"Rat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prowess in the narrative. Our judgment is always too much at the mercy of our likes and dislikes. He did indeed mention himself, but only to say that once in the street of a village he saw the horse at some distance with a child in his teeth shaking him like a terrier with a rat. He ran, he said, but was too far off. Ere he was half-way, the horse's groom, who was the only man with any power over the brute, had come up and secured him—though too late to save ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... by Colonel Norwood in his Voyage to Virginia: "Women and children made dismal cries and grievous complaints. The infinite number of rats that all the voyage had been our plague, we now were glad to make our prey to feed on; and as they were insnared and taken a well grown rat was sold for sixteen shillings as a market rate. Nay, before the voyage did end (as I was credibly informed) a woman great with child offered twenty shillings for a rat, which the proprietor ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... animal its foe: Hounds hunt the hare, the wily fox Devours your geese, the wolf your flocks Thus Envy pleads a natural claim To persecute the Muse's fame; On poets in all times abusive, From Homer down to Pope inclusive. Yet what avails it to complain? You try to take revenge in vain. A rat your utmost rage defies, That safe behind the wainscot lies. Say, did you ever know by sight In cheese an individual mite! Show me the same numeric flea, That bit your neck but yesterday: You then may boldly go in quest ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Hugh, I believe I could willingly assist in tarring and feathering a scamp like Brother Lu, who can settle down on his poor relative, and expect to be waited on and fed and treated like an invalid the rest of his life, while all the time he's as strong as anything, and as sleek as a well-fed rat!" Hugh laughed outright at ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... half-conscious glance in the cab window. One could literally feel his firm American hand at the throttle as the heavy train gathered steady headway and raced away to the eastward. Across the car sat two handsome, solidly-knit young bull-fighters, their little rat-tail coletas peering from behind their square-cut hats. We sped steadily across the sun-flooded, dry, brown plateau, slightly rolling, its fields alternating between the dead tint of dry corn and newly plowed patches. Here for the first time were pulque producing fields of maguey, ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... it felt the hand of the master, the head of the bolt began to turn, until at length the workman was satisfied. Then he turned also the corresponding nut on the opposite face of the jaw, swung the great steel jaw back to the place where he fancied it, and made all fast again. "She's but a rat-trap," said he to himself, "but it's only fair to give the ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... you must be stifling under this! Not to say that I might have amused myself by sticking a dagger through the curtain. Remember Hamlet's madness and Polonius' death: 'How now! A rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!' Come along, Mr. Polonius, come out ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... action. There was one little delegate, a Frenchman, who tried to get me to vote against the 'coward Marx'—me that had known Karl since we were little shavers together, and that knew him to be fearless and lion-hearted. I just picked the creature up and shook him like a terrier shakes a rat and he squealed bitterly. I don't think he called Karl a coward again ...
— The Marx He Knew • John Spargo
... the pine-dark highlands, Around the vine-hung islands, She ploughed her crooked furrow And her rippling and her lurches Scared the river eels and perches, And the musk-rat in his burrow. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... which the occupants of the raft most desired to prevent; and to that end both had got upon their knees, and were scrambling over the sail-cloth with as much eager earnestness as a couple of terriers engaged in a scuffle with a harvest rat. ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... now Dan's tacit aloofness piqued her. She admitted she did not understand him at all. Here was a man, a tugboat captain, of course a product of the water front; primarily, no doubt, a dock-rat, and yet a man who had not tangled himself in the use of his forks, who spoke in even, well-modulated tones, and looked like a gentleman. Miss Howland was not snobbish in these thoughts. She had never been a snob; she was simply considering facts. And she did not want ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... drawn, by way of screen to a sombre band of winter cloaks, pendent each from its pin, like a malefactor from his gibbet. From amongst these cloaks, and behind that curtain, the Nun was said to issue. I did not believe this, nor was I troubled by apprehension thereof; but I saw a very dark and large rat, with a long tail, come gliding out from that squalid alcove; and, moreover, my eye fell on many a black-beetle, dotting the floor. These objects discomposed me more, perhaps, than it would be wise to say, as also did the dust, lumber, and stifling ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... one of the variations that have rendered possible the changes produced by man, have been determined at the right time and place by the Creator. Every race produced by the florist or breeder, the dog or the pigeon fancier, the rat-catcher, the sporting man, or the slave-hunter, must have been provided for by varieties occurring when wanted; and as these variations were never withheld, it would prove that the sanction of an all-wise and all powerful ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... related at length stories of wrecks and sufferings at sea; which, though they had long been in print, were most of them new to these poor fellows. He told them, among the rest, what the men of the Bona Dea, waterlogged at sea, had suffered—twelve days without any food but a rat and a kitten—yet had all survived. He gave them some details of the Wager, the Grosvenor, the Corbin, the Medusa; but, above all, a most minute account of the Bounty, and Bligh's wonderful voyage in an open ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... certain, but our young friend's strange conduct seems to suggest that he has smelt a rat, possibly even that Jackson, the old beast, has shown him a rat—of ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... false front set on awry, and shuffles into the room in her slipshod fashion. She is an oldish woman, with a bloated countenance, and a nose like a parrot's beak set in the middle of it; her fat little hands (she is as sleek as a church rat) and her shapeless, slouching figure are in keeping with the room that reeks of misfortune, where hope is reduced to speculate for the meanest stakes. Mme. Vauquer alone can breathe that tainted air without being disheartened by ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... October all phases of civilisation were passed with little regret, and at the Rat Creek, near the southern shore of Lake Manitoba, I bade good-bye to society, pushed on to the Hudson Bay Company's post of Beaver Creek, from which point, with one man, three horses, three dogs, and all the requisites of food, arms and raiment, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... that won't do; leave an old sailor to find out a rat. I tell you that 'tis the common report of the day. Besides, is not the Leaftenant gone this morning with that scapegrace, Tom W——, to hear some lying land-shark preach ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... a hiding-place for anything bigger than a rat or a bird," said his wife, glancing around upon the bare walls, ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... they appear to suffer from. But a friendly interest in a Python had lived and recrudesced as the Kinkajou endeavoured to get at some soft biscuit, in spite of a cruel wire screen no one bigger than a rat could get his ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... hartshorn to him;" but he appeared at that moment rather to want a little. And it is probably true, what Cibber facetiously says of Pope, in his second letter:—"Everybody tells me that I have made you as uneasy as a rat in a hot ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... say, you glassy-eyed horror you, that our mutual friend Juggut Khan has been seen emerging like a rat from a hole in the wall. I'll give him and his party one more minute to get clear. Then there's going to be a holocaust, ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... again. 'I'm quite ashamed—'tis mighty rude To eat so much—but all's so good. I have a thousand thanks to give— My lord alone knows how to live.' No sooner said, but from the hall 210 Rush chaplain, butler, dogs, and all: 'A rat! a rat! clap to the door'— The cat comes bouncing on the floor. O for the heart of Homer's mice, Or gods to save them in a trice! (It was by Providence they think, For your damn'd stucco has no chink.) 'An't please your honour, ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... a cornered rat, and crazy from the drug he had filled himself with, conceived the idea of poisoning Mr. Carwell. That would prevent arrest and ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... falling off; 'no, you will not; I will throw you into the river. I will see you sink to your death. You will cry for help. No one will hear you but God and myself. Both of us are merciless. You will die like a rat in a hole, and that face you are so proud of will be buried in the mud of the river. You devil! your time has come ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... rat! If you open your face to me again, I'll brain you, and that goes for all of this death-watch." He took in the other five men with his reddened eyes. "When you fellows see me coming, ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... to burn poor children in their beds? So he turned round, and struck his sword upon the floor, and asked me whether I was one of them—'Who are you then?' and I—all my courage went away, and I answered, I was a poor rat-catcher. 'A rat-catcher, are you? Well then, Mr Rat-catcher, when you are killing rats, if you find a nest of young ones, don't you kill them too? Or do you leave them to grow, and become mischievous, eh?'—'I kill the young ones, of course,' replied I. 'Well, so do we Malignants ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... freed Mr. Savage from two more snakes which seemed to have taken possession of various parts of his garments. Also, amidst shouts of laughter, from a large dead rat which he appeared to draw from ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... the son of a prebend[ary] in Norwich, and a 'prentice boy in the city in the rebellious times. When the committee house was blown up, he was very active in that rising, and after the soldiers came and dispersed the rout, he, as a rat among joint stools, shifted to and fro among the shambles, and had forty pistols shot at him by the troopers that rode after him to kill him [24th April, 1648]. In that distress he had the presence of mind to catch up a little child that, during the rout, was ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... "Know him! The little rat has been following me about Manila all day! I thought I was to be rid of him until you took him as ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... seemed peopled by tiny folk, living out their timid, inscrutable lives around him. A water-rat, passing bright-eyed upon his lawful occasion, paused on the border of the stream to consider the stranger, and was lost to view. A stagnant pool among some reeds caught the reflection of the sunset and changed on the ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... cordial for philosophical enjoyment. A long tongue of flame had crept under the cage, completely singing every hair from the cat's body. The felicitous adder was slowly burning in two and busily engaged in impregnating his organic system with his own venom. The joyful rat had lost his tail by a falling bar of iron; and the beatific rabbit, perforated by a red-hot nail, looked as if nothing would be more grateful than a cool corner in some Esquimaux farm-yard. The members of the delectated convocation were all ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... when we heard the Lewises giving the recall signal. A good gunner gets so he can play a tune on a Lewis, and the device is frequently used for signals. This time he thumped out the old one—"All policemen have big feet." Rat-a-tat-tat—tat, tat. ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... best exterminated by the use of a trap or some preparation such as "Rough on Rats". Traps should be set nightly and should be scalded and aired after a mouse has been caught. Rat holes may be stopped by sprinkling with chloride of lime and then filling with mortar or plaster ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... as those who had besieged Louisbourg thirteen years before. The best had volunteered then. The worst had been enlisted now. Of course, there were a few good men with some turn for soldiering. But most were of the wastrel and wharf-rat kind. Wolfe expressed his opinion of them in very vigorous terms: 'About 500 Rangers are come, which, to appearance, are little better than la canaille. These Americans are in general the dirtiest, most contemptible, cowardly dogs that you can conceive. There is no depending upon 'em in ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... like an answer to his words, came through the woods the sound of a single rifle-shot, followed closely by the increasing rat-tat-tat of the mingled guns. Nearer to the house the sounds gradually came. Soon we heard the beating of the horses' hoofs and the brutish cries of the soldiers. In a moment three of them burst into the house, from off the road where they were being raked now by ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... get out. Not because I'm afraid to stay, but because there's no use. She's got no eyes for me. I'm a plain impossibility so far as she's concerned. It's Vos Engo—damn little rat! Old Dangloss came within an ace of speaking of her as 'her Highness.' That's enough for me. That means she's a princess. It's all very nice in novels, but in real life men don't go about picking up any princess they happen to like. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... peculiar methods ceased to be irritating, and became funny. Mr Kay was always ferreting out the weirdest misdoings on the part of the members of his house, and rushing to Kennedy's study to tell him about them at full length, like a rather indignant dog bringing a rat he has hunted down into a drawing-room, to display it to the company. On one occasion, when Fenn and Jimmy Silver were in Kennedy's study, Mr Kay dashed in to complain bitterly that he had discovered that the junior dayroom kept mice in their lockers. ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... leaps. A Rat, who saw her lab'ring steps, Cried out, "Where in this hurry, pray? You ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... gentleman holds that entitles me or induces me to say so much about him. He is a fly in amber: nobody cares about the fly; the only question is, How the devil did it get there? Nor do I attack him from the love of glory, but from the love of utility, as a burgomaster hunts a rat in a Dutch dyke, for fear it should flood ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... many a secret path, veined with clumsy roots, shadowed with the thick bush of many a clustering parasite, and echoing sometimes beneath from the hollowed shelter of coot or water-rat. Lilies floated in circles about the ponds, like the crowns of sunken queens, and sometimes a bird broke the silence with ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... of Clayhanger's predecessor, and at least eighty years old. It was one of those machines whose worn physiognomies, full of character, show at once that they have a history. In construction it carried solidity to an absurd degree. Its pillars were like the piles of a pier. Once, in a historic rat-catching, a rat had got up one of them, and a piece of smouldering brown paper had done what a terrier could not do. The machine at one period of its career had been enlarged, and the neat seaming of the metal was an ecstasy to the eye of a good workman. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... "Aha! I smell a rat," Josh muttered, "and its name is Jules, too! I can see his fine hand back of all this ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... were so strong—"can't you see he's got me?" she said between her teeth, "and that, next thing, he'll get the La Chance gold? If you don't let me meet him to-night I'll be helpless. I——Oh, can't you see I'll be like a rat in a trap?—not able to do anything? I can make him go away, if I meet him! Otherwise"—the passion in her voice kept it down to a whisper—"it's not only that I'm afraid he can make things look as if I stole from Dudley as well as from Van ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... a spry an' likely crew: Sam Small never lacked the pick o' the swilin'-boys when it come t' fittin' out for the ice in the spring o' the year. He'd get his load o' fat with the cleverest skippers of un all; an' the wily skippers o' the fleet would tag the ol' rat through the ice from Battle Harbor t' the Grand Banks. 'Small Sam Small,' says they, 'will nose out them swiles.' An' Small Sam Small done it every spring o' the year. No clothes off for Small Sam Small! 'Twas tramp the deck, night an' day. 'Twas 'How's the weather?' ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... a go!" said Wildney, recovering immediately. "It'll never do to awake old Rose. He'd smell a rat in no time." ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... been accustomed to run, and to a fixed loathing to practice. As the latter necessary, if uninteresting, pursuit was left entirely to her own discretion—for no one ever dreamed of ordering Norah to the piano—it is small wonder if it suffered beside the superior attractions of riding Bobs, rat trapping, "shinning up" trees, fishing in the lagoon and generally disporting herself as a maiden may whom conventional restrictions ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... dear to this "counsellor of kings"—on books, or architecture, or the science of fortifications, or on the theology of Lanfranc; from the helmeted locks of Rollon to the veiled tresses of the lovely Tiphaine Raguenel, Duguesclin's wife; from the ghastly rat-eaten body of the Dutch journalist, who offended that tyrant King, Louis XIV., to the Revolutionary heroes, as pitilessly doomed to an odious death under the gentle Louis Philippe—there is no shape or figure in French history which cannot be summoned at will to ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... came out of the water, he happened to come out beside the kid, who stood shaking himself. He stopped in a hurry when he saw the half drowned little monkey coming out of the pond looking more like a drowned rat than a monkey. He did not wait to give himself another shake, but dove into the water and swam for the place where he had first entered the pond, and there he found his Twin awaiting him, laughing as if his ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery
... the fire, was lying upon the ground, his heart's blood oozing upon the snow. Patrick Carr and Samuel Caldwell, who also had come to put out a fire, were dying, and six others were wounded. The soldiers were reloading their guns, preparing for another volley. Robert heard the rat-a-tat of a drum, and saw the Twenty-Ninth Regiment march into the street from Pudding Lane, the front rank kneeling, the rear rank standing, with guns loaded, bayonets fixed, and ready ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... listen!" I listened and sure enough, right out of that grain bin overhead came a moaning and whimpering, and then a scratching against the door. My hair stood on end. Blended with the drip, drip of the rain, and the occasional scurrying of a rat overhead, that noise had a super-natural sound. I was really frightened; perhaps my nerves were a trifle unstrung from our recent tour ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... cleared away, Mrs. Jones assisting my wife, and showing that she would be hurt if not permitted to do so. Then we all gathered around the glowing hearth, Junior's rat-a- tat-snap! proving that our final course of nuts and cider would be provided in the ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... deplore the bad manners of the rats at Harwan, but their conduct was exemplary compared with that of the rats of Rainawari! I had been writing my journal, according to my custom, before going to sleep, and hardly had "lights out" been sounded than a rat went off with my candle, literally from below my very nose. Then, from the inadequately partitioned chamber where the invalid vainly sought repose, came sounds of strife—boots and curses flying—followed by an extraordinary scraping and ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... uniform and rags of flesh: falling on faces of the unburied dead that it was helping to dissolve into, their primal pulp of clay. War! always war! and no theatre of scarlet and gold and cavalry charges, but a rat's war of mud and cold and fleas and unutterable, nerve-dissolving fatigue. Not far off occasionally the rustle of clothes or the tinkle of an entrenching tool, as a sleeper turned over or the group ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... left Cloudsdale, for he never passed the house on any of his numerous expeditions without running in for ten minutes' chat, so that the girls were getting accustomed to see his head appear at the window as they sat at work, or to hear the loud rat-tat on the door which heralded his coming. They soon had practical demonstration of his "managing powers," for more than once, after definitely making up their minds that nothing would induce them to stir from the house, they found themselves ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... which rusty chains were attached—all too significant of the purpose to which the room was dedicated. In the dirt floor near the wall were two or three holes resembling the mouths of burrows—doubtless the habitat of the giant Martian rat. He had observed this much when suddenly the dim light was extinguished, leaving him in darkness utter and complete. Turan, groping about, sought the table and the bench. Placing the latter against the wall he drew the table in front of him and sat down upon the bench, his long-sword gripped ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hour—to spare: for it was now appallingly near August; and the first of September would delay for no man. When, with the advice of Sir Archibald and the help of every man-jack in the warehouses (even of the rat-eyed little Tommy Bull), the credit of Topsail, Armstrong, Grimm & Company had been exhausted to the last penny, Archie sighed in a thoroughly self-satisfied way, pulled out his new check-book and plunged ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... who'll have L1000 a day (including Sundays) when he comes into the title—and that can't be very far off, for the wicked old Duke of Deptford has got creeping paralysis, like his father and grandfather before him, and is now quite mad, and thinks himself a postman, and rat-tats all day long on the furniture. Lady Jane is furious with her for not accepting; and when Julia told her, she slapped her face before ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... satisfaction. The hound-shark, the basking-shark, and the port-beagle were not less loyal; and these, the most perfectly organized of my cartilaginous tribes, handed me over to the deep-swimming Norwegian 'sea-rat.' Thus I kept steadily southward, the water growing warmer hour by hour, now riding on the serrated snouts of saw-fishes, now moving in the midst of battalions of sword-fish, now acknowledged by the great pike, now vaulting ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... an enclosure behind them. A number of tame parrots and parakeets, of several different species, scrambled over the roofs and entered the houses. In the open pastures near by were the curious, extensive burrows of a gopher rat, which ate the roots of grass, not emerging to eat the grass but pulling it into the burrows by the roots. These burrows bore a close likeness to those of our pocket gophers. Miller found the animals difficult to trap. ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... Dugi Rat, Omisalj, Ploce, Pula, Rijeka, Sibenik, Split, Vukovar (inland waterway ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Mrs. Nevill Tyson's lap, and she looked at it with a gay indifference. "Isn't he a queer thing?" said she. "He isn't pretty a bit, so you needn't say so. Nevill calls him a boiled shrimp, and a little rat. He is rather like a little rat—a baby rat, when it's all pink and squirmy, you know, and its eyes just opened—they've got such pretty bright eyes. But I'm afraid baby's eyes are more like pig's eyes. Well, they're pretty too. As he's so ugly I expect he's going to be clever, ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... resistance. From this strong position we were able to sustain without loss a brisk fire of explosive missives which continued unchecked for some weeks. Speaking quite candidly, and dropping the language of the Press Bureau for the moment, there has never been a time when the postman's rat-tat has occasioned me ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... say, I made an observation at random. 'You show, by your own conduct,' said I, 'that there are other things worth following besides dog-fighting. You practise rat-catching and badger- baiting ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... ascending into its own karate peak; the second story, with its lattice-windows, projecting over the first; and the door, which is perhaps arched, provided on the outside with an iron hammer, wherewith the visitor's hand may give a thundering rat-a-tat. ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... five-and-twenty than I can predicate the priority of the first hen or the first egg. I, with never a murder or a seduction or a robbery on my conscience, could not sleep last night. I doubt whether I shall sleep to-night. I feel as if I shall remain awake through the centuries with a rat ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... would defend every popular error that she attacked, and with an acumen and ease that baffled her, even when she knew he was not in earnest, and made her feel like Thor, when the giant affected to take three blows with Miolner for three flaps of a rat's tail. ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fire. But the mail laughs at these terrors. To robbers, the answer is packed up and ready for delivery in the barrel of the guard's blunderbuss. Rats again! there are none about mail-coaches, any more than snakes in Van Troil's Iceland; except, indeed, now and then a parliamentary rat, who always hides his shame in the "coal cellar." And, as to fire, I never knew but one in a mail-coach, which was in the Exeter mail, and caused by an obstinate sailor bound to Devonport. Jack, making light of ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... spectator of the old man's countenance, when I most thoroughly recanted my errors, and acknowledged myself wrong. If ever the look of a man conveyed a warning, his did; but there was more in it than even that,—there was a tone of sad and pitiful compassion, such as an old gray-bearded rat might be supposed to put on at seeing a young and inexperienced one opening the hinge of an iron trap, to try its efficacy upon his neck. Many a little occasion had presented itself, during my intimacy with the family, of doing Matthew some small services, of making him some trifling ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... sayin', 'If a meenister canna mind [remember] his ain discoorse, nae mair can the congregation be expectit to mind it.'... Mr. E? He's my ain meenister." (She has a pillow in her mouth now, but though she is shaking it as a terrier would a rat, and drawing on the linen slip at the same time, she is still intelligible between the jerks.) "Susanna says his sermon is like claith made o' soond 'oo [wool] wi' a gude twined thread, an' wairpit an' weftit wi' doctrine. Susanna kens her Bible weel, ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... drawing-room tried to effect their escape by the door which opened on the stairs; but, alas! it was locked on the outside, and it was evident, from the soliloquy of Mr Bristles, that their retreat was cut off through the front room. A knock—the well-known rat, tat, tat, of the owner of the mansion—now completed their perplexity; and, in a moment more, they heard the steps of several ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... counted. Another had fled from flames and might be ignored for some moments, anyhow. But a blast-bolt struck the ship's metal hull only feet from Calhoun, and he whipped around to the other side and let loose a staccato rat-tat-tat of fire which emptied the ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... answered. "All has been done according to order. The back entrance which was the water gate before the old canal was filled up, is surrounded, and the adjoining houses with which some communication may have been established are watched. Not a rat could have crawled out since we came, nor could one have gone in. To-day is the feast of a saint, and these people have their excuse not to open the house to visitors, for so it is with other show places. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Pitakas themselves allow. In art and literature its influence has been considerable. The story of the Ramayana is illustrated on the cloister walls of the royal temple at Bangkok and Indian mythology has supplied a multitude of types to the painter and sculptor; such as Yomma: rat (Yama), Phaya Man (Mara), Phra: In (Indra). These are all deities known to the Pitakas but the sculptures or images[236] in Siamese temples also include Ganesa, Phra: Narai (Narayana or Vishnu) riding on the Garuda and Phra: Isuen (Siva) riding on a bull. There ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... to ruin for want of use. Guided by the radiant moonlight, I could see the very spot on which Mary and I had stood to watch the snaring of the ducks. Through the hole in the paling before which the decoy-dog had shown himself, at Dermody's signal, a water-rat now passed, like a little black shadow on the bright ground, and was lost in the waters of the lake. Look where I might, the happy by-gone time looked back in mockery, and the voices of the past came to me with their burden of reproach: See what ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... luck. Things had been goin' contrary, and I hadn't money enough to buy a square meal. I didn't like to tell my friends, bein' a bit proud. One day when I was feelin' so hungry that I wouldn't have turned up my nose at a Chinaman's diet—rat pie—an old acquaintance met me and asked me to dine with him. Did I accept? Well, I should smile. I did smile all over my face, as I sat down to the table. You'd better calculate that I made my knife and fork fly. Finally my friend remarked, looking kind of ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... than herself, belongs to the highest class of those women whose social utility cannot be questioned by the prefect of the Seine, nor by those who are interested in the welfare of the city of Paris. Certainly the Rat, accused of demolishing fortunes which frequently never existed, might better be compared to a beaver. Without the Aspasias of the Notre-Dame de Lorette quarter, far fewer houses would be built in Paris. Pioneers in fresh stucco, they have ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... a thing of nerves and passion now, all energy and muscle and concentrated purpose. He shook the man off like a rat, and the next moment burst open the ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... of his treason—for the remainder let him take his luck. Now I am an uncle, my heart begins to melt a little towards the rebel. And you, Maud, how do the honours of an aunt sit upon your feelings? But women are all heart, and would love a rat." ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... his ears in the direction of her voice, like a terrier that suspects the presence of a rat. Valdarno's answer was inaudible, but Donna Tullia ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... of the gale dealt the tent a broad-handed slap as it hurtled past, and the sleet rat-tat-tatted with snappy spite against the thin canvas. The smoke, smothered in its exit, drove back through the fire- box door, carrying with it the pungent odor of ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... rat in a maze where it can't learn the path, and it goes insane. But what good would he be to anyone if they drove him insane? And why bother with all that when they could silence him as ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... a miracle, O turtle! For thy head is the head of a serpent, thy tail the tail of a water rat, thy bones are bird's bones and thy covering is of stone; and yet thou knowest love as it is known by men. And from thy eggs, O turtle of stone, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... better all her life," replied the other; "a rat would not live in the house with her: at last, in one of her tantrums, she nearly murdered old Spinney, the clerk at Overton. The report went out that he was dead; and conscience, I suppose, or summut of that kind, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... sung him truly into slumber: For this performance I your debtor prove.— Not yet art thou the man, to catch the Fiend and hold him!— With fairest images of dreams infold him, Plunge him in seas of sweet untruth! Yet, for the threshold's magic which controlled him, The Devil needs a rat's quick tooth. I use no lengthened invocation: Here rustles one that ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... them; but one of the savages was made very conspicuous by a pewter plate, which he wore round his neck, and which glittered in the sun. This plate proved his death; for, according to Gun-Deck, he himself shot it through the middle, and the ball entered the wearer's heart. It was a rat-killing ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... clouds, and yet he saw everything below him on the earth more distinctly than ever before. Even the smallest things appeared perfectly clear to his sharpened eyes, and yet he seemed to see them as if reflected in a brilliant mirror. He could distinguish even the hairs on the rat and suddenly another impulse came over him—the impulse to stoop down and catch the long-tailed vermin in his beak and claws. Wendelin had been changed into a falcon, and the rat struggled in vain ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... he asked, and the words were scarcely out of his mouth, when Barlasch extinguished his candle. There followed a dead silence, such as comes when a rodent is disturbed at his work. The two men on the cellar-stairs were conscious of the gaze of the bright, rat-like ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... when everything went smoothly were dull and dove-like, but when things crossed or excited him, which occurred when his own pocket or plans were concerned, they grew singularly unpleasant, and greatly resembled those of some not amiable animal—was it a rat, or a serpent? It was a peculiar concentrated vigilance and rapine that I have seen there. But that was long afterwards. Now, indeed, they were meek, and sad, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... his belly with the cream. Not so his uninitiated brother; he is bred at home to far higher principles of honour. I have known such lie night and day among from ten to twenty pails full of milk, and never once break the cream of one of them with the tip of his tongue, nor would he suffer cat, rat, or any other creature to touch it. This latter sort, too, are far more acute at taking up what ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... and no doubt it fitted him better than either the English cobbler or the German doctor; besides, as he said, sham court costume is always the easiest to contrive: but Cherry was by no means prepared to find the Rat-like poet the secret admirer of a daughter of the Serene ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a special favorite of the ancients, has nothing to do with mice. The fat dormouse of the South of Europe is the size of a rat, ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... Wolf seized and threw him. The Jack Rabbit was let out. The Eagle poised himself for a moment, then swooped upon him. The Cotton Tail came forth. The Prey Mole waited in his hole and seized him; the Wood Rat, and the Falcon made him his prey; the Mouse, and the Ground Owl ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... dear! It's very American, that, you know, that picking of holes in excellent material, furbishing up your consciences, running after your motives as if you were ferrets in a rat-hole. If all you have to say against it is that it's too perfect, too happy,—why, then I keep to my own conviction. She'll be peacefully married and back among us in ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... anything, so went off rather flatly. But an exemplary lady named Wilcocks, who had stowed away gold and silver in a pickle-pot in a clock-case, a canister-full of treasure in a hole under her stairs, and a quantity of money in an old rat-trap, revived the interest. To her succeeded another lady, claiming to be a pauper, whose wealth was found wrapped up in little scraps of paper and old rag. To her, another lady, apple-woman by trade, who had saved a fortune of ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Philip is capable of anything in the way of manoeuvring; and I'm not ashamed to confess that I'm no match for him. He was in here one day when I had the Haygarth pedigree spread out on the table, and I know he smelt a rat. We must beware of him, Hawkehurst, and we must work against time if we don't want him to ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... neighbors owned a large hunting dog and had frequently warned me that if my cat ever had the presumption to attack his dog, Bruno would shake the breath out of her as easy as he could kill a rat. I was inwardly much alarmed at this threat, but I put on a bold front, and assured Mr. Dixon that Dinah Diamond always had come off best in a fight and I believed she always would, and the ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... as 'ud speak civil to each other, and the wimmen was a'most as bad. Cats and dogs and such-like began to act as if the place belonged to 'em, and seven people stopped Mr. Bunnett one day to tell 'im that Joe Parsons 'ad been putting down rat-poison and killed five little baby rats ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... shortened and lengthened in the bright sunlit yard, the monotonous silence broken only by the deep regular snores of my companion, whose capacity for sleep was something marvellous, the clucking of poultry, and the occasional stamp or snort of a horse in the stable below. Now and again a rat would crawl out, and, emboldened by the stillness, creep close up to me, darting back into its hole with a jump and a squeal as I waved it off with hand or foot. My visitors from the village did not return to-day, ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... beginning with the ruts of chariot-wheels graven on the rock-paved street. I thought, as I looked at the sordid little village of to-day, which had crawled into the very midst of the fortress, of some words I'd read last night: "a rat in the ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson |
