"Rag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had been cashiered for something or other so dreadful it couldn't be spoken of. The story's going the rounds of London now. I'm not sure Gerald didn't get it from your brother-in-law the night he asked Major Vandyke to dine at the Rag. How strange Captain March should have been ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sea, the landing of a great steamer, with splashing of spray as real as if seen from the dock. To those who enjoy music it furnishes band concerts, orchestra, bell-ringing, quartettes, solos, plantation melodies, rag-time tunes ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... tongue of our bullock-driver. The mules were all stalled in the next gully to ours, and one afternoon three or four of us were sitting admiring the sunset when a shell came over. It was different from that usually sent by Abdul, being seemingly formed of paper and black rag; someone suggested, too, that there was a good deal of faultiness in the powder. From subsequent inquiries we found that what we saw going over our dug-outs was Mule! A shell had burst right in one of ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... wives, and defends his action by appealing to Moses. They have taken out of Moses such things as please them and pander to their lust. In Turkey they are very cruel to women; any woman that will not submit is cast aside. They toy with their women like a dog with a rag. When they are weary of one woman, they quickly put her beneath the turf and take another. Moses has said nothing to justify this practise. My opinion is that there is no real married life among the Turks; theirs is ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... Thou liest, thou thread, Thou thimble, Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail! Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket thou! Brav'd in mine own house with a skein of thread! Away! thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant, Or I shall so be-mete thee with thy yard As thou shalt think on prating whilst thou liv'st! I tell thee, I, that thou hast ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... him, and walked towards the city. On my way thither, as I passed a Buddhist monastery, I was struck by the appearance of a man sitting at the side of the road near it. He was extraordinarily ugly; his body naked, with the exception of a rag round his waist; and his face so covered with dirt, that the tears he was shedding left furrows as ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... cant, a "townsman" as opposed to a "gownsman." Cf. Gradus ad Cantabrigiam (1824), quoted in Century Dictionary: "Snobs.—A term applied indiscriminately to all who have not the honour of being members of the university; but in a more particular manner to the 'profanum vulgus,' the tag-rag and bob-tail, who vegetate on the sedgy banks of Camus." This use is in De Quincey's mind. Later, in the strikes of that time, the workmen who accepted lower wages were called snobs; those who ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... cried a young law student, with a Blackstone under his arm, to the town rag picker opposite, who was ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... muddy, with one hand wrapped in a blood-stained rag, came in first. "We found them hidden in the bushes at the turn of the road," he said hastily. "The schoolmaster was more peaceably inclined than any Quaker, but Hugon fought like the wolf that he is. Can't you hang him out of hand, Haward? Give ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers get sea-sick—grow quarrelsome—don't sleep of nights—do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing;—no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... with a slam, and, groping beneath the seat of the summer-house, found and handed to Clem the torso of an old rag doll, which, because it might be thrown against a window without breaking the glass, served as their wonted substitute ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... at the table the next morning, but he came in later, and greeted Bradley brusquely, as he flung his rag of a hat ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... 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
... professors, their good clergymen, their good political speakers, their good, earnest women—all the time he felt his soul was grinning, grinning at the sight of them. So many performing puppets, all wood and rag for the performance! ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... how it came about, but the Germans were more numerous than we. It was not we who were taking prisoners, but they, and then suddenly I found myself alone, with three Germans before me. One, I remember, had a rag saturated with blood tied round his head. He had a great gash in his cheek, too, and was nearly beaten; but there was the look of a devil in his eye. Had I been a private soldier, I expect I should have been killed without ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... clothes, even to the klompen, for, alas! her French shoes were now in no condition to be worn, the pretty blue frock torn and stained and hopelessly wet, the hat with its dainty plume crushed and useless; indeed, every article she had worn looked only fit for the rag-bag. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... which a man fancies that a ruffian is coming to attack him, and raises his arm to strike that ruffian a terrible blow which he knows should annihilate him, but then feels that his arm drops powerless and limp like a rag, and the horror of unavoidable destruction seizes ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... contented with my poor clothes, and cheerful about it." I hope the little dear will like the bonnet and the frills I made her and some bows I fixed over from bright ribbons L. W. threw away. I get half my rarities from her rag-bag, and she doesn't know her own rags when fixed over. I hope I shall live to see the dear child in silk and lace, with plenty of pictures and "bottles of cream," Europe, and all she ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... of lava, under the various names of granite, porphyry, toadstone, moor-stone, rag, and slate, which constitute the old world, may have acquired the stratification, which some of them appear to possess, by their having been formed by successive eruptions of a fluid mass, which at different periods of antient time arose from volcanic shafts and ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... somehow seemed cold and empty. It was clean and sweet, but it had so little evidence of being lived in. The old part, which was built of logs, was used as best room, and modeled after the best rooms of the neighboring Yankee homes, only it was emptier, without the cabinet organ and the rag carpet and the chromoes. ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... live. God the Father and Maker of all men alone can create such wonders. No men who ever lived could, if they worked all through their lives, make one thing so marvellous as one of these boys. Will you, then, sell one of these miracles, one of your children, for a bit of red rag which any man can ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... leather or string, and judging by the general look of the object it must have been a formidable weapon in strong, skilled hands. A theory has recently been put forward to the effect that the picture character represents a stick with a bit of coloured rag tied to the, but it will hardly commend itself to any archaeologist. The lines which cross the side of the axe-head represent string or strips of leather, and indicate that it was made of stone which, being brittle, was liable to crack; the picture characters which delineate the object ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... the band of incapables who obtained power and place on the fall of Walpole. Horace Walpole, in his Memoires, calls him "that old rag of Lord Bath's quota to an ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Lower oolitic formation, including, besides the great oolite bed of central England, fullers' earth beds, forest marble, and cornbrash; 3. Middle oolitic formation, composed of two sub-groups, the Oxford clay and coral rag, the latter being a mere layer of the works of the coral polype; 4. Upper oolitic formation, including what are called Kimmeridge clay and Portland oolite. In Yorkshire there is an additional group above the lias, and in Sutherlandshire there is another group above that again. In the wealds ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... She showed no sign of hurt; there was nothing but a little streamlet of violet blood still trickling from her beak. Prada was at first merely astonished. He stooped and touched the hen. She was still warm and soft like a rag. Doubtless some apoplectic stroke had killed her. But immediately afterwards he became fearfully pale; the truth appeared to him, and turned him as cold as ice. In a moment he conjured up everything: Leo XIII attacked by illness, Santobono hurrying to Cardinal Sanguinetti ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... yonder Red-skins are no Pawnees! The 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 ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... . . You are a rag then, not an examining magistrate! I have never ventured to abuse you, but now you force me to it! You rag! you old fogey! Come, dear ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... having glanced up and recognised the inevitable, rose to her feet, and, holding the hideous rag-doll she had been nursing, head down and dangling in one hand, she stood waiting till Dicky, after a few last perfunctory bellows, suddenly dried his eyes and held up a tear-wet face for his father to kiss. Then she presented her brow solemnly to her ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... was her husband.[FN447] As for his strangerhood, I noted that the dress of the woman differed from that of the townsfolk, wherefore I knew that she was a foreigner; and in the mouth of the phial I saw a yellow rag,[FN448] which garred me wot that the sick man was a Jew and she a Jewess. Moreover, she came to me on first day;[FN449] and 'tis the Jews' custom to take meat puddings[FN450] and food that hath passed the night[FN451] and eat them on the Saturday their Sabbath, hot and cold, and they exceed ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... pale young man came back with something wrapped in a bit of clean rag, he said a whispered word or two to the pawnbroker, who unrolled the rag and looked closely at ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... you," cried Betty suddenly, her eyes sparkling with a new idea. "Give me that old red rag we use for a duster, Mollie, and I'll go ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... scroll this beginning only of a letter, and nothing more, "Demosthenes to Antipater." And that when his sudden death was much wondered at, the Thracians who guarded the doors reported that he took the poison into his hand out of a rag, and put it in his mouth, and that they imagined it had been gold which he swallowed; but the maid that served him, being examined by the followers of Archias, affirmed that he had worn it in a bracelet for a long time, as an amulet. And Eratosthenes also ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... and find that brother of mine, and bring him in, and here he'll be lying in clover, and doctored up, and enjoying himself, while poor we are slaving about in sunshine and rain, and often not getting anything to eat, or a rag ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... a dozen like him; ruffianly-looking, rag-bags of fellows, all armed, and looking like a gang of bullies ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... the bronze cross on the veteran's faded coat, the staff saluted; for the cross, though it were hung on rag's, wherever it went was entitled by custom to the salute of officers and "present arms" ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... endeared by association with home to the children, and the mother should be slow to replace it. The window draperies may be home-made, such as of rough-finished silk or embroidered canvas, and the floor covered with a thick rag-carpet, preferably of a nondescript or "hit-and-miss" design. If the housekeeper thinks that this is "hominess" carried to excess, she may cover the floor with an ingrain carpet, or better, plain filling of a medium shade, on which a few rag rugs are laid, light in color. Very artistic ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... down, and dressed her arm as well as she could. Verena was quite a skilful little nurse in her own way, and as Pauline had some of the wonderful ointment which the Kings' cook had given her, and as Verena knew very nicely how to spread it on a piece of rag, the arm soon ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... being washed out to sea in a river of tears. Then she came out wearing a rose-coloured dressing-gown!!! exquisite. And she led us into the room and said: "Girls, you must not look at me in this old rag, which is only fit to throw away." I should have liked to say: "Give it to me then." But of course I could not. And when we made our final goodbye, perhaps for ever, she kissed each of us twice over and said: Girls, I wish you all ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... of which I have managed to keep the pockets together. The others are no better off. Besides these, we have between us, for bedding, two small camel pads, some horse-hair, two or three little bits of rag, and pieces of oil-cloth saved from ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... she decided ruefully. "It did bunch up in the weirdest places in your spare spacesuit. Have you any old rag I ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... it had been Trevor I think I'd have killed him. How jolly of you to do gymnastics with that little beggar; he's dreadfully delicate, ain't he, not likely to live? But you're awfully cruel to me. You think no more of giving a wring to my heart than if it was a bit of rag. I think you'd like to ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... 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 ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... quickly and grabbed at it with both hands. It seemed like a sharp, smooth pole sticking almost upright in the water. There was a bit of rag, or marine plant of ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... know the reason she'll SAY," said Advena. "She objects to rag carpet in her bedroom. She told ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... same effect on Conway that a red rag has on a mad bull," laughed Morgan. "He can never forget that trick your cousin played ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... of the public mind, and an opinion was abroad that he was drunk. "Hi, hi, hi," bawled the omnibus-drivers, threading a dangerous way. A drunken American sailor wandered about tearfully inquiring, "What's he want anyhow?" A leathery-faced rag-dealer upon a little pony-drawn cart soared up over the tumult by virtue of his voice. "Garn 'ome, you Brasted Giant!" he brawled, "Garn 'Ome! You Brasted Great Dangerous Thing! Can't you see you're a-frightening the 'orses? Go 'ome with you! 'Asn't any one 'ad the sense to tell you the law?" ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... thin stubble; a few half-ripened pumpkins, hanging yet to the seared vines,—whose leaves had long since been shrivelled by the frost,—showed their shining green faces on the dank soil. In other fields, overrun with a great shaggy growth of rag-weed, some of the parson's flock—father and blue-nosed boys—were lifting poor crops of "bile-whites" or "merinos." From time to time, a tall house jutted upon the road, with unctuous pig-sty under the lee of the garden-fence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... things happen to her. She pricks her with pins, and pretends she has the ear-ache, and lets her tumble down and hurt herself, till sometimes I nearly feel sorry, though it's all make-believe. When you wrote us about only having pudding for dinner, I didn't a bit. John put her into the rag-closet that very day, and has been starving her to death ever since, and Phil says it serves her right. You can't think how awfully lonely I sometimes get without you. If it wasn't for Helen Gibbs, that new girl I told you about, I shouldn't know what to do. She is ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... Fielding from writing plays; not at all because the plays were coarse, but because they criticised the Government. Fielding was a free writer; but they did not resent his sexual freedom; the Censor would not have objected if he had torn away the most intimate curtains of decency or rent the last rag from private life. What the Censor disliked was his rending the curtain from public life. There is still much of that spirit in our country; there are no affairs which men seek so much to cover up as public affairs. But the thing was done somewhat more boldly and baldly in Walpole's ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... rag babies for her, and made her a soap-box baby-house in the corner of the kitchen, and taught her her letters; and began to think that she should hate to have her go when ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... inclosed with high walls of villas, through the open gates of which the golden oranges gleam, that you seem never to leave the city. The streets and quays swarm with the most vociferous, dirty, multitudinous life. It is a drive through Rag Fair. The tall, whitey-yellow houses fronting the water, six, seven, eight stories high, are full as beehives; people are at all the open windows; garments hang from the balconies and from poles thrust out; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... past the privet bush about nine in the morning. If you need me, hang a white rag on it, and I'll stop at the ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Finlay told us to come aboard the next day but one with our bags, by which time the cargo would be discharged. We set off home greatly pleased, though puzzled to know how we should obtain a decent kit. With Nancy's help, I might be pretty well off, but poor Jim had scarcely a rag to his back besides the clothes he stood in. In the evening, however, a note came from Mr Gray with an order on an outfitter to give us each a complete kit suited to a cold climate. We were not slow to avail ourselves of ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... voila as the French say for over there itll come handy to be able to sit down and have a dosy dos with them poilus. (That means chew the rag in English.) A poilus Mable is a French peasant girl an they say that they are very belle. (Now don't mispronounce things an get sore till you know. You pronounce that like the bell in push button. It means good lookers.) There crazy about us fellos. They call us Sammies. They named one ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter
... hastening revolutions. Of all the enemies of liberty whom Britain has produced, he was at once the most harmless and the most provoking. His office resembled that of the man who, in a Spanish bull-fight, goads the torpid savage to fury, by shaking a red rag in the air, and by now and then throwing a dart, sharp enough to sting, but too small to injure. The policy of wise tyrants has always been to cover their violent acts with popular forms. James was always obtruding his despotic ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the voice, which I was now able to trace to its origin, on the lips of a small, unseemly rag of human-kind. The speaker's skin was gray and blotched; he spoke in a kind of broken song, with much variety of key; his gestures seemed (as in the disease called Saint Vitus's dance) to be imperfectly under control; he was badly dressed; he carried himself with an air of shrinking assumption, ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... slim, red-haired bunch of galatea, stylish of cut as to upturned nose and straight little skirt but wholly and defiantly unshod save for a dusty white rag around one pink toe. A cunning little straw bonnet, with an ecru lace jabot dangled in her hand, and her big brown eyes reminded me of Jane's at her ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... in our flat kitchen with a lot of care. First he would take our set of three sad-irons—the kind that are run with the same handle, especially designed to press trousers under a wet rag—and he would put them on top of the range, one under each leg of a chair as far as they would go, and an old tin cup bottom-side-up under the fourth leg. He was always particular to have a cane seat in the chair and a piping hot ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... "I got busy a while ago. Forgot to put 'em back on. Didn't realize I'd left every rag behind till I was well on my way." He looked at the ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole
... monotonous than a calm. He did not brood over a storm, therefore, but continued to consider the subject which had so deeply interested him since he discovered Mulgrum on his knees at the door, with a rag and a saucer of rottenstone in his hands. He had a curiosity to examine the brass knob of his door at that moment, and it did not appear to have been ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... all last night, and has hardly left off yet. I have not a dry rag to my name. Even my martial cloak is sopping, though the lining is what, considering all things, I might call dry. So sitting on my upturned saddle beneath a weeping (not willow) tree, on the branches of which my wet blanket ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... she was alaborin' in the Gulf o' Mexico, The skipper on the quarter, with eyes aloft and low. Says he, 'My bucko boys, it's asurely goin' to blow— Take every blessed rag from her, strip her from truck to toe, And we'll see what she can make of it.' And O, my eyes, it blew! And blew and blew, And blew and blew! My soul, how it did blow! Aboard the Flying Walrus in ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... wire and allowed its free end to hang in close proximity to a leaden water-pipe. Then he placed a piece of oily rag near by and saw it answer his expectation by bursting into flame. He looked triumphantly around at Prosper, to whom he had previously explained the ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... his lady. The tradition of the family is, that this knight was the standard-bearer of Henry of Richmond in the Battle of Bosworth Field; and a banner, supposed to be the same that he earned, now droops over his effigy. It is just such a colorless silk rag as the one already described. The knight has the order of the Garter on his knee, and the lady wears it on her left arm,—an odd place enough for a garter; but, if worn in its proper locality, it could not be decorously visible. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... be grieved, But that I'll not out-live you: chuse your death; For, I have seen him in such various shapes, I care not which I take: I'm only troubled, The life I bear is worn to such a rag, 'Tis scarce worth giving. I could wish, indeed, We threw it from us with a better grace; That, like two lions taken in the toils, We might at last thrust out our paws, and wound The ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... 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 ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... "Miss not the discourses of the elders," though put now in the Apocrypha, is a wise precept, but incomplete unless we add, "Nor cease from recording whatsoever thing thou hast gathered therefrom,"—so ready is Oblivion with her fatal shears. The somewhat greasy heap of a literary rag-and-bone-picker, like Athenaeus, is turned to gold by time. Even the Virgilium vide tantum of Dryden about Milton, and of Pope again about Dryden, is worth having, and gives a pleasant fillip to the fancy. There is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... brown door closed gently enough, and separated Mrs. Pratt from the whole moving mass of animate confusion that reigned in the streets outside. As she stopped, on her way through the narrow passage within, to straighten the rag mat at the door of the front room, she ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... fresh. He had slept while she stood above him, while the rose had faded. On the step the fish lay, no longer brightly colored, in a dull, stiff heap. The house was still; through the open door the sun fell on a strip of rag rug. He turned and hurried down the steps, unlatched the gate, and almost ran across the fields to the cover of a wood, fleeing ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... stock-taking." With that, from every pocket he produced French notes of all denominations, in all stages of decay, and heaped them upon the table. "Now, this one," he added, gingerly extracting a filthy and dilapidated rag, "is a particularly interesting specimen. Apparently, upon close inspection, merely a valuable security, worth, to be exact, a shade under twopence-half-penny, it is in reality a talisman. Whosoever touches it, cannot fail to contract at least ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... not grow in Sofi, great numbers were brought down by the river during the rains; these were eagerly collected by the Arabs, and the grave of the Faky was ornamented with selected specimens, upon which were hung small pieces of rag-like banners. The people could not explain why they were thus ornamented, but I imagine the custom had originated from the necessity of scaring the wild animals that might ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... companion, who stalked behind; so thin, so sexless that none could say if the shape were that of man or woman. Dry, streaming locks of iron-grey, an ashen countenance, deep-set, hollow eyes, a beetling, parchment-covered brow; lean shanks half hidden with a rotting rag, claw-like hands which clutched miserably at the air. Such was its awful fashion, that of new death ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... mend anything," he said. "You haven't been married very long and I think I can give you some serviceable suggestions. When I want a shirt mended I take it to my wife and flourish it around a little and say, 'Where's that rag-bag?' ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... True, had you questioned him as to his particular religious doctrines or articles of faith, he would not have been very clear, or very ready to give you any explanation at all, for the very best of reasons,—he was not so superstitious as to have a creed. A creed! that was a rag of the old woman of Babylon. No, if you wanted to know all about doctrines and disputations, why, you might look into Barclay's Apology. There was a book big enough for you, he should think. For himself, like most of his ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... all going to Santa Fe over the long trail. Every last gun of us. Aunty Boone, and Mat, and you, and me, and Jondo, and Uncle Esmond, rag-tag and bobtail. Whoop-ee-diddle-dee!" Beverly threw up his cap, and, catching Mat by the arms, they whirled around the ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... with the red handkerchief waved over the top of a bush?" Bob went on. "Hank said there never was a more curious little beast than an antelope. If he didn't have a red rag a white one would do. Once he said he just lay down on his back and kicked his heels in the air. The game ran away, but came back; and each time just a little bit closer, till Hank could fire, and get his supper. I've done something the same for ducks, in a marsh ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... the host, "had the look of a dog with a bottle at its tail, and wore a coat, every rag of which was bidding good-day to ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... into the ground, and in its place they have lately set up 'pessimist,' which certainly has a threatening appearance. They don't know its meaning, and in their mouths it merely signifies that what a man says snakes them feel personally uncomfortable. The word has become a dusty rag of slang. The arrested burglar very likely calls the policeman a pessimist; and, speaking reverently and with no intention to shock you, the scribes and Pharisees would undoubtedly have called Christ a pessimist when He called them ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... the suite, clearing away the breakfast, sponging off the oilcloth table-spread, making the bed, pottering about with a broom or duster or cleaning rag. Towards ten o'clock she opened the windows to air the rooms, then put on her drab jacket, her little round turban with its red wing, took the butcher's and grocer's books from the knife basket in the drawer of the kitchen table, and descended to the street, ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... clad urchins, unable to scrape together the few sous necessary for the hire of a rag or two, had nevertheless determined not to be altogether out of it. They had managed to borrow a couple of white blouses—not what you would understand by a white blouse, dear Madame, a dainty thing of frills and laces, but the coarse white ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... the pail in the well-room, and drank from the cocoanut dipper. When the weather was warm our parlor was open, as it was to-day. Aunt Mercy had dusted it and ornamented the hearth with bunches of lilacs in a broken pitcher. Twelve yellow chairs, a mahogany stand, a dark rag-carpet, some speckled Pacific sea-shells on the shelf, among which stood a whale's tooth with a drawing of a cranky ship thereon, and an ostrich's egg that hung by a string from the ceiling, were the adornments of the room. When ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... through it that way you can't help pumpin' your lungs full. Makes you glow and tingle inside and out. Makes you want to holler. That, and the sunshine dancin' on the water, and the feel of the boat slicin' through the waves, the engine purrin' away a sort of rag-time tune, and the pennants whippin', and all that scenery shiftin' around to new angles, not to mention the fact that Vee's along—well, I was enjoyin' life about then. Kind of got into my blood. Everything was lovely, and I didn't care ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... been a pretty big sorter woman when she young. A ridin' boss went to whoopin' her once and she tore every rag clothes he had on offen him. I heard em say he went home strip start naked. I think they said he got turned off or ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... had he worn it, but only for a brief stroll on a rainy Sunday, with an entirely opaque raincoat buttoned closely under his chin. Even so, he fancied that people stared through and through that guaranteed fabric straight to his red secret. The rag burned on his breast. Afterward it was something to look at beyond the locked door; perhaps to try on behind drawn shades, late of a night. And how little Gordon Dane would have made of such a matter! Floated in Bean's mind the refrain of a clothing advertisement. "The more ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... enemy. At one and the same moment there had risen above the shoulders of the crowd, nearly opposite Mr. Brooke, and within ten yards of him, the effigy of himself: buff-colored waistcoat, eye-glass, and neutral physiognomy, painted on rag; and there had arisen, apparently in the air, like the note of the cuckoo, a parrot-like, Punch-voiced echo of his words. Everybody looked up at the open windows in the houses at the opposite angles of the converging streets; but they were ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... up in her crib, tumbled, red-cheeked, tears hanging on her lashes. The room was darkened for her nap; she wore a worn little discoloured wrapper; she clung to her rag doll. Martie, with deathly weakness sweeping over her, smiled, and spoke to her. The baby eyed her curiously, but she was not afraid. Martie picked her up, and stood there holding her, while the knife turned and ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... a grimy blue-and-yellow cotton rag from the pocket of his serge nether garments, and proceeded to wipe the rescued man's face with as much force and energy as if he had been polishing tin pans with a view to ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... "May I have this?" she asked at last, picking up a bit of rag from a pile of things untidily heaped on a chair. Mrs. Lang, though, was gone, and did not hear her. Jessie looked at the rag, and pondered. At last, however, the temptation to wipe off some of the dust became too much for her, and she used it. ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... scold them when they changed unasked his tattered vestments for new; and he used to have them darned and patched, as long as they would hold together. Now this good archbishop knew that the late Sieur de Poissy had left a daughter, without a sou or a rag, after having eaten, drunk, and gambled away her inheritance. This poor young lady lived in a hovel, without fire in winter or cherries in spring; and did needlework, not wishing either to marry beneath her or sell her virtue. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... Arab foul with sweat, the drainer of the camels dug, Gorged with his leek-green lizards meat, clad in his filthy rag and rug, ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... always a turn for speculation, and being a private soldier he made money by selling small articles to his fellow soldiers. When his term of service had expired, he entered the employ of a rag-merchant, and in a little while proposed a partnership with his master, who laughed at his impudence. He then set up an opposition shop, and lost all he had saved in a month. He then became a porter at ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... A comfortless room. Rag carpeting on the floor. No rug softening the hearth-stones. The sashes of the windows loose in the frames and shaken to-night by twisty gusts. A pane of glass in one had been broken and the opening pasted over with a sheet of letter paper. This had been burst by an indolent hand, ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... lee-earrings dipped into the sea, but righted herself as she came before the wind, and rose like a duck on the back of the angry swells. It was a fearful night, and every incident of it is photographed indelibly on my memory. There was not a rag of canvas on the ship except her heavy main-staysail, and yet one after another the topmasts splintered and fell, hampering the lower rigging and littering the deck with the wreck, the broken royals making terrible work as they whipped about in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... in a vast crowd, so that whichever way he turned there before him they appeared—hundreds and hundreds of dark, excited faces, hundreds of grimy hands all pointing at him. Then, all at once, he caught sight of an old rag of a garment lying on the ground among the ashes and cinders, and he thought he would cover himself with it, and picking it hastily up was just going to put it round him when a great roar of "No!" burst out from the crowd; he was almost deafened with the sound, so that he stood trembling with the ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... 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 ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rifle with an oily rag, and scowled. "Got both hosses saddled, and lots of ca'tridges—and Dorry ain't here yet! She promised to be here right ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... slaves when they can scarcely keep themselves. His Excellency is very sulky. He threatens to resign his Sheikhdom. The poor Sheikh is the dirtiest, unhappiest mortal of all his people. He is without wife, family or friend; he is without a rag to cover himself, except a filthy blanket. He houses in a little dirty cabin. In looks he is a hard strong-featured man, and large of limb. I asked his Excellency what he got by his Sheikhdom, to plague him. He growled, "Shayen (nothing)." "Why don't you resign?" I continued. "I can't; ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... frayed ends of his dress and his jagged hair, tries to turn him where he lies stark on his back, and force his face towards the rising sun, that he may be shamed the more. A lull, and the wind is secret and prying with him; lifts and lets falls a rag; hides palpitating under another rag; runs nimbly through his hair and beard. Then, in a rush, it cruelly taunts him. Father, was that you calling me? Was it you, the voiceless and the dead? Was it you, thus buffeted as you lie here in a heap? Was ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... good jest, And please all the rest; Comes Dingley, and asks you, what was it? And, curious to know, Away she will go To seek an old rag in the closet. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... borrow a glass," remarked the latest arrival. "Mine's smashed and my batman hasn't unpacked my aluminium traps. Judging by appearances, by Jove! I've drawn a blank. What's up—a toppin' rag, or ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... that I have those within my call who, at my lightest bidding, would immure ye in an uncomfortable dungeon? (Calling.) What ho! within there! RICH. Hold—we are prepared for this (producing a Union Jack). Here is a flag that none dare defy (all kneel), and while this glorious rag floats over Rose Maybud's head, the man does not live who would dare to lay unlicensed hand upon her! ROB. Foiled—and by a Union Jack! But a time will come, and then—- ROSE. Nay, let me plead with him. (To Robin.) Sir Ruthven, have pity. In my book of etiquette the case ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... however, she went into the yard to look for her white hen. Where was it lying? Where had it crept to? She sought for it in every corner; she trembled whenever she saw something white gleaming, a piece of paper, a rag, or a little chalk that had crumbled off the wall—could this be it, or that? She felt so miserable that she at last did not know if she wanted to find it ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... sign of its condition, more or less clear, according to its circumstances, but always unmistakable to the practiced eye. Sometimes it is the broad banner of standing water, or dark, wet streaks in plowed land, when all should be dry and of even color; sometimes only a fluttering rag of distress in curling corn, or wide-cracking clay, or feeble, spindling, shivering grain, which has survived a precarious winter, on the ice-stilts that have stretched its crown above a wet soil; sometimes the quarantine flag of rank growth ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... company into order, and the next thing I knew I was facing him, where he stood in front of the biggest kya, with Henriques beside him, and some of the northern indunas. Henriques looked ghastly in the clear morning light, and he had a linen rag bound round his head and jaw, as if he suffered from toothache. His face was more livid, his eyes more bloodshot, and at the sight of me his hand went to his belt, and his teeth snapped. But he held his peace, and it was Laputa who spoke. He looked straight through ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... below was Addison, whose business was to tell me that a History of the Revolution was intended, and to propose that I should undertake it. I said, 'What shall I do with the character of lord Sunderland?' and Addison immediately returned, 'When, Rag, were you drunk last?' ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... lordly figure of Prince Karl Albert gesturing aside the dead body of the Vaterland sailor. Hitherto he had rather liked the idea of war as being a jolly, smashing, exciting affair, something like a Bank Holiday rag on a large scale, and on the whole agreeable and exhilarating. Now he knew it a ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... brass instruments were out of tune; the rag-tag crowd surged about, some jeering, some cheering,—everything in the environment was repellent, but in the midst shone that pale ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... whole plain was a wilderness. Straw and paper possessed it merely, except that here and there a destitute Kaffir groped among the debris in hopes of finding a shiny tin pot for his furniture or some rag of old uniform to harmonise with his savage dress. In one corner of the empty iron huts a few of the cavalry were still trying to carry off some remnants of forage. It was a pitiful sight, and yet the rapidity ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... The Talmud has minute rules for leading out animals on the Sabbath: An ass may go out with his pack saddle if it was tied on before the Sabbath, but not with a bell or a yoke; a camel may go out with a halter, but not with a rag tied to his tail; a string of camels may be led if the driver takes all the halters in his hand, and does not twist them, but they must not be tied to one another—and so on for pages. If, then, these sticklers for rigid observance of the Sabbath admitted ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... theologians who flank them, are Augustine and Jerome, Anselm and Aquinas, Calvin and Episcopius, Ballarmine and Jansenius, Baronius and the Magdeburg Centuriators,—natural enemies, here bound over to their good behavior. These dark veterans are Jewish Rabbis,—Kimchi, Abarbanel, and, like a row of rag-collectors, a whole Monmouth Street of rubbish,—behold the entire Babylonian Talmud. These tall Socinians are the Polish brethren, and the dumpy vellums overhead are Dutch divines. The cupboard contains Greek and Latin manuscripts, and those spruce fashionables are Spencer, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... consul, reoiling his cleaning rag. "No, the other one—that bamboo thing won't hold you. Why, they're cocoanuts—green cocoanuts. The shell of 'em is always a light green before ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... settin' fire to things is Benzine Bob's religion. He says his prayers to an oiled rag, and a box of matches is ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... was too fine a gentleman not to be polite to all—all, that is, except Germans. They never dared let him loose when prisoners were about. The sight of a gray-green uniform was to that dog what a red rag is to a bull. For him some horror was associated with it—a horror which must remain a mystery ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to say he would pay for all trouble, but fortunately did not, and then being offered a chair, sat down and was left alone. For ten minutes, that seemed longer, he surveyed the plainly furnished sitting-room, with open fireplace, a many colored rag-carpet on the floor, old-fashioned chairs, and dozens of pictures on the walls. They caught his eye at once, mainly because of the oddity of the frames, which were evidently home-made, for it was too dark to see more, and then a door was opened, and Uncle Terry invited him ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... anything, even supposing that had been possible. Forward was a box full of sand to serve as hearthstone, but the little scraps of fuel we had brought with us were drenched and unburnable, even if the risk of being seen were not too great. Lady Saffren Waldon told us we were "toe-rag contrivers." In fact, now that she was out of reach of the men she feared and hated most, she reverted to type and tried to domineer over us all by the simple old recipe—audacious arrogance. Luckily, she slept ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... we mustn't be cruel," said she in a softer tone, and then she brought a rag and began to assist Shep in the process of cleaning my coat. "Good land! He's got to stay here—ayes!—he ain't got no other place ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... men sheltered 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 ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... Gull Marsh. The tide will take her off at the full of the moon. Sambo 's been playing 'possum again. Said he'd cut his foot with his hoe so badly that he couldn't stand upon it. Said I could see that by the blood on the rag that tied it up. I made him take off the rag and wash the foot, and there wa'n't no cut there. The blood was puccoon. If he'd waited a bit he could 'a' had all he wanted to paint with, for I gave him the rope's end, lively, until Mistress Patricia heard him yelling and ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... far and wide for migrating thither upon the opening of Yukon navigation, and the early summer of 1910 saw a wild stampede to the Iditarod. Saloon-keepers, store-keepers, traders of all kinds, and the rag-tag and bobtail that always flock to a new camp were on the move so soon as the ice went out. From Dawson, from the Fortymile, from Circle, from Fairbanks, from the Koyukuk, and as soon as Bering Sea permitted, from Nome, all sorts of craft bore all sorts of people to the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... which she has picked up, and fills it with water at the fountain; and Liza takes from her pocket an apple and some sticky toffee, and perhaps one of the little ones has a bun. And then the apple is rubbed until it shines with a dirty bit of rag called a pocket-handkerchief, and they all sit down together in a row and share the things; and even the baby has a hard lump of apple stuffed into its mouth, for Liza and Bella do not mean to be unkind to their babies, for ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... for, when the day re-appeared, the wind veered round to the eastward, a little northerly, bringing the craft directly on a lee-shore, blowing at the time so heavily as to render a foresail reefed down to a mere rag, more canvass than the little vessels could well bear. As the day returned, and the drizzle cleared off a little, land was seen to leeward, stretching slightly to seaward, both ahead and astern! On consulting his charts, and after getting a pretty ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... haven't been two years of war! They've been two years of a noisy, gaudy, rough and tumble! Bull Run was opera bouffe! The rest of it has been one fantastic and bloody carnival! Did anybody ever before see such a grandmother's rag bag of uniforms in an American army! What in hell do we want of zouaves in French uniforms, cavalry, armed with Austrian lances, ridiculous rocket-batteries, Polish riders, Hungarian hussars, grenadiers, mounted rifles, militia and volunteers in every garb, ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... Border which no Scotsman ever recrosses, to live and labour among a people by no means friendly to his country, it would have been a folly which so sensible a man as he was not likely to commit to have displayed the red rag of his nationality before his easily excited neighbours, upon whose friendliness his comfort and success depended. The farther argument of the Biographia Brittannica, that "it is pretty extraordinary that Barclay ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... to produce any rag-eared, stub-tailed, eager-eyed, collarless yellow cub. Nor did the mess-call raise his shrill bark in the vicinity of the cook's tent. ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... who called themselves Anacharsis and Anaxagoras, celebrated the worship of the Goddess of Reason. Bonfires of feudality; Goddesses of Liberty in plaster; trees of liberty planted in every square; altars de la patrie; huge rag-dolls representing Anarchy and Discord; Cleobis and Biton dragging their revered parents through the streets; bonnets rouges, banderolles, ca iras, carmagnoles, fraternisations, accolades; the properties, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... termed a "blind alley." On each side were low doors entering the basements of the houses, and the population consisted of rag-pickers, second-hand clothiers and one pawnshop. It was just such a place as one would expect to meet the lowest types of humanity. Dirty children were playing in the half-deserted place, their blue lips and pinched ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... revived 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 liffas, almost as numerous, excited a shudder of despair. While trying ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... have gone by themselves to-day, for I wanted to clean the gun ready for winter," said the fisherman, still rubbing at the lock with a piece of oiled rag. ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie
... took out an old dirty rag, which I suppose he called a handkerchief, unfolded it, and produced three cards, saying, "Them thar fellows gave me these ar cards, and I'm going to larn that ar game, so as when I get back to Texas I can beat ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... laughter and little shrieks and shouts of glee. They had had "Horned Lady," and Willy's head was a forest of paper horns, skilfully twisted. Hugh had just gone triumphantly through the whole list, "a sneezing elephant, a punch in the head, a rag, a tatter, a good report, a bad report, a cracked saucepan, a fuzzy tree-toad, a rat-catcher, a well-greaved Greek, etc., ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... went back to look for my own horse after that, beginning to feel very much amused at the whole thing; but, alas! my steed was gone. The young scoundrels had stolen him, to revenge themselves on me, I suppose, for disturbing them; and to relieve me from all doubt in the matter they left two bits of rag, one white and the other red, attached to the branch I had fastened the bridle to. For some time I wandered about the wood, and even shouted aloud in the wild hope that the young fiends were not going to carry things ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... great deal more when he is poor than he was when he was rich; but dishonesty goes very far indeed to make a man of no value—a thing to be thrown out in the dust-hole of the creation, like a bit of a broken basin, or a dirty rag. So North Wind had to look after Mr. Coleman, and try to make an honest man of him. So she sank the ship which was his last venture, and he was what himself and his wife ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... beating of his heart. It was faint but audible. Giovanni Severi was not dead yet, and a few moments later his artillerymen were carrying him down the hill towards the road, his injured arm swinging like a rag at ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... was my dress this morning," said Jenny, "but here can't any body play in the mud and not get dirty. My pantalet hung by a few threads, and as I wanted a rag to wash my earthens with, I tore it off. Why don't you ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... became a moral issue. The curl rag was the only beautifier that somehow never lost its odor of sanctity—and that was doubtless because curl rags were a perfectly logical part of the long-sleeved Canton flannel nightgown civilization. Curls couldn't be so very wrong when they were so frightfully ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... wouldn't give much for his flesh," observed Briant; "but his skin and bones would fetch a good price in the leather and rag market." ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne |
