"Tattered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... holes in my soul and that burrows in and through my secretest veils!) My will against its will, and no more will it fly at my night-light or be hidden behind the curtains that swing in the winds. (But O who will shatter the Change-Moth that leaves me in rags — tattered old tapestries that swing in the winds that blow out of Chaos!) Night-Moth, Change-Moth, Time-Moth, eaters of dreams ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... person, with tattered clothing and a Finnish countenance, we were somewhat amazed, and we asked if he were a Scotchman, that type more closely resembling the Finn ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... stood, the best that could happen to the pair, if they were found to play bridge well, was to be asked to the bridge parties of the great; while for other entertainments they would have to depend on outsiders to whom a title was a title, no matter how tarnished or how tattered. ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... built called St. Louis. La Salle had scarcely finished this establishment, when he determined to search for the Mississippi River, for he had by that time concluded from explorations that he had not found it. On the last day of October, he started, and towards the end of March, the party returned, tattered and worn, almost ready to die; but though the strong body of the leader had given away, his stronger spirit was still unbroken, and he soon determined to set out to find the Illinois region where he left a colony formerly, and where he felt sure he could obtain relief. There ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... melancholy sight, I think, that ever my eyes beheld. All of them, however, were fairly clean, for this matter had been seen to by the Officers who attend upon them. The Salvation Army does not only wash the feet of its guests, but the whole body. Also, it dries and purifies their tattered garments. ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... broken-down metronome on the mantelpiece. It was this very instrument that had been upset when he sent Rosher sprawling into the fireplace; and yet, here was the same fellow talking about keeping up a correspondence. A litter of torn music lay on the top of the piano; among it a tattered hymn-book. Jack turned over the pages until he came to "Hark, hark, my soul!" and then, sitting down, played the air through several times with one finger. It was a tune that had been popular on Sunday evenings at Brenlands, and the children had always ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... which men hear eagerly; and a string of doleful tragedies, merry Italian tales, and Spanish voyages, which all the London prentices know. All the mass has been treated, with more or less skill, by every playwright, and the prompter has the soiled and tattered manuscripts. It is now no longer possible to say who wrote them first. They have been the property of the Theatre so long, and so many rising geniuses have enlarged or altered them, inserting a speech, or a whole Scene, or adding a song, that no man can any longer claim ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... shelves on which to lay our camp dishes and kettles. It started to drizzle again that night, but what cared we? With a roaring fire in front of the tent we all cleaned up for a change, sewed patches on our tattered garments, and, sitting on our beds, wrote the day's happenings in our journals. Then we crawled into our comfortable beds, and I was soon dreaming of my boyhood days when I "played hookey" from school and went fishing in ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... her long and lonely years at Charlock House, Lady Channice had, at first tentatively, then with a growing assurance in her limited sphere of action, moved away all the ugliest, most trivial things: tattered brocade and gilt footstools, faded antimacassars, dismal groups of birds and butterflies under glass cases. When she sat alone in the evening, after Augustine, as child or boy, had gone to bed, the ghostly glimmer of the birds, the furtive glitter of a glass eye here and ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... of the porch. The light from the attic window lay on the lush green grass before him, and he kept his eyes upon it. There was a tread on the floor behind him as soft as that of a cat. It was Mrs. Pitman in her bare feet. She held her tattered shoes in her hand. She touched him on ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... miscellaneous houses—the faces of fat undressed women and of other simple folk who are not aware that they enjoy, from balconies once doubtless patrician, a view the knowing ones of the earth come thousands of miles to envy them. The effect is enhanced by the tattered clothes hung to dry in the windows, by the sun-faded rags that flutter from the polished balustrades— these are ivory-smooth with time; and the whole scene profits by the general law that renders decadence ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... watched, and the woman danced. The lanthorn overhead threw a weird light on red caps and tricolour cockades, on the sullen faces of the men and the shoulders of the women, on the dancer's weird antics and her flying, tattered skirts. She was obviously tired, as a poor, performing cur might be, or a bear prodded along to uncongenial buffoonery. Every time that she paused and solicited alms with her tambourine the crowd dispersed, and some of them laughed ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... the soldiers presented a ghastly sight. Their clothes were tattered and torn, blood-stained and mudstained, while the raw wounds seemed to glare wickedly against the sun, air, and dust. It was pitiable to see the men striving to protect their injuries from the driving sand, ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... was half sitting up in his rough bunk, with the tattered gray blankets over him, one hand was clutched on the side of the bed and there was a great horror in his eyes. "The sea; the sea," he kept saying, "don't let me hear it. It's THEIR voices. Listen! They're beating at the sides of the ship. Keep them ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... know they who dwell 'mid rural shades, Of life's great struggles. Poverty and want In direst forms, are never seen, where bloom And verdure revel, but within the dark And loathesome cellars of the crowded town, They hide their tattered forms. ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... smoke, and a red glare as of flame shot through it, he was aware that some one else had joined them and that his hand the mother had released was now tightly held by the daughter. Ilse had come in answer to the call, and he saw her with leaves of vervain twined in her dark hair, clothed in tattered vestiges of some curious garment, beautiful as the night, and ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... inconvenience from the heat of the fire; and was spacious enough overhead to allow of the insertion of wood poles for the hanging of bacon, which were cloaked with long shreds of soot, floating on the draught like the tattered banners on the walls of ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... in the open, his own somewhat tattered hope that Ashe had been able to impress his captors with his knowledge and potential. Trained to act as contact man with other races, there was a chance that Gordon had saved himself from whatever fate had been planned for the prisoners the ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... water-line. The Arabs squatting on the painted poops of these ships seemed sullen. They looked as cut-throat a lot as you could desire. When the boats were loaded up they drifted off, and by means of a tattered bit of sacking for a sail, and a long pole, managed to reach their destination somehow. It was curious to see these primitive craft filled with the black cases of the ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... himself, too small a potato in this world to hope for any attention from the Prophet in the next. The paradise of the Mohammedans, its shady groves, marble fountains, walled gardens, and cool retreats, its kara ghuz kiz and wealth of material pleasures, no doubt seem to poor Osman, with his one tattered garment and unhappy servility, far beyond the aspirations of such as he. Like the gutter-snipe of London or New York who gazes into the brilliant shop windows, he feels privileged to feast his imagination, perchance, but ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... she arrived, in the selfsame corner, dressed in one of his remarkable check tweed suits; he seldom said good morning, and invariably when she appeared he began to fidget with increased nervousness, with some tattered and ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... These tattered clothes my poverty bespeak, These hoary locks proclaim my lengthened years; And many a furrow in my grief-worn cheek Has been the channel ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... warsh that chimbly in a couple o' years," he commented as he set the lantern down and reached for a worn and tattered mail-order ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... agitation? I bid thee live, once more remembering these tears of mine are shed alone for thee, in this dark and gloomy vault, and should I perish under this load of trouble, join the song of thrilling accents with the raven above my grave, and lay this tattered frame beside the banks of the Chattahoochee or the stream of Sawney's brook; sweet will be the song of death to your Ambulinia. My ghost shall visit you in the smiles of Paradise, and tell your high ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Forcing our way once more through the still squabbling crowd, we gained the landing place. Here we encountered a boat, just landing a fresh cargo of lively savages from the Emerald Isle. One fellow, of gigantic proportions, whose long, tattered great-coat just reached below the middle of his bare red legs, and, like charity, hid the defects of his other garments, or perhaps concealed his want of them, leaped upon the rocks, and flourishing aloft his shilelagh, bounded and ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... whom all sorts of stories were told—none to her credit; big tender-hearted Luigi Zanaletto, prince of gondoliers, and last, and this time least, a staid old painter who works in a gondola up a crooked canal which is smothered in trees, choked by patched-up boats and flanked by tattered rookeries so shaky that the slightest earth quiver would tumble them into ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... whereinto do thou enter." The Caliph did her bidding, and no sooner had the people seen him stripped than they said one to other, "This man is a merchant who hath been shipwrecked;" so they gave him by way of almsgift a Tobe[FN270] all tattered and torn wherewith he veiled his shame. And after so doing he fell to wandering about the city for pastime, and while walking about he passed into a Bazar and there sighted a cook, before whom he stood open mouthed ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... neck by a small silver anchor, permitted a view of his hairy breast: he had a cravat twisted into a string; trousers of blue drilling, worn and threadbare, white on one knee and torn on the other; an old gray, tattered blouse, patched on one of the elbows with a bit of green cloth sewed on with twine; a tightly packed soldier knapsack, well buckled and perfectly new, on his back; an enormous, knotty stick in his hand; iron-shod shoes on his stockingless ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... desperate of all deliverance, and saw staring her in the face, nearer and nearer, some hideous and shameful end; when one day going down with the wives of the cacique to draw water in the river, she saw on the opposite bank a white man in a tattered Spanish dress, with a drawn sword in his hand; who had no sooner espied her, than shrieking her name, he plunged into the stream, swam across, landed at her feet, and clasped her in his arms. It was no other, ladies, incredible as it may seem, than Don Sebastian himself, who had returned ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... borrowed an old pair of trousers hanging on the wall, which, from their dilapidated and mud-stained appearance, may well have belonged to the farm hand—the usual occupant of the building. An equally tattered coat was over his shoulders, while his bare feet were thrust into a pair of heavily nailed boots, which had been cleaned perhaps a year before. There was no hat on his head, and, thanks to his swim in the river, his ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... strong arms to his own tent. For many hours the helpless man lay insensible, but at last the flickering spirit struggled back to light for a little space. When first conscious of his surroundings, the poor captive felt tremblingly in the pocket of his tattered vest. Not finding what he searched for, he half started up. Detricand hastened forward with a black leather-covered book in his hand. Mr. Dow's thin trembling fingers clutched eagerly—it was his only passion—at this journal of his life. As his grasp ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... appearance and voice betrayed. How dreadful to the sight are those watery eyes; that red, uneven, pimpled nose; those fallen cheeks; and that hanging, slobbered mouth! Look at the uncombed hair, the beard half shorn, the weak, impotent gait of the man, and the tattered raiment, all eloquent of gin! You would fain hold your nose when he comes nigh you, he carries with him so foul an evidence of his only and his hourly indulgence. You would do so, had you not still a ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... our bosom swarms with ungoverned passions, which spread the gall of bitterness over our joys. How many thousands are there not, for whom fortune smiles in vain! How many are there not, who, though surrounded with untold wealth, are nevertheless more wretched than the tattered beggar! One, for instance, is always suffering from bad health, and hence he cannot enjoy the pleasures which fortune has placed within his reach. Another is not only wealthy, but is, moreover, elevated to some honorable position, ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... chandelier, and all the other daily objects which she at once detested and loved, sitting close to her silly mother who angered her, and yet in whom she recognized a quality that was mysteriously precious and admirable, staring through the small window at the brown, tattered garden-plot where blackened rhododendrons were swaying in the October blast, she wilfully bathed herself in grim gloom and in an ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... to go to the Syrian school-houses, and see the piles of shoes at the door. There are new bright red shoes, and old tattered shoes, and kob kobs, and black shoes, and sometimes yellow shoes. The kob kobs are wooden clogs made to raise the feet out of the mud and water, having a little strap over the toe to keep it on the foot. You will often see ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... Arthur, who was good-natured and fond of children, went through all these ceremonies one day; had the boy to breakfast at the Temple, where he made the most contemptuous remarks regarding the furniture, the crockery, and the tattered state of Warrington's dressing-gown; and smoked a short pipe, and recounted the history of a fight between Tuffy and Long Biggings, at Rose's, greatly to the edification of the two gentlemen ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... collected, efficient. Her eyes swept Gypsy Nan. The woman, who had obviously flung herself down on the bed fully dressed the night before, was garbed in coarse, heavy boots, the cheapest of stockings which were also sadly in need of repair, a tattered and crumpled skirt of some rough material, and, previously hidden by the shawl, a soiled, greasy and spotted black blouse. Rhoda Gray's forehead puckered into a frown. "What about your hands and face-they go with the ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... torn and tattered coat. Thou shalt have my scarlet cloak in its place. Thy staff, too, I must have. Instead of it thou ...
— Stories from the Ballads - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor
... the Cap Martin—the steep pathway to it—and Richard mounting it, with that pale look, those tattered, sea-stained leaves in his hand—and the tragedy that had to be told, in his eyes, and on his lips. Could any other human being have upheld her as he did through that first year—through the years after? Was it not to him that she owed everything that had been recovered ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with false-looking ear-locks depending from its sides. Round his neck was a grimy red scarf, tucked into his waistcoat; his coat and trousers had a remote affinity with those of a reduced hostler. In one hand he had a stick; on his arm he bore a tattered basket, with a handful of withered vegetables at the bottom. His face was pale haggard and degraded beyond description—as base as a counterfeit coin, yet as modelled somehow as a tragic mask. He too, like everything else, had a history. From what height had he fallen, from what depth ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... sort of series of fields of battle all over it; one eye out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop Leighton's father's; the remaining eye had the power of two; and above it, and in constant communication with it, was a tattered rag of an ear, which was forever unfurling itself, like an old flag; and then that bud of a tail, about one inch long, if it could in any sense be said to be long, being as broad as long,—the mobility, the instantaneousness of that bud were very funny and surprising, and ...
— Rab and His Friends • John Brown, M. D.
... and I called at Rydal Mount yesterday early, to wish our dear friends the blessings of the season. Mrs. W. met us at the door most kindly, and we found him before his good fire in the dining-room, with a flock of robins feasting at the window. He had an old tattered book in his hand; and as soon as he had given us a cordial greeting, he said, in a most animated manner, 'I must read to you what Mary and I have this moment finished. It is a passage in the Life of Thomas Elwood.' He then read ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... old Queen Bess in the Westminster-Cupboard. The waxen effigies which yet remain at Westminster are preserved in the wainscot presses over the Islip Chapel. Queen Elizabeth, in her tattered velvet robes, is still one of the most famous. They were formerly far more numerous. A waxen figure of the deceased, dressed in the habit worn whilst living, was, in the case of any royal or notable personage, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... suppose I do look rather the worse for the wear," added the grayback, glancing down at the tattered uniform he wore. "I joined the rebel army, after I had tried every way in the world to get out of this infernal country; but I never fired a gun at a Union man. Seems to me, sergeant, I've seen you before somewhere. What's your name? ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... fine mango-trees on the slopes, said to have been planted by the Dutch two centuries ago. The fort is nearly oblong, and has a wall of stones and earth round it, in which, near the entrance, some of the Dutch brickwork is still visible. The trees round it are much tattered and torn by English shell. In front of the entrance there is a large flat stone on a rude support. On this a young girl was sacrificed some years ago, and the Malay guns were smeared with her blood, in the idea that it would make ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... arrived, we take leave of the consul and the company assembled, and, under the escort of a torn and tattered negro porter bearing the mail bags, reach the quay. Passing through the custom-house, which is represented by a roof and eight posts, we embark in our little canoe, and gliding over the waters of the river Ozana, which skirts the town, ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... series of the most outrageous scratchings and daubings, as specimens of the fine arts, that ever an itinerant showman had the face to impose upon his circle of spectators. The pictures were worn out, moreover, tattered, full of cracks and wrinkles, dingy with tobacco-smoke, and otherwise in a most pitiable condition. Some purported to be cities, public edifices, and ruined castles in Europe; others represented Napoleon's ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... evening when the weary occupants of the shanties came flocking home,—men and women, in soiled and tattered garments, surly and uncomfortable, and in no mood to look pleasantly on new-comers. The small village was alive with no inviting sounds; hoarse, guttural voices contending at the hand-mills where their morsel of hard corn was yet to be ground into meal, to fit it for the ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... subscription of his Devonshire tenants on the occasion of his marriage with the Lady Gertrude Semmering—no insignia were absent, save the family portraits in the gallery of Valleys House in London. There was even an ancient duplicate of that yellow tattered scroll royally, reconfirming lands and title to John, the most distinguished of all the Caradocs, who had unfortunately neglected to be born in wedlock, by one of those humorous omissions to be found in the genealogies of most old families. Yes, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Beverley, wiping his eyes on the tattered lapel of his coat, "the resemblance served you luckily there; your cousin gave him the thrashing of his life, and poor Tom evidently thought he was in for another. That was the last you saw of him, I'll ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... eyes stared into brown ones, and then Ross noted the other's bedraggled and tattered dress. The kilt-tunic smudged with mud, scorched and charred along one edge, was styled like his own. The fellow wore his hair fastened back with a band, unlike the topknot of the ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... few moments two negro slaves, part of the force sent to bury the dead, with their tattered hats doffed out of respect, slowly bore the body of Hilland to the roadside. Graham, with his bare head bowed under a weight of grief that seemed wellnigh crushing, followed closely, and then the old clergyman and his daughter. They laid the princely form down on the grass beside ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... "O maids, O slave-girls, whose maids and slave-girls are ye?" They answered, "We are the maids and the slave-girls of the minister." The boy said, "Go and tell the minister's wife that her sister's son is here. Tell her that he is standing by the village tank, that his coat is tattered and that his garments are torn, and ask her to let him come into her house through the back door." The slave-girls took him in through the back door. His aunt had him bathed, and gave him clothes to wear, and food to eat, and drink, and a pumpkin hollowed out ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... I saw the very object of my thoughts in front of me. He was clad in a tattered old tail coat, and trousers twice the size of his little legs. His head and feet were bare, and there seemed little enough semblance of a shirt. Altogether it was the most "scarecrowy" apparition I ever ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... in his turret-like office room in the Bryson block, examining a tattered book under a microscope. He learned that Davis had a private library of more than 8,000 volumes and was one of the rare old book lovers of the city. His office room was stacked with books he had purchased, several of which were to be sent to England to be handsomely ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... the leader stops and utters a short bark, which in wolf's language is equivalent to an oath, for at the foot of an adjacent hill are seen two mounted Kirghizes, who have come out to seek their comrade. The wolves disappear like magic. The poor man lies quite motionless in his tattered furs, and the snow around is stained red with blood. He is unconscious, but is still breathing and his heart beats. His friends bind up his wounds with their girdles and carry him on the back of a horse to ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... the face of the cliff, he came upon a man who stood under it catching the trickle in a stone basin, and halted a few paces off to watch him. The man's hair and beard were long and unkempt, his legs bare, and he wore a tattered tunic which reached below the knees and was caught about his waist with a thong girdle. For some minutes he did not perceive the Singer; but turned at length, and the two eyed each ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... found Dan Barry wandering across the hills years ago. He was riding home over the range and he heard a strange and beautiful whistling, and when he looked up he saw on the western ridge, walking against the sky, a tattered figure of a boy. He rode up and asked the boy his name. He learned it was Dan Barry—Whistling Dan, he was called. But the boy could not, or would not, tell how he came to be there in the middle of the range without a horse. He ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... a long cloak made out of all sorts of bits, a weird Joseph's coat of many colours. His tall staff was hanging with tattered rags and his poor turban was in the last stages of decay." Millicent's voice betokened genuine pity. "He looked terribly thin and tired. I ought to have given him some food—he wouldn't accept money. I don't think ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... cotton handkerchief, which was tied round his waist, were his only apparel. By far the most showy and conspicuous object in the yard, was an immense umbrella, made of figured cotton of different patterns, with a deep fringe of coloured worsted, which was stuck into the ground. But even this was tattered and torn, and dirty withal, having been in Forday's possession for many years, and it is only used on public and sacred occasions. I had been sitting amongst the revellers till the speaker had finished his harangue, when I embraced the opportunity, as they were about to separate, of entreating ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... if Fanny had been a woman with the slightest sense of humor, she could not but have been amused at the picture which he presented in the revealing fire-light with his elfish and ape like body much too small to fill out the tattered and ill-fitting garments that hung about it. But she only wondered at him and his rags, and at his ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... want to tell you is how easily some of your pictures can be turned into tableaux-vivants, or even acted. There was "Pattikin's House;" I am sure we had the greatest fun with those pictures, we being so many girls: and "The man all tattered and torn that married the maiden all forlorn;" that was on p. 652 of the volume for 1876: "The Minuet," in January, 1877: "Hagar in the Desert," in June, 1877; my aunty did that, and it was lovely: the little girl in "The Owl That Stared," in November, ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... caps, whilst others were almost in rags, for, as we have already said, many of the hangers-on at the barriers, and people without any profession, had joined the troop of the Wolves, whether welcome or not. Some hideous women, with tattered garments, who always seem to follow in the track of such people, accompanied them on this occasion, and, by their cries and fury, inflamed still more the general excitement. One of them, tall, robust, with purple complexion, blood shot eyes, and toothless jaws, had a handkerchief ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... tattered old slippers that toast at the bars, And a ragged old jacket perfumed with cigars, Away from the world and its toils and its cares, I've a snug little kingdom ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... away from the court, Widow Johnsen sat in the corner by the stove. Hanne's little girl lay cowering on the floor, on a tattered patchwork counterpane. Through the naked window one saw only ice, as though the atmosphere were frozen down to the ground. Transparent spots had formed on the window-panes every time the child had breathed ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... in the great hall of the castle. Around the walls hung the hard-favored portraits of the heroes of the house of Katzenellenbogen, and the trophies which they had gained in the field and in the chase. Hacked corselets, splintered jousting spears, and tattered banners were mingled with the spoils of sylvan warfare; the jaws of the wolf and the tusks of the boar grinned horribly among cross-bows and battle-axes, and a huge pair of antlers branched immediately over the head of the ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... it is the dread of the unknown, the ghastly doubt as to whether there is any goal before us or not; when we fear, we are like the butterfly that flutters anxiously away from the boy who pursues it, who means out of mere wantonness to strike it down tattered and bruised among ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... put our eyes to the grating. The prisoner lay with his face towards us, in a very deep sleep, breathing slowly and heavily. He was a middle-sized man, coarsely clad as became his calling, with a coloured shirt protruding through the rent in his tattered coat. He was, as the inspector had said, extremely dirty, but the grime which covered his face could not conceal its repulsive ugliness. A broad wheal from an old scar ran right across it from eye to chin, and by its contraction had turned up one side of ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... kept him back; they refused to admit this pale man with the lacerated face and tattered clothes to their master's ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... a while ago I said one day: "A tattered old manuscript has been discovered while rummaging in the Adi Brahma Samaj library and from this I have copied some poems by an old Vaishnava Poet named Bhanu Singha;"[39] with which I read some of my imitation poems to him. He was profoundly stirred. ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... of Erris appear to be the most wretched of all human beings. Their cabins, their patched and tattered clothes, their broken-down gait—every thing bears witness to their poverty. Their beds consist of a few bits of wood crossed one upon the other, supported by two heaps of stones, and covered with straw; their whole bedclothes a miserable, worn-out quilt, without any blankets ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... his rag of a cap, and arranging his tattered regimentals the best he could, off he went stumping among the passengers in an adjoining part of the deck, saying with a jovial kind of air: "Sir, a shilling for Happy Tom, who fought at Buena Vista. Lady, something for General Scott's ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... tattered curtains and mended the worn carpet and the schoolmaster trimmed the long grass and trained the ivy before the door. In the evening a bright fire was kindled and they all three took their supper together, and then the schoolmaster ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... heard the trolley-car's flat wheels grinding on a curve. Its search-light changed the shadow-haunted woodland to a sad group of scanty trees, huddling in front of an old bill-board, with its top broken and the tattered posters flapping. The wanderers stepped from the mystical romance of the open night into the exceeding realism of the car—highly realistic wooden floor with small, muddy pools from lumps of dirty melting snow, hot ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... I saw her first in the sunlight on that memorable day, at the corner of Essex Street, Strand, bare-headed, her shoulders shining like patches of polished ivory here and there through the rents in her tattered dress, while she stood gazing before her, murmuring a verse of Scripture, perfectly unconscious whether she was dressed in ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... awful night on which the gaunt haggard children, who thrive on starvation, crouch shiveringly around the last hissing fagot on the fire-place, with big, hungry eyes wandering over the low ceiling and the mouldy walls, or resting perchance on the wet, dirty panes, with their stuffings of tattered clothing, or gazing in a wilder longing still, on the bare shelves and the empty bread-box: Oh no! There are no such nights as these in reality; such a scene never existed out of the imaginations of men; ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... great black lava flood, which in prehistoric times had flowed into the sea, and had ever since declined the kindly draping offices of nature, vibrated in waves of heat. Even the imperishable cocoanut trees, whose tall, bare, curved trunks rose from the lava or the burnt red earth, were gaunt, tattered, and thirsty-looking, weary of crying for moisture to the pitiless skies. At last the ceaseless ripple of talk ceased, crew and passengers slept on the hot deck, and no sounds were heard but the drowsy flap ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... and violent; every mouth slobbered, every lip trembled and every eye glowed with unnatural brightness: curls were dishevelled and laurel crowns awry; the silken draperies on the couches had become tattered rags and the cushions were scattered all about the floor; debris of crystal vases littered the table and bunches of dying flowers were tossed about by ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of the administration of John Tyler the atrocious plot received its finishing touch and the Executive approval, and, in the apt words of the ablest and fairest historian of the transaction, "the bridal dress in which Calhoun had led the beloved of the slaveocracy to the Union was the torn and tattered Constitution of the United States." War with Mexico, as prophesied by the Whigs, speedily followed. As early as August, 1845, General Taylor was ordered by President Polk to advance to a position on the Nueces. In March of the following year, in pursuance ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... would be a thorough man and accomplish great things must be lord of himself, and have no wishes for himself, but to attain glory and honor! And so I now shake the past from my soul as a torn and tattered garment, and would despise myself if even a sensation of pain were left behind. No, no, I am free! My heart is coffined, and I shall close the lid and bid ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... them again in a very singular connection. The Minion and Judith meanwhile pursued their melancholy way. They parted company. The Judith, being the better sailer, arrived first, and reached Plymouth in December, torn and tattered. Drake rode off post immediately to carry the bad news to London. The Minion's fate was worse. She made her course through the Bahama Channel, her crew dying as if struck with a pestilence, till at last there were hardly men enough left to handle the ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... must give up all your prisoners, both French and Indian, without one exception. I will then return mine, and make peace with you, but not before." He then entertained them at his own table, gave them a feast described as "magnificent," and bestowed gifts so liberally, that the tattered ambassadors went home in embroidered coats, laced shirts, and plumed hats. They were pledged to return with the prisoners before the end of the season, and they left two hostages as security. [Footnote: ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... the middle of a field a scarecrow. The clothes were all in rags, but that did not matter to Watson. He exchanged with the scarecrow, and placing his uniform in its stead, dressed himself in the tattered suit and continued his journey, only to be arrested and brought back to the barracks. The end of poor Watson will be ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... in the street before the palace, and Ulysses, taking no notice of his fallen foe, flung his tattered scrip across his shoulder, knotted the thong around his waist, and returned to the palace, where the nobles joined in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... supposed, with the princess till morning. Guess, however, what was my surprise, when on awaking I found myself lying in my first humble lodging, stripped of my rich vestments, and saw on the ground my former mean attire; namely, an old vest, a pair of tattered drawers, and a ragged turban, as full of holes as a sieve. When I had somewhat recovered my senses, I put them on and walked out in a melancholy mood, regretting my lost happiness, and not knowing what I should do to recover it. As I strolled towards the palace, I beheld sitting in ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... change, I said; his view broadens. And I remembered Penelope as I first saw her, in her tattered frock and with the faded ribbon tossing in her hair. I liked Penelope. I thought of her with brotherly affection. But I said to myself that she could never grow to the wonderful beauty of ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... like that—for I should have to face it. I could see that in a few seconds the gutters had begun to race, the road where I lay was a stream, and then—then the rain ceased. Never was anything so astonishing. The sky came out blue, tattered rags of cloud raced across it, and I had time to conclude that, whipped and almost breathless though I ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... suit ov glossy black, Worn bi a chap 'at's nowt to back it: Wol monny a true, kind heart may rack, Lapt in a tattered fushten jacket. ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... a little distance, the immense portals of the cathedral; light streamed forth from the arches that were so dim and gloomy above; and there came a strong scent from the incense. Even the poorest, most tattered beggars ascended the wide stairs to the church, and the sailor who was with Joergen showed him the way in. Joergen stood in a sacred place; splendidly-painted pictures hung round in richly-gilded frames; the holy Virgin, with the infant Jesus in her arms, ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... part of his company and his baggage. The forests furnished him with timber; the shoes of the horses which had died on the road or been slaughtered for food, were converted into nails; gum distilled from the trees took the place of pitch; and the tattered garments of the soldiers supplied a substitute for oakum. It was a work of difficulty; but Gonzalo cheered his men in the task, and set an example by taking part in their labors. At the end of two months a brigantine was ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... semblance of a man. A tattered coat—some one's cast-off overcoat—green, greasy, mud-stained, clung round his shaking knees; trousers which might have been of any hue originally, but were now "sad-colored," flapped about his thin legs and fringed his ankles; ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... arms and now she suddenly twisted violently, writhed and wrenched herself free, leaving a velvet sleeve in James's grasp and leaping back from him, one creamy shoulder bared by the tattered gown and her wonderful hair loosened and foaming about her head to lend her the aspect of a beautiful Bisharin girl, wild as the desert gazelle. James saw that she wore an antique gold locket upon a thin chain about ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... observed closely, and never said a thing because he had read it. Indeed, he did not read, and he had in a little hanging shelf above his bunk only four or five tattered books, and even these were magazines. I remembered his testimony now as I watched these Catalans letting the ship go free, and I believed it, comparing it with history and the things I had myself seen. They ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... squatty woman, heavy, with a striped kerchief on her shoulders, and wearing a short skirt, from under which appeared flat feet in tattered overshoes. She was seventy years old, at least; her large, sallow face was much withered. Bordered by gray hair and a white cap that face was bright with the gleam of dark eyes, still fiery, and quickly glancing from under a wrinkled, high forehead. Her whole figure had in it something of the ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... humbly knew himself improper, But could not shrink up small enough) —Round to the door, and in,—the gruff Hinge's invariable scold Making my very blood run cold. Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered On broken clogs, the many-tattered Little old-faced peaking sister-turned-mother Of the sickly babe she tried to smother Somehow up, with its spotted face, From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place; She too must stop, wring the poor ends dry Of a draggled shawl, and ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... land. Reminders of the sea and of the life that is lived in ships were conspicuous features everywhere, in the pastoral scenes that began as soon as the town ended. Women carrying sails and nets toiled through the green aisles of the roads and lanes. Fishing-tackle hung in company with tattered jerseys outside of huts hidden in grasses and honeysuckle. The shepherdesses, as they followed the sheep inland into the heart of the pasture land, were busy netting the coarse cages that trap the finny tribe. Long-limbed, vigorous-faced, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... into the privacies of such people; but I hope they did not feel as if it had been done offensively. We called next at the cottage of a hand-loom weaver—a poor trade now in the best of times—a very poor trade—since the days when tattered old "Jem Ceawp" sung his pathetic ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... leaving the main mass like scouts sent out in advance to drop their silver spears on the heads of ferns and flowers on other hills." Some of the detached portions moved up the valley, others rose slowly above the wooded ridges or trailed their tattered fringes near the tree tops that seemed to have torn their edges. Every bush and leaf was saturated with their life-giving elixir. How the wild sweet carols of the birds ascended from every forest! It seemed as if all Nature was sending up a paean of praise for the beneficent ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... place where last the white sail had been seen. Was it not possible that Ceyx, having weathered the gale, might for the present have foregone his voyage to Ionia, and was returning to her to bring peace to her heart? But the sea-beach was strewn with wrack and the winds still blew bits of tattered surf along the shore, and for her there was only the heavy labour of waiting, of waiting and of watching for the ship that never came. The incense from her altars blew out, in heavy sweetness, to meet the bitter-sweet tang of the seaweed that was ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... winter night, As authors of the legend write, Two brother-hermits, saints by trade, Taking their tour in masquerade, Disguised in tattered habits went To a small village down in Kent, Where, in the strollers' canting strain, They begged from door to door in vain, Tried every tone might pity win; But not a soul would let them in. Our wandering saints, in woful state, Treated at this ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... is admirably conveyed in the height and shape of the huge olive-green seas, their crests torn off and swept away to leeward in horizontal showers of spindrift, and the black, menacing hue of the sky, across which tattered shreds of smoky-looking cloud are careering wildly. And next to this, again, is a large water-colour, admirably executed, representing a broad moon-lit river, concealed amid the tall reeds of which a man is portrayed, picking off the game as ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... added, with a courtliness that was so incongruous with his unkempt appearance and patched and tattered garments;—"If the Senhora permits, the men may smoke now. In another hour the channel will not be navigable. We have a hot and tiring day before us, and I advise sleep for those to whom it is vouchsafed. If the ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... in silence to the little volcanic knoll near the centre of the island. There, in the neat garden plot they had observed before, a man, in the last relics of a very tattered European costume, much covered with a short cape of native cloth, was tending his flowers and singing to himself merrily. His back was turned to them as they came up. Felix paused a moment, unseen, and caught the words ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... the scene and the drama. The sun was still shining warmly aslant the heavens; the wind, crisp and sweet, wandered by on laggard wings, the conies cried from the ledges; the lambs were calling—and in the midst of it one tattered fragment of humanity was heaping the iron earth upon another, stricken, perhaps, by the same ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... the watching crews. They crowded on the ships' decks, and all eyes were on that tattered flag, bending toward the top of what had once been a grand old castle. But it was only bending, not yet down. Lieutenant-Commander Delehanty and Lieutenant Blue took their time. The ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... and rock-bound coast' beneath which the gallant little Mayflower furled her tattered sails, and dropped her anchor, on the evening of the eleventh of November, in the year 1620. The shores of New England had been, for several days, dimly descried by her passengers, through the gloomy mists that hung over the dreary and uncultivated tract of land towards ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... in books of all sorts, Folios, quartos, large and small sorts; Poems, so very deep and sensible That they were quite incomprehensible Prose, which had been at learning's Fair, And bought up all the trumpery there, The tattered rags of every vest, In which the Greeks and Romans drest, And o'er her figure swollen and antic Scattered them all with airs so frantic, That those, who saw what fits she had, Declared unhappy Prose was mad! Epics ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... covered with a pattern of loose clusters of moss rosebuds. The dampness had rotted it until, in some places, it had fallen away in strips from its fastenings. A quaint, embroidered couch stood in one corner, and as Betty looked at it, a mouse crept from under the tattered valance, stared at her in alarm and suddenly darted back again, in terror of intrusion so unusual. A casement window swung open, on a broken hinge, and a strong branch of ivy, having forced its way inside, had thrown a covering of leaves over the deep ledge, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... ships that went to sea More than fifty years ago. None have yet come back to me, But keep sailing to and fro, Plunging through the shoreless deep, With tattered sails and battered hulls While ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... taking the habit off indignantly, he threw it from him with contempt, and, turning to Elias, "That is the way," he said, "that the bastard brethren of our Order will strut." After this he resumed his usual demeanor and walked humbly with his old and tattered habit, saying:—"Such is the deportment of the true Friars Minor." Then, seating himself amongst them, he addressed them in the mildest manner, and spoke on poverty and humility, of which he so forcibly pointed out the perfection, that ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... tattered cloak about his face, came the model, at whom Beppo looked askance, jealous of an encroacher on his rightful domain. The figure passed away, however, up the Via Sistina. In the piazza below, near the foot of the magnificent steps, stood Miriam, with ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rather stockily built man of middle age, and obviously, from his mahogany colored skin and lank black hair, a Mexican. He was dressed in a tattered shirt with a serape thrown about the neck to keep off the blazing rays of the sun. His feet were encased in a kind of moccasins over which spurs were strapped. Evidently, then, he had been mounted at some time—presumably recently, but where was his horse? How did he come to be ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... the fluttering leafy trees Proclaim the gently swelling breeze, Whilst through my window, by degrees, Its breathings play: The spider's web, all tattered flees, Like ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... cove we were quitting can hardly be imagined. A fringe of cocoa-nuts and bread-fruit trees, overhanging an undergrowth of bright glossy foliage and flowers, a few half-hidden palm-leaf covered huts, from one of which—I suppose the chief's—a tattered Tahitian flag floated in the breeze, a small schooner drawn up among the trees and carefully covered with mats, the steep sugar-loaf point, at the entrance to the cove, clothed to its summit with grass and vegetation: these ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... to find one?" said he of the tattered hat; "where's the gwr boneddig to find a prydydd? No occasion to go far, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... Bloated faces glowered through the open doors—their humanity sunk away into mere bestiality. Human forms—men no longer—lay on benches, hung over chairs, babbled, maundered, shrieked or wept aloud; while women came in and took black bottles from under tattered shawls, and said nothing, but put down a piece of money; and the man behind the counter said nothing, but took the money and filled the bottles, which were hidden under the tattered shawl again, and the speechless phantoms ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... certain grimy, gritty old rag with which he was wont to polish his golf clubs. It was caked with dirt, and most disreputable, but it was of just the right material, or weight, or size, or something, and he had for it the unreasoning affection that a child has for a tattered rag doll among a whole family of golden-haired, blue-eyed beauties. Ma Mandle, tidying up, used to throw away that rag in horror. Sometimes he would rescue it, crusted as it was with sand and mud and scouring dust. Sometimes he would have to train in a new rag, and ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... effort, I will, by a simple illustration of the point, save you the trouble. Is not turkey-cock just as proud of his homely feathers as peacock of his magnificent plumes? And after the battle fought, which leaves him but the tattered rag of a tail to display to the sun, will not turkey-cock spread that tattered rag of a tail as self-complacently, and strut as grandly and gobble as obstreperously as ever? Aye, that will he! And why? Because his tail—tag-rag or not—is all his own and nobody ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... the Passes, and stopping all intercourse with the outer world, until New Orleans began to get shabby and ragged and hungry, and the pleasure-parties came less often to the forts, and the gay young soldiers saw their uniforms getting old and tattered, but knew not where to get the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Great Day, what a strange awakening for decorations there will be, if such be in store for the just and the brave: Private soldiers, blue and gray, arising from neglected graves with tattered clothes and unmarked brows. Scouts who rode, with stolid faces set, into Death's grim door and died knowing they went out unremembered. Spies, hung like common thieves at the end of a rope—hung, though the ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... the fact that I had unconsciously hooked myself half a dozen times on the thorny claws of the pita-plant, and my overalls began to exhibit a most tattered condition. ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... happy reunion we held upon the edge of the pit. Edith and Barbara bound up the wounds of the two faithful natives, and the muscular Raretongan was so touched with their tender ministrations that he foraged in his tattered sulu, and with tears of gratitude in his big brown eyes he handed back to Barbara the emerald ring with which she had caused him to ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... knot upon the thongs, and blew his horn. And thereupon, behold, his knights came down upon the palace. They seized all the host that had come with Gawl, and cast them into his own prison, and Pwyll threw off his rags, and his old shoes, and his tattered array. As they came in, every one of Pwyll's knights struck a blow upon the bag, and asked, "What is here?" "A badger," said they. And in this manner they played, each of them striking the bag, either with ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... days' leave they found their way to the generous ouvroir on the Boulevard Haussmann, where Madame Waddington, or her friend Mrs. Greene (also an American), or Madame Mygatt, always gave the poor men what they needed to replace their tattered (or missing) undergarments, as well as coffee and bread ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... closet, shut the door, and proceeded to search for the manuscript. It was soon found, for the directions of old Melmoth were forcibly written, and strongly remembered. The manuscript, old, tattered, and discolored, was taken from the very drawer in which it was mentioned to be laid. Melmoth's hands felt as cold as those of his dead uncle, when he drew the blotted pages from their nook. He sat down to read,—there was a dead silence through the house. Melmoth ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... the Capitol to the White House, and prove that they had lived this long time and were still good for a longer journey. There was little of gaiety among them, tho' some were swinging flags, torn, tattered, be-shot ... and raised their hats to the President as they passed, tho' most of them, doubtless, were sorry that he was not a Republican. It was a time ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... been brought over to Portugal by Antonio Gonzales in the former voyage. After he had been conveyed to a considerable distance inland, he was stripped of all his clothes, and even deprived of all the provisions he had taken on shore. A tattered coarse rug, called an alhaik, was given him instead of the clothes he had been deprived of. His food was principally a small farinaceous seed, varied sometimes by the roots which he could find in the desert, or the tender sprouts of wild plants. The inhabitants, among whom he lived ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... heard; but he knew that all around him life was about to awaken in common noises, hoarse voices, sleepy prayers. Shrinking from that life he turned towards the wall, making a cowl of the blanket and staring at the great overblown scarlet flowers of the tattered wallpaper. He tried to warm his perishing joy in their scarlet glow, imagining a roseway from where he lay upwards to heaven all strewn with scarlet flowers. Weary! Weary! He too ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... and the measured sound of their prayers rang through the aisles, with a groan now and again, or a choking gasp as some poor sufferer battled for breath. The dim, yellow light streaming over the earnest pain-drawn faces, and the tattered mud-coloured figures, would have made it a fitting study for any of those Low Country painters whose pictures I saw long afterwards ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... air was warmed; only, Lavienne strewed straw on the wet floor. By long use the benches were as polished as varnished mahogany; at the height of a man's shoulders the wall had a coat of dark, indescribable color, given to it by the rags and tattered clothes of these poor creatures. The poor wretches loved Popinot so well that when they assembled before his door was opened, before daybreak on a winter's morning, the women warming themselves with ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... black hair, a neck burned copper brown by sun, tattered cotton shirt and trousers, big, bare dirty feet, a rusty repeating rifle of heavy caliber—these were what they saw first. The man lay straight, his face in the dirt, his hands a little ahead as if he had been crawling forward at the moment of death. Tucu turned him on his back, revealing ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... basket in which she puts the eggs she knows just where to find. Not behind the hay, where a poor wretch was almost dead with terror. There was no nest there, and so she failed to see the ghastly face, pinched with hunger and pain, the glassy eyes, the uncombed hair, and soiled tattered garments of him who once was known as one of ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... apparition stood in a pair of soaked moccasins. On his legs were worn trousers of deerskin, patched here and there with the skins of muskrats and squirrels; one thin brown knee showed bare through a rent. Over a tattered woollen shirt hung an old cloth coat twice too big for him—moss-green from exposure, the sleeves of which hung in shreds over his bony fingers. Framed by a shock of sandy hair falling to his shoulders, ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... had a tattered piece of a book in one hand, which he slipped inside his jacket as carefully as if it ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... scarecrow all tattered and torn,— Oh, 'twas a horrible thing to see! And very early, one summer morn, He set it up in ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... the man all tattered and torn, That kissed the maiden all forlorn, That milked the cow with the crumpled horn, That tossed the dog, That worried the cat, That killed the rat, That ate the malt That lay in the house that ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)
... last. By the time he had dragged himself up to the top of their stairs there was nothing left but hunger, the consciousness of tattered, blood-stained clothes, and a sore, tired body. After all, he was only a small boy who had wanted to play with other boys, and had been cast out. Even Mr. Ricardo could never ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... a grizzly-bearded old gaucho, in somewhat tattered garments, lit a cigarette and, oblivious of everything except the stimulating fragrance of the strongest black tobacco, expanded his lungs with long inspirations, to send forth thereafter clouds of blue smoke into his neighbours' faces, scattering the soothing ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... we have not seen him for many days: I would fain visit him and I should rejoice to hear that he hath prospered." So the twain walked along towards my house, Sa'd saying to Sa'di, "Forsooth I perceive that he appeareth the same in semblance, poor and ill-conditioned as before; he weareth old and tattered garments, save that his turband seemeth somewhat newer and cleaner. Look well and judge thyself and 'tis even as I said." Thereupon Sa'di came up closer to me and he also understood that my condition was unaltered; ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... what he saw was a lank, grey beggarman; half his sword bared behind his haunch, his two shoes full of cold road-a-wayish water sousing about him, the tips of his two ears out through his old hat, his two shoulders out through his scant tattered cloak, and in his hand a ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.) |
