"Scratch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sagacity of Mr. Bonflon relieved us from our dilemma. He hoisted out the small car or tender, and, letting it down with great care and precision, safely accomplished the object. In the space of half an hour, De Ary, without a scratch, and, like a gallant Gaul, rather proud of his adventure than frightened at it, was again restored ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... opened fire up the slope on to the camp on the skyline above. A stampede of the horses ensued, but a resolute front was quickly formed and the attack was checked. An alarm that the enemy was threatening the rear of the camp was proved to be unfounded by a scratch gathering of details which was hastily mustered; it then wheeled round, and picking up reinforcements on the way charged the Boer left at the river. The charge was irresistible, and the sun had hardly risen when Delarey's whole line ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... instead of finding his dearest Rapunzel, he found the enchantress, who gazed at him with wicked and venomous looks. 'Aha!' she cried mockingly, 'you would fetch your dearest, but the beautiful bird sits no longer singing in the nest; the cat has got it, and will scratch out your eyes as well. Rapunzel is lost to you; you will never see her again.' The king's son was beside himself with pain, and in his despair he leapt down from the tower. He escaped with his life, but the thorns into which he fell pierced his eyes. Then he wandered quite ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... can't tell what—How the devil should I, when I was as drunk as David's sow, you know? But I was punished, my lad—made to kiss the wench that never speaks but when she scolds, and that's the gunner's daughter, comrade. Yes, the minister's son of no matter where—has the cat's scratch on his back! This roused me, and when we were ashore with the boat, I gave three inches of the dirk, after a stout tussle, to the fellow I blamed most, and took the bush for it. There were plenty of wild lads then along shore—and, I don't care who knows—I went on the account, look ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the clans was the small but fairly efficient body of men who formed the Town Guard; the Train Bands, some thousand strong, who knew no more than so many spinsters of the division of a battle; the small and undisciplined Edinburgh regiment; and a scratch collection of volunteers hurriedly raked together from among the humbler citizens of the town, and about as useful as so many puppets to oppose to the daring and the ferocity of the clans. Edinburgh opinion had changed very rapidly with regard to that same daring ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... tried to scratch by the wood-pile, but the ground was covered with little chips, so she could not ...
— Bobby of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton
... another twenty-five down, and Moss will have to turn Jew. Well, I can get plenty of jobs as good as his, and there aren't many Dolly St. Johns in the world, all said and done. I'll risk it, and take my gruelling afterwards. What's more, if Mr. John's papa don't come up to the scratch, I'll put a word in for myself. It would make a line in the newspapers anyway, and who knows but what we mightn't both get ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... kicks away any one trying to bite at the delicious morsel. Selfishness reigns everywhere. When she has eaten her fill, she makes way for another, who in her turn becomes intolerant. One after the other, all the inmates of the menagerie come and refresh themselves. After cramming their crops, they scratch the soles of their feet a little with their mandibles, polish up their forehead and eyes with a leg moistened with spittle and then, hanging to the trellis-work or lying on the sand in a posture of contemplation, blissfully they digest ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... who, seeing him in this pickle, scared, appalled, shivering, raving, staring, berayed, and torn with the claws of the famous cat Rodilardus, could not choose but laugh, and said to him, Prithee what wouldst thou do with this cat? With this cat? quoth Panurge; the devil scratch me if I did not think it had been a young soft-chinned devil, which, with this same stocking instead of mitten, I had snatched up in the great hutch of hell as thievishly as any sizar of Montague college could have done. The devil take Tybert! ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... between Mrs. Ess Kay and Potter, and though she seemed so angry with Mrs. Van der Windt and several other members of the Ball committee, for trying to make a stand against her, she was perfectly ruthless about the names she would scratch off the lists her secretary was continually making out and revising ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... fall out with it, quarrel, or be over hastily angry; offer to turn it away from study in a humour, but come to it again upon better cogitation; try another time with labour. If then it succeed not, cast not away the quills yet, nor scratch the wainscot, beat not the poor desk, but bring all to the forge and file again; torn it anew. There is no statute law of the kingdom bids you be a poet against your will or the first quarter; if it comes in ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... dear, To test Lothario's passion, simply said, "Forego the weed before we go to wed. For smoke, take flame; I'll be that flame's bright fanner. To have your Anna, give up your Havana." But he, when thus she brought him to the scratch, Lit his cigar, and threw away ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... Constitution. I have only been able to suggest very impressionistically what they are and the lessons to be drawn from them. If I were able to deliver a dozen addresses on the subject in this historic Hall and with this indulgent audience I would not scratch even the surface. To understand the Constitution of the United States you must not only read the text but the thousands of opinions rendered in the last 130 years by the Supreme Court in its great task of interpreting this wonderful document. Few documents have been the subject of more extended ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... twenty-five-dollar made-to-orders. And if the years had brought, among other things, a certain hardness about the jaw and a line or two at the corners of the eyes, it was not surprising. You can't rub up against the sharp edges of this world and expect to come out without a scratch or so. ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... alike conceived and dared? What act proved all its thought had been? What will but felt the fleshly screen? 60 We ride and I see her bosom heave. There's many a crown for who can reach. Ten lines, a statesman's life in each! The flag stuck on a heap of bones, A soldier's doing! what atones? They scratch his name on the Abbey-stones. My riding is ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... common enough, but they are not generally strung on square-plaited copper wire, and still fewer amulets bear black enamel on silver. There were none except the Kamboh and the lama in the compartment, which, luckily, was of an old type with solid ends. Kim made as to scratch in his bosom, and thereby lifted his own amulet. The Mahratta's face changed altogether at the sight, and he disposed the ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... large estates. Without the slightest military training, by study and zeal, he soon made himself an accomplished staff officer. Of singular coolness in battle, he never blundered, and, though much exposed, pulled through without a scratch. My aide, Lieutenant Hamilton, grandson of General Hamilton of South Carolina, was a cadet in his second year at West Point when war was declared, upon which he returned to his State—a gay, cheery lad, with all the pluck of ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... (N.B.—Which play of yours? Not surely the 'English Tragedy' unless shown to him in MS.? {72b} Come: I have sent you my Translations: you should give me your Original Plays. When I get home, I will send you an old Scratch by Thackeray of yourself in Louisa ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... a good show. (Cousin Charley had assured Alfred that very morning that he considered him the best actor he had ever seen). He'll be out with a fly-by-night troupe afore the next month. Alfred's a gone goslin'. He's got no trade an' he'll hev to scratch to make a livin'. I sort of pity Uncle John an' Aunt Mary, kase they think so much of the boy, an' it's a great pity for them. Uncle John ought to beat the foolishness out of him long ago. He never touches him, no matter what he does. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... sensibility gave them a formidable advantage over him. They were, indeed, contemptible assailants. Of all that they wrote against him, nothing has survived except what he has himself preserved. But the constitution of his mind resembled the constitution of those bodies in which the slightest scratch of a bramble, or the bite of a gnat, never fails to fester. Though his reputation was rather raised than lowered by the abuse of such writers as Freron and Desfontaines, though the vengeance which he took on Freron and Desfontaines was such, that scourging, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "good Mr. Mustard-seed, but to help Mr. Peas-blossom to scratch; I must go to a barber's, Mr. Mustard-seed, for methinks I am marvelous ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Pierre Radisson should put the blanket about Kazan, and carry him in to the camp, without scratch or bite. It was this miracle that he achieved, with Joan's arm resting on Kazan's shaggy neck as she held one end of the blanket. They laid him down close to the fire, and after a little it was the man again who brought warm water and washed away the blood from the torn ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... but admire the beauty of her fellow countrywomen, especially since herself and her own few acquaintances had always been slightly sunburnt or marked on the back of the hands by a bramble-scratch at ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... dust bowled along by the evening breeze. She was sixteen; how strange she looked, with her rather elongated face! she savoured of the open air, of the grass, of mother earth. And so accurate was his recollection of her that he could once more see a scratch upon one of her supple wrists, a rosy scar on her white skin. Why did she laugh like that when she looked at him with her blue eyes? He was engulfed in her laugh as in a sonorous wave which resounded and pressed close to him on every side; he inhaled it, he felt it vibrate within ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... he was pressing you against the accursed altar with his spear poised. I didn't waste any time finding my aim, but even as it was the iron point had touched you when the bullet crashed through his brain. The shock swerved the weapon a little and you were only wounded in the shoulder. You got a scratch which might have been serious but for your Arctic coat. The fellow fell dead beside you, and under the circumstances I felt compelled to shoot the other one also, for he was insane with the delirium of their bloody rite, and I knew that our lives would never ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... and of seed-land; there, alone amid great bare fields, a countryman was ploughing. The wooden plough, as regards its form, might have been thousands of years old; it was drawn by a little donkey, and traced in the soil—the generous southern soil—the merest scratch of a furrow. I could not but approach the man and exchange words with him; his rude but gentle face, his gnarled hands, his rough and scanty vesture, moved me to a deep respect, and when his speech fell upon my ear, it was as though ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... belongings fought for with tooth and claw by their 'dearest' relations. Dearest relations are, according to my experience, very much like wild cats: give them the faintest hope of a legacy, and they scratch and squawl as though it were raw meat for which they have been starving. In all my long career as a solicitor I never knew one 'dearest relation' ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... blotting-paper in the circle where the light was brightest. As he took it a stain on his right hand caught his eye, and he dropped the pipe to look at it. The blood was dark and was quite dry, and he could not find any scratch to account for it. It was on the inner side of his right hand, between the thumb and forefinger, and was no ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... to conquer thirty or forty men, without receiving a scratch or two in the encounter; and knowing this, they took Congo's ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... their pearly teeth glittering with eagerness to mangle his flesh, and their monstrous fore-arms, hung with sharp, bony claws, ready and anxious to hug his body in a close and most loving embrace. There was not much time for Kit to scratch his head and cogitate. In fact, one instant spent in thought then would have proved his death warrant without hope of a reprieve. Messrs. Bruin evidently considered their domain most unjustly intruded upon. The gentle elk and deer mayhap were their dancing boys and girls; ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... Bishop of Oxford was quietly installed by proxy: but only two members of Magdalene College attended the ceremony. Many signs showed that the spirit of resistance had spread to the common people. The porter of the college threw down his keys. The butler refused to scratch Hough's name out of the buttery book, and was instantly dismissed. No blacksmith could be found in the whole city who would force the lock of the President's lodgings. It was necessary for the Commissioners to employ ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bitten, that moment the wound should be searched for, and when found, should be freely opened with a knife, and lunar caustic, caustic potash, or the permanganate of potash at once applied to all parts of the wound, care being taken not to suffer a single scratch to escape. This, if attended to in time, will ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... was not a sound to be heard except the distant tinkle of chisel and stone, and the occasional rustle of a falling leaf, until Schwartz, the subject of this history, walked pensively round a corner eighty yards down the avenue, and paused to scratch one ear with a hind foot. He stood for a time with a thoughtful air, looked up the avenue and down the avenue, and then with slow deliberation, and an occasional pause for thought, he walked towards me. When within half a dozen yards he stopped and took good stock of me, with brown ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... whispered Kieran to Paula. "Scratch their ears? I used to tame squirrels this way when I was ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... old woman comes with a nutshell full of the matter of the best sort of smallpox, and asks what vein you please to have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer with a large needle (which gives you no more pain than a common scratch), and puts into the vein as much matter as can lie upon the head of her needle, and after that binds up the little wound with a hollow bit of shell; and in this manner opens four or ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... thing was that he should love her, and then a year would be soon enough, or if he went at it right (that depended on him, she would see about it), six months; but with that Freneli he must have nothing more to do or she would scratch both their eyes out and the hussy would have to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... her thoughtlessness was exasperating, her docility was exemplary. But she seemed disheartened; then she seemed to consider; then she brightened a little; then she got some letters, sat down, and began to write—scratch, scratch, scratch, squeak, squeak, squeak, on rough paper with a quill pen, writing in furious haste at a table just behind her husband. Why did she choose the library, his own private sanctum, for the purpose, when there were half a dozen other rooms at least where she might have been quite ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... spot where they work over the cattle. Hardy danced his sorrel up to the line where the gray was waiting, there was a scamper of feet, a streak of dust, and Bill Lightfoot was out one yearling heifer. A howling mob of cowboys pursued them from the scratch, racing each other to the finish, and then in a yell of laughter at Bill Lightfoot they capered up the canyon and spread out over The Rolls—the ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... Before attempting to investigate the origin of this mistake, I hasten to write to you, knowing, dearest, what a shock this must have been to you. It is true that I was in the Makar Akool affair, and was slightly wounded—a mere scratch in the arm—but nothing more. I have not written to you for some months past because I have been turning something over in my mind. Anna, dearest, there is no chance of my being in a position to marry for some years yet, and I feel it incumbent upon ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... Sir Burne Jones' little daughter was once in such a specially angry mood as to scratch and bite and spit, her father somewhat roughly shook the child and said, "I do not see what has got into you, Millicent; the devil must teach you these things." Whereupon, the little one indignantly flashed back this reply:—"Well ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... gunners. I was going to sleep there too, and as I have a new officer, Ingle, with me he was going to sleep there. But by the greatest stroke of good fortune I spotted this one just near. It is the best dug-out I have ever had. The other dug-out is swarming with mice and rats, who scratch earth into you all the time, and come and expire on you at night. One fell down and died on the table while we were having tea. But in this I have only seen one mouse so far, and it has got about ten feet of solid earth over it. I sleep on a comfortable folding ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... witches scratch you, and pinch you, and bite you, don't they? A. Yes. Then he put his hand upon her breast and belly, viz. on the clothes over her, and felt a living thing, as he said; which moved the father also to ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... this. It made him feel hot and uncomfortable all over. He knew well how careful he ought to be, and yet, do what he could, from time to time his forgetfulness of the part betrayed him into unreserve. His mother saw that he winced, and enjoyed the scratch she had given him. Had she felt less confident of victory she had better have foregone the pleasure of touching as it were the eyes at the end of the snail's horns in order to enjoy seeing the snail draw them in again—but she knew ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... tale of my youth,' he dreams. And indeed, it is a dream! The mountain opens, the captive princess comes forth and leads him in, and he rests his head in her lap all strewn with blossoms. The lovely trolls come and scratch his head and music sounds from the rocks. It is characteristic of Shakespeare that the lovers do not dream fairy tales of their childhood. Higher culture has given them deeper passions, more intense personal relations; in dreams they but continue ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... consolidating the white South was measurably achieved. As some one flippantly put the case, there came to be in many sections "two kinds of people—Democrats and negroes." It was the general feeling on the part of the whites that to fail to vote was shameful, to scratch a ticket was a crime, and to attempt to organize the negroes was treason to one's race. The "Confederate brigadier" sounded the rallying cry at every election, and a military record came to be almost a requisite for political preferment. Men's eyes were turned to the past, and on every stump were ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... and rolled up his sleeves. He knew quite well who had thrown the missile. A ring was at once formed, and the fight began. It only lasted, however, for three rounds. The bridegroom was victorious; he escaped without a scratch. The other man was, as he richly deserved to be, severely punished. It was, however, just as well for him that this was the case, otherwise we would have ducked him in the muddiest tail race within ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... refresh my memory of names and circumstances, and what was specially wanted, &c. In these, I brief'd cases, persons, sights, occurrences in camp, by the bed-side, and not seldom by the corpses of the dead. Some were scratch'd down from narratives I heard and itemized while watching, or waiting, or tending somebody amid those scenes. I have dozens of such little note-books left, forming a special history of those years, for myself alone, full of associations never to be possibly said or sung. I wish I could convey to ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Henry Worley, striker of the Amaranth! My mother lives in St. Louis. Tell her a lie for a poor devil's sake, please. Say I was killed in an instant and never knew what hurt me—though God knows I've neither scratch nor bruise this moment! It's hard to burn up in a coop like this with the whole wide world so near. Good-bye boys—we've all got to come to ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... altogether unexpected good fortune attended them, and they reached Taos, without receiving a scratch or losing a fur. They found on arriving at that quaint town, that there was great demand for peltries and prices were correspondingly high. They sold out their stock for a very liberal price, and Kit's friend, despite his advice, went on a carousal which ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... I; I did not get so much as a scratch. A quarter-staff is a rare weapon in a fight like that, for you can keep well out of the reach of their swords. In faith I have not had so pleasant an exercise since that fight Dickon and I had in the market-place at Winchester ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... him en my Missus say, 'John O., you let my nigger alone.' You see, my Missus had her niggers en den old Boss had his niggers cause when old Missus been marry Massa John O. Bethea, she had brought here share of niggers from whe' she was raise in de country. It been like dis, old Missus father had scratch de pen for everyone of his chillun to have so many niggers apiece for dey portion of his property so long as dey would look after dem en treat dem good. Den if dere been talk dat dem chillun never do what ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... And the Honourable George, talking in whispers to Frank about his widow—"Not such a catch as yours, you know; but something extremely snug;—and have it all my own way, too, old fellow, or I shan't come to the scratch." And the Honourable John prepared to toady Frank about his string of hunters; and the Lady Amelia, by herself, not quite contented with these democratic nuptials—"After all, she is so absolutely nobody; absolutely, absolutely," ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... which, together with my razors, I had saved from the wreck of our fortunes, shaved him in the face of the whole camp.[9] I very soon found that this exhibition of my abilities and profession might be productive of the greatest advantage to my future prospects. Every fellow who had a head to scratch immediately found out that he wanted shaving, and my reputation soon reached the ears of the chief, who called me to him, and ordered me to operate upon him without loss of time. I soon went to work upon a large head that exhibited the marks of many a sword cut, and which ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... scratch, Scratch went the old black hen! Every fowl that scrapes in the barn Can scratch as ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... see my family last night. Please to admire them now; we are all met together for tea. This is our second, our feast-day tea. You may embrace us all. Only Shurochka wouldn't let you, and the cat would scratch you. ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... thought she had seen the worst, and was sighing at being able to say nothing for it, when Miss Winter confounded her by turning a leaf, and showing it was possible to make a still wilder combination of scramble, niggle, scratch, and crookedness—and this was supposed to be an amended edition! Miss Winter explained that Ethel had, in an extremely short time, performed an exercise in which no fault could be detected except the writing, which was ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... was a mere scratch." And, raising her skirt, she displayed a foot that might have turned a steadier head than Norbert's. "See," said she, "it is there ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... first to run away, shaking his plumes like a great yellow prancing cock,[378] while I am left to watch the nets.[379] Once back again in Athens, these brave fellows behave abominably; they write down these, they scratch through others, and this backwards and forwards two or three times at random. The departure is set for to-morrow, and some citizen has brought no provisions, because he didn't know he had to go; he stops in front of the statue of Pandion,[380] reads his name, is dumbfounded and starts ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... met at the foot of the avenue, at the far end of which, on her palace steps, stood the Grand Duchess to make her choice. Now, when Prince Melchior came to the golden road, he thought it would be a sin and a shame were his horse to set hoof on it and scratch it and perchance break off a plate of it; so he turned aside and rode up along the right of it under the chestnuts. Likewise and for the same reason Prince Otto turned aside and rode on the left. But Prince Caspar thought of the lady so devoutly and wished so much to be with her ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... could be better! Why the devil should I scratch around for pennies. I'll make one swoop, and that's an end to it! Only God give us the nerve! Thanks, Lazar. You've treated me like a friend. [He rises] Now, get busy! [He goes up to him and taps him on the shoulder] If you get the thing done properly, ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... Holmes says and what Robert stoutly maintains, though you can't see a scratch or a mark or anything to indicate that such means had been used. No, major," and the doctor shook his head ominiously. "I—I have another theory, but it's one too shadowy, too unsubstantial to speak of. It is ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... your papers and oath of allegiance. Scratch out one side and sign the other in the presence of God and the recording angel. Mark God's ...
— The Chocolate Soldier - Heroism—The Lost Chord of Christianity • C. T. Studd
... the tiger became wild with fright, and, quite forgetting the jackal, and that reef-knot in their tails, he bolted away full tilt, dragging the jackal behind him. Bumpety, bump, bump, over the stones!—crash, scratch, patch, through ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... scratch among the ashes at the edge of the pile. His fingers encountered many rough chunks of earth, partly hardened by fire. The rain, the frost, and the cold of winter would naturally have broken those ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... who came to our house twice a week, and I remember finding her in tears, and asking what was the matter. "Ah! c'est Monsieur qui m'a grondee," she sobbed desperately. "But what has he said to put you in such a state?" "Oh! he did not say much; only, 'Lazarette, why will you scratch off the paint with the matches?' ... 'Mais quand Monsieur gronde,'" ... and there was ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... the following iron ores: Hematite, brown hematite, magnetite, carbonate, and pyrites. Note the color and physical appearance of each; scratch the first four with a very hard steel point and note the color of ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... Benjy, giving him instructions for cutting it down on certain days, and cautioning Tom not to meddle with the wart for a fortnight. And then they strolled out and sat on a bench in the sun with their pipes, and the pigs came up and grunted sociably and let Tom scratch them; and the farmer, seeing how he liked animals, stood up and held his arms in the air, and gave a call, which brought a flock of pigeons wheeling and dashing through the birch-trees. They settled down in clusters on the farmer's arms and shoulders, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... poison yourself, Hazelton," replied Rutter quickly, as one of the chainmen came near with the recaptured pony. "Snake venom isn't deadly in the stomach—-only when it gets into the blood direct. There's no danger unless you've a cut or a deep scratch in your mouth. Spit the stuff ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... director. My heart and mind were, however, so full of other matters and so far away from these, that I performed all my duties with the greatest good-nature and serviceableness, very much as, while at work, you stroke and scratch your ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... should require to be so in two. She thoroughly knew, however, how many ways Mrs. Jordan counted in. It all meant simply that her fate was pressing her close. If that fate was to be sealed at the matrimonial altar it was perhaps not remarkable that she shouldn't come all at once to the scratch of overwhelming a mere telegraphist. It would necessarily present to such a person a prospect of regretful sacrifice. Lord Rye—if it was Lord Rye—wouldn't be "kind" to a nonentity of that sort, even though people quite as ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... was," Alec answered, deep in thought. "But it was a serious business, just the same. When Blue Bonnet fell I scarcely knew whether I'd pick her up whole. Not having a scratch is marvelous." ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... of the younger Grand Central Station set there was scarce a one who could start with me at scratch and beat me to a train just pulling out of the shed; and even though he might have bested me at sprinting, I had him whipped to a souffle at panting. In a hundred-yard dash I could spot anyone ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... scratch I received in the forest, and hardly worthy thy notice, dame. But where is Mistress Eveline? and I ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... to every one on the farm, so that they won't have anything to scratch my eyes out for afterward," said Lasse after a little. "And I should like you to thank Karna nicely for having put everything in such good order. It isn't every ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... lion-like valour, in obedience, and endurance. They take no rest, and flight or retreat is unknown to them. On their expeditions they are accompanied by oxen, sheep, camels, and horses, and sweet or sour milk suffices them for food. Their horses scratch the earth with their hoofs and feed on the roots and grasses they dig up, so that they need neither straw nor oats. They themselves reck nothing of the clean or the unclean in food, and eat the flesh of all animals, even of dogs, swine, and bears. They will open a horse's ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... A miracle! the hermit's daughters thus Will be remembered in the years to come. My pencil will suffice to scratch the lines Upon the wood: my memory will hold The lights, the tints, the golden atmosphere, The genius of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... search out objects in the darkness she saw the stranger reappear around the corner of the cabin and approach the door. He fumbled at it for a moment and threw it open. He disappeared within and an instant later Sheila heard the scratch of a match and saw a feeble glimmer of light shoot out through the doorway. Then ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... duck. When I am put to death 'Twill be for more! Oh, I will have her yet By the hair! [For the first time noticing Fidelio.] Fidelio, if you breathe one word Of this, I will scratch the Princess into ribbons, Whom you ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... confines of the town, there reached the flat monotony of the dark prairie soil. The leaves of the soft maples were beginning to show over there, near the village church. A dog crossed the street, pausing midway of the crossing to scratch his ear. The cart of the leading grocer was hitched in front of his store, and an idle citizen or two paused near by to exchange a morning greeting. All the little, uneventful day was beginning, as it had begun so many times before here in this little, uneventful town, where the world was finished, ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... of voices, raced back along the passage and flung himself at the door. He then proceeded to scratch at the panels in the persevering way of one who feels that he is engaged upon a business at which he ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... said; and holding out his little brown hands he displayed the scratches and said, "Me big brothers beat me, and scratch ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... moated grange. I have yawned aloud a dozen times, but Eleanor does not mind it. She has been extremely busy with accounts, papers, and letters. For the last four hours I do not think she has spoken a word. I hear nothing but the scratch of her pen as it moves over the paper, and the wind in the ash-trees. I have taken Madge's journal in despair. Ah, Madge! I wish the bonnie girl were here;—how we would talk nonsense by the hour together, just to keep our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... that you mustn't pull the kitty's tail?' says she. 'Don't you know you hurt the poor kitty, and she'll scratch you if you don't take care. Poor ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... succeeds in rescuing her brother, having taken the precaution of propitiating with butter the cat Jeremiah, "who was telling the boy stories and singing him songs." When the Baba Yaga awakes, she tells Jeremiah to scratch her eyes open, but he refuses, reminding her that, long as he has lived under her roof, she has never in any way regaled him, whereas the "fair maiden" had no sooner arrived than she treated him to butter. In another ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... It next will be right To describe each particular batch: Distinguishing those that have feathers, and bite, From those that have whiskers, and scratch. ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll
... becomes free. It is, therefore, better to tie the bridle to a tuft of grass, or a slender twig, rather than to a tree or to the saddle-bags. Mounting an ox is usually a troublesome business, on account of his horns. To make ride-oxen quiet and tame, scratch their backs and tails—they dearly love it—and hold salt in your hands for them to lick. They soon learn their names, and come to be ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... hotly, "fit only for clergymen and beggars for charities. I am not sure, anyway, that I want 'to do for' people. I think no fine theories about social service and all that settlement stuff. I want to be a man, and have a man's right to start with the crowd at the scratch, not given a handicap. There are too many handicaps in the crowd ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... came up and hailed the Gentleman. "Here you old swine! Are you sober enough to scratch ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... he thus waited, he could not but be aware, through the tense silence otherwise reigning in the room, of the tap and scratch of the rose-spray upon the window-panes; of the swish of the moist gusty wind sweeping from across the salt-marsh and mud-flats of the Haven—from the black cottages, too, beyond the warren, gathered, as somewhat sinister boon ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... record of a pianoforte solo shows this very clearly to the eye, because the impression made by a long note is a deeply-marked indentation succeeded by the merest shallow scratch—not unlike the impression made by a tadpole on mud—with a big head and an attenuated body. Every note marked long in pianoforte music is therefore essentially a sforzando followed by a rapid diminuendo. Anything in such music marked as a long note ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... mammals which are habituated, as their race, both to climb as well as to scratch or dig in the ground, or to tear open and kill other animals for food, have been obliged to use the digits of their feet; moreover, this habit has favored the separation of their digits, and has formed the claws with which they ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... have been a tough one to have jumped the train without receiving a scratch," said a voice in the ear of the detective, as he flashed the rays of a lantern down on ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... scratch from a splinter, sir. The same shot that tripped up poor Wiggins, sent a ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... You're sickening for them now. One of the worst symptoms in the man is his curt refusal to permit anybody else to admire one bright particular star of womanhood. If the girl hears another girl gushing over the young man, she's ready to scratch her eyes out. By Jove! It'll be many a day before you forget your visit to Roxton Park this morning, or yesterday morning, or ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... Minister reflected profoundly, standing the while, in order that he might assist his faculties by scratching himself, even as we, when thinking, scratch our heads. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... quivering in the dust on the road. He was nearly cut in two; all his intestines were hanging through his stomach, which had been ripped open, and fell in spurts of blood to the ground. He tried to get up, to walk, but he could only move his two front paws, and scratch the ground with them, as if to make a hole. The two others were already dead. And he ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... cause for thankfulness," said Arthur, returning from a hurried circuit of the verandas, "not one on our side has received a scratch. But I have ordered the men to remain at ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... her intense, absorbing parental love, she has very serious deficiencies,—deficiencies occasioned by the same lack of modification which I have before mentioned. Devoted to her little ones, she will scratch vigorously and untiringly to provide them food, yet fails to remember that they do not stand before her in a straight line out of harm's way, but are hovering around her on all sides in a dangerous proximity. Like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... especial change in her; in fact, it had loosened to the sloughing point the whole skin of her conventional training—that surface skin which seems part of the very essence of our being until something happens to force us to shed it. Crises, catastrophes, may scratch that skin, or cut clear through it; but only the gentle, steady, everywhere-acting prying-loose of day and night association can change it from a skin to a loose envelope ready to be shed ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... outside, lying quite comfortably on a roll of blankets. She was propped on her elbow drinking something hot, and there was a good smell of hot food in the air. I stared at Regis and demanded, "I didn't conk out, did I, from a little scratch like this?" I looked carelessly at ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... best advice I can give you. Make your husband see you're the better woman of the two. Cut her out, I'm saying, and don't come whining here like a cry-baby, who runs to her grandmother's apron-strings at the first scratch ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... him; 'n' it was true, for they 'd spent every cent he hed); 'n' third place, fer alienatin' the 'fections of a travelin' baker-man she hed her eye on fer herself. He was a kind of a flour-food peddler, that used to drive a cart round by Hard Scrabble, Moderation, 'n' Scratch Corner way. Mis' Maddox used to buy all her baked victuals of him, 'specially after she found out he was a widower beginnin' to take notice. His cart used to stand at her door so long everybody on the rout would complain o' stale bread. But bime bye Fiddy begun to set at her winder ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... locked horns, a tall flame already rippled and spread, sending up a pillar of black smoke that rose straight, poisoning the clear blue of the sky. Nobody paid any attention to Mr. Trimm as he stood swaying upon his feet. There wasn't a scratch on him. His clothes were hardly rumpled, his hat was still on his head. He stood a minute and then, moved by a sudden impulse, he turned round and went running straight away from the railroad at the best speed his pudgy legs could accomplish, with his arms pumping up and down in front of ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... of wood, thatching the roofs with leaves and straw, domesticating the wild grasses and meadow-roots, fathering them to become the progenitors of rice and millet and wheat and barley and all manner of succulent edibles, learning to scratch the soil, to sow, to reap, to store, beating out the fibres of plants to spin into thread and to weave into cloth, devising systems of irrigation, working in metals, making markets and trade-routes, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... pictures on the walls, the bright, clean kitchen. He shook his head. "By chops, it's fine!" he said. "It's very nice. Yes, it's very nice. We want to be careful now not to break anything. It's so easy to scratch things up, and then it's all over." Yes, ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... that any mineral in this series, that is of higher number than any other, will scratch the other. Thus diamond (10) will scratch all the others, sapphire (9) will scratch any but diamond, topaz (8) will scratch any but diamond ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... he stopped, as on the previous night, being overcome by a sudden sense of silence. There was not the faintest sound of gnaw, or scratch, or squeak. The silence was as of the grave. He remembered the odd occurrence of the previous night, and instinctively he looked at the chair standing close by the fireside. And then a very ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... danger," I answered; "but I am not an easy person to kill. I have had narrow escapes before, and escaped without a scratch." ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... love and praise my verses, still Thy long black thumb-nail marks them out for ill: A fellon take it, or some whitflaw come For to unslate or to untile that thumb! But cry thee mercy: exercise thy nails To scratch or claw, so that thy tongue not rails: Some numbers prurient are, and some of these Are wanton with their itch; scratch, and ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... a small-tooth comb, sir,' said one of the staff officers. 'And we've raised a scratch pack. Best part of two thousand. Good men, but most of them know nothing about infantry fighting. We've put them into platoons, and done our best to give them some kind of training. There's one thing may cheer you. We've plenty of machine-guns. ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... into neat piles as Angus had instructed him. He came whimpering up with a bruised finger which he held up to the old man. Angus comforted him tenderly, telling him Eddie must be a man and not mind a little scratch. He looked down at this most helpless of his children and gently stroked the boy's ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... the higher values, and it was characteristic of the plane of his mental processes that this one should remind him now of a dark, lithe panther, tensely strung, capable of fierceness. The pain of having her scratch him ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... out laughing. The remark instantly ran over all Versailles. Madame de Maintenon and M. du Maine at once heard it, and nevertheless no sign was anywhere made. To have been angry would only have been to spread it wider: I took the matter as the scratch of an ill- natured cat, and did not allow Lauzun to perceive ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Franklin Davis and my madam was Mrs. Bettie Davis. I and my brother used to scratch her feet and rub them for her; you know how old folks like to have their feet rubbed. My brother and I used to scrap over who should scratch and rub her feet. She would laugh and tell us not to do that way that she loved us both. Sometimes she let me sleep at her feet at night. She ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... were on his shoulders—her deep eyes piercing his with a look that meant more to him than all the earth beside. It was the fierce, mother-look of changeless affection, the companion to that savage cry. She held him in a pinching grip, and made sure that he was unhurt, save for that scratch on ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... it was all Lombard-street to a china orange. The Masked Festival on the 18th is a subject of considerable attraction, and wigs of every nature, style, and fashion, are in high request for the occasion—The Bob, the Tye, the Natural Scratch, the Full Bottom, the Queue, the Curl, the Clerical, the Narcissus, the Auricula, the Capital, the Corinthian, the Roman, the Spanish, the French, the Dutch—oh! we are full of business just now. Speaking of the art, by the by, reminds me of a circumstance which ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan |
