"Rat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... leering river rat, Nelia Crele trembled for a time in weak dismay, the reaction from her tense and fiery determination to protect herself at all costs. But she quickly gathered her strength and, having brewed a pot of strong coffee, thrown together a light supper, ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... motion." A tall woman, with the magisterial sweep of shawl and wave of the arm of a cheap boarding-house keeper, rose. "I detect a subtle purpose in that offer. There is a rat behind that arras. There is a prejudice against us in the legislature, and the car company wish no mention of Woman Suffrage to be made in Berrytown until their new charter is granted. Are we so cheaply bought?—bribed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... he lifted the knocker and let it fall. The rat-tat sounded hollowly, but there was no response. Constans looked longingly at the wall, but without some special appliance, such as a notched pole or grappling-hooks, it was unscalable. There were no signs of life to be seen in or about the house. Not a light in any of the windows or curl of smoke ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... and pushed some of the sheep off in the river. All the sheep then made a rush to follow the unfortunate ones. Barney Hill, who was on the back end of the boat, got knocked off and could not swim and the boys had a good laugh at him climbing over the sheep, looking like a drowned rat trying to get out of a molasses barrel. Dick Stewart was a good swimmer and so he landed back ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... was not bothered by fears of the supernatural, no matter what the old house was, or had been. Now, a good-sized rat might have made ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... his poverty had brought him to live in a hay- loft. This character he assumed, and no doubt it fitted him better than either the English cobbler or the German doctor; besides, as he said, sham court costume is always the easiest to contrive: but Cherry was by no means prepared to find the Rat-like poet the secret admirer of a daughter of the Serene Highness ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but our young friend's strange conduct seems to suggest that he has smelt a rat, possibly even that Jackson, the old beast, has shown him a rat—of ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... which they caught and carried home with them. He was of the usual tabby colour and by no means fierce, quickly yielding to the coaxing treatment of his captors. He made himself quite at home in the Shack, and we looked forward to a display of his prowess as a rat-catcher. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... moral virtue. Some people are physically brave and morally cowards; others are exactly the reverse. Some people are constitutionally cowards all round, while in others cowardice shows itself only partially. I have known a man who is as brave as a lion in battle, but is terrified by a rat. I have known a man brave in other respects lose his nerve altogether in a thunderstorm. In neither of these cases was it the man's own fault; it was constitutional, and by no effort could he conquer it. I consider Bathurst to be an exceptionally noble character. I am sure that he is capable ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... I am not a priest," she said. "And I would sooner be buried dead than alive. And there is a rat there that sorely ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... thickness, yielded as much electricity in little more than three seconds of time as a Leyden battery charged by thirty turns of a very large and powerful plate electric machine in full action (371.). This quantity, though sufficient if passed at once through the head of a rat or cat to have killed it, as by a flash of lightning, was evolved by the mutual action of so small a portion of the zinc wire and water in contact with it, that the loss of weight sustained by either would be inappreciable ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... are thinking of asking the Anzacs to exert a preliminary pressure on the Gaba Tepe alarum to the southwards. We shall then give Birdwood what he wants, an extra division, and it will be a problem how to do so without letting the enemy smell a rat. Birdwood's Intelligence are certain that no trenches have been dug by the enemy along the high ridge from Chunuk Bair to Hill 305. He is sure that with one more Division under his direct command, plus the help of a push from Helles to ease ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... three weeks all kinds of stories have been handed out to the American public about our lack of preparedness. It has even been charged that the money we have spent on our military and naval forces during the last few years has gone down the rat-hole. I think that it is a matter of fairness to the nation ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... them. They search every hole, nook, and cranny. Here, dozens may be seen surrounding a great spider or scorpion; there, they chase sprawling long-legged creatures across the window-panes; yonder, hundreds of them may be observed dragging out a rat or a mouse which they have killed: even snakes can not escape from the sharp and poisonous bite of these bold foragers. It takes from three to four hours for them to clear out a house. They will not leave it until they are ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... doings, Doctor.... Hi told Bough what you said. Hi did, faithful ... an' 'e swore if you wasn't the man to do what 'e wanted, 'e'd be damned but 'e'd find a woman as would! And she come next night—a little, shabby, white-faced, rat-nosed hold thing, shiverin' an' shakin'. Five pounds she 'ad of Bough, shakin' an' shiverin'. An' he wasn't to send no more to the haddress he knew, because she wouldn't be there. Always move hout ... she says, after a fresh job! Oh, my Gawd! An' Bough, he hordered me, an' Hi 'ad ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Ulster, near his own palace; Forgoll said it was at Dubtar in Leinster. Forgoll, enraged at being contradicted by a mere layman, threatened to pronounce awful incantations against Mongan, which might put rat-hood on him, or anything. The end of it was that Mongan was given three days to prove his statement; if he should not have done so by that time, he and all his possessions were to become the property ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Temple Grace looked as if he were blighted by lightning; and his deep blue eyes gleamed like a hyaena's. The Baron was least changed. Tom Cogit, who smelt that the crisis was at hand, was as quiet as a bribed rat. ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... notice but one more of the early Boston editors, who seems to have been an odd fish—somewhat witty, but, to use a homely proverb, 'as rough as a rat-catcher's dog.' He first established the Boston Weekly Rehearsal, in 1731, and afterward the Boston Evening Post. His name was Thomas Fleet. Massachusetts was then a slaveholding country, and Fleet owned several negroes, two ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... feel frightened," I said, seeking to reassure her. "There is nothing here more terrifying than a vacant house, doubtless long since deserted. We shall discover nothing more formidable within than a rat or two." ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... their appearance in the main scar or in the scars of stitches in its neighbourhood. In the lower animals the grafting of cancer only succeeds in animals of the same species; for example, a cancer taken from a mouse will not grow in the tissues of a rat, but only in a mouse of the same variety as that from ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... land lay, and finding himself thus beset, old Simon falls to his usual artifices, turning this way and that, like a rat in a pit, to find some hole for escape. First he feigns to misunderstand, then, clapping his hands in his pockets, he knows not where he can have laid them; after that fancies he must have given them to his man Peter, ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... detachment of three hundred knights, who invaded Albania, and besieged the fortress of Belgrade. Their defeat might amuse with a triumph the vanity of Constantinople; but the more sagacious Michael, despairing of his arms, depended on the effects of a conspiracy; on the secret workings of a rat, who gnawed the bowstring [39] of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... Looking little though wondrous fat; Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister Than a too-long-opened oyster, Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous For a plate of turtle green and glutinous) "Only a scraping of shoes on the mat? Anything like the sound of a rat Makes ...
— The Pied Piper of Hamelin • Robert Browning
... twel bimeby, atter he done got de tree mos' cut thoo, he stop fer ter ketch his bref, en he seed Mr. Buzzard laughin' behime his back, he did, en right den en dar, widout gwine enny fudder, Brer Fox, he smelt a rat. But Mr. Buzzard, ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... doing no good" there, and his father thought it was "time he settled down to his medical study in Edinburgh," never heeding the fact that his son had already one passion in life, apart from "shooting, dogs, and rat-catching," which stood a very good chance of saving him from becoming the disgrace to the family that his good father feared. So that while Wallace was imbibing his first lessons in Socialism at 14 years of age, Darwin at 16 found himself merely enduring, with a feeling ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... years. Also it must have been shielded by the moon, to some extent, against the constant small atmospheric leakage most celestial globes are subject to. Just the same, when we land, we'll test conditions with a rat or two." ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... the strange sonority of his own name, ran to hid himself under a bookcase in an orifice so small that a rat could not have squeezed himself ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... of his daughter, fled to another kingdom as quickly as possible. Here he endured a disconsolate life, subsisting on the sale of some jewels, which he happened to have upon his dress at his flight. Wandering one day through a town, a man offered him for sale a dog, a cat, and a rat, which he purchased, and kept, diverting his melancholy with their tricks, and uncommon playfulness together. These seeming animals proved to be magicians; who, in return for his kindness, agreed to recover for their master his lost ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... furtive hopes, the pride of the Scot to perpetuate his line, the desire of a man for a manchild. The Chief had buried all that in the desk drawer with the picture; but he had gone overboard in his best uniform to rescue a wharf-rat, and he had felt a curious sense of comfort when he held the cold little figure in his arms and was hauled on deck, sputtering dirty river water and broad Scotch, as was ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... no coward, but life was sweet to him, and to die like that—like a drowned rat in a hole—to be able to do nothing but wait for that swift and sure oncoming death! He reeled against the damp rock wall, and for a moment sea and sky and prisoning headlands and white-lined tide whirled ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... creatures men are. They learn wisdom about all the little matters of daily life by experience, but they do not seem to do so about the higher. Even a sparrow comes to understand a scarecrow after a time or two, and any rat in a hole will learn the trick of a trap. But you can trick men over and over again with the same inducement, and, even whilst the hook is sticking in their jaws, the same bait will tempt them once more. That is very largely the case because ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was in the middle of the night. I've seen as much myself when I waked up in the middle of the night. I took a rat for ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... in their habits and instincts. It is a physiological peculiarity which leads the Greyhound to chase its prey by sight,—that enables the Beagle to track it by the scent,—that impels the Terrier to its rat-hunting propensity,—and that leads the Retriever to its habit of retrieving. These habits and instincts are all the results of physiological differences and peculiarities, which have been developed from a common stock, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... bought it at a bazar for ten dollars, the day before I brought it around. When you went out for lunch Cap. he comes in. We done for the plug in a minute, and as Mighty Marda was all but gone, on account of his rat diet, we finished him, too. Then we wrecked the place up some, took a couple of turns about the horse with Mardo, called in Doc. Forbes, who stood in, to fix up the fictitious fracture, and then ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... was pronounced and executed almost in the same breath, to the unspeakable terror and disorder of the poor shivering patient, who, having undergone the immersion, ran about like a drowned rat, squeaking for assistance and revenge. His cries were overheard by the patrol, who, chancing to pass that way, took him under their protection, and, in consequence of his complaint and information, went in pursuit of ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... here in the darkness? 'Tis only the rat that squeals, Crushed down under the iron hoof. 'Tis only the fool ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... exceedingly bitter hatred of rats and mice. Still there was no danger of her investigating the grain-chests on her own account, for she was very much afraid. She would not have lifted one of those lids, with the chance of a rat or mouse being under it, for the world. If ever a mouse was seen in the kitchen Nabby took immediate refuge on the settle or the table and left some one else to ...
— The Adventures of Ann - Stories of Colonial Times • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was never unusually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater's heaven. I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. I believe that water is the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... of Gentle Sorrow. I once was honored in the friendship of an exalted mandarin who sustained the course of joyful Wisdom to the raising of the Fifth Gate (called the Gate of Sweet Desires) and the admission of the twentieth rat. I esteem him almost equally with my ancestors. The Sixth, or Gate Celestial—whereby a man enters into the joy of Complete Understanding—I have dispensed with, here, substituting a Japanese fancy of an antiquity nearly as great and honorable. The introduction of ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... stole up, self-accused, a timid, servile creature, rubbing his hands nervously, and suspecting mischief. He was a rat in trouble. He had thin brown hair, neatly brushed and plastered down, so as to make it look still thinner, and his face was the average narrow cunning face of the dishonest man-servant. It had an ounce ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... advance not hither. Behold Seb and Shu. Stand still now, and thou shalt eat the rat which is an abominable thing unto Ra, and thou shalt crunch the bones of ...
— Egyptian Literature
... at him, his green eyes shrewdly confiding. "There's been the devil of a row," he said. "The mater is furious with her. She gave her a fearful licking last night to judge by the sounds. Dinah was squealing like a rat. Of course girls always do squeal when they're hurt, but I fancy the mater must have hit a bit harder than usual. And she's burnt the whole of the trousseau too. Dinah was so mighty proud of all her fine things. She'd feel that, you know, ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... mirth and sadness of the story are skilfully drawn into the handling of this portion of it; and, amid wooings and preparations for weddings and church-ringing bells for baptisms, the steadily-going rat-tat of the hammer on ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... that have rendered possible the changes produced by man, have been determined at the right time and place by the Creator. Every race produced by the florist or breeder, the dog or the pigeon fancier, the rat-catcher, the sporting man, or the slave-hunter, must have been provided for by varieties occurring when wanted; and as these variations were never withheld, it would prove that the sanction of ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... far truer to say that the secret of his success was his profound belief in other people, and it is the lack of this that has commonly been the curse of these obscure Napoleons. Francis always assumed that everyone must be just as anxious about their common relative, the water-rat, as he was. He planned a visit to the Emperor to draw his attention to the needs of "his little sisters the larks." He used to talk to any thieves and robbers he met about their misfortune in being ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... it's worm-eaten and rat-eaten and tindery enough in all conscience; and the damp doesn't exactly foster it. It's a queer old shanty. There are two or three accounts of it in some old local stuff I have. And of course ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... with nobody in the back seat. A man sits there with his arms crossed and his face like a blank sheet of paper, but one never knows how much they hear, and their ears are always cocked, like a terrier's on the scent of a rat." ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... and behaves himself as such, I'm not the man to go and split upon him for a word. To be sure it's quite nat'ral that a gentleman—put case that a young woman is his fancy woman—it's nothing but nat'ral that he should want to get her out of such an old rat-hole as this, where many's the fine-timbered creature, both he and she, that has lain to rot, and has never got out of the old trap at all, first or last'——'How so?' I interrupted him; 'surely ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... "Rat poison, maybe," replied Ned with a laugh. "I've heard there are lots of rats on ships, and maybe he has a patent stuff ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... the hood of a Beguine, And mine was the foot to falter; Three cowled monks, rat-eyed, were seen; The Cross was of bones o'er ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... for a few weeks' gaiety. Well, we took a fancy to one another. I was always a queer sort of chap, hating convention and all the trammels of society, and I liked the old man at once. He was a big, jolly old boy, a thorough sportsman and Irish to the backbone. Poor as a rat, yet living somehow like a Prince; hospitable to a fault, and looking on debts and duns in ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... caused by excessive use of condiments in the feed, putrid or spoiled feeds and eating caustic drugs, such as lime and rat poison. ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... been coloured, independently of sexual selection, for the sake of protection; but not, as far as I can judge, in so many cases, nor in so striking a manner, as in most of the lower classes. Audubon remarks that he often mistook the musk-rat (35. Fiber zibethicus, Audubon and Bachman, 'The Quadrupeds of North America,' 1846, p. 109.), whilst sitting on the banks of a muddy stream, for a clod of earth, so complete was the resemblance. The ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... was heard at the door. It must be the young doctor, for who else would call at such an hour? Yet Helen hesitated and trembled, holding her breath to listen, thinking it possible it was but the pressure of the wind, or some rat tramping within the walls. But when the knock was repeated, with a little more emphasis, she took the lamp, entered the narrow passage, closing the door softly after her, removed the massy bar, certain of beholding the countenance which was the sunlight of her soul. ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... had no regrets at departure, and went away with something of the satisfaction of a rat leaving a sinking ship. But with old Hannibal it was ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... 'I smell a rat,' said Smyth, who had in his mouth an unlit cigarette, which had fastened itself to his lip and bobbed up and down with his speech, like a miniature baton. 'When a man says a woman's voice is sweet, it means that ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... Mary Shum; indeed, as I have said, it was purely for her sake that he took and kep his lodgings at Pentonwille. Excep for the sake of love, which is above being mersnary, fourteen shillings a wick was a LITTLE too strong for two such rat-holes as he lived in. I do blieve the famly had nothing else but their lodger to live on: they brekfisted off his tea-leaves, they cut away pounds and pounds of meat from his jints (he always dined at home), and his baker's ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in a single year—he brought us in sight of Vienna. It was just a clean sweep. We had eaten up three different armies in succession, and had wiped out four Austrian generals; one of them—a white-haired old chap—was burned alive at Mantua like a rat in a straw mattress. We had conquered peace, and kings were begging, on their knees, for mercy. Could a man have done all that alone? Never! He had the help of God; that's certain! He divided himself up like the five loaves of bread in the Gospel; he planned battles at night and directed them ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... begun to rebuke Michael, when "rat-tat" went the iron ring that hung at the door. Some one was knocking. They looked out of the window; a man had come on horseback, and was fastening his horse. They opened the door, and the servant who had been with ...
— What Men Live By and Other Tales • Leo Tolstoy
... his house, He kept like rat in hole; All those that pass'd the barber's door, Could always ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... Bargeton; perhaps in a few days she will be mine, yet here I live in this rat-hole!" he said to himself this evening, as he went down the narrow passage into the little yard behind the shop. This evening bundles of boiled herbs were spread out along the wall, the apprentice was scouring a caldron, and M. Postel himself, girded ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... the trapper. "Just as alligators do, so mink, otter, and muskrats have holes that run up into the bank of a stream, their nest being always above ordinary high water. When you missed seeing your rat it was because he happened to be near enough to dive down, enter his tunnel, and make his way up to his nest. You see, there are lots of queer things to be learned, if you only keep your eyes and ears open when in ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... of his arm through the wind and rain, summoned a kind of little, white, wooden sarcophagus which was skipping near us on the waves, sculled by two yellow boys stark naked in the rain. The craft approached us, I jumped into it, then through a little trap-door shaped like a rat-trap that one of the scullers threw open for me, I slipped in and stretched myself at full length on a mat in what is called ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... rushed up and down the stairs, trying every door and peering out of every window I could find, but after a little the conviction of my helplessness overpowered all other feelings. When I look back after a few hours I think I must have been mad for the time, for I behaved much as a rat does in a trap. When, however, the conviction had come to me that I was helpless I sat down quietly, as quietly as I have ever done anything in my life, and began to think over what was best to be done. I am thinking still, and as yet have come to no definite conclusion. Of one thing only ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... caused Douglas' face to darken and his eyes to blaze. He sprang quickly forward, and seized the wretch by the collar just as Nell forced his grip from her arm. He shook him as a terrier would shake a rat and left him at length sprawling in the middle of the road, his ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... Church, or the Stock Exchange. Hundreds of young men at both our ancient Universities look upon Journalism as the easiest and most attractive of all the professions. In the first place there are no Examinations to bar the way, and your ordinary Undergraduate loathes an Examination as a rat may be supposed to loathe a terrier. What can be easier—in imagination—than to dash off a leading article, a biting society sketch, a scathing review, to overturn ancient idols, to inaugurate movements, to plan out policies? All this GRUBLET was confident of being ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... him. Nothing could be more natural than to draw them from his bosom. Again and again he examined them in fascinated contemplation. He had already charged them, and he amused himself by thinking of the mischief he could do, by a single touch upon the trigger, to a poor little wood-rat, that once or twice ran along a decaying log some five steps from his feet. But his object being secrecy, the rat brushed his whiskers in safety. Still he amused himself by aiming at this and other ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... see he's got me?" she said between her teeth, "and that, next thing, he'll get the La Chance gold? If you don't let me meet him to-night I'll be helpless. I——Oh, can't you see I'll be like a rat in a trap?—not able to do anything? I can make him go away, if I meet him! Otherwise"—the passion in her voice kept it down to a whisper—"it's not only that I'm afraid he can make things look as if I stole from Dudley as well as from Van ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... saying this, Friar John spied twenty or thirty young slender-shaped Chitterlings posting as fast as they could towards their town, citadel, castle, and fort of Chimney, and said to Pantagruel, I smell a rat; there will be here the devil upon two sticks, or I am much out. These worshipful Chitterlings may chance to mistake you for Shrovetide, though you are not a bit like him. Let us once in our lives leave our junketing for a while, and put ourselves in a ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... spiders. Among it, in the cracks, upright Cerei, like candelabra twenty and thirty feet high, thrust themselves aloft into the brushwood. An Aroid {103b} rides parasitic on roots and stems, sending downward long air-roots, and upward brown rat-tails of flower, and broad leaves, four feet by two, which wither into whity-brown paper, and are used, being tough and fibrous, to wrap round the rowlocks of the oars. Tufts of Karatas, top, spread their long prickly leaves among ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... mumbled something through the gag in his mouth, but Tom couldn't understand what he was trying to say. Mrs. Hill just looked at the planter with wide, frightened eyes. The cadet whirled around angrily. "Why, you dirty little space rat!" ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... invaluable realistic picture,—relates an encounter with the village bully, Jack Armstrong. The "boys" at last teased Lincoln into a wrestling match, and when his victory in the good-natured encounter provoked Jack to unfair play, Abe shook him as a terrier shakes a rat. Then he made peace with him, drew out the better quality in him; and the two reigned "like friendly Caesars" over the village crowd, Abe tempering Jack's playfulness when it got too rough, and winning ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... wet as a drowned rat," his sister said. "Come on up and get some dry clothes, Ford. I'm sure you're awful kind, Mrs. Gallup. I will telephone for the ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... to employ you. My men wouldn't stay with me if I should employ a 'scab,' or 'rat,'" ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... rice-grains prepared and dyed in a certain ingenious way. A kite lighted upon her head, and tore away and swallowed the string of beads. But it is great fun to feed these birds with dead rats or mice which have been caught in traps overnight and subsequently drowned. The instant a dead rat is exposed to view a kite pounces from the sky to bear it away. Sometimes a crow may get the start of the kite, but the crow must be able to get to the woods very swiftly indeed in order to keep his prize. ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... any hist'ry about this," the selectman retorted with emphasis. "It's here, now, present, and up to date. And I can give you the future if you want any predictions. That money ain't goin' to be throwed down a rat-hole in any ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... comical incident occurred just as he was about leaving the hall, after his first lecture in Boston. A shabby, ungainly looking man stepped briskly up to him in the anteroom, seized his hand and announced himself as "proprietor of the Mammoth Rat," and proposed to exchange season tickets. Thackeray, with the utmost gravity, exchanged cards and promised to call on the wonderful quadruped ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... constrainin' atmosphere of a onwelcome and onlawful attachment. And it took all the principle I had by me to git up even a emotion of pity for the one-eyed watcher, whose only recreation seemin'ly durin' that long, long day wuz to watch our party as clost as any cat ever watched a rat hole, and to kinder hang round us. Faith kep' pretty clost to me all day and seemed to take a good deal of comfort watchin' the entrancin' scenery ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... golden crown on his head, and his consort marshalled the procession. After the chariot followed a vast procession of rats, each of whom carried a torch, and the sparks which flew from the torches fell to the earth as jewels. Some of the rats were shouting "Zurkielis" incessantly; and whenever a rat uttered this cry, a piece of gold fell from his mouth. The procession was followed by a great number of fantastic forms, which collected the gold from the ground, and put it into large sacks. When the farmer saw this he also gathered together as much of the gold ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... in Calgary, Alberta, on the morning of Sunday, September 14th, after some of the members of the train had spent an hour or so shooting gophers, a small field rat, part squirrel, and at all times a great pest ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... of June 8th, 1773, a man named Corbet, a rat-catcher and chimney-sweep, living at Tring, entered down the chimney the house of Richard Holt, of Bierton, Buckinghamshire, and murdered him in his bed-chamber. For this crime Corbet was hanged and gibbeted in a field not far distant from the house where the murder ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... where I stood. A scapegoat was necessary, and with a prison record behind me I had about as much show as a rat in a trap. If there should be an investigation, Mullins would swear that I had entire charge of the claim department. And having no written data to fall back upon, I ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... two had a slight degree of astigmatism. They also examined other animals, and the same proportion of hypermetropia existed. These gentlemen found that as an optical instrument the eye of the horse, cow, cat and rabbit is superior to that of the rat, mouse and guinea pig. ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... Along by the fences, behind the stack, And one by one, through a hole in the wall, In under the dusty barn they crawl, Dressed in their Sunday garments all; And a very astonishing sight was that, When each in his cobwebbed coat and hat Came up through the floor like an ancient rat. And there they hid; And Reuben slid The fastenings back, and the door undid. "Keep dark!" said he, "While I squint an' see what the' is ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... "Do you think that's all? Why, don't you realize that you can't live in your own country again? Don't you know that the whites will hunt you out like you was a rat? Don't you realize that the folks that believed in you and was fond of you has had to give up their faith in you? Don't you understand that you've lost all your white friends? But I suppose that don't mean anything to ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... north and south, and west, as far as Basil could see. They were shaped like truncated cones, about three feet in diameter at the base, and not over two in height. Near the top of each was the entrance—a hole not much larger than would have been used by a rat. There was no grass immediately around this hole, although the sides and tops of the mounds were clothed with a smooth green turf that gave them the appearance of having been constructed a long ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... understandin' wimmin," mused David, as his victoria swept through the gates of Linden House. "Sunday afternoon Dickey might ha' bin a dose of rat poison; now she's ready to swaller 'im as if 'e was a ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... my enemy who speaks my virtues." Having a wholesome dread of litigation, they say of one who goes to law, "He sues a flea to catch a bite." Their equivalent for our "coming out at the little end of the horn" is, "The farther the rat creeps up (or into) the cow's horn, the narrower it grows." The truth of their saying that "The fame of good deeds does not leave a man's door, but his evil acts are known a thousand miles off," is illustrated in our own daily papers every morning. Finally, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... rotten from the gunwale to the keel, Rat riddled, bilge bestank, Slime-slobbered, horrible, I saw her reel And drag her oozy flank, And sprawl among the deft young waves, that laughed And leapt, and turned in many a sportive wheel As she thumped onward with her ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Virginia Deer Black Bear Lynx Wild Cat Red Fox Gray Fox Beaver Raccoon Skunk Otter Fisher Cottontail Rabbit Martin Mink Black Squirrel Gray Squirrel Red Squirrel Fox Squirrel Flying Squirrel Chipmunk Musk Rat Opossum ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... something dreadful, Ada Peirce, Miriam, and I. We went down to the confectionery; and unable to resist the temptation, made a detour by the Custom-House in hope of seeing one of our poor dear half-starved mule and rat fed defenders. The crowd had passed away then; but what was our horror when we emerged from the river side of the building and turned into Canal, to find the whole front of the pavement lined with ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... rats are to your chickens: chickens despise rats when raised, as yours are now, above the reach of claws and teeth. Some day or other I may so raise a coop for that little one: I am too old for coops. Meanwhile, if a rat comes sneaking here after us, send it off the wrong way, with a flea in ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the wall, to examine the back. The hinges were immovable. Despondent, I ran my hand further down the back at random, and, to my surprise, felt a small irregular hole, through which I could thrust two fingers. It was evidently a rat hole, for I saw now that when close to the wall, it must have corresponded to a chink between the ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... stone; and each compartment in the depths of it was safe and dry. The night-watchmen, flashing their lanterns over the backs of Plato and Shakespeare, saw that on the twenty-second of February neither flame, rat, nor burglar was going to violate these treasures—poor, highly respectable men, with wives and families at Kentish Town, do their best for twenty years to protect Plato and Shakespeare, and then are buried ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... responded to Ralston's signal like the loyal, honest little brute she was. The gravel flew behind them, and the rat-a-tat-tat of the horses' hoofs on the hard road was like the roll of a drum. They were running neck and neck, but Ralston had little fear of the result, unless the gray had ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... LEMMING RAT, a rodent, which "travelling in myriads seawards from the hills," as seen in Norway, "turns not to the right or the left, eats its way through whatever will eat, and climbs over whatever will not eat, and perishes ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... man said nothing. He stood there looking down, dogged, quiet, like one tongue-tied. Littimer thundered out his question again. He crossed over, laying his hands on his son's shoulders and shaking him as a terrier might shake a rat. ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... Weir, I didn't want to leave you in that rat-infested room all night without giving you a chance to change your mind. Wouldn't you rather sleep between ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... to twenty-five thousand pounds. On the occasion of the wedding, Jack informed a friend that the fact of the lady's being Scotch was forgiven in view of the dowry. Most of this fortune went into a rat-hole to help pay the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... not, you simple Humfrey, that, as I said methinks some time since, it is well sometimes to give a rogue rope enough and he will hang himself? Close the trap too soon, and you miss the biggest rat of all. So we waited until the prey seemed shy and about to escape. Babington had, it seems, suspected Maude or Langston, or whatever you call him, and had ridden out of town, hiding in St. John's Wood with some of his fellows, till they were starved out, and trying to creep ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Orthopedic Apparatus Palmer's Perfumes Paracamph Peckham's Croup Remedy Perry Davis Painkiller Physiological Tonicum Pinus Medicine Co. Piso's Remedy Planten's Capsules Plexo Toilet Cream Poland Water Pozzoni's Complexion Powder "Queen Bess" Perfume Rat-Nox Razor Stropper, "Meehan's" Razors Rex Bitters Riker's Tooth Powder Roachine Rossman's Pile Cure Saliodin Salted Peanuts Salubrin Samurai Perfumes Sandholm's Skin Lotion Sanford's Inks "Sanitas," Disinfectant Scheffler's Hair Colorine Seguin et Cie Sharp & Smith Shoes for ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... an unusual nature took place in the house of a respectable innkeeper in Ireland. The parties concerned were, a hen of the game species, and a rat of the middle size. The hen, in an accidental perambulation round a spacious room, accompanied by an only chicken, the sole surviving offspring of a numerous brood, was roused to madness by an unprovoked attack made ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... very good name, Berwin, but not for me. Oh, was there ever so unhappy a creature as I? False name, false friend, in disgrace, in hiding! Curse everybody! Go! go! Mr. Denzil, and leave me to die here like a rat ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... never gave trouble anywhere, and left both hotels and lodging-houses with an excellent character, so the bargain was concluded. I saw that his wife was not a party to it, but he overruled her, and as he was a big red-faced noisy man, and she was a small rat of a woman, I thought he would continue to do so. One is always making these stupid elementary mistakes about one's fellow-creatures. But a little later in the day I had occasion to call at the rooms to ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... a thing of nerves and passion now, all energy and muscle and concentrated purpose. He shook the man off like a rat, and the next moment burst open the ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... rat," he told the Ganymedan, who was rubbing his chin and groaning: "you do exactly as I say, if you know what's good for you." He shook ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... other lil gals had a play house, but when they came nigh I got skeered. I just ducked through a hole in the fence and ran out in the field. One of the soldiers seed me and he hollers 'look at that rat run'." ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... in the Saxon style with narrow holes, scorpions, and large square gratings over narrow loopholes. There was no window on it, but here and there slits, old embrasures of pierriers and archegayes. At the foot of this high wall was seen, like the hole at the bottom of a rat-trap, a little wicket gate, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... one has a waterfall dividing it into two distinct caves. Plemont is the spot where the cable comes in from England, crawls out of the ocean like a great dripping hoary old sea-serpent to trail through a cleft to the station on the cliff above. This is a rat-hole beside those caves." ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... before this village, which is governed by a daughter of Mkasiwa, we were informed we could not enter unless we paid toll. As we would not pay toll, we were compelled to camp in a ruined, rat-infested boma, situated a mile to the left of Kigandu, being well scolded by the cowardly natives for deserting Mkasiwa in his hour of extremity. We were accused of running away from ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... heard him say, "here's an old rat's nest made years ago, I should think; and look what's lying beside ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... Erh's) arrival, I casually remembered that her mistress employed, during her time, such domestics as were up to all kinds of larks, and at the sight of her, I got more cross than ever. But, little though one would have thought it, she behaved from the moment she came, like a rat that tries to get out of the way of a cat. And as she had had to stand for ever so long, I pitied her very much; but she took up the thread of the conversation, and went on to spin that long yarn of hers. Yet, instead of mentioning that her mistress treats me with every consideration, she, on ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... correspondence in the library," went on Saunders. "Most of it I've seen to. There are a few private letters I haven't opened. There's also a box with a rat, or something, inside it that came by the evening post. Very likely it's the six-toed albino. I didn't look, because I didn't want to mess up my things but I should gather from the way it's jumping about ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... herrings, sprats, and bacon, to the vexation of worshipful merchants resorting to the Exchange. In 1602 we find that oranges and lemons were allowed to be sold at the gates and passages of the Exchange. In 1622 complaint was made of the rat-catchers, and sellers of dogs, birds, plants, &c., who hung about the south gate of the Bourse, especially at exchange time. It was also seriously complained of that the bear-wards, Shakespeare's noisy neighbours in Southwark, before special bull or bear baitings, used to ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury |
