"Rag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flintlock rifle; it is a fearful and wonderful process; it takes him at least two minutes; he does not seem to know on which particular part of his wonderful paraphernalia to find the slugs, the powder, or the patching, and he finishes by tearing a piece of rag off a by-standing villager to place over the powder in the pan. While he is doing all this, and especially when ramming home the bullet, he looks at me as though expecting me to come and pat him approvingly on ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... garden she chose a great bunch of delphinium, in mingled shadings from pale blues and lavenders to deepest sapphire tones, and bringing it in exultingly filled the copper bowl and set it on the old spindle-legged table opposite the fireplace. Woven rag rugs in dull blues lay on the floor; one great winged chair, Granny's chair, stood by the window. Besides this were the splint-bottomed, high-backed chair, two Sheraton chairs, and a Chippendale mirror,—all ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... As the last fluttering rag vanished from sight, our lads, who had watched the latter part of this performance in silent wrath, turned to each other and burst ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... and some fresh eggs; she was four years old and so klug. I gave her a captain's biscuit and some figs, and the little pet sat with her little legs tucked under her, and ate it so manierlich and was so long over it, and wrapped up some more white biscuit to take home in a little rag of a veil so carefully. I longed to steal her, she was such a darling. Two beautiful young Nubian women visited me in my boat, with hair in little plaits finished off with lumps of yellow clay burnished like golden tags, soft, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... damaging ourselves, and I doctor them all. Anyhow, I know that Mary ought not to hold her hand down like that,"—gently raising it to check the flow—"it will bleed for hours if she does. Have you any soft rag?" ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... presently one came shyly up to offer two of their best, leaving the teacher to explain in English their wish to be polite to their distinguished guest. Like the little gentlewoman she was, Annie graciously accepted the ugly bits of rag with answering nods and smiles, and carried them away with her as carefully as if they were ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... forehead striking against the projecting root of a tree; and the blow cut it open and his blood ran down and mingled with his tears Then he rose and, wiping away the blood, dried his tears and bound his brow with a piece of rag; then continued his walk about the garden engrossed by sad reverie. Presently, he looked up at a tree and saw two birds quarrelling thereon, and one of them rose up and smote the other with its beak on the neck and severed from ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... particularly want you to do," he writes. "Take strong coffee, inspire yourself, think of your 'Ideal,' and compose some very pretty music to the enclosed words, with which Rag's ideal flame has inspired Rag—surtout, let it be as good as possible, with accompaniment a l'avenant. An alteration in the music of each stanza would render the gradation of energy expressed in the words, 'Je compte sur toi.'" (How du Maurier ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... me," he said; "I can't stand this! Yes, yes, I know her well," he whispered, as they went round the screen which was the only partition between pipes and plates; "but let me see what that scurrilous rag has to say while you order. I'll do the rest, and you had better make ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... fellow like you would be sure to be able to pick up a wife with money. My thoughts don't incline that way. I look forward to the Rag as the conclusion of my career. There you meet fellows you know, lie against each other about past campaigns, eat capital dinners, and have your rub of whist, ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... additions of wood, cardboard, and paper, aided by the color-box. Windmills, whirligigs, carts, engines, trains, dolls' house furniture, jigsaw puzzles, cardboard animals with movable limbs, black velveteen cats with bead eyes, beautifully dressed rag dolls, wool balls and rattles for babies, and dear little books of extracts, were some of the things set out in a tempting display. Fil, whose slim fingers excelled in dainty work, had contributed three charming booklets of poetry and nice bits cut from magazines and newspapers, ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... said: the pitying audience melt in tears. But Fate and Jove had stopp'd the Baron's ears. In vain Thalestris with reproach assails, For who can move when fair Belinda fails? Not half so fix'd the Trojan could remain, 5 While Anna begg'd and Dido rag'd in vain. Then grave Clarissa graceful wav'd her fan; Silence ensu'd, ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... Anna to rest her head an instant on the cushioning behind it and close her eyes. With his rag of a hat on the ground and his head tightly wrapped in the familiar Madras kerchief of the slave deck-hand, the attendant at the carriage side reverently awaited the relifting of her lids. The old coachman ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... party, Mr Pillson?' and he couldn't do other than reply, for we all received notice that it was Hightum—mine came about twelve—he couldn't do other than reply, 'Yes, Miss Bracely, it is.' 'Good gracious me,' she would say, 'and I've only got this old rag on. I must go back to the Ambermere Arms, and tell my maid—for she brought a maid in that second motor—and tell my maid to put me out something tidy.' 'But that will be a great bother for you,' he would say, or something of that sort, for I don't pretend to know ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... their position was one of the greatest danger. With only a rag of sail set they ran before the gale from the south-west. Every wave as it overtook them threatened the destruction of the ship; but the Dragon, light and buoyant, and ably handled, rode safely over the waves. On the fourth morning the wind was still blowing fiercely, although its force had ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... in the fountain in the court, it was Benham, in a state between distress and madness, and armed with a horn-handled cane of exceptional size, who intervened, turned the business into a blend of wrangle and scuffle, introduced the degrading topic of duelling into a simple wholesome rag of four against one, carried him off under the cloud of horror created by this impropriety and so saved him, still only slightly wetted, not only from this indignity but from the experiment in rationalism that ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... upon the minister in twinkles of amusement around his eyes and lips much like the smile that Tom MacMertrie had worn, only there was not a rag of hurt pride about it. With ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... ketch me joinin' in any more Indian revolutions, anyway," Young put in. "I did think I could bet on those Tlahuicos, an' they've just gone back on us th' worst kind. Do you feel strong enough, Professor, to tie th' ends o' this rag?" He had been binding up the cut in his forehead, and now he got down on his hands and knees in front of me, and bent his head down within easy reach of my hands; and my strength had so far returned ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... never definitely received the Holy Spirit, or else because the fountain is choked. It is quite possible for a fountain to become choked. The best well in one of our inland cities was choked and dry for many months because an old rag carpet had been thrust into the opening from which the water flowed. When the rag was pulled out, the water flowed again pure and cool and invigorating. There are many in the Church to-day who once knew the matchless joy of the Holy Spirit, but some sin or worldly conformity, some act ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... with its current. What an infinite charm resides in the water about us! Beautiful the great trees under whose shade we lie. Beautiful the grassy bank—but lo! a small heap of dirty clothes on the greensward! We turn away with disgust and laughter. Insignia of glory!—a shilling's worth to the rag-picker. What a contrast they present to the loveliness of the common things ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... had only some tinder," said Dominick, "we could find flint, I dare say, or some hard kind of stone from which fire could be struck with the back of a clasp-knife, but I have seen nothing like tinder to-day. I've heard that burnt rag makes capital tinder. If so, a bit of Pina's dress might do, but we can't burn it ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... is the right key." The door flies open—Le Prun rushes puffing among the bushes. Blassemare sees something drop glittering to the ground as the door opens—a button and a little rag of velvet; he says nothing, but pockets it, and joins ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... neither of them wore any shoes or stockings. Even the richer peasants, who possess shoes or fur-lined boots for winter use, more often than not walk barefoot in the summer, while stockings are unknown luxuries, a piece of rag ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... liveliest when taking a limb from the hillside to the house in the pond. A young beaver will catch a limb by one end in his teeth, and, throwing it over his shoulder in the attitude of a puppy racing with a rope or a rag, make off to the pond. Once in the water, he throws up his head and swims to the house or the dam with the limb held trailing ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... So, 'twas well I laid by the rest, my Peace had not been Made under every Rag on't else; and what I was painfully cheating for All this Night, would have been laid out at the Mercers and Lacemans in half an Hour. —Well, are you satisfy'd I ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... were having a systematic, Teutonic afternoon's enjoyment. But from another point of view the situation was desperate. There were these poor fellows, hordes of them, in nature's inadequate protection against the weather, shivering in the cold, with the nearest spare rag of clothing some miles away. Boyce got them together, paraded them instantly under the shell fire, and led them at a rush into the blazing building to salve stores. Six never came out alive. Many ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... up in a gay new rag, and dropped him into the copper kettle of boiling water that was ...
— Denslow's Humpty Dumpty • William Wallace Denslow
... and she worked for twelve hours, leaving off work at six, when she began her 'evening out.' I am fain to add the sartorella was often a sort of whited sepulchre. She was gorgeously clad without, but as a rule had not a rag, not even a chemise, underneath, unless she were 'in luck.' 'In luck,' I grieve to say, meant that every boy, youth, and man in Trieste, beginning at twelve and up to twenty-five and twenty-eight, had an affaire with a sartorella; ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... "Dolly is a rotter not to be here! Oh, we would rag just then!" Then Margaret went ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... lick o' paint and a bucket o' tar, And she's fit for the seas once more, To carry the Duster near and far, The same as she used before; The same old Rag on the same old round, Bar Light vessel and Puget Sound, Brass and Bonny and Grand Bassam, Both the Rios and Rotterdam— Dutch and Dagoes, niggers and Chinks, Palms and fire-flies, spices and stinks— Portland (Oregon), Portland (Maine), She's been there once and she'll ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... old man!" cried the Virginian, admiringly. "You got back at Flemming in great shape. They say he has been weak as a rag ever since you dropped him the second time, and it is pretty certain he will hold you ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... fence to get some. But what a wretched looking creature she is!" she went on thoughtfully, looking more closely. "She's worse off than you are, Hester Bartlett, if she hasn't got a humpback. Hardly a decent rag to her back—not a shoe or stocking—an old boy's hat, picked out of a gutter likely. And how she does stare! looks as if she'd eat the flowers. Well anyway," she went on more slowly, "she's got good taste; she never turns an eye on my finest flowers, but ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... his nature. Strangers in distress, who appealed to the rich retired merchant for help, found in their excellent references to character the worst form of persuasion that they could have adopted. Paupers without a rag of reputation left to cover them, were the objects of charity whom Mr. Henley relieved. When he was asked to justify his conduct, he said: "I have a sympathy with bad characters—-I am one ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... lesser measures, are done almost as well—Cowperwood's pale wife, whimpering in her empty house; Aileen Butler, his mistress; his doddering and eternally amazed old father; his old-fashioned, stupid, sentimental mother; Stener, the City Treasurer, a dish-rag in the face of danger; old Edward Malia Butler, that barbarian in a boiled shirt, with his Homeric hatred and his broken heart. Particularly old Butler. The years pass and he must be killed and put ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... pink clouds of the coming morn were blushing in the east, and the rag-women, with their bags and hooks, were ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... is fond of an Oriental effect can have it in the pillow by sewing silks and satins hit and miss, as in making an old-time rag carpet, then having it ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... Well, how could you help loving her? Your taste isn't bad! And you'll get plenty of money with her, which is fine for a penniless fellow like you—without a rag to ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... to the end of the sky With a rag and a pole and a gooseberry pie. He cried: "Three cheers for the Fourth of July!" With a rag and a pole and ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... hands tight with the cords, while she screamed, and struggled, and yelled piteously for the Lady Prioress; then dragging her up, he exclaimed, "Since thou didst not heed me, now thou shalt come off naked as thou art; better the devil should not have a rag to ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... become something else. It was just as unpleasant and repugnant to take a cigarette at which he looked, as though it had already been in his mouth. There was a certain constant restlessness in him, now twisting him like a rag, now throwing him about like a body of coiling live wires. And he drank water ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... to point out the distinguishing features of Saxon work, in order that you may be able to detect the evidence of its existence in your own village and neighbourhood. The walls are chiefly formed of rubble or rag stone, having "long and short work," i.e. long block of cut stone laid alternately horizontally and vertically, at the corners of the building and in the jambs of the doors. Often narrow ribs of masonry run vertically up the walls, and a string-course runs horizontally. The churches of Barnack ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... can be too fine for a pretty girl, or a good frigate, Mr Simple; for my part, I'm very fond of these hard names. Your Bess, and Poll, and Sue, do very well for the Point, or Castle Rag; but in my opinion, they degrade a lady. Don't you observe, Mr Simple, that all our gun-brigs, a sort of vessel that will certainly d——n the inventor to all eternity, have nothing but low common names, such as Pincher, Thrasher, Boxer, Badger, ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... will land in naked equality: The lord of a ribboned principality Will mourn the loss of his cordon; Nothing to eat and nothing to wear Will certainly be the fashion there! Ten to one, and I'll go it alone; Those most used to a rag and bone, Though here on earth they labor and groan, Will stand it best, as they wade abreast To the other side ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... miraculous power should not, in this supreme moment, use it to deliver Himself? Did not 'Physician, heal Thyself,' come in properly there? Would any of the most besotted followers of this pretender retain a rag of belief in His Messiahship if He was crucified? Could it be possible that, if there was a God at all, He should leave a man that really trusted in Him, not to say who was really His Son, to die thus? A cracked mirror ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... had been Aunt Lois's bedroom, looked out from two windows upon the road, and from two upon the rolling, tumbling bay, and the shining sea beyond. A tall clock, with a rocking ship above the face, ticked in the corner. The painted floor with bright rag-mats, the little table with a lacquer work-box, the stiff chairs, and the old-fashioned bedstead, the china ornaments upon the mantel-piece, the picture of "The Emeline G. in the Harbor of Canton," were just as they had been when the patient ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... up and showed it to the machine gunners in the Snout. Turning back, he ran into Hicks, stripped to his shirt and trousers, as wet as if he had come out of the river, and splashed with blood. His hand was wrapped up in a rag. He put his mouth to Claude's ear and shouted: "We found them. They were lost. They're coming. Send word to ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... sketchy and had no connection whatever with the calendar. "I'm going to keep Silver in the little corral and let him sleep in the box stall where his leg got well that time he broke it. I 'member when he had a rag tied on it and teased for sugar. And the Countess has got to quit a kickin' every time I need sugar for my string. Ain't she, Daddy Chip? She's got to let us men alone ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... then at last a roar; a roar which runs like a fire down our side of the field, waking tired lungs to new enthusiasm and calling into action every crimson flag and rag. Only the wearers of the blue are quiet; their benches remain coldly silent. The Harvard eleven have arrived on a tally-ho, and in a few minutes more are disporting themselves like a band of prairie dogs over the campus. The uproar is deafening, but they seem to pay no attention to it. ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... bear to put it to the ground. Then you sat down, and held it as tight as you could, and cried over it, till the fellows helped you to the pump to wash the blood off. Then, as soon as you could, you limped home for a rag, and kept pretty quiet about it so as to get out again without letting on ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... "rag-time," etc., to an almost subliminal thought—an adjective resembling "verisimilitudinarious," perhaps, qualifying the "con" or confidential talk that proved useless to bring Mame back ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin
... the room is a sunk well, built up to floor level and evidently going deep underground. There is no windlass nor any trace of there ever having been any—no rope—nothing. Now, we know that the Romans had wells of immense depth, from which the water was lifted by the 'old rag rope'; that at Woodhull used to be nearly a thousand feet. Here, then, we have simply an enormously deep well-hole. The door of the room was massive, and was fastened with a lock nearly a foot square. It was evidently intended ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... an editorial on the strike for the Old Rag," he said to Sam. "Do one for me. Do something strong. Get a punch into it. I want to talk to ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... on that score; settin' fire to things is Benzine Bob's religion. He says his prayers to an oiled rag, and a box of matches ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the obvious choice. His gift of tongues would enable him better than any of us to persuade, and if need were, compel. We had left our rifles leaning by the wall at the castle entrance, and in his cartridge bag was my oil-can and rag-bag. I asked him for them, and he threw them to me rather clumsily. Trying to catch them I twisted for the second time the ankle I had hurt that morning. Fred mounted and rode out through the echoing entrance without a backward glance, and I sat down and pulled my boot off, ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... and the fifes of the warriors, "BLOOD" screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors, "Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle, Harry the uplands, Steal all the cattle, Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle, Bing. Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM," With a philosophic pause. A roaring, epic, rag-time tune From the mouth of the Congo To the Mountains of the Moon. Death is an Elephant, Shrilly and with a heavily accented metre. Torch-eyed and horrible, Foam-flanked and terrible. BOOM, steal the pygmies, BOOM, kill the Arabs, BOOM, kill the white men, HOO, ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... standing warning against spoiling one's patients. I wouldn't have them and their whole tag-rag and bobtail about my ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... round! cries Goblin. Mash, mash, mash! An endless routine of heavy hammers. Mash, mash, mash! upon the sufferer's limbs. See the stone trough! says Goblin. For the water torture! Gurgle, swill, bloat, burst, for the Redeemer's honour! Suck the bloody rag, deep down into your unbelieving body, Heretic, at every breath you draw! And when the executioner plucks it out, reeking with the smaller mysteries of God's own Image, know us for His chosen servants, true believers ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... spoke Minerva touched him with her wand and covered him with wrinkles, took away all his yellow hair, and withered the flesh over his whole body; she bleared his eyes, which were naturally very fine ones; she changed his clothes and threw an old rag of a wrap about him, and a tunic, tattered, filthy, and begrimed with smoke; she also gave him an undressed deer skin as an outer garment, and furnished him with a staff and a wallet all in holes, with a twisted thong for him to ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... drew back, and Catiline and Aurelia appeared. Fanny had dressed Francis, from Kennet's Antiquities, out of an old rag-chest, and a more complete little Roman figure I never saw, though made up no mortal can tell how, like one of your own doings, dear aunt, with a crown of ilex leaves. Aurelia was perfectly draped in my French crimson shawl; she ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... hundred and forty-four square feet of sail area. There wouldn't have been much chance for you, Monroe, if you'd tried to hold that bunch in your hand. The kites would have picked you off the ground and whisked away with you like a piece of rag tied to the tail of a Japanese kite. There," he concluded as he stepped back, "I think we're ready now. ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... ain't fightin'," Donny assured her disgustedly. "They're chewin' the rag down there, is all. Good Injun knows one ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... can go! But you look out! You're all a set of radicals, anyhow! making equals of all the rag, tag, and bobtail about. Look at Claudia there! What would Judge Merlin say if he was to see his daughter with her ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... epargne, a save-all or hold-all. Here seems no more difficulty in the transfer of the name than in that of chiffonier, from a rag-basket to a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 48, Saturday, September 28, 1850 • Various
... foaming sea. At first the very violence of the wind kept the waves down, but they gradually rose until the ship was tossed on their crests and engulfed in their hollows like a cork. As the force of the gale increased sail was further reduced, until nothing but a mere rag was left and even this at last was split and blown to ribbons. Inky clouds soon obscured the sky, and, as night descended on the wild scene, the darkness became so intense that nothing could be seen except the pale gleam of foaming ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... do not find in ourselves, and it would be true to nature to represent an unfortunate woman delighting in reading of such purity as her own life daily insulted and contradicted; and the novel is the rag in which this leper age coquets before the mirror of its hypocrisy, rehearsing the deception it would practise ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... the softer it will be; be sure they are exactly square. Nothing is more trying, in a small way, than to get a diaper that cannot be folded true. These should be made double and the edges turned in and sewed around. By the time the baby has outgrown them they will be fit only for the rag- bag, and may be thrown aside. The second size diaper, also the third should be many times washed to make them soft enough for use. These may be used at first folded eight times and put under the baby next the damask diaper, between that and the pinning blanket, and will often save the nurse the ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... God hasn't said it, you have his coorse, or something nearly as bad, before you. Oh! go to the wake as soon as you like, an' to the dance, too. Find some one that'll take you off of my hands; that'll put a house over your head—give you a bit to ait, an' a rag to put on you; an' may God pity him that's doomed to get you! If the woeful state of the country, an' the hunger an' sickness that's abroad, an' that's comin' harder an' faster on us every day, can't tame you or keep you down, I dunna what will. I'm sure the black an' terrible ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... forward, he reached into the trap for his adversary. Heeding not at all the butt end of the whip which was brought down furiously upon his head, he wrenched the driver ignominiously from his seat, spun him around, shook him as if his had been a rag baby, and hurled him violently against a rotten stump on the other side of the ditch. The stump gave way, and the drummer splashed into ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... nearest to him only had the Sun—a late edition of the paper he had already read. It annoyed Bunting to give a penny for a ha'penny rag of which he already knew the main contents. But there was ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Torpentia. Frequently moisten the eye with cold water by means of a rag. Cool airy room. Darkness. When the inflammation begins to decline, white vitriol gr. vi. in an ounce of water is more efficacious to moisten the eye than solutions of lead. Tincture of opium diluted. New vessels from the inflamed ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... you thinking of doing with yourself to-day?" he asked at breakfast. "If you want to go into Ballymoy to rag that judge again I can let you ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... A French rag this morning had some cheering telegrams about the Allies—that left, centre, and right were all more than holding their own, even if the enemy is rather near Paris. What about the Russians who came through England? We've heard of ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... records of old wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all over it; one eye out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop Leighton's father's; the remaining eye had the power of two; and above it, and in constant communication with it, was a tattered rag of an ear, which was forever unfurling itself, like an old flag; and then that bud of a tail, about one inch long, if it could in any sense be said to be long, being as broad as long—the mobility, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the "People's Banner." In his old happy days two papers a day, one in the morning and the other before dinner, sufficed to tell him all that he wanted to know. Now he felt it necessary to see almost every rag that was published. And he would skim through them all till he found the lines in which he himself was maligned, and then, with sore heart and irritated nerves, would pause over every contumelious word. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... ain't no time to chew the rag," muttered Sam. "We're done fer. Get us something to eat an' something to drink, old woman; give the girl a nifter, too. She's fainted, I reckon. Hurry up; I want ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... were stealing down in quiet water towards the entrance of the fiord. All this time not a rag of a pilot had appeared, and it was without any such functionary that the schooner swept up next morning between the wooded, grain-laden slopes of the beautiful loch, to Throndhjem—the capital of ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... that there was nothing left for him but to resign himself to the accomplished fact; for, one fine day, his two other victims, Ganimard and Holmlock Shears, made their reappearance. Their return to the life of this planet, however, was devoid of any sort of glamor or fascination. An itinerant rag-man picked them up on the Quai des Orfevres, opposite the headquarters of police. Both of them were gagged, bound ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... for the charm of his oratory; smooth-shaven, pink-and-white-cheeked, exquisite in his manners, gracious and insinuating. His ideas and his language and his morals were all as perfectly polished as his finger-nails; and never before in his life had Thyrsis had such a red rag waved in his face. But he had come there for the dinner, and he attended to that, and let Dr. Holland provide the flow of soul; until at the very end, when the doctor was sipping ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... had been recommended at Quartes was full, or else the landlady did not like our looks. I ought to say, that with our long, damp india-rubber bags, we presented rather a doubtful type of civilization: like rag-and-bone men, the Cigarette imagined. "These gentlemen are pedlars?—Ces messieurs sont des marchands?"—asked the landlady. And then, without waiting for an answer, which I suppose she thought superfluous in so plain a case, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... law? The reason of my doubt is, because I have been so very idle as to read above fifty pamphlets, written by as many Presbyterian divines, loudly disclaiming this idol Toleration, some of them calling it (I know not how properly) a rag of Popery, and all agreeing it was to establish iniquity by law. Now, I would be glad to know when and where their successors have renounced this doctrine, and before what witnesses. Because, methinks I should be ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... it, through which stuck skeleton ribs of lath; around him were bare, dirty-white walls, that seemed to grow out of the gray light of a wet morning as the natural deposit from such a solution. Two slender poles, meant to support curtains, but without a rag of drapery upon them, rose at his feet, like the masts of a Charon's boat. Was he indeed in the workhouse he had pre—ferred to Cairncarque? It could hardly be, for there was the plaster fallen in great patches ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... all out of curl and lay straight on her forehead in most unbecoming fashion. That also would have to be considered in the question of costume—a head-dress which should combine use and ornament. The idea of having only a wet, white rag on one's head! No wonder people looked "objects!" Perhaps it would be better to coil the hair about the brow and have no fringe, or at least only a few loose locks that would look equally well, straight ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... the ship's head to the wind and "lay to", by which landsmen will understand that we tried to face the storm, and remain stationary. But the gale was so fierce that this was impossible. The last rag of sail was blown away, and then there was nothing left for us but to show our stern to the gale, and ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... to shed them now.' Kolniyatsch was born, last of a long line of rag-pickers, in 1886. At the age of nine he had already acquired that passionate alcoholism which was to have so great an influence in the moulding of his character and on the trend of his thought. Otherwise he does not seem to have shown in childhood any exceptional ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... cheer the witch will salve avail; A rag will answer for a sail; Each trough a goodly ship supplies; He ne'er will fly, ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... up. To take the Wilbur sparker out you simply remove two nuts and out comes the sparker complete, and you cannot get it back the wrong way. It isn't much of a job to wipe the point off with a rag, is it? ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... that, and Fleda's cheeks growing crimson, Mrs. Plumfield stepped forward to ask after the old lady's health; and while she talked and listened Fleda's eyes noted the spotless condition of the room—the white table, the nice rag-carpet, the bright many-coloured patch-work counterpane on the bed, the brilliant cleanliness of the floor where the small carpet left the boards bare, the tidy look of the two women; and she made up her mind that she could get along with Miss Barbara very well. Barby was rather tall, and ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... peace. My dears, if ever you are a doll, hope to be a rag doll, or a wax doll, or a doll full of sawdust apt to ooze out, or a china doll easy to break—anything in the world rather than a good strong wooden doll with a painted head and movable joints, for that is indeed a sad thing to be. Many a time the ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... to take care of himself. I mean with his fists. He was in a way of learning that without long delay, for ever since he was a little shaver he had had to fight his own way, and sometimes his mother's. He was thirteen when I met him, and most of his time had been put in around the Rag Gang's quarters, along First Avenue and the river front, where that kind of learning was abundant and ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... broad noon, and hunger makes it dinner-time, and the young kinsmen who have strolled abroad come home, one of them with his hand bound up in a white rag that has drops of blood on it, for he has picked a quarrel in the street and steel has been out, as usual, though no one has been killed, because the 'bargello' and his men were in sight, down there near the Orsini's theatre-fortress. And at dinner when the priest has blessed the table, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... gardens in seed-time to scare the sparrows. The gulls soon recover from their alarm, if they ever feel any; and it is somewhat suggestive of irony to watch a gull calmly wiping his beak on a piece of rag intended to scare him away. Whether meant as insulting or not, such conduct does not provoke the inhabitants to severe reprisals; the gulls are an institution of the place, to be grumbled at sometimes but always to be tolerated. And all the grumbling is not on one side, as one may judge from ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... fair trial on our lines. We claim that ours are common sense methods. Anyone can see that if a head is hot and fevered the application of a cold towel is likely to lower that heat and reduce the fever. But it is no use putting a little bit of wet rag on and then saying our treatment has failed. Large towels repeatedly changed for an hour or more may be needed, and this will give more trouble than administering some dose from the chemist's shop, but the results are well ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... water to something lying white at the bottom. It looked for all the world like a dead face, coloured a greenish white by the water; but presently we saw, by one end curling over in the swell of a wave, that 'twas only a rag ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... gives you the most view of the mysterious world around the great Ha-ta Street, which the Boxers have conquered, indeed you find everything practically deserted, the people having learned that it is best to stay indoors until this crisis is solved in some manner. Occasionally a rag-picker, or some humble person so little separated from the life hereafter that to push a trifle closer does not spell much peril, can be seen hooking up rags and whatnots from the piles of Peking offal. If you speak ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... man, smug, cynical, shameless, sprawling luxuriously on the sofa, with his tunic unbuttoned, filled him with sudden fury: such fury as Oliver's insult had aroused, such as had impelled him during a vicious rag in the mess to clutch a man's hair and almost pull it out by ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... running upon deck. "I've been looking for it. Call all hands, Mr Millons, and take in sail—every rag, ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... form for a bundle of rags; but taking pity on the half-frozen lad, he placed him in his basket and carried him to his miserable home. And so the future artist commenced his professional career as a Parisian rag-picker. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... in the valley as, you may say. She don't never go nowheres, Miss Ainslie don't, but folks goes to see her. She's got a funny house—I've been inside of it sometimes when I've been down on errands for Miss Hathaway. She ain't got no figgered wall paper, nor no lace curtains, and she ain't got no rag carpets neither. Her floors is all kinder funny, and she's got heathen things spread down onto'em. Her house is full of heathen things, and sometimes ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... dragged naked up and down the streets amidst yells of "A bailiff! A bailiff!" Finally he was compelled to kneel down and to curse his father and mother. Having performed this ceremony he was permitted,—and the permission was blamed by many of the Savoyards,—to limp home without a rag upon him. [789] The Bog of Allen, the passes of the Grampians, were not more unsafe than this small knot of lanes, surrounded by the mansions of the greatest nobles of a flourishing and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... or sold it to the rag-and-bottle man," retorted Berry. Then came a suppressed giggle, which ended in sudden, forced gravity as the opening words of the service fell on their ears, and they rose with ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... possible; and, while they increased the difficulty of establishing Presbyterianism in England, they were the best demonstration of its necessity. Therefore, he would not despair. There was yet a faint hope that the Independent Divines in the Assembly might be made ashamed of the tag-rag of Anabaptists, Antinomians, and what not, that hung to their skirts, and so might be brought to an accommodation with the Presbyterians. But, failing that, the Presbyterians must stand firm, must face Independency and all its belongings ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... require as payment may be purchased at Rag Fair, being extremely partial to cast off wearing ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... dust and landed among the dog fennel of a fence corner, in a flying leap. Then I looked. It was the Princess' father, tall, and gray, and grim, riding a big black horse that seemed as if it had been curried with the fine comb and brushed with the grease rag. ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... repeatedly rinsed and made to sweat several times until the pores are considered absolutely clean. There were two people lying down in a semi-unconscious state, and although I was only there a few minutes I came out quite limp and rag-like. It ruined my watch, and only by very careful nursing I was able to save my camera from falling to pieces. On returning to the previous hot chamber it seemed quite cool by comparison, and when we emerged again ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the outfielder forgot his surroundings. He ran across the foul line, head up, hair flying, unheeding the warning cry from Healy. And, reaching up to make his crowning circus play, he smashed face forward into the bleachers fence. Then, limp as a rag, he dropped. The audience sent forth a ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... discourse of kings and royal dukes. He spends an evening at Vauxhall with "Killigrew and young Newport—loose company," says he, "but worth a man's being in for once, to know the nature of it, and their manner of talk and lives." And when a rag-boy lights him home, he examines him about his business and other ways of livelihood for destitute children. This is almost half-way to the beginning of philanthropy; had it only been the fashion, as it is at present, Pepys had perhaps been a man famous for good deeds. And it is through ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... presented themselves, and he expected them all. Yes, it was like a dream in which a man fancies that a ruffian is coming to attack him, and raises his arm to strike that ruffian a terrible blow which he knows should annihilate him, but then feels that his arm drops powerless and limp like a rag, and the horror of unavoidable destruction seizes him in ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... to the captain the hopelessness of attempting to overtake the Armada. They should go down, he said, as the Diana had already done, and as the Princess was like at any moment to do, unless they took in every rag of sail, and did their best with their oars to gain the nearest port. But in order that the rowers might exert themselves to the utmost, it was necessary that the soldiers, who were a useless incumbrance ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
