"Rag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Again, in the morning, a great stone, being six-pound weight, did remove from place to place,—we saw it,—two spoons throwed off the table, and presently the table throwed down. And, being minded to write, my inkhorn was hid from me, which I found, covered with a rag, and my pen quite gone. I made a new pen; and, while I was writing, one ear of corn hit me in the face, and fire, sticks, and stones throwed at me, and my pen brought to me. While I was writing with my new pen, my inkhorn taken away: and, not knowing how to ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... affection. Surely some allowances ought to be made for the circumstances of the case. Carrissima was excellent at making allowances for people! She was one of those tiresome, inconsistent young women who remain blind to the teachings of reason and experience, and ever find some remnants of good in the rag-bags of humanity. ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... represents the unending war of muscle against mind; Encolpius is, of course, the hero of every school story ever written, though (to be fair) the authors of most of them have never guessed it. Agamemnon is the sort of form-master whom it is conventional to rag. He may have told you already that Petronius is worth reading for its admirable literary criticism (contained in pages 1 to 4 and 189 and 191 of this volume) and you may have listened, not knowing yet that literary criticism is rarely admirable, nor suspecting that those are the pages which ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... enough to wish that he had been his wife's first lover. But a man has to get up pretty early to be that to any woman. The minxes begin to flirt with the milk-bottle, then with the doctor, and then to cherish a precocious passion for the first rag sailor-doll. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... suddenly, her eyes sparkling with a new idea. "Give me that old red rag we use for a duster, Mollie, and I'll go and ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... Rag-Time girls could shout And Piano-Organs make a Din about; But syncopated Melodies at last Will pass away, and ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... before the gale was a ship's boat, a rag of sail was set, and they could see figures ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... Entering, she saw that Mrs. Almayer had deserted the pile of mats serving her as bed in one corner of the room, and was now bending over the opened lid of her large wooden chest. Half a shell of cocoanut filled with oil, where a cotton rag floated for a wick, stood on the floor, surrounding her with a ruddy halo of light shining through the black and odorous smoke. Mrs. Almayer's back was bent, and her head and shoulders hidden in the deep box. Her hands rummaged in the interior, where a soft clink as of silver ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... rose because Maria has ogled him in the old way; because she has happened to meet him in the garden in the old way; because he has taken her hand in the old way; because they have whispered to one another behind the old curtain (the gaping old rag, as if everybody could not peep through it!); because, in this delicious weather, they have happened to be early risers and go into the park; because dear Goody Jenkins in the village happened to have a bad knee, and my lady Maria went ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... order. The main-sail had rent from the leash to the peak of the gaff, and was shaking into shreds. The starboard sheet of the maintop-sail was gone, and it had torn at the head from the bolt-rope, flying at every gust like the shreds of a muslin rag in a hail-storm. Without the government of her helm, she lay in the trough of the sea more like a log than a manageable mass. Sea after sea broke over her, carrying every thing before them at each pass. The officers and crew had now as much as they could do to retain ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... quickly washed the scraped patch on the old man's arm with clean water and then bound her own handkerchief over the abrasion under the rather doubtful rag that ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... make it 'Spades,'" said the digger, bearded to the eyes; his tangled thatch of black hair hiding his forehead, and his clothes such as would have hardly tempted a rag-picker. ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... round; in hopes that the wind might, unnoticed, have shifted a little and blown them towards the shore. As he glanced around, him he gave a shout. Following almost in their track, and some fifty yards away, was a large galley; running before the wind, with a rag of ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... lethal weapon for every form of stupidity is ridicule, and against the high silliness of the militarist it is particularly effective. It is the laughter of wholesome men that will finally end war. The stern, strong, silent man will cease to trouble us only when we have stripped him of his last rag of pretension and touched through to the quick of his vanity with the realization of his apprehended foolishness. Literature will have failed humanity if it is so blinded by the monstrous agony in Flanders as to miss the essential triviality ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... there, keeping up a steady, dropping fire on the house. McNamara sat propped against a rock, a clumsy, dirty bandage around his thigh; Isaacs lay prone, a stained rag twisted tightly around his shoulder; Lovel sat with his legs crossed, staring stupidly down to the steady drip of blood ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... spectacle when the corpse of a little girl was extricated and placed on a stretcher for transportation to the morgue. Clasped to her breast by her two waxen hands was a rag doll. It was a cheap affair, evidently of domestic manufacture. To the child of poverty the rag baby was a favorite toy. The little mother held fast to her treasure and met her end without separating from it. The two, child and doll, ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... were herded like sheep. As we were without spot, at least so far as smuggling was concerned, we were soon liberated. All our effects were left in the office, and we were turned into the streets without even a rag but what we had on. This was an inauspicious commencement for a country so polished; and yet, when one comes to look at the causes, it is not easy to point out an alternative. It was our own fault ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... hurried entries further on. He found himself, as he had anticipated, in a society composed of some of the most heterogeneous elements. Stillwater, viewed from a certain point, was a sort of microcosm, a little international rag-fair to which nearly every country on earth had contributed one of its shabby human products. "I am moving," wrote Mr. Taggett, "in an atmosphere in which any crime is possible. I give myself seven days at the outside to light upon the traces of Shackford's murder. I feel him in the ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... on the hook and looked at her watch. It lacked a quarter of two. In the room adjoining, Charlie and Linda were jubilantly wading through the latest "rag" song in a passable soprano and baritone, with Mrs. Abbey listening in outward resignation. Stella sat soberly for ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... brought nothing into the world but the name, we take out nothing else. A sore dispensation. I'm not the man I was, not this two years. I must dispone, I know it well. Now the name, that I thought that I cared not an empty whistle for, is worn to a rag, but I cannot leave it in the mire. There's just one that bears it, one Logan by name, and true Logan by the mother's blood. The mother's mother, my ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... bone of the buck was spitting and sputtering on the glowing coals, and Watty smiled as he felt in his pockets and brought out a tobacco box, which, on being opened, proved to contain two pieces of rag, which he also opened, and displayed about a dessert-spoonful of salt and about half that ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... will use in fighting anything in preference to his fists and a stone tied up in a kerchief or a rag makes ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... Schout and his obsequious deputy, the burgomasters with their officious schepens at their elbows, the subaltern officers at the elbows of the schepens, and so on, down to the lowest hanger-on of police; every tag having his rag at his side, to finish his pipe, drink off his heel-taps, and laugh at his flights of immortal dulness. In short—for a city feast is a city feast all over the world, and has been a city feast ever since the creation—the dinner went off much the same as do ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... the toothsomeness of beefsteak, falls to again, while the others dance a sort of fandango, and turn up the rag carpet, and rattle the dishes on the dresser, and lift Dolly high in the air to the improvised tune of "Tom's coming home! Tom's coming home! ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... ma'am!" (with dignity and indignation) "I never cooked until after I was married, and I never washed, never washed so much as a rag. All I washed was the babies and maybe my mistress's feet. I was a lady's maid. I'd wait on my mistress and I'd knit sox for all the folks. When they would sleep it was our duty—us maids—to fan 'em with feathers made out of turkey ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... sort? Is it because of the new topped boots, or by virtue of the silver-topped whip, and the bit of a red rag tied about the throat?—Then ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... and shake out the reefs, sir," he said coolly to his mate, for it was a standing rule of the captain's to seem calmest when he was in the greatest rage. "Turn them up, sir, and show every rag that will draw, from the truck to the lower studding-sail boom, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... having booked a few details of each case, produced a form of oath to be accepted. Nothing could be conceived more passive than the obedience promised, or more stringent than the terms by which the juror bound himself. The man who forfeited a pledge so awful could scarcely have a rag of honour or any of the consolations of religion left to him. Florizel signed the document, but not without a shudder; the Colonel followed his example with an air of great depression. Then the President received the entry ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not be expressed, that he was naked? that he was utterly unfit to appear in such a Presence? No wonder that our first parents, after their apostasy, felt that they were unclothed. They were indeed stripped of their character, and had not a rag of righteousness to cover them. No wonder that they hid themselves from the intolerable purity and brightness of the Most High. Previously, they had felt no such emotion. They were "not ashamed," we are told. And the reason lay in the fact that, before their apostasy, they were precisely as ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... was summoned to the parlor and the state of her wardrobe inquired into. It was found to be lamentably deficient in even the necessary articles of clothing. Mrs. Stanley then turned her rag bag inside out and rummaged through several boxes in the garret which had not seen the light for several years. The result of her search was three or four cast-off garments, which the cook said "were so bad the rag ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... find repose in ceaseless small activities. Her son could not remember a time when he had not seen those small hands in motion—shaping garments, darning rents, repairing furniture, exploring the inner economy of clocks. "I make a sort of rag-carpet of the odd minutes," she had once explained to a friend who wondered at her turning to her needlework in the ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... internal adornment. This period was also distinguished for its splendid sepulchral and other monuments. Of these, probably the most exquisite gem of architectural taste is the circular building at Athens, the Cho-rag'ic Monument, or "Lantern of Demosthenes," erected in honor of a victory gained by the chorus of Lysic'rates in 334 B.C. "It is the purest specimen of the Corinthian order," says a writer on architecture, "that has reached our time, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... of his oratory; smooth-shaven, pink-and-white-cheeked, exquisite in his manners, gracious and insinuating. His ideas and his language and his morals were all as perfectly polished as his finger-nails; and never before in his life had Thyrsis had such a red rag waved in his face. But he had come there for the dinner, and he attended to that, and let Dr. Holland provide the flow of soul; until at the very end, when the doctor was ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... after another, and filled up the town—Abe Cohen, the Jew clothing dealer, Barringer, the druggist, Dr. Barton, rival of Dr. Smelter and a far more highly skilled practitioner, Jake O'Flaherty, the saloon-keeper, Widow Stokes, rag carpet weaver and gossip, Jeremy Whitling, town carpenter, and his golden-blonde daughter Lucy, school-teacher, Dr. Sohmer, dentist. Every small community needs these various souls. No sooner is the earth scraped clean for a new village than they come, one by one, until the town ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... was one scene of life, bustle, and enjoyment. It was studded with bonfires, which were surrounded by wild groups of both sexes, some tolerably dressed, some ragged as Lazarus, and others young urchins with nothing but a slip of rag tied about their loins "to make them look jinteel and daicent." The monster bonfire, however—that which was piled up into an immense pyramid in honor of the stranger—was not ignited until the arrival of the quality. The moment the latter made their appearance it ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... bar is a pneumatic beer-pump, by means of which the bar-tender can flood the bar with beer. Afterwards he wipes up the beer with a rag. By this means he polishes the bar. Some of the beer that is pumped up spills into glasses and has to ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... A French rag this morning had some cheering telegrams about the Allies—that left, centre, and right were all more than holding their own, even if the enemy is rather near Paris. What about the Russians who came through England? ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... Graham, "it is not worth while to notice that rag. Half of what it says is clearly a downright invention. If only you could get hold of the writer and thrash him, it might do some good; but these liars are very hard to catch. As to the 'other lady,' there is ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... to rag me like this, Chief," he protested. "Sure I remember all you've said. And you're not going to have cause to be sore much longer. There'll ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... a leper in the scattering effects which he produces during his shaky promenade. He is indeed alone in the world, and brandy or gin is his only counsellor and comforter. As to character, the last rag of that goes when the first sign of indolence is seen; the watchers have eyes like cats, and the self-restrained men among them have usually seen so many fellows depart to perdition that every stage in the process of degradation is known to them. No! there is ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... disappointingly like any other old country-house living room; scrupulously clean and shining, a wide fireplace aglow with a wood fire that cast bright splotches of color over the low walls, the faded rag rugs, the piece-work cushions on ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... be a rag on me body nor a whole bone in me skin when we get out of this!" he gasped, as they reached high ground between two spreading deeps of mingled weeds and water. "The sight of us'd frighten the whole rebel army, if we don't come on them aisy loike, as the fox said when he whisked ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... abroad) was put a stop to in London at the end of Oct. 1840, though it was not until 1854 that the prohibition became general. Prior to the passing of the Act in that year, dogs were utilised as draught animals to a very great extent in this neighbourhood by the rag-and-bone gatherers, pedlars, and little merchants, as many as 180 of the poor brutes once being counted in five hours as passing a certain spot on the Westbromwich Road. There have been one or two "homes" for stray dogs opened, but it is best in case of a loss ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... before the feudal cavalry of Burgundy, strange steel monsters, half bird, half reptile, with steel beaked and winged helmets and claw-like steel shoes, and jointed steel corselet and rustling steel mail coat; before the infantry of Gascony, rapid and rapacious with their tattered doublets and rag-bound feet; before the over-fed, immensely plumed, and slashed and furbelowed giants of Switzerland, and the starved, half-naked savages of Brittany and the Marches—before this multifaced, many-speeched army, gathered from the rich ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... fish," Bunny said. To the bent pin hook, on the end of the string, he tied a piece of rag. He had brought all these things with him, hoping he might get a chance to ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... treat everyone as an old pal, seemed to be the order of the day, and in that atmosphere it was impossible to feel anything but quite at home. Before tea was over we new arrivals were infected with the same spirit of joviality, and were ready for the first 'rag.' ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... him, and with three strokes of his arms he reached the opposite bank, which with great difficulty he crawled up. He, at length, felt that he was safe from his pursuers. Still, the forlorn situation in which he was placed, without even a rag to cover his body, almost overwhelmed him. Yet, fully alive to the danger to which he was exposed, he had began to plan how he could best rest on the top of a tamarind tree, in order to escape from panthers, when the idea of ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... wrench the rag from the shattered jaw; a shriek, and the crowd laugh, and the axe descends amidst the shout of the countless thousands, and blackness rushes on thy soul, Maximilien Robespierre! So ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Berkshire, in 1872, was placed in them. The following particulars are furnished in Notes and Queries, 4th series, vol. x., p. 6:—"A novel scene was presented in the Butter and Poultry Market, at Newbury, on Tuesday (June 11th, 1872) afternoon. Mark Tuck, a rag and bone dealer, who for several years had been well known in the town as a man of intemperate habits, and upon whom imprisonment in Reading gaol had failed to produce any beneficial effect, was ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... a white tissue-paper wreath with long streamers around his neck. They tied a red one on the little white hen. They tried to decorate the turkey, too, but he was in no mood for it, and gobbled and pecked at them so savagely that Dona Teresa had to tie up his head in a rag! ...
— The Mexican Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... man on the press who would do me a favor. The press is a great engine, of course, but its influence is vastly overrated. It has the credit of leading public opinion, when it only follows it; and look at the rag-tag-and-bobtail that contribute to it. Even the London 'Times' only lives for a day. My books have made their way ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... One, two, three, four; ten of spades! He is a wanderer, he has a passion for travel, he sets out at night to see the curiosities of Paris. One, two, three, four; the queen of spades! It is a woman who manufactures ermine fur out of cat-skin. One, two, three, four; the knave of spades! It is a rag-picker. One, two, three, four; the king of spades! It is a restaurant-keeper. The falling together of these three persons alarms me. One, two, three, four,—clubs! One, two, three, four,—clubs again! One, two, three, four,—always clubs. Your cat would bring money to these ...
— The Story of a Cat • mile Gigault de La Bdollire
... was a ball on the flat above. It was refreshingly democratic. The rag-pickers who lodged with Madame Gougeon and laid the foundation of her iron business, attended. Thither thronged the beggars, the knife-grinders, the old-bottle collectors of the neighbouring rookeries. The crookedest ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... hear; his eyes roved back and forth along that lace-white ridge of rock on the weakness of which depended his salvation. She had never seen him so fierce, so hawklike, so impassive. The gusts shook him, his garments slatted viciously, every rag beneath his outer covering was sodden, yet he continued to face the tempest as indifferently as he had faced it since the dawn. The girl thrilled at thought of the issue these mighty forces were fighting out before her eyes, and of what it meant to ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... tomb-besprinkled burying-grounds, and the broken walls of deserted churches—that its memory still lives freshly in my mind, as one of the happiest of my life. I passed whole hours among the ruins of Craighouse—a grey fantastic rag of a castle, consisting of four heavily-arched stories of time-eaten stone, piled over each other, and still bearing a-top its stone roof and its ornate turrets ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... meantime Phineas was taken to Newgate, and was there confined, almost with the glory and attendance of a State prisoner. This was no common murder, and no common murderer. Nor were they who interested themselves in the matter the ordinary rag, tag, and bobtail of the people,—the mere wives and children, or perhaps fathers and mothers, or brothers and sisters of the slayer or the slain. Dukes and Earls, Duchesses and Countesses, Members ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... imitation English hunting-print, an anemic imitation boudoir-print with a French caption of whose morality Babbitt had always been rather suspicious, and a "hand-colored" photograph of a Colonial room—rag rug, maiden spinning, cat demure before a white fireplace. (Nineteen out of every twenty houses in Floral Heights had either a hunting-print, a Madame Feit la Toilette print, a colored photograph of a New England house, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... fine ladies indeed; they came from Paris, and had trunks full of splendid dresses. The children did not care much for them, and liked better certain decrepit babies of rag and composition, which were thought too shabby to be allowed in ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... got what she could from her husband in this particular, she did not trouble him much further. He delighted in the Rag, and there spent the most of his time; happily, she delighted in what she called the charms of society, and as society expanded itself before her, she was also, we must suppose, happy. She soon perceived that more in her immediate line was to ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... knight or nobleman. So incongruous was his costume that I could never tell whether kilt or trousers was the original foundation upon which it had been constructed. To his tatters add the bits of old ribbon, list, and coloured rag which he attached to his pipes wherever there was room, and you will see that he looked all flags and pennons—a moving grove of raggery, out of which came the screaming chant and drone of his instrument. When he danced, ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... than spotless cleanliness. Let us look calmly at the problem for a few minutes. Here is a housewife who cannot afford help to keep her house as spotless as her instincts and her training desire. It is simply impossible for her, personally, to go over the house daily with rag, duster and dustpan. If she attempts it, as she does sometimes—she overworks, and a breakdown is the result. What, then, is the sensible, the reasonable, the only thing she should do? Sit down and "worry" over her "untidy house"; lament that "the stairs have ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... woman it is!) HOW could they be worth more? Think for yourself. They are so much loss to you—so much loss, do you understand? Take any worthless, rubbishy article you like—a piece of old rag, for example. That rag will yet fetch its price, for it can be bought for paper-making. But these dead souls are good for NOTHING AT ALL. Can you name anything that ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... of a man who can play like that, and who is out on the road for a living just because he knows it's a sure thing? Music! That's my gift. And I've buried it. Why? Because the public won't take a fat man seriously. When he sits down at the piano they begin to howl for Italian rag. Why, I'd rather play the piano in a five-cent moving picture house than do what I'm doing now. But the old man wanted his son to be a business man, not a crazy, piano-playing galoot. That's the way he put it. And I was darn fool enough to think he was right. Why can't people ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... bank two battalions in the licorice factory, the 110th Mahratas and the 120th Infantry, were better off, and there was dead ground here—'a pitch of about fifty by twenty yards'—where they could play hockey and cricket with pick handles and a rag ball. They also fished, and did so with success, supplementing the rations at the same time. Two companies of Norfolks joined them in turn, crossing by ferry at night, and they appreciated ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... Anything to put him out of the way, or to make his testimony incompetent for the will contest. So, when the ex-lunatic returned from Europe a year ago, our friend Honeywell here, in some way located him at the Caronia. He matured his little scheme. Through a letter broker who deals with the rag and refuse collectors, he got all the second-hand mail from the Caronia. Meantime, William Honeywell Robinson had moved away, and as chance would have it, William Hunter Robinson moved in, receiving the pinprick letters which, had they reached their goal, ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... black boys carried on their backs little brothers equally inky, and, gravely depositing them, shook hands. Never had I seen human beings so clad, or rather so unclad, in such amazing squalidness and destitution of garments. I recall one small urchin without a rag of clothing save the basque waist of a lady's dress, bristling with whalebones, and worn wrong side before, beneath which his smooth ebony legs emerged like those of an ostrich from its plumage. How weak is imagination, how cold is memory, that I ever cease, for a day of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... hazel in his haversack, which he often found exceedingly useful. This he got out, and after warning the other that it might sting a little at first, he poured some of the extract on the lump; and then wetting a piece of rag with it, he laid this over the wound, Cale's cap ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... up two flights of stairs and into a little room with a gabled roof. The room itself, the curtains, the rag rug, the bed, and the old fashioned bureau, were very neat and clean, but the whole effect of the furnishing was too bare to allow the room to be regarded as really attractive. Marjorie wondered what it would seem like to Frieda, unused as she was ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... a dandy, old man!" cried the Virginian, admiringly. "You got back at Flemming in great shape. They say he has been weak as a rag ever since you dropped him the second time, and it is pretty certain he will ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... for children to experience the best too early in life; there is then no room for growth and development. It was Professor James who said that the best doll he ever saw was a home-made rag doll; it left sufficient room for the play of the imagination. With the perfect, factory-made doll there is nothing more for the imagination to do; it is complete, but it is not the little girl who has completed it. In the country, men and women, boys ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... herself. "To think of this network of treachery spreading through and through us, lying in wait for us, leading us on, buoying us up with false strength, sham elasticity—and then collapsing like a toy balloon, leaving nothing but a rag, a tatter of humanity. Oh, it is shameful! it is disgraceful! Look at me! what business have ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... the sound of the battle, and many the slain of the field. Red was the sword of Lochallen: it was red with the blood of the brave. For his eye sought the combat of heroes, and the mighty withstood not his arm. He rag'd like a flame on the heath; and the enemy fled ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... we travelled a large party and in style. There is much less exaggerated about the Irish than is to be expected. Their poverty is not exaggerated; it is on the extreme verge of human misery; their cottages would scarce serve for pig-styes, even in Scotland, and their rags seem the very refuse of a rag-shop, and are disposed on their bodies with such ingenious variety of wretchedness that you would think nothing but some sort of perverted taste could have assembled so many shreds together. You are constantly fearful that some knot or loop will give, and ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... teased him about his red necktie, which began to look black with wear; she asked whether he would always stay a Garibaldi and offered to sew a new one for him, if he would let her remove the old. He agreed; nobody noticed the glow and the tension in his eyes. When she had unfastened the little red rag and was running away with it laughing, he quickly grabbed her hand and caught it between his crooked horse-teeth. Spiele cried out and tore herself away. Victor laughed with embarrassment and excitement. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... to justice as the flower to the plant,—its efflorescence, its bloom, its consummation! But honour that does not spring from justice is but a piece of painted rag, an artificial rose, which the men-milliners of society would palm upon us as ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... s'pose it does, but it kinder seems as if that little gal ought to have somethin'. Do you remember them little rag babies I used to make for you, Ann? I s'pose she'd be terrible tickled with one. Some of that blue thibet would be jest the thing to make it a ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... I have given you everything—that I am dressed in clothes fit for the rag-bag—that I have not bought a bonnet for three years—that Corentine washes my linen in the kitchen because I should blush to give such rubbish to the laundress; and you know also that my worst misery is to refuse what you ask. Then why do you ask?' And this ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... "The Melon Eaters" is known far and wide as a great masterpiece, and yet the boys were little rag-a-muffins, the pests of the market people. Murillo knew the joys and sorrows of those boys because he too at that time was very poor and hungry and no one was giving him a helping hand. Do you suppose that when he was famous as ...
— The Children's Book of Celebrated Pictures • Lorinda Munson Bryant
... dat one would have to get back en another one would step up for dey turn. De preacher, he would have a big towel to wipe his hands wid en every child's mammy would be standin right behind hind dem wid a rag to wipe de (drain) dren water ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... sauntering away from the water, for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts, when the above words were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us, levelled his massive forefinger at the vessel in question. He was but shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trowsers; a rag of a black handkerchief investing his neck. A confluent small-pox had in all directions flowed over his face, and left it like the complicated ribbed bed of a torrent, when the rushing waters have been dried up. Have ye shipped in her? he repeated. ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... didn't know how to keep what he had. He was always buying, and living large; but that can't last for ever. I saw him first at a muster. I was then just eighteen, and went out with the rest, for the first time. Maybe, 'squire, I didn't take the rag off the bush that day. I belonged to Captain Williams's troop, called the 'Bush-Whackers.' We were all fine-looking fellows, though I say it myself. I was no chicken, I tell you. From that day, Mark Forrester wrote himself ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... and generally a favourable answer; but in the garb of poverty, in the spots where beggars were wont to congregate and the rich to bestow alms, they took their stand, and gratefully received the broken bits that fell from the tables of the wealthy. Each remnant of food, each rag of clothing, they brought home with joy; and the mouldiest piece of bread out of their bag was set aside for their own nourishment, while the best was ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... something come in stead of it) "the stone-chat and the glancing sand-piper," which was a line quite alive. I demand these at your hand. I am glad that you have not sacrificed a verse to those scoundrels. I would not have had you offer up the poorest rag that lingered upon the stript shoulders of little Alice Fell, to have atoned all their malice. I would not have given 'em a red cloak to save their souls. I am afraid lest that substitution of a shell ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... forming here and there considerable pools of water, the stench and the colour whereof led to the supposition that the inhabitants facilitated domestic operations by emptying casual vessels out of the windows. The dirty little casements on the ground floor exhibited without exception a rag of red or white curtain on the one side, prevailing fashion evidently requiring no corresponding drapery on the other. The Court was a cul de sac, and at the far end stood a receptacle for ashes, the odour from which ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... Wounds, with it, is, to take some of the Blood upon a Rag, and put some of the Powder upon the Blood, then keep only the Wound clean, with a clean Linnen about it, and in a moderate Temper betwixt hot and cold, and wrap up the Rag with the Blood, and keep it either in ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... the minister in twinkles of amusement around his eyes and lips much like the smile that Tom MacMertrie had worn, only there was not a rag of hurt pride about it. ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... big man. "Then you ain't as much of a tenderfoot as you look to be. Shake!" and he held out a hand as huge as a bear's paw. Following the hand-grip he grew confidential. "'Long in the afternoon I stuck my head in at the door and saw you chewin' the rag with a thin-faced old nester that couldn't set still in his chair while ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... On the chair is her Teddy Bear fine; The things that I thought she would really enjoy Don't seem to be quite in her line. There's the flaxen-haired doll that is lovely to see And really expensively dressed, Left alone, all uncared for, and strange though it be, She likes her rag ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... that the weary patrons could sit and watch the game. The Chicago stocks had a blackboard to themselves, and this was covered with the longest lines of figures. Iron, Steel, Tobacco, Radiators, Vinegar, Oil, Leather, Spices, Tin, Candles, Biscuit, Rag,—the names of the "industrials" read like an inventory of a country store. "Rag" seemed the favorite of the hour; one boy was kept busy in posting the long line of quotations from the afternoon session of the Exchange. A group of spectators watched the jumps as quotation varied from quotation ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... A colored rag borne above troops and hoisted on forts and ships. It appears to serve the same purpose as certain signs that one sees and vacant lots in London—"Rubbish ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... seemed a mile square, because there was nothing in it except some rows of books, on unpainted white-pine bookshelves, a cracked marble-top table, a rag rug, a hairless horsehair sofa and two or three chairs. Yes, there was a picture on the wall, a colored crayon drawing of a cluster of pansies. I looked around for the portrait of Andrew Jackson and the pinecone hanging basket ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... the green baize doors leading into the hall burst open and Morris himself leaped into the show-room. His necktie was perched rakishly underneath his right ear, and his collar was of the moisture and consistency of a used wash rag. His clothes were dripping, for he carried no umbrella, and his hair hung in damp strands over his forehead. Nevertheless he was grinning broadly, as without a word he ran up to Abe and seized his hand. For two minutes Morris shook it up and down and then he collapsed ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... nine in the evening and remained until two o'clock in the morning, or at whatever hour sleep came to the relief of the sick man. One of the compensations of those long vigils was the phonograph. Frohman was very fond of a tune called "Alexander's Rag-Time Band." The nurse would put this record in the machine and then leave. When it ran out, Potter, who never could learn how to renew the instrument, simply turned the crank again. There were many nights when Frohman listened to this famous rag-time song not less than twenty ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... then there is painting. What a red rag is to a bull Turner's "Slave Ship" is to me. Mr. Ruskin is educated in art up to a point where that picture throws him into as mad an ecstasy of pleasure as it throws me into one of rage. His cultivation enables ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of the deep window recesses Roberta had set up her entire doll family to housekeeping. She was very fond of her dolls. The mother instinct in her was developed very early. She had wax dolls and china dolls and rag dolls. Mrs. Marsden painted features on the rag dolls, and they looked very natural. There was Miss Prim and Miss Slim, Mrs. Jolly and Mrs. Folly, Miss Snappy and Miss Happy, named from their different expressions. Roberta had the quaintest ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... was in one of the police-courts this morning doing my work for the Evening Star. You know I report the police news for that rag, don't you? Well, I do. My column is called "The Doom of the Disorderly." Rather a good title that for a column of the kind! There didn't appear to be anything particular on, just a few ordinary drunks, until ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... Viaduct, reached Las Vistillas and watched some rag-dealers sorting out their materials after emptying the contents of their sacks upon the ground. He sat down for a while in the sun. With his eyes narrowed to a slit he could make out the arches of the Almudena church just above a wall; beyond rose the Royal ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... the Devil contentedly; 'if you had taken a piece of rag, or what not, you might yourself... Hulloa!...' He looked down and saw the hole still gaping, and he felt a furious draught coming up again. He wondered a little, and then muttered: 'It's a pity I have on my best things. I never dare crease them, and I have nothing in ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... one. One doesn't take in the whole of such a misfortune at once. We must hold on to the last rag of hope, and in the meantime I'll half work myself to death. Are you ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... king ob de ghostes, whut name old Skull-an'-Bones, he place' he hand on de head ob li'l' black Mose, an' he hand feel like a wet rag, an' he say': ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... armed with clubs, forks, lances, shovels, torches, stakes, crooks, levers, sabres, and spits. They sang and howled alternately, counterfeiting with atrocious yells the cries of a cat, and carrying as a flag one of these animals suspended from a pole and wrapped in a red rag, thus representing the Cardinal, whose taste for cats was generally known. Public criers rushed about, red and breathless, throwing on the pavement and sticking up on the parapets, the posts, the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... had meant to have me on toast from the first. I mean to say, they had started a rag with me—a bit of chaff—and I now found myself rather preposterously enjoying the manner in which they had chivied me. I mean to say, I felt myself taking it as one gentleman would take a rag from other gentlemen—not as a bit of a sneak who would tell the truth to save ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... larnt the half av your lesson, sorr,' sez I, 'but av you shtick to the Rig'lations you'll niver get thim in-ship at all, at all. Or there won't be a rag av kit ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... ill, ye may please Heaven, And soothe the coming pangs of sinking life; And prayer perchance may win A term to God's indignant mood And the orgies of the multitude, Which now begin; But do not hope to wave the silken rag Of your unsanction'd flag, And so to guide The great ship, helmless on the swelling tide Of that presumptuous Sea, Unlit by sun or moon, yet inly bright With lights innumerable that give no light, Flames of corrupted ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... feathers in their heads are from the wings and tails of owls.—Ah! as I am but a miserable, half-sighted, trapper, it is a band of the accursed Siouxes! To cover, lads, to cover. A single cast of an eye this-a-way, would strip us of every rag of clothes, as surely as the lightning scorches the bush, and it might be that our very lives would ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... had met the Cubs in the street and claimed brotherhood, also spent the day in camp. No one knew his name, and he was just called "Kangaroo," because that was his patrol. When the choirboys had gone, Kangaroo and the Cubs had a good rag. ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... minutes the hunters poured volley after volley of lead into the forest. Suddenly a white rag tied to a stick was thrust ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... his rifle. With great care he poured the powder into the palm of his hand, measuring the quantity with his eye—for it was an evidence of a hunter's skill to be able to get the proper quantity for the ball. Then he put the charge into the barrel. Placing a little greased linsey rag, about half an inch square, over the muzzle, he laid a small lead bullet on it, and with the ramrod began to push the ball ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... and epigram constantly dissolving in impalpable mist of mere words has he assaulted The History of an Attraction (CHATTO AND WINDUS) that the poor thing, atomised, vaporised and analysed to the bone, lies limp and lifeless between the covers, with hardly a decent rag of incident or story to cover it. And there one might perhaps be content to let it rest, but for the fact that Anita, the lady of the "Attraction," is worthy of a better fate. The principal man of the book, who, after much wobbling consideration, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... suddenly the rocket, hot, The old piano jumbled! It stopped that rag-time like a shot, Then through the ...
— The Rocket Book • Peter Newell
... where man is least; So, where is neither church nor priest, And never rag of form or creed To clothe the nakedness of need,— Where farmer-folk in silence meet,— I turn my bell-unsummoned feet; I lay the critic's glass aside, I tread upon my lettered pride, And, lowest-seated, testify To the oneness of humanity; Confess ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... boracic acid in warm water at least twice daily. As exposure to oxygen kills the bacilli, one need have no fear about disturbing or tearing off the caseous patches or necrotic tissue during irrigation. The irrigation of the sores should then be followed by the application with a brush or rag on a stick of a paste made with 1 part of salicylic acid and 10 parts of water, or the affected areas may be painted with Lugol's solution of iodin (iodin, 1; potassium iodid, 5; water, 200). Frequent injections ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... rag from my pocket and wiped blood from my mouth. I'd figured out, in Shainsa, why the mistake was logical. And here in Charin I'd been hanging around in Rakhal's old haunts, covering his old trails. Once again, ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... Bumble, 'see anything like the pitch it's got to. The day afore yesterday, a man—you have been a married woman, ma'am, and I may mention it to you—a man, with hardly a rag upon his back (here Mrs. Corney looked at the floor), goes to our overseer's door when he has got company coming to dinner; and says, he must be relieved, Mrs. Corney. As he wouldn't go away, and shocked the company very much, our overseer sent him out a pound of potatoes ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... at 'em now," said Dinny; "call themselves men, and to go about like that, widout a bit o' rag to their backs, and only a scrap of a skin apron hanging before and behind. Oh, go along now wid ye, ye ought to be ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... parlor, he was very unhappy, and anxious to get out. Yet those interiors were not of an oppressive grandeur, and one was much like another. The parlor had what was called a flowered-carpet or gay pattern of ingrain on its floor, and the other rooms had rag-carpets, woven by some woman who had a loom for the work, and dyed at home with such native tints as butternut and foreign colors as logwood. The rooms were all heated with fireplaces, where wood was burned, and coal was never ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... cottage. Before his arrival, the little girls had spent a good deal of time with me, but now they no longer knew I existed, so taken up with their father were they. He hung a swing for them between the two rowan trees in the field, taking care to pack plenty of rag under the rope so as ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... go back again To that tag-rag-and-bobtail? What's the use Of a man's working to keep a decent home, When his own mother tries to drag ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... my Friend,—You behold before you a remorseful man! It is well-nigh a year now since I despatched some hurried rag of paper to you out of Scotland, indicating doubtless that I would speedily follow it with a longer letter; and here, when gray Autumn is at hand again, I have still written nothing to you, heard nothing from you! It is miserable to think of:—and yet it is ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... it; for if they were hers, to punish her for shirking me, by the Lord, I'd have every rag she has in the world out in the middle of the floor in ten minutes! You don't know me—I'm a terrible person ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... kind of Men who loved a Bit of Finery in his Heart, and would rather have a tatter'd Rag of a Better Body's, than the best plain whole Thing his Wife ...
— A Political Romance • Laurence Sterne
... in hyeh inside a month," he said, kicking up a rag of red flannel. "White man and two hawsses. Ours have went up his ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... half an eye could see that, mum; and a mighty dirty spot you picked out for such a nice little rag to ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... human flesh is good enough for her!" Miranda groaned to Jane. "She'll ride with the rag-sack-and-bottle peddler just as quick as she would with the minister; she always sets beside the St. Vitus' dance young one at Sabbath school; and she's forever riggin' and onriggin' that dirty Simpson baby! She reminds me of a puppy that'll always ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... French expedition came out of French Africa into the Sudan, where Kitchener's army was in possession after having freed Egypt from the power of the Madhi's wild Sudanese. French and British both claimed the same place; and for some years Fashoda was like a red rag to a bull when mentioned to Frenchmen; for Kitchener had got there first. Luckily he had fought for France in 1870, spoke French like a Frenchman, and soon made friends with the French on the spot. More luckily still, King Edward the Wise went to Paris in 1903, despite ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... dare not say that He does not send His angels to comfort and sustain them who from love to Him go out into rightous warfare. But I don't believe they come through a seansy. I don't, honestly. I don't believe Daniel would have felt strengthened a mite, by seein' a materialized rag-baby hung out by a wire in front of a hemlock box, and then ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... An endless routine of heavy hammers. Mash, mash, mash! upon the sufferer's limbs. See the stone trough! says Goblin. For the water torture! Gurgle, swill, bloat, burst, for the Redeemer's honour! Suck the bloody rag, deep down into your unbelieving body, Heretic, at every breath you draw! And when the executioner plucks it out, reeking with the smaller mysteries of God's own Image, know us for His chosen servants, true believers in the Sermon on the ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... of young plants, small fields here and there just showing a delicate downy growth of green, delightful to the eye. They were not long sown. For each still lay cradled under its scarecrow, a pole planted in the centre of the rectangle with strings stretched to the four corners, and a bit of rag fluttering from the peak. The scarecrows are, no doubt, useful, since they are in general use; but I counted seven sparrows feeding in reckless disregard of danger under the very wings of ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... Church, Cambridge. His intention was to prosecute the study of medicine, and he took great delight in the cognate pursuits of natural history and botany. His chief friend was Edmund Smith, (Rag Smith, as he was generally called,) a kind of minor Savage, well known in these times as the author of 'Phaedra and Hippolytus,' and for his cureless dissipation. In 1703, Philips produced 'The Splendid Shilling,' which proved a hit, and seems to have ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... middle of a mighty and solemn dinner party! All the grandees, the county people (this in a deep and awful voice), sitting up in their chignons of state, in the awful pause during the dishing-up, when these five little wretches, in finery filched from the rag bag, appear on the smooth lawn, mown and trimmed to the last extent for the occasion, and begin to strike up at their shrillest, close to the open window. Ellen rises with great dignity. I fancy I can see her, sending out to order them off. And then, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... what a spendthrift you are with your breath! I'm going to dance my dress to a rag. Did you ever think that Cinderella may have just danced her dress to rags by twelve o'clock and after all the fairy godmother had nothing to do with it? Cinderella danced every dance with the prince and perhaps ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... of the people one meets there having hardly a rag to cover them; and the more the swarming goes on, the more it promises to revive this old story. And when the story is perfectly revived, the swarming quite completed, and every cranny choke-full, then, too, no doubt, the faces in ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... have the most sense, for after they began to grow bigger they were not so sure about it. We little ones were all of one mind: that a creature that couldn't fight and was aye carrying tales, and couldn't so much as shy a stone without flapping its arm like a rag in the wind, was no use for anything. And then the airs that they would put on, as if they were mother and father rolled into one; for ever breaking into a game with "Jimmy, your toe's come through your boot," or "Go home, ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for a time. As workers, young beaver appear at their best and liveliest when taking a limb from the hillside to the house in the pond. A young beaver will catch a limb by one end in his teeth, and, throwing it over his shoulder in the attitude of a puppy racing with a rope or a rag, make off to the pond. Once in the water, he throws up his head and swims to the house or the dam with the limb held trailing out ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... clothes, O.N. dudi, "vestes plumatae" (Haldorson), duda (duetha), to wrap up heavily, to swaddle. Gael. dud, rag, is a loan-word from O.N. It is possible that the word may have come into Lowland Sco. by ...
— Scandinavian influence on Southern Lowland Scotch • George Tobias Flom
... bunch of us ginnies settin' on the fence at the wire, watchin' the work-outs. Some trainers 'n' owners is standin' on the track rag-chewin'. ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote |
