. That old rag of a dishclout ministry, Henry Furnese, is to be the other lord. Lord Bateman and Dick Edgcumbe(648) are the new admirals; Rigby, Soame Jennings, and Talbot the Welsh judge, lords of trade; the Duke of Leeds cofferer, Lord Sandwich chief justice in eyre, Ellis and Lord Sandys (autre ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Gallows was full of guests. Everybody was very merry and bright, except Luke. Tyburn was specially elated, for his little drive with the zebras had only cost thirteen hundred altogether. There had apparently been a terrific rag the night before. While the guests were at dinner, Tyburn arranged for a number of wild beasts to be brought up from the Mammoth Circus. One was put into the bedroom of each guest to greet him or her on going to ...
— If Winter Don't - A B C D E F Notsomuchinson • Barry Pain
... for that," replied the trapper, "mebbe he do be afther thinkin' discretion was the better part av valor. Ye say, he had one av his hands wrapped up in a rag, and I suspect he ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... Hightower from the inside of the house. "Don't set her atter me, Abe—don't, fer mercy's sake. Get her in the notion, an' she'll be a-yerkin' me aroun' thereckly like I wuz a rag-baby. I'm a-gittin' too ole fer ter be romped aroun' by a great big double-j'inted gal like Babe. Projick wi' 'er yourself, but make 'er ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... new-invented trade, called "the rag-trade," which is very profitable. I refer to the purchasing and selling of false bank-notes, which are, as in the lawyer's case, palmed upon any stranger suspected of having money. On such occasions, the magistrate and the plaintiff share the booty. I may as well here add ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... say that since she was crazy about Chinese prints, she ought to be friendly with the Chinese laundryman in Chestnut Street. We regarded the nations of Europe as repositories of splendid traditions, magnificent even in their decay. Miss Fraenkel regarded them as rag-baskets from which the American Eagle was picking a heterogeneous mass of rubbish, rubbish that might possibly, after much screening, become worthy ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... blows. Thus it ran round! cries Goblin. Mash, mash, mash! An endless routine of heavy hammers. Mash, mash, mash! upon the sufferer's limbs. See the stone trough! says Goblin. For the water torture! Gurgle, swill, bloat, burst, for the Redeemer's honour! Suck the bloody rag, deep down into your unbelieving body, Heretic, at every breath you draw! And when the executioner plucks it out, reeking with the smaller mysteries of God's own Image, know us for His chosen servants, true believers in the Sermon on the Mount, elect disciples ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... where Kitchener's army was in possession after having freed Egypt from the power of the Madhi's wild Sudanese. French and British both claimed the same place; and for some years Fashoda was like a red rag to a bull when mentioned to Frenchmen; for Kitchener had got there first. Luckily he had fought for France in 1870, spoke French like a Frenchman, and soon made friends with the French on the spot. More luckily still, King Edward the Wise went to Paris in 1903, despite the fears of his ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... deem not necessary"; but, if the preachers were inspired, the miracle had not ceased, and the ceremony was soon reinstated. Contrary to Genevan practice, such festivals as Christmas and Easter were abolished. The Scottish Sabbath was established in great majesty. One "rag of Rome" was retained, clerical excommunication—the Sword of Church Discipline. It was the cutting off from Christ of the excommunicated, who were handed over to the devil, and it was attended by civil penalties equivalent to universal boycotting, practical outlawry, ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... fight. I may say that the sport is, in my opinion, a most barbarous one, and likely to operate unfavourably on the national morals; the arena is sometimes drenched in the blood of bulls, horses, and even of the unfortunate picadores and matadores, whose sole defence is the red rag with which ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... half bird, half reptile, with steel beaked and winged helmets and claw-like steel shoes, and jointed steel corselet and rustling steel mail coat; before the infantry of Gascony, rapid and rapacious with their tattered doublets and rag-bound feet; before the over-fed, immensely plumed, and slashed and furbelowed giants of Switzerland, and the starved, half-naked savages of Brittany and the Marches—before this multifaced, many-speeched army, gathered from the rich cities of the North and the devastated ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... all chatted happily, and then Jerry said, "Erfore I fergits hit, us wants ye ter stay up hyar this trip. Ther loft-room air yourn, an' leetle Rose hes fixed hit up special fer ye—curtains et ther window, er rag rug on ther floor, an' ther Lawd knows ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... actively in an Irish wake. Dr. Arten did the honors at the head of the table in his dress coat and vest that had once been white, though he no longer figured around in red flannel drawers as he had done on the beach. The little round faces of the Bruders seemed as if protruding from animated rag babies, while nothing could dim the glory of Ernst's great spiritual eyes, as they gratefully and wistfully followed Dennis's every movement. Cronk was in a very dilapidated and famished state, and endured many and varied ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... stairway once more and slipped away to the lower pasture with her burden, where for the next half hour she might have been seen tying the scarlet strips to the fence rails in the corner farthest from the raspberry patch. When the last rag was fastened securely, she stepped back and viewed the result of her labor, sighing in deep satisfaction, "There are twenty-one hunks in all. It ought to take him a good long time to tear them all to pieces, and maybe if we work fast ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... abundantly, on account of the settled weather. The cochineal breeds better in the house, where there is more light and a higher temperature. The result is that 8 to 10 lbs. become 100. It is cheaper too: as a lesser proportion of rag is wanted for the field, and it is kept on only till the insect adheres. Thus a small quantity goes a long way. At this season there is no need of the cuarto, and bags of pierced paper or of rengue (loose gauze), measuring 10 inches long by ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... investigation," went on the dame de compagnie, "that they injured him internally. When they had done with him he was doomed. He could do nothing for himself. I beheld him lying on a wooden bedstead without any bedding, with his head on a bundle of dirty rags, lent to him out of charity by an old rag-picker, who happened to live in the basement of the house. There he was, uncovered, burning with fever, and there was not even a jug in the room for the water to quench his thirst with. There was nothing whatever—just that bedstead and the ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... of Shalott to see how many different ways of doing a disagreeable thing seemed to be practicable to that scuttle. Besides the bed on which the Lady of Shalott lay, there was a stove in the palace, two chairs, a very ragged rag-mat, a shelf with two notched cups and plates upon it, one pewter teaspoon, and a looking-glass. On washing-days Sary Jane climbed upon the chair and hung her clothes out through the scuttle on the ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... into the Dale, and had rested them, and drunk a cup of wine, and when they had seen the chaplets and wreaths of the spring-flowers wherewith they were bedecked, and had smelt the sweet savour of them, fell to walking proudly, heeding not their nakedness; for no rag had they upon them save breech-clouts of deer-skin: they had changed weapons with the Burgdale carles; and one had gotten a great axe, which he bore over his shoulder, and the shaft thereof was all done about with ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... Gazette, Mr. Spring, as gossiping a rag as ever was printed. I expect there will be a fine column in it if ever it gets its prying nose into this day's doings. However, we are mum and her ladyship is mum, and, my word! his lordship is mum, though ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tell thee of, such a one as eye hath not before seen." He stopped to laugh heartily. "A garment it also was of many colors," and again he laughed. "In that which is filthy and cast away do rag-pickers stir and strive. And when they have great stores of that which is vile and useless, do they sew it together into a garment and sell it for a pittance to a slave to cover his naked body. Such a rag-picker's garment saw I. Such a ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... them who from love to Him go out into rightous warfare. But I don't believe they come through a seansy. I don't, honestly. I don't believe Daniel would have felt strengthened a mite, by seein' a materialized rag-baby hung out by a wire in front of a hemlock box, and then ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... sometimes three or four together, joining hands, dance slowly round and round, singing slowly rude rhymes describing marriage—and not over decent some of these rhymes are. She has no toys—not one in twenty such girls ever have a doll; or, if they do, it is but some stick dressed in a rag. Poor things! they need no artificial dolls; so soon as ever they can lift it, they are trusted with the real baby. Her parents probably do not mean to be unkind, and use makes this treatment bearable, but to an outsider it seems unnecessarily rough, and even brutal. ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... phrases—odd, that is to say, to an English ear—as that the chief merit of a cook is 'the ability to make good bread.' Alas! if that be so, how many inhabitants of London, England, possess a good cook? But Mrs. Harland is free from even a rag of national prejudice. She sternly, and with almost frightful boldness, denies the sacred PIE so much as a place in her book, and she ventures on the following utterance, which we purposely place in italics, and for which ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... below was Addison, whose business was to tell me that a History of the Revolution was intended, and to propose that I should undertake it. I said, 'What shall I do with the character of lord Sunderland?' and Addison immediately returned, 'When, Rag, were you drunk ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... here he is, yelpin' in his damned rag every day, 'Fee-fo-fum, I smell the blood of a young man!' Why don't they shove him at the Front ... ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... same little room in which Kitty had spent her childhood, from which Johnny first, and then long afterwards the husband and father, had been carried out to return no more. And yet it was not the same,—there was a neat rag carpet on the floor, a Christmas gift from Mrs. Minturn; the round table in the corner was covered with a bright red cloth, and strewn with a few books and papers; the full white curtain was looped away from the window, and the light of a clear sunset glimmered in the ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... garrulous one, "He has no bone in his tongue" or "His tongue is always wet;" of a spendthrift, "Water does not stand on a hillside;" and of a noble family in reduced circumstances, "It is a decayed rag, but it is silk." All these metaphors are clear, vivid and forcible, and the list of such proverbs might be almost indefinitely extended. With all their vividness of imagery, however, Caucasian sayings are sometimes as mysterious and unintelligible as the darkest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... the toothsomeness of beefsteak, falls to again, while the others dance a sort of fandango, and turn up the rag carpet, and rattle the dishes on the dresser, and lift Dolly high in the air to the improvised tune of "Tom's coming home! Tom's coming ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... hay, and over that the popple poles again well tied with hand twisted ropes of wild hay, to those below. It was a good roof, only it leaked like a sieve. The floor was just the ground. Over it we put a layer of the wild hay and then staked a rag carpet over it. A puncheon shelf to put my trunk under, and the furniture placed, made a home that I was more than satisfied with. It took my husband over two weeks with a pair of trotting oxen to go for the furniture to ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... foul with sweat, the drainer of the camels dug, Gorged with his leek-green lizards meat, clad in his filthy rag ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... open closet; and a squat-looking stove, which made the apartment agreeably warm, was smartly polished, and was evaporating cheerful music out of a bright teakettle. Through a door partly ajar could be seen another room, covered with a rag carpet, and the companion of the first in ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... "Beastly rag!" said Frank, fervently. "It's rather a queer thing, isn't it, that such a clever chap as that should have made such a mess of his chances. It almost makes one ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fixedly over his rifle sights at the red-blanketed figure squatted in the sand and kept his finger crooked upon the trigger. Beside him Applehead fidgeted and grumbled and called Luck names for being so dang slow, and wondered if those two out there meant to sit and chew the rag ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... you have not sat through the long black night in, a cold cell with the rats, a wet rag thrown over your lacerated back, the chains eating into your flesh like the nibbling of tiny teeth, thinking of the good people who rule England, sitting at their blazing fires or ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... hanging back in Turnus is, and no AEnean thrall Hath aught to do to break his word or plighted troth recall: I will go meet him: Father, bring the Gods, the peace-troth plight; Then either I this Dardan thing will send adown to night,— This rag of Asia,—Latin men a-looking on the play, And all alone the people's guilt my sword shall wipe away; Or let him take us beaten folk, and ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... ensconced herself in a chair near grandma's large one, with her wash-rag. Grandma took up her knitting, also, and ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... days! An' 'ow they've flown— Flown like the smoke of some inchanted fag; Since dear Doreen, the sweetest tart I've known, Passed me the jolt that made me sky the rag. An' ev'ry golding day floats o'er a chap Like a glad dream of some ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis
... rag of the Muse! In the bag of the clothesman go lie; A farthing thou'lt fetch from the Jews, Which the hard-hearted ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... destroyed for the sake of their intrinsic value in gold or jewels. In the early days of my life I was allowed to pick out the corals and seed-pearls from an old Stuart needle picture "for a doll's necklace!" the picture itself probably going into the "rag-bag" ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... paper pinned on the back. As soon as it came within reach, I thrust my hands through the bars, and in an instant tore the paper off. Unfolding it, I found in the inside three steel-spring saws, and read these words: "As soon as you have sawed away the bars, tie a white rag on the grating. On the first evening after this, when the wind is favorable, a kite will be flown to the window. Pull in the string very carefully, and you will come to a larger cord. Keep pulling until a rope-ladder reaches you. Fasten this securely to the window, ...
— John Whopper - The Newsboy • Thomas March Clark
... dark corners! You know I can't say the name that he said. But he said it, and then the enchantment was all gone, and he saw that the horse he'd been riding was nothing but the beam of a plough and that the horse that each of the others had was only an old broom, or maybe a rag weed, or the like ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... woman," said Wade, "our orders are precise! Not so much as a kerchief is to be taken from these chambers till search hath been made. We know what practices may lurk in the smallest rag." ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be indiscretion so to publish one's errors, yet there is no great danger that it pass into example and custom; for Ariston said, that the winds men most fear are those that lay them open. We must tuck up this ridiculous rag that hides our manners: they send their consciences to the stews, and keep a starched countenance: even traitors and assassins espouse the laws of ceremony, and there fix their duty. So that neither can injustice complain of incivility, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the commissioner, in a softer tone. "There's no need of that. She hasn't asked for anything of that sort yet. Besides, her case is in my hands. I see now what a little, rag-tag, bob-tail, gotch-eared department I've been put in charge of. It seems to be about as important as an almanac or a hotel register. But while I'm running it, it won't turn away any daughters ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... scudding before the wind, with only the smallest rag of canvas hoisted, yet she rose on the great waves and plunged madly into the hollows between with a violence that almost tore the masts out of her. The chief-mate stood by the wheel assisting the steersman; ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... Government gained the allowance of a daily drive, but even for this slight exertion the sick man was soon too feeble. I wanted to take him to the bracing heights of Johannesburg, but lawyers and physicians advised me not to make this request. Johannesburg was still a red rag to the Government, and I would be sure to meet with a rebuff. Notwithstanding, I went one night at eleven o'clock, escorted by Lieutenant de Korte, carrying a glimmering lantern, to interview Dr. Schaagen van Leuwen, and laid ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... into a rag-bag and hide there; or give yourself to some little girl to play with. Those who travel are likely to meet trouble; that's ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Charles Benton he had first met long ago in the Hotel de Russie in Rome while he was wintering there. Benton was merry, and, apparently, a gentleman. He talked of his days at Harrow, and afterwards at Cambridge, of being sent down because of a big "rag" in the Gladstonian days, and of his life since as a fairly well-off bachelor ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... latter grows in our respect, for we find that its seeming humble functions are intimately related to our highest powers. Sir William's couplet gives a hint of the dominance of the classical method of his day. It overemphasized the importance of reason and too often converted the youthful mind into a rag bag of useless information. The educators of that time and since have thought more highly of human reason than experience justifies. With their medieval bias for a world of will and reason, they drove the young with the whip and spur of ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... again. Nor did either of them speak again till the music ceased. A vaudeville turn followed. A disgustingly clad, bewigged soubrette murdered a rag time ditty in a rasping soprano, displaying enough gold in her teeth to "salt" a barren claim. No one gave her heed. The lilt of the orchestra elicited a fragmentary chorus from the audience. For the rest the people pursued the prescribed purpose of these ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... and all around the old man telling their story, and what they had lost, and how they was all as good as ruined; till at last Old Engleton says, says he, "How about Oglethorpe?" says he. "Ay," says the others, "how about the guard?" Well, with that we bousted him down, as white as a rag and all blooded like a sop. I thought he was dead. Well, he ain't dead; but ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... get over the shock," she said to herself, looking off to the railroad track, shining in the morning sunlight. "To look up from my sewing and see—la! and 'twas the first time I ever sat down to that rag-rug since I had to drop it and run over and take care of Simon, when they brought me word he was 'most cut to pieces in the mowing machine. My senses! I'm afraid ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... happily. "Oh, Mumsy, what a spendthrift you are with your breath! I'm going to dance my dress to a rag. Did you ever think that Cinderella may have just danced her dress to rags by twelve o'clock and after all the fairy godmother had nothing to do with it? Cinderella danced every dance with the prince and perhaps he was an awkward prince and tangled his feet in her ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... the average mariner to slashed leather breeches of antique cut and red cloth skirts reaching from the girdle to the knees. Some of the group wore three-cornered hats, others seamen's caps of rough wool, and here and there a face grimaced from beneath a twisted rag rakishly askew. Everywhere about them the fire gleamed on small-arms of one kind or another. Nearly every man carried a wicked-looking hanger at his side and most had one or two pistols tucked into waistband ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... the last trace of veneer was gone, the last rag of pseudo-civilisation was rent off these young women; in physical conflict, vilifying each other like the female spawn of Whitechapel, they revealed themselves as born—raw material which the mill of education is supposed to convert into middle-class ladyhood. As a result of being ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... two day-boys are coming. Clephane is, for one. And Beverley. We shall have rather a rag. I'm going to ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... design. This will become endeared by association with home to the children, and the mother should be slow to replace it. The window draperies may be home-made, such as of rough-finished silk or embroidered canvas, and the floor covered with a thick rag-carpet, preferably of a nondescript or "hit-and-miss" design. If the housekeeper thinks that this is "hominess" carried to excess, she may cover the floor with an ingrain carpet, or better, plain filling of a medium shade, on which a few rag ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... bitterly disappointed fellow Elmer had come across in a long time. He kept muttering to himself as he examined the fragment of rope. Lil Artha said he was "chewing the rag," whatever that might mean; but, at any rate, Johnny did not seem to be in a very happy frame of mind, so the operation could hardly have been ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... pipe was foul; he threw it down with an exclamation of disgust. Its foulness was symbolic; everything was out of kilter. He looked at the picture he had been painting for a week—rotten! It was a still life; a broken jar and three books on a rag of Persian embroidery. Picking up his pen-knife he deliberately cut the canvas out of the stretcher, and setting a match to a corner of it, tossed it in the empty stove. He paced up and down the room wondering what the devil was the matter with him; he couldn't work; he couldn't read; his friends ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... few Talh trees. The greater part of the Wadys from hence to Egypt are of this description. The coloquintida grows in great abundance in all of them, it is used by the Arabs to make tinder, by the following process: after roasting the root in the ashes, they wrap it in a wetted rag of cotton cloth, they then beat it between two stones, by which means the juice of the fruit is expressed and absorbed by the rag, which is dyed by it of a dirty blue; the rag is then dried in the sun, and ignites with the ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... gets put to it now and then. Why, it was only last year, we were down on the south-west fishing-ground: about the 10th of October, it came on to blow, sir, from the southward, and sent in a sea upon us, which nearly drowned us: we tried to keep an offing, but it was no use; we couldn't show a rag; every thing was blown away, and it was perishing cold; but our captain was a smart man, and he said,—'Well, boys, we must run for Hangman's Cove,[3] altho' it's late in the day; if we don't, I won't answer where we'll ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... showed it to the machine gunners in the Snout. Turning back, he ran into Hicks, stripped to his shirt and trousers, as wet as if he had come out of the river, and splashed with blood. His hand was wrapped up in a rag. He put his mouth to Claude's ear and shouted: "We found them. They were lost. They're coming. ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... nothing against Durban, breakfast food and canned meats. We know Victoria Falls, because they have eclipsed our own Niagara Falls, and Zanzibar, farther up the Coast, is familiar through comic operas and rag-time. Of itself, the Cape to Cairo Railroad would make the East Coast known to us. But the West Coast still means that distant shore from whence the "first families" of Boston, Bristol and New Orleans exported slaves. Now, for our soap and our salad, ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... And, rouzing up himselfe, for his rough hide 1335 He gan to reach; but no where it espide. Therewith he gan full terribly to rore, And chafte at that indignitie right sore. But when his crowne and scepter both he wanted, Lord! how he fum'd, and sweld, and rag'd, and panted, And threatned death and thousand deadly dolours To them that had purloyn'd his princely honours. With that in hast, disroabed as he was, He toward his owne pallace forth did pas; And all the way he roared as he went, 1345 That all the forrest with astonishment ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... In the morning a gale broke and soon came a blinding fall of snow. It was impossible to see many yards through the rushing drift of murky yellow, but Jack took in all four reefs, and ran on with a rag of sail ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... the ranch the first contingent of gathered cattle were under herd. They were a rag-tag lot, many of them big steers, while much of the younger stuff was clear of earmark or brand until after their arrival at the home corrals. The ranch help herded them by day and penned them at night, but on the arrival of the independent ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... left. It had been wrought, as was easy to perceive, with wonderful skill of needlework; and the stitch (as I am assured by ladies conversant with such mysteries) gives evidence of a now forgotten art, not to be recovered even by the process of picking out the threads. This rag of scarlet cloth,—for time and wear and a sacrilegious moth had reduced it to little other than a rag,—on careful examination, assumed the shape of a letter. It was the capital letter A. By an accurate measurement, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... water very gently over it with a sponge or cloth will have a blessed effect. It may be continued for an hour at a time for several times. If this ceases to be comforting, it should be discontinued and the limb dressed with warm olive oil, a soft cotton rag being put next the skin, and soft flannel above that. Of course ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... with gusts of laughter and little shrieks and shouts of glee. They had had "Horned Lady," and Willy's head was a forest of paper horns, skilfully twisted. Hugh had just gone triumphantly through the whole list, "a sneezing elephant, a punch in the head, a rag, a tatter, a good report, a bad report, a cracked saucepan, a fuzzy tree-toad, a rat-catcher, a ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... better, sir, to send the men away," said he to the colonel, for he was a much-privileged subaltern. He put his arms round the rag-bound horror as he spoke, and dropped him into a chair. It may not have been explained that the littleness of Mildred lay in his being six feet four, and big in proportion. The corporal, seeing that an officer was disposed to look after the capture, and that the colonel's ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... breakfast a wonder; their dinner a miracle; their bed an interposition of Providence. If you and I, my dear sir, want a shilling tomorrow, who will give it us? Will OUR butchers give us mutton-chops? will OUR laundresses clothe us in clean linen?—not a bone or a rag. Standing as we do (may it be ever so) somewhat removed from want,[*] is there one of us who does not shudder at the thought of descending into the lists to combat with it, and expect anything but to be utterly crushed ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his hand in his pocket, as well as he was able, and drew out a flint and steel. He struck a spark out of it, and lit a burnt rag he had in his pocket. He blew it until it made a flame, and he looked round him. The church was very ancient, and part of the wall was broken down. The windows were blown in or cracked, and the timber of the seats were rotten. ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... wrench firmly grasped in his right hand, knew that at exactly ten minutes to four Mr. Uhl would issue that order—so he was on the spot to receive the fireman as the latter came leisurely up the greasy steel stairway. As the fellow emerged on deck he paused to wipe his heated brow with a sweat rag and draw in a welcome breath of cool fresh air. He did not succeed in getting his lungs quite full, however, for Michael J. Murphy, lurking beside the door, thrust the barrel of his gun in the fireman's ribs, effectually curtailing the process of respiration ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... there through the rifts the glimmer of the stars might be seen, and once the pale moon gleamed through the storm wreath. The dawn broke cheerless and dreary, disclosing the great turmoil of endless slate-coloured waves and the solitary little barque, with her rag of canvas, like a broken-winged seabird, staggering to ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Anthony and Cleopatra, now on exhibition in this city. I will just say one word about art. I think this is one of the most beautiful words in our language, and do you know, it never seemed to me necessary for art to go into partnership with a rag? I like the paintings of Angelo, of Raphael—I like those splendid souls that are put upon canvas—all there is of human beauty. There are brave souls in every land who worship nature grand and nude, and who, with swift, indignant hand, tear off ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... heath, which has the useful property of burning while fresh and green. It was very surprising to see the Gauchos, in the midst of rain and everything soaking wet, with nothing more than a tinder-box and a piece of rag, immediately make a fire. They sought beneath the tufts of grass and bushel for a few dry twigs, and these they rubbed into fibres; then surrounding them with coarser twigs, something like a bird's nest, they put the rag with its spark of fire in the middle and covered it up. The nest ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... into me and your father by side and by seam, about his greatness, and what happened when he was a young fellow at college, and I don't know what-all; the tongue o' en flopping round his mouth like a mop-rag round a dairy. That 'a ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... were dead the prince said: "Minister, return to the country of Damas, with a rag for your girdle, and during your last days change your conduct. If you do not know it, I am the princess Djouher-Manikam, daughter of the Sultan of Bagdad, wife of Chah Djouhou, my lord, and the sister of Minbah-Chahaz. God has stricken your eyes with blindness on account of your crimes toward ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... calculations of profits, there were records of the gist of his replies, there were things Hutchinson himself could not possibly have fished out of the jumbled rag-bag of his ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and gave them new tabbinet dresses once in three years. It supplied their wants the better that they had inherited house plenishing from their parents, "Which they thanked their stars was not made of tag-rag, and would last their time," and that they were quite content with an old home and old neighbours, and never desired to change the grand air that blew about their native hills for worse, in order to be poisoned with bad butter, ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... a dash of effeminacy about it, however, hardly in keeping with the robber's desperate trade. It must not, however, be supposed that it is every robber who can indulge in all this luxury; there are various grades of thieves, some poor enough, with scarcely a rag to cover them. Perhaps in the crowded prison of Madrid, there were not more than twenty who exhibited the dress which I have attempted to describe above; these were jente de reputacion, tip-top thieves, mostly young fellows, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... converted into differently-tinted reds, by a few hours' immersion in the Kiefel. He also kneaded bread in the hand, until it became as plastic as clay. This he modelled into snuffboxes (with strips of rag for hinges, and a piece of whalebone for a spring), draughts, chess-men, pipe-bowls, and other articles. When dry, they became hard and serviceable; and he sold them among the prisoners and the prison officials. He obtained ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... plantation lullaby. There was a thumping of a rockerless chair on the floor. Presently the mother of the child came out. She blinked from the staring blue eyes which she timidly raised to Mostyn's face. Her dress was a poor drab rag of a thing which hung limply over her thin form. Her hair was tawny and drawn into a tight, unbecoming knot at the back of her head. No collar of any sort hid ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... at night to see the curiosities of Paris. One, two, three, four; the queen of spades! It is a woman who manufactures ermine fur out of cat-skin. One, two, three, four; the knave of spades! It is a rag-picker. One, two, three, four; the king of spades! It is a restaurant-keeper. The falling together of these three persons alarms me. One, two, three, four,—clubs! One, two, three, four,—clubs ...
— The Story of a Cat • mile Gigault de La Bdollire |
