"Raff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sir George, the worthy Loumle, a knyghte of great renown, Sir Raff, the ryche Rugbe, with dyntes ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... with minute ants, and we have to pick every piece over because of weevils. Existence at night is an unequal fight with rats and cockroaches, and at meals with the stewards for time to eat. The stewards outnumber the passengers, and are the veriest riff-raff I have seen on board ship. At meals, when the captain is not below, their sole object is to hurry us from the table in order that they may sit down to a protracted meal; they are insulting and disobliging, and since illness has been ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... pockets, poverty and starvation staring them in the face—still they came. Doors slammed in their faces, dogs set upon their heels, and ignorant babblers hooting at them—still they came; and the worst of it is they are reducing our own "riff-raff" to their level. The novelist has written about them; the preacher has preached against them; the drunkards have garbled them over in their mouths, and yelped out "Gipsy," and stuttered "scamp" in disgust; the swearer has sworn at them, and our "gutter-scum ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... she? Pretty chippy? Sorry she's laid up. All serene, Raff. Keep it mum, and you shall have the threepenny. Jolly heavy box ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... mucor, rubigo^. slovenry^; slovenliness &c adj.; squalor. dowdy, drab, slut, malkin^, slattern, sloven, slammerkin^, slammock^, slummock^, scrub, draggle-tail, mudlark^, dust-man, sweep; beast. dirt, filth, soil, slop; dust, cobweb, flue; smoke, soot, smudge, smut, grit, grime, raff^; sossle^, sozzle^. sordes^, dregs, grounds, lees; argol^; sediment, settlement heeltap^; dross, drossiness^; mother^, precipitate, scoriae, ashes, cinders. recrement^, slag; scum, froth. hogwash; ditchwater^, dishwater, bilgewater^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... not always shine in this genre—he was admirable. Though he played all the standard repertory, Bach, Beethoven, etc., I can never forget his exquisite rendering of modern works, especially of a little composition by Raff, called La Fee d'Amour. He was the first to play the violin concertos of Saint-Saens, Lalo and Max Bruch. They were all written for him, and I doubt whether they would have been composed had not Sarasate been there to play them. Of course, in his own ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... wound; dirty, unshaven men, in uniforms begrimed and tattered, disorganized, swearing at each other, casting frightened glances backward with no other thought or desire save to escape the pursuing terror behind. They were the riff-raff of the battle, the skulkers, the cowards, the slightly wounded, making pin pricks an excuse for escape. Wagons toiled along in the midst of them, the gaunt mules urged on by whip and voice, while occasionally an ambulance ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... accordance with the practice all along the coast of North America. Even aboard the famous Black Ball Line of Yankee transatlantic packets in the forties there was plenty of 'handspike hash' and 'belaying-pin soup' for shirkers or mutineers. The men before the mast were mostly foreigners and riff-raff Britishers; very few were Yankees or Bluenoses. Discipline had to be maintained; and it was maintained by force. But these were not the real hell ships. 'Hell ships' were commonest among deepwatermen on long voyages round the Horn, or among the whalers when the best class of foremast ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... "mess," as Bill expressed it. The floor was covered with scattered heaps of riff-raff, oilskins, coats, empty bottles, and papers. On the table a box stood, its hinged lid ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... some friends at the Ocean House near by, while Bessie went out for a moonlight sail with some friends from a western city, whom, she said, she had "discovered, not made." Her appreciation of a fine rendering of her favorite Raff Cavatina by a talented young gentleman of the party, soon after her arrival, had been the means of bringing together these two souls on the musical heights, which afterwards had led to an introduction to the other members of the party, all of whom she ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... thousand of the riff-raff and putting them at work on roads, piers, and prisons, applied himself with special energy to the suppression of Marti, the most daring, yet the slyest and most cautious of all the robbers in the country. ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... you, David, that I do not know how to speak," began his mother. "You—always until now a refined, gentlemanly boy,—you to turn yourself into a head hospital nurse, and Poor Society agent! travelling in company with the lowest riff-raff! I don't know what to make of you. Really, I am ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... much learning has made thee mad. A good old fishwives' ballad jingle is worth all your sapphics and trimeters, and 'riff-raff thurlery bouncing.' Hey? have I you there, old lad? Do ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... moment which the responsible Ministers of the Crown thought propitious to throw down the gauntlet to the overwhelming power of America rather than to face what the writer terms the "cabbage-headed riff-raff of the Plaza de la Cevada" of Madrid. Again and again was the absolute inefficiency of the fleet pointed out to them. Even the few ships there were, all of them vastly inferior to those of the United States' navy, ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... and fist with Rios and Escobar and a lot of other riff-raff I don't know. She is instrumental in Betty ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... But over here that signifies nothing; might just as well be Jones or Smith or Brown. We call him Parrot & Co., but the riff-raff have another name for him. The Man Who Never Talked of Home. For two or three seasons he's been going up and down the river. Ragged at times, prosperous at others. Lately it's been rags. He's always ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... Will'm, I 'pose. I reck'n dat 'ere lad hab gone to de bott'm ob de sea long afore dis, or else he get off on de big raff. I know he no go 'long wi' de cappen, 'case I see de little chap close by de caboose after de gig row 'way. If he hab go by de raff dem ruffins sure eat him up,—dat be if dey get hungry. Dey sure do dat! Hark! ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... The riff-raff of the world was moving there, and when not apathetic they took their pleasures with drawn brows and eyes alert for a fight; but the only types Magdalena recognised were the drunken sailors and the occasional blank-faced Chinaman who had ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... on finding themselves rid of them. You must do the same at Madrid. Five-sixths of the town are good, but honest folks should be encouraged, and they cannot be so except by keeping in check the riff- raff. Unless a hundred or so of rioters and ruffians are got rid of, nothing is done. Of that hundred, get twelve or fourteen shot or hanged, and send the rest into France to the galleys. I think it necessary, especially at the first start, that your government should show a little ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... their eyes shifting nervously from group to group of huddling spectators, their shoulders hunched up to their ears—the riff-raff of the garrison—the few desperate, dangerous characters from the surrounding camps, an uncouth, uncanny lot at any time, but looking its worst in the drip of the floating fog-wreaths and the gloom and despond of the dying day. The boom of the sunset gun ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... Khr of the old Egyptians, meaning a "mixed multitude," were originally Phoenicians and domiciled from earliest ages about Lake Menzlah. So the "mixed multitude," or mingled people, which followed Israel from Egypt would be a riff-raff of strangers. D'Herbelot says (sub voce Midian): "Quoyque les Madianites soient reputez pour Arabes, neanmoins ils ne sont pas du nombre des Tribus qui partageoient l'Arabie, et dont les Auteurs nous ont rendu un compte exact dans leur Histoire et dans leurs Genealogies; de sorte ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... ill-balanced, the blackguardly, the unprincipled, the hapless, the shiftless, the unclassed, the sensual and the besotted that shoulder and hustle one another in the world of the theatre; all the riff-raff recruited from the greater world without by the fascinating glare of ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... to pick up some other "fare," not thinking myself and my servant a sufficient cargo to pay well. I tried to find a railway official; but I might almost as well have looked for a flea in a flower-garden—no badges, no distinctive marks, the station full of all the riff-raff of the town;—it was hopeless. At last, by a lucky accident, I saw a man step into a small office, so I bolted after him, like a terrier after a badger, but I could not draw him; he knew nothing about the cabs—he was busy—nay, in short, he would not be bothered. Having experienced ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... tourists—it has not changed in sixty; for it is still small, straggling, and shabby. It had a desperate reputation, morally, in the old keel-boating and early steamboating times—plenty of drinking, carousing, fisticuffing, and killing there, among the riff-raff of the river, in those days. But Natchez-on-top-of-the-hill is attractive; has always been attractive. Even Mrs. Trollope (1827) had to confess ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the same day, Madame Odintsov was sitting in her own room with Bazarov, while Arkady walked up and down the hall listening to Katya's playing. The princess had gone upstairs to her own room; she could not bear guests as a rule, and 'especially this new riff-raff lot,' as she called them. In the common rooms she only sulked; but she made up for it in her own room by breaking out into such abuse before her maid that the cap danced on her head, wig and all. Madame Odintsov was ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... ascertained the spot selected for the scene, I determined to witness it. Accordingly, at noon, the appointed hour, I repaired to an open spot of building-land on the Carondelet side of the city. Here I found assembled a motley assemblage of citizens, negroes, steamboat-hands, and the general riff-raff of the place. Although the crowd was not so great, the meeting strongly reminded me of those scenes of infamy and disgrace in England—public executions; the conduct of the assembled throng on this occasion being the more decorous of the two. Precisely at twelve, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... entertaining a lady of easy virtue; in the box behind, a larrikin quartette from the Pavilion Theatre were holding high revelry. There was no mistaking the character of the place. In the heart of the city's tenderloin it was a haunt of human riff-raff, a palace of gilt and guilt, a first scene in the nightly comedy ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... paralysed his power. All along the right bank of the Upper Niger his bands of hirelings and mercenaries, whom we call Sofas, are constantly raiding for slaves. Indeed Samory's troops are the fiercest and most merciless in this country. They are the riff-raff of the West Soudan and are a terror to friend and foe, a bar to the peaceful settlement of all lands within the range of ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... Chopin; a few etudes of Czerny, Cramer, Clementi, Heller; the mazurkas, nocturnes, and preludes of Chopin; and miscellaneous pieces by modern writers,—Grieg, Rubinstein, Tschaikowsky (and other Russians), Sgambati, Saint-Saens, Moszkowski, Raff, Reinecke, Scharwenka, Schuette, MacDowell,—or any other compositions, vocal or instrumental, in which the student may be interested, or which he ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... the sailors apparently gave themselves up to riotous debauch. The best of the islanders withdrew disillusioned, sad, sullen, resentful over the violation of their sacred burial-places. Only the riff-raff of the natives forgathered with the riotous crew. When the ships at length set sail with a crew sore-headed from dissipation, by way of a climax to the debauch, a number of women ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... with the other; by her side her assistant, Mr. T. Sandys, a pen balanced on his ear. For a whole hour did they wait, but though many of the worthiest poor had been enrolled as members, the few who appeared with their pennies were notoriously riff-raff. At eight Miss Ailie disconsolately sent Tommy home, but he was back in ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... riff-raff of the wharves, the town, the gutters. Such women! such wrecks of women! and all the juvenile rag-tag. The lower steamboat-landing, well covered with sugar, rice, and molasses, was being rifled. The men smashed; the women scooped up the smashings. The river was overflowing ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... soon be obliged, if we pay any attention to the chatter of certain scribblers, to give to every individual a share in the throne or to adopt certain revolutionary ideas, which are mere Punch and Judy shows for the public, manipulated by a band of self-styled patriots, riff-raff, always ready to sell their conscience for a million francs, for an honest woman, or for a ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... I do not wish to be Sosia, be Sosia yourself, by all means. Now that I am he, you either pack, or take a thrashing, you unknown riff raff. ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... musician had such success that a second concert was at once announced. Two were next given at Hildesheim. Then came Leipsic, Hanover and after that Weimer, where Franz Liszt and his retinue of famous pupils held court. Here Johannes became acquainted with Raff, Klindworth, Mason, ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... water. Us n'used to fish in dat pond. One day, me and Matilda tuck off a-fishing. I fell in dat pond, and when I riz up, a raft o' brush held my head under dat water and I couldn't git out no ways. 'Tilda sees my dangerment, and she jump in dat deep water and pull me from under dat raff. She couldn't swim but us both got out. Can't think ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... who were personally attractive to himself. About 1850 the American, Dr. William Mason, was there, and for two years following. The class at this time contained the well known names of Rubinstein, Carl Klindworth, Pruckner, Tausig, Joachim Raff, and Hans von Buelow. From this time on there is scarcely a concert pianist in the world who did not spend a few months or longer with Liszt at Weimar. Nor did his influence stop here. He produced a constant succession of important works, and conducted ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... to Jim's cheek. "So," he said, facing her quickly, "for the sake of a lot of riff-raff and scum that's drifted here around us—jest for the sake of cuttin' a swell before them—you'll go out among the hounds ez allowed your mother was a Spanish nigger or a kanaka, ez called your father a pirate and landgrabber, ez much as allowed he was shot by some one or killed himself a purpose, ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... their behalf were made in a few hours, and our poor fellow-countrymen were soon off for England in the steerage of a huge cotton-loaded freight-steamer, having a new experience in the companionship of Bengalese, Maltese, Arabs, English navvies and riff-raff of all tongues and complexions. In fact, the Overland route, at that time especially, afforded about the most curious aggregation of nationalities and costumes that the world has ever seen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... remarked my presence. His eyes were bent toward the ground: his fingers drummed a tune upon his chest. As he approached, I heard that he was humming something. I even heard the air; it has been impressed upon my memory firmly enough since, though I did not know it then—the air of the march from Raff's Fifth Symphonie, the "Lenore." I heard the tune softly hummed in a mellow voice, as with face burning and glowing, I placed myself before him. Then he looked suddenly up as if startled, fixed upon me a pair of eyes which gave me a kind of shock; so keen, so commanding were they, ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... linger in the moonlight) spans the stream and links the Old Town with the new, which we sometimes term the Flats, but more often simply Over There. It is a sordid huddle of dingy and down-at-the-heel tenements, housing the poorer working classes and the frankly worthless and ruffianly riff-raff of the neighbourhood. There are eight gin-mills Over There as against two sample-rooms in the Old Town, and of the local constabulary two-thirds lead exciting lives patrolling the Flats; the remaining third is ordinarily to be found dozing in ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... Everywhere the strike was discussed, and everywhere, in the Culpeper's circle, Gideon Vetch and his policies were repudiated. It was generally believed that the strike would be called, and that the Governor had been, as old General Plummer neatly put it, "bought off by the riff-raff." There were those, and the General was among them, who thought that Vetch had been definitely threatened by the labour leaders. There were open charges of "shady dealings" in the newspapers; hints that he had got the office of Governor "by striking a bargain" with the faction whose ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... rector of Trinity Church, had brought some strange ideas from London, where he had worked in the slums. He had founded a workman's club, and smoked his pipe with the members; formed a brigade of newsboys and riff-raff, and taught them elementary morality with the aid of boxing-gloves; and offended his congregation by treating the poor with the same consideration as themselves. And then, astonished by the number of mothers who were not wives, ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... establishments; it is a queer place, merely the patio of a private house, with a stage at one end, in which chairs and tables have been placed. On holiday nights it is crammed with students, with countrymen and artisans, with the general riff-raff of the town, and with women of no particular reputation. Now and then appears a gang of soldiers, giving a peculiar note with the uniformity of their brown holland suits; and occasionally a couple of ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... Jedburgh to circuit, where found my old friend and schoolfellow, D. Monypenny.[510] Nothing to-day but a pack of riff-raff cases of petty larceny and trash. Dined as usual with the Judge, and slept at my old ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... then, make it his boast that he cannot disburden his soul within the three hours' limit, and cannot produce plays intelligible or endurable to any audience but a band of adepts. A popular audience, however, does not necessarily mean the mere riff-raff of the theatrical public. There is a large class of playgoers, both in England and America, which is capable of appreciating work of a high intellectual order, if only it does not ignore the fundamental conditions of theatrical presentation. It is an audience of this ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... pity, Massa Roff,' said Cudjo, as we wended our way back to the camp; 'what a pity we make dat fine raff for nuffin!' ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the drawing-room, Marion was seated at the piano, playing a rhapsody of Raff's, and Mrs. Armour and Lali were seated side by side. Frank thrilled at seeing his wife's hand in his mother's. Marion nodded over the piano at the men, and presently played a snatch of Carmen, then wandered off into the barbaric strength of Tannhauser, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... cries, interspersed with an occasional pathetic long- drawn whine, suggested dimly the idea that somebody was playing, or trying to play, on a refractory stringed instrument, the well- worn composition known as Raff's "Cavatina." And, in fact, had the vexed wind been able to break through the wall and embody itself into a substantial being, it would have discovered the producer of the half-fierce, half-mournful noise, in the person of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... music, with or without notes; and from Swiss bell-ringers, Vincent D'Indy, the Paris Opera, and Elgar's Salut d'Amour; and from the doctrine that Massenet was a greater composer than Dvorak; and from Italian bands and Schnellpostdoppelschraubendampfer orchestras; and from Raff's Cavatina and all of Tschaikowsky except ten per centum; and from prima donna conductors who change their programmes without notice, and so get all the musical critics into a sweat; and from the abandoned hussies who sue tenors for breach of promise; and from all alleged musicians ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... drooped. He was so near Nell that she could almost have touched him—so near that she almost dreaded that he must hear the wild throbbings of her heart. Once, as the violin wailed out a passionate, despairing, yet exquisitely sweet passage of the Raff cavatina Falconer was ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... of good counsel and a shrewd experience in life. In the reading-room he saw many of the country clergy and an Archdeacon; there were three journalists and a writer upon the Higher Metaphysic, playing pool; and at dinner only the raff of ordinary club frequenters showed their commonplace and obliterated countenances. None of these, thought Mr. Rolles, would know more on dangerous topics than he knew himself; none of them were fit to give him guidance in his present strait. At length, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... companionship of William Adolphus. In my mind I translated her speech into a declaration that Victoria might have some influence over me although my mother had none, and that William Adolphus would be more wholesome company than my countesses and Wetters and such riff-raff. I was unable to regard William Adolphus as an intellectual resource, and did not associate Victoria with the exercise of influence. The weakness of the Princess's new move revealed the straits to which she felt herself reduced. The ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... signs, as the son of a fool hath been disputing here about had I wist.[55] Out of doubt, the poet is bribed of some that have a mess of cream to eat, before my lord go to bed yet, to hold him half the night with raff-raff of the rumming of Elinor.[56] If I can tell what it means, pray God I may never get breakfast more, when I am hungry. Troth, I am of opinion he is one of those hieroglyphical writers, that by the figures of beasts, plants, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... he can do for himself," added Eskew, "is deliverin' the Daily Tocsin on a second-hand Star bicycle and gamblin' with niggers and riff-raff! None of the nice young folks invite him to their doin's ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... Africa are finer than those in the north; but this is fine for an African. One fellow mounts upon it, and sets off with the world before him, like a knight-errant, seeking an adventure, the rabble at his tail acting as squire. He begins the circuit of the Forum, and picks up its riff-raff as he goes along—here some rascal boys, there some drunken women, here again a number of half-brutalized country slaves and peasants. Partly out of curiosity, partly from idleness, from ill temper, from hope ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... the truth, I did not like your bringing all the riff-raff of the town to eat my ...
— Five Happy Weeks • Margaret E. Sangster
... four bad-rooking men with brasters, and Sonig hire four more that are his countrymen, and they bring these men back and now they are hiding in the woods. And they awrso bring back movie cameras with terescope renses. And Rord Narf raff and say he wirr marry Princess Ryra today before your dead ...
— —And Devious the Line of Duty • Tom Godwin
... having a suffrage amendment incorporated in the constitution. "Oh, if those who attend our meetings could do the voting," wrote Miss Anthony, "it would carry overwhelmingly, but alas, the riff-raff, the paupers, the drunkards, the very chain-gang that I see passing the house on their way to and from the jail, will make their influence felt on the members of the Constitutional Convention." In another letter she said: "I am in the midst of as severe a treadmill ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... two duties awaited the explorer, which he carried out in a way that left a streak both of glory and of shame across his escutcheon. The Sandwich Islands had become the halfway house of the Pacific for the fur traders. How fur traders—riff-raff adventurers from earth's ends beyond the reach of law—may have acted among these simple people may be guessed from the conduct of Cook's crews; and Cook was a strict disciplinarian. Those who sow to the wind, need not be surprised if they reap the whirlwind. White men, ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... family of these Verdurins. But he had entirely severed his connection with what he called "young Verdurin," taking a general view of him as one who had fallen—though without losing hold of his millions—among the riff-raff of Bohemia. One day he received a letter from Swann asking whether my grandfather could put him in touch with the Verdurins. "On guard! on guard!" he exclaimed as he read it, "I am not at all surprised; Swann ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... herd of riff-raff, who, for the miserable sum of sixty thousand francs, of which they pretend I have despoiled them, have carried a complaint against me for an abuse of confidence, and forced me to give up ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... that they do steal with the coolest impunity, and often sell the stolen goods back to the owners, who dare not complain. Sometimes the Dey sends them to sea, when they are allowed to retain part of the spoil; and others are permitted to keep taverns for renegades and the general riff-raff, both of Turks and Christians, to carouze in. Sometimes they may save enough to re-purchase their freedom, but it often happened that a slave remained a slave by preference, sooner than return to Europe and be beggared, and many of them were certainly ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... of Judea by miracle, and so on; but you are as well aware as I am that the subject has been mixed with a heap of nonsense both by Jews and Christians. And as to the connection of our race with Palestine, it has been perverted by superstition till it's as demoralizing as the old poor-law. The raff and scum go there to be maintained like able-bodied paupers, and to be taken special care of by the angel Gabriel when they die. It's no use fighting against facts. We must look where they point; that's what I call rationality. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Cardinal's household. To this Hennage, Arden grants the wardship of his son Peter; and, if he should die, the wardship of Raffe; failing whom, the wardship of John, his third son, 1533. His wife was Margery. Sir Raff Ellerker married Jane, daughter of John Arden, Esq. (Visitation, Yorks, 1563). There is also noted the Inquis. P. M., of Peter Arden, of York, 22 Henry VIII.,[542] and William Arden's lease of Yaresthorpe, Yorks. The priory of nuns at Arden, founded ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... while on Top Notch, that he really had no personal objections to having the stones mined from Rainbow Cliffs, but all unsightly machinery and the riff-raff of miners that would be necessary in such work, must be kept out of sight of the house. He explained that most of the working ends of the project could be stationed back of the cliffs down in the Devil's Causeway, and the ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... out of the Bill so much to heart, Brooke; you've got all the riff-raff of the country on ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... in defense of the saloon. He made up what he called an "ominum gatherum," of "bigots," "hay-seed politicians," "fake philosophers," "cranks," "scamps," "professional sharps," "mad caps of destruction," "preachers who would sell corner lots in heaven," "a riff-raff of moral ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... please a taste fastidious and exacting in such matters—"Oah, my dear fallow, surely you appreciate danger of venturing into nateeve quarters in European dress? As regular-out-and-out sahib, I am meaning, of course. It is permeesible for riff-raff, sailors and Tommies from the Fort, and soa on, to indulge in debauchery among nateeves, but first-class sahib—Oah, noah! You would be mobbed in no-time-at-all, where ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... inaudible to all but the occupants of the sleigh. "Ge wug, Joggles! What is the land coming to, when such doctrines are preached in the pulpits; when those in authority are told 't is their duty to do what the riff-raff think best? As well let their brats and bunters tell us what to do. They'll not force me to attend their meeting, nor to yield ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... ground of Bush street, where an immense sand-*hill with a hollow in its middle, like a crater, struck across the path. Some called this depression Thieves Hollow, for in it deserting sailors, ticket-of-leave men from Botany Bay prison colony and all manner of human riff-raff consorted for ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... hardly tell you, if you won't have Wagstaff, or Pugsby, or Sniggins, or Goldman, or somebody that's respectable, to do what's proper, the child sha'n't be christened at all. As for Prettyman, or any such raff—no, never! I'm sure there's a certain set of people that poverty's catching from, and that Prettyman's one of 'em. Now, Caudle, I won't have my dear child lost by any of your spittoon acquaintance, ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... themselves totally unfitted for their former occupations. Having acquired habits of idleness and a taste for excitement and adventure, no peaceful pursuit can content them. Released from the army, they can turn to no useful work. But it is usually the social riff-raff, discharged prisoners and the like, whom either the struggle for life or their own inclination drives into the ranks. These, their military term over, again turn to their former life of crime, more brutalized and degraded than before. It is a ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... matter with you all?' she demanded; 'have you all gone to sleep? Bring me something to eat at once, do you hear? I'll have the lot of you hanged, precious riff-raff that ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... styles of log architecture; the shanty with corners criss-cross, called hog-pen finish, and the other, the house with the corners neatly finished, called dovetail finish. In Sanger it was a social black eye to live in a house of the first kind. The residents were considered "scrubs" or "riff-raff" by those whose superior axemanship had provided the more neatly finished dwelling. A later division crept in among the "dovetailers" themselves when a brickyard was opened. The more prosperous settlers put up neat little brick houses. To the surprise of all, one Phil O'Leary, a poor ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... when the neighbourhood was annually invaded by troops of pea-pickers—a very miscellaneous collection of humanity comprising at the one extreme broken army men and university graduates, and at the other the lowest riff-raff of the towns. It was Hankin's regular custom to visit the camps where these people were quartered, with the avowed object of "studying human nature," but really for the purpose of spying out the shoeless, ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... happened that afternoon. The battleship got under way and steamed slowly toward the Energon. At half a mile distant the battleship blew up—simply blew up, that was all, her shattered frame sinking to the bottom of the bay, a riff-raff of wreckage and a few survivors strewing the surface. Among the survivors was a young lieutenant who had had charge of the wireless on board the Alaska. The reporters got hold of him first, and he talked. No sooner had the Alaska got under way, he said, ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... money, crazy (dilapidated), crone, crook, croon, cross-grained, cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to cuff (to strike), cleft, din, earnest money, egg on, greenhorn, jack-of-all-trades, loophole, settled, ornate, to quail, ragamuffin, riff-raff, rigmarole, scant, seedy, out of sorts, stale, tardy, trash. How Halliwell ever came to class these words as archaic I cannot imagine; but I submit that any one who sets forth to write about the English of England ought to have sufficient acquaintance with the ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... I found that though Tom had never met Alf personally, the unfortunate outlaw was his Doctor Fell too. And the very spirit of Leviticus breathed in his tone as he informed me that gin he had umquhile kent the nowte belangit tae yon ill-hairtet raff, he wad hae whummelt them owre the burn (the Lachlan a burn! O, my country) lang syne, an' no fashit himsel' wi' ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... shrilly.... But the white horse plodded on. On a stretch of level road he passed a pair talking, noting casually that the woman was a lady from her carriage, and from his threatening cringe that the man was a cad. Italian riff-raff of some kind.... ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... you too! Don't care! Go at least and put some more clothes on. Sitting there like this before this sailor riff-raff." ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... fills. One day is so like another that to see one is to have seen all. The length of the Corso there saunters listlessly an idle, cloak-wrapt, hands-in-pocket-wearing, cigar-smoking, shivering crowd, composed of French soldiers and the rif-raff of Rome, the proportion being one of the former to every two or three of the latter. The balconies, which grow like mushrooms on the fronts of every house, in all out-of-the-way places and positions, are every now ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... end of his verses when there came out upon him from among the trees a horseman of terrible mien covered and clad in steely sheen, who cried out to him, saying, "Stand, O riff-raff of the Arabs! Doff thy dress and ground thine arms gear and dismount thy destrier and be off with thy life!" When Jawamard heard this, the light in his eyes became darkest night and he drew his sabre and drove at Jamrkan, for he it was, saying, "O thief of the Arabs, wilt thou cut the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... office, appears and hails Biquet: "Hey, riff-raff! A letter! Been chasing you an hour. You're never ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... merely a suggestive title, as in the case of some of the compositions of Beethoven, Schumann, and Mendelssohn, or an extended commentary, as in the symphonic poems of Liszt and the symphonies of Berlioz and Raff, the programme has a distinct value to the composer as well as the hearer. It can make the perceptive sense more impressible to the influence of the music; it can quicken the fancy, and fire the imagination; it can prevent a gross misconception of the intentions of a composer and ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... mouthing, the very fact of debate being considered necessary to the settlement of all questions makes the public mind less hasty and more cautious. "Thus saith the Lord" men can only succeed at present among the intellectual riff-raff ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... were not sailors—the riff-raff of many ports they were; and now with them it was every man for himself. This feeling without proper knowledge worked their undoing. The ropes were released, one before the other, and the loaded boat bumped down the side of the vessel, one end dropping before the other, spilling ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... States bond issue?" Nevins inquires with a semblance of interest. "What would that Republic do if it were not for its public spirited men of wealth? Republics are all right when they are curbed by the conservative elements, but when the riff-raff gets the reins in hand, then there ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... eyes on my Spencer and ran along the titles while he cast his definition. "The Hobo, my dear fellow, is the name for that particular place of detention in city and county jails wherein are assembled tramps, drunks, beggars, and the riff-raff of petty offenders. The word itself is a pretty one, and it has a history. Hautbois—there's the French of it. Haut, meaning high, and bois, wood. In English it becomes hautboy, a wooden musical instrument of two-foot ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... tells him that Big Jem and the pack o' blackguard riff-raff come and 'sulted yer and said what you wouldn't tell me. The captain wouldn't want you to put up with that. I know the captain 'most as well as you do. 'Hullo!' he says; 'what ha' you been doing—how did you get in that condition?' he says—just ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... Herold was called, of his antipathy to these students. Professor Herold snapped like a vicious dog, brushed the white bristles back over his enormous head, and said: "Well, my young original, you have made a discovery. Don't you know that music cajoles into its magic circle the very riff-raff of any community? Don't you know that music is a subterfuge for the neglect of human duty? Don't you know that the voluptuous fumes it spreads over the cities results in the general corrosion and consumption of men's hearts? Don't you know that of every five hundred so-called artists, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... loudly of obstruction. Respectable working women were there, together with their husbands, having finished the day's work; country folk who dropped into town on the Saturday had been attracted to the scene; the riff-raff of Muirtown had come out from their dens and lodging-houses, together with that casual population which has nothing particular to do and is glad of any excitement. They were of various kinds and different degrees of respectability, but they were all collected ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... regardless of their interests and their rights. Women are well-educated; they are graduating from our colleges; they are reading and thinking and writing; and yet they are the political inferiors of all the riff-raff of Europe that is poured upon our shores. It is unbearable. There is no language that can express the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... this kind of riff-raff of "nouveaux riches," and plutocrats, he began by degrees to form around himself a totally different entourage,—though he was careful to make his various changes slowly, so that they should not be too freely noticed and commented upon. Great nobles, whether possessed ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... were bright, her lips tremulous. He slipped his hand along the table and touched her fingers. Then she flashed a look at him—appeal, reproach, tenderness, all were expressed in it. Was she expecting him to dance? Did she want to mix with the rift-raff there; wish him to make an exhibition of himself in this hurly-burly? A voice said, "Good-evening!" Before them stood Kasteliz, in a dark coat tightly buttoned at ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... ye," came the oral substitutes for kitchenware. "Ye can apollygise to riff-raff of the streets for settin' yer unhandy feet on the tails of their frocks, but ye'd walk on the neck of yer wife the length of a clothes-line without so much as a 'Kiss me fut,' and I'm sure it's that long from rubberin' out the windy for ye and the victuals ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... and manning them have been very much the same; and there must have been some hot work about the harbour of Palos in the summer of 1492. The place was in a panic. It is highly probable that many of the volunteers were a ruffianly riff-raff from the prisons, to whom personal freedom meant nothing but a chance of plunder; and the recruiting office in Palos must have seen many a picturesque scoundrel coming and taking the oath and making his mark. The presence of these adventurers, many of them entirely ignorant ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... there was a prime fight of five rounds between Tammy Bowsie, the snab, and auld Thrashem, the dominie, about their drawing cuts which was to get Dalkeith Palace, and which Newbottle Abbey! Oh, sic riff-raff! ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... books, that makes you the laziest man that a poor woman ever had tinder one roof wid her? ay, an' that sent you out of our dacent shop an' house, in the heart of the town below, an' banished us here, Jer Mulcahy, to sell drams o' whisky an' pots o' beer to all the riff-raff o' the counthry-side, instead o' the nate boots an' shoes you ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... darkness came on, strange women—the riff-raff from (p. 017) Paris, the expelled from Rouen, in fact the badly diseased from all parts of France—hovered about in the blackness with their electric torches, and led the unknowing away to blackened side-streets ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... watching the fun. So you go into the square to watch also. You see little groups of revolutionaries looking sullen and laboriously class-hating. You see a lot of soldiers looking very ordinary but trying not to. The riff-raff scowl at the soldiers, who are ordered out to shoot at them. The soldiers scowl at the riff-raff at whom they are ordered not to shoot. And, for some reason which the experts have not yet fathomed, it always ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various |
