"Patching" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blue pencil or standardized phrase has left too deep a wound or gross a blemish I have had to rewrite. And, as I have rarely succeeded in recovering the original idea, I have had to borrow from my later thought. Of such patching I have been as thrifty as possible: also, I have not attempted to square the opinions and sentiments of early days with my later pronouncements, so, I make no doubt, some very clever readers will have the pleasure ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... St. Thomas de Villeneuve, who were in charge of an immense hospital, had two old masons who might be seen at all times, trowel in hand, patching up the slightest damage to their buildings; the local manager of a Dufayel store had become almost a fanatic on the subject. His stock in trade consisted of furniture, china and crockery of all kinds, housed beneath a glass roof, which seemed to attract the Boches' special ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... what I told you yon day we drove to Pitleathy. They're all patched—or I should say we're all patched. Either bodily, mentally or spiritually there are holes torn in us, and we've to be so busy patching them up from collapsing that we've no time to grow. As time goes on and we learn better there'll be less patching. There'll be more growing up tall and straight—everyone—there'll be giants in ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... concentrating its power. Behind him that nation was patching up its one great quarrel, and now a gray phantom stalked out of the past to the music of drum and fife, and Crittenden turned sharply to see a little body of men, in queer uniforms, marching through a camp of regulars toward him. They were old boys, and they went rather slowly, but ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... Who would I be patching torn trousers or darning ripped sweaters for if you were like Bob, I'd like to know? Who'd be pestering me to hunt up his cap and mittens? And who would ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... the raised circle of the Roman camp, patching Jacob's breeches; only looking up as she sucked the end of her cotton, or when some insect dashed at her, boomed in ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... cultivated, though clearly by an unscientific hand. Indeed, little Peter was the sole labourer, he devoting to it every moment he could spare from attendance on his sick parent after his return from his daily work, patching up many a rent in the cottage produced ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... chauffeur made the dragon's toilet, patching up a fat white foot as he might have doctored the pad of an elephant, we wandered about, and finally decided to lunch in a secluded corner ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... is no case of distraction, of individual carelessness; all the large spinstresses suffer from a similar incapacity for patching. The Banded Epeira and the Silky Epeira are noteworthy in this respect. The Angular Epeira remakes her web nearly every evening; the other two reconstruct theirs only very seldom and use them even when extremely dilapidated. They go on hunting with shapeless rags. ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... mode of patching up his argument is more important. The 'vices of mankind,' he says in an unusually rhetorical summary of his historical inquiry,[236] 'are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... though nothing would have induced me to confess it then. He had served in the Crimea, and seemed to regard a dilapidated body very much as I should have regarded a damaged garment; and, turning up his cuffs, whipped out a very unpleasant looking housewife, cutting, sawing, patching and piecing, with the enthusiasm of an accomplished surgical seamstress; explaining the process, in scientific terms, to the patient, meantime; which, of course, was immensely cheering and comfortable. There was an uncanny sort of fascination in watching him, as he peered and probed ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... the knob and entered a lighted room, where sat his sister and Bernard Higginbotham. She was patching a pair of his trousers, while his lean body was distributed over two chairs, his feet dangling in dilapidated carpet-slippers over the edge of the second chair. He glanced across the top of the paper he was reading, showing a pair of dark, insincere, sharp-staring eyes. Martin Eden ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... domesticities come for their due appreciation (for they disclose, often, elements of really baffling complexity) not less than their ventilation and unravelling, is an eminently peace-loving man, and quite an adept at patching up such-like conjugal trifles. He will dispense from his tribunal sage advice, and prescribe remedial measures, which shall have untold efficacy, in dispelling mutual mistrust, restoring mutual confidence, and bringing about ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... make her his wife, believing that never could a girl of such lofty descent fail in her duty. This marriage was soon celebrated, because the Sire de Rohan had seven daughters, and hardly knew how to provide for them all, at a time when people were just recovering from the late wars, and patching up their unsettled affairs. Now the good man Bastarnay happily found Bertha really a maiden, which fact bore witness to her proper bringing up and perfect maternal correction. So immediately the night arrived when it should be lawful for him to embrace her, he got her with a ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... the little girls had had their supper, they set out for the quarters. Dilsey and Chris and Riar, of course, accompanied them, though Chris had had some difficulty in joining the party. She had come to grief about her quilt patching, having sewed the squares together in such a way that the corners wouldn't hit, and Mammy had made her rip it all out and sew it over again, and had boxed her soundly, and now said she shouldn't go with the others to the quarters; ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... observed this dubious expression gather upon his countenance, accompanied with a glance that fixed now upon the sleeve of his coat, now upon the knees of his breeches, where he probably missed some antique patching and darning, which, being executed with blue thread upon a black ground, had somewhat the effect of embroidery, they always took care to turn his attention into some other channel, until his garments, 'by the aid of use, cleaved to their mould.' The only remark ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... period; they compensated themselves, however, for any plainness in dress, by additional extravagances in their head-dresses, and wore "heart-breakers," or artificial curls, which were set out on wires at the sides of the face. Patching and painting soon became common, and many a nonconformist divine lifted up his voice in vain against these vanities. Pepys has left ample details of the dress in this century; and, if we may judge from the entry under the 30th of October, 1663, either he was very liberal in his own expenditure, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... Australia, and more than one woman with a past, and more than one broken old clerk who went wrong and was found out, and who steadied down in jail, and there's more than one poor girl that's been deceived. I could easily replace 'em. And the Lost Souls' Hotel might be the means of patching up many wrecked lives in that way—giving people with pasts the chance of another future, so ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... ashes. My unfortunate workman, having blundered on for certain millions of years tinkering and patching and improving his dismal colony, will give the thing up; and God will laugh and show him the mistakes and then blot the essay out, as a master runs his pen through the errors in a pupil's exercise. The ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... forth. So, in early years, the author of the plays (Bacon, by the theory) had to work over old pieces. All this is the work of the hack of a playing company; it is not work to which a man in Bacon's position could stoop. Why should he? What had he to gain by patching and vamping? Certainly not money, if the wealth of Shakespeare is a dark mystery to the Baconian theorists. We are asked to believe that Bacon, for the sake of some five or six pounds, toiled at refashioning old plays, and handed the ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... balloon silk, big shears, a quick-drying gum solution and a pot of gasproof varnish, ready for the job of patching up the hole. But first they had to empty the big bag of gas. This was speedily done, for already enough had escaped to wrinkle the bag like a walnut, ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... the old in years, in sorrow and knowledge, will sit darning the rents and patching the bad places with their trembling hands, as their wise old heads nod and their dear old mouths murmur a prayer, and yet be unable to teach the young how to keep the fabric of life whole, or ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... taken by the Governor and the Intendant. All agreed upon the necessity of completing the walls of Quebec and of making a determined stand at every point of the frontier against the threatened invasion. In case of the sudden patching up of a peace by the negotiators at Aix La Chapelle—as really happened—on the terms of uti possidetis, it was of vital importance that New France hold fast to every shred of her territory, both East ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... to rule the world: Siegfried is the only man to get it; and after he has got it, Mime will avert the Wanderer's prophesied disaster by poisoning him. He tells the history of Sieglinda also, and Siegfried knows he is the hero. He will have no patching of the sword: that sword was Wotan's and subject to his will; he grinds it to powder, and makes one of his own, with which he will face either man or god. In the making of it he sings the glorious Sword-song; and when ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... thousand islands, he journeys and sails through Pliny, Marco Polo, Odoric de Pordenone,[675] Albert d'Aix, William of Boldensele, Pierre Comestor, Jacques de Vitry, bestiaries, tales of travels, collections of fables, books of dreams, patching together countless marvels, but yet, as he assures us, omitting many so as not to weary our faith: It would be too long to say all; "y seroit trop longe chose a tot deviser." With fanciful wonders are mingled many real ones, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... transported up-stairs by his faithful Bulke, and Jacob Fleischmann strolled about on deck, or reclined in the steamer chairs, which even the trading vessel possessed. Stoss needed some massaging and patching up, and while the physicians were busy with him, he crowed and cawed in his ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... with him, who had been unfortunately reprieved from the gibbet in their own country, served to swell the mass of mutiny. The admiral exhausted art, negotiation, entreaty, force, and succeeded at length in patching up a specious reconciliation by such concessions as essentially impaired his own authority. Among these was the grant of large tracts of land to the rebels, with permission to the proprietor to employ an allotted number of the natives in its cultivation. This was the origin of the celebrated system ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... sylvan or rural in the immediate village, and is as ugly a place as mortal man could contrive to make, or to render uglier through a succession of untidy generations. The fashion of paving the village-street, and patching one shabby house on the gable-end of another, quite shuts out all verdure and pleasantness; but, I presume, we are not likely to see a more genuine old Scotch village, such as they used to be in Burns's time, and long before, than this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... once," the Itinerant Tinker said, "but I ran out of paper and gave it up. Then, when the night fell," he resumed dolefully, after another long interval of silence, "I tried to prop it up. But I met with the same difficulty that confronted me in patching up the day, and was forced to abandon ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... gleams From the blue-arched illimitable heaven Could glide with lightness airier than she To hang the garment round her mother's neck; And then strike, womanlike, the folds in place; Kissing the thankful lips, and deftly fix The fastening at her throat. While pondering thus And patching these rich fragments, strange it seems What little things obtrude on my regard! I now remember every sculptured group, And painted scene, and portrait, figured vase, Each print unique, and gem, we once ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... to have spent the rest of his life quietly in the country, enjoying the fresh air and the old English sports—'repenting at leisure moments,' as Shakspeare has it, of the early pruriencies of his muse; or, as the same immortal bard says of Falstaff, 'patching up his old body' for a better place. The date of his death is not exactly ascertained; but he seems to have got considerably to the shady side of seventy ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... for she spoke of them at present with the last frankness, telling him of her visit to her father and giving him, in an account of her subsequent scene with her sister, an instance of how she was perpetually reduced to patching up, in one way or another, that ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... he meant, from that appearance of variation from the usual human type. If he had practically escaped remark, as she pretended, by doing, in the most important particular, what most men do—find the answer to life in patching up an alliance of a sort with a woman no better than himself—how had she escaped it, and how could the alliance, such as it was, since they must suppose it had been more or less noticed, have failed to make her rather ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... few volleys before Humphreys received orders to give up his advanced position and fall back to the ridge itself. There he turned at bay. Hancock, who had been placed in command of the First, Second, and Third Corps, was indefatigable in his vigilance and personal supervision, "patching the line" wherever the enemy was likely to break through. His activity and foresight probably preserved the ridge from capture. Toward the last Meade brought forward Lockwood's Maryland brigade from the right and sent them in to cover Sickles' retreat. Humphreys was followed up by the brigades ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... your dad will have to hustle to beat you and me, I'm thinking," and with pardonable pride the mother, who had often been termed "Chief of Franklin police," went on with the mending of socks and thrifty patching ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... little sickness in the Bay, and after patching up a lumberman at Grampus River, and providing some medicine for old Molly Budd's rheumatics, Andy and Jamie turned homeward with ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... said the skipper one day, pointing out over the bow. "We'll make a round of the fleets, and you'll have a chance to get busy patching the ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... wagon wheels was broken, and in the course of an hour or two, Willis and I succeeded in patching up the shattered body sufficiently to hold the hogs. But how to get the heavy brutes off the ground and up into the wagon was a task beyond our resources. When you try to take a live hog off its feet, he ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... first morning at Silverado, when we were full of business, patching up doors and windows, making beds and seats, and getting our rough lodging into shape, Irvine and his sister made their appearance together, she for neighbourliness and general curiosity; he, because he was working for me, to my sorrow, cutting firewood at I forget how ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fair-haired girl of about fifteen, dressed in European clothes. I fainted from loss of blood, and don't remember anything else until I found myself in a tent, with two Cossacks patching up my wound. When I came to, she rushed forward, and thanked me profusely for saving her. To my surprise, she spoke in French, and on inquiry I found that she was the daughter of a certain Baron Conrad de Hetzendorf, an Austrian, who possessed a house in Budapest and a chateau at Semlin, in ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... little turret that remains On the plains, By the caper overrooted, by the gourd Overscored, 40 While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks Thro' the chinks— Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time Sprang sublime, And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced As they raced, And the monarch and his minions and ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... the next afternoon when Dick drove slowly along the trail. The three men were flat on their backs under the absorber, patching leaks, when they heard the squeak of the wagon and the soft tread of horses' hoofs in the sand. They made no attempt to ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... palefac'd, quiet; her young man went back on her four years ago; his folks would not let him marry a convict's sister. She sits by the window, sewing on the children's clothes, the clothes not only patching up; her hunger for children of her own invisibly ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... our Social meeting on the morning of the 26th, we had pleasant talks and addresses, after which the industrial work, papers on nursing and examination papers were exhibited. There were dresses, aprons, undergarments, sets of button-holes, quilts, skirts, cushions, specimens of darning and patching, and various fancy articles, some of them exceedingly well done. We also had delicate work from the kindergarten and primary rooms; paper folding and card sewing, showing ...
— American Missionary, Volume 50, No. 8, August, 1896 • Various
... famous surgeon some day, I feel sure," Roxanne said, as she began on another interminable job of stocking-patching. "And Douglass is going to be a Supreme Judge of the United States while I help him. Just as soon as the money comes we shall all go to college, Lovey, Douglass, Uncle Pomp and I, to get ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... sitting on the bed with a studiously vacant expression. It was Smith's policy not to seem, except by request, to take any interest in, or, in fact, to be aware of anything unusual that Steelman might be doing—from patching his pants to ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... life of nineteen years I can look back and see a time when she was all gentleness and refinement, but the polish has been worn off it by years and years of scrubbing and scratching, and washing and patching, and poverty and husbandly neglect, and the bearing of burdens too heavy for delicate shoulders. Would that we were more companionable, it would make many an oasis in the desert of our lives. Oh that I could take an all-absorbing ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... the end, nor estimate the claims that are yet to be made in the cause of patriotism. The nations engaged, at least the chief of them, are fixed irrevocably in their determination that peace, when it comes, shall be no temporary patching up of hostilities and arranging of indemnities, but a solid, lasting settlement, which shall, as far as possible, place another vast European war out of ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... Van Reypen, I've already exhausted myself this evening patching up one spoiled friendship, and it's just about worn me out! Now if ours needs any patching up, you'll have to do it yourself. I shan't ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... shawl of her own. Polikey's shirt was all ready, nice and clean, but his shoes badly needed repairing, and this fact caused his devoted wife much anxiety. She took from her own feet the thick woollen stockings she was wearing, and gave them to Polikey. She then began to repair his shoes, patching up the holes so as to protect his ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... rudimentary cup-stage and containing no provisions has a hole, three or four millimetres (.11 to.15 inch.—Translator's Note.) wide, made in it at the bottom. A few moments later, this orifice is stopped by the Mason. We have already witnessed a similar patching. The insect, having finished, starts foraging. I reopen the hole at the same place. The pollen runs through the aperture and falls to the ground as the Bee is rubbing off her first load in the cell. The damage is undoubtedly observed. When plunging ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... its author borrows from previous systems, is a commonplace work, whose method consists in constantly explaining the known by the unknown, and in giving entites for abstractions, and tautologies for proofs. Its whole theodicy is a work not of genius but of imagination, a patching up of neo-Platonic ideas. The psychological portion amounts to nothing, M. Lamennais openly ridiculing labors of this character, without which, however, metaphysics is impossible. The book, which treats of logic ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... herself; and even afterwards, when she could breathe more freely and began to frame her own laws, these, since they were blended with ancient ordinances which were bad, could not themselves be good; and thus for the two hundred years of which we have trustworthy record, our city has gone on patching her institutions, without ever possessing a government in respect of which she could truly be ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... attendance on scores of intriguing factors and brokers ashore), the requisite stores for the fleet, Paul sat in his cabin in a half-despondent reverie, while Israel, cross-legged at his commander's feet, was patching ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... out no dress and make it, but I can use a needle on patching and quilting. Can't nobody beat me doin' that. I can knit, too. I can make stockings, gloves, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... embroidered your virtues—for twenty marks; the contractor, who had grown rich on your streets, delivered a eulogy; the chiropodist, who acquired practice through your beautiful street stones, had a medallion struck of you; then the wagonmaker, who made money patching up wagons, named a vehicle after you; and last, the shoemaker held a memorial fest in your honor. Then it was done! Your son-in-law, the burgomaster, sent out a subscription blank for a statue no one dared refuse, and now ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... necessarily out of the great doctrine of Christ's Person, that for me to give up those doctrinal points alleged to be non-essential is to give up all, to give up the whole Gospel. And what good would come of patching up such a hollow peace? At the first favorable opportunity Schmucker would break it, and even if he seemed to keep quiet, he would be secretly and incessantly working and machinating against our side of the house. And, what is more, the ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... work mending garments apparently unmendable, pressing, steaming, patching, sewing on buttons. The ragged uniforms come out of that big bare room clean and whole, ready to be tied up in new burlap bags, tagged, and placed in racks of fresh white cedar. There is no odour in this room, although innumerable old ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... wherever one looked, of that old spell of la douce France! And now! Under the pall of the fog we drove through the silent ruin of the streets, still on their feet, so to speak, as at Verdun, but eyeless, roofless, and dead, scarcely a house habitable, though here and there one saw a few signs of patching up and returning habitation. And in the great square before the Cathedral instead of the old comeliness, the old stir of provincial and commercial life—ruin!—only intensified by a group of motors, ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... consequence is that they have been obliged to find such a logic as would bring the conclusions they require out of the canonical books. And a queer logic it is; nothing but the Roman forge can be compared with the Protestant loom. The picking, the patching, the piecing, which goes to the Protestant termini ad quem,[73] would be as remarkable to the general eye, as the Roman manufacture of termini a quo,[74] if it were not that the world at large seizes the character of an asserted fact better than that of a mode of inference. A grand ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... have been allowed to carry more than three hundred passengers, not less than nine hundred and fifty soldiers were packed. Most of the vessels were antiquated and inadequate; not a few were badly decayed. With a little superficial patching up they were imposed upon the Government. Despite his knowing that only vessels adapted for ocean service were needed, Vanderbilt chartered craft that had hitherto been almost entirely used in navigating inland waters. Not a single precaution was taken by him or his associates to ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... were below. Some of the men lay smoking in their bunks, others in their hammocks with their boots over the edge; one was patching a coat, another greasing his boots; others were seated in a group talking; while under the lamp were a couple of men playing at cards upon a chest, three or four watching and holding on by the ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... turret that remains On the plains, By the caper overrooted, by the gourd Overscored, While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks Through the chinks— Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time Sprang sublime, And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced As they raced, And the monarch and his minions and his ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... matter; if they do tear up the system, then shall we all have reason to rejoice at these disasters, apart from our sympathy with individual sufferings. More good will have been done by this one great shock to the heart of England than by fifty years' more patching, and pottering, and knocking impotent heads together. What makes me most angry is the ministerial apology. 'It's always so with us for three campaigns,'!!! 'it's our way,' 'it's want of experience,' &c. &c. That's precisely ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... on the other, had caused to break out into explosive action what was nothing more than an inner prompting. We are strangely mistaken as to the part played by poetic imagination, if we think it pieces together its heroes out of fragments filched from right and left, as though it were patching together a harlequin's motley. Nothing living would result from that. Life cannot be recomposed; it can only be looked at and reproduced. Poetic imagination is but a fuller view of reality. If the characters created by a poet give us the impression of life, it is only because they are the poet ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... very small stars around it. But the moon is not a success because it can only be understood if the stars too are intelligible, and the stars are not worked out. And so what I produce is not literature, but something like the patching of Trishka's coat. What am I to do? I don't know, I don't know. I must trust to time ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... is in such hurly-burly. Some of the men are loading the cannon, and some are examining the great gates, and the walls all round, and are hammering and patching up, just as if all those repairs had never been made, that were so long about. But what is to become of me and you, ma'amselle, and Ludovico? O! when I hear the sound of the cannon, I shall die with fright. If I could but catch the great gate open for one minute, I would be even with it for ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... nature to subdue. You had better not press them too far. Do not drive them to the goal of last resort. Give them justice while you have it in your power to do so. Satisfy them that ultimately they shall have equality in this broken Government, or Union, if you will. But, sir, I leave the patching up of the Constitution to the distinguished Senator from Kentucky and other gentlemen, especially my friend from Pennsylvania [Mr. BIGLER], who has labored harder to patch up the Constitution than any man I ever knew, except my friend ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... of taking the violator to my heart? Can I vow duty to one so wicked, and hazard my salvation by joining myself to so great a profligate, now I know him to be so? Do you think your Clarissa Harlowe so lost, so sunk, at least, as that she could, for the sake of patching up, in the world's eye, a broken reputation, meanly appear indebted to the generosity, or perhaps compassion, of a man, who has, by means so inhuman, robbed her of it? Indeed, my dear, I should not think my penitence for the rash step I took, any thing better than a specious delusion, if I had ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... rang again. Well, to tell truth, we had so much playing in the convent garden, and such a long walk home in the evening, that we were generally rather tired and glad to get quickly to bed as mamma bade us. She, poverina! always sat up, patching and darning, long after we were in bed, so that we might ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... idle. She had sat idle only once that he remembered—the day they had brought Ned Shelley in, dank and dripping, after the August storm ten years before. Mrs. Shelley sat by the crooked, small-paned window and looked out down the harbour. The coat she had been patching for her husband when the Camerons came still lay in her lap, and she had folded her hands upon it. She was a big woman, slow of speech and manner, with a placid, handsome face—a face that had not visibly stirred even when she had heard the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... bread-winning, child-rearing, death-awaiting men and women who fill this huge, palpitating world of ours! It would be worth while to pass a week or a month among the plain, average people of Stratford. What is the relative importance in human well-being of the emendations of the text of Hamlet and the patching of the old trousers and the darning of the old stockings which task the needles of the hard-working households that fight the battle of life in these narrow streets and alleys? I ask the question; ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Russia will fatally result either in the defeat of the Russian Army by the Germans, and the patching up of a peace between the Austro-German coalition and the Franco-British coalition at the expense of Russia-or in a ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... I said, and was about to explain that I was from another world, thinking that by patching a truce with these fellows and fighting with them against the therns I might enlist their aid in regaining my liberty. But just at that moment a heavy object smote me a resounding whack between my shoulders that nearly felled ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... off his fur cap. "If Miss Rawlinson would like to see Mrs. Sandberg, I'll drive her round," he suggested. "We'll catch you in a league or so. Gregory has a bit of patching to do on his ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... Northwest Fur Company. It would disgrace them forever. Think of the honor of conquering disaster. Then he vowed that he would go ahead, whether the men accompanied him or not. Then he set them to patching the canoe with oil-cloth and bits of bark; but large sheets of birch bark are rare in the Rockies; and the patched canoe weighed so heavily that the men could scarcely carry it. It took them fourteen hours to make the three-mile portage of these rapids. The Indian from the mountain tribe ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... nether garments. The same insatiate demand finally consumed the whole coat, in a vain attempt to prevent an exposure of person greater than consistent with the usages of society. The pantaloons—or what, by courtesy, I called such, were a monument of careful and ingenious, but hopeless, patching, that should have called forth the admiration of a Florentine artist in mosaic. I have been shown—in later years—many table tops, ornamented in marquetry, inlaid with thousands of little bits ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... commenced the Sicilian war, but it was protracted by various delays during a long period [122]; at one time for the purpose of repairing his fleets, which he lost twice by storm, even in the summer; at another, while patching up a peace, to which he was forced by the clamours of the people, in consequence of a famine occasioned by Pompey's cutting off the supply of corn by sea. But at last, having built a new fleet, and obtained twenty ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... and when Washington was in public life she played her part well. No brilliant sallies of wit spoken by her on any occasion have come down to us, but we know that at Valley Forge she worked day and night knitting socks, patching garments and making shirts for the loyal band of winter patriots who stood by their leader and their cause in the darkest hour ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... that Akakiy Akakievitch's cloak served as an object of ridicule to the officials: they even refused it the noble name of cloak, and called it a cape. In fact, it was of singular make: its collar diminishing year by year, but serving to patch its other parts. The patching did not exhibit great skill on the part of the tailor, and was, in fact, baggy and ugly. Seeing how the matter stood, Akakiy Akakievitch decided that it would be necessary to take the cloak to Petrovitch, the tailor, who lived somewhere on the fourth floor up ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... our Lord proclaim the newness and completeness of His gospel. It was in no sense a patching up of Judaism. He had not come to mend old and torn garments; the cloth He provided was new, and to sew it on the old would be but to tear afresh the threadbare fabric and leave a more unsightly rent than at first. Or to change the figure, new wine could not safely be entrusted to old bottles. ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... with the Vandyke beard, cutting into a cake, you may not need to be told, is Patching, the painter of those delicious interiors which have been seen every year by those who had eyes to find them, in obscure corners at the rooms of the National Academy of Design. In short, Patching is the subject of a conspiracy in which the Hanging Committee is implicated. But though professional ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... to the performances of artists also.... The observations which he made on poetry, on life, and on everything about us, I applied to our art; with what success others must judge. Perhaps an artist in his studies should pursue the same conduct, and instead of patching up a particular work on the narrow plan of imitation, rather endeavour to acquire the art ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... was modified by recollections of the past. Burgundy and Orleans had once before sworn a solemn friendship, and yet a week or two later Orleans lay dead in the streets of Paris, murdered by the order of Burgundy. Was it likely that the present patching up of the quarrel would have a much longer duration? On the former occasion the quarrel was a personal one between the two great houses, now all France was divided. A vast amount of blood had been shed, there had been cruel massacres, executions, and wrongs, and the ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... [FOOTNOTE: "Grosses Concert in E moll. Op. 11." Bearberet von Carl Tausig. Score, pianoforte, and orchestral parts. Berlin: Ries and Erler.] I shall only say that his cutting-down and patching-up of the introductory tutti, to mention only one thing, are not well enough done to excuse the liberty taken with a great composer's work. Moreover, your emendations cannot reach the vital fault, which lies ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... be only too willing, if I knew how," instantly flashed back the other, "but unfortunately my education was neglected when it came to patching up boats, and tinkering with machinery. I'm ashamed to confess to that, but it's the whole sad truth. But, thank goodness, we've got a scoutmaster who can do the job mighty near as well as any machinist going. ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... helped the sled in. They built our igloo in short order, and during the time we were with them did everything in their power to contribute to our comfort. It seemed as if some one was on the roof of our igloo all the time patching up holes, and they changed the direction of the doorway every time the wind changed, and that kept them busy nearly ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... it," Hastings explained. "This island land is the most productive in the world. This section of California is like Holland. You wouldn't think it, but this water we're sailing on is higher than the surface of the islands. They're like leaky boats—calking, patching, pumping, night and day and all the time. But it pays. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... when a gentle rain, followed by several warm days came right after the sowing. A soaking rain or a series of cold damp days might have spoiled the work. The only way to have a good lawn from a poor piece of land is to do a thorough piece of work. Patching ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... in the last vessels from Europe, A treatise on ogling, simpering, flirting, gigling, painting, patching, perfuming, &c. very useful to every Lady—and much in demand. Also, The Art of burning dimples in ladies' cheeks and chins—of repairing female tongues that wear with using—of setting eyes fashionably in their sockets—of giving the face a ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... its case, and would have liked to find more definite proof of Lanrivain's complicity than the statement of the herb-gatherer, who swore to having seen him climbing the wall of the park on the night of the murder. One way of patching out incomplete proofs in those days was to put some sort of pressure, moral or physical, on the accused person. It is not clear what pressure was put on Anne de Cornault; but on the third day, when she was brought ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... patching, and an immense deal of talk and consultation, occupied that and a good deal of the following day, the rest of which was given up to the repairing of an immense pair of green baize shoes, without which Aunt Patsy could not be persuaded to go into the outer air. It was Saturday ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... in good taste, spotless from dirt, and suited both to the weather and the occasion; doing for herself what her own personal needs require; arranging flowers; entertaining company; nursing the sick; "letting down" and "letting out" to suit the growing ones; patching, darning, knitting, crocheting, braiding, quilting,—but let us remember the warning of the old saying, and forbear ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... at Mademoiselle Reisz's front room door and entered, she discovered that person standing beside the window, engaged in mending or patching an old prunella gaiter. The little musician laughed all over when she saw Edna. Her laugh consisted of a contortion of the face and all the muscles of the body. She seemed strikingly homely, standing there in the afternoon light. She still wore the shabby lace ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... former may be conceived. The wheel was an utter smash. No patching however thorough, no care however tender, could place it on its edge again a perfect wheel. A hill rose before them, behind which the Spaniards, hitherto their companions, had disappeared half an hour previously, and were now rolling on over the palin beyond ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... savings on it. Some of his decorations, indeed, were so awkward that they would have excited many people's smiles. The replastering of the stonework soon tired him: so he contented himself with patching up the church walls all round to a height of some six feet from the ground. La Teuse mixed the plaster. When she talked of repairing the parsonage as well, for she was continually fearing that it would topple down on their heads, he told her that he did not think he could manage ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... enough material on land or sea to supply the demand for ready-made garments. As it is, I'm afraid the poor devils will have to go naked themselves until a new crop springs up. I saw one of Pootoo's wives patching his best suit of breech clothes to-day, so he must be ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... paradas, "the waters have stopped." The muddy streets, in a few days, dry up; groups of young fellows are now seen seated on the shady sides of the cottages making arrows and knitting fishing-nets with tucum twine; others are busy patching up and caulking their canoes, large and small; in fact, preparations are made on all sides for the much longed-for "verao," or summer, and the "migration," as it is called, of fish and turtle— that is, their descent from the inaccessible pools in the forest to the main ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... Jessie demurely. She was patching a pair of leather trousers for Fergus and she did not raise her ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... worm. She smiled kindly on me, much as a goddess designs to sweeten the life of a mortal with a glance. She smiled in gentle rebuke as she noted my torn and stained garments and the moccasins so sadly in need of patching. ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... occasionally a flash of foreign individuality would break through the husk of satisfaction in which he had inclosed himself, compelling him to feel that another man might have claims. And hitherto he had been very successful in patching up and keeping entire his eggshell of conceit. But that affair with Alec was a very bad business. Had Beauchamp been a coward, he would have suffered less from it. But he was no coward, though not quite so courageous as ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... they were leading unfortunately suggested no remedy. They thought they could drive women back to the water pitcher and the loom, but that was impossible. The clock of time will not turn back. Neither is it by a return to hand-sewing, or a resurrection of quilt-patching that women of the present day will save the race. The old avenues of labor are closed. It is no longer necessary for women to spin and weave, cure meats, and make household remedies, or even fashion the garments for their household. All these things are done ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... stock of the way the wall was made, and found that for the most part it was cut through solid chalk; but here and there, where the chalk failed or was broken away, they had lined the walls with brick, patching them now on this side, now on that, and now all round. By degrees the light, which was dim even overground that rainy day, died out in the well, till all was black as night but for my candle, and ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... crew was patching the Argo and pumping the water from her hold, the lookout yelled that another sail was making for them. Without hesitation Talbot somehow got this absurdly impudent one-masted craft of his under way and ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... them; for, as they do not understand what I call poetry, we talk in a foreign language to each other. Indeed, many of these gentlemen appear to me to be a sort of tinkers, who, unable to make pots and pans, set up for menders of them, and, God knows, often make two holes in patching one. The sixth canto is altogether redundant; for the poem should certainly have closed with the union of the lovers, when the interest, if any, was at an end. But what could I do? I had my book and my page still ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... book on this campaign, then recently published, his statement that the brigades of Lane and Conrad rallied at the river but were not again carried into action. When Cox made that statement he was more concerned in patching up that fatal gap in the battle line of his own command without any outside assistance, than he was in ascertaining the truth, and he took that way to dispose of two entire brigades. In his first official report, for he made two reports, Cox ...
— The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee • John K. Shellenberger
... sentiments as dull as they were false, and a continual outrage on manners, morals and common sense, were its leading features. Yet, strange to tell, the audience endured it all; and, by copious retrenchments and plaistering and patching, this very piece had ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... was she But dressing, patching, repartee; 40 And, just as humour rose or fell, By turns a slattern or a belle; 'Tis true she dress'd with modern grace, Half naked at a ball or race; But when at home, at board or bed, 45 Five greasy nightcaps wrapp'd her head. Could so much beauty condescend To be a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... thing of which you must particularly beware," continued Lord Marney, "there is one thing worse even than getting into difficulties—patching them up. The patching-up system is fatal; it is sure to break down; you never get clear. Now, what I want to do for you, Charles, is to put you right altogether. I want to see you square and more than square, in a position which will for ever guarantee you from ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... were driven in and forced to join the main ranks for safety. The Mormon troops were placed in position by the officers, so as to guard every point. We all had a large supply of bullets, with the patching sewed on the balls to facilitate the loading of our guns, which were muzzle loaders. The Mormon force was about eight hundred strong, poorly armed; many of the men had no guns; some had single-barrel pistols and a few homemade swords. These ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... great joy at the thought of living with "Miss Agnes," seemed to have forgotten the painful circumstance which compelled her to leave home. But on the day that her mother finished patching her few clothes, tying them up and telling her she might go at once to her new home, there came sad tidings from the hospital. They need never hope to have the husband and father home again, unless to take one last look before they buried him ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd
... neglect of constitutional obligations, deemed it his duty to assist in making a united effort to save the Union. If he believed the present state of public sentiment of the North was to be enduring, he would say it is folly to talk about patching up the Union; but he looked forward to a reaction of public sentiment. Amendments to the Constitution, legal enactments, or repeal of personal liberty laws are not worth a straw unless the popular sentiment ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... flies, and consisted of a framework of ti-tree poles and branches, roofed with grass and pig-face; under this we slung our mosquito-nets and enjoyed perfect peace. A few days in camp are by no means idle ones, for numerous are the jobs to be done—washing and mending clothes, patching up boots and hats, hair cutting, diary writing, plotting our course, arranging photograph plates (the majority of which were, alas! spoilt by the heat), mending a camera cracked by the sun, making hobble-straps, mending and stuffing saddles, rearranging packs cleaning firearms, and ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... stretchers on rubber-tyred wheels about the paths, stretchers on which motionless forms lay shrouded in blankets. One, concerning whom I asked, had just had part of his skull trepanned: another had suffered amputation. And all this pruning and patching up of broken men to win them a few more years of crippled life caught one's throat like the penetrating smell of the iodoform. Nor was I sorry to hasten away by the night mail northwards to the camps. It was still dark as we passed ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... Nat, "and it would do a lot toward patching up a fellow's finances. Let's see. Where's that itinerary? Suppose we make it two ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... sounds, my Philo, brought into my head that old anecdote about the Sinopean. A report that Philip was marching on the town had thrown all Corinth into a bustle; one was furbishing his arms, another wheeling stones, a third patching the wall, a fourth strengthening a battlement, every one making himself useful somehow or other. Diogenes having nothing to do—of course no one thought of giving him a job—was moved by the sight to ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... case, were it not better to let the race die out, instead of laboriously piecing and patching at a too old garment, and so leave room for a new race to come up, which the fruit of experience, both sweet and bitter, left behind in books, might enable ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... hard at work patching up one side of the improvised hut when he heard a movement in the brushwood not far away. Fearing some wild animal he ran for his gun, but ere he could reach the firearm ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... vague imaginings, For every hour has wings. Yet my heart watches . . . as I work I say, All simply, to Him: "Come! And if to-day, Then wilt Thou find me thus: just as I am— Tending my household; stirring goose- berry jam; Or swiftly rinsing tiny vests and hose, With puzzled forehead patching some one's clothes; Guiding small footsteps, swift to hear, and run, From early dawn till setting ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... tell others what they know, and turn them slowly toward the haven. Imperative, accumula- tive, sweet demands rest on my retirement from life's bustle. What, then, of continual recapitulation of tired [20] aphorisms and disappointed ethics; of patching breaches widened the next hour; of pounding wisdom and love into sounding brass; of warming marble and quench- ing volcanoes! Before entering the Massachusetts Meta- physical College, had my students achieved the point [25] whence they could have derived most benefit from their ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... whatsoever to suppose that he did: for scripture gives us no hint or warrant that he did; and if we have any real or honest reverence for scripture, we shall be careful to let it tell its own story, and believe that it contains all things necessary for salvation, without our patching our own notions into it over and above. Wise men are generally agreed that those old prophets did not, for the most part, comprehend the full meaning of their own words. Not that they were mere puppets and mouthpieces, speaking what to them was nonsense—God forbid!—But ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... novelty: Descartes himself did not do so, but ignored his subjective first principles in the development of his system; and it was not until adopted by Kant, or rather by Fichte, that the transcendental method showed its true colours. Even today philosophers fumble with it, patching soliloquy with physics and physics with soliloquy. Moreover, Locke's misunderstandings of Descartes were partly justified by the latter's verbal concessions to tradition and authority. A man who has a clear ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... she said abruptly. 'He knew every animal on the place. In his regiment they called him the "vet.," because he was always patching up the sick and broken mules. One of his last messages to me was about an old horse. He taught me a few things—and sometimes I am of use—till ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the old boys all right, Dan. Vose is in the pension-office; Ambrose and Sturdivant are in the adjutant-general's office patching up the Civil War rolls, with orders to take their time about it. And you'll ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... the painter had planned his picture so as to convey its message and meaning, he did try to make it beautiful to look upon, and he often succeeded. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it was beauty of outline and a pleasant patching together of bright colours for which the painters strove, both in pictures and in manuscripts. If you think of this picture for a moment as a coloured pattern, you will see how pretty it is. The blue wings against the gold background make a hedge for ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... weakened, and no one was satisfied. 'Whigs, Tories, and Radicals,' wrote Greville, 'join in full cry against them, and the "Times," in a succession of bitter vituperative articles very well done, fires off its contempt and disgust at the paltry patching-up of the Cabinet.' ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... Look at this country all cut up into silly little parallelograms, look at all those villas we passed just now and those potato patches and that tarred shanty and the hedge! Somebody's minding every bit of it like a dog tied to a cart's tail. Patching it and bothering about it. Bothering! Yapping at every passer-by. Look at that notice-board! One rotten worried little beast wants to keep us other rotten little beasts off HIS patch,—God knows why! Look ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... absent buttons. With this experience, it will not be long before she will begin to take an interest in her own clothes, and so will not need to be warned that a button is coming off or that the hem of her skirt is coming out. But, of course, she could not begin by sewing or patching her own clothes, nor by mending intricate tears. First see that she sews on buttons correctly and then ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... the crown of sovereignty upon the head of whatever person first enters the city gate in the morning, and commit the kingdom to his charge." It happened that the first man that presented himself at the city gate was a beggar, who had passed his whole life in scraping broken meat and in patching rags. The ministers of state and nobles of the court fulfilled the conditions of the king's will, and laid the keys of the treasury and ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... indicates that she will find trouble facing her when she imagines her happiest moments are approaching near. If she tries to hide the patches, she will endeavor to keep some ugly trait in her character from her lover. If she is patching, she will assume duties for which she ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... investigation discovered him sound asleep, curled up like a dog, on the deck. Assured as to this, I ventured up the companion stairs, and indulged in a glance forward. Except for a group of sailors doing some sail patching in the shade of the charthouse, no one was visible. The vessel rocked gently, and far forward there was a sound of hammering. The mate would be there, overseeing the job whatever it might be. There was a dark cloud overshadowing the eastern ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... and talk to you, in spite of what you believe. You've got the gift of sympathy, Jonathan. But I don't approve of you're spending your time in this sort of work—(he waves a hand toward the bench)—which may never come to anything, and in doctoring people for nothing and patching up their troubles. I daresay you enjoy it, but what worries me is how you are ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... chaffing him in their own way, sent as many spears at him as he would stand for. The detention caused by the loss of the horses, was a serious matter, whilst the hostility of the natives was very annoying, keeping the party constantly on the alert. The interval was occupied in patching up the ration tent, with portions of the other two, so that they had now one water-proof to protect their stores. Some good snipe and duck shooting might have been got round these lagoons, but as nearly all their caps had been destroyed by the ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... of all sympathy, all example, all brotherly aid, all protection and countenance in high places? Try yourselves to speak to your brethren heart to heart, conscience to conscience! Try it! but you cannot, busied as you are with watching and patching up in all directions your dykes which the flood is invading: the material existence of this society of yours absorbs all your cares, and requires more than all your efforts. Meanwhile the powers of human thought are growing into strength ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... of the chamber used for sleeping quarters was covered with a thick mattress of dry "snake-grass," and the whole interior was remarkably clean. After blocking and patching up the hole and covering the place with snow, the hunters threw water over it until it froze into a solid mass, then they removed the stakes from the runways and left the rest of the beavers in peace. Loading their catch upon their toboggans, all ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... is ever totally right," said Polly. "You keep patching up things that always have flaws in them. That's how government is." She chuckled, looked up at Orne. "All right, Lewis. We accept." She glanced at Spencer, who shrugged, nodded glumly. Polly looked back at Orne. "Just ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert
... had tried their best to make up for Mariette—with lovely rashers of our own ham, and plum brandy, and patching up my linen, and all sorts of little spoiled-kid tricks—and I noticed they were still slanging each other in the old familiar way! But you talk about a difference! I always had my eye on the door to see if some time or other it wouldn't get a move on and turn into a woman. So I went and saw the ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... come at your bidding and must first of all apologize for some little delay; the cause being that your messenger found me busy patching up a bullet-hole ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... minds? So here's where we tighten up the belt a bit. But we humans, who come into the world alone, and go out of it alone, are always hungering for companionship which we can't quite find. Our souls are islands, with a coral-reef of reserve built up about them. Last night, when I was patching some of Gershom's undies for him, I wickedly worked an arrow-pierced heart, in red yarn, on one leg of his B.V.D.'s. This morning, I noticed, his eye evaded mine and there was marked constraint in his manner. I even begin to detect ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... all eyes are drawn by some strange impulse toward the altar; and while all is mute and watchful, the voice of Margaret is heard from heaven, imploring a baptism for her unborn babe. The author himself cannot feel more sensibly than ourselves the injustice of thus patching together the beauteous fragments of his sorrowful and melodious history in so hugger-mugger a way; but MAGA is peremptory, and hints to us that we cannot command the scope of the 'Edinburgh Review:' The voice ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... together made the best job they could of patching up Jan's wounds a little against the frost and the rub ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... a long and confidential talk; and I perceived that, though he had finally given up all intention of getting me into the church, in the hopes of patching up the holes in the old roof with a mitre, he had fully made up his mind on the subject of a widow. I rejoiced that Mrs Coutts was already disposed of. He talked a long time of jointures, three per cents, India stock; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... Remus—adjusting his spectacles so as to be able to see how to thread a large darning-needle with which he was patching his coat—"one time, way back yander, 'fo' you wuz bomed, honey, en 'fo' Mars John er Miss Sally wuz bomed—way back yander 'fo' enny un us wuz bomed, de animils en de creeturs sorter 'lecshuneer roun' 'mong deyselves, twel at las' dey 'greed fer ter have ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... the diligent patching and the strong tackle told; for they had succeeded in inclosing a goodly portion of a large shoal of mackerel, and the weight seemed more than they ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... checked the breaking of the defenders. But he knew it was like patching rotten material. His influence could not last without Bill and his reinforcements. He plied his guns with a discrimination which no heat or excitement could disturb, and the first invaders fell under his attack amidst a din of fierce-throated ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... of those scenes one cannot soon forget:—a wide, low, little house, whose motherly roof reached over and sheltered a snug little porch. There we sat, after the long hot drive, drinking cool water,—the talkative little storekeeper who is my daily companion; the silent old black woman patching pantaloons and saying never a word; the ragged picture of helpless misfortune who called in just to see the preacher; and finally the neat matronly preacher's wife, plump, yellow, and intelligent. "Own land?" said the wife; "well, only this house." Then she added ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the battle ended, Lord Oliphant and Cyril rowed on board Prince Rupert's ship, where every unwounded man was hard at work getting up a jury-mast or patching up the holes ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... This one is never done talking about her husband, her baby, her experience, her theory, her friends who are about to marry, or who want to marry, or who can't marry. She can't see two persons together without patching up a ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... John went on. "Then understand it about the rest of the country as well. Understand that we are all the time patching our income with our capital; and it answers pretty well because there is a good deal of capital and not so very many of ourselves, as yet. There will be twice as many of us in a few years, and very much ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... of seeing him nursed back to life to go through that agony and ordeal of the inquest again and come out with the same result as if he hadn't been there at all? And I decided—no; no, thanks; not me. It was too much like patching up a dying man in a civilised country for the pleasure of hanging him, or like fatting up a starving man in a cannibal country for the satisfaction of ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... "Atlantic cable" columns of the "Morning Meteor" the tokens of a standing prescription to dilute foreign facts with nine parts domestic verbiage; and this kind of "editing" educates mankind to padding and patching ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... Peggotty came home about nine o'clock, this unfortunate Mrs. Gummidge was knitting in her corner, in a very wretched and miserable condition. Peggotty had been working cheerfully. Ham had been patching up a great pair of waterboots; and I, with little Em'ly by my side, had been reading to them. Mrs. Gummidge had never made any other remark than a forlorn sigh, and had never raised her eyes ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens |
