"Rag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Every rag of sail was now piled on to the ship, and as many of the others were showing nothing above their topgallant sails she rejoined the rest just as ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... The oiled rag dropped from his hand. His descent from elation (he had planned a little surprise) to dejection and chagrin was a tumble that touched Marion's commiseration and disarmed her. She did not want to go camping; she did ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... a seed, covered it with earth in a small flower-pot, then put a rag over the pot; after a minute the rag began to rise; in ten minutes it had risen a foot; then the rag was removed and a little tree was exposed, with leaves upon it and ripe fruit. We ate the fruit, and it was ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... incredulously. "Don't try to rag me, Lennie Browne, for it won't come off. As it happens, I asked Toddlekins half an hour ago, and she said there were ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... uniform 'e wore Was nothin' much before An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind— For a twisty piece o' rag And a goatskin water-bag Was all the field equipment 'e ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... the most bitterly disappointed fellow Elmer had come across in a long time. He kept muttering to himself as he examined the fragment of rope. Lil Artha said he was "chewing the rag," whatever that might mean; but, at any rate, Johnny did not seem to be in a very happy frame of mind, so the operation could hardly have ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... free existence. Such cuckoos' eggs the ruling powers will not have in their nests. A community, in which exploitation and slavery do not reign, would have the same effect on these powers, as a red rag to a bull. It would stand an everlasting reproach, a nagging accusation, which would have to be destroyed as quickly as possible. Or is the national glory of the Jews to ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... we're about fed up with your gas, so if you give us so much as one wag of that cursed red rag of yours, I'll pick you up and snap you in half across my knee, as I would snap ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... Making, Nitro-glycerine Making, Paint Makers, Paper Making, Philosophical Instrument Makers, Photographers, Pieric Acid Making, Portland Cement Making, Pottery Manufacture, Printers, Quicksilver Mining, Rag Pickers, Razor Grinders, Red Lead Making, Rope Making, Sand Paper Making, Saw Grinders, Scissors Grinders, Shoddy Manufacture, Shot Making, Silk Making, Silver Mining, Skinners, Slag, Wood Manufacture, Steel Makers, Steel Pen Making, Stereotypers, Stone ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... night, as they were sauntering home from a starlight ramble, that they came on Johnnie Vautrin crouched in the hedge with Marielihou, and Marielihou had her hind leg bound up in a piece of white rag. ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... Klebs-Loffler bacillus is the only conclusive evidence of the disease. The bacillus may be obtained by swabbing the throat with a piece of aseptic—not antiseptic—cotton wool or clean linen rag held in a pair of forceps, and rotated so as to entangle portions of the false membrane or exudate. The swab thus obtained is placed in a test-tube, previously sterilised by having had some water boiled in it, and sent to a laboratory for investigation. To identify ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... They were told of a famous inn. When they reached the carriage entry 'the rattle of many dishes fell upon their ears.' They sighted a great field of snowy table-cloth, the kitchen glowed like a forge. They made their triumphal entry, 'a pair of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a limp India-rubber bag upon his arm.' Stevenson declares that he never had a sound view of that kitchen. It seemed to him a culinary paradise 'crowded with the snowy caps of cookmen, who all turned ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... concerned with the fine arts who had so little sympathy, so little enthusiasm. On the whole, he was distinctly gentle with me, but I made him angry twice. He had done me the honor to promote me to water-color, and as I wanted a rag to wipe my slab and brushes, I ventured to ask for one, on which he turned upon me a glance of haughty surprise, and said, "Do you suppose, sir, that I can undertake to supply you with rags?" This will give an idea of the curiously unsympathetic nature of the man. On another occasion ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... rolled with clashing blocks and groaning spars, making night hideous. In the morning a gale broke and soon came a blinding fall of snow. It was impossible to see many yards through the rushing drift of murky yellow, but Jack took in all four reefs, and ran on with a rag of sail ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... to Sarah Jane's spirit to allow of her giving it over. She revelled in the work. It was a delight to her to search out hidden stores of useless wealth,—to bring forth to the light forgotten hoards of cups and saucers, and to catalogue every rag on the premises. ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... people," "The people of England," "The glorious dissolution," "The glorious reform," "The people and the press," "The people's triumph." A man who seemed by his dress to belong to the very lowest class (a cross apparently between a scavenger and a rag-seller), with a branch of laurel waving in his tattered hat, stopped before this last sentence and exclaimed, "No—they don't yet; but ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... each case, produced a form of oath to be accepted. Nothing could be conceived more passive than the obedience promised, or more stringent than the terms by which the juror bound himself. The man who forfeited a pledge so awful could scarcely have a rag of honour or any of the consolations of religion left to him. Florizel signed the document, but not without a shudder; the Colonel followed his example with an air of great depression. Then the President received the entry money; ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a despatch-rider belonging to one of the batteries. It would have been hard to say whether machine or man was the more travel-stained. The cycle's front wheel was badly bent, evidently by some collision; the soldier's hand was bound with a dirty rag, and his face clotted with the blood of a congealed scratch, the result of having been pushed off the road by a motor-lorry in the dark and falling head-long down a stone embankment. Yet about both mount and man there was still an air of efficiency and unimpaired fundamental soundness ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... and engaged an expensive room therein, had left instructions at the desk that breakfast should be served to him at ten o'clock and with it the Sunday issue of the Chronicle. Five years had passed since he had seen the dear old rag for which he had reported so many fires, murders, street-accidents, and weddings: and he looked forward to its perusal as a formal taking seisin of his long-neglected country. Nothing could be more fitting and symbolic than that the first morning of ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... antiseptic solution (borax, one-half ounce, or carbolic acid, 3 drams to a quart of tepid water). If inflammation threatens, the abdomen may be bathed continuously with hot water by means of a heavy woolen rag, and large doses of opium (one-half dram) may be ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... I see of you," said Mr. Iff, removing his coat, "the more qualities I discover in you to excite my admiration and liking. As in this instance when with thoughtfulness for my comfort"—he tore from his neck the water-soaked rag that had been his collar—"you combine a prudent, not to say sagacious foresight, whereby you plan to place the Cadogan collar far beyond my reach in event I should turn out to be a ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... manes and tails? A scrubby, pickety ridge along the neck, and a bare stump projecting behind, were all that remained of the flowing honors with which they had come gallivanting down to "bear away the bell" at Hickory Creek, or, in the emphatic language of the country, "to take the rag off the bush." ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... was a thing well worth doing. She must risk her soul, lose it, perhaps, or rather, exchange it for a man's life. She had hoarded it hitherto, had been miserly, selfish, seeking to save the poor thing as though it were a pearl of price. Now she saw herself as the veriest rag of flesh parading virtue, useless, comfortless, helpless, clinging to her code, and justifying all the trouble she gave to others by a reference to the impalpable, elusive and possible non-existent immortal and ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... would have suited your case better," said Keogh, with fiery emphasis. "You tear up ten thousand dollars like an old rag because the way you've spread on five dollars' worth of paint hurts your conscience. Next time I pick a side-partner in a scheme the man has got to go before a notary and swear he never even heard the word ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... day, and in that atmosphere it was impossible to feel anything but quite at home. Before tea was over we new arrivals were infected with the same spirit of joviality, and were ready for the first 'rag.' ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... out for a while to forget it, if we could. We went to the Lung Fu-Ssu, a sort of rag-fair held every ten days in the grounds of an old temple in the East City. It's a wonderful fair, usually, with booths and stalls stretching in every direction, and spreading all over the ground, underfoot as well. Everything ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... allowed to see hardly any but her women. Her father had fallen into disgrace before her, and her mother was dead of grief. All around her were spies, and love was nowhere. Gladly would she have yielded every rag of her rank, to breathe the air of freedom. To be a peasant girl on her father's land, would be a ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... that I have ever seen, comprised men of all classes. Some might once have belonged to the learned professions, while others had fallen so low that they looked scarcely human. Every grade of rag-clad misery was represented here, and every stage of life from the lad of sixteen up to the aged man whose allotted span was almost at an end. Rank upon rank of them, there they sat in their infinite variety, ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... riotous juniors rushed upstairs to the Officers' Lounge, a large room with a bar at one end, and a piano at the other. Some congregated near the bar to order liqueurs, while others surrounded the piano to roar rag-time choruses that one of their number was playing. This artist had a whole manual of rag-time tunes, and seemed to have begun at Number One and decided to work through the collection. Each air was caught up and sung with more enthusiasm than the last. And see, ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... Fellah will use in fighting anything in preference to his fists and a stone tied up in a kerchief or a rag makes no ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... to this interrogatory, it occurred to me that I might caulk the hole with a rag from my jacket. It was fustian, and would ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... is termed a "blind alley." On each side were low doors entering the basements of the houses, and the population consisted of rag-pickers, second-hand clothiers and one pawnshop. It was just such a place as one would expect to meet the lowest types of humanity. Dirty children were playing in the half-deserted place, their blue lips and pinched faces speaking eloquently ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... deal, no end of, most, not a little; pretty, pretty well; enough, in a great measure, richly; to a large extent, to a great extent, to a gigantic extent; on a large scale; so; never so, ever so; ever so dole; scrap, shred, tag, splinter, rag, much; by wholesale; mighty, powerfully; with a witness, ultra [Lat.], in the extreme, extremely, exceedingly, intensely, exquisitely, acutely, indefinitely, immeasurably; beyond compare, beyond comparison, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to screen Gerald, but merely from amour- propre. She would not let Chirac think that she was the wife of a man bereft of all honour. And so she clothed Gerald with the rag of having, at any rate, not left her in destitution as well as in sickness. Her assertion seemed a strange one, in view of the fact that he had abandoned her on the previous evening—that is to say, immediately after the borrowing from Chirac. But Chirac ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the scarlet blankets, and muskets of the most worthless Brummagem make, for which they had been exchanging their bits of gold, while their squaws looked on with the most perfect indifference. I saw one chief, who had gone for thirty years with no other covering than a rag to hide his nakedness, endeavouring to thrust his legs into a pair of sailor's canvas ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... heterogeneous as the contents of a rag-picker's auction. Yet they associated with little friction, herding uniformly kind with kind, only rarely lending themselves to transient ructions. They played little jokes on each other; a fat ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... Hermippus, says, that as he fell near the altar, there was found in his scroll this beginning only of a letter, and nothing more, "Demosthenes to Antipater." And that when his sudden death was much wondered at, the Thracians who guarded the doors reported that he took the poison into his hand out of a rag, and put it in his mouth, and that they imagined it had been gold which he swallowed; but the maid that served him, being examined by the followers of Archias, affirmed that he had worn it in a bracelet for a long time, as an amulet. And Eratosthenes also says that he kept the poison in a hollow ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... taken to Newgate, and was there confined, almost with the glory and attendance of a State prisoner. This was no common murder, and no common murderer. Nor were they who interested themselves in the matter the ordinary rag, tag, and bobtail of the people,—the mere wives and children, or perhaps fathers and mothers, or brothers and sisters of the slayer or the slain. Dukes and Earls, Duchesses and Countesses, Members of the Cabinet, great statesmen, Judges, Bishops, and Queen's ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... take upon himself the name of Sir Simpleton Somebody! always boiling over with the froth of his own follies. With tin in his pocket, brass in his face, and never a forlorn h in his vocabulary, is he the fellow to do brown the 'rag and tinsel.' ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... want done?" He turned round and gesticulated. The three young men accelerated their pace. In a minute they there about me, plying me with questions I was indisposed to answer. "I'll tell all that later," I said. "I'm dead beat. I'm a rag." ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... crushing his cap in his big hands and glowering at the rag-mat under his feet. Two kinds of love, several kinds of devils, pride, anger and despair ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... pretensions? And even though I relate every fact as truly as the Holy Book itself, what will there be left of it by the time it has passed through a hundred sottish brains in Greenland yonder? I tell you, this stained rag of a cloak I wear is nearer to what it was first, than that tale will be after swinish mouths have chewed upon it a day. It is the curse of the old gods upon the heathen. And I fling my curse back at them, for the chains they have hung upon my free hands and the beast-dumbness ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... head against this sea, under that rag of canvas," said Barnstable, gloomily, addressing the cockswain, who, with folded arms and an air of cool resignation, was balancing his body on the verge of the quarter-deck, while the schooner was plunging madly into waves ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... yes, I know. You say it's all on account of my beliefs, all because I have strayed away from the chalkline you marked out for me. But who else has strayed? Who else has thrown over his earlier creed? And you have thrown with it all belief in anything, tossed it aside as if it had been a worn-out rag. I have laid it aside, unharmed, and chosen out another creed of finer texture. And now you think I am going to stay here, inert, supine, and watch you ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... women, all the world over, in every stage of history, under every abuse of error, under every circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging, in the brothel or on the scaffold, to some rag of honour, the poor jewel of their souls! They may seek to escape, and yet they cannot; it is not alone their privilege and glory, but their doom; they are condemned to some nobility; all their lives long, the desire of good is at their heels, the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Skillen, aged fifteen, weeping bitterly at the foot of the ramparts. He assured her no harm should befall her. She replied, "I am not crying because I am afraid!" "What is the matter, then?" said he. "I am crying because you have put that miserable rag up there," she said, pointing to the Palmetto flag which had just been raised to ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... such great harm after all; the worst one risks is to sleep on straw in return for making them sleep on rosewood. But when their beauty is bought by the ounce at the perfumer's, and will not stand three drops of water on a rag; then their wit consists in a couplet of a farce, and their talent lies in the hand of the claqueur, it is hard indeed to understand how respectable men with good names, ordinary sense, and decent coats, can let themselves be carried away ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... of the carriages and collected in a crowd. They saw a man lying senseless on the footway, drenched in blood, and another man standing beside him with a blood-stained rag ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... vacation had been unusual, even for him. We sent up the money and William was home that night, more crushed, more pale, more dilapidated than ever. He had worn a new suit away. He returned with a mere rag. We thought this might cure him, but nothing could do that. We could redeem William, but he could not redeem himself. These occasional lapses were the only drawback of that faithful, industrious soul, and we let them go. We had been unable ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 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, ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... 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 what he actually did ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... other woman with her gentle murmurings and soft foldings, and shake her into her own meaning of life. If her impulse had had the power of deed, Elvira Gordon's little cap of fine needle-work would have been a fiercely crumpled rag upon her decorous head, her sober bands of gray hair would have streamed like the locks of a fury, the quiet clasp of her long fingers would have been stirred with some response of indignant defence ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... bore from the breech. When the heavy grease has been removed, the metal part of the gun, bore included, should be covered with a light coating of "3-in-1" oil. Heavy grease can be removed from the rifle by rubbing it with a rag which has been saturated ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... strummed a while, sang a popular rag-time, strummed again and, so Starr explained his silence, went to bed. Estan began again to talk, now and then lifting his voice, speaking earnestly, as though he was arguing or protesting, or perhaps expounding a theory ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... any man be entirely to blame who had led a life like mine! The things that I have seen, the things that I should like to find out! Then the madness comes on me and I must drink or destroy myself. I fought for the possession of myself to-day until I was a mere nervous rag of a man, if I had fought much longer I should have blown my brains out. And what ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... for if they were hers, to punish her for shirking me, by the Lord, I'd have every rag she has in the world out in the middle of the floor in ten minutes! You don't know me—I'm a terrible person ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... happiness. You find it at home if you stop huntin' for it outside. It's like my specs that I go lookin' all over the house for and find up on my forehead where they was all the time. Now, dear, don't make a mistake and go fishing for happiness with a red rag instead of a real live worm, and then think there ain't no fish 'cause they won't bite. You got the right kind of bait in your pretty self, in your nice home, and in that great big husband, who, a person can see as plain as a wart ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... between the road and the bog-hole. That night will be ever in my mind. Where would I be now if it hadn't been that you kept on with me and brought me back, cured? It wouldn't be a cassock that would be on my back, but some old rag of a coat. There's nothing in this world, Gogarty, more unlucky than a suspended priest. I think I can see myself in the streets, hanging about some public-house, holding horses attached to ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... the colonies by means of cyanide of potassium. Dissolve one ounce of the drug in a quarter of a pint of water. This will be sufficient to destroy several nests, but it is a deadly poison, and must be kept in a place of safety. Soak a piece of rag in the fluid, and lay it over the entrance to the nest. There is no occasion to run away; not a Wasp will venture out, and those which return from foraging will not lose their tempers and find yours, but at each successive attempt to enter ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... the paraphernalia of physical endurance. What use has it got for old fellows of intellectual attainments like myself? It takes the greatest poet, singer, painter, violinist; all it can do with him is to thrust a rifle into his hands. All brains look alike, Michael Angelo's or a rag-picker's, when they're spattered in the mud of a trench. Take Lord Taborley here, for instance—all that military stupidity could do with him was to keep him in the ranks for two years. You can't make me believe in ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... though the weather seems warm enough for such thin material here on shore, it will be a great deal cooler on the water; and should the waves or spray come dashing over us, you would find your dress clinging to you like a wet rag—neither ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... the bowwows. I'm all right. I'm a decent citizen. I awake in the rosy dawn with a song on my lips; I softly whistle rag time as I button my collar; I warble a few delicious vagrant notes as I part my sparse hair; I'm not murderous before breakfast; I go down town, singing, to my daily toil; I fish for fat contracts in Georgia marble; ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... upon one. One doesn't take in the whole of such a misfortune at once. We must hold on to the last rag of hope, and in the meantime I'll half work myself to death. Are you going to see ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... Cedric," she exclaimed, "how could you be so foolish? What made you encourage all these people in the absurdity of wishing to attend that Easter ball?—a mob of tag, rag, and bobtail, tradespeople and people from Heaven knows where: very good fun, no doubt, for the officers from Rockcliffe, Jim, or any other young men, but no place for ladies and ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... learns that son John too has betrayed him, curses his day and his sons, and refuses to withdraw his curse, dies at Chinon before the altar, houselled and anhealed, on the 6th of July, 1189. But when dead he is plundered of every rag and forsaken. ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... are red fellows on horseback, with spears and shields, but without a rag on them," he exclaimed. "They seem to be fighting with another set of fellows dressed as Spaniards, and, hang it, the latter are turning heels and flying." The rancheroes seemed very much excited all the time, and ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... only on the moist ground was stamped the impress of struggling feet, but on a branch I found a strip of torn green velvet, and, remembering the dress she had worn that day, I understood to the full the significance of that rag, and, understanding it, I ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... and dined (I mind it was on lamb, finches, and flaunes [custards]), and then Kate, I, and Maud, were set down to our needles. Blanche was something too young for needlework, saving to pull coloured silks in and out of a bit of rag for practice. We had scarce taken twenty stitches, when far in the distance we ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... lounge of the Hotel M—— at the Base. "I'll introduce you to young C—— of the Guards when he comes in," the Major was saying to me. "He is going up to the Front with me to-night by the troop train. You don't mind if I rag a bit, do you, old chap? You see he's only just gazetted from Sandhurst, a mere infant, in fact, and he's a bit in the blues, I fancy, at having to say good-bye to his mother. He's her only child, and she's a widow. The father ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... telling her she might stay and have an education, if that was all she wanted. But the girl would not hear to anything she said, and told her she need not be frightened, that she wouldn't go to you with the fuss; she would not tell you why she left your house. She went to her room and she got every rag of her old clothes, and left the house with the tears raining out of her eyes. Oh, master, it's a crying shame! If you had only been here to hear that child talk to Miss May! Good Lord! how her big eyes did blaze when she told her she could ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... you think I don't know a gentleman when I see one, from a common run-the-hedge like you? Clothes or no clothes, I can read you like a book. Here is a shirt that maybe cost as much as my Sunday hat; and that coat, I take it, has never seen the inside of Rag-fair, and then ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... past, of the French and Indian wars, and of their ancestors, long ago, in old England. Those same great fires that were the joy of winter were also one of its troubles. Once lit, with all the difficulty attendant upon flint and steel and burnt rag, they had to be kept alight from morning till night and from night till morning. If a fire went out it was a woful business to start it again with the reluctant tinder-box. There was, indeed, another way, an easier way, of going ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... half av your lesson, sorr,' sez I, 'but av you shtick to the Rig'lations you'll niver get thim in-ship at all, at all. Or there won't be a rag av kit betune ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... You call it being sensitive? You, who used to quiver from head to foot if the merest scribbler in the most obscure rag ventured to say a ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... I went to the office of this rag," replied Raffles, brandishing an evening paper that ill deserved his epithet. "See what they say about ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... streets. I made a tentative effort to present some such point of view to him as you suggested, but it didn't take. He could only see Cobbens's red head in front of his eyes, and it was like the proverbial rag of the same colour to the bull. Emmet is a generation short of being able to see in his personal enemy a synopsis of the processes of history. This, in short, is my conclusion. I'm afraid I did n't accomplish what we ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... FELON.—"Take common salt, dry it in the oven, then pound it fine and mix it with turpentine, equal parts. Put it on a rag and wrap it around the finger, and as soon as it gets dry put on some more, and in twenty-four hours the felon will be as dead as ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various
... Parliament was abruptly dissolved. What then stepped in to take its place? A small body, effectively about eighty strong at the utmost, having no pretence of representing the community at that time, or of being anything else than the casual surviving rag of a Parliament of 500, the members of which had been elected at various times, and irregularly, between 1640 and 1649. Nay, it was not even the surviving rag of that Parliament itself, but the rag of a stump to which ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... furious, so that they could scarcely carry a rag of canvas, and before morning lost one of their topmasts. It was an anxious night, for they knew not if they would live through it; moreover, the hearts of Castell and of Peter were torn with fear lest the Spaniard should founder and take Margaret with her to the bottom ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... one of the most important arts in chemistry. If the tubes are new, they are generally only soiled by dust, and can be cleaned fairly easily—first by pushing a bit of cotton waste through with a cane, or pulling a rag through with string—and then washing with sand and commercial hydrochloric acid. I have heard of glass becoming scratched by this process, and breaking in consequence when heated, but have never myself experienced this inconvenience. ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... 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 sling it ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... dip of buffalo-tallow to our rooms. The furniture of these consists of a sort of couch, with buffalo skins for mattress and wolf skins for sheets and coverlet, a chest for a seat, a punch-bowl of water on a broken chair for a washstand, and a torn bit of rag for towel; while a barrel covered with a white cloth serves as a centre-table, and is besprinkled with antique books. Among those in his chamber our naturalist discovers one which appears to be a catechism of human knowledge containing, among ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... it all the better because I had sung their songs with them. Before we had got to the end of the last verse some of those boys were in tears, and it wasn't hard to pray. It isn't far from rag-time to "When ...
— Your Boys • Gipsy Smith
... trying to beat to windward, so as not to fall off our course; but now that we had hardly a rag to stand by, the captain put up the helm and let her run for it, the foresail with the gale that was blowing sending her at such a rate through the water as to prevent any of the following seas from pooping her. The fear alone of this had prevented him doing so before, "Old Jock" ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... painted on small sheets, his sports, banterings, quarrellings, sledge-parties of children, with their half-frozen but still merry faces, in their puffy yet not unpicturesque costume; his beggar-boys, with their rag-ware on their backs, are almost always genial and pleasing. In the course of his narrow, in-doors life, he had worked himself into a friendly, nay, as it were, almost paternal relation with domestic and fire-side ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... picked up Neipperg, 'at Frating' deep in Moravia (November 7th, the very day while Friedrich was getting homaged in Breslau), and turned him northwestward again. The Grand-Duke, in such strength, marches Rag-ward what he can; might be there before the French, were he swift; and is at any rate in disagreeable proximity to that Budmeis-Tabor Country, appointed ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... their efforts were absolutely without avail. First from across the street shot tongues of flames which cracked the glass in one of the Flood building's upper story windows. Then a shower of sparks was sent driving at a lace curtain which fluttered out in the draft. The flimsy whipping rag caught, a tongue of flame crept up its length and into the ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... up a rag-time on the sergeant-major's typewriter, did a juggling turn with the army list, and let forth a few hunting yells; then, seeing that the interpreter had reached the required state ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... cried he; 'hustle him out! he didn't get his liquor here: I've no room for such company!' I then endeavored to put my companion upon his feet, but his legs bent under him, and his whole body seemed as limber and lifeless as a wet rag. 'You can't do any thing with him in that way,' continued the landlord; 'if you want to get him home to-night, you must take him on your back and carry him there yourself. He'll be bright enough in the morning.' I saw no other way of proceeding; and so, being strong and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... conical cap of felt, which looked as though it had done service more than once on the head of some modern representative of Guy Fawkes of infamous memory. And yet there was nothing beggarly about the appearance of the old knife-grinder. Not a rag disfigured his person. All was whole and neat, though quaint and faded. Altogether, he would have formed an admirable subject for an artist's sketch-book; nor could any stranger pass him without ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... moment Roy's artificial feeding began. Peggy raised his head while Mammy opened his mouth by inserting a skilful finger where later the bit would rest, then slipped in the milk-sopped woolen rag. After a few minutes the small beastie which had never known fear, understood and sucked away vigorously, for he had not fed for hours and the poor inner- colt was grumbling sorely at the long fast. The bowlful of milk soon disappeared, ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... of those dreadful North-western States and bound to be corrupt," cried Emory, triumphantly. He wished desperately that he had waited and got up his case. He spoke from sincere conviction. "There may be a rag of decency left in the older States, but the West is positively fetid. I give you my word I am speaking the truth, Betty dear, and in your own interest. If I have no more details to give you, it is because I promised my father on his death-bed that I would have nothing to do with politics, ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... more against my door They lie, and look, in form and tint, Like piles of lint, When war's alarum roused the land, Wrought out by woman's loyal hand From linen rag, and robe, and band— From garments cast aside— In hospital, on battle-field The shattered limb that bound and healed, ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... less from age than a life in the open. Wrinkles radiated from the corners of his eyes, and one, like a fold in the flesh, crossed his forehead in a deep-cut crease. His clothes were of the roughest, a dirty collarless shirt with a rag of red bandanna round the neck, a coat shapeless and dusty, and overalls grease and mud-smeared with the rubbing of his hands. His boots were the iron-hard clouts of the rancher, his hat a broken black felt, sweat-stained and torn. Passing him on the road, ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... my companions had meant to have me on toast from the first. I mean to say, they had started a rag with me—a bit of chaff—and I now found myself rather preposterously enjoying the manner in which they had chivied me. I mean to say, I felt myself taking it as one gentleman would take a rag from other gentlemen—not as a bit of a sneak ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Metz farm was attractive in its old-fashioned furnishing. It was large and well lighted. The gray rag carpet—woven from rags sewed by Aunt Maria and Phoebe—was decorated with wide stripes of green. Upon the carpet were spread numerous rugs, some made of braided rags coiled into large circles, others were hooked rugs gaily ornamented with birds and flowers and ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... to look at and no longer competent for business. She was a great loss to me. Yet not all loss. I sold her —ah, pathetic skeleton, as she was—I sold her to Leopold, the pirate King of Belgium; he sold her to our Metropolitan Museum, and it was very glad to get her, for without a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16 feet high, and they think she's a brontosaur. Well, she looks it. They believe it will take nineteen geological periods to breed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... That was the first time in my life I nearly went to war on my own account, Shaw. We couldn't talk those fellows over. We couldn't bribe them, though the Frenchman offered the best he had, and I was ready to back him to the last dollar, to the last rag of cotton, Shaw! No use—they were that blamed respectable. So, says the Frenchman to me: 'My friend, if they won't take our gunpowder for a gift let us burn it to give them lead.' I was armed as you see now; six eight-pounders on the main deck ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... ranged before the blackboards, so that the weary patrons could sit and watch the game. The Chicago stocks had a blackboard to themselves, and this was covered with the longest lines of figures. Iron, Steel, Tobacco, Radiators, Vinegar, Oil, Leather, Spices, Tin, Candles, Biscuit, Rag,—the names of the "industrials" read like an inventory of a country store. "Rag" seemed the favorite of the hour; one boy was kept busy in posting the long line of quotations from the afternoon session of the Exchange. A group of spectators watched the jumps as quotation varied from quotation under ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... soon enough and broke his stiff neck," added Cyriax, on whom the vagabond's story had had the same effect as a red rag upon a bull. Spite of the old slanderer's mutilated tongue, invectives flowed fast enough from his lips when he thought of young Frau Groland's father. If the Groland outside resembled his father-in-law, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 from the walls as well as the ceiling, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... I tell ye about leavin' ye, Maud? 'tis the only thing I can't compass for yer sake. I'm jest a child in yere hands, I am, ye know. I can lick a big fellah to pot as limp as a rag, by George!'—(his oaths were not really so mild)—'ye see summat o' that t'other day. Well, don't be vexed, Maud; 'twas all along o' you; ye know, I wor a bit jealous, 'appen; but anyhow I can do it; and look at me here, jest a child, I say, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... at 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 ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... send sharp arrows of sarkasm and argument through his coat armor of dignified complacency and self-esteem, for truly his idees wuz to her like a red rag to a bull. ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... (Prince X—— was the governor of our district), when I started, alarmed by a strange uproar which suddenly arose in the house. David also noticed the noise and started, holding the watch in his left hand and the rag covered with chalk in his right. What was that shrill shriek? It was my aunt screaming. And that? That is my father's voice, hoarse with anger. "The watch! the watch!" some one cries, probably Trankwillitatin. The stamping of feet, the creaking of the stairs, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... crazy, unless we would die the despairing death of darkest pessimism; and that is why the voice of one sane man threw into fits of rage all the others who wanted to forget; they were afraid that this voice would wake them up, and that they would find themselves sobered, disgraced, and without a rag to cover them. ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... an hour to boil, and the later kinds rather longer; the water should boil when they are put in; when they are tough and yellow, they may be made tender and green, by putting in a little pearl-ash, or ashes tied up in a rag, just before they are taken up; this will tender all green but do not put too much—when done, dip them out: drain and season them with butter, pepper and salt; put a bunch of parsley in the ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... for a lady's costume, but there may be a hair-brush and some soap and handkerchiefs. And, anyhow, if you'll accept it, it'll be something for you to hitch on to. One feels a little lost even for one night without a rag one can call one's own except a Pullman towel. I thought it might give you the appearance of a regular traveller, you know, ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... other men to work no better nor quicker than they do,' growled Mr Springett. 'Don't pinch her so hard in the vice, Mus' Dan. Put a piece o' rag in the jaws, or you'll bruise her. More than that'—he turned towards Hal—'if a man has his private spite laid up against you, the Unions give him his excuse for ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... took the tray down to a kind of scullery on the floor below. The wet plates and cups I dried on a greasy rag which I found lying on the sink; and this seemed to me a refinement of luxurious living; for at home, when we did wash plates, we merely held them under the tap till the remains of food ran off, and we never thought of drying them. When I ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... gathered in the sitting-room; they had had their supper—the eight elderly women and the three elderly men, all that were left of the community. The room had the austere and shining cleanness which Athalia had called a perfume, but it was full of homely comfort. A blue-and-white rag carpet in the centre left a border of bare floor, painted pumpkin-yellow; there was a glittering airtight stove with isinglass windows that shone like square, red eyes; a gay patchwork cushion in the seat of a rocking-chair was given up to the black ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half-square foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs, lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three quintals are a crushing load for him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste rag. Nevertheless he can use Tools; can devise Tools: with these the granite mountain melts into light dust before him; he kneads glowing iron, as if it were soft paste; seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... go home to her daughters (Mrs. Meyer looked frightened). There are some embroideries of mine there which I do not want my sisters to throw away or sell in the rag-market; ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... young dandy does his newly raised silken moustache. On examination, all his companions were found to have holes in their ears, as he also had, while on the upper part of their arms they wore bracelets of plaited hair; thus evincing a taste for ornament, although they had not a rag of any sort of clothing. The previous day the only gift they seemed to prize was a fish which was offered them. To-day they brought one in return. They were, however, excessively jealous and suspicious, and in consequence of one of the gentlemen examining ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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
... Uller and the Fifth Cavalry have mutinied; so have these rag-tag Auxiliaries. That mob down there's part of them." He was puffing under the double effort of running and talking. "Whole thing blew up in seconds; no chance ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... engaging in any sort of chase, there was a gang of four children belonging to her. They peeped over the rail at passing boats and occasionally dropped various objects into them. Thus, sometime before I knew Hermann to speak to, I received on my hat a horrid rag-doll belonging to Hermann's eldest daughter. However, these youngsters were upon the whole well behaved. They had fair heads, round eyes, round little knobby noses, and they resembled ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... she having glanced up and recognised the inevitable, rose to her feet, and, holding the hideous rag-doll she had been nursing, head down and dangling in one hand, she stood waiting till Dicky, after a few last perfunctory bellows, suddenly dried his eyes and held up a tear-wet face for his father to kiss. Then she presented her brow solemnly to her ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... week," he wrote, "I shall be with you all again. It will be good to see you. Of course, this has been rather a rag, and I think I shall hold down the job for ever and evermore; but a year is a long time, isn't it? I look forward to coming home. I shall have a lot to tell you, but I expect I shall want to hear your news first, and how George has got on at school, ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... be they summer or winter, Hurricane nights like these, When spar and topsail are rag and splinter Hurled ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... 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 ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson |
