"Ragged" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... labour will be lost. You may clothe the drunkard, fill his purse with gold, establish him in a well-furnished home, and in three, or six, or twelve months he will once more be on the Embankment, haunted by delirium tremens, dirty, squalid, and ragged. Hence, in all cases where a man's own character and defects constitute the reasons for his fall, that character must be changed and that conduct altered if any permanent beneficial results are to be attained. If he is a drunkard, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... meal, A heart so hard, oh, a heart of steel! A wizened look and an infant's cry, The cold, cold clutch of Poverty, A withered hand and a blanched cheek, Alone, and, ah, no friend to seek! A chilly hearth and a ragged dress, A home ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... hard with us had he marched hither instead of waiting there for the arrival of the Armada. Our force here has fallen away to well-nigh nothing. The soldiers could get no pay, and were almost starved; their clothes were so ragged that it was pitiful to see them. Great numbers have died, and more gone back to England. As to the Dutch, they are more occupied in quarrelling with us than in preparing for defence, and they would right ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... mail train came up at half-past five. At two o'clock she closed the office again and started on a long walk. She longed for the comfort of the solitary hillsides, where warm patches of sunlight lay at the foot of ragged stone walls, and there were long stretches of plain and meadow to be looked over, and rolling hills to comfort the soul. As she climbed a hill just before the place where a weedy untravelled road turned off from ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... old and ragged and gray And bent with the chill of the winter's day. The street was wet with the recent snow, And the woman's feet ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow—a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... A ragged boy, barefooted and clasping a wornout broom, sits huddled on the ground left, but facing right. His arms are folded and rest on his knees, and his head is bent down upon them, so as to hide his face. A girl, in nun's costume, ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... before, the force that accompanied him was in forlorn case, reminding me strongly of Shakspere's description of Falstaff's ragged regiment. It consisted chiefly of raw, undrilled troops, quite unused to discipline, but, perhaps, as effective as veterans in the service in which they were employed, the adroitness of the enemy, accustomed to the interminable swamps, hammocks, and cane-brakes ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... Bibles and piles of blankets, are yet wanted at home before being despatched to either farthest land or the plains of Timbuctoo. The general scene may be thus condensed and described: Myriads of children, ragged, sore-headed, bare-legged, dirty, and amazingly alive amid all of it; wretched-looking matrons, hugging saucy, screaming infants to their breasts, and sending senior youngsters for either herring, or beer, or very small loaves; strong, idle young men hanging about street corners ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... same, there was a ragged fringe to one of Grip's ears, and for weeks he had limped sorely on his near fore leg. It was written in his mind that Jan must pay, and pay dearly, for those things, when a suitable occasion offered. He was no swashbuckler, and did not know what it meant to ruffle ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... legitimate sons of the Alhambra, and has lived here all his life, filling various offices; such as deputy alguazil, sexton of the parochial church, and marker of a fives-court established at the foot of one of the towers. He is as poor as a rat, but as proud as he is ragged, boasting of his descent from the illustrious house of Aguilar, from which sprang Gonsalvo of Cordova, the grand captain. Nay, he actually bears the name of Alonzo de Aguilar, so renowned in the history of the conquest. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... idea before her, drawing it on the air with his stick, or on the sand of the alleys where the arching trees overhead seemed still to hold a golden twilight captive. The picture was to represent that fine metal-worker of the ancien regime who, when the Revolution came, took his ragged children with him and went to the palace which contained his work—work for which he had never been paid—and ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... If the ragged villager, trudging home from the market, could suddenly be lifted to the crest of a distant age, men would stop in their work and shout and run ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... quick and steady eye fixed in one undeviating line with the sight near the breech, and that which surmounted the extreme end of the deadly weapon. No sooner, however, had the head of the advancing column come within sight, than the trigger was pulled, and the small and ragged bullet sped hissing from the grooved and delicate barrel. A triumphant cry was next pealed from the lips of the warrior,—a cry produced by the quickly repeated application and removal of one hand to and from the mouth, while the other suffered the butt end of the now harmless weapon to fall loosely ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... when you hear the name; you will be astonished when you learn the whole story; but the time for concealment has gone by now. Several years ago that poor sailor came to me, in ragged clothing, in poverty and distress, and first laid his complaint before me. I did not believe a word of what he told me; I thought the man mad, and refused to have anything to do with the cause. He became disgusted, and went ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... shrouds and stays, leaving about twenty feet of naked, jagged, and splintered stump of the lower-mast standing above the deck; and her main-topmast was also gone; but the wreckage of this had been cut away and had gone adrift, leaving only the heel in the cap, and the ragged ends of the topmast shrouds streaming from the rim of the top. She had been a very smart-looking little vessel in her time, painted black with false ports, and under her bowsprit she sported a handsomely-carved half-length figure of a crowned woman, ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... relic to his lips and the work of destruction continued—the heavy iron guns sunk through the decks and disappeared; the crew of the vessel (who were looking on) crumbled down into skeletons, and dust, and fragments of ragged garments; and there were none left on board the vessel in the semblance of life ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... The inside faces should be flat across, and slightly curved in their lengths, as shown. If this curve is too great, as shown exaggerated in Figure 18, the body of the ink lies too near the point and is apt to flow too freely, running over the pen-point and making a thick, ragged line. On the other hand, if the inside faces, between which the ink lies, are too parallel and narrow near the points, the ink dries in the pen, and renders a too frequent cleaning necessary. Looking at the face of the pen as at A in Figure 17, ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... the suffocating atmosphere of the crowded rail way-carriage, shedding their fitful light on grimy, ragged passengers wedged tightly together, and wreathed in smoke. Sanine sat next to three peasants. As he got in, they were engaged in talk, and one half-hidden by ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. . . . They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. . . . 'They are Man's,' said the Spirit, looking down upon them. 'And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... A long ragged breath whistled through the closed lips of the tenderfoot. He ran along the edge of the rock wall till he found a descent less sharp, lowered himself by means of jutting quartz and mesquit cropping out from the crevices, and so came through a ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... foliage they were embowered, and the people who stood on the shore inviting their approach, had all vanished, and nothing remained but an uniform and irksome desert of sand and sky, with a few naked huts and ragged shrubs. Had they not been undeceived by their nearer approach, there was not a man in the French army who would not have sworn, that the visionary trees and lakes had a real existence in the ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... long men toil for wife and child; Wife suffer and stint to make bigger plate for child; Child beg in street to get food for sick mother; Sister wear ragged clothes for sake of little brother. And none of these has bowed to Joss, Or marched with candle, Or washed ...
— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke
... up to the tent and Bob talked to Pierre in French. Pierre then pulled back the hair and showed the boys a white scar across his head and Jean showed them a ragged scar that made Pud's ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... moment the moon began to shine forth again—this time behind the path of the squall. Out far across the torn bosom of the ocean shot the ragged arrows of her light, and there, half a mile ahead of us, was a white line of foam, then a little space of open-mouthed blackness, and then another line of white. It was the breakers, and their roar grew clearer ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... but chiefly among the northern nations, being especially plants that are of some humble beauty, and (the crucifers) of endless use, when they are chosen and cultivated; but that run to wild waste, and are the signs of neglected ground, in their rank or ragged leaves and meagre stalks, and pursed or podded seed clusters. Capable, even under cultivation, of no perfect beauty, thought reaching some subdued delightfulness in the lady's smock and the wallflower; for the most part they have every floral quality meanly, and in vain,—they are ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... almost untouched. Edgar Allan Poe might have written some of his tales in the seventeenth century or in the twentieth; he might, like Robert Louis Stevenson, have written in Samoa rather than in the Baltimore, Philadelphia, or New York of his day; his description of the Ragged Mountains of Virginia, within very sight of the university which he attended, was borrowed, in the good old convenient fashion, from Macaulay; in fact, it requires something of Poe's own ingenuity to find in Poe, who is one ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... and the walls of the manse, or the smooth sand by the river side, were alike convenient for his purpose. Any sort of tool would serve him; like Giotto, he found a pencil in a burnt stick, a prepared canvas in any smooth stone, and the subject for a picture in every ragged mendicant he met. When he visited a house, he generally left his mark on the walls as an indication of his presence, sometimes to the disgust of cleanly housewives. In short, notwithstanding the aversion ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... keeping with the village, being old and worm-eaten, and the craziest craft imaginable. I would not have sailed one across a pond. However, I sought out the commander of this ragged squadron, and gave him ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... enough—though that won't be for a good many years yet, little girl. When the blood that has fed the growing feather is all dried up, the feather ceases to grow. Then after a while longer, when it has become ragged and worn, it gets loose in the skin and drops out—as I am sorry to say some of my hair is doing already. That is ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... blessing on the service in the great hall, and he prayed most fervently. The Earl of Shaftesbury was not only the author of great reformatory legislation in Parliament, and the acknowledged leader of the Low Church Party in the Established Church. He was also a leader of city missions, ragged schools, shoe-black brigades, and other organizations to benefit the submerged classes in London. He once invited all the thieves in London to meet him privately in a certain hall, and there pleaded with them to abandon their wretched ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... made a commotion among the children in the block, and the Chief of Police looked out of his window across the street, his attention arrested by the noise. He saw a little pine coffin carried into the alley under the arm of the driver, a shoal of ragged children trailing behind. After a while the driver carried it out again, shoved it in the wagon, where there were other boxes like it, and, slamming ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... yet been finished: it is just ragged brickwork waiting for its marble, and likely to wait, although such expenditure on marble is going on within a few yards of it as makes one gasp. Not very far away, in the Via Ghibellina, is a house which contains some rough plans by a master ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... he commenced, with one hand in the breast of his ragged vest, and the other, as usual, plucking nervously at his beard, "This kind o' work can't last for ever." (Deep and earnest exclamations, "It can't! It shan't") "Well, boys," continued the speaker, "Somebody'll have to find ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... of Sixth Avenue a young Italian, with the face of a poet, was roasting peanuts in a little kerosene stove beside a flickering torch which enkindled the romantic youth in his eyes. Farther away some ragged children were dancing to the music of a hand-organ, which ground out a melancholy waltz; and from a tiny flower stall behind the stand of a bootblack there drifted the intense sweetness of hyacinths. ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... opened, and a gentleman entered the room. He was wearing a shabby-looking dressing-gown, a couple of ragged quill pens were stuck in his mouth, and he carried in his hand a bundle of closely-written sheets of foolscap. Mr. Basil Fenleigh, to tell the truth, was about to issue an invitation to a "few friends" to join him in starting an advertisement ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... box. Then she unfastened the bundle. "I guess I'll see what you've got for clothes," said she, and her tone was as motherly as she could make it towards this outcast Dickey boy. She laid out his pitiful little wardrobe, and examined the small ragged shirt or two and the fragmentary stockings. "I guess I shall have to buy you some things if you are a good boy," said she. "What have you got in that box?"—the boy hung his head—"I hope you ain't ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... water is scarce the entire distance. They look as if they had never washed their faces or cut their hair, and their shaggy, greasy, black locks hang down upon their shoulders beneath enormous turbans. Each wears the costume of his own country, but they are so ragged, grimy and filthy that the romance of it is lost. The Afghans are in the majority. They are stalwart, big-bearded men, with large features, long noses and cunning eyes, and claim that their ancestors were one of the ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... coolness and decision. With us a moment sufficed to extinguish the burning garments of the engineer; but by that time the flames had burst from the engine-room, and that part of the beautiful boat was a ragged, crackling ruin. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... trudged a procession of beggars, both men and women, each dirtier and more tattered than the next. Out of las Cambroneras and las Injurias streamed recruits for this ragged army; they came, too, from the Paseo Imperial and from Ocho Hilos, and by this time forming solid ranks, they trooped on to the Toledo Bridge and tramped up the San Isidro highway until they reached a red edifice, before which they ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... grown dear— Wages of sin. Trouble without, Canker within, Fear, hate, and doubt— Wages of sin. What is to be, All that has been, Shadows that flee— Wages of sin. Loss of the soul, Wrangle and din, Tragedy's dole— Wages of sin. Warning enough! (Mortals are kin) Ragged and rough Wages ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... and kindly people in this ragged world of ours, and they go to church with prayer in their hearts and goodness on their lips and forgiveness in their hands. They wear no masks; their hearts and minds go in and out of church unchanged. These are the salt of the earth, and do not often have their names in ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... found an old man keeping school near the ruins of his own school-room, which had been destroyed by the Turks. It happened to be his dinner-time, and he was seated cross-legged on a stone, with a footstool before him, enjoying a few olives and a morsel of bread. Around him stood his ragged pupils, reading from leaves torn out of old books, some of which were so worn and dirty that the poor boys could scarcely discover what they had once contained. The weather was by no means warm, yet we could not wonder at his choosing the open air for the place of instruction, ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... evening, and meat at dinnertime, washed down with mead or spirits. We children—and indeed our elders—were not seldom kicked and cudgelled by the Russian soldiers, when they were in liquor, but we could be merry enough romping about ragged and unwashed, and our real life was lived in the Holy Land, with patriarchs, kings, and prophets, and we knew that we should return thither ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... is often a good refuge in trouble, but though he may sew up a ragged tear in a child's throat ever so neatly, it doesn't necessarily follow that ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... is added to the flame, there will still be the central blue-white cone, but it will be smaller and more or less ragged around the edges (Figure 39). When there is just enough oxygen to make the single cone, and when, by turning on more acetylene or by turning off oxygen, two cones are caused to appear, the flame is neutral (Figure ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... exchanged for another sort of costume. Her scars strove to be hidden beneath the yellow lace and crumpled feathers of an antique head-dress. She wore a satin gown of an old fashion, whose pristine whiteness was much impaired by time. An aged fan, ragged, but of tasteful pattern, dangled at her wrist. She resembled some forgotten Ginevra, reappearing after an age's seclusion in the oaken chest. Her aspect was painfully repellent, the more for this pathetic attempt at good looks. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... of African and American negroes, a serpent entered in the guise of a negro preacher who taught the sinfulness of dancing, fishing on Sunday and eating the catfish which had no scales. In consequence the slaves "became poor, ragged, hungry and disconsolate. To steal from me was only to do justice—to take what belonged to them, because I kept them in unjust bondage." They came to believe "that all pastime or pleasure in this iniquitous world was sinful; that this was only a place of ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... not returned, but Jan did not know that Mr. Pixley was still very ill. The dog hid or skulked if he met any person, and his deep growls and twitching nose were so threatening that no one dared to go nearer. His silky hair was rough and ragged, raw bleeding spots scarred his body, his eyes were bloodshot and his tail was almost bare of the long hair that had once made it ...
— Prince Jan, St. Bernard • Forrestine C. Hooker
... and delight, as countless thousands have done, in his Ovid. The world of books and of reading is apt to seem stuffy, the favoured home of the moody spirit, a lair to which a dirty and ragged Magliabechi retreats, a palace where a Beckford gloats solitary over his treasures—a world whence we often desire to escape, since we know we can return to it when we will. For if good books shelter us from the ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... admit of a touch through any sense. Some, unable to bear the extended strain, sank upon the ground and covered their faces with their hands. But the half-grown children, wan with privations and fever, ragged and barefoot, watched steadily the horse and its rider, their round, gleaming eyes full of wonder ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... Richard Bullen! Sing, O Muse, of chivalrous men! the sacred quest, the doughty deeds, the battery of low churls, the fearsome ride and gruesome perils of the Flower of Simpson's Bar! Alack! she is dainty, this Muse! She will have none of this bucking brute and swaggering, ragged rider, and I must fain follow him ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... of all that somehow seemed left irrevocably behind. It was as if it had been ages ago! It had been ages ago since happiness had fled. There was not a laugh left in all the sad world that had abruptly grown old, and savorless. A vagrant, aged, dirty, ragged, accosted him, begging alms, and without looking up, Jimmy thrust a hand into his pocket and took therefrom a dollar note. The beggar mumbled thanks, stamped his feet, turned away, and then came back and said, "Hope you're not down on your luck. I ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... of Warwick reached London, he proceeded at once to the Tower to release old King Henry from his confinement. He found the poor king in a wretched plight. His apartment was gloomy and comfortless, his clothing was ragged, and his person squalid and dirty. The earl brought him forth from his prison, and, after causing his personal wants to be properly attended to, clothed him once more in royal robes, and conveyed him in state through London to the palace in Westminster, and established ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... twig, which can finally be withdrawn by a string; take care so to out away the turf that the jaws are only just below the level of the ground. Having done this, cut a very thin slice of the turf which was removed to make way for the trap, leaving little more than the grass itself with a ragged edge, and lay this gently on the plate, and withdraw the prop. Then cover the spring in the same way; and, lastly, put some more shreds of grass or leaves over the jaws themselves, but in such a way that the former will not be caught ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... heaves a contented sigh, and steps out manfully along the dusty road. Behind him tramp his men. We have no pipers as yet, but melody is supplied by "Tipperary," sung in ragged chorus, varied by martial interludes upon the mouth-organ. Despise not the mouth-organ. Ours has been a constant boon. It has kept sixty men in step ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... afternoon, on the piazza of the colonel's house, where Dick had taken his bride, when a negro from the yard ran down the lane and threw open the big gate for the colonel's buggy to enter. The colonel was not alone. Beside him, ragged and travel-stained, bowed with weariness, and upon his face a haggard look that told of hardship and privation, sat the ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... Acklins and Crooked Islands, Bimini, Cat Island, Exuma, Freeport, Fresh Creek, Governor's Harbour, Green Turtle Cay, Harbour Island, High Rock, Inagua, Kemps Bay, Long Island, Marsh Harbour, Mayaguana, New Providence, Nichollstown and Berry Islands, Ragged Island, Rock Sound, Sandy Point, San Salvador and ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... when we were marching toward Belfort, and in the rear when returning by the Jura. Of our brigade, that had numbered twelve hundred men on the first of January, there remained only twenty-two pale, thin, ragged wretches, when at length we succeeded in ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... on as a help to their parents; with us, for want of being early trained to work, they are an intolerable burthen at home, and a grievous charge upon the public, as appeareth from the vast number of ragged and naked children in town and country, led about by strolling women, trained up in ignorance and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... Mor. England, unkind to thy nobility, Groan for this grief! behold how thou art maim'd! K. Edw. Go, take that haughty Mortimer to the Tower; There see him safe bestow'd; and, for the rest, Do speedy execution on them all. Be gone! Y. Mor. What, Mortimer, can ragged stony walls Immure thy virtue that aspires to heaven? No, Edward, England's scourge, it may not be; Mortimer's hope surmounts his fortune far. [The captive Barons are led off. K. Edw. Sound, drums and trumpets! ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... at all like me! I feel like Josepha or Louisa or whoever she was who wore it—" she laughed. Her laughter was tremulous in spite of her bravest efforts. They were all of them on the ragged edge of tears. They'd hoped so that the storeroom would give the house back to them! Only the Painter Boy seemed not to care. He waited, his eyes gleaming, until after the others had trooped off to their own quarters, each with his or her bit of the loot. He caught at the hanging green sleeve. ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... pride of place, for now there are some by the Grove Park Estate below Kew Bridge. The centre of the eyot is yellow with patches of marsh-marigold in the hot spring days. Besides the marsh-marigolds there are masses of yellow camomile, comfrey, ragged robin, and tall yellow ranunculus, growing on the muddy banks and on the sides of the little creeks among the willows, and a vast number of composite flowers of which I do not know the names. Common reeds are also increasing ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... would buy the ship he offered, but he had no money. The Englishman, however, was generous. Instead of money he took the cannon and other things now useless to the colonists. He provided them with food enough for the voyage, and seeing many of the men ragged and barefoot, added among other ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... to speculate whether or not Roddy were gazing after him; in the ragged animal who held the door while Lanyard fumbled for his facteur's tip, he recognized a runner for the Prefecture; and beyond question there were many such about. If any lingering doubt should trouble Roddy's mind he need only ask, "Such-and-such an one took what cab and for what destination?" ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... a fixed period, the cards were required to be brought to the colonial treasury, and exchanged for bills on the treasurer-general of the marine, or his deputy at Rochefort. Those which appeared too ragged for circulation were burnt, and the rest again paid out ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... hint, and soon reappeared in a pair of faded nankeen pantaloons, reaching to about the calf of the leg, a very shabby black coat, out at the elbows, a ragged black vest, and, instead of his varnished leather boots, a ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... befell Dick Varley which well-nigh caused him to give way to despair. For some time past he had been approaching the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains—those ragged, jagged, mighty hills which run through the whole continent from north to south in a continuous chain, and form, as it were, the backbone of America. One morning, as he threw the buffalo robe off his shoulders and ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... his long white hair fell down upon his shoulders, and his white beard reached to his middle. Once he must have been very tall, but now he was bent with age, and the bones of his gaunt frame thrust out his ragged garments. His dark eyes also were horny, indeed it seemed as though he could scarcely see with them, for he leaned forward to peer at their faces where they lay. His face was scored by a thousand wrinkles, and almost black with exposure to the sun and wind, ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... Let me in, Tom!" he called. "I've caught the thief," and as the lad unlocked the portal he saw that the jeweler held by the arm a ragged lad. "Ah; you scoundrel! I've caught you!" cried the diamond merchant, shaking the small chap, while Tom looked ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... plunge into the bathing-pool, and another quiet hour or two at the work in hand, and the delight of feeling that one was gaining skill and ease of expression; or again there would be the quick tramp in winter along muddy roads, with the ragged clouds hurrying across the sky, with the prospect ahead of a fire-lit evening of study and talk; and best of all a walk and a conversation with Father Payne himself, when all that he said seemed ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and they are responsible for the bloodshed. France trembled for a moment. She aimed at the traitors within her borders, and struck down many a gallant friend in error. But she recovered from the panic. Then her sons, half-starved, ragged, shoeless, ill-armed, marched to the frontier, hurled back her enemies, and swept the trained armies of Europe into flight. They would be free, and who should say them nay? They were not to be terrified or deluded by "the blood on the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... like those of the Blues and Horse Guards; as he looked from side to side, with a self-satisfied contented air, he appeared quite insensible of the cortege which followed and preceded him; the latter, consisting of some score of half-ragged boys, yelling and shouting with all their might, and the former, being a kind of instalment in hand of the Dublin Militia Band, and who, in numbers and equipment, closely resembled the "army which accompanies the first appearance of Bombastes." ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... and we took up the day's march, battling with cold and hunger over every foot of ground. On the tenth day after we crossed the Arkansas River the crisis came. Our army clothes were waiting for us at Camp Supply. Rain and ice and the rough usage of camp life had made us ragged already, and our shoes were worn out. And still the cold and storm stayed with us. We wrapped pieces of buffalo hide about our bare feet and bound the horses' nose-bags on them in lieu of cavalry boots. Our blankets we had donated to our mounts, and we had ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... I shall never want to look inside a bank again. This is life, real, sensible life. I have, after all, always had a yearning for genuine simplicity. It must have come to me from my pioneer, Puritan ancestry. That man over there plowing corn with his mule and ragged harness is happier than I ever was down there in that God-forsaken turmoil. The habit of wanting to beat other men in the expert turning over of capital is as dangerous, once it clutches you, as morphine. I must call ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... boys' steps died away, and Polly was wondering how it would seem to live all alone in the wood, when a little girl came trudging by, with a great pail of berries on her arm. She was a poor child: her feet were bare, her gown was ragged, she wore an old shawl over her head, and walked as if lame. Polly sat behind the ferns, and the child did not see her till Polly called out. The sudden sound startled her; and she dropped her pail, spilling the berries all over the path. The little girl began to cry, and Polly to laugh, saying, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... of the mischief her over-kindness did us all. Well, when our new maid came, on the supposition that Miss Woodbourne took care of her own clothes, she never touched them; and as Margaret's work was not endowed with the fairy power of lasting for ever, I soon grew as ragged as any ragged-robin in the hedge. Mamma used to complain of my slovenliness, but I am afraid I was naughty enough to take advantage of her gentleness, and out-argue her; so things grew worse and worse, till at last, one fatal day, Papa was aware of a great hole in my stockings. Then ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... people you will confine your table fare to eggs and English biscuits as I did. Arequipa has been thrice destroyed by earthquakes and is indeed considered the quakiest spot on earth. Priests, monks, ragged soldiers and churches almost compose the town; yet it has a very beautiful Plaza de Armas, where in the evenings Arequipa fashion promenades to the music of a quite good band. I seemed to be ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... winter—the long, cold winter. All the birds who had sung so sweetly about her had flown away; the trees shed their leaves, the flowers died; the great clover-leaf under which she had lived curled up, and nothing remained of it but the withered stalk. She was terribly cold, for her clothes were ragged, and she herself was so small and thin. Poor little Thumbelina! she would surely be frozen to death. It began to snow, and every snow-flake that fell on her was to her as a whole shovelful thrown on one of us, ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... purpose, of narratives without an aim. Mr. Borrow has hit the English taste by his union of the clerical and scholarly with what we may call manly blackguardism. His sympathies are all with the blackguards. Not with the ragged nondescripts of the streets, but the poetic vagabonds of the fields—the Rommany Chals—the Gipsies, who are as great in "horse-taming" as Hector of old, and great in the art of "self-defence" as any Greek before the walls of Troy—not to mention other peculiarities ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... into life. Yes, he was her own child after all. She did not really want to hurt him, but a sort of demon was inside her, the demon of drink and sometimes it made her almost mad. She looked down now with love-cleared eyes at the little crying child who still clung to her ragged skirt. She stooped and picked him up, and wrapped a bit of her shawl round him. Presently after a fearful struggle, she turned away from the public-house and carried the child home ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... ragged burros were cropping the scanty growth. Behind them the sharp elbow of the mountain ascended, scarred and furrowed and littered with rocky debris. Before them the hill sloped for a few rods and levelled ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... which presented itself at the outset. This difficulty related to his clothing. He had on a pair of overalls and a ragged vest which Abner had provided for him, intending that he should save the good suit he brought with him for Sundays. His present suit, which had been worn by half a dozen of his predecessors, Herbert decidedly objected to wearing, as, in addition to being faded and ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... nonplussed at first; but, a second glance showing me Tom Jerrold, one of my berthmates who had turned out before me, washing his face and hands in a bucket of sea-water in the scuppers, I followed suit, drying myself with a very dirty and ragged towel which he lent me in a friendly way, albeit I felt inclined to turn up ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... turns to open shame, Thy private feasting to a public fast, Thy smoothing titles to a ragged name, Thy sugar'd tongue to bitter wormwood taste: Thy violent vanities can never last. How comes it then, vile Opportunity, Being so bad, such ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... nearly seven miles from Ansdore to Lydd, passing the Woolpack, and the ragged gable of Midley Chapel—a reproachful ruin among the reeds of the Wheelsgate Sewer. Foxy went smartly, but every now and then they had to slow down as they overtook and passed flocks of sheep and cattle being herded along the road by drovers and shepherds in dusty boots, and dogs with ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... the pleasures of life, of fine dinners at restaurants, gay excursions to Joinville-le-Pont, and masked balls at Montparnasse or the Elysee Montmartre. Ah! experience is quickly gained in these work-shops. Sometimes those who went off at night with ragged dresses and worn-out shoes, returned the next morning in superb toilettes to say that they resigned their situations, as they were not made for work, and intended to live like ladies. They departed radiant, but often before a month was over they came back, emaciated, hollow-eyed, and despairing, ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... to the huckster's stall, and there was the owner herself, superintending the sale of her small wares—a few loungers and ragged idlers were hanging round her stall—for Biddy was 'a character,' and, in her way, was one of the sights ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... wall, on the land side, which is very high and massive, is pierced by five guarded gates. The dry moat, both wide and deep, is spanned by wooden bridges, after crossing which one has the choice of a dozen highways, all scantily shaded with rows of ragged mulberry-trees, glaring white in the sun and deep in impalpable dry dust. But the sea-breeze blows freshening across the parched land; shadows of light clouds cool the arid mountains in the distance; the olives roll into silvery undulations; a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... silence. McPherson, ashamed of blurting his sacred heart secrets to a fellow he detested, sat gnawing angrily at his ragged grey moustache. Frederik, to whom the last part of the doctor's tirade had passed unheard, stood gazing sightlessly at the ground before him. And for a space, neither ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... Mappamundus in the Hall, and when the apartment was renewed in 1459 a decree of the Senate ordered that such a map should be repainted on the new walls. This also perished by a fire in 1483. On the motion of Ramusio, in the next century, four new maps were painted. These had become dingy and ragged, when, in 1762, the Doge Marco Foscarini caused them to be renewed by the painter Francesco Grisellini. He professed to have adhered closely to the old maps, but he certainly did not, as Morelli testifies. Eastern Asia looks ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... drive, and the cold yellow sun of the Moruan system swam into sight in the viewscreen. Far below, the tiny eighth planet glistened like a snowball in the reflection of the sun, with only occasional rents in the cloud blanket revealing the ragged surface below. The doctors watched as the ship went into descending orbit, skimming the outer atmosphere and settling ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... child, what a formalist you have become. You stand on a fine point of etiquette, as if it were the broad foundation of hospitality; while only last week you wanted a ragged tramp, who had every appearance of being a thief, to stay all night. Your brother thinks it a special providence that his friend should have turned up ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... from the scene of revolutions. They feel that he is arriving at knowledge faster than they wish, and their policy of precedents is the barometer of their fears. This political popery, like the ecclesiastical popery of old, has had its day, and is hastening to its exit. The ragged relic and the antiquated precedent, the monk and ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... far away, clustered a range of mountains, spread out like an enormous horse-shoe and in its center arose the form of a solitary hill. In the heavens from the east drifted a white, ragged cloud. The solitary hill seemed to rise high and higher and all the mountains bowed before it. The spectral cloud resolved itself into a terrible vision which enveloped the central hill. Great Heavens! ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... stoves up on a rainy day. Why, we know not; but we never heard of any exception to this rule. The first step to be taken is to put on a very old and ragged coat, under the impression that when he gets his mouth full of plaster it will keep the shirt bosom clean. Next, the operator gets his hand inside the place where the pipe ought to go, and blacks his fingers, and then he ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... attractive as to feature, with bright blue eyes, long, fair hair, and a complexion which would have been perfect only for the grime upon it. He blushed as Jimmie looked him over, and involuntarily turned his eyes down to his ragged clothing and ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... every town, of every village where I passed, gathered around me, throwing flowers of consolation on my path. I have seen not a single man bearing that mark of poverty upon himself which in old Europe strikes the eye sadly at every step. I have seen no ragged poor—have seen not a single house bearing the appearance of desolated poverty. The cheerfulness of a comfortable condition, the result of industry, spreads over the land. One sees at a glance that the ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... plentiful, but the labourers are few": here is only one, but he is quite sufficient—"the reaper whose name is Death," a skeleton over whose bones the peasant's dress—a shirt and a pair of ragged trousers—hangs loose. The shirt-sleeves of the skeleton are turned well up, as if for more active exertion, as he grasps the two holds of the huge scythe with which he is sweeping down ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... ink wells appeared to be empty, if she was to judge by the look of chagrin on the clerk's face as he inspected them. Photographs of polo scenes in which Wrandall was a prominent figure, hung about the walls, with two or three pictures of his favourite ponies, and one of a ragged gipsy girl with wonderful eyes, carrying a monkey in a crude wooden cage strapped to her back. On closer observation one would have recognised Sara's peculiarly gipsy-like features in the face of the girl, and then one would have noticed ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... in his throat as if he had works in him like a clock, and was going to strike. And he smeared his ragged rough ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... the news of the departure of his ragged soldiery on the very day which witnessed his investment with the Garter by the fair hands of Elizabeth herself. A few days afterwards he left England, accompanied by an escort of lords and gentlemen, especially ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
