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More "Wag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shut up in the bug-disappointer, when a facetious lay-brother of the convent fell upon me and began tickling me. I never had the courage again to try the anti-flea contrivance, preferring the friskiness of those animals to the sports of such a greasy grinning wag as ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... animates art and literature, as the whistle of the master animates the dog and makes him wag his tail. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... melancholy Irish terrier followed O'Connell for miles. He tried to drive him away. The dog would turn and run for a few seconds and the moment O'Connell would take his eyes off him he would run along and catch him up and wag his over-long tail and look up at O'Connell with his sad eyes. The dog followed him all the way home and when O'Connell opened the door he ran in. O'Connell Had not the heart to turn him out, so he poured out some milk and broke up some dry biscuits for him and ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... enjoyed and appreciated the bacon, and the cheese, and the ale; he was like a great, big human dog; you know how we like to see a big dog wag his tail at his food, or put his paws on our knees and laugh, as it were, with his eyes in our face. They petted him, these two women, exactly as if he had been a dog, giving him all the bones, literally and metaphorically, the actual bones of the meat, and any scraps there were, to ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... the English detenus at Valenciennes was left for signature at the house of the colonel of gendarmerie, addressed in a fulsome manner to Bonaparte, under his title of Emperor of the French, and beginning with "Sire." Some unlucky wag took an opportunity of altering this word into "Dear Sir," and nearly caused the whole party ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... the reapers sharpen it by drawing the edge through an apple, when the acid bites and cleans the steel. While we were sauntering through a village one morning, out rushed the boys from school, and instantly their tongues began to wag of those things on which their hearts were set. 'I know a jay's nest, said one; 'I know an owl's nest,' cried a second; a third hastened to claim knowledge of a pigeon's nest. It will be long before education drives the natural love of the woods out of the children's ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... between ourselves, was a bit of a wag in his way, "it proceeds from the spirit of his office. Take a magistrate, for instance, as a man—a mere man; place him in the ordinary situations of society; let him ride home at night, for instance, through a disturbed district like this, which, if he is wise, he will avoid doing, or let him ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... blood, then destruction was near at hand. Like Jonah at Nineveh, the woman, known to-day simply as Niang-tzu, walked up and down the streets of the city, warning all of the coming calamity. She was laughed at and looked upon as mad by the careless people. A pork-butcher in the town, a noted wag, took some pig's blood and sprinkled it round the eyes of the stone lions. This had the desired effect, for when Niang-tzu saw the blood she fled from the city amid the jeers and laughter of the inhabitants. Before many hours had passed, however, the face of ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... a rouse with Dunois," said Crevecoeur, "wag the world as it will. But we heard that both he and the Duke had fallen into disgrace, and ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... my sister who told me that Mary was engaged to be married. But I had noticed for some days how the neighbors went out of their way to accost her upon our walks; to banter her kindly, to shake hands with her, to wag their heads and look chin-chucks even if they gave none. Her face wore a beautiful mantling red for hours at a time. And instead of being made more sedate by her responsible and settling prospects she shed the half of her years, which were not many, and became the most delightful romp, a furious ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... tail—he was very sad too, but he had far too much self-respect not to wag his tail when he was kindly spoken to, however depressed he might be feeling—and looked up again, blinking his eyes ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... was the evening we were to put our money on our horse, our pick, nay, our "dead bird" for the Cup. We three met at the office. Our office boy, rather a wag in his way, had decorated my office table with flowers. My two partners, who seemed to me to have spent the week-end without any sleep, visiting training stables, waiting for the first streaks of dawn to watch the early Sunday and Monday morning gallops, and ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... alive, Off with your tunics at my call— Naked, all. For a man must strip to battle like a man. No quaking, brave steps taking, careless what's ahead, white shoed, in the nude, onward bold, All ye who garrisoned Leipsidrion of old.... Let each one wag As youthfully as he can, And if he has the cause at heart Rise at least ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... into the Muromachi magnates and the Kamakura chiefs brought two sets of rulers upon the same stage, and naturally intrigue and distrust were born, so that, in the end, Muromachi was shaken by Hosokawa, and Kamakura was overthrown by Uesugi. An animal with too ponderous a tail cannot wag it, and a stick too heavy at one end is apt to break. The Ashikaga angled with such valuable bait that they ultimately lost both fish and bait. During the thirteen generations of their sway there was no respite from struggle between family and family ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... her. I could do it, and I did. I applied for Letters of Naturalisation. Some weeks later I became a French citizen, and received a letter from M. ADOLPH CREMIEUX, then Minister of Justice, and never suspected of being a wag. He wrote: "Your application for Naturalisation in the midst of our great disasters, is for me the signal of a new life for us. A country which in the midst of such catastrophes recruits citizens like you, is not ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... that I shrunk from such a trial as this," said I. "It would give grounds for suspicions of guilt that never had existence, even in thought. I will go and show myself in every public place, that no slanderous tongue may wag against me. I have shed the blood of sinners, but of these deaths I am guiltless; therefore I will face every tribunal, and put all ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... an Irishman, two Scots (one of them anglicised), a Welsh, and a Cornishman, and they discussed everything under the sun except the Celtic Renaissance: for they spend their days on the confines of the Empire, and the brain takes time to make the tail wag. ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... any 'bow-wows' with Rachel," broke in Peachy, "though you just jolly well have to wag your tail the way she wants. She's not bad on the whole, but rather a tyrant, and it would do her all the good in the world if some day somebody had the courage to knock sparks out of her. We do what we can in a mild way," (here the ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... over his lower jaw; and now and then he drew it back and licked his lips as though they were dry. Helen May found a rock that was hollowed like a crude saucer, and poured water into the hollow from her canteen. Pat lapped it up thirstily, gave his stubby tail a wag of gratitude, lay down with his front paws on the edge of her skirt with his head dropped down upon them, and took a nap—with one eye opening now and then to see that the goats were all right, and with his ears lifting to catch the meaning ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... and the dog came on, dragging behind him in the road the block of wood fastened by a chain to his collar, and trying at the same time to wag his tail. He was tan-coloured, lean as a rail, long-eared, a hound every inch; and Davy was a ragged country boy who lived alone with his mother, and who had an old single-barrel shotgun at home, and who had in his grave boy's eyes a look, clear and unmistakable, ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... up and grand. He had to spend one night on the way, and as evening came on he asked a passing stranger to direct him to the best house, meaning the best in the neighborhood. The stranger happened to be the village wag, and seeing the schoolboy swagger, and the manly airs of sixteen, he, in fun, directed him to the squire's house. There the boy arrived, handed over his horse with a lordly air to a groom, marched into the house and ordered supper and a bottle ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... fling his curls to the wind, and scatter his bones across the open plain. Prince Ivan approached the horse, laid his hand upon its back, placed his foot in the stirrup—the horse stood just as if petrified, didn't so much as wag an ear! The Prince got on its back, the magic horse sank into the earth up to its fetlocks. The twelve chains were taken off the horse, it began to move with an even heavy pace, while the sweat poured off ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... "Kazi al-Kuzat," a kind of Chief Justice or Chancellor. The office wag established under the rule of Harun al Rashid, who so entitled Abu Yusuf Ya'akab al-Ansari: therefore the allusion is anachronistic. The same Caliph also caused the Olema to dress ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... restlessness that is upon thee." So Al-Rashid laughed at his saying and said, "See which of the boon-companions is at the door." Thereupon he went out and returning, said, "O my lord, he who sits without is Ali bin Mansur of Damascus, the Wag."[FN327] "Bring him to me," quoth Harun: and Masrur went out and returned with Ibn Mansur, who said, on entering, "Peace be with thee, O Commander of the Faithful!" The Caliph returned his salutation and said to him, "O Ibn Mansur, tell us some of thy ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... they did so, Heideck once more attentively observed his new acquaintance. The lurking expression with which he felt that the eyes of the other were fixed upon him made him start for a moment. What if the Russian perhaps only had the same intention as himself, and only wanted to make his tongue wag with the champagne? At all events, he was now ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... well go stand upon the beach, And bid the main flood bate his usual height; You may as well use question with the wolf, Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb; You may as well forbid the mountain pines To wag their high tops, and to make no noise, When they are fretted with the gusts of heaven; You may as well do anything most hard, As seek to soften that—than which what's harder?— His Jewish heart: therefore, I do beseech ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... especially those who, like Soames, had been to public schools, and were accustomed to niceness in such matters. Could he really be considered a butler? Playful spirits alluded to him as: 'Uncle Jolyon's Nonconformist'; George, the acknowledged wag, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Battalion doubling up and down along the Canal side to the accompaniment of the drums. This was entertaining for a brief space, but the novelty soon wore off. Ordinary training was continued, and included several route marches. It was during one of these that the C Company "wag" brought forth a spontaneous remark one day when passing one of those little dog-carts one used to see so often. It was very heavily laden and the dog was straining every nerve. A big, powerful looking woman was walking ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... daughter of W.H. Johnson, next door but one. Undeniably a lady, and undeniably unmastered. This last was irritating to the good-natured but easy-coming young men in the Chapel Choir, where she resumed her seat. These young men had the good nature of dogs that wag their tails and expect to be patted. And Alvina did not pat them. To be sure, a pat from such a shabbily-black-kid-gloved hand would not have been so flattering—she need not imagine it! The way she hung back and ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... lost my own—every stiver about me." He began to hop about again, halted, and began to wag his forefinger at me slowly. "Come, come, what's the use? I'm sorry for ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... after couple, wandering as they list. The quiet winding closes ring with songs of love and death, so that the old townsfolk lift their heads from their pillows, and, their nightcaps pushed to one side, wag gravely at all this frivolity. But youth knows nothing of this; it plunges reveling onward, with its surging blood. And one day the old people have the best of it; the blood surges no longer, but there they are, and there are the consequences, and the consequences demand paternity and maintenance. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... clear whistle came from the street; There's a wag of the tail and a twinkle of feet, And the little white dog did not even say, "Excuse me, ma'am," as he scampered away; But I'm sure as can be his greatest joy Is just to ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... extra appeal for the 'conscientious men.' Now, in said county, there dwelt one Barney Mullen, who, not being exempted at the first appeal, on 'non-citizenship' grounds, was in 'great tribulation' in regard to the approaching draft. Some wag persuaded him to attend the second 'hearing,' telling him to swear that he was conscientious, and he would get his exemption papers. So Barney was at hand at the 'appointed time and place,' At last, 'it came to pass' that he got a hearing, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... initials in the very legs of his desk. The puzzled dunce, who stood beside it to say his lesson "off the book," looked no longer at the ceiling for forgotten words, but drew closer to the master's elbow, and boldly cast his eye upon the page; the wag of the little troop squinted and made grimaces (at the smallest boy, of course), holding no book before his face, and his approving companions knew no constraint in their delight. If the master did chance ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... out, Cromwell shouted "drunkard," "glutton," "extortioner," with other opprobrious names. When all were gone, he locked the door and put the key in his pocket. During the night some Royalist wag nailed a placard on the door, bearing the inscription in large letters, ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... are certainly a wag, sir," said Jode, who enjoyed Barker as some people enjoy a symphony, without understanding it. But after we had reached the club and were lunching, and Jode realized that a letter had actually been written telling Hilbrun to come and ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... you chance to go To Hades, do not fail to throw A "Sop to Cerberus" at the gate, His anger to propitiate. Don't say "Good dog!" and hope thereby His three fierce Heads to pacify. What though he try to be polite And wag his tail with all his might, How shall one amiable Tail Against three angry Heads prevail? The Heads must win.—What puzzles me Is why in Hades there should be A watchdog; 'tis, I should surmise, The last place one ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... and lusts which make earth's war, So grieve poor cheated hearts and flow salt tears; So wag the passions, envies, angers, hates; So years chase ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... quaffings the better the effects; not a compound of acids and sweets, hot water and fire-water, to steal away the brains,—but a finer mixture of subtler elements, conducive to mental and moral health; not, in a word, punch, the drink, but "Punch," the wise wag, the genial philosopher, with his brevity of stature, goodly-conditioned paunch, next-to-nothing legs, protuberant back, bill-hook nose, and twinkling eyes,—to speak respectfully, Mr. Punch, attended by the solemnly-sagacious, ubiquitously-versatile "Toby," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... showing in his countenance the map of extremities. As soon as the shepherds saw him, they did him all the honor they could, as being the flower of all the swains in Arden; for a bonnier boy was there not seen since that wanton wag of Troy that kept sheep in Ida. He, seeing the king, and guessing it to be Gerismond, did him all the reverence his country courtesy could afford; insomuch that the king, wondering at his attire, began to question what he was. Montanus overhearing ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... pusillanimous, knock-kneed shrimp? I'm going to mash your jaw so you'll never wag it again! And right now, ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... left the choice to his own breast. So Van resolved to write a farce; But, well perceiving wit was scarce, With cunning that defect supplies: Takes a French play as lawful prize;[3] Steals thence his plot and ev'ry joke, Not once suspecting Jove would smoke; And (like a wag set down to write) Would whisper to himself, "a bite." Then, from this motley mingled style, Proceeded to erect his pile. So men of old, to gain renown, did Build Babel with their tongues confounded. Jove saw the cheat, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... girl came on, a sunbonnet hanging down her back, her apron caught up in front and filled with grain which she threw to the buttering fowls. Pigeons flew down from the top of the film and joined in the scrambling feast. The dog returned, wading scarcely noticed among the feathered creatures, to wag his tail and laugh up at the girl. And, behind, the horse nodded over the rail and switched on. A young man entered, his errand immediately known to an audience educated in moving pictures. But Saxon had no eyes for the love-making, the pleading forcefulness, ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... court of the hospital after lectures were over, they would invariably catch sight of young Huxley's dark head at a certain window bent over a microscope while they amused themselves outside. The constant silhouette framed in the outlines of the window tickled the fancy of the young fellows, and a wag amongst them dubbed it with a name that stuck, "The Sign of the Head ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... So, disappointed of my projected 'talk about runts' and turnips, I am come back—with a good deal of animal spirits at my tongue's and fingers' ends. If I were transported now into your room at Castellamare, I would wag my tongue far beyond midnight with you. These fits of exultation are not very common with me: as (after leaving off beef) my life has become of an even grey paper character: needing no great excitement, and as pleased with Naseby as ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... rather amusing to boys of any country, but to these Formosan lads who had had no experience with one the sound of Lu-a's harsh voice and the sight of his flying heels brought convulsions of merriment. "He's pounding rice! He's pounding rice!" shouted the wag of the party, and his companions flung themselves upon the grass and rolled about ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... bed and let one doctor after another "do things" to her poor knee. There were consultations and X-ray photographs, and all through it old Doctor Bowerman, who had dosed her through mumps and measles, kept saying, at every opportunity, with a maddening wag of his bald head: "If you only hadn't been such a little fool as to walk on it!" Finally, after what seemed to Isobel a great deal of needless fuss, the verdict was given—in an impressive now-you'll-do-as-I-tell-you manner; she had torn the muscles and ligaments of her knee; some had stretched, ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... the Eighteenth Century made many of those jolly little wall clocks called Wag-on-the-Wall. These clocks may be still picked up in out-of-the-way towns. In construction they are very much like the old cuckoo clock which has come to us from Switzerland, and the tile clock which comes from Holland. These clocks ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... to do that here" answered Edith, emphatically. "If you cut any such capers in this school, it won't be the teachers who will go for you, but the girls," with a significant wag ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Would do it, and prove, through every disaster, So fond, so faithful, and so forgiving, To such a miserable, thankless master. No, Sir! see him wag his tail and grin— By George! it makes my old eyes water— That is, there's something in this gin That chokes a fellow, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... heaps, when some loose pebbles were dislodged by his paws, and, as they rolled down, he must have been attracted by the yellow glitter in one large lump, for the next moment he had picked up the nugget and laid it, with a wag of his tail, at Donald's feet. The miner almost wept for gladness, and, taking Gum up in his arms as if he were a child, hurried home to proclaim his fortune. That night the family had a great feast, and Gum's health was drunk in the strongest tea the mining ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... "Apoplexy," and let this man see that we can't take such a risk as he is on any terms. A third caller, who really looked quite healthy except around the eyes, was also assured that he need not call again—"Because, you see," explained the clerkly wag, "it's no go for you to try to play your BRIGHT'S Disease on us!" When, however, the applicant was a robustious, long-necked, fresh individual, he was almost lifted from his feet in the rush of obliging ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... to one singular piece of information which brought much ridicule upon them. She chanced to say to Wilson Gregg, who is something of a wag, and had just sold the Jamesons a nice little white pig, that she thought that ham was very nice in alternate streaks of fat and lean, though she never ate it herself, and only bought the pig for the sake of her mother, who ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... stage-coach passed sometimes called it the "bean-pot." The Jehn who drove it was something of a wag. Once, coming through Charlestown, while waiting in the street for a resident passenger, he was hailed by another resident who thought him obstructing the passage, with ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... make a world, said Torfi Torfason. And he took off his pack and sat down in the snow with his legs stretched out in front of him. In the mouth of the pack there was something that little Tota had scraped together for her papa on the trip. And then the bitch began to wag her tail back and forth in the snow and gaze with lustful eyes at ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... Junior, the miller, was a public-spirited and many-sided man. Something of a wag and given to writing letters in verse, his life also had its more serious side. Besides being one of the founders and a trustee of the Union Schoolhouse of Germantown, now Germantown Academy, he was a justice of the peace ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... the guard came running up to the front with his 'Hurry up, Missis,' when the old dame, with her two baskets, an umbrella, similar in size to a modern camping tent, and a crinoline fashionable in mid-Victorian days, got firmly wedged in the door way, whereupon some wag suggested that, to expedite departure, a break-down gang and crane should be sent for and the lady hoisted ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... the Moon The First Monkey The Virtue of the Cocoanut Mansumandig Why Dogs Wag Their Tails The Hawk and the Hen The Spider and the Fly The ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... after a time he wired Baxter at Medicine Bend that a herd of at least one million buffaloes was crossing the railroad at Goose Creek. As the grave despatcher seemed not greatly excited by this intelligence, Bucks followed up the story at intervals with vivid details. A wag on the wire in Medicine Bend played upon his enthusiasm by demanding frequent bulletins, even going so far as to ask the names of the leading buffaloes in the herd. When he had got all the laughs possible for the office out of the youthful ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... cavalier, one of the most valiant captains in the army, was so diminutive in size, that, when mounted, he seemed almost lost in the high demipeak war-saddle then in vogue; which led a wag, according to Brantome, when asked if he had seen Don Pedro de Paz pass that way, to answer, that "he had seen his horse and saddle, but no rider." Oeuvres, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... while this man had a child beside him, a child with long, bright, yellow hair and a little red cap. This to Sonny was a bewildering phenomenon. But when at last the wagon turned up the lane, his doubts were finally resolved. His stub of a tail jerked spasmodically, in its struggle to wag. Then with two or three delirious yelps of joy he started madly down the lane. At the sound of his voice the door of the gray house opened. A tall, thin woman in a bluish homespun skirt and red calico waist came out, and moved slowly across the yard ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... trust with which, in the first round of this duel, Christ had conquered; it was really distrust, as putting God to proof whether He would keep His promises or no. It looked like the very perfection of that worship with which He had overcome in the second round of the fight; it wag really self-will in the mask of devoutness. It tempted God, because it sought to draw Him to fulfil to a man on self-chosen paths His promises to those who walk in ways ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... wound under the short ribs has done for him. Surgeon, lords, captains, bailiffs, chairmen, and gentleman gaoler with your axe, where be you now? The gentleman axeman's head is off his own shoulders; the lords and judges can wag theirs no longer; the bailiff's writs have ceased to run; the honest chairmen's pipes are put out, and with their brawny calves they have walked away into Hades—all as irrecoverably done for as Will Mountford or Captain ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... WORLDS GREAT FRAME, in which al things Are now containd, found any being-place, Ere flitting Time could wag* his eyas** wings About that mightie bound which doth embrace 25 The rolling spheres, and parts their houres by space, That high eternall Powre, which now doth move In all these things, mov'd in it selfe by love. [* Wag, move.] [** ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... was made for it, I think—so I made friends with the animals. They are just charming, and they have the kindest disposition and the politest ways; they never look sour, they never let you feel that you are intruding, they smile at you and wag their tail, if they've got one, and they are always ready for a romp or an excursion or anything you want to propose. I think they are perfect gentlemen. All these days we have had such good times, and it hasn't been lonesome for me, ever. Lonesome! ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... This is ther greatest place I ever struck fer bracin' up a feller's lungs; but it takes all ther ambition outer him. It hes made me so I don't care ter do anything but be lazy. Let ther old world wag, Gabriel Blake won't bother with her ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... first thing to do with an adopted cat is to give it a name, and Jack Harmon, who was a bit of a wag in his way, and a great admirer of the monster elephant which was just then making such a stir in New York, called his ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... garden he went, through the orchard. Half-way across the meadow beyond the orchard he came upon Custard dining at second table, and too busy to do more than wag ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott
... reaches it a tenth of a second in advance of the others, and with a lightning-like gulp, which disturbs the serenity of the surface of the pool, swallows the kicking prey. The energy of the sun's heat and light, stored in grass, transmitted to move muscles in gigantic leaps, will, in a short time, wag a caudal fin and propel the owner through these ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... till I met these Americans that I was such a wit—or perhaps wag is a better word. I didn't try to be funny, I didn't even know I was being funny, but every ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... began his old trick of trying to work the pitcher for a base. He was small and he crouched down until a wag in the bleachers yelled that this was no kindergarten game. Raymond was exceedingly hard to pitch to. He was always edging over the plate, trying to get hit. If anybody touched him in practice he would roar like a mad bull, but in a game he would cheerfully have stopped ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... Though envy wag her scorpion tongue, The march of Time shall find his fame; Where Bravery's loved and Glory's sung, There children's lips shall lisp ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... people of Chicago go home from work. Clatter, clatter, clatter, go the heels on the hard pavements, jaws wag, the wind blows and dirt drifts and sifts through the masses of the people. Every one has dirty ears. The stench in the street cars is horrible. The antiquated bridges over the rivers are packed with people. The suburban trains going away ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... a small doll; not one of those splendid specimens of wax, modelled from the Princess Royal, with distinct fingers and toes, eyes that shut, and tongues that wag. No; such I have only contemplated from a respectful distance as I lay on my stall in the bazaar, while they towered sublime in the midst of the toys, the wonder and admiration of every passing child. I am not even one of those less magnificent, but still dignified, leathern-skinned individuals, ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... Providence, indeed," he continued, "that our state, in the infancy of its independence, is left to undergo so fearful a trial. Already there are many of the Tories who wag the head and say 'Aha, so would we have it,' averring that this insurrection is but the first fruits of our liberty, and that the rest ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... Meantime, a wag of a fellow, an intimate friend of Briarly's, appeared in Market street in an old rusty coat, worn hat, and well-mended but clean and whole trowsers and vest. Friend after friend stopped him, and, in astonishment, inquired the cause of this change. He had ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... he did not gladly avail himself of the opportunity of accompanying her home. Madame rumor soon got tidings of Mr. Luzerne's attentions to Annette and in a shout the tongues of the gossips of A.P. began to wag. Mrs. Larkins who had fallen heir to some money, moved out of Tennis court, and often gave pleasant little teas to her young friends, and as a well spread table was quite a social attraction in A.P., her gatherings were always well attended. After rumor had caught the news ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... made my theory of the sleep-walking to the cliffs more plausible. But while we lay low in the clump of trammon trees the appearance of Kit Kermode, with his cat-like walk and his eyes that could wink slander faster than any old woman's tongue could wag it, gave me a theory, or at least a ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... and gained as much as to make me live: I never laid by indeed: for I was reckoned a piece of a wag, and your wags, I take it, are seldom ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... class of men who call themselves jewellers, but may be better likened to hucksters, or linen drapers, pawn brokers, or grocers... with a maximum of credit and a minimum of brains... these dunderheads... wag their arrogant tongues at me and cry, 'How about the chrysophrase, or the jacynth, how about the aqua marine, nay more, how about the garnet, the vermeil, the crysolite, the plasura, the amethyst? Ain't these all stones and all different?' ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... silence; tongues ceased to wag, tankards to clink. Every man and every dog was quietly gathering about those two central figures. Not one of them all but had his score to wipe off against the Tailless Tyke; not one of them but was burning to join in, the battle once begun. And the two ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... them, conscious of their misconduct, doubtless felt secret misgivings whenever any specially significant outburst of popular dissatisfaction occurred. But for many years they were able to present a united and brazen front, and to crush anyone who dared to so much as wag a finger against them. It was intimated on a former page that Robert Gourlay was not the first victim of Executive tyranny. The first conspicuous victim of whom any record has been preserved was Mr. Robert Thorpe, an English barrister of much learning and acumen, who in 1805 was appointed a ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... as he might have done, on the insincerity which Davis's sneer exposed. He was hampered by his own attitude as a candidate. Douglas, who had received 150 votes at Charleston, and who expected the whole at Baltimore, could not let his tongue wag as freely as Davis, who had received only one vote and a half at Charleston, and could count on none at Baltimore; else he might have denounced him on the score of patriotism. For Jefferson Davis, like ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... little feller a drink, Bill. He never was used to hittin' it none, an' it'll have a powerful effect on him." Bill opened the pup's mouth an' poured in a tol'able stiff swig, an' by cracky, the pup opened his eyes, an' when he saw Bill bendin' down over him, he tried to wag his ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... desire to spread the news, but Peter looked so anxious that finally she promised that she would keep it to herself, and she really meant to. But though Peter looked greatly relieved as he watched her start for home, he didn't smile as he had before. "I wish her tongue didn't wag ...
— Mrs. Peter Rabbit • Thornton W. Burgess
... round, as if to see how his antagonist felt. His legal brother was very quietly pursuing his lunars with the paper tube, expecting soon to work up all the curious angles of the Umpire's face. To properly intersperse this amusement he would now and then bestow a good-natured and very sly wink upon a wag who sat at the opposite side of the table, ever and anon tickling with the feather of his quill the nasal organ of the Secretary, who had just melowed away into a delicious nap. Flum proceeded: 'I mean no disrespect to ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... must at length succumb under prolonged Herculean endeavour. No man may long continuously wag his ears, even alternately; therefore Sam perforce paused in time. Yet by that time—in what manner it occurred no one may know—Nora was seated on the chair next to him at the table. They were alone. Silence fell. Nora's ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... the Cat went on, "you see a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... or dinner, there were pious pilgrims from all parts of the world, as to a shrine—from Paris, from Germany, Italy, Norway, and Sweden; from America especially. Leah had to play the hostess almost every day of her life, and show off her lion and make him roar and wag his tail and stand on his hind legs—a lion that was not always in the mood to tumble and be shown off, unless the pilgrims were pretty ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... up as if distracted. "Yelp, yelp!" Ah! poor Fido! although your master seems evidently out of humor, he would not have kicked your beautiful spotted coat had he seen you! There, he caresses you—so fold back your long ears, and wag your tail complacently, while we hear what this impatient youth has to say, as he strides so rapidly ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... however, that he displayed little enough of the last-named qualities, excepting to Burlman Reynolds, Jemima Reynolds, and little Bushie, in whose society only would he now and then deign to unbend—i.e., untwist and wag his iron hook of a tail—and, for a few moments snatched from the press of public business, play the familiar and agreeable. If he ever caught any one railing at Grumbo—any colored individual, that is, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... Skirting lawns of sleep to chase Shifting dreams in mazy light, Somewhere then I'll see your face Turning back to bid me follow Where I wag my arms and hollo, Over hedges hasting after Crooked smile and baffling laughter, Running tireless, floating, leaping, Down your web-hung woods and valleys, Garden glooms and hornbeam alleys, Where the glowworm stars are peeping, Till I find you, quiet as stone On a hill-top ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... with languid gum-leaves, held the week's output of his garden, representing in money value at least two pounds. It wag not likely to yield half as much, for, being a new-chum, he was fair game, and it was considered smart to impose on his good-nature. He also paid through an agent a weekly levy to Tsing Hi, which he understood purchased the tolerance, if not goodwill, under all and every circumstance ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... His first official act was to order dinner. "A nice, juicy steak," he is said to have called for,[4] "French fries, apple pie and a cup of coffee." It is probable that he really said "a coff of cuppee," however, as he was a wag of the first water and loved a joke as well as ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... the town, he had better go out at the other. He followed the suggestion, and Abdiel followed him—his head hanging and his tail also, for the joy of recovering his master had used up all the remnant of wag there was in his clock. He had no more frolic or scamper in him now than when Clare first saw him. How the poor thing had subsisted during the last few days, it were hard to tell. It was much that he had escaped death from ill-usage. ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... however, to wonder about the big machine, for Tuvvy, giving a sudden wag of his head towards it, said: "The elevator's my next job, soon as hay harvest's over. Wants a ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... the village Radical: he was also the village wag, with a reputation for humour which rendered him enormously popular. He was about thirty-five years old; a small man with sandy hair, a serious, not to say solemn, expression of countenance, and twinkling light grey eyes, which he had a trick of blinking when about to perpetrate ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... we can't make a blackamoor white, we can wash him clean, at all events," remarked Nat Bolus, the wag of the crew; "though I don't think as how we could have done it without the help ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... long as I am working with you," he answered. It was much as a faithful dog would wag his tail and snuggle up for a pat ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... moulded into the shape of a rampant bear, which the owner regarded with a look of mingled reverence, pride, and delight, that irresistibly reminded Waverley of Ben Jonson's Tom Otter, with his Bull, Horse, and Dog, as that wag wittily denominated his chief carousing cups. But Mr. Bradwardine, fuming towards him with complacency, requested him to observe this curious relic of the ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... certain Conde de ——, who had lately been decorated, was a most notorious rogue; in consequence of which, some wag chalked up on his door in large letters, during the night, the following lines, which, of course, were in everybody's mouth soon after the sun ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Charles II. was displeased with the colonists for coining money, which he considered his royal prerogative, and intimated to Sir Thomas Temple that they must be punished, and the business stopped. Sir Thomas was considerable of a wag, and showed the king one of honest John Hull's shillings, on the reverse of which was the pine tree. The king asked him what sort of a tree that was. Upon which Sir Thomas replied that, of course, it was the royal oak, which had saved his majesty's life. The king smiled at the courtier's ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Darrin, holding a rolled napkin at one side of the table, and below the level of the table top, waved it slowly back and forth. Dan was the only one of the party at the table who could see the moving napkin. By this simple wig-wag signal device Dave Darrin sent to ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... contents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he sympathized as a fellow sufferer in persecution. 'Poor Wolf,' he would say, 'thy mistress leads thee a dog's life of it; but never mind, my lad, whilst I live thou shalt never want a friend to stand by thee!' Wolf would wag his tail, look wistfully into his master's face, and if dogs can feel pity, I verily believe he reciprocated ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... must confess that all these praises, and the respect that wag paid me, turned my head a little; and as all the chaps said I must have a black satin stock to set the stone off, was fool enough to buy a stock that cost me five-and-twenty shillings, at Ludlam's ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... remoteness from them. In the last analysis, the impression they produced was that of having in common one memory so deep and dark that nothing that had happened since was worth either a growl or a wag. ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... mew or talk, He has a funny kind of walk, His tail is difficult to wag And that's what makes him ...
— The Kitten's Garden of Verses • Oliver Herford
... old Pan with his hubbubs; or smutty Vulcan half covered with cinders; or even Pallas herself, so dreadful with her Gorgon's head and spear and a countenance like bullbeef? Why is Cupid always portrayed like a boy, but because he is a very wag and can neither do nor so much as think of anything sober? Why Venus ever in her prime, but because of her affinity with me? Witness that color of her hair, so resembling my father, from whence she is called the golden Venus; and lastly, ever ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... dead I wash and iron and cook out and raise my chillun. I was raise up in de fiel' all my life. When I git disable' to wuk in de time of de 'pressure (depression) I git on my walkin' stick. I wag up town and I didn' fail to ax de white folks 'cause I wo' myself out wukkin' for 'em. Dey load up my sack and sometime dey bring me stuff in a car right dere to dat gate. But I's had two strokes and I ain't able to go ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... was lost on Jim, for he was already bending over Bull, patting his poor old mangled head and calling him all the endearing names he could think of. Finally, seeing that Bull was either too weak or too ashamed to get up and could only wag his stub of a tail, he picked him up very ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... The rough paw caught in her lace frill, and it was torn to pieces before "down! down!" and the united efforts of Lady Cecilia and Helen could extricate it.—"Don't distress yourselves about it, pray; it does not signify in the least. Poor Neptune, how really sorry he looks—there, there, wag your tail again—no one shall come between ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... duty as a clergyman and a magistrate to interfere. But it wouldn't become wise people like you and me to be making a fuss about trifles, as if we thought the Church was in danger because Will Maskery lets his tongue wag rather foolishly, or a young woman talks in a serious way to a handful of people on the Green. We must 'live and let live,' Joshua, in religion as well as in other things. You go on doing your duty, as parish clerk and sexton, as well as you've always done it, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... appointment, and appeared in shoestrings instead of buckles. 'I found,' he relates, 'to my surprise, people looking down at my feet: I could not think what they were at. At first I thought they had discovered the beauty of my legs; but at last the truth burst on me, by some wag laughing and thinking I had done it as a good joke. I was, of course, exceedingly annoyed to have been supposed capable of such a vulgar unmeaning piece of disrespect, and kept my feet as coyly under ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... wag somewhat too fast, as he sat by Torfrida's side, when some knight near began to tell of a wonderful mare, called Swallow, which was to be found in one of the islands of the Scheldt, and was famous through ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... May morning." [1] Having patched the middle and end of the Address, I send one more couplet for a part of the beginning, which, if not too turgid, you will have the goodness to add. After that flagrant image of the Thames (I hope no unlucky wag will say I have set it on fire, though Dryden [2], in his Annus Mirabilis, and Churchill [3], in his Times, did it before me), ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... She would keep back some piece of news during dinner to be fired off with the entrance of the supper tray, and form as it were the LEVER DE RIDEAU of the evening's entertainment. Once he had heard her tongue wag, she made sure of the result. From one subject to another she moved by insidious transitions, fearing the least silence, fearing almost to give him time for an answer lest it should slip into a hint of separation. Like so many people of her ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 'An anonymous wag not long ago, placed an advertisement in each of our city journals, signed by an eminent house on the Delaware wharf, and stating that FIVE HUNDRED CATS were wanted immediately by the firm. The said firm in the meantime ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... a proof of that—I myself—at Eylau. I see him now, as he rode up a height, took his field glass, looked at the battle, and said, 'A11 goes well.' One of those plumed busy-bodies, who plagued him considerably and followed him everywhere, even to his meals, so they said, thought to play the wag, and took the Emperor's place as he rode away. Ho! in a twinkling, head and plume were off! You must understand that Napoleon had promised to keep the secret of his compact all to himself. That's why all those who followed him, even his nearest friends, fell like nuts,—Duroc, Bessieres, Lannes,—all ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... time, making his preparations for departure. He says he shall come back in two months, but some of us think they will be two long months which will eat themselves up like money borrowed of the Jews." A wag, moreover, posted a large placard upon the door of Granvelle's palace in Brussels as soon as the minister's departure was known, with the inscription, in large letters, "For sale, immediately." In spite of the royal ingenuity, therefore, many shrewdly suspected the real state of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... there's a bobby! (Exit. Re-enter to the lamp.) I wish the gen'leman 'ad guv me a penny. I can't do nothin' wi' this 'ere quid. Vere am I to put it? I 'ain't got no pocket, an' if I was to stow it in my 'tato-trap, I couldn't wag my red rag—an' Mother Madge 'ud soon have me by the chops. Nor I've got noveres to plant it.—O Lor! it's all I've got, an' Madge lets nobody go to bed without the tuppence. It's all up with Bill—for the night!—Where's the odds!—there's a first-class ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... a different type; long and thin for fourteen, burnt to almost Kaffir darkness; a wag of a boy, with merry brown eyes, and a temperament unable to be depressed for more than five minutes at a time. He was always in scrapes at school, but a great favourite with masters and boys notwithstanding; and he straightway laid his boyish heart down at Norah's ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... the aisle, take my place in front of the Chief Pharisee, wag my finger under his nose, and tell him a thing or two about the condition of ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... willow-clad brook I came upon an unexpected sight, and paused to witness it. On his knees, close to the water, his back towards me, was Corporal Henry. Extended at his left side was Vic, held closely under his left arm, her plumy tail hanging dejectedly in my direction. An occasional dispirited wag showed that she appreciated the kindness being shown her. The boy was evidently busy at something that elicited from the animal, every now and then, faint cries of pain. I heard something snap, and saw him lay two parts of an arrow on the ground to ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... recommending her to strengthen herself with cold water as he did, and avoid all drugs. Mrs. Poyser curtsied and thanked him with great self-command, but when he had passed on, she whispered to her husband, "I'll lay my life he's brewin' some nasty turn against us. Old Harry doesna wag his tail so for nothin'." Mr. Poyser had no time to answer, for now Arthur came up and said, "Mrs. Poyser, I'm come to request the favour of your hand for the first dance; and, Mr. Poyser, you must let me take you to my aunt, for she ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... removed himself and his wine, and were served obsequiously by Nicodemus and his wife with the best the house afforded. For a while they ate and drank in silence. Then the tongue of the small old man, loosened by the wine, began to wag. He spoke abruptly, in a voice ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... at top speed, though I tried to restrain myself, to show that I was nothing more than an uncle to her. I talked to distract her, to distract us both; I let my tongue wag—I could hear it buzzing. What could I say? A little of everything—a ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... feelings, motives of action, characters, differing from the others, as the stamp of nature on his brow differs from his fellows! Thus, also, men's ears ring with the advancement of science, men's beards wag with repetition of the novel powers which have been educed from material nature; and if, in our daily traffic, we traverse without attention countless sands of thought, how much more, in our hackneyed talk of science, do we neglect the debt we owe to thought—thought, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... method of interpretation, and the swing and gaiety of the measure carried the audience by storm. Looking down from her platform Claire could see the indifferent faces suddenly lighten into interest, into smiles, into positive beams of approval. At the second verse heads began to wag; unconsciously to their owners lips began to purse. It was inspiring to watch those faces, to know that it was she herself who had wrought ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and plodded away at her task of sewing or her difficult sum. Betty made cumbrous jokes at Miss Eyre's expense. Molly looked up with the utmost gravity, as if requesting the explanation of an unintelligible speech; and there is nothing so quenching to a wag as to be asked to translate his jest into plain matter-of-fact English, and to show wherein the point lies. Occasionally Betty lost her temper entirely, and spoke impertinently to Miss Eyre; but when this had been done ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... but these birds of prey, vultures, condors and such like, with crows, as well as the smaller Republican eagles born since, are humble enough to him now. The British lion himself having been so often scratched and clawed by this fowl, has learned to shake his mane and wag his tail rather amiably in our eagle's presence, even if he has to give an occasional growl to keep his hand in. We are proud of this bird, though we are far from home, and to-day send our heartiest good wishes across the sea to the land we ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... ken him, cudna bide to hear tell o' him, and they said, "Lat's hae nae mair o' this! Hae dune wi' yer bonny man! Haud yer tongues," they cryit. But the ithers, they wadna hear o' haudin their tongues. A'body maun ken aboot him! "Sae lang's we hae tongues, and can wag them to the name o' him," they said, "we'll no haud them!" And at that they fell upo' them, and ill-used them sair; some o' them they tuik and burnt alive—that is, brunt them deid; and some o' them they flang to the wild beasts, and they bitit them ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... peculiar prestige among his fellows, and it was clearly understood that a certain Freckleton, a senior and the good boy of the school, should hold this pleasant leadership. What was more natural, since he was destined to "wag his head in a pulpit?" But Robert Hart could not see the matter in this light. Some spirit of contradictoriness rising in him, he thought a little dispute for first place in Scripture would add spice to a naughty boy's school life and both amuse and amaze. So on Sundays, while the rest of the ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... CHILD. Away, wag; what would'st thou make an implement of me? 'Slid, the boy takes me for a piece of perspective, I hold my life, or some silk curtain, come to hang the stage here! Sir crack, I am none of your fresh pictures, that use to beautify the decayed dead ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... Jessup," said the client, with a confident wag of his head. "Jessup's all right. He'll do the square thing. Why, he left Susanville just to keep people from talking about Mrs. Billings. But she followed him up, and now, of course, he'll stick to her. When she ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... Rabbit went away presently to assemble the sheep for the night, and Tim let his Irish tongue wag as it would. He was in lively and generous mood, making a joke of the mingling of the flocks which had come so dearly to Mackenzie's account. He bore himself like a man who had gained something, indeed, and that was the interpretation put on it ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... sweet-peas, the long rows of neat vegetable beds sloping down to the water, the straggling lane with the big oak at the gate. And there was Collie bounding down the lane, uttering yelping barks and twisting himself almost out of joint in his efforts to wag his tale hard enough to express his welcome. The Lad leaped down and ran to open the gate; Collie knocked him over in his ecstasy, and his father smiled indulgently as the two rolled over and ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... mighty friendly here just now," Sandy answered, "but look up on top of the ridge, and see if you can tell what George is trying to say to us. That's Boy Scout wig-wag, all right!" ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... were doing something naughty, Herve would pull open the heavy door, just a crack, the better to hear her sing. Then he would put his ear to the opening; while the wolf would thrust his nose in below, and wag his tail eagerly. But Christine's keen ears always heard them, no matter how slyly the good blind man crept up to that door. And it became part of the game that she should ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... Hence wag the tongues of the passing people, saying In their surmise, "Ah—whose is this dull form that perambulates, seeing nought Round him that looms Whithersoever his footsteps turn in his farings, Save a ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... says, "books in the running brooks, and good in every thing;"[1] and so far from neglecting to turn the ill-wind to our account, we are disposed to venture a few seasonable truisms for the gratification of our readers, although a wag may say our subject ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... people should talk about this strange friendship between the rough old sea-captain and the little boy. How their tongues did wag, and many were the visits of protest paid to the rectory. The principal discussion, however, always took place at the regular meetings of the Ladies' Aid Society. This was done most of all for Mrs. Royal's benefit. ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... the close of a wearisome day Homeward disheartened, you moodily stray, What would you take for your little dog Tray? Take for the wag of his tail? ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... of Modena, to whom this territory in part belonged, claimed the proud distinction of being the only sovereign in Europe who had not recognised Louis-Philippe as King of the French! He was not a wag, but quite in earnest. He was also much opposed to railroads; and if certain lines in contemplation by other potentates, on either side of him, had been executed, would have probably enjoyed the satisfaction of having an omnibus plying to and fro across ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... a mule, with a basket on his arm, an' Dick lines out for Jedge Chinn's for to fetch away that little hawg. Dick puts him in the basket, climbs onto his mule, an' goes teeterin' out for home. On the way back, Dick stops at Hickman's tavern. While he's pourin' in a gill of corn jooce, a wag who's present subtracts the pig an' puts in one of old Hickman's black Noofoundland pups. When Dick gets home to Bill Hatfield's, Bill takes one look at the pup, breaks the big rasp on Dick's head, throws the forehammer ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... What now? His tongue longed to wag, but by this time he was readily obeying Hillard in ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... Major Lloyd, in his 'Scandinavian Adventures,' of the wiles of a tame wolf in her efforts to get young pigs within her reach. He says: "When she saw a pig in the vicinity of her kennel, she evidently, with the purpose of putting him off his guard, would throw herself on her side or back, wag her tail most lovingly, and look innocence personified; and this amicable demeanour would continue until the grunter was beguiled within reach of her tether, when, in the twinkling of an eye, 'Richard was himself again!'" Major Lloyd asserts that but for this penchant ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... GIRL SCOUTS AT SEA CREST or The Wig Wag Rescue Luna Land, a little island by the sea, is wrapt in a mysterious seclusion, and Kitty Scuttle, a grotesque figure, succeeds in keeping all others at bay until the Girl ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... whose strength was equal to that of a hundred thousand elephants, alas, that king sitteth today, leaning on a woman. Alas! he by whom the iron image of Bhima on a former occasion wag reduced to fragments, leaneth today on a weak woman. Fie on me that am exceedingly unrighteous! Fie on my understanding! Fie on my knowledge of the scripture! Fie on me for whom this lord of Earth lieth today in a manner that is not becoming of him! I ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... fulfillment. We can not say this of the many aspiring magazines and periodicals that have solicited the charity of his name. We recollect, when brass buttons were universally worn on men's coats, a wag undertook to prove that they were very unhealthy, from the fact that more than half the persons who wore them suffered from chronic or acute disease, and died before they had reached a canonical age. According to this mode ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... noise and scare 'em. I wouldn't like to be in his place, though; father says you can never trust tigers as you can lions, no matter how tame they are. Sly fellers, like cats, and when they scratch it's no joke, I tell you," answered Ben, with a knowing wag of the head, as the sides of the cage rattled down, and the poor, fierce creatures were seen leaping and snarling as if they resented this display ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... people—or mere animals, perchance—if they have human institutions, reasonable aspirations or finite intelligences. We take temperatures, make blood counts and record blood pressure, reckon the heart-beats, and think we are wondrous wise. But wig-wag as we may, signal with what mysterious wireless of evanescent youth-fire we still hold in our blood, we get nothing but vague hints, broken reminiscences, and a certain patchwork of our own subconscious chop logic of middle age in return. There ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... adored Emily is not a clever woman. The truth is, she had not only never heard of Kotzebue, but she had never heard of Farquhar, or Congreve, or any dramatist in whose plays she had not a part: and of these dramas she only knew the part which concerned herself. A wag once told her that Dante was born at Algiers: and asked her,—which Dr. Johnson wrote first, 'Irene,' or 'Every Man in his Humour.' But she had the best of the joke, for she had never heard of Irene ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a wag, and well aware that his guest was mad. He therefore decided to fall in with his wishes for the sport of the thing; so he told Don Quixote that he would make him a knight and gladly, that he too had been a knight errant in his time and wandered all over Spain seeking ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... choose one of their number to be Mayor, and submit to him all questions of conscience, and such cases of notorious evil living as the law failed to provide for. Summary justice waited on all his decisions; and as the village wag was usually chosen for the post, you may guess that the horse-play was rough at times. When this was over, and the public conscience purified, the company fell on the pasteboard dragon with sticks and whacked him ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... quick four-in-a-bar time. There are several well-known tunes to it. [See Note on Arbeau's 'Orchesographie.' 1588.] The derivation of the name is from the French, bransle, a totter, swing, shake, etc., or perhaps from Old French Brandeler, to wag, shake, swing. Skeat thinks the original dance may have been a sword dance, and with this he connects the word Brandish.[20] It was danced, sometimes in a ring, holding hands, and ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... presently to a small white house some distance up a lane, where a dog with a collar greeted him with a cordial wag of ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... filled by strongly-visaged spinsters and mutinous wives, who twice a week were worked up by Dr. Fleabody to a full belief that a glorious era was at hand in which woman would be chosen by constituencies, would wag their heads in courts of law, would buy and sell in Capel Court, and have balances at their banker's. It was certainly the case that Dr. Fleabody had made proselytes by the hundred, and disturbed the happiness ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... Dr. Kitchiner's, on a very wet night, after several messengers, whom he had despatched for a coach, had returned without obtaining one; at last, at "past one o'clock, and a rainy morning," the wag walked himself to the next coach-stand, and politely advised the waterman to mend his inside lining with a pint of beer, and go home to bed; for said he, "there will be nothing for you to do to night, I'll lay you a shilling that there's not a coach out." "Why, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... it had on the steps of the machine. A tail to wag wasn't really necessary, Stern decided, when there was ...
— Martians Never Die • Lucius Daniel
... remarkably awkward horseman, so much so, as generally to attract notice. Some years after this, he was riding along the turnpike road, in the county of Durham, when a wag, approaching him, noticed his peculiarity, and (quite mistaking his man) thought the rider a fine subject for a little sport; when, as he drew near, he thus accosted Mr. C. "I say, young man, did you meet a tailor on the road?" "Yes," replied Mr. C. (who was ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... he was often only a boy. Very likely rather a young terror in his way: shy before elders, but a desperate wag with his contemporaries. He had a habit of whistling during office hours; he took too long for dinner, and was much given to descending the stairs four at a time and shaking the premises, blurring the copying-book and under-stamping ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... as proud as a king, laid the package at his mistress's feet, and waited, with a delighted, expressive wag, ...
— The Nursery, November 1877, Vol. XXII. No. 5 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... Doctor was at the height of his popularity, some wag perpetrated the following joke in a newspaper paragraph: "During some experiments he was making in chemistry last week, an explosion took place which entirely bewildered his faculties and left him in a condition bordering ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... a glorious morning; one of those mild, mellow days of the late autumn, when unscientific people wag their heads and proclaim that the climate is changing. There was scarcely a breath of wind, and the landscape toward which our steady nag trotted sturdily wore a faint atmosphere of saffron haze, as though the sunlight had been steeped in the ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... the venom of Smallbones, added to the tongues of the women, which were beginning to wag loudly at what they believed was Jim's clandestine intimacy with Eve during her husband's absence, would finally overcome the scruples of Doc Crombie and force him to yield to ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... Pickwick!' exclaimed the Grand Master, letting the hand fall in astonishment. 'Never in Ba-ath! He! he! Mr. Pickwick, you are a wag. Not bad, not bad. Good, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... their small family. A little, wiry-haired, scrubby, melancholy Irish terrier followed O'Connell for miles. He tried to drive him away. The dog would turn and run for a few seconds and the moment O'Connell would take his eyes off him he would run along and catch him up and wag his over-long tail and look up at O'Connell with his sad eyes. The dog followed him all the way home and when O'Connell opened the door he ran in. O'Connell Had not the heart to turn him out, so he poured out some milk and broke up ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... same house. On meeting her in the drawing-room, he gave her his hand as usual; hers returned no pressure. She seemed as cheerful as ever in her talk with others; him she kept apart from. He could not make up his mind to write. She had refused to accept such proof of his sincerity as it wag in his power to offer, and Wilfrid made this an excuse—idle as he knew it to be—for maintaining a dignified silence. Dignified, he allowed himself to name it; yet he knew perfectly well that his attitude had one very ignoble aspect, since he all but ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... pale, still morning we looked upon the deed. We stopped our ears and held our leaping hands, but they—did they not wag their heads and leer and cry with bloody jaws: Cease from Crime! The word was mockery, for thus they train a hundred crimes ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... whose age was supposed by Mrs. M——r to be about one hundred and twenty. He had been in her husband's house, who was an officer in the Spanish service, when she married, and first came here half a century back, and was then considered past labour. The old boy was quite a wag; cracked several jokes, as well as his want of teeth would let him, upon one of the company about to be married; and, on being shown a lump of fine Cavendish tobacco he had asked for, his eye sparkled like a serpent's. Mr. M——r ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... of New York by the British in 1776 the notes began to fall. In 1778 the news of the French alliance caused a little rise; but in 1781 the bills fell to a point where a thousand dollars exchanged for one dollar in specie, and a Philadelphia wag made out of the notes a blanket for his dog. The Continental currency was never redeemed, and was consequently a forced tax on those who were least able to pay, since every holder lost by its depreciation ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... had arrived in the motor, fixed a deadly glance upon me and said—'If you value your po-seetion'—he was a Lowland Scot, with the Lowland accent—'if you value your po-seetion on this paper, you'll hold your tongue!' So I did hold my tongue then—but only because I meant to wag it more violently afterwards. I always devote Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup to the blue blazes, because I'm sure it was through her I lost my post. You see a shareholder in a paper has a good deal of influence, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... followed every man did his full duty, and we heard very little grumbling, although I am sorry to set it down that some of the faint-hearted did wag their tongues more than was seemly; but on the whole the garrison showed themselves to be ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... rough, shaggy dog, and his tail curled down under him in a way that showed he had been ill-treated. But he had good, faithful, brown eyes, and the drooping tail was always ready to wag at ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... and the garden with Mrs. Joyce and the young ladies the middle-distance and background, there flits from time to time an unquiet figure. This personage is always greeted by Leo, the Newfoundland dog, with an extra wag of the tail; and is apostrophized laughingly by the young ladies, under the appellation of ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... now the Transcontinental moguls are buying up a majority of their own, meaning to capture the main-line dog and leaving us to wag the extension tail which we have just acquired. Say, Ford; doesn't that appeal to your ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... of the town, he had better go out at the other. He followed the suggestion, and Abdiel followed him—his head hanging and his tail also, for the joy of recovering his master had used up all the remnant of wag there was in his clock. He had no more frolic or scamper in him now than when Clare first saw him. How the poor thing had subsisted during the last few days, it were hard to tell. It was much that he had escaped death from ill-usage. Meanest of wretches are the boys or ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... slipped from the dog's mouth and fell upon an earthenware jar which was broken; the rest of the vessels were upset and the water spilt. The old woman seized a stick, and rose up to beat [the animal]; the dog seized the skirt of her clothes, and began to rub his mouth on her feet, and wag his tail; then he ran towards the mountain; again having returned to her, he sometimes seized a rope, and sometimes having taken up a bucket in his mouth, he shewed it [to her]; and he rubbed his face against her feet, and seizing ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... Army preparations, that half the regiment and all the horses and mules were left behind. Arrived in Cuba,, the first troops, accustomed only to the saddle, had to hobble along as best they could, on foot, so that some wag rechristened them " Wood's Weary Walkers." The rest of the regiment, with the mounts, came a little later, and at Las Guasimas they had their first skirmish with the Spaniards. Eight of them were killed, and they were buried in one grave. Afterward, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... mythology." Enough to say that the Muse of History has been guilty of one of those practical jokes to which she is too much addicted, in dressing with tragic buskins and muffling in the cloak of a hero of melodrama, and so palming off for earnest on two generations of mankind, the drollest wag of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... off the premises, and went; but the dog trailed, wagging at his heels, and had to be roughly called back. The thought of the dog comforted Stebbins as he went on his way. He had always liked animals. It was something, now he was past a hand-shake, to have the friendly wag of a ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... live godly in Christ Jesus, you must be prepared to be taunted, and made fun of, and teased. The tongues will wag and say all sort of hard things about you; You are a hypocrite, or you are going too far, or you are a fine person to set up to be a saint! but be of good cheer, do not mind the laughter, it is only for a while, and then the tables will be turned, and the ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... boys poor old Skipper lying on the floor in front of the open fireplace which was filled with fresh green boughs—and evidently a very sick dog indeed. He gave the boys a pathetic glance of recognition as they came in, and with a feeble wag or two of his tail tried to show them he was glad to see them; but this done, he seemed to be completely exhausted, and once more laid his head between his forepaws ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... on, "you see a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... rulers upon the same stage, and naturally intrigue and distrust were born, so that, in the end, Muromachi was shaken by Hosokawa, and Kamakura was overthrown by Uesugi. An animal with too ponderous a tail cannot wag it, and a stick too heavy at one end is apt to break. The Ashikaga angled with such valuable bait that they ultimately lost both fish and bait. During the thirteen generations of their sway there was ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... mere trifle. The road ran through a very pretty district; well-cultivated farms, making frequent gaps in the forest, and many a brook and river lending variety to the scene. After Bert had grown accustomed to the novelty of his position, his tongue began to wag again, and his bright, innocent questions afforded Mr. Miller so much amusement, that with Jack Davis' full approval, he was invited to remain during the next stage also. Mrs. Lloyd would rather have had him with her inside, but he pleaded so earnestly, and Mr. Miller assuring ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... persons would give some rough token of respect to Lieutenant Atkinson if they met him in High Street. Touching their hats was an unknown gesture in those parts, but they would move their heads in a droll, familiar kind of way, neither a wag nor a nod, but meant all the same to imply friendly regard. The ship-owners, too, invited him to an occasional dinner or supper, all the time looking forward to the chances of his turning out an active enemy, and not by any means inclined to give him ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... enthusiasm. At night, in the wards, the men recovering from all manner of wounds would try to speed the lagging hours by telling stories, singing songs, and inventing the wildest of rumors. Occasionally, when the lights were out, some wag would begin an imitation of a machine gun, with its rat-tat-tat-tat, and another, catching the spirit of the mimic warfare, would make the whistling sound of a high angle shell. In a few moments the ward would be a clamorous inferno of mimic battle ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... or her difficult sum. Betty made cumbrous jokes at Miss Eyre's expense. Molly looked up with the utmost gravity, as if requesting the explanation of an unintelligible speech; and there is nothing so quenching to a wag as to be asked to translate his jest into plain matter-of-fact English, and to show wherein the point lies. Occasionally Betty lost her temper entirely, and spoke impertinently to Miss Eyre; but when this had been done in Molly's presence, the girl flew out into such a violent ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... perching on the tiptop of a spray, it turned to the sun, ruffling its small breast feathers. And now they had passed the fisherman's hut, passed the charred-looking little whare where Leila the milk-girl lived with her old Gran. The sheep strayed over a yellow swamp and Wag, the sheep-dog, padded after, rounded them up and headed them for the steeper, narrower rocky pass that led out of Crescent Bay and towards Daylight Cove. "Baa! Baa!" Faint the cry came as they rocked ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... the tongue. And yet," said the Penitent, warming his hands and casting a look up at the sky, where the dust-cloud had given place to a rolling pall of smoke, "what a treat it is to let the tongue wag at times!" ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... precious stones. "I have a thing or two to say," he remarks, "in order not to scandalize a certain class of men who call themselves jewellers, but may be better likened to hucksters, or linen drapers, pawn brokers, or grocers... with a maximum of credit and a minimum of brains... these dunderheads... wag their arrogant tongues at me and cry, 'How about the chrysophrase, or the jacynth, how about the aqua marine, nay more, how about the garnet, the vermeil, the crysolite, the plasura, the amethyst? Ain't these all stones and all different?' Yes, and why the devil don't you add ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... ask "why a cat has whiskers," or why and how they make a purring noise when they are pleased and wag their tails when they are angry, while a dog wags his to show pleasure, the wisest man cannot answer your question. A teacher once asked a boy about a cat's whiskers and he said they were to keep her from trying to get her body ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... John, I'm sure I little thought to vind That you had ever sich a jealous mind. What then! I s'pose that I must be a dummy, An' mussen goo about nor wag my tongue To any soul, if he's a man, an' young; Or else you'll work yourzelf up mad wi' passion, An' talk away o' gi'en vo'k a drashen, An' breaken bwones, an' beaeten heads to pummy! If you've a-got sich jealous ways ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... denominations—Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians—as a house of worship, but was made to serve as a schoolhouse. So far as petty litigation was concerned, Squire Ichabod Inchly, the wheel-wright, was prepared to hold justice-court in the open air in front of his shop when the weather wag fine, and in any convenient place when the weather was foul. "Gentlemen," he would say, when a case came before him, "I'd a heap ruther shoe a horse or shrink a tire; yit if you will have the law, I'll try and temper it wi' jestice." ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... blue lights and she had chattered gaily of anything that came into her head, twice she had caught in her sister's eyes that glimmer of expectancy. "Amy feels sure I will be a success!" Ethel thrilled at the recollection, and thought, "Oh, yes, you're quite a wag, my love; and as soon as you get over being so young you'll probably make a name for yourself. No dinner or suffrage party will ever again be quite complete without your droll dry humour. . . . I suppose I ought ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... began to think it was all a joke; someone's spite, the jest of some wag; and besides, if she were dead, one would have known it. But no! There was nothing extraordinary about the country; the sky was blue, the trees swayed; a flock of sheep passed. He saw the village; he was seen coming bending forward upon his horse, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... completely flabbergasted some days later when Secretary Hughes and the President gave out contradictory statements as to whether the treaty included the Japanese homeland. Hughes stated to the correspondents that it did, the President said it did not. Whereupon some wag remarked that at Paris President Wilson did not let the American delegation know what he did, while at Washington the delegates did not let President Harding know what they were doing. In deference to the President's views and to criticisms of the treaty in the Japanese press a supplementary treaty ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... ship was back over the San Francisco area and those people who had maintained that people were being fooled by a wag in a balloon became believers when the object was seen ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... Soames, had been to public schools, and were accustomed to niceness in such matters. Could he really be considered a butler? Playful spirits alluded to him as: 'Uncle Jolyon's Nonconformist'; George, the acknowledged wag, had named ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... lurking den together. "Look at those, woman," he said ominously, deliberately, but she could not or would not; and, before she could collect her wits, what must need old Nonna do but make bad worse, and, running, thrust herself in between, and wag her hand under the ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... mistake; that's just the way a tree appears when it has been struck by lightning. Next time you pass one, look at it. I have not the slightest doubt that this was the way the mistake was made. We have an occasional wag at the South, and some one has practised upon a soft-hearted New Englander in search of horrors; this is the result. She mentions that the ashes were black. Do not infer from this that it must have been a black man or negro. But I will no longer arraign ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... As they approached the farmhouse they discerned in the darkness a figure coming toward them with a stable lantern. The figure swung this light to and fro, up and down, in wig-wag signaling, and Tom replied by whistling shrilly two short blasts, which meant "All right, we're coming." Then the figure hailed them with a whoop ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... overspread With vestiges of War, the Shepherd Boy Climbs the green hillock to survey his flock; Then sweetly sleeps upon his favourite hill, Not conscious that his bed's a Warrior's Tomb. The ancient Mansions, deeply moated round, Where, in the iron Age of Chivalry, Redoubted Barons wag'd their little Wars; The strong Entrenchments and enormous Mounds, Rais'd to oppose the fierce, perfidious Danes; And still more ancient traces that remain Of Dykes and Camps, from the far distant date When minstrel Druids wak'd the soul of War, And rous'd to ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... Buckingham Gate, where no wag had chalked "Peace" on the doors for nearly a year now, had an arid look after a hot day's sun. The hair-dresser's shop below his rooms was still open, and the private door ajar: 'I won't ring,' she thought; 'I'll go straight up.' While she ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the engine ran merrily. Above its barking I sang the praises of the Englishman, with a comfortable feeling that, at least in this, the tail would wag the dog. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... species of hound. (14) One dog as soon as he has found the trail will go along without sign or symptom to show that he is on the scent; another will vibrate his ears only and keep his tail (15) perfectly still; while a third has just the opposite propensity: he will keep his ears still and wag with the tip of his tail. Others draw their ears together, and assuming a solemn air, (16) drop their tails, tuck them between their legs, and scour along the line. Many do nothing of the sort. (17) They tear ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... of tie that properly belonged to a certain shade of shirt; whose personal taste in sport clothes had been aped and imitated by half the fellows he knew. What would they think if they could look upon him now? He wondered if Stit Duffy would wag his head and say "So-me ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... Conde de ——, who had lately been decorated, was a most notorious rogue; in consequence of which, some wag chalked up on his door in large letters, during the night, the following lines, which, of course, were in everybody's mouth soon after ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Turk element, in this young time, the like of him was seldom seen; we knew him long afterwards as a diligent old gentleman, in French-Revolution days),—M. de Vergennes zealously supports; zealous to let loose the Turk upon Anti-French parties. The Turks seem to wag their heads, for some time; and their responses are ambiguous. For some time, not for long. Here, fast enough, comes, in disguised shape, the Catastrophe itself, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the young couple, guzzled in a wedged and weltering mass. Wizened grandfathers and stolid large-eyed children ate and panted in the suffocating heat, and gorged again. Not till half way through the repast did tongues begin to wag freely. At last the tisane of champagne—syrupy paradise to my uncultivated palate—was handed round and the toasts were drunk. The bride's garter was secured amid boisterous shouts and innuendos, and then we left the stifling room and entered ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Ramsay's that there was a conspiracy on foot to purchase his house, and accordingly he took every opportunity to declare that he would never part with an inch of his land while he was in the flesh. A wag in the neighborhood had expressed the opinion that the old gentleman waxed hale and hearty on his own bile. He was certainly a churlish individual in his general bearing toward his fellow-beings, and violent in his prejudices. For the last ten years his favorite ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... particularly timely. It creates only a smile of amusement to-day, but it was all fresh and delightful then. Schuyler Colfax, by this time Vice-President, wrote to him: "I have had the heartiest possible laugh over it, and so have all my family. You are a wicked, conscienceless wag, who ought ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the globe, the splendid creation that had existed in the brain of Dr. Jones, was an actuality. Language is inadequate to describe the sensations of the little company of promoters. They said but little, but would often stand in a group, gaze upon it, then into each other's eyes, and smile and wag ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... White was a contributor. Hill was the Hull of Hook's Gilbert Gurney. He happened to know everything that was going on in all circles; and was at all "private views" of exhibitions. So especially was he favoured, that a wag recorded, when asked whether he had seen the new comet, he replied—"Pooh! pooh! I was present at the ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... quietly pursuing his lunars with the paper tube, expecting soon to work up all the curious angles of the Umpire's face. To properly intersperse this amusement he would now and then bestow a good-natured and very sly wink upon a wag who sat at the opposite side of the table, ever and anon tickling with the feather of his quill the nasal organ of the Secretary, who had just melowed away into a delicious nap. Flum proceeded: 'I mean no disrespect to the proficiency, or to the very high position which my learned brother holds ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... I say. I'm hyer, and I want to tell the cap'n whar the redskins is; but I don't reckon my story'll spile while Phil tells you about the gal. Go on, boy; wag your tongue as fast as you wagged your ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... shall have his worship presently, that is, if he means to keep his hour; if not, you may wait for him, Godfrey, if you court his acquaintance. But what, after all, if it should prove but a mummery got up by Vankarp, or some such wag? I wish you had run all risks, and cudgelled the old burgomaster soundly. I'd wager a dozen of Rhenish, his worship would have unmasked, and pleaded old acquaintance ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... something like a couple of miles on their way homeward and their tongues were just beginning to wag, girl-like, again, when both were considerably startled by a loud hallo, coming from behind. They turned quickly and saw two horsemen, who had just ridden out from behind a small grove of trees, some twenty rods back and to ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... as there was light, which at this season lasted until after eight o'clock, and we pushed on until we came to Corbett's Bite, a place that also rejoices in the name of New York, the same having been facetiously bestowed upon it by some fisherman wag, because four small huts had been collected ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... I now to do? Should I send Zoe away? Should I keep her in my household and let the tongues wag, as they were doing, or clatter if Zoe should have a child? The secret would be out soon. Lamborn would be sure to betray the fact that he had captured Zoe. There seemed nothing to do then but to settle down with British ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... or talk, He has a funny kind of walk, His tail is difficult to wag And that's what makes him ...
— The Kitten's Garden of Verses • Oliver Herford
... loads. On the road beyond, migrating planters and slaves bound for the west, "'where the cotton land is not worn out,'" met cotton-laden wagons townward bound, whereupon the price of the staple was the chief theme of roadside conversation. Occasionally a wag would have his jest. The traveler reported a tilt between two wagoners: "'What's cotton in Augusta?' says the one with a load.... 'It's cotton,' says the other. 'I know that,' says the first, 'but what is it?' 'Why,' says the other, 'I tell you it's cotton. Cotton is cotton in Augusta ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... Courtille in Labatut's posting-chaise; Aulus Gellius would halt no longer in front of Congrio than would Charles Nodier in front of Punchinello; Marto is not a tigress, but Pardalisca was not a dragon; Pantolabus the wag jeers in the Cafe Anglais at Nomentanus the fast liver, Hermogenus is a tenor in the Champs-Elysees, and round him, Thracius the beggar, clad like Bobeche, takes up a collection; the bore who stops you ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... I know," replied he, "that I am Ralph Jobson? Why it knew me, and seemed to wag its tail; nay, made as though ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... in the summer. Its destiny is that of the Union. It will be the greatest capital the world ever saw, or it will be "a parched place in the wilderness, a salt land and not inhabited," and "every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished and wag ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... lad Is on earth to be had, With a wand to wag On a trusty nag, He shall keep the lists With cudgel or fists. And black shall be whose ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... by this time a little stricken in years, yet by dint of keeping up a good heart, and having never known care or sorrow (having never been married), he was still a hearty, jocund, rubicund, gamesome wag, and of great capacity in the doublet. This last was ascribed to his living a jolly life on those domains at the Hook, which Peter Stuyvesant had granted to him for his gallantry ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... cold wet compress and went on, singing loudly and boldly, with a facetious wag of her head, (how tired she was of ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the better,' says I. 'I don't care if it gets in fully fifteen minutes before I am shot; and if you happen to lay eyes on Beauregard or Albert Sidney Johnston or any of the relief corps, wig-wag 'em to ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... with great dignity, mounts the stand,—a little table standing at one end of the room. His face reddens, he gives several delinquent coughs, looks round and smiles upon his motley patrons, points a finger recognisingly at a wag in the corner, who has addressed some remarks to him, puts his thumbs in the sleeve-holes of his vest, throws back his coat-collar, puts himself in a defiant attitude, and is ready to deliver himself ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... first deliver my grandfathers message. The moment I had done so, I rushed back to the breakfast room, and in a loud voice proclaimed to the company what I had seen. My tale produced all the effect I had anticipated, but mainly in the shape of amusement. One wag - my uncle Henry Keppel - asked for details, gravely declaring he could hardly credit my statement. Every one, however, seemed convinced by the circumstantial nature of my evidence when I positively asserted that their heads were ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... to be a man of action and that my place was amid the thunder of the captains and the shouting. So I am starting life at fifty as Captain Anthony Anderson of the Springtown militia; and the Devil's Disciple here will start presently as the Reverend Richard Dudgeon, and wag his pow in my old pulpit, and give good advice to this silly sentimental little wife of mine (putting his other hand on her shoulder. She steals a glance at Richard to see how the prospect pleases him). Your mother told me, Richard, that I should never have chosen Judith if ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... was a bit of a wag in his way, as he looked at the powder-boys still seated on their tubs, "as you have still got your heads on your shoulders, you may put some food into your mouths. Maybe you won't have another opportunity after we get up with the big 'un we are chasing. I told ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... French in Tescheron after all, for he waved his arms and danced about like a man whose tongue won't wag fast enough to ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... is well shown by the coming of a game called "ping pong," a parlor tennis, with our battledores for rackets. What great mind invented this game, or where it came from, no one seems to know, but as a wag remarked, "When in doubt lay it to China." Some suppose it is Chinese, the name suggesting it. So extraordinary was the early demand for it that it appeared as though everybody in America was determined to own and play ping pong. The dealers ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... of Mr. Newell, who formerly owned Mr. Newell's present farm. Mr. Wright says that within a short distance of the present discovery, there is a spring of water which will within a few months turn into solid stone any small deposits of sand and gravel. Neighbors corroborate the statement. A wag has suggested that a factory be at once established there and petrified dogs, cats and small fry generally be ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... "My dear father," I answered, "what did he do? He could draw a little, but could he to save his life have got a picture into the Royal Academy exhibition? He built two organs and could play the Minuet in Samson on one and the March in Scipio on the other; he was a good carpenter and a bit of a wag; he was a good old fellow enough, but why make him out so much ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... would I," cried Mr. Peram. Giles had a very disagreeable habit of repeating his words. A wag once said that his ideas were so few and his words so many that he was forced to repeat. "I will fight for the rights of the people. I will lead an army myself and hurl ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... Brute!" he said, wagging away, so that with each wag the lenses of his spectacles caught the light of the lamp on ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... grazed, and then on again until the sun went down below the horizon. During the hotter hours I took my ease in the buggy, but in the early morning, and at the end of the day I rode. The Mongols were gay young fellows, taking a kindly interest in my doings. One, the wag of the party, was bent on learning to count in English, and each time he came by me he chanted his lesson over, adding number after number until he reached twenty. The last few miles before getting into camp ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... determined it shall last till that there Paris doctor gets his hands on him. An' she ain't goin' back now to her father's for quite a spell—Miss Dorothy, I mean," further explained Susan. "I guess she don't want to take no chances herself of his findin' out—jest yet," declared Susan, with a sage wag of her head. "Anyhow, she's had an inspiration to go see a girl down to the beach, an' she's goin'. So we're safe for a while. But, oh, if July'd only hurry up ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... weep out the spark? or should he just flit to Elysium? There, seated on Elysian lawns, browsed by none but Dian's (no allusion to little Mrs. Lollipop) fawns, amid the noise of fountains wonderous and the parle of voices thunderous, some wag might scribble on his door, "Here lies Ali Baba"—as if glancing at his truthfulness. How is he to pass effectively into the golden silences? How is he to relapse into the still-world of observation? Would four thousand five ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... till ye've made yer fortin, in course, sonny?" one of the older men suggested. He enjoyed some local reputation as a wag, the maintenance of which so absorbed his energies that his wife, who had lost whatever sense of humor she might once have had, toiled both ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... her, for I had me suspicion, if she was a lady-dawg an' I sez—'If yez are wag yer tail three times,' an' the words was scarce off me tongue, whin she wagged her tail ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... Brazilian Emperor, it would call forth no public sympathy, or but slight, in your favour. The case would be thought very hard, to be sure; but that would be all. Not so, should you triumph in the Greek cause. Transcendent glory would not only crown but protect you. No minister would dare to wag a finger—no, nor even Crown lawyer a tongue—against you; and, if they did, the feeling of the whole English public would surround you with an impenetrable shield. Fines would be paid; imprisonment protested and petitioned against; in short, I am convinced the nation would be in a flame, and you ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... of acids and sweets, hot water and fire-water, to steal away the brains,—but a finer mixture of subtler elements, conducive to mental and moral health; not, in a word, punch, the drink, but "Punch," the wise wag, the genial philosopher, with his brevity of stature, goodly-conditioned paunch, next-to-nothing legs, protuberant back, bill-hook nose, and twinkling eyes,—to speak respectfully, Mr. Punch, attended by the solemnly-sagacious, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... for three hundred thousand francs for an incorrigible father! Why, they have nothing left, poor wretches! And they have no fun for their money. All they have to live upon is what Victorin may make in Court. He must wag his tongue more, must monsieur your son! And he was to have been a Minister, that learned youth! Our hope and pride. A pretty pilot, who runs aground like a land-lubber; for if he had borrowed to enable him to get on, if he had run ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... chatter away at top speed, though I tried to restrain myself, to show that I was nothing more than an uncle to her. I talked to distract her, to distract us both; I let my tongue wag—I could hear it buzzing. What could I say? A little of everything—a great deal, ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... courage, has excited that fear from all men which is the highest homage this world can offer to integrity. His personal sorrow, therefore, was not degraded by any foolish additional worry about the tittle-tattle of this, that, or the other personage. Tongues might wag; for himself, he could but do his duty and keep his account straight with God. He hoped that a public law-suit would be avoided. Baron Zeuill was using his influence, so he declared, to arrive at some settlement with Parflete. Parflete's agent was now in ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... hafath waldend wyrhtan forweorene geleorene heard gripe hrusan oth hund cnea wer theoda gewitan. Oft thes wag gebad rg har and read fah rice fter othrum ofstonden ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... prisoner which that same loyalty made—had left orders that Israel should be supplied with whatever liquor he wanted that night. So, calling for the can again and again, Israel invites the two soldiers to drink and be merry. At length, a wag of the company proposes that Israel should entertain the public with a jig, he (the wag) having heard that the Yankees were extraordinary dancers. A fiddle is brought in, and poor Israel takes the floor. Not a little cut to think that these people should so unfeelingly seek to be diverted ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... this time, respecting this election, which was rather ridiculous, and excited considerable mirth at Paris. Upon the first appearance of the election book of the first consul, in one of the departments, some wag, instead of subscribing his name, immediately under the title of the page, "shall Napoleone Bonaparte be first consul for life?" wrote the following words, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... for "call sorrow joy?" No compositor, or scribe either, could possibly be misled by any sound from the "reader" into such a mistake as that! The words "and sorrow wag," I admit, are not sense; but the substitution of "call sorrow joy" strikes me as bald and common-place in the extreme, and there is no pretence for its having any authority. If, then, we are to have a mere fanciful emendation, why not "bid sorrow wag?" This would be doing far ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... strike the assembly with wonder, Miss screamed a cantata, like Boreas, That waked farmer Thrasher's dog Thunder, Who starting up, joined in the chorus: While a donkey, the melody marking, Chimed in too, which made a wag say, sir, "Attend to the Rector of Barking's Duet with the Vicar ...
— Deborah Dent and Her Donkey and Madam Fig's Gala - Two Humorous Tales • Unknown
... How now, how now, mad wag, what in thy quips and thy quiddities? what a plague have I to ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... gamblers packed their race-horse, saddled, and rode away without a word to any of the range-riders. The men round the fire gave no sign that they knew the confidence men were on the map until after they had gone. Then tongues began to wag, the foreman having gone to the edge of the ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... precisely the rite time, and wuz now editor of the Court Journal, laffed immodritly. Some one exclaimed, "Bring in Thad Stevens!" at wich His Majesty turned pale, and his knees smote together. "Don't, don't!" sez he; "he's strength enuff left to wag his tongue. Keep him away! keep him away!" and he showed ez much fear ez men do in delirum tremens ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... answered; whilst Pierrebon let his tongue wag: "Oh, the mole! To want a lantern in this moonlight!" And following his words came the voice from the house, asking again ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... trusted always to preserve his temper. Every one tells everything he knows; that is our country sickness. Nearly every one has been betrayed at times, and told a trifle more; the way our sickness takes the predisposed. And the news flies, and the tongues wag, and fists are shaken. Pot ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... account for his insisting on every one of his guests taking the same medicine, and whether it was by way of patronising the medicine, which is in some sense a national receipt, or whether the mischievous old wag amused himself with anticipating the scenes of delicate embarrassment, which the dispensation sometimes produced in the course of the night, I really cannot even guess. What is equally strange, he pressed the request with a sort of eloquence which succeeded ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... Dean, go change your gown, Let my lord know you're come to town." I hurry me in haste away, Not thinking it is levee-day; And find his honour in a pound, Hemm'd by a triple circle round, Chequer'd with ribbons blue and green: How should I thrust myself between? Some wag observes me thus perplex'd, And, smiling, whispers to the next, "I thought the Dean had been too proud, To justle here among a crowd!" Another, in a surly fit, Tells me I have more zeal than wit. "So eager to express your love, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Freddie. "Now, Snap, lie down and roll over!" he called. At once the fine animal did so, and then sprang up with a bark, and a wag of his tail, ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... bear! Open that mouth wider; wag your apostolic beard! How funny you are! And what's strange about that? But don't laugh any longer; you make me nervous. I'll go away, if you ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... land and in the water, and keep on after the boys themselves were tired. He was so fond of hunting, anyway, that the sight of a gun would drive him about crazy; he would lick the barrel all over, and wag his tail so hard that it would lift his hind-legs ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... really inhabited by real people—or mere animals, perchance—if they have human institutions, reasonable aspirations or finite intelligences. We take temperatures, make blood counts and record blood pressure, reckon the heart-beats, and think we are wondrous wise. But wig-wag as we may, signal with what mysterious wireless of evanescent youth-fire we still hold in our blood, we get nothing but vague hints, broken reminiscences, and a certain patchwork of our own subconscious chop logic of middle age in return. There is no real communication between the worlds. ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... followers of Plato. It is by shutting their eyes that they see, and by opening their mouths that they apprehend. Like certain broad-muzzled dogs, all stand equally stiff and staunch, although few scent the game, and their lips wag, and water, at whatever distance from the net. We must leave them with their hands hanging down before them, confident that they are wiser than we are, were it only for this attitude of humility. It is amusing to see ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... woman. The truth is, she had not only never heard of Kotzebue, but she had never heard of Farquhar, or Congreve, or any dramatist in whose plays she had not a part: and of these dramas she only knew the part which concerned herself. A wag once told her that Dante was born at Algiers: and asked her,—which Dr. Johnson wrote first, 'Irene,' or 'Every Man in his Humour.' But she had the best of the joke, for she had never heard of Irene or Every Man in his Humour, or Dante, or perhaps Algiers. It was all one to her. She acted what ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... petition from the English detenus at Valenciennes was left for signature at the house of the colonel of gendarmerie, addressed in a fulsome manner to Bonaparte, under his title of Emperor of the French, and beginning with "Sire." Some unlucky wag took an opportunity of altering this word into "Dear Sir," and nearly caused the whole ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... himself upon the floor beside the dog. In the body of this black terrier centred everything in life that a man holds most dear. If he could speak—if the dumb tongue could wag an answer ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... t' the age o' three," said Jim Grimm, with a pessimistic wag of the head, "'twill be more by luck ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... great alliance with Mr Dott, the midshipman, who followed Captain Delmar about, just as Bob used to follow me, and generally remained in the shop or outside with me, when his captain called upon my mother. He was a little wag, as full of mischief as myself, and even his awe of his captain, which, as a youngster in the service, was excessive, would not prevent him from occasionally breaking out. My mother took great notice of him, and when he could obtain leave (which, indeed, she often asked ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... miller, was a public-spirited and many-sided man. Something of a wag and given to writing letters in verse, his life also had its more serious side. Besides being one of the founders and a trustee of the Union Schoolhouse of Germantown, now Germantown Academy, he was a justice of ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... imagined could be turned from sacrament to circus by the indecorous behavior of the groom and the flippancy of the bride. She, above all, must not reach up and wig-wag signals while she is receiving, any more than she must wave to people as she goes up and down the aisle of the church. She must not cling to her husband, stand pigeon-toed, or lean against him or the wall, ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... you pusillanimous, knock-kneed shrimp? I'm going to mash your jaw so you'll never wag it again! And right ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... up all the game we could take care of. Such was the feeling expressed by the soldiers as they discussed the situation on the march that day, and indulged in conjectures as to our probable destination and the outcome of the expedition. Of course, the company wag had a hearing while he expounded his views as to what we would do to the Confederacy or the Confederacy to us. The soldiers had confidence in General Warren, and regarded him as a prudent and efficient officer. He had the reputation of ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... sigh for this and that, My wishes don't go far; The world may wag at will, So I have ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... between its teeth, which were very firmly closed together. The lamb, whose only disorder was hunger and fatigue, began to feel the effects of this nourishment. It first began to stretch out its limbs, then shake its head, to wag its tail, and at last to prick up its ears. In a little time, it was able to stand upon its legs, and then went of itself to Flora's breakfast pan, who was highly delighted to see it take such pleasing liberties; for she cared not a farthing about losing her own ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... to stay where you are: Little Jancourt, you know, has a tear at command, The rest shall have muslin-wrapp'd onions in hand; An expedient which you, my good Consul, must try, For a drop never yet wag observ'd in your eye! And therefore I think 'twould be better for you The largest to pluck from the beds of St Cloud. When these fellows appear, they shall fall at your feet, Portalis shall pen a few words to repeat; He shall ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... bell a second time, the door fell back and I beheld in the black gap before me the oldest man I had ever come upon in my whole life. He was so old I was astonished when his drawn lips opened and he asked if I was the lawyer from New York. I would as soon have expected a mummy to wag its tongue and utter English, he looked so thin and dried and removed from this ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... with the Jew. You may as well go stand upon the beach, And bid the main flood bate his usual height; You may as well use question with the wolf, Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb; You may as well forbid the mountain pines To wag their high tops, and to make no noise, When they are fretted with the gusts of heaven; You may as well do anything most hard, As seek to soften that—than which what's harder?— His Jewish heart: therefore, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... which disturbs the serenity of the surface of the pool, swallows the kicking prey. The energy of the sun's heat and light, stored in grass, transmitted to move muscles in gigantic leaps, will, in a short time, wag a caudal fin and propel the ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... smiled at discretion, a far-away and unobtrusive smile that could by no possibility give offense; at the same time it was calculated to convey the impression that, in the opinion of one humble person, at least, Mr. Maitland was a merry wag. ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... Namely:—You can't do this"—here Dr. Veiga held up a pared and finished finger and wagged it to and fro with solemnity—"you can't do this without moving your finger ... You were aware of this great truth? Then why are you upset because you can't wag your finger without moving it?... Perhaps I'm being too subtle for you. Let me put the affair in another way. You've lost sight of the supreme earthly fact that everything has not merely a consequence, but innumerable consequences. You knew when you married that you ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... the dogs here are going mad, if you believe the overseers; but I protest they seem to me very rational and collected. But nothing is so deceitful as mad people, to those who are not used to them. Try him with hot water; if he won't lick it up, it's a sign he does not like it. Does his tail wag horizontally or perpendicularly? That has decided the fate of many dogs in Enfield. Is his general deportment cheerful? I mean when he is pleased, for otherwise there is no judging. You can't be too careful. Has he bit any of the children yet? If he has, have them shot, and keep him for curiosity, ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... this case. The Government simply ordered the gate of the cemetery to be locked, and when the crowd could no longer approach the tomb the miracles ceased. A little Parisian ridicule helped to end the matter. A wag wrote up over ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the sovran of the pastoral song: "While thou didst sing that cruel warfare wag'd By the twin sorrow of Jocasta's womb, From thy discourse with Clio there, it seems As faith had not been shine: without the which Good deeds suffice not. And if so, what sun Rose on thee, or what candle pierc'd the dark That thou didst after see to hoist ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... wasn't the same way with the man an' the woman in the house—for divil a wink iv sleep, good or bad, could they get at all, wid the fright iv the sperit, as they supposed; an' with the first light they sint a little gossoon, as fast as he could wag, straight off, like a shot, to the priest, an' to desire him, for the love o' God, to come to them an the minute, an' to bring, if it was plasin' to his raverence, all the little things he had for sayin' mass, an' savin' ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... old files can best put the past back upon its legs and set it going. There is a kind of history-book that sorts the bones and ties them all about with strings, that sets the past up and bids it walk. Yet it will not wag a finger. Its knees will clap together, its chest fall in. Such books are like the scribblings on a tombstone; the ghost below gives not the slightest squeal of life. But slap it shut and read what was ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... that in the magic of its Flow Anoints the Tongue to wag of So-and-So, To gabble garbled Garrulousness ere You lay the Cup and ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... christening. What was meant by this ceremony the reader may imagine who has already gathered some idea of the reckless irreverence of Roaring Camp. The master of ceremonies was one "Boston," a noted wag, and the occasion seemed to promise the greatest facetiousness. This ingenious satirist had spent two days in preparing a burlesque of the Church service, with pointed local allusions. The choir was properly trained, and Sandy Tipton was to stand ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... flourish to her winchester, goes trapsein' over to the O. K. Restauraw, leavin' us—as the story-writer puts it—glooed to the spot. You see it ain't been yoosual for us to cross up with ladies who, never waitin' for us to so much as bat an admirin' eye or wag an adorin' y'ear, opens neegotations by threatenin' to ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... have been: "Lazy Faire" and the Buck's "'Nuff Said," as a wag at Ryeville had declared, but such mottoes did not fit Miss Judith. Nothing must be left as it was unless it was already exactly right and enough was not said until she had spoken her mind freely and fearlessly. Everything about this girl was free and fearless—her walk, the way she held her head, ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... from that time on became the College of San Gregorio at Valladolid, where he had the companionship of his devoted friend Ladrada and the support of an important community of his Order. Fray Rodrigo, who also acted as confessor to his old friend, would seem to have been something of a wag, as it is related of him that when the Bishop had become somewhat deaf, the confessor might be heard admonishing his penitent: "Don't you see, Bishop, that you will finish up in hell because of your want of zeal in defending the Indians whom God ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... the yellow road, up over the hill by the signal corps tents, across Wig-Wag Park to the woods beyond, and sat down on a log with his letter. He told himself that it was likely one of those fool letters the fellows were getting all the time from silly girls who were uniform-crazy. He wouldn't answer it, of course, and he felt a kind of contempt with himself ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... sometimes, when he chid him, "Mud mixed with blood." But his disposition shewed itself still more clearly on his attaining the imperial power, and even in the beginning of his administration, when he was endeavouring to gain the popular favour, by affecting moderation. Upon a funeral passing by, a wag called out to the dead man, "Tell Augustus, that the legacies he bequeathed to the people are not yet paid." The man being brought before him, he ordered that he should receive what was due to him, and then be led to execution, that he might deliver the message to his father himself. Not long afterwards, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... the sun. As you move the wire away from the magnet, a second wave starts through the wire, flowing in the opposite direction. You can prove this by holding a compass needle under the wire and see it wag first in one ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... length and breadth of mine, And let it answer every strain for strain; As thus for thus, and such a grief for such, In every lineament, branch, shape, and form: If such a one will smile, and stroke his beard; And, 'sorrow wag,' cry; hem, when he should groan; Patch grief with proverbs; make misfortune drunk With candle-wasters; bring him yet to me, And I of him will gather patience. But there is no such man: For, brother, men Can counsel, and speak comfort to that grief Which they themselves not feel; ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... slight, in your favour. The case would be thought very hard, to be sure; but that would be all. Not so, should you triumph in the Greek cause. Transcendent glory would not only crown but protect you. No minister would dare to wag a finger—no, nor even Crown lawyer a tongue—against you; and, if they did, the feeling of the whole English public would surround you with an impenetrable shield. Fines would be paid; imprisonment protested and petitioned against; ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... incompris, only more or less concerned for the mischance; all trying wrongly to do right; all fawning at each other's feet like dumb, neglected lapdogs. Sometimes we catch an eye—this is our opportunity in the ages—and we wag our tail with a poor smile. "Is that all?" All? If you only knew! But how can they know? They do not love us; the more fools we to squander ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... temper. Every one tells everything he knows; that is our country sickness. Nearly every one has been betrayed at times, and told a trifle more; the way our sickness takes the predisposed. And the news flies, and the tongues wag, and fists are shaken. Pot boil ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of porridge, tinned fruit, fresh bread, butter and tea and the soothing aroma of innumerable pipes, other public heroes arose and ousted this upstart of the night. Meanwhile, the latter began to show signs of abating energy after twelve hours' work. Soon some wag had caught him having a private nap, a whispered signal was passed round and the unfortunate hero was startled into life with a rousing "Rise and shine!" in which all ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... creature's sudden cry, Bridget came out, and saw at a glance what had been done. She took Mignon up in her arms, and looked hard at the wound; the poor dog looked at her with his glazing eyes, and tried to wag his tail and lick her hand, all covered with blood. Mr. Gisborne spoke in a kind of ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of his enemies maligned him to the King, alleging that there still lurked in him a hot lust for the boy and that he ceased not to desire him, whenever the cool northern breezes moved him, and to gnash his teeth for having given him away. Cried the King, "Wag not thou thy tongue at him, or I will shear off thy head." However, he wrote Abu Amir a letter, as from the boy. to the following effect: "O my lord, thou knowest that thou wast all and one to me and that I never ceased from delight with ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... the first thing to do with an adopted cat is to give it a name, and Jack Harmon, who was a bit of a wag in his way, and a great admirer of the monster elephant which was just then making such a stir in New York, ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... Rebel Sergeant who called the roll entered. He was very odd-looking. The cervical muscles were distorted in such a way as to suggest to us the name of "Wry-necked Smith," by which we always designated him. Pete Bates, of the Third Michigan, who was the wag of our squad, accounted for Smith's condition by saying that while on dress parade once the Colonel of Smith's regiment had commanded "eyes right," and then forgot to give the order "front." Smith, being a good soldier, had kept his ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... came from the street; There's a wag of the tail and a twinkle of feet, And the little white dog did not even say, "Excuse me, ma'am," as he scampered away; But I'm sure as can be his greatest joy Is just to trot ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... as it had on the steps of the machine. A tail to wag wasn't really necessary, Stern decided, when there was ...
— Martians Never Die • Lucius Daniel
... belly with their hobnail boots. It cried out with the pain and writhed a little, but the poor little beast did not attempt to bite or even snarl. It looked up with those beseeching friendly eyes at its persecutors, and fawned on them again, and tried to wag its tail and be merry, pretending to play with a straw on the road, hoping perhaps to win a ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... now, how now, mad wag! what, in thy quips and quiddities? What a plague have I to do ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... growl and a pathetic wag was all the answer he could make to these tender inquiries; for never would the story of his wrongs be known, and never could the glory of his doggish beauty be restored. Betty was trying to comfort him with pats ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... until he had become an expert climber, nailed new cleats to the flagstaff and climbed to its summit, bearing with him the flag of the new republic. When he reached the top he cut down the British flag and suspended that of the United States. This greasy trick may have been the act of some wag of the retiring fleet, and might have been taken for a joke had it not been followed by hostile acts which indicated that this was the initial step in a long ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... like a ritt-meister," he said, with an approvingly good-natured wag of the head, as he came up as close as ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... a bit of sport above measure, & had some pretensions to the lady besides as being but a cousin once removed,—clapped & halloo'd them on; and as fast as their indignation cooled those mad wag's, the Ember Days, were at it with their bellows, to blow it into a flame; & all was in a ferment: till old Madame Septuagesima {who boasts herself the Mother of the Days} wisely diverted the conversation with a tedious tale of the lovers which she could reckon ...
— A Masque of Days - From the Last Essays of Elia: Newly Dressed & Decorated • Walter Crane
... foot-cloths—an expression which was soon communicated to his master. Rizi immediately administered a wholesome practical rebuke, by commanding the attendance of Antinolez on his Majesty's service, and ordering him to execute a piece of painting in distemper. The unlucky wag, being quite ignorant of the mode of performing the work, and too proud to confess it, worked for a whole day, at the end of which he had merely spoiled a large piece of canvas. "So, sir," said Rizi, quietly, "you see painting foot-cloths is not ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... understand, Mr Brand, that I keep my mouth shut in such company, and don't express my own views more than is absolutely necessary. I criticize whiles, and that gives me a name of whunstane common-sense, but I never let my tongue wag. The feck o' the lads comin' the night are not the real workingman—they're just the froth on the pot, but it's the froth that will be useful to you. Remember they've heard tell o' ye already, and ye've some sort ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... darling!" as they caught sight of Poppy's dark head and beaming face in Esther's bed. "Just look at our letters,—oh, you have got some too? Isn't it lovely of Anna? I think she is a perfect dear." Both talked at once, and as fast as their tongues could wag. "Here's a present for you," said Penelope, laying her parcel very carefully in Poppy's lap, and kissing her on the top of ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... House.—One often hears the anecdote of a wag who, as alleged, stared at the lion on Northumberland House until he had collected a crowd of imitators around him, when he cried out, "By Heaven! it wags, it wags," and the rest agreed with him that the lion did wag its ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... disposition to industry. Some wag once said: "All men are lazy, but some are lazier than others." It might sound better to say that all men are industrious, but some men are more industrious than others. There is such a quality of body and mind as the quality of predisposition ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... vegetable beds sloping down to the water, the straggling lane with the big oak at the gate. And there was Collie bounding down the lane, uttering yelping barks and twisting himself almost out of joint in his efforts to wag his tale hard enough to express his welcome. The Lad leaped down and ran to open the gate; Collie knocked him over in his ecstasy, and his father smiled indulgently as the two rolled over and ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... by ill-feeling to wag his tongue a bit. A depraved son receives heavy blows with a ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... quite easily, although, it is true, the height and thickness of the foliage prevented us from seeing far ahead. But sometimes a jutting- out rock on the hill sides afforded us a position whence we could enjoy the romantic view and mark our progress towards the foot of the hill. I wag particularly struck, during the walk, with the richness of the undergrowth in most places, and recognised many berries and plants that resembled those of my native land, especially a tall, elegantly-formed fern, which ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... mule with the ends of his driving-lines, and urging it, by voice and gesture, to the highest mule-speed: "Git up! git up! you lazy old no-go! Git up! Don't you see dat picter-feller tryin' to took you an' me an' de bar'l? Git up! Wag yer ears an' switch yer tail. You're not gwine ter stan' still an' keep yer eyes on de instrement fer no gallery-man to took, 'less you's fix' up fer Sunday. Git up, you ole ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... public schools, and were accustomed to niceness in such matters. Could he really be considered a butler? Playful spirits alluded to him as: 'Uncle Jolyon's Nonconformist'; George, the acknowledged wag, had ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... he, 'some day when I am asked out to dinner, some wag or another of a lord will call me parson, and ask me to crave a blessin', jist to raise the larf agin me for ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Laurent Jacques Menetrier. My father, Leonard Menetrier, kept a cookshop at the sign of Queen Pedauque, who, as everyone knows, wag web-footed ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... thick!" twittered Betty Carlisle. "We knew when you hove into sight that we might expect some jaw-wag!" ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... more widely distributed into such as Drolls, Clowns, Pantaloons, Punches, Scaramouches, and the like. In the Italian Comedy, of purely native growth, the original characters were Pantaloon, a Venetian Merchant; Dottore, a Bolognese physician; Spavento, a Neapolitan braggart; Pulcinello, a wag of Apalia; Giangurgoto and Corviello, two Clowns of Cala-simpleton; and Arlechino, ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... face as full of grief as his heart was of sorrows, showing in his countenance the map of extremities. As soon as the shepherds saw him, they did him all the honor they could, as being the flower of all the swains in Arden; for a bonnier boy was there not seen since that wanton wag of Troy that kept sheep in Ida. He, seeing the king, and guessing it to be Gerismond, did him all the reverence his country courtesy could afford; insomuch that the king, wondering at his ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... A dead and gone wag called the street "Fashion Street," and most of the people who live in it do not even see the joke. If it could exchange names with "Rotten Row," both places would be more appropriately designated. It is a dull, squalid, narrow thoroughfare in ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... kindled over the cheeks. Her lips were firmly closed, her eyes grave; dry, but seeming to waver tearfully in their heavy fulness. He could not doubt her love of him; and although chafing at the idea that she swayed him absurdly—beyond the credible in his world of wag-tongues—he resumed his natural soberness, as a garment, not very uneasily fitting: whence it ensued—for so are we influenced by the garb we put on us—that his manly sentiment of revolt in being condemned to play second, was repressed by the refreshment breathed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... frequent to the Confederates in the Valley that some wag at Richmond marked a fresh shipment of new guns destined for Early's army: "General Sheridan, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... the foul monster, Gluttony, Of wame insatiable and greedy, To Dance he did him dress: Him followit mony foul drunkart, With can and collop, cup and quart, In surfit and excess; Full mony a waistless wally-drag, With wames unweildable, did furth wag, In creesh[140] that did incress: Drink! aye they cried, with mony a gaip, The fiends gave them het lead to laip, Their ...
— English Satires • Various
... and at night each side can hear the enemy driving pickets for entanglements, digging trous-de-loup, or working forward by sapping. In some places obstacles have been constructed by both sides so close together that some wag suggested that each side provide working parties to perform this fatigue duty alternately, inasmuch as the work of the enemy is now almost indistinguishable from ours, and ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... guv me up. I come hyar ter die; but I got well. This is ther greatest place I ever struck fer bracin' up a feller's lungs; but it takes all ther ambition outer him. It hes made me so I don't care ter do anything but be lazy. Let ther old world wag, Gabriel Blake won't ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... romped and played rowdy games like a pack of children. Nothing was too silly for us to attempt. While a one-step was in full swing some would-be wag suddenly turned off all the lights. It was then that for a moment I caught sight of a pair of glowing, fiery eyes shining through the darkness. Instantly my thoughts flew back to that meeting at the station, when I had fancied that Ethne had her dog in her ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... big rough dog came out of the house, where it had been having a long sleep through the hot part of the day, and after giving Dyke a friendly wag of the tail, walked slowly ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... he would be induced to keep his promise: how he had thrown her over to her own devices: and how she had ever since been trying to pick up a precarious livelihood for herself in stray ways as a sempstress, work for which she wag naturally very ill-fitted, and for which she had no introductions. She slurred over nothing on either side of the story; and especially she did not forget to describe the full measure of her troubles and trials from her Methodist ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... aristocrat attracts flunkies as a magnet draws iron filings. Lucian tells of an exhibition in Rome in which monkeys had been trained to play a human part; which they did perfectly, before the beauty and fashion of the city—until a wag, in the midst of the performance, flung a handful of nuts upon the stage, and straightway the actors were monkeys again. Some of our republicans are monkeys in human attire. They get on well enough until the nuts of class distinction ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... to confession draw Those venial sins, an atom, or a straw; But oh! what terrors must distract the soul Convicted of that mortal crime, a hole; Or should one pound of powder less bespread Those monkey tails that wag behind their head. Thus finished, and corrected to a hair, They march, to prate their hour before the fair. So first to preach a white-gloved chaplain goes, With band of lily, and with cheek of rose, Sweeter than Sharon, in immaculate trim, Neatness itself impertinent in ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... would joke with hyaenas, returning their stare With an impudent wag of the head: And he once went a walk, paw-in-paw, with a bear, "Just to keep up ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll
... token Finn was far more sensitive to spoken words than Jan. It was not once in three months that the Master so much as raised or sharpened his voice in speaking to Finn. If Finn were verbally reproached by a member of the household, one saw his head droop and his eyes cloud. Jan would wag his tail while being scolded, even vehemently, and five minutes later would require a second call, and in a sharp tone, before turning aside from an interesting scent or a ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... Sun and the Moon The First Monkey The Virtue of the Cocoanut Mansumandig Why Dogs Wag Their Tails The Hawk and the Hen The Spider and the Fly The Battle ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... small white house some distance up a lane, where a dog with a collar greeted him with a cordial wag of ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... were saying you would know its irony. You cannot do a thing better than anyone else. People, like water, strike a dead level. No matter how you strive, dozens of others can do the thing you are doing. Were you to die, your place would be filled to-morrow, and the world would wag on just the same. There is always someone just beneath you watchfully waiting, ready to seize your place if you relax your effort for a moment. The term 'big things' is relative. To speak it is merely to refer to something you ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... said Dr. Possum. So the two piggie boys began to sing funny songs under Pinky's window. They sang about the mousie who had a rubber nose, and every time he blew it he bounced on his tiptoes. Then there was another one about a doggie, who could not wag his tail, because he'd fastened on it the monkey's drinking pail. And when Pinky heard these songs she felt much better, and she let the doctor do whatever he had ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... drawn into imitative worship. A very moderate use of great men in person should suffice anyone. Your real friends ought to be people with whom you are entirely at ease, not people whom you reverence and defer to. It's better to learn to bark than to wag your tail. I don't think the big men themselves often begin by ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... his hands despairingly. "Ah, what a wag you are, what a wag," he laughed. "To think that that very admirable wit of yours must go ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... bound to execute twice, though he would much rather have been excused either performance; and upon Mrs. Brown's presenting a substitute he became so beside himself as to forget the figure—a mishap rendered none the clearer by a wag's performing la pastorale, when he ought to have done trenise, and moreover, not have done it in such a facetious manner, as to render it a matter of doubt if he himself could have recognized it; the audacity being accompanied by a certain amount of shyness, ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... credit, I feel sure, for being animals of fine feeling and intelligence, than in justice they are entitled to; because they have so many ways of showing forth what they feel. A dog can growl or bark in several ways, and show his teeth in at least two, to tell how he feels. He can wag his tail, or let it droop, or curl it over his back, or stick it straight out like a flag, or hold it in a bowed shape with the curve upward, and frisk about, and run in circles, or sit up silently or with howls; or stand with one foot lifted; ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... mother of Rufus, had on one occasion been confined, and old Doctor—I forget his name—who officiated at the birth, had been asked to give the infant a name. Now he was a dry wag, of the kind so dear to Dr. Holmes, and expressed much gratification and gratitude at such a compliment being paid to him. "He had long been desirous," he said, "of naming a child after his dear old friend, Dr. Green." ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... Monday. It was the evening we were to put our money on our horse, our pick, nay, our "dead bird" for the Cup. We three met at the office. Our office boy, rather a wag in his way, had decorated my office table with flowers. My two partners, who seemed to me to have spent the week-end without any sleep, visiting training stables, waiting for the first streaks of dawn to watch the early Sunday and Monday ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... a tame wolf in her efforts to get young pigs within her reach. He says: "When she saw a pig in the vicinity of her kennel, she evidently, with the purpose of putting him off his guard, would throw herself on her side or back, wag her tail most lovingly, and look innocence personified; and this amicable demeanour would continue until the grunter was beguiled within reach of her tether, when, in the twinkling of an eye, 'Richard was himself again!'" Major Lloyd asserts that but for ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... crows, as well as the smaller Republican eagles born since, are humble enough to him now. The British lion himself having been so often scratched and clawed by this fowl, has learned to shake his mane and wag his tail rather amiably in our eagle's presence, even if he has to give an occasional growl to keep his hand in. We are proud of this bird, though we are far from home, and to-day send our heartiest good wishes across the sea to the ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... Faithful and Vicar of the Lord of the Worlds." Aboulhusn laughed at himself and misdoubted of his reason and was perplexed at what he saw and said, "In one night I am become Khalif! Yesterday I was Aboulhusn the Wag, and to-day I am Commander of the Faithful." Then the chief eunuch came up to him and said, "O Commander of the Faithful, (the name of God encompass thee!) thou art indeed Commander of the Faithful and Vicar of the Lord ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... Lacy had not taken the trouble to learn the lines properly and broke down at least once in every long speech, thereby justifying the popular inversion of her name to Lazy Kitty, a pseudonym which some college wag had fastened upon her ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... and wake with bright eyes," said Dolores, her toilet completed. "Let thy busy tongue wag its liveliest then; see to it that the strangers hear whispers and rumors, yet keep them apart and from harm a while. Thy task with the other rabble is easy. I care not how they are divided. But divided they must be; ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Alcesimarchus, Phoedromus, Diabolus, and Argyrippus, descend from Courtille in Labatut's posting-chaise; Aulus Gellius would halt no longer in front of Congrio than would Charles Nodier in front of Punchinello; Marto is not a tigress, but Pardalisca was not a dragon; Pantolabus the wag jeers in the Cafe Anglais at Nomentanus the fast liver, Hermogenus is a tenor in the Champs-Elysees, and round him, Thracius the beggar, clad like Bobeche, takes up a collection; the bore who stops you by the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and because it is so he will play and risk to the end, hazarding all, not yielding while he breathes. Having opened the theme which alone, of all themes, shall transform his irresolution into action, he will, Hamlet like, "fight upon this theme until" his "eyelids will no longer wag." So was Colden aroused, transfigured, as he stood doubly armed by the window, waiting for his men to ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... mask whenever his object is to flatter himself into some one's good opinion; and you may pay just as much attention to it as if it were made of wax or cardboard, never forgetting that excellent Italian proverb: non e si tristo cane che non meni la coda,—there is no dog so bad but that he will wag his tail. ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... good to me that Will should leave Gloria again; and Kagig must surely stay there to do the bargaining. So I took Monty's hand to bid him good-by, and limped off through the dark to try to find men who would come with me to the shambles below. It wag Kagig and Will together who overtook me, picked me off my feet, and dragged me back, and Will went down alone, with a wave of the hand to Gloria, and a laugh that might have made the ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... speech, rolling on the syllables as if over cobblestone, that the 144th pours out upon us; with the dialect blown from those ant-like clusters that the Auvergnats so obstinately form among the rest. I remember the first words of that wag, Tirette, when he arrived—"I, mes enfants, I am from Clichy-la-Garenne! Can any one beat that?"—and the first grievance that Paradis brought to me, "They don't give a damn for ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... Crowe might have saved him the trouble, had the wag honourably adhered to the institutions of chivalry, in his conflict with our novice. But on this occasion, his ingenuity was more commendable than his courage. He had provided at the inn a blown bladder, in which several ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... pretty one! Here's a virago! Here's a termagant! If length and sharpness go for anything, You'll want no sword while you can wag your tongue! ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... an idea that their distance from me was as nothing to my remoteness from them. In the last analysis, the impression they produced was that of having in common one memory so deep and dark that nothing that had happened since was worth either a growl or a wag. ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... last cork had been drawn, the last speech made, the last nut cracked, that tidings reached and were whispered about that the poor dean was no more. It was well for the happiness of the clerical beards that this little delay took place, as otherwise decency would have forbidden them to wag ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... race Her Carthage ruin, and her tow'rs deface; Nor thus confin'd, the yoke of sov'reign sway Should on the necks of all the nations lay. She ponder'd this, and fear'd it was in fate; Nor could forget the war she wag'd of late For conqu'ring Greece against the Trojan state. Besides, long causes working in her mind, And secret seeds of envy, lay behind; Deep graven in her heart the doom remain'd Of partial Paris, and her form disdain'd; The grace bestow'd on ravish'd Ganymed, Electra's glories, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... been watching him through some secret peephole. That had been her tribute to him and her scorn of his opponents. It about closed the incident, Pan concluded. Men were now coming along the street in both directions, though not yet close. Some wag yelled from a distance: "Thar ain't no ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... exposure here to the south and sou'-west," says the Sergeant, with a wag of his grizzled head, and a streak of pleasure in his melancholy voice. "This is the shape for a rosery—nothing like a circle set in a square. Yes, yes; with walks between all the beds. But they oughtn't to be gravel walks like these. Grass, Mr. Gardener—grass walks between your roses; gravel's ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... Fowler," said the painter, "that is a mighty curiosity." "What might it be, sir, if I may be so bold?" "A whale's eye," replied Gainsborough. "Oh! not so; never say so, Muster Gainsborough. Laws! sir, it is a little child's skull!" "You have hit upon it," said the wag. "Why, Fowler, you are a witch! But what will you think when I tell you that it is the skull of Julius Caesar when he was a little boy?" "Do you say so!" exclaimed ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... mounds, while at the same moment a number of small heads popped up from holes in the ground, and we were saluted by a chorus of sharp, angry barks, while the animals shook their sides and wagged their tails at every bark, as if they would wag them off; then, having thus exhibited either their pleasure or fear—it was difficult to say which—uttering a fresh volley of barks, they rushed headlong into their burrows, wagging their tails to the last as they disappeared beneath ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... blue eyes met her own. Then the eyeglass dropped from its place, the jaw fell, with a wag of the fair beard, and a look of stony astonishment and blank disappointment came into all the great features, while Madame Bonanni broke into a ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... Velasquez and Rembrandt smiled and frowned and wondered at us. As poppa said, it was easy to see that these people had ideas, and were simply longing to express them. "You feel sorry for them," he said, "just as you feel sorry for an intelligent terrier. But these poor things can't even wag their tails! Just let me know when you've had ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the collar with which he had restrained the dog, and the latter, feeling that he was free, began to wag his tail, fawn before Pan Tarkowski with whom he was already ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... have carried this off, but for his tail, which, instead of being straight and rat-like, was as plumy as the Prince of Wales's feathers, and curled unblushingly over his back, sideways, like a pug's. "It was a good one to wag," his master said, and, apart from the question of high breeding, it was handsome, and Rufus ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... deal of truth in what you say, but the world must just wag its stupid tongue. If the thing is to be, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... son Hal," he said, "and you, gentlemen all, resume your seats, I pray. I too did but jest as did Baby Charles here—a sad young wag, I fear me, is this ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... about my vengeance in this hole-and-corner fashion to set a hangman's noose about my neck. A fine vengeance that, as God lives! Was it so I dealt with you, Sir John, when you permitted your tongue to wag too freely, as you have yourself confessed? Heaven's light, man; take a proper view; consider was this matter likely. I take it you are a more fearsome antagonist than was ever poor Peter Godolphin, yet when I sought satisfaction of you I sought it boldly and openly, as is my way. When we measured ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... Mr Pecksniff. 'Ah, you wag, you naughty wag! You laugh at poor old fond papa. Well! He deserves it. And he don't mind it either, for his feelings are their own reward. You have come ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the mutineers, to seize their ringleaders, and to lash them down in their berths," he answered. His plan was generally approved of. We had now altogether twelve or fourteen persons prepared for the expected emergency. It wag important to communicate with Spratt, to collect the men forward who could be trusted. I volunteered immediately to do this. I knew that there was considerable risk, for I had already had an example of the way Cobb and his associates would treat me if they suspected ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... four legs dropped the big white dog, and with another wag of his fluffy tail he came straight ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... if they are really inhabited by real people—or mere animals, perchance—if they have human institutions, reasonable aspirations or finite intelligences. We take temperatures, make blood counts and record blood pressure, reckon the heart-beats, and think we are wondrous wise. But wig-wag as we may, signal with what mysterious wireless of evanescent youth-fire we still hold in our blood, we get nothing but vague hints, broken reminiscences, and a certain patchwork of our own subconscious chop logic of middle age in return. There is no real communication ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... thy tongue doth wag, husband,' she said, and cried in French for the rogues to be gone. When the door closed upon the lights she said in the comfortable gloom: 'I dote upon thy words. My first was tongue-tied.' She beckoned him to her and folded ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... disrespectful boy, that's what you are," retorted Aunt Charlotte, turning as pink as her ribbons. "The gentleman we're speaking of must be quite elderly, several years older than I am, and, for all I know, he may have a wife and half-a-dozen grown-up children by this time. You let your tongue wag a very great deal too fast, I can ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... not without scruple, since everybody must recognize something intentional in it,— just as people had before glossed on the previous external deportment of Von Plotho, so much prized in other respects, and, when once inclined towards him, had admired him as a wag, who, like his king, would place himself above all ceremonies,—one nevertheless gladly returned to the fairy ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Lem's words with a wag of his head toward the girl. "Flea," he said, "I telled Lem as how ye'd kiss ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... the two was by nature a merry wag, and though he had never had the chance to taste of pleasure, he thought that nothing in the world could be better worth spending money for than wine and music and dancing. So, when the evening had come, he proposed that they two should go and squander it all at the Inn. But the younger fellow—Abdallah—was ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... up a soldier man, I'll buy a pole to wag, With silver top and tassels red and blue; I'll tell my little brother to be carrying the flag, While I call out and tell ...
— The Bay and Padie Book - Kiddie Songs • Furnley Maurice
... if it was ever so'. The practical result is that, while Brown's consciousness informs him, trumpet-tongued, that Green is at Rome, 'the residue of a forgotten impression' makes him (without his knowing it) wag the table, which he does not intend to do, and forces him to say through the tilts of the table, that Green is at Machrihanish, while he believes that Green ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... A caricature of Arion on his dolphin; he wears a cap ending in a long proboscis-like horn, and plays a violin with a curious twitch of the bow and wag of the head, very graphically expressed, but still without anything approaching to the power of Northern grotesque. His dolphin has a goodly row of teeth, and the waves ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... time, the door fell back and I beheld in the black gap before me the oldest man I had ever come upon in my whole life. He was so old I was astonished when his drawn lips opened and he asked if I was the lawyer from New York. I would as soon have expected a mummy to wag its tongue and utter English, he looked so thin and dried and removed from this life and all ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... their lutes for more deadly instruments, and prepared themselves to give the Boer as much music as he cared to face. It was altogether a magnificent dissolution, rapidly accomplished. And, of course, it was as usual, all for nothing. Wessels was a wag. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... Rifleman's Ridge, Telegraph Hill, and a 12-pounder on Middle Hill, while Pom-Poms at two points barked frequently, but all this fuss and fury happily did no harm to anybody. At night a brilliant beam, like the tail of a comet, appeared in the southern sky. Presently the tail began to wag systematically, and experts were able to spell out the words of a cipher message. It was General Buller talking to us across fifteen miles of hills, and the conversation, all on one side, was kept up until lowering clouds shut out the light. We had no means of replying, ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... are sometimes varied by the command "Simon says wig-wag!" when all the thumbs must be waggled ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... — N. humorist, wag, wit, reparteeist^, epigrammatist, punster; bel esprit, life of the party; wit-snapper, wit-cracker, wit- worm; joker, jester, Joe Miller^, drole de corps^, gaillard^, spark; bon diable [Fr.]; practical joker. buffoon, farceur [Fr.], merry-andrew, mime, tumbler, acrobat, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... broadest career of Literature, broad way that leadeth to destruction for so many, the one duty laid upon you is still, Talk, talk. Talk well with pen or tongue, and it shall be well with you; do not talk well, it shall be ill with you. To wag the tongue with dexterous acceptability, there is for human worth and faculty, in our England of the Nineteenth Century, that one method of emergence and no other. Silence, you would say, means annihilation for the ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... it would be impossible. No gratitude could be commensurate with the benefit I conferred upon you. Yet if you had married, and discovered for yourself the troubles that come from too close an association with that sex which some wag of old ironically called the weaker, and of which contemporary fools with no sense of irony continue so to speak in good faith, you could have blamed only yourself. You would have shrugged your shoulders and made the best of it, realizing that no other ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... to a special salon within the official Salon, at the Palais de l'Industrie, which would harbour the work of the young lunatics who wished to paint purple turkeys, green water, red grass, and black sunsets. (Lie down, ivory hallucinations, and don't wag your carmilion tail on the chrome-yellow carpet!) It is an enormously clever book, this, deriving in the main as it does from Manette Salomon and Balzac's Frenhofer. The fight for artistic veracity by Claude Lantier is a replica of what occurred in Manet's lifetime. The Breakfast on the Grass, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... and iron and cook out and raise my chillun. I was raise up in de fiel' all my life. When I git disable' to wuk in de time of de 'pressure (depression) I git on my walkin' stick. I wag up town and I didn' fail to ax de white folks 'cause I wo' myself out wukkin' for 'em. Dey load up my sack and sometime dey bring me stuff in a car right dere to dat gate. But I's had two strokes and I ain't able to ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... was Jotham Marden's watch, A curious wag,—the pedler's son; And so he mused (the wanton wretch), "To-night I'll have ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the edge through an apple, when the acid bites and cleans the steel. While we were sauntering through a village one morning, out rushed the boys from school, and instantly their tongues began to wag of those things on which their hearts were set. 'I know a jay's nest, said one; 'I know an owl's nest,' cried a second; a third hastened to claim knowledge of a pigeon's nest. It will be long before education drives the natural love of the woods out of the children's ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... profession, there ran many a joke at the skill with which he parried irregular assaults on his purse; and that gentleman, with his nose more than usually in the air, having once observed to such scoffers "that they were quite welcome to any joke at his expense," a wag had exclaimed, "At your expense! Don't fear; if a joke were worth a farthing, you ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Myers of the University of Cambridge, England. Of any abuses of the practice, Dr. Myers gave his readers no reason for believing that he had ever heard; and as an indication, perhaps, of an animal's eagerness to be vivisected, he tells us that "again and again dogs have been observed to wag the tail and lick the hands of the operator even immediately before the beginning of the operation." Commenting upon the singular conclusion which this fact seemed to suggest to Dr. Myers, the present writer quoted a sentence or two from an editorial which ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... to be hustled round; so you 'd better let me alone, Fan," said Tom, drawing off with a threatening wag of the head, adding, in a different tone, "I only put the shells in for fun, Polly. You cook another kettleful, and I 'll pick you some ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... entangling lassos, they were instantly seized and other ropes of raw-hide were deftly twisted about their limbs and bodies, until in less than a minute they were so tightly and securely trussed up that they could scarcely wag a finger; after which they were each hoisted upon the shoulders of four Indians and borne with songs of triumph and rejoicing to the canoes, into which they were tumbled with scant ceremony. Then, with further songs of triumph, they were swiftly transported back down the river ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... then sorry that Bull should have had such a long pursuit, but that did not keep back Whitey's laughter when Bull staggered up to where they waited for him. He sure was a happy dog, and fatigue did not keep him from showing it, his method being to twist his body into almost a half-circle, wag his stump tail, and prance about gazing delightedly ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... contracted a great alliance with Mr Dott, the midshipman, who followed Captain Delmar about, just as Bob used to follow me, and generally remained in the shop or outside with me, when his captain called upon my mother. He was a little wag, as full of mischief as myself, and even his awe of his captain, which, as a youngster in the service, was excessive, would not prevent him from occasionally breaking out. My mother took great notice of him, and when he could obtain leave (which, indeed, she often asked for ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... face, and the features were still discernible. A merchant, travelling with the kafila, suddenly exclaimed, "That was my slave I left behind four months ago, near this spot." "Make haste! take him to the fsug (market)," said an Arab wag, "for fear any body ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... They trotted into the house and out again, and mingled with the mongrel home pack that snarled and growled hostility for this invasion. Then, they came once more to the stile. As they climbed out, Samson South reached up and stroked a tawny head, and the bloodhound paused a moment to wag its tail in friendship, before it jumped down to the road, ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... travesty was particularly timely. It creates only a smile of amusement to-day, but it was all fresh and delightful then. Schuyler Colfax, by this time Vice-President, wrote to him: "I have had the heartiest possible laugh over it, and so have all my family. You are a wicked, conscienceless wag, who ought to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... The village wag stepped forth, half innocent and half knave. "Saay, colonel! The prospects of this ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... hanging to a beam, from which she cut only just enough at a time to disguise the water which, when thickened with bread, a handful of haricots, and some scraps of other vegetables, made her daily soup. She was a widow now, but although whenever she spoke of her dead husband her head began to wag and the tears to start from her eyes, she had less care and worry and pain as a lonely woman than when she was bearing children and working harder than any pack-mule to bring them up. Her husband was a fisherman ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... was very hot, old Krafft used to sit under a tree, and was not long in dozing off. Then Jean-Christophe used to sit near him on a heap of loose stones or a milestone, or some high seat, uncomfortable and peculiar; and he used to wag his little legs, and hum to himself, and dream. Or sometimes he used to lie on his back and watch the clouds go by; they looked like oxen, and giants, and hats, and old ladies, and immense landscapes. He used to talk to them in a low voice, or be absorbed in a little cloud which a great one was ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... small family. A little, wiry-haired, scrubby, melancholy Irish terrier followed O'Connell for miles. He tried to drive him away. The dog would turn and run for a few seconds and the moment O'Connell would take his eyes off him he would run along and catch him up and wag his over-long tail and look up at O'Connell with his sad eyes. The dog followed him all the way home and when O'Connell opened the door he ran in. O'Connell Had not the heart to turn him out, so he poured out some milk and broke up some dry biscuits ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... of at least one million buffaloes was crossing the railroad at Goose Creek. As the grave despatcher seemed not greatly excited by this intelligence, Bucks followed up the story at intervals with vivid details. A wag on the wire in Medicine Bend played upon his enthusiasm by demanding frequent bulletins, even going so far as to ask the names of the leading buffaloes in the herd. When he had got all the laughs possible for the office out of the youthful operator, he wired Bucks ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... shouted "drunkard," "glutton," "extortioner," with other opprobrious names. When all were gone, he locked the door and put the key in his pocket. During the night some Royalist wag nailed a placard on the door, bearing the inscription in large letters, ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... another small structure. Mr. Kincaid stopped at the shed, and began to unharness Bucephalus. Bobby descended very stiffly. Curly hopped out and expressed delight over his arrival by wagging himself from the fifth rib back. You see he had not tail enough for the job, so he had to wag part of his body too. In a moment or so Bucephalus was tied in the shed and supplied with ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... old man needed no introduction. He had only to speak to the dog to set every inch of him quivering in affectionate response. "Here's a friend worth having," the raggedy tail seemed to signal in a wig-wag code of ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... whenever any specially significant outburst of popular dissatisfaction occurred. But for many years they were able to present a united and brazen front, and to crush anyone who dared to so much as wag a finger against them. It was intimated on a former page that Robert Gourlay was not the first victim of Executive tyranny. The first conspicuous victim of whom any record has been preserved was Mr. Robert Thorpe, an English barrister of much learning and acumen, who in 1805 was appointed a puisne ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Hill was the Hull of Hook's Gilbert Gurney. He happened to know everything that was going on in all circles; and was at all "private views" of exhibitions. So especially was he favoured, that a wag recorded, when asked whether he had seen the new comet, he replied—"Pooh! pooh! I was present at the ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... lying on the floor in front of the open fireplace which was filled with fresh green boughs—and evidently a very sick dog indeed. He gave the boys a pathetic glance of recognition as they came in, and with a feeble wag or two of his tail tried to show them he was glad to see them; but this done, he seemed to be completely exhausted, and once more laid his head between his forepaws and seemed ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... cavalcade with barks as noisy as he would have bestowed on any worldly pedlar. Nay, so very unmannerly was Colle, that when he was let go, he marched straight to the Archbishop, and after a prolonged sniff at the archiepiscopal boots, presumed so far as to wag his very secular tail, and even to give an uninvited lick to the archiepiscopal glove. The Archbishop, instead of excommunicating Colle, laid his hand gently on the dog's head and patted him; which so emboldened that audacious quadruped that ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... assembled,—the lower saloon is crowded; Mr. O'Brodereque, with great dignity, mounts the stand,—a little table standing at one end of the room. His face reddens, he gives several delinquent coughs, looks round and smiles upon his motley patrons, points a finger recognisingly at a wag in the corner, who has addressed some remarks to him, puts his thumbs in the sleeve-holes of his vest, throws back his coat-collar, puts himself in a defiant attitude, and is ready to deliver himself of ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... succour approach. In that day, the strong antipathy which now exists between the black and the emigrant Irishman was unknown, the competition for household service commencing more than half a century later. Still, as the negro loved fun constitutionally, and Pliny the younger was somewhat of a wag, Mike did ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... these my dog friend fell, as if he had been a starving wolf, but he did not forget to glance up at me before he began with such a grateful look, and to give his tail one quick wag of thanks. ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various
... sister who told me that Mary was engaged to be married. But I had noticed for some days how the neighbors went out of their way to accost her upon our walks; to banter her kindly, to shake hands with her, to wag their heads and look chin-chucks even if they gave none. Her face wore a beautiful mantling red for hours at a time. And instead of being made more sedate by her responsible and settling prospects she shed the ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... Tree of mine! Have you seen my naughty little maid With a willy willy wag and a great big bag, She's stolen my money—all ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... do my best to entertain her—trot out all my old jokes and stories, pay her delicate compliments, and do frank homage to her youth and beauty. But her attention wanders. My tongue is stiff, like my legs. It can wag through the old motions, but it has lost its spontaneity. One glance from the eye of the boy down the long table and she is oblivious of my existence. Should I try to dance with her I should quickly find that crabbed middle-age and youth cannot step in time. My place is with Mrs. Jones—or, ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... blythe before to cheer the way, From clouds of curling dust which onward fly, In rural splendour break upon the eye. As in their way they hold so gayly on, Caps, beads, and buttons glancing in the sun, Each village wag, with eye of roguish cast, Some maiden jogs, and vents the ready jest; Whilst village toasts the passing belles deride, And sober matrons marvel at their pride. But William, head erect, with settled brow, In sullen silence view'd the ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... a distinguished actor so far forgot himself as to let slip an expletive of three simple letters, whereat Mrs. KEAN held up her hands in horror and quitted the room, followed by the actresses who happened to be present. Subsequently some wag at the Garrick Club wrote a song whereof the burden was "The Man who said 'dam' in the Green-Room." Tempora mutantur, and now, at the Avenue Theatre, under the management of Mr. and Mrs. KENDAL in the Green-Room and behind the scenes, as well as on the stage, "DAM" will be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... the supper-room, more than one wag of a fellow had congratulated him on his success with the widow. "She's got some some sort of a jointure, I suppose," said one. "She's very young-looking, certainly, to be the mother of that girl," declared another. "Upon my word, she's a handsome woman still," said a third. "And what title will ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... telegraph line and to the commutator, a device which, when the operator moves the handle H to right and left, keeps reversing the direction of the current. The needles on both receiving and transmitting instruments wag in accordance with the movements of the handle. One or more movements form an alphabetical letter of the Morse code. Thus, if the needle points first to left, and then to right, and comes to rest in a normal position for a moment, the letter A is signified; right-left-left-left in quick succession ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... thickets lies crouched the lordly stag, The dreaming terrier's tail forgets its customary wag; And plodding ploughman's weary steps insensibly grow quicker, As broadening casements light them on toward home, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... garden with Mrs. Joyce and the young ladies the middle-distance and background, there flits from time to time an unquiet figure. This personage is always greeted by Leo, the Newfoundland dog, with an extra wag of the tail; and is apostrophized laughingly by the young ladies, under the appellation of "funny ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... art a wag; no more of that. Thou shall want neither man's meat, nor woman's meat, as far as his provision ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... whistle came from the street; There's a wag of the tail and a twinkle of feet, And the little white dog did not even say, "Excuse me, ma'am," as he scampered away; But I'm sure as can be his greatest joy Is just to trot ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... society, however, and the tongue of gossip continued to wag. Her immediate marriage with a former lover, Mr. Hill, was announced: 'il est bien bon,' said Lady Bessborough. Then it was whispered that Canning was 'le regnant'—that he was with her 'not only all day, but almost all night.' She quarrelled ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... love to wag! Fool! Go ask him then! I call these men to witness I have given the order that he told me to give to you. ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... 'Alas, he whose strength was equal to that of a hundred thousand elephants, alas, that king sitteth today, leaning on a woman. Alas! he by whom the iron image of Bhima on a former occasion wag reduced to fragments, leaneth today on a weak woman. Fie on me that am exceedingly unrighteous! Fie on my understanding! Fie on my knowledge of the scripture! Fie on me for whom this lord of Earth lieth today in a manner that is not becoming of him! I also shall fast even as my preceptor. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... she had the feelings of a woman immediately to accompany him, and prevent murder; briefly stating, that her 'beauties were the cause and most accursed effect.' In a state of real excitement, mixed up with woman's vanity, she rushed out of the house, and accompanied that wag of wags. A white beaver hat, sweet emblem of her purity, was on her head, and partially concealed her disordered ringlets, hastily gathered together. We arranged with HARLEY always to keep ourselves a certain distance in advance on the pathway bordering the sands. The first ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... an odd look. "The blood of white goats—meaning Sahibs, Hazur."—Roy's 'click' was Oriental to a nicety.—"'A white goat for Kali' is an old Bengali catchword. Hark how their tongues wag. But there is still another—much esteemed by the student-log; one who can skilfully flavour a pillau[16] of learned talk, as the Swami can flavour a pillau of religion. Where he comes, there will be trouble afterwards, and arrests. But no Siri Chandranath. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... to pound his royal skull with a blacksmith's hammer. The absurdity of the story is transcendent. One is charitably tempted to believe, for the credit of human nature, that it was the work of a subtle, solemn wag, who thought it a safe way of satirising the proverbial ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... her eyes widely, but she did not at once reply; she was not, strictly speaking, a clever girl, and did not at once grasp any new idea; our conversations were generally rather one-sided. Emma Hardy, who was our school wag, once observed that I used Jessie's brains as an airing-place for my ideas. Certainly Jessie listened more than she talked, but then, ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the Garden of Eden about six thousand years ago," responded a wag from somewhere—he was too tired to recognize the voice. "There! the skirmishers have struck that blamed cavalry again. Plague them! They're as bad ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... up his hands despairingly. "Ah, what a wag you are, what a wag," he laughed. "To think that that very admirable wit of yours must go ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... in dogs, and indeed in other animals. At the house of a gentleman in Wexford, out of four dogs kept to guard the premises, three of them would always wag their tails, and express what might be called civility, on the approach of any well-dressed visitors; manifesting, on the other hand, no very friendly feelings towards vagrants or ill-dressed people. The fourth,—a sort of fox-hound,—which, as a puppy, had belonged to a ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... ceased to wag, tankards to clink. Every man and every dog was quietly gathering about those two central figures. Not one of them all but had his score to wipe off against the Tailless Tyke; not one of them but was burning to join in, the battle once ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... world, my masters, as has been said before," resumed Warner, "but I should add that it's also a mad wag of a world. Here we are face to face for forty miles, at some points seeking to kill one another in a highly impersonal way, and at other points conducting sale and barter according to the established customs of peace. People at home wouldn't believe it, and later on a lot more won't believe ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... have called me quixotic had he known. Now, as I read and pondered, I neither blamed him for his own course in fair business war with old Dan Emory, nor did I censure myself for my own hidden act of restitution. Let the world wag its head if it liked, and remain ignorant of other millions given to me before my father's death, unprobated, secret, after the fashion of my pirate parent who buried his treasures and told none but his kin how they ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... scholastic wight, Who wishes to hold a public debate On sundry questions wrong or right! Ah, now this is my great delight! For I have often observed of late That such discussions end in a fight. Let us see what the learned wag maintains With such a prodigal waste ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... admiringly of her and never met her at church, or among her friends that he did not gladly avail himself of the opportunity of accompanying her home. Madame rumor soon got tidings of Mr. Luzerne's attentions to Annette and in a shout the tongues of the gossips of A.P. began to wag. Mrs. Larkins who had fallen heir to some money, moved out of Tennis court, and often gave pleasant little teas to her young friends, and as a well spread table was quite a social attraction in A.P., her gatherings were ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... Not every officer has this habit, but most acquire it. I have been told that, however weakly otherwise, the calf muscles of watch-officers were generally well developed. There were exceptions. A lieutenant who was something of a wag on one occasion handed the midshipman of his watch a small instrument, in which the latter did not recognize a pedometer. "Will you kindly keep this in your trousers-pocket for me till the watch is over?" At eight bells he asked for it, and, after examining, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... Said to refer to a Mr. Repington, a well-known wag of the time, and a member of an old Warwickshire family, of Amington, near ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... him to his owner. At any rate, before we retired to rest he prevailed on himself to eat some supper which I prepared for him, pausing every now and then in his meal to lift his infantile face to mine and wag his tail in a half-hearted manner, as though he said, "You see I am doing my best to trust you, though you are a medical student!" Poor innocent beast! Well indeed for him that he had not chanced to stop at the door of my neighbor and camarade, Paul Bouchard, who had a passion ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... with flowers, everything else was exactly as she had left it, except that above her bed was a crown of golden stars set there by "citizen Le Brun." The long-suffering Vigee Le Brun was deeply touched; but could not forget that the unconscious wag had made her pay dearly for ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... porridge, tinned fruit, fresh bread, butter and tea and the soothing aroma of innumerable pipes, other public heroes arose and ousted this upstart of the night. Meanwhile, the latter began to show signs of abating energy after twelve hours' work. Soon some wag had caught him having a private nap, a whispered signal was passed round and the unfortunate hero was startled into life with a rousing "Rise and shine!" in which all ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... to totter from weakness, and finally sat down upon the floor. Here he gathered his quilt about him, and began to smile and chuckle and wag his head and pick at his fantastic dress as before. The words which he muttered were inaudible, and those which could be heard were utterly incoherent. The subject that had been presented to his mind ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... did tell me something about ATTORNEY-GENERAL going on the Spree. But that was in Germany, and he had his skates with him. Don't know how it'll be here. You mustn't forget that WILFRID's something of a wag. Wouldn't advise you to wait much after ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various
... three sailors, said that we would not see it done. But there was no moving Prendergast and those who were with him. Our only chance of safety lay in making a clean job of it, said he, and he would not leave a tongue with power to wag in a witness-box. It nearly came to our sharing the fate of the prisoners, but at last he said that if we wished we might take a boat and go. We jumped at the offer, for we were already sick of these bloodthirsty doings, and we saw that there would be worse before it was done. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... a wanton; In the whole world, there is scant one ——Such another: No, not his mother. He hath pluck'd her doves and sparrows, To feather his sharp arrows, And alone prevaileth, While sick Venus waileth. But if Cypris once recover The wag; it shall behove her To look better to him: Or she will ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... poor little thing who is leaning on me; I fear that she feels rather bad; Poor limp little thing! she wants a back-bone, She's only just made up of rag. There's little Miss Prim sitting up all alone, And the Japanese looks like a wag. ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... with a delicate appetite, you do very well," laughed the Professor. "It wag less than two months ago, if I remember correctly, that the doctors thought you were not going to live, you ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... viceroy. The licentiate was much addicted to cards, particularly at the games of triumpho and primero, on which circumstance one of Guzmans friends played him the following trick to hold him up to ridicule. The civilians at that time wore gowns with loose hanging sleeves, into one of which some wag contrived to convey a pack of cards, so that when Torre was walking across the great square of Mexico in company with several persons of quality, the cards began to drop from his sleeve, leaving a long trail behind him as he walked along. On ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... When lo some scurril children that lurked near, Set there by Satan for my stumbling-stone, Fell hooting with necks thwart and eyes asquint, Screeched and made horns and shot out tongues at me, As at my Lord the Jews shot out their tongues And made their heads wag; I considering this Took up my cross in patience and passed forth: Nevertheless one ran between my feet And made me totter, using speech and signs I smart with shame to think of: then my blood Kindled, and I was moved to smite the knave, And the knave ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... be derived from the "1001 Nights" (271st to 290th nights of the Breslau edition, "The Story of Abu-l-hasan the Wag, or the Sleeper Awakened"). The Arabian story is not only more detailed, but contains much preliminary matter that is altogether lacking in our story. In fact, the two are so dissimilar, except for the trick the husband and wife play on their benefactor to get more money, that ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... of the nose and a gleam of dazzling ivory—ha! no enemy ever saw this last piece of canine language without a full appreciation of what it meant. Then as to the tail—the modulations of meaning in the varied wag of that expressive member—oh! it's useless to attempt description. Mortal man cannot conceive of the delicate shades of sentiment expressible by a dog's tail, unless he has studied the subject—the wag, the waggle, the cock, the droop, the slope, the wriggle! ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... administration of the law. Therefore," and his voice was cold as marble, "it would be inadvisable to run him in for such picayune crimes as twisting lead pipe round young women and throwing them overboard, or otherwise delicately quieting tongues that might be made to wag against him. And now if you are going ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... The wag who started the "forty acres and a mule" idea among the black people of the South was a wise fool; wise in that he enunciated a principle which every argument of sound policy should have dictated, upon the condition ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... fire; and Harry Shafto and Willy Dicey tried if they could not eat them while still blazing, and, of course, burned their mouths, eliciting shouts of laughter; and the whole party soon thought no more of the future, and were happy in the present. How Mrs Clagget's tongue did wag! She was a tall, old lady, going out to a nephew in New Zealand; and, as she was to be the companion of the young Diceys on the voyage, she had been asked to join the ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... wind by the rank breath of lying rascals, I would not put forth a hand to check its flight. If old scars received while defending woman's name and fame in paths of peril which my traducers dare not tread, fail to speak for me, then to hell with the world, and let its harlot tongue wag howsoever it will. Never but once did I stoop to refute a cowardly falsehood circulated about myself. I was younger then—had not learned that public opinion is a notorious bawd, that "nailing a lie" but accentuates its circulation. Unfortunately, the recent assaults upon me are not altogether ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... hearn some pretty tall stories about the deer and moose up about the head of Bog River from an Ingen who'd hunted that section, I mentioned to Crop one mornin' that we'd take a trip into them parts. 'Agreed,' said he, or leastwise he didn't say a word agin it, and, by the wag of his tail, I understood him ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... said, wagging away, so that with each wag the lenses of his spectacles caught the light of the ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... is not spared; but Colonel Goldsworthy is the wag professed of their community, and privileged to say what he pleases. The other, with the most perfect good-humour, accepted the joke, without dreaming of taking ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... harshly; and, finally, said that she would give one hundred pounds to have him back, but that she would never speak to him again. The doctor promised to undertake the search, and would have promised anything to get rid of his visitor. A reward of fifty pounds wag offered. But whether the fear of falling into the clutches of the law for murderous assault stimulated Cashel to extraordinary precaution, or whether he had contrived to leave the country in the four days which elapsed between ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... singularly clear and deep-toned, and he had been well trained as to the use to make of it, but his personal actions were too vehement, and one wag remarked, 'Mr. Fox, in speaking, saws the air with his hands, but Mr. Pitt saws ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... manners frank even to coarseness. The temper of Pelham was yielding, but peevish: his habits were regular, and his deportment strictly decorous. Walpole was constitutionally fearless, Pelharn constitutionally timid. Walpole had to face a strong opposition; but no man in the Government durst wag a finger against him. Almost all the opposition which Pelham had to encounter was from members of the Government of which he was the head. His own pay-master spoke against his estimates. His own secretary-at-war ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I looked for old Peter Dexter, president of the Dexter Trust Company—yes, he was in his pew, wizened and hunched up, prematurely bald. And Stuyvesant Gunning, of the Fidelity National—they were all here, the masters of the city's finance and the pillars of "law and order." Some wag had remarked if you wanted to call directors' meeting after the service, you could settle all the business of ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... began to jump about and wag his tail. He was always ready for fun, he told Mr. Crow. "But where is it at this ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... what troubles me. Always, always, for the last five years. I've been afraid day and night that I've done him some wrong. I've prayed and prayed and always thought of the great wrong I'd done him. And now it turns out it wag true." ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... all day and has to forget me," he answered calmly. "You can bring me back to bed when she is through." And to this plea was added a pathetic wag of ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and found that our suspicious friend had shortened sail, as if he had made us out, and wag afraid to approach, or ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of the wind, A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms, The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag, The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides, The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Fair is over, and we are no longer invited to "walk up," let us march in the train of the great Mime, until he takes his ease in his inn,—the Black Jack aforesaid,—and laugh at his jibes and flashes of merriment, before the Mad Wag shall be silenced by the great killjoy, Death, and the jester's boon companions shall lay him in the graveyard in Portugal Fields, placing over him a friendly record of ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... damp and icy building. One of the distributors of holy water, an old fellow with a rubicund, joyous, wine-bibbing face, seeing Frances approach the little font, said to her in a low voice: "Abbe Dubois is not yet in his box. Be quick, and you will have the first wag of his beard." ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... in it—on one side at least. But I can't help wondering whether Hyde . . . . our dear Laura would naturally be the last to hear of it. But Hyde's a man of the world and knows how quickly tongues begin to wag. In Laura's unprotected position he ought ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... are those who wag their heads knowingly and tell us that the capital of the Cotton Kingdom has moved from the Black to the White Belt,—that the Negro of to-day raises not more than half of the cotton crop. Such men forget ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... of Dr. Kitchiner's, on a very wet night, after several messengers, whom he had despatched for a coach, had returned without obtaining one; at last, at "past one o'clock, and a rainy morning," the wag walked himself to the next coach-stand, and politely advised the waterman to mend his inside lining with a pint of beer, and go home to bed; for said he, "there will be nothing for you to do to night, I'll lay ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... could learn how much more charming altogether it is to exchange the delicate courtesies that make up refined social companionship. The difference in social culture is what distinguishes the vulgar wag from the urban wit. The crude humor of the former, often marred by coarseness, is like ore in which the dross greatly out-weighs the pure metal. The brilliant mots of the latter, refined by the processes of culture, ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... proved that he was both fearless and faithful. In the morning he was found lying beside the safe whose valuable contents he had kept from being touched, but with only enough of life left to give a feeble wag of welcome to his master, as though he would say, "You trusted me. and I ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 15, April 12, 1914 • Various
... oysters obtained by the Red Sea shore. At his church in Paris were performed the 'miracles' of the Quietists in the seventeenth century. When the scenes that took place became a scandal, the government intervened, with the result that a wag adorned the church door with ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... I would wish," said Gard, with a gloomy wag of the head. "Your Sark men are difficult—very difficult, and the others who ought to know better, and who do know better"—with more than a touch of warmth—"go on as though ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... find a seat, with an air of expectation that all pew-doors would fly open at his approach. But as every seat was full, and nobody stirred, the crestfallen brother was obliged to retrace his steps. As he retreated by the pew, far down the aisle, where the clerical wag was sitting, that pleasant man leaned over the door, and greeted his comrade with the sententious whisper, "May it be sanctified to you, dear brother!" Every right-minded man will wish the same blessing to the rebuke of the loud-talking maids ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... countenanced by the great historian Vander Donck, is Manhattan, which is said to have originated in a custom among the squaws, in the early settlement, of wearing men's hats, as is still done among many tribes. "Hence," as we are told by an old governor, who was somewhat of a wag, and flourished almost a century since, and had paid a visit to the wits of Philadelphia, "hence arose the appellation of man-hat-on, first given to the Indians, and afterwards to the island"—a stupid joke!—but well enough ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... beaten army at two on the 19th came down the road between the French and our lines, with the colours in their cases, and the bands playing a British march; for it is of the etiquette of such occasions that the captured army play none but their own tunes. Some wag must have chose the air, for they marched by to the good old English music of "The World Turned Upside Down"; such must have seemed sadly the ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... now? So you saw those invalids and thought yourself responsible for their misery? They're tough fellows, you can believe me; they'll be able to leave here in a few days and go back to their occupations. Oh yes, lying Erik's a wag! But things have gone so far with you, that you can't distinguish between your own and other people's children. Wouldn't it be a great thing to escape from all this? What do you say? Oh, I could free you... but I'm no saint. Now we'll call old Maia. (He whistles between his fingers: MAIA appears.) ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... also badly winded, though he would chatter; "now to see Paul get one of the other fellows on the line, to wig his wag at us, or do something that sounds that way. There he goes at it. And looky there, they've been watching us climb, I reckon, because almost before Paul made the first sign, that other fellow ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... Fongereues mansion had been temporarily staved off by the marriage that had been arranged between Irene and the Vicomte, but as soon as the world knew that the marriage was broken off, the tongues of gossips began to wag. ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... employ you,' said the wag. 'I am from Picardy, and will get you taken in here, where you will be treated as a queen would often like to be, and you will be able to make a ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... second part, entitled "Familiar Dialogues," the fun grows fast and furious. Let us accompany our mad wag upon "The walk." "You hear the bird's gurgling?" he enquires, and then rapturously exclaims "Which pleasure! which charm! The field has by me a thousand charms"; after this, to the question "Are you hunter? Will you go to the hunting in one day this week?" he responds "Willingly; ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... something of the philosopher under the garb of a wag. His quaint sayings and doings were frequently quoted with great relish among this rural population. He had a way of his own of shooting facts and truths into the uncultivated understandings of these laborers,—facts and truths that never otherwise could have penetrated so far; he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... look, and a little propitiating wag of the tail, which was not so much a wag as a suggestion of what he might do if encouraged, went to Peggy's heart. "Poor fellow!" she exclaimed, and the mischief was done. Instantly the dog had classified her. ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... in the midst of it, the priest said out aloud, 'Oh I forgot,' and turning round to us began to wag his grey head and white beard, throwing his head right back, and sinking his chin on his breast alternately; and when we saw him do this, we presently began also to knock our heads against the wall, keeping time with him and with each other, till the priest said, 'Peter! it's dragon-time ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... levied on Mytton and Vetch were the least part of their punishment. The incident of the dust bin brought on them open ridicule; they became the laughingstock of Shrewsbury. The school wag, who afterwards became famous for his elegant Greek verses at Cambridge, pilloried them in a lampoon which the whole town got by heart, and for days afterwards they could not show their faces without being greeted by some ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... wool and buckskin were celebrating. Old Laramie had seen life—all of life, since the fur days of La Ramee in 1821. Having now superciliously sold out to these pilgrims, reserving only alcohol enough for its own consumption, Old Laramie was willing to let the world wag, and content to twiddle a man ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... don't know but I'd as soon tell a story as not," replied Grace, pushing back her curls; "I reckon Pincher wants to hear one, he begins to wag his tail. I can't make up any thing as I go along, but I can tell a sober, ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... the mystery ship was back over the San Francisco area and those people who had maintained that people were being fooled by a wag in a balloon became believers when the object was seen moving into ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... waited fer you to say as ye'll marry Davi', an' ye ain't had the savvee to wag yer tongue right, I'm goin' to quit. The snow's goin' fast. They dogs o' mine is gettin saft fer want o' work. I'm goin' to light right out o' here, Victor, an' ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... engines, As Indian Britons were from Penguins. 60 So let them be; and, as I was saying, They their live engines ply'd, not staying Until they reach'd the fatal champain, Which th' enemy did then encamp on; The dire Pharsalian plain, where battle 65 Was to be wag'd 'twixt puissant cattle And fierce auxiliary men, That came to aid their brethren, Who now began to take the field, As Knight from ridge of steed beheld. 70 For as our modern wits behold, Mounted a pick-back on the old, Much further oft; much ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... the strongest ale, as to the next physician. It is incredible to say how our malt-bugs lug at this liquor, even as pigs should lie in a row lugging at their dame's teats, till they lie still again and be not able to wag. Neither did Romulus and Remus suck their she-wolf or shepherd's wife Lupa with such eager and sharp devotion as these men hale at "huffcap," till they be red as cocks and little wiser than their combs. But how am I fallen from the market ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... began to look hopeless, and the poignancy of my suspense became such that I thought I should have gone mad. Francois was already persuaded into setting to work with his pick, and, I should most certainly have been speedily interred, had it not been for the timely arrival of a village wag, who, planking himself unobserved behind a tombstone close to my coffin, burst out laughing in the most sepulchral fashion. The effect on the company was electrical; the majority, including the women, fled precipitately, and ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... were lined up on the warm side of the lean-to, shading their faces from the sun. When the comer was so near that they could see he was strange to them, Lancaster gave a peremptory wag of the head, and the two girls disappeared around a corner. Their father stayed on watch, his jaws working nervously ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... sister-birth. Swift are her wings to cleave the air, swift-foot she treads the earth: 180 A monster dread and huge, on whom so many as there lie The feathers, under each there lurks, O strange! a watchful eye; And there wag tongues, and babble mouths, and hearkening ears upstand As many: all a-dusk by night she flies 'twixt sky and land Loud clattering, never shutting eye in rest of slumber sweet. By day she keepeth watch high-set on houses ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... were shocked when they saw a publican with Jesus, and tongues began to wag. No one seemed to notice that Levi had stopped collecting taxes. He had been a publican once, and no one except Jesus was ready to ...
— The King Nobody Wanted • Norman F. Langford
... the spot. Mr. A. Hawkes, in an article in the "Wimbledon Annual" for 1904, places it in front of the house called "Scio," but it must be the deeper hollow towards Kingston Vale. Caricatures of the time wrongly place the duel on the high ground near the windmill. A wag chalked on Abershaw's gibbet a figure of the two duellers, Tierney saying: "As well fire at the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... grave and sly character, and Poker was a wag—an incorrigible wag—in every sense of the term. Moreover, although they had an occasional fight, Dumps and Poker were excellent friends, and great ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... asked for a doctor. A dozen students ran in a dozen different directions. The tired horse stamped its feet impatiently, and once it whinnied. The coachman lighted his pipe and watched his dying fare. Some wag sang a drunken lyric, and Ambroise ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... have saved him the trouble, had the wag honourably adhered to the institutions of chivalry, in his conflict with our novice. But on this occasion, his ingenuity was more commendable than his courage. He had provided at the inn a blown bladder, in which several smooth pebbles were enclosed; ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... salootatory, Miss Bark, givin' a coquettish flourish to her winchester, goes trapsein' over to the O. K. Restauraw, leavin' us—as the story-writer puts it—glooed to the spot. You see it ain't been yoosual for us to cross up with ladies who, never waitin' for us to so much as bat an admirin' eye or wag an adorin' y'ear, opens neegotations by threatenin' to shoot us ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... hypocrite who has wronged her sex so deeply. That, amid the general impunity, the mere telling of some ridiculous lies to the disguised Duke about himself, should draw down a disproportionate severity upon Lucio, the lively, unprincipled, fantastic jester and wag, who might well be let pass as a privileged character, makes the whole look more as if done in mockery of justice than in honour of mercy. Except, indeed, the noble unfolding of Isabella, scarce any thing turns ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... mountains wild and bar'!' Put yo' crook around our necks, John, an' lead us home with our tails behind us, so as our Bo Peeps'll know us when we come an' gladden us with their soft black eyes! Ain't that the way the poetry runs?" snickered a drunken wag, dropping on the post-office steps and gazing up with a befuddled air at Fairfield, who had removed his hat ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... mongrels of the most hopeless type. They are yellowish, with thick, short, woolly coats, and much fatter than you expect to find them. They walk like a funeral procession. Never have I seen one frisk or even wag his tail. Everybody turns out for them. They sleep—from twelve to twenty of them—on a single pile of garbage, and never notice either men or each other unless a dog which lives in the next street trespasses. Then they eat him up, for they are jackals ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... character he had assumed. The ass brayed, the owl hooted, the ghost groaned. The ape leaped on the back of the throne whereon the young man still sat, and seized him by the hair, chattering idiotically after the manner of apes, and began to wag his head back and forth. In the midst of the uproar Demosthenes stepped forward and took the envelopes from the palette, and, tearing them open, began reading them aloud by the light of a candle held for him by Lady Macbeth, ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... an honour, and the body of the building was always filled by strongly-visaged spinsters and mutinous wives, who twice a week were worked up by Dr. Fleabody to a full belief that a glorious era was at hand in which woman would be chosen by constituencies, would wag their heads in courts of law, would buy and sell in Capel Court, and have balances at their banker's. It was certainly the case that Dr. Fleabody had made proselytes by the hundred, and disturbed the happiness of many fathers ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... the sight of Tom, Ned and Mr. Whitford, blew a shrill whistle. Those in the launch looked back. The man on shore waved a red flag in a peculiar way, almost as the soldiers in the army wig-wag signals. ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... into the shape of a rampant bear, which the owner regarded with a look of mingled reverence, pride, and delight, that irresistibly reminded Waverley of Ben Jonson's Tom Otter, with his Bull, Horse, and Dog, as that wag wittily denominated his chief carousing cups. But Mr. Bradwardine, fuming towards him with complacency, requested him to observe this curious relic of ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... captain C—, 'Ha, C—! (said he) what news, C—? How does the world wag? ha!' 'The world wags much after the old fashion, my lord (answered the captain): the politicians of London and Westminster have begun again to wag their tongues against your grace; and your short-lived popularity wags like a feather, which the next puff of antiministerial calumny ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... and blossoms sprout in spring, And bid the burdies wag the wing, They blithely bob, and soar, and sing By the foot ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Viceregent of the Lord of the three Worlds." Abu al-Hasan laughed at himself and doubted of his reason and was bewildered at what he beheld, and said, "In one night do I become Caliph? Yesterday I was Abu al-Hasan the Wag, and to-day I am Commander of the Faithful." then the Chief Eunuch came up to him and said, "O Prince of True Believers (the name of Allah encompass thee!), thou art indeed Commander of the Faithful and Viceregent of the Lord of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... company—I was made for it, I think—so I made friends with the animals. They are just charming, and they have the kindest disposition and the politest ways; they never look sour, they never let you feel that you are intruding, they smile at you and wag their tail, if they've got one, and they are always ready for a romp or an excursion or anything you want to propose. I think they are perfect gentlemen. All these days we have had such good times, and it hasn't been lonesome ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... unalterable truth prevails. Namely:—You can't do this"—here Dr. Veiga held up a pared and finished finger and wagged it to and fro with solemnity—"you can't do this without moving your finger ... You were aware of this great truth? Then why are you upset because you can't wag your finger without moving it?... Perhaps I'm being too subtle for you. Let me put the affair in another way. You've lost sight of the supreme earthly fact that everything has not merely a consequence, but innumerable consequences. You knew when ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... hurriedly removed himself and his wine, and were served obsequiously by Nicodemus and his wife with the best the house afforded. For a while they ate and drank in silence. Then the tongue of the small old man, loosened by the wine, began to wag. He spoke abruptly, in a voice husky ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... the Shepherd Boy Climbs the green hillock to survey his flock; Then sweetly sleeps upon his favourite hill, Not conscious that his bed's a Warrior's Tomb. The ancient Mansions, deeply moated round, Where, in the iron Age of Chivalry, Redoubted Barons wag'd their little Wars; The strong Entrenchments and enormous Mounds, Rais'd to oppose the fierce, perfidious Danes; And still more ancient traces that remain Of Dykes and Camps, from the far distant date ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... mule, with a basket on his arm, an' Dick lines out for Jedge Chinn's for to fetch away that little hawg. Dick puts him in the basket, climbs onto his mule, an' goes teeterin' out for home. On the way back, Dick stops at Hickman's tavern. While he's pourin' in a gill of corn jooce, a wag who's present subtracts the pig an' puts in one of old Hickman's black Noofoundland pups. When Dick gets home to Bill Hatfield's, Bill takes one look at the pup, breaks the big rasp on Dick's head, throws the forehammer at him, an' bids him go back to Jedge Chinn an' tell him that ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... I feel sure, for being animals of fine feeling and intelligence, than in justice they are entitled to; because they have so many ways of showing forth what they feel. A dog can growl or bark in several ways, and show his teeth in at least two, to tell how he feels. He can wag his tail, or let it droop, or curl it over his back, or stick it straight out like a flag, or hold it in a bowed shape with the curve upward, and frisk about, and run in circles, or sit up silently or with howls; or stand ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... and one wag called out, "Three cheers for holder-on Dawson." The cheers were given heartily, the Marines stood aside from the doors, and the room rapidly emptied. The officials of the Munitions Department and the Colonel, who was Dawson's insubordinate subaltern, crowded round ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... the newspapers that forged notes, amounting to several millions of dollars, were flooding the street. The young man was sentenced to prison for a term of five years—one for each forged million! as remarked the wag who is now talking ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... guidance," as she called it, through the world. A pocket Bible, and a small volume of the "Select Edition of Franklin's Maxims," a book in high favor with the good people of the Cape, were got of a bookseller in Barnstable, a queer wag, who had got rich by vending a strange quality of literature and taking fish in exchange. In addition to these good books provided by my mother, I was careful not to forget my "Polite Speech Maker," a book which I confess to have studied much. In truth, like many distinguished ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... thought—indeed, productive of it. Not every officer has this habit, but most acquire it. I have been told that, however weakly otherwise, the calf muscles of watch-officers were generally well developed. There were exceptions. A lieutenant who was something of a wag on one occasion handed the midshipman of his watch a small instrument, in which the latter did not recognize a pedometer. "Will you kindly keep this in your trousers-pocket for me till the watch is over?" At eight bells he asked for it, and, after examining, said, quizzically, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... FIRST WAG. 'T is said they become so dazed by the noise of the city and the rush of such countless numbers, ...
— Children's Classics In Dramatic Form • Augusta Stevenson
... fer you to say as ye'll marry Davi', an' ye ain't had the savvee to wag yer tongue right, I'm goin' to quit. The snow's goin' fast. They dogs o' mine is gettin saft fer want o' work. I'm goin' to light right out o' here, Victor, an' the ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... if he would ask for a share of his meal. His master one day, pretending to be angry and shaking his stick at him, said, "You wretched little sluggard! what shall I do to you? While I am hammering on the anvil, you sleep on the mat; and when I begin to eat after my toil, you wake up and wag your tail for food. Do you not know that labor is the source of every blessing, and that none but those who work are entitled ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... strong alliances above, That 'twere profaneness in us laity To offer earthly aid. I tell thee, Mufti, if the world were wise, They would not wag one finger in your quarrels. Your heaven you promise, but our earth you covet; The Phaetons of mankind, who fire that world, Which you were sent by preaching ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... my Lords, this cause is no joke; Says with a horse laugh my Lord Elliock[13] To have read all the papers I pretend not to brag, Says my Lord Gardenstone[14] with a snuff and a wag. ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... is new," said Kriech, with a wag of his head. "That O Lalala! I have heard that that poker iss very dansherous. That Prince Hanoi of Papeite lose his tam headt to a Chinaman. Something ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... coast. This made my theory of the sleep-walking to the cliffs more plausible. But while we lay low in the clump of trammon trees the appearance of Kit Kermode, with his cat-like walk and his eyes that could wink slander faster than any old woman's tongue could wag it, gave me a theory, or at least a speculation, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... he said, with an approvingly good-natured wag of the head, as he came up as close as ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... passenger was Sir Cowasji Jehangir Readymoney, an Indian baronet, who inherited immense wealth from a long line of Parsee bankers. They have adopted as a sort of trademark, a nickname given by some wag to the founder of the family, in the last century because of his immense fortune and success in trade. Mr. Readymoney, or Sir Jehangir, as he is commonly known, the present head of the house, was accompanied by his wife, two daughters, their governess, and ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... her the fact that these bitter-tongued women whom she despised had dared to assail her—her, the Burra Mem, the Great Lady of their little world. Had dared to? She could not silence them. And what would they say of her, how their tongues would wag, if she ran away from her husband! And they would have a right to talk scandal of her then. The thought made ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... could hardly articulate. When she caught hold of her fork she began to tremble so acutely that she let it fall again. The hunger that possessed her made her wag her head as if senile. She carried the food to her mouth with her fingers. As she stuffed the first potato into her mouth, she burst out sobbing. Big tears coursed down her cheeks and fell onto her bread. She still ate, gluttonously devouring this bread thus ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... When the governor had put that on his paper, he just gave his head a little wag toward Rectus. ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... not have any 'bow-wows' with Rachel," broke in Peachy, "though you just jolly well have to wag your tail the way she wants. She's not bad on the whole, but rather a tyrant, and it would do her all the good in the world if some day somebody had the courage to knock sparks out of her. We do what we can in a mild way," (here the other chuckled) "but she's got the ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... sufferer, how lonesome for you! Nicknames are so homely and cosy. I have about as many as I have toes. One of my friends calls me 'Corney.' He's a bit of a wag—('He,' indeed!)—Another one calls me 'Nelia,'—'Neel-ya!'" She threw a lingering sentiment into the repetition, and chuckled reminiscently. "To most of my chums I'm just 'Neely.' Life's too short for three syllables every day of ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... than this: he was the ship's wag, and so was greeted with shouts and whistles of approval as he stepped on to the stage attired in the burlesque counterfeit ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... say. I'm hyer, and I want to tell the cap'n whar the redskins is; but I don't reckon my story'll spile while Phil tells you about the gal. Go on, boy; wag your tongue as fast as ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... the earth see us with scorn; those who sit in high places wag their heads, and say we are naught, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... destruction and ruin being done, the storm abated, the rain ceased to pour and the winds to wag their noisy tongues so furiously. A wolf howl, and of all fearful howls, or yelps uttered by beasts of prey, none can, I think, be more alarming and terrific to the ear than the wolf howl as he scents carnage. A wolf howl broke fearfully ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... toward the German Gardens—since the war, Belgium Gardens—where we were camped, I noticed every one laughing as I went by. After crossing the ridge where the Anglican Cathedral now stands, I went around to the off side, and there saw that some wag, while I was loading, had obliterated a letter on the name of my waggon, which Fitzmaurice had christened the "Townsville Lass." Striking the "L" out gave it a different name. I quickly procured a paint brush and renewed the name as ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... and torn, and chewed most awful, but what the pal said sounded so fine that I wanted to wag my tail, only couldn't, owing to my hanging ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... motion is to the right," Jimmie quoted from the wig-wag lesson he had learned on first becoming a Boy Scout. "It should embrace an arc of ninety degrees, starting at the vertical and returning to it without pause, and should be made in a plane exactly at right angles to the line connecting ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... angel shalt thou see; Yet fear not thou, but speak audaciously.' The boy replied 'An angel is not evil; I should have fear'd her had she been a devil.' With that all laugh'd, and clapp'd him on the shoulder, Making the bold wag by their praises bolder. One rubb'd his elbow, thus, and fleer'd, and swore A better speech was never spoke before. Another with his finger and his thumb Cried 'Via! we will do't, come what will come.' The third he caper'd, and cried ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... cheer the way, From clouds of curling dust which onward fly, In rural splendour break upon the eye. As in their way they hold so gayly on, Caps, beads, and buttons glancing in the sun, Each village wag, with eye of roguish cast, Some maiden jogs, and vents the ready jest; Whilst village toasts the passing belles deride, And sober matrons marvel at their pride. But William, head erect, with settled brow, In sullen ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... despised them. Moreover, the naughty diarist had an ugly habit of recording men's private conversations; and thus a good many sayings which should have been kept secret became public property. A very irreverent wag wrote— ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... of shavings and seated within it; it is then whirled round till the white shreds rise like a ballet dancer's skirt. Gradually the sick person is worked up to a frenzy, and, keeping time with the music, the medicine women sway about and wag their heads. So the proceedings go on, with weird fantastic dancing, nodding, howling, whistling, chanting, for all the hours of the tropical night. Then the medicine women are whirled round in the cone, and one by one they fall into a faint, to be recovered by fanning with the ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... leaves a bad taste in one's mouth;" and he went to the table, took a pull at the tankard, and then threw himself down on the sofa again, as Jack jumped up and coiled himself round by his master's legs, keeping one half-open eye winking at him, and giving an occasional wag with the ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... not say that Van der Kemp received his faithful little servant kindly, and it was quite touching to observe the monkey's intense affection for him. It could not indeed wag its tail like a dog, but it put its arms round its master's neck with a wondrously human air, and rubbed its little head in his beard and whiskers, drawing itself back now and then, putting its black paws on his cheeks, turning his face round ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... that put Jim Leonard in mind of Pony's running off again. All the way home he kept talking to Pony about it, and Pony said he was going to do it yet, some time, but when Jim Leonard wanted him to tell the time, he would only say, "You'll see," and wag his head. ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... de melon or de rose. Don't be what yo ain't, jess yo be what yo is, If yo am not what yo are den yo is not what you is, If yo're jess a little tadpole, don't yo try to be de frog; If yo are de tail, don't yo try to wag de dawg. Pass de plate if yo can't exhawt and preach; If yo're jess a little pebble, don't yo try to be de beach; When a man is what he isn't, den he isn't what he is, An' as sure as I'm talking, he's a-gwine ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... rest of the vessels were upset and the water spilt. The old woman seized a stick, and rose up to beat [the animal]; the dog seized the skirt of her clothes, and began to rub his mouth on her feet, and wag his tail; then he ran towards the mountain; again having returned to her, he sometimes seized a rope, and sometimes having taken up a bucket in his mouth, he shewed it [to her]; and he rubbed his face against her feet, and seizing the hem of her ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... heartily tired of this dry prose, Must play the devil again out hollow. [Aloud.] The healing art is quickly comprehended; Through great and little world you look abroad, And let it wag, when all is ended, As pleases God. Vain is it that your science sweeps the skies, Each, after all, learns only what he can; Who grasps the moment as it flies He is the real man. Your person somewhat takes the eye, Boldness you'll find an easy science, And if you on yourself rely, ...
— Faust • Goethe
... irony. You cannot do a thing better than anyone else. People, like water, strike a dead level. No matter how you strive, dozens of others can do the thing you are doing. Were you to die, your place would be filled to-morrow, and the world would wag on just the same. There is always someone just beneath you watchfully waiting, ready to seize your place if you relax your effort for a moment. The term 'big things' is relative. To speak it is merely to refer to something you do not personally understand. Nothing seems really ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... obstinate blindness, this people will wag their poor heads, and attribute their diseases not to ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... tenth of a second in advance of the others, and with a lightning-like gulp, which disturbs the serenity of the surface of the pool, swallows the kicking prey. The energy of the sun's heat and light, stored in grass, transmitted to move muscles in gigantic leaps, will, in a short time, wag a caudal fin and propel the owner ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... ran merrily. Above its barking I sang the praises of the Englishman, with a comfortable feeling that, at least in this, the tail would wag the dog. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... the place, however, from the poorest fisherman's child to the wealthy widow, Mrs. Meadowsweet, wag expected to come to the Rectory to be feasted and petted, and made much ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... worst of it. The lieutenants are good officers and pleasant messmates: the doctor is a little queer, and the purser thinks himself a wag; the master, an old north-countryman, who knows his duty, and takes his glass of grog. The midshipmen are a very genteel set of young men, and full of fun and frolic. I'll bet a wager there'll be a bobbery ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... father would have called me quixotic had he known. Now, as I read and pondered, I neither blamed him for his own course in fair business war with old Dan Emory, nor did I censure myself for my own hidden act of restitution. Let the world wag its head if it liked, and remain ignorant of other millions given to me before my father's death, unprobated, secret, after the fashion of my pirate parent who buried his treasures and told none but his kin how they might ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... comedy of manners has had an unbroken record of triumphs. A century later it ran one hundred nights in London. Authorities say that it has never been performed without success, not even by amateurs. Like all of Goldsmith's best productions, it was based on actual experience. In his young days a wag directed him to a private house for an inn. Goldsmith went there and with much flourish gave his orders for entertainment. The subtitle of the comedy is The Mistakes of a Night; and the play shows the situations which developed when its hero, Tony ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... a yowling, and last of all made out that it was down the shaft here; and I fetched Master Hardock and we got the engine started, and I went and found the poor dog four steps down, just ready to lick my hand, but he couldn't wag his tail, and that's what ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... a little of a wag, compares her waking-life to the appearance which the sun makes above the horizon on a winter day: only, her morning is about his noon. He says, however, there appears to be no necessary end to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... of sorrows, showing in his countenance the map of extremities. As soon as the shepherds saw him, they did him all the honor they could, as being the flower of all the swains in Arden; for a bonnier boy was there not seen since that wanton wag of Troy that kept sheep in Ida. He, seeing the king, and guessing it to be Gerismond, did him all the reverence his country courtesy could afford; insomuch that the king, wondering at his attire, began to question ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... Dr. Bartolo's tricky ward! What a change matrimony makes in some folks! Old Dr. Bartolo bears not much resemblance to the other Dr. Bartolo, and Don Basilio, a kind of Ecclesiastical lawyer, is quite a rollicking wag as compared with the Basilio of the Barber of Seville. Nothing could be better than the Susanna of Mlle. TELEKI, or sweeter than the duet, heartily encored, between her and the Countess. EDOUARD DE RESZKE is a magnificent representative of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... general more inclined to roguery than wit, had once a strong inclination to play the wag with his neighbour the Stork. He accordingly invited her to dinner in due form. But when she came to the table, the Stork found it consisted entirely of different soups, served in broad, shallow dishes, ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... the mountains wild and bar'!' Put yo' crook around our necks, John, an' lead us home with our tails behind us, so as our Bo Peeps'll know us when we come an' gladden us with their soft black eyes! Ain't that the way the poetry runs?" snickered a drunken wag, dropping on the post-office steps and gazing up with a befuddled air at Fairfield, who had removed his hat and ascended ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... and has to forget me," he answered calmly. "You can bring me back to bed when she is through." And to this plea was added a pathetic wag of the brindle tail. ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... fashionable sport. Franco Sacchetti has left us a ludicrous picture of one of these holiday cavaliers—a notary seventy years old. He rides out on horseback to Peretola, where the tournament was cheap, on a jade hired from a dyer. A thistle is stuck by some wag under the tail of the steed, who takes fright, runs away, and carries the helmeted rider, bruised and shaken, back into the city. The inevitable conclusion of the story is a severe curtain-lecture from the wife, who is not a little enraged at these ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... fortunetellers, who prey upon the folly of the superstitious. With a treatise on physiognomy laid on a desk before them, they call out to this man that he has an ill-omened forehead, and to that man that the space between his nose and his lips is unlucky. Their tongues wag like flowing water until the passers-by are attracted to their stalls. If the seer finds a customer, he closes his eyes, and, lifting the divining-sticks reverently to his forehead, mutters incantations between his teeth. Then, suddenly parting the sticks in two bundles, ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... I can hardly crawl, While shivering in the snow and hail; My teeth are dropping, one by one; I scarce have strength to wag my tail. ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... urged her if she had the feelings of a woman immediately to accompany him, and prevent murder; briefly stating, that her 'beauties were the cause and most accursed effect.' In a state of real excitement, mixed up with woman's vanity, she rushed out of the house, and accompanied that wag of wags. A white beaver hat, sweet emblem of her purity, was on her head, and partially concealed her disordered ringlets, hastily gathered together. We arranged with HARLEY always to keep ourselves a certain distance in advance on the pathway bordering the sands. The first thing that ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... collected, each one gazing on the bronze figure, expecting to see the phenomenon. Their imagination supplied the desired marvel, and presently a street full of people fancied that they could see the lion Percy wag ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... take up the tomahawk against our good Canadians. Oh, don't be offended, Mr. Lennox! I have not said I believe such tales. Perhaps 'tis but the tongue of scandal wagging in this way, because it must wag in some way." ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... accustomed to it afterwards. The rules of civilised society naturally lapse in prison. Talking is strictly prohibited, "pals" are rigorously kept apart, nobody knows who will be next him in the exercise ring, and any man who wants to wag his tongue must strike up a conversation with his immediate neighbor. "How long are ye doing?" is almost invariably the introduction. This muttered question brings a muttered answer. Confidences are exchanged, and the conversation grows animated, until at last the speakers forget prudence, ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... be always a wag or clown among each group of animals,—some one species in which the amusing or the grotesque is prominent. Among these clownish fellows I should class the black vulture, or john-crow. He is not a crow at all, but gets that name probably ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... first servant to Humphrey. "It is the canon's order. He will see this nephew of the prior's and inquire more narrowly concerning his journey. And say thou naught of this rescue to any man. We four do the canon's bidding at all times, but our tongues wag not ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... whenever Hyacinth went out they called on every side: "Little Roseblossom is my sweetheart!" Now Hyacinth was vexed, and again he could not help laughing from the bottom of his heart when the lizard would come sliding up, seat himself on a warm stone, wag ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... a meadow at the town's end, where a malefactor hung in gibbets; all gazing at it, one by chance flung a stone, and made it stir, by which accident, the children affrighted ran away; one slower than the rest, looking back, and seeing the stirred carcase wag towards her, cried out it came after, and was so terribly affrighted, that for many days she could not rest, eat, or sleep, she could not be pacified, but melancholy, died. [2147]In the same town another child, beyond the Rhine, saw a grave ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... doll; not one of those splendid specimens of wax, modelled from the Princess Royal, with distinct fingers and toes, eyes that shut, and tongues that wag. No; such I have only contemplated from a respectful distance as I lay on my stall in the bazaar, while they towered sublime in the midst of the toys, the wonder and admiration of every passing child. ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... long, however, to wonder about the big machine, for Tuvvy, giving a sudden wag of his head towards it, said: "The elevator's my next job, soon as hay harvest's over. ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... reprimanded her with a sober face as she again repeated "me no gwine home," at the same time untwisting the handkerchief from about her waist, but when she had left the room I should have shaken the bed, if that had been my style of laughter. Robert is a great wag in his way, though we do not see so much of his fun, as, having been used to the house in "Secesh time," he is utterly undemonstrative before white people and is only gradually thawing into a little more communicativeness. But we overhear him sometimes talking with ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... he to save his life have got a picture into the Royal Academy exhibition? He built two organs and could play the Minuet in Samson on one and the March in Scipio on the other; he was a good carpenter and a bit of a wag; he was a good old fellow enough, but why make him out so much abler ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... my wanton, smile upon my knee; When thou art old there 's grief enough for thee. Mother's wag, pretty boy, Father's sorrow, father's joy; When thy father first did see Such a boy by him and me, He was glad, I was woe; Fortune changed made him so, When he left his pretty boy, Last his sorrow, first his ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... out, 'Mind what you are doing, such-and-such gang!' Yet there you stand-blinking over your task like an object dried stiff! It's not to blink that you're here, but to play the watchdog upon us, and to keep an eye open, and your tongue on the wag. So issue ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... his means are not always happy. Thus, though the humours of Truga may have been suggested by the character of Dipsa in the Jealous Lovers, she is probably introduced into Cowley's play as the counterpart of Dorylas in Amyntas. Randolph trod on thin ice in some of the speeches of the liquorish wag, whose 'years are yet uncapable of love,' but censure will not stick to the witty knave. On the other hand, Cowley's portrait of incontinent age in Truga fails wholly of being comic, and appears all the loathlier for the fact that the author himself was still a mere schoolboy—though ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... hard to drag any sort of information from a Boer, whether bond or free, but from what I can pick up they are perfectly satisfied with what they have done up to date. They think that President Kruger has astonished the world, and they wag their heads, and give one to understand that the same old gentleman has a good many more surprises in store for us. It is impossible to get a direct statement of any kind from them, but by patching fragments together I incline to the opinion that ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... think that an eclipse consists in an attempt on the part of a monstrous jaguar to swallow the sun—have as much right to their opinion as he has, he would consider the person who advanced such an argument either a wag or a fool. Only a wag or a fool, again, would argue that a Fijian has just as much right as we have to his opinions on medical matters, or on the morality of polygamy, infanticide, and cannibalism. Yet when we come across a dirty, malodorous savage, so stupid that ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Don't meddle with what doesn't concern you. You've been brought to row, now row. And if you let your tongue wag, no good will come of ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... we looked upon the deed. We stopped our ears and held our leaping hands, but they—did they not wag their heads and leer and cry with bloody jaws: Cease from Crime! The word was mockery, for thus they train a hundred crimes while we do cure one. Turn again our captivity, ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... Christy was lifeless, and Kitty Lacy had not taken the trouble to learn the lines properly and broke down at least once in every long speech, thereby justifying the popular inversion of her name to Lazy Kitty, a pseudonym which some college wag had fastened upon her early in her ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... their dry jests with plenty of Botargos and dried neats' tongues. It is like Camacho's wedding in Don Quixote, where Sancho ladled out whole pullets and fat geese from the soup-kettles at a pull. The flagons are setting a running, their tongues wag at the same time, and their mirth flows as a river. How Friar John roars and lays about him in the vineyard! How Panurge whines in the storm, and how dexterously he contrives to throw the sheep overboard! How much Pantagruel behaves like a wise king! How Gargantua mewls, and ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... downfall to Euripides. Poetry was gradually superseded by rhetoric, sublimity by earnestness, pathos by reasoning. Thus, Iphigenia and Macaria give so many good reasons for dying, that the sacrifice appears very small, and a modern wag in the upper regions of the theatre would, at the end of the speech of the latter heroine, almost have exclaimed, "Then why don't ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... would see it, you'd better say," said Doctor Wharton. "No matter how she took it, you fellows would wag your ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... Mr. Pickwick!' exclaimed the Grand Master, letting the hand fall in astonishment. 'Never in Ba-ath! He! he! Mr. Pickwick, you are a wag. Not bad, not bad. Good, good. He! ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... with the Marquis of Santa Cruz. The wedding-guests were numerous; they sang and danced, and rejoiced beyond measure. Senor Alvaro, said I, are you not ashamed to be so joyous at such a time? 'Friend,' was his answer, 'let the times wag—they are certainly bad enough, but must soon change. All things have an end. We rejoice in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... no answer to this. The old man left me to take the wheel, and I noted his head wag from side ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... offences, To me you cannot reach. You play the Spaniell, And thinke with wagging of your tongue to win me: But whatsoere thou tak'st me for; I'm sure Thou hast a cruell Nature and a bloody. Good man sit downe: Now let me see the proudest Hee, that dares most, but wag his finger at thee. By all that's holy, he had better starue, Then but once thinke his place becomes ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... A sort of buffoon.] though not without scruple, since everybody must recognize something intentional in it,— just as people had before glossed on the previous external deportment of Von Plotho, so much prized in other respects, and, when once inclined towards him, had admired him as a wag, who, like his king, would place himself above all ceremonies,—one nevertheless gladly returned to ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... entered a small chamber, with two windows looking towards the north. Between these windows are the marks of a fixed sofa: on that couch Napoleon died. The apartment is now occupied by a threshing machine; 'No bad emblem of its former tenant!' said a sacrilegious wag. Hence we were conducted onwards to a large room, which formerly contained a billiard-table, and whose front looks out upon a little latticed veranda, where the imperial peripatetic—I cannot style him philosopher—enjoyed the luxury of six paces to and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... May, 1844, Lord Ballindine and Fanny Wyndham were married. The bishop "turned 'em off iligant," as a wag said in the servants' hall. There was a long account of the affair in the "Morning Post" of the day; there were eight bridesmaids, all of whom, it was afterwards remarked, were themselves married within two years of the time; an omen which was presumed to promise much ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... to have originated in a custom among the squaws, in the early settlement, of wearing men's hats, as is still done among many tribes. "Hence," as we are told by an old governor, who was somewhat of a wag, and flourished almost a century since, and had paid a visit to the wits of Philadelphia, "hence arose the appellation of man-hat-on, first given to the Indians, and afterwards to the island"—a stupid joke!—but well enough ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... That merry wag Will Stutely was in command; and when he saw the palefaced Sheriff being led in like any culprit, he took his cloak and laid it humbly upon the ground and besought the Sheriff to alight upon it, as the ground of Sherwood was unused ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... me their hopes, For writing pamphlets, and for roasting Popes; Yet lo! in me what authors have to brag on! Reduc'd at last to hiss in my own dragon. Avert in Heav'n! that thou, my Cibber, e'er Shouldst wag a serpent-tail in Smithfield fair! Like the vile straw that's blown about the streets, The needy poet sticks to all he meets; Coach'd, carted, trod upon, now loose, now fast, And carry'd off in some dog's tail at last. Happier thy fortunes! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... himself alone in his chamber for a time, making his preparations for departure. He says he shall come back in two months, but some of us think they will be two long months which will eat themselves up like money borrowed of the Jews." A wag, moreover, posted a large placard upon the door of Granvelle's palace in Brussels as soon as the minister's departure was known, with the inscription, in large letters, "For sale, immediately." In ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... mark the deid, Wi' lengthened lip, the sarious read; Syne wag a moraleesin' heid, An' then an' there Their hirplin' practice an' their creed ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... home pack that snarled and growled hostility for this invasion. Then, they came once more to the stile. As they climbed out, Samson South reached up and stroked a tawny head, and the bloodhound paused a moment to wag its tail in friendship, before it jumped down to the road, and ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... close of a wearisome day Homeward disheartened, you moodily stray, What would you take for your little dog Tray? Take for the wag of his tail? ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... was not only the village Radical: he was also the village wag, with a reputation for humour which rendered him enormously popular. He was about thirty-five years old; a small man with sandy hair, a serious, not to say solemn, expression of countenance, and twinkling light grey eyes, which he ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... They wag as though they were Panting for joy Where they shine, above all care, And annoy, And demons ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... the woods and snuff the autumnal winds with the highest rapture; then return into the house and cast a quick and attentive look at the rifle, which was always suspended to a joist by a couple of buck-horns or little forks. The hunting dog understanding the intentions of his master, would wag his tail, and by every blandishment in his power, express his readiness to ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... work. She had been known, on occasion, to acquaint even the collie with her state of mind, and had assured the head of the family afterwards that there was more sense of understanding of a woman's trials in one wag of a dog's tail than in ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... One thing alone could cheer her. I could do it, and I did. I applied for Letters of Naturalisation. Some weeks later I became a French citizen, and received a letter from M. ADOLPH CREMIEUX, then Minister of Justice, and never suspected of being a wag. He wrote: "Your application for Naturalisation in the midst of our great disasters, is for me the signal of a new life for us. A country which in the midst of such catastrophes recruits citizens like you, is not to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... the name of an old pedant who has written a tiresome book; and the adventures of this book form the subject of the poem. Some wag relates how he read it a month ago, having come into the garden for that purpose; and then revenged himself by dropping it through a crevice in a tree, and enjoying a picnic lunch and a chapter of "Rabelais" on the grass close by. To-day, ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... the youths who are led out, and carried home, or who stumble through the "German," this is a sober matter. My friend told us we should see the "best society." But he is a prodigious wag. Who make this country? From whom is its character of unparalleled enterprise, heroism, and success derived? Who have given it its place in the respect and the fear of the world? Who, annually, recruit its energies, confirm its progress, and secure its triumph? Who are its characteristic children, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... to-night, Skirting lawns of sleep to chase Shifting dreams in mazy light, Somewhere then I'll see your face Turning back to bid me follow Where I wag my arms and hollo, Over hedges hasting after Crooked smile and baffling laughter, Running tireless, floating, leaping, Down your web-hung woods and valleys, Garden glooms and hornbeam alleys, Where the glowworm stars are peeping, Till I find you, quiet as stone On a hill-top all alone, Staring ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... still hanging to the skin of the face, and the features were still discernible. A merchant, travelling with the kafila, suddenly exclaimed, "That was my slave I left behind four months ago, near this spot." "Make haste! take him to the fsug (market)," said an Arab wag, "for fear any ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... a less stringent union? Indeed, is it worth while? We are all INCOMPRIS, only more or less concerned for the mischance; all trying wrongly to do right; all fawning at each other's feet like dumb, neglected lap- dogs. Sometimes we catch an eye - this is our opportunity in the ages - and we wag our tail with a poor smile. "IS THAT ALL?" All? If you only knew! But how can they know? They do not love us; the more fools we to ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... likes a bit of sport above measure, & had some pretensions to the lady besides as being but a cousin once removed,—clapped & halloo'd them on; and as fast as their indignation cooled those mad wag's, the Ember Days, were at it with their bellows, to blow it into a flame; & all was in a ferment: till old Madame Septuagesima {who boasts herself the Mother of the Days} wisely diverted the conversation with a tedious ...
— A Masque of Days - From the Last Essays of Elia: Newly Dressed & Decorated • Walter Crane
... (he said to himself)—instinct tells me that there is one, for when I think about Him I find that I unconsciously wag my tail a little. But I must not reason on that basis, which is too puppyish. I like to think that there is, somewhere in this universe, an inscrutable Being of infinite wisdom, harmony, and charity, by Whom all my desires and ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... my dear? Even the settling with our old creditors—the creditors of Grimes & Morrell—made suspicion wag her tongue more eagerly than ever. I paid every cent, with interest compounded to the date of settlement. Grimes had long since had himself cleared of his debts and started over again. I do not know even ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... young man with a delicate appetite, you do very well," laughed the Professor. "It wag less than two months ago, if I remember correctly, that the doctors thought you were not going to live, you ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... real people—or mere animals, perchance—if they have human institutions, reasonable aspirations or finite intelligences. We take temperatures, make blood counts and record blood pressure, reckon the heart-beats, and think we are wondrous wise. But wig-wag as we may, signal with what mysterious wireless of evanescent youth-fire we still hold in our blood, we get nothing but vague hints, broken reminiscences, and a certain patchwork of our own subconscious chop logic of middle age in return. There ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... man may come to me so thick-like, And shake my hand where once he pass'd me by, And tell me he would do me this or that, I can't help thinking of the big boy's trick-like, And then, for all I can but wag my hat, And thank him, I do ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... these birds of prey, vultures, condors and such like, with crows, as well as the smaller Republican eagles born since, are humble enough to him now. The British lion himself having been so often scratched and clawed by this fowl, has learned to shake his mane and wag his tail rather amiably in our eagle's presence, even if he has to give an occasional growl to keep his hand in. We are proud of this bird, though we are far from home, and to-day send our heartiest good wishes across the sea to the land we ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... the door and followed Bert outside. At a word from the farmer Tige stopped barking and began to wag ...
— The Bobbsey Twins - Or, Merry Days Indoors and Out • Laura Lee Hope
... It's up-the-spout and Charley-Wag With wipes and tickers and what not! Until the squeezer nips your scrag, Booze and the blowens ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... taking passage in larger ships than mine. Still, I will do my best to make you comfortable, and I can assure you that Leon, my cook, is by no means a bad hand at turning out dainty dishes. He was cook in an hotel, at one time; but he let his tongue wag too freely and, having to leave suddenly, was glad enough to ship with me. Fortunately he likes the life, and I do not think anything would tempt him to go back ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... pointed at the dog. 'I've made a bet with myself he won't wag his tail within the next ten minutes. I beg of you, Harrington, to remain silent for both ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... watery blue eyes met her own. Then the eyeglass dropped from its place, the jaw fell, with a wag of the fair beard, and a look of stony astonishment and blank disappointment came into all the great features, while Madame Bonanni broke into a peal ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... sweet pudding to replace the cold meat, would wag a facetiously warning head at the young lady behind the back of the unconscious Mr. Gibbon. "Don't you go leading that nice young chap on to make a fool of hisself over you, Miss Bessie," she would caution the girl, the ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... the round hole do quite as great and as lasting injury as he does from the pulpit. The right man for the work—that must be the ideal of the Church, that man and no other, whatever be the consequence in the way of offending well-to-do supporters whose dream it has been that son of theirs shall "wag his head in a pu'pit," whatever be the disappointment caused to the uninspired ambitions of callow youth or the conceit of later years. The pulpit is not for sale! The honour of standing there is not to be dispensed as a reward or allowed as a compliment. Wealth has no rights and ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... those amongst his friends who offered him a wager he would not persist in wearing it long. At this the king stated his resolution afresh of never changing; but before the month was out he had made an alteration, for inasmuch as the vest being slashed with white, was said by a wag to make the wearers look like magpies, his majesty changed the colour of the silk to black. This "manly and comely habit" might have become permanently the fashion, if the King of France, by way of ridiculing the merry monarch, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... beside herself with grief. Cinders, in the midst of his pain, tried gently to wag his tail. His brown eyes, faithful, appealing, full of love, gazed up at her. He had never seen his mistress in such trouble before, and the instinct to comfort her urged him even then, in the midst of his own. Again he made piteous efforts to crawl into her arms, but ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... coming into the presence of him they mean to salute, they put off their shoes, so that they are barefooted, for they wear no stockings. Then putting their right hand within the left, they hold them down to their knees, bending their bodies, then wag or swing their joined hands a little to and fro, making some small steps to one side from the person they salute, and say augh! augh! I immediately led them into my cabin, where I had prepared a banquet for them, and entertained them with a good concert of music, to their great delight. I ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... waiting, sapped his enthusiasm. At night, in the wards, the men recovering from all manner of wounds would try to speed the lagging hours by telling stories, singing songs, and inventing the wildest of rumors. Occasionally, when the lights were out, some wag would begin an imitation of a machine gun, with its rat-tat-tat-tat, and another, catching the spirit of the mimic warfare, would make the whistling sound of a high angle shell. In a few moments the ward would be a clamorous inferno of mimic ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... got the right exposure here to the south and sou'-west," says the Sergeant, with a wag of his grizzled head, and a streak of pleasure in his melancholy voice. "This is the shape for a rosery—nothing like a circle set in a square. Yes, yes; with walks between all the beds. But they oughtn't to be gravel walks like these. Grass, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... birds is mere cant," sez this wobbling old wag. From Arran he'd tramp to Dunrobin without the least chance of a bag! "Peaceful hills," that's his patter, my pippin; no gillies, no luncheons, no game! Wy, he ought to be tossed in a blanket; it fills a true ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... for a time, because when Maret and Metternich met, the former urged the matrimonial bond as a consideration. "The marriage," rejoined the latter, with a cough—"yes, the marriage; it was a match founded on political considerations, but—" and the conclusion of the sentence was a significant wag of the head. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... market-cross, that had let his tongue run too freely. And I can tell you, I'm not one of that sort. You're welcome to stay while you behave decently, as I see you've been a help and comfort to my women here: but one word against the priests, or one wag of your head in irreverence to the holy mass, and out you go, bag and baggage!—ay, down ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... free themselves from the entangling lassos, they were instantly seized and other ropes of raw-hide were deftly twisted about their limbs and bodies, until in less than a minute they were so tightly and securely trussed up that they could scarcely wag a finger; after which they were each hoisted upon the shoulders of four Indians and borne with songs of triumph and rejoicing to the canoes, into which they were tumbled with scant ceremony. Then, with further ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... and licked his master's face so energetically that the boy dived under the bedclothes to escape from the rough tongue. A rap on the floor from below made both jump up, and in ten minutes a shiny-faced lad and a lively dog went racing downstairs,—one to say, "Good-mornin', ma'am," the other to wag his tail faster than ever tail wagged before, for ham frizzled on the stove, and Sancho ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... is a shame and a scandal that a poor woman may not go to make prayer to her Gods except she be jostled and insulted by all the refuse of Hindustan—that she must eat gali [abuse] as men eat ghi. But I have yet a wag left to my tongue—a word or two well spoken that serves the occasion. And still am I without my tobacco! Who is the one-eyed and luckless son of shame that has not yet prepared ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... self-control that the former could refrain from uttering certain blasphemous suggestions that rose into his mind, respecting the communion supper. He absolutely trembled and turned pale as ashes, lest his tongue should wag itself, in utterance of these horrible matters, and plead his own consent for so doing, without his having fairly given it. And, even with this terror in his heart, he could hardly avoid laughing, to imagine how the sanctified old patriarchal deacon would ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sometimes varied by the command "Simon says wig-wag!" when all the thumbs must be waggled ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
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