"Rag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... poles are placed in the ground, and united by ropes at about the height of two feet, forming a circle of half a league in circumference, enclosing a space called the chasqu. Coloured pieces of rag are attached to the ropes, which are moved about by the wind. Some of the hunters are on horseback, others on foot. Each man is armed with the well-known bolas; which consists of three balls of lead, two of which are heavy and one lighter, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... nurse gave almost her entire attention to us older children, disposing easily of the baby's claims. Deborah, unless she was teething or whoop-coughing, was a quiet baby, and would lie for hours on the nurse's lap, sucking at a "pacifier" made of bread and sugar tied up in a muslin rag, and previously chewed to a pulp by the nurse. And while the baby sucked the nurse told us things—things that we must remember when we went to ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... middle of this procession, an old pair of breeches [culottes] borne on a pike with this motto: Vivent les Sans-Culottes! and, on a pitch-fork, the heart of a calf with this inscription: Coeur d'aristocrate, both significant emblems of the grim humor the imaginations of rag-dealers or butchers might come up with for a political carnival.—This, indeed, it is, they have been drinking and many are drunk.[2541] A parade is not enough, they want also to amuse themselves: traversing the hall they sing ca ira and dance in the intervals. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... I 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)
... came to visit at his home bringing the little sister a beautiful, new doll. That night she trotted off to bed hugging the new treasure close. The boy did not love dolls; but when he saw the old, rag baby left lonely and forsaken be quietly picked it up and carried ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... been alarmed at the sight of a sunken boulder, which I fancied must be near the top, and on further investigation have found myself to be upward of twenty feet from the danger of a concussion. I have frequently lowered a white rag to the depth of one hundred feet and been able to discern its every fold or stain. The color of the water near the shore is a deep green; but off soundings it has all the dark ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... down and handed it to her, and she hugged it to her in an ecstasy of delight. Then she held it off and looked at it, and hugged again, and for very joy she wept. It was only a poor little rag doll with face and hair grotesquely painted upon the cloth, and dressed in printed calico—but it was a doll—a real one—the first that Emily had ever owned. It had been the dream of her life that ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... the nations of the moral North! Where all is virtue, and the winter season Sends sin, without a rag on, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... It makes my heart ache to think of them. Some had a tolerably whole shirt and drawers, some had no drawers, and what was once a shirt was now a few shreds, hanging from the shoulders. Many had merely a rag, as a sort of jacket, with holes to put the arms through, and others had not a thread upon their bodies. The people seem to be almost bedless. Wherever we went, we found that the beds were a piece of carpet, or felt, or only a little straw, with a piece ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... 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 they ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... than to the gravity of the moment in which he stands; and he remembered vividly that he had never watched any soul in the supreme crisis of its experience without the stirring in himself of a strange sentiment of reverence. Even the most abandoned was covered in that exalted hour by some last rag of honour. ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... be so personal, Hal," said her cousin. "I wrote a poem on you last week, and called it 'Why Men Die Young.' It is in a rag called The Woman's Own Newspaper. It is also in The Youth's Journal, with the pronouns altered, and a different title; but I ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... it," said the convict laughingly, as he waved the torch and made it glow. "I mean that after I discovered it one day, as I told you, through a sheep falling down into that well-like opening, I made myself a rough lamp from an old pannikin, some melted mutton fat, and a bit of rag, and when I had chances I came down and followed the stream a little farther and a little farther, led on and on by the interest of the place, always expecting to find that it would end with an ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... theirs. Therefore a respectable man ought to keep bayaderes like flowers of a cemetery, three steps away from him. It is also said: changeable like waves of the sea, like clouds in a sunset, glowing only a moment—so are women. As soon as they have plundered a man they throw him away like a dye-rag that has been squeezed dry. This saying, too, is pertinent: just as no lotos grows on a mountain top, no mule draws a horse's loud, no scattered barley grows up as rice; so no wanton ever becomes a ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... 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 them, and the resultant mass was what ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... to be so impoverished. What humiliation, too; what disgrace! I began again to think about the poor widow's last mite, that I would have stolen a schoolboy's cap or handkerchief, or a beggar's wallet, that I would have brought to a rag-dealer without more ado, ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... and these, when required, were converted into differently-tinted reds, by a few hours' immersion in the Kiefel. He also kneaded bread in the hand, until it became as plastic as clay. This he modelled into snuffboxes (with strips of rag for hinges, and a piece of whalebone for a spring), draughts, chess-men, pipe-bowls, and other articles. When dry, they became hard and serviceable; and he sold them among the prisoners and the prison officials. He obtained thus a number of comforts not afforded by the ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... commonplace, ill-prepared meal, served on those artistic plates, as complacently as if dainty food were not a refinement; as if heavy rolls and poor bread, burnt or greasy steak, and wilted potatoes did not smack of the shanty, just as loudly as coarse crockery or rag carpet—indeed far more so; the carpet and crockery may be due to poverty, but a dainty meal or its reverse will speak volumes for innate refinement or its lack in the woman who serves it. You see by my speaking of rag carpets and ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... big enough to open the window and call out that he had several rags and bottles and bones to sell; but instead he had to be content with watching two self-important little girls chaffer on behalf of their mothers, and go off counting their pennies. The voice of the rag-and-bone man, grew fainter and fainter round corners out of sight; Lima Street became as empty and uninteresting as the nursery. Mark wished that a knife-grinder would come along and that he would stop under the dining-room window so that he could watch the sparks flying from the grindstone. ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... you, Miss Stein!'" the quivering voice jerked out in bitter mimicry. "Up to me, indeed! And he gives me this rag bag!" ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... ensconced herself in a chair near grandma's large one, with her wash-rag. Grandma took up her knitting, also, and the needles ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... don't forget my number, 'cause I can knock the spots out of any animal except a giraffe." The crowd cheered pa again and he got down off the elephant, took off his fire extinguisher, and handed Bolivar a piece of rag carpet, and said: "Eat it, you old catamaran, or I'll kill you," and Bolivar was so scared of pa he eat the carpet, which shows the power of ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... early every morning, took away our bread; and also how he himself had been suborned to maintain the milkman in coals. In two or three days more, I was informed by the authorities of his having led to the discovery of sirloins of beef among the kitchen-stuff, and sheets in the rag-bag. A little while afterwards, he broke out in an entirely new direction, and confessed to a knowledge of burglarious intentions as to our premises, on the part of the pot-boy, who was immediately taken up. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... gone. The next and last will leave tonight about ten o'clock. We want to make an early start, for the labor is all green. It'll take three times as long to put up the rag as usual." ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... seldom entered except at night to sleep, became, during the beautiful month of June, my palace of delight, and I went there after dinner to enjoy the long, and mild, and beautiful twilights. I had invented a sport which I deemed an improvement upon the rag-rat trick that the dirty little street urchins whisked, at the end of long strings, about the feet and legs of the passers-by. My game amused me greatly and I prosecuted it with vivacity. It would, I think, amuse me still if I dared play it, ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... 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 ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Joel brought himself up remorsefully, trying to recover the collection of rag dolls sent spinning from her ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... wooden ware, passed him; then a donkey bearing a pair of panniers filled with crockery or glass; then a sled driven over the bare cobblestones (the runners kept greased with a dripping oil rag so that it might run easily); and then, perhaps, a showy but clumsy family carriage, drawn by the brownest of Flanders horses, swinging the whitest ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... inadequacy; high up on the wall, bordering the ceiling, the moonlight, as though contemptuous of its artificial competitor, streamed in through a small, square window, and laid a white, flickering path to the door across a filthy and disreputable rag of carpet; also, through a rent in the roller shade, which was drawn over a sort of antiquated French window that opened on a level with the floor and in line with the top-light, the moonlight disclosed a narrow and ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... 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 men of Paris, the most hideous ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... night, as you may very well think, But hardly ever set my eyes together, or slept a wink. So I was a-dream'd, methought, that I went and search'd the folks round, And in a corner of Mrs. Duke's[3] box, ty'd in a rag, the money was found. So next morning we told Whittle,[4] and he fell a swearing: Then my dame Wadgar[5] came, and she, you know, is thick of hearing. "Dame," said I, as loud as I could bawl, "do you know what a loss I have had?" "Nay," says she, "my Lord Colway's[6] folks are all ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... himself, but taken down from his lips by another. But like the crutch-marks of the cripple by the Beautiful Gate, this blurred record is now out of print. From a tattered copy, rescued by the merest chance from the rag-pickers, the present account has been drawn, which, with the exception of some expansions, and additions of historic and personal details, and one or two shiftings of scene, may, perhaps, be not unfitly regarded something ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... encouraging barbarous tastes? Their young minds are very open to suggestion. They quickly adopt our standards, and the blame must fall upon us if they acquire crude color habits. Yellow journalism and rag-time tunes will not help their taste in speech or song, nor will violent hues improve their taste in ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... secret hair shirt, and not a red rag flaunted in your family's face. But never give up reading and thinking, the keeping in touch with abstract ideas. As long as you are young you can get on without this, but, when the charm of youth deserts ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... no encumbrances to lay aside, for they travelled in the simplest possible costume, but Ian drew the charge of his gun, wiped the piece carefully out with a bit of rag, made sure that the touch-hole was clear, fixed in a new flint, and loaded carefully with ball. The ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... said: "Don't forget again." A little later the fag-master had some friends to tea, and told the boy who gave good advice to boil him six eggs for not more than three minutes and a half. The boy who gave good advice, while they were on the fire, took part in a rag that which was going on in the passage; the result was that the eggs remained seven minutes in boiling water. They were hard. When the fag-master pointed this out and asked his fag what he meant by it, the boy who gave good advice persisted in his statement that they had been exactly three minutes ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... has proved that several of the most popular of recent rag-time tunes were originally scored by the brain of a patient who had met with a severe concussion while attempting to escape over the high wall of an Asylum for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... which bruised and tore his knees as he walked. They again pinioned his arms, put a reed into his hand, and covered his Divine countenance with spittle. They had already thrown all sorts of filth over his hair, as well as over his chest, and upon the old mantle. They bound his eyes with a dirty rag, and struck him, crying out at the same time in loud tones, 'Prophesy unto us, O Christ, who is he that struck thee?' He answered not one word, but sighed, ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... must beg, with a wooden arm and leg, And many a tattered rag hanging over my bum, I'm as happy with my wallet, my bottle, and my callet, [trull] As when I used in scarlet to follow ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... some life and pep to it, and rushin' 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 ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... end of women dominion at Siwash. There wasn't a rag of the movement left next fall. But we boys never entirely forgot what happened to us, and it's still the custom to elect a co-ed to some Athletic office. They do say that the only way to teach a politician what the people want ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... Rag Fair department of old clothes, the ludicrous and pathetic called for an equal blending of smiles and tears. It seemed as if every household, from Maine to California, from the St. Lawrence to the Rio Grande, had rummaged its attics for the flood sufferers. ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... induce each dog to do its best, the owner, or more probably the trainer stands beyond the winning post, and frantically waves a towel or very stout rag. Accompanied by a babel of noise, the race is started, and in less time than it takes to write it the competitors reach the goal, one and all as they finish taking a flying leap at their trainer's towel, to which they hold on with such tenacity that they are swung round in the air. The speed at ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... secret with animals, and the poor little bitch hardly winced under his touch, though her under-lip was torn away, and hung, like a red rag, by half an inch ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... took a place in the corner, refusing to budge an inch, and his wife and all her assistants went to work on each side of the square table. Each woman had at her right a flat brick on which to set her iron. In the center of the table a dish of water with a rag and a brush in it and also a bunch of tall ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... filling Ted's mouth with clean dish-rag and thinking dully that it was just like handling a man in the last stages of alcohol—the body had the same limp refractory heaviness all over—when he heard something that sounded like the bursting of a large blown-up paper bag from the other room. He ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... went on, "Mother, the Lord who gave each of us our talents will come home some day, and will demand from all an account. The teapot, the old stocking-foot, the linen rag, the willow-pattern tureen will yield up their barren deposit in many a house. Suffer your daughters, at least, to put their money to the exchangers, that they may be enabled at the Master's coming to pay Him ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Swift, when he had gone, 'what an unholy rag! This suits yours truly. Poor old Jim, though. I wonder what the ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... other side of the platform. The wall of the store has an enormous hole in it, but the thickly packed hay prevented the shrapnel scattering. The station-master was hit, and his watch saved him, but it was crumpled up like a rag. Two men were wounded, and one of them died. A whole crowd of refugees came in from Coxide, which is being heavily shelled. There was not a scrap of food for them, so I made soup in great quantities, and distributed it to them in a crowded ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... said Mr. Alexander evasively, "I'll see. Anyhow, don't say anything to my mother about it; a drunken man is like a red rag to a ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... 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 ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... but these views of Amy's mother were so complete an innovation that I paused. On the verge of a first drive I had never in my life stopped to consider the ethics of golf-club cleaning. Why had not Amy a pocket and a rag of sand-paper like resourceful Jimmy Baines? I don't remember to have ever read anything on the niceties of the art of scouring clubs. It is a subject on which the writers of golfing articles—prolific ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... jug of warm water," he said, "a bowl, and some soft rag—that is all. By the time that is ready I shall be. You will have to hold his leg, Godfrey," he went on as the Buriat returned to his tent. "You must hold it just under the knee as firmly as possible, so as to prevent the slightest ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... said Mrs. Rabbit. "It's all you can do to gossip about grown-up people's affairs." And then Mrs. Rabbit shook her dusting rag up and down, and maybe once sideways, and after that she shut the window. So Grandmother Magpie flew away ...
— Little Jack Rabbit's Adventures • David Cory
... and their wives, errand-boys with notes and packages, orange-girls with empty baskets, working-men out for a mouthful of air, and idle boys out for a 'spree'—men with burdens to carry, and men with hardly a rag to cover them; unctuous Jews, jabbering Frenchmen, and drowsy-looking Germans—on they flock, squeezing through the gangway, or clambering over the bulwarks, while the little vessel rolls and lurches till the water laves the planks on which you stand. In three minutes from her ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... until so near that he was assured that his piece would carry that far. It actually came within thirty yards of him, and he shot it while lying prone on the ground, the graceful animal noticing nothing but the white rag that had attracted ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... inspected herself, standing on the grass, while a pool of water rapidly widened round her. Alas, for the trim maiden of the morning! soaked to the skin, her lank hair clinging round her face, her collar a limp rag, the dye from her red silk tie spreading in artistic patches on her white blouse! Over all was the rich black mud of the lagoon, from brow to boot soles. Her hat, once white felt, was a sodden black-streaked mass; even her hands and face ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... the captain. 'Didn't know we had ladies on board. Well, Sally, oblige me by hauling down that rag there. I'll do the same for you another time.' He watched the yellow bunting as it was eased past the cross-trees and handed down on deck. 'You'll float no more on this ship,' he observed. 'Muster the people aft, Mr Hay,' he added, ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... from his book—peeps at you roguishly as you turn the pages. His atmosphere surrounds you; you smile when you ought to frown, chuckle when you should groan, and—O final triumph!—laugh aloud when, if you had a rag of principle left, you would fling the book into the fire. Your poor moral sense turns away with a sigh, and patiently awaits the conclusion of the ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... of letting himself be dunned? Truly, truly, Providence—his Providence, was a sorry jade! Tricks enough she had certainly played him: him, to whom she had given so enormous a secret capability for spending! With a crust for food, a rag for his covering, a garret for shelter, she had endowed him with artist-dreams of luxury, with every extravagant desire, and but one, faint possibility of attainment. One, however, he had; together with a higher ambition ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... picked up Neipperg, 'at Frating' deep in Moravia (November 7th, the very day while Friedrich was getting homaged in Breslau), and turned him northwestward again. The Grand-Duke, in such strength, marches Rag-ward what he can; might be there before the French, were he swift; and is at any rate in disagreeable proximity to that Budmeis-Tabor Country, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... "I have no trouble now in patching and piecing that rag the world calls—a character. I can sit at your feet every day unquestioned. To be sure, others do the same, but they are female eccentrics, and have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... square on the East side bounded by Houston, Stanton, Pitt, and Willett streets. It contains a group of three front and seven rear houses, and is known as "Rag-pickers' Row." These ten houses contain a total of 106 families, or 452 persons. All these persons are rag-pickers, or more properly chiffonniers, for their business is to pick up every thing saleable they can find in the streets. Formerly they brought their gatherings to this place ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... good shower-bath did none of us any harm; and as soon as the rain was over, and the moisture on our skins had evaporated, we had our garments as warm, dry, and comfortable as if they had been before a fire. In populous districts, we kept on our drawers, or supplied their place with a piece of rag, or a skin; and then, when the rain was over, we wrapped ourselves up in our 'quarry,' and taking off the wetted articles, hung them over the animal's cruppers to dry." Another ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... interrupted by a person who appeared in the background and resembled a judicial official. Voltaire saw who it was, and became furious: "Your Majesty, how can you allow this rag-tag and bob-tail to enter the castle-park? Why do you not enclose it with ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... the same effect on Conway that a red rag has on a mad bull," laughed Morgan. "He can never forget that trick your cousin ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... His hand! his seal! The secrets of my soul, Conceal'd from all but him! All, all conspire To banish doubt, and brand him for a villain! Our schemes for ever cross'd, our mines discover'd, Betray'd some traitor lurking near my bosom. Oft have I rag'd, when their wide-wasting cannon Lay pointed at our batt'ries yet unform'd, And broke the meditated lines of war. Detested Cali, too, with artful wonder, Would shake his wily head, and closely whisper, Beware of Mustapha, beware ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... Of course, during a skirmish or battle, armed men should never leave their ranks to attend a dead or wounded comrade—this should be seen to in advance by the colonel, who should designate his musicians or company cooks as hospital attendants, with a white rag on their arm to indicate their office. A wounded man should go himself (if able) to the surgeon near at hand, or, if he need help, he should receive it from one of the attendants and not a comrade. It is wonderful how soon the men accustom themselves ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... first!" said Falloden. "Who's got some soda-water bottles?" And he beckoned imperiously to a neighbouring group of men,—"bloods"—always ready to follow him in a "rag," and heroes together with him of a couple of famous bonfires, ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in my life. Suppose," said I, with vivid recollections of my school days, "suppose they rag me?" ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... that there were thousands more in the Forum. Hordes kept pouring in from the Piazza di Spagna, from the Via del Babbuino, from the Piazza del Popolo. Every one had something in his hand: a wreath of flowers, a branch of olive or laurel, a banner, a rag tied to a stick. Some carried holy images uplifted above their heads; inscriptions, emblems, pictures of the Pope, of the King, of the Princes, of Garibaldi; never under the sun was there such a medley and confusion of people and things! And all the while only that low murmur, and the great multitude ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... his supreme skill in thrusting the irritating lancet of his humour into bulging excrescences on the flank of that monstrous pachyderm of Europe, the German. Professor Knatschke (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), aptly translated by Professor R.L. CREWE, is a joyous rag. It purports to be the correspondence of a Hun Professor, full of an egregious self-sufficiency and humourlessness and greatly solicitous for the unhappy Alsatian who is ignorant and misguided enough to prefer the Welsch ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... to have been invented by the Chinese at an unknown but very early date. It was introduced to Europe by the Arabs about the 10th century A.D. It was made of linen or rags and did not vary greatly from the rag paper of to-day. As the process of manufacture is fully described in the book on paper (No. 13) of this series, description is not necessary here. Paper was not much used in Europe until the invention of printing. Being much less substantial than vellum it did not commend itself ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... away enough food and wearing apparel to maintain a small army. We are, alas, a very wasteful people and are constantly becoming more so. Our ancestors used to lay aside buttons, string, papers, scraps of cloth and use them again. They made over clothing, fashioned rag rugs, conserved everything they could lay hands on. Their attics were museums where were horded every sort of object against the time when it might be needed. But do we follow their example? No, indeed! In fact, we go to the other extreme and ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... down upon whenever possible. He once said, "I don't know a 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 in spite ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... have a living matter in the atmosphere. We often notice in the summer, after a rain, that the ground is yellow. On gathering up the yellow powder and examining it under the microscope, we find that it consists of pollen. The pollen of rag weed and other plants is supposed to be the cause of hay fever. But we also have something far more important in the germs of certain classes of vegetation. The effects are familiar. If food is put away, it becomes mouldy. This mould is a peculiar kind of vegetation which is called a fungus, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... is suitable for work of this kind, but it can also be finished in "golden oak" which is done in the following manner: First put on a golden oak stain and after it has dried for about 2 hours, apply the filler. Let this dry about 10 minutes then rub off with an old rag. Then go over the case again with some very fine sandpaper and after seeing that all parts are free from dust and dirt the varnish can be applied. Three coats of varnish will give a ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 2 • H. H. Windsor
... head in a species of wild turban made of dried grass and tall sedgy leaves; then he put several patches of red and white earth on his black face, as well as on his body in various places, and fastened a number of loose pieces of rag, torn from a handkerchief, and bits of tattered leaves to his arms and legs in such a manner as to give him an extremely wild and dishevelled appearance. I must say that when his hasty toilet was completed ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... I'm not going to rag you." And with the ghost of a smile he passed into the Ambler's stall. The groom had just finished putting him to rights; the horse stood ready to be led from the field of his defeat. The groom moved out, and George went to the Ambler's head. There ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... perceive, with wonderful skill of needlework; and the stitch (as I am assured by ladies conversant with such mysteries) gives evidence of a now forgotten art, not to be discovered even by the process of picking out the threads. This rag of scarlet cloth—for time, and wear, and a sacrilegious moth had reduced it to little other than a rag—on careful examination, assumed the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... followed, 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 walls of the houses, and ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... farm-hand came blustering into the room, his face covered with a yarn comforter. He slowly unwound the rag and brought to view the side of his face, swollen to ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... not dwell upon the sequel. At the end of an hour his face was red, and wet with perspiration; his outer garments lay scattered here and there over the place; he was the angriest man in the State, and there wasn't a rag or remnant of an injurious adjective left in him anywhere—and I had ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... the Sorters and the Postmen, and them that were of the tribes of Rag and of Tag, hardened their hearts, and were silent at the tenth hour; for they said among themselves, 'Shall the poor man shout in his poverty, and the hungry celebrate his lack ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... through a long covered bazaar, in which was a multitude of toys, wax dolls, wooden dolls, china dolls, composition dolls, rag dolls, and dolls of all descriptions; together with wooden horses, donkeys, elephants, and every kind of toy in which children delight. After this she came out upon a more open space, where a Happy Family was being displayed ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... of our mourning are ended, The lean years of famine are fled, When, sick for a spoonful of aught that was tuneful, We've sorrowed as over the dead For Music, forlorn and unfriended, Gone down into glimmerless gloom, While rude "rag-time" revels were dancing a devils' ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... doing some other foolish thing. I expected it, however. No woman is happy unless she's flat down about half the time. How on earth any of your sex manage to live to be twenty years old is a mystery to me. The average woman has no more sense than a rag baby." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... diabolical procedure had been set up by the 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 either blank, or filled by laughing listeners. The most ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... farmhouse (where Ham had kept two rooms); banished along with the superintendent the stiff plush furniture, the yellow-red carpets, the easels and the melodeon, and decked it out in bright chintzes, with wall-papers to match, dainty muslin curtains, and rag-carpet rugs on the hardwood floors. The pseudo-classic porch over the doorway, which had suggested a cemetery, was removed, and a wide piazza added, furnished with wicker lounging chairs and tables, and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... funny little wink of one intelligent eye, as if he fully understood; then slowly waddled across the rag-carpeted floor and curled himself up at a safe distance from Sir Philip, upon whom he kept a wary watch. But he was a weary dog by that time, and so glad of warmth and repose that he left even his own damaged coat to take care of ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... in those days were little housewives and took as much pride in having the family silver, copper and brass polished as the older ones. The oaken floors were made white with soft soap and sand, and the comfortable rugs of rag carpet were woven with special care. The high-posted bedsteads with the valance around the bottom of white linen, the canopy above draped with chintz of the daintiest tracings of figures and flowers, ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... according to Ashantee custom, had been buried alive. A similar fetish had been put up at a river near Moinsey to stop the British troops. The advancing army found almost every turn of the road to Coomassie strewn with fetish documents. Near Fommanah nearly every tree had a white rag fastened to it as a charm. On the King hearing of the British victory, he went to pour libation to the spirits of his ancestors, and to ask their assistance against the enemies ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... Squire like your pa; and then I'll take all the little thieving fellows I can find, and help 'em to be good. Rich folks don't know how hard 'tis for poor ones to keep from stealin' when their stomach is as flimpsy as a rag. I know how to pity 'em, for when mammy locked me up till I'd agree to steal again, there was such a gnawing and gnawing, that I should have give in, if ...
— Bertie and the Gardeners - or, The Way to be Happy • Madeline Leslie
... neglect ever saddened the heart of the most repulsive, but all were fed and clothed, nursed and caressed with an affection which never failed. One forlorn fragment of dollanity had belonged to Jo and, having led a tempestuous life, was left a wreck in the rag bag, from which dreary poorhouse it was rescued by Beth and taken to her refuge. Having no top to its head, she tied on a neat little cap, and as both arms and legs were gone, she hid these deficiencies by folding it in a blanket and devoting her best bed to this chronic invalid. If anyone ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... that Lamarck's theory had never yet had the honour of being seriously discussed. It never has—not at least in connection with the name of its propounder. To mention Lamarck's name in the presence of the conventional English society naturalist has always been like shaking a red rag at a cow; he is at once infuriated; "as if it were possible," to quote from Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire, whose defence of Lamarck is one of the best things in his book, {235b} "that so great labour ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... knightly race of Harcourts, and 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. The complete preservation and good condition of these statues, even ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... M'Adam had reached the bank of the stream. In he plunged, splashing and cursing, and seized the struggling puppy; then waded back, the waters surging about his waist, and Red Wull, limp as a wet rag, in his hand. The little man's hair was dripping, for his cap was gone; his clothes clung to him, exposing the miserableness of his figure; and his eyes blazed like hot ashes in ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... a flesh-wound or slight cut, wash it with cold water and bandage it with a clean, white rag. The edges of a deep cut should be drawn together and held in place by narrow strips of adhesive plaster, fastened across the wound from ...
— Object Lessons on the Human Body - A Transcript of Lessons Given in the Primary Department of School No. 49, New York City • Sarah F. Buckelew and Margaret W. Lewis
... the 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
... since she had sent off her last letter to him and yet there seemed to be nothing to say. She added a line or two, dropped her pen and went back to the window. The girls were dancing to the music of the hurdy-gurdy. Alice Waite was standing on the edge of the crowd, hugging a huge rag-doll in her arms as if it was her dearest treasure. Eleanor shrugged her shoulders impatiently. The whole affair was perfectly absurd. She had told Alice Waite so at luncheon, in her haughtiest manner. She picked up a book from the table and began to read, but in spite of her determination ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... 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 ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Huntsville, Alabama, in 1818-19, I frequently saw slaves on and around the public square, with hardly a rag of clothing on them, and in a great many instances with but a single garment both in summer and in winter; generally the only bedding of the slaves was ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... several Huxleys—the artificer in words, the amateur of garbage, pierrot lunaire, the cynic in rag-time, the fastidious sensualist. For my part, I believe only in the last, taking that to be the real Huxley and the rest prank, virtuosity, and, most of all, self-consciousness. As the foal will shy at his own shadow, so Aldous Huxley, nervous by fits at the poise ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... cheerful in its tone and with a definite design. This will become 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 ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller |
