"Tatter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... indeed of these my woes? Or must my forced tongue my griefs disclose? And must myself dissect my tatter'd state, Which mazed Christendome stands wond'ring at? And thou a child, a Limbe, and dost not feel My fainting weakened body now to reel? This Physick purging portion I have taken, Will bring Consumption, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... tears of grief In vain Aurelia sought relief; In sighs and plaints she pass'd the day; The tatter'd frock neglected lay: While busied at the weaving trade, A spider heard the sighing maid And kindly stopping in a trice, Thus offer'd (gratis) her advice: "Turn, little girl! behold in me A stimulus to industry Compare your woes, my dear, with mine, Then tell me who should most ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... the last tatter, only he couldn't waste money; he never had any. Once I asked father what he thought Isaac would do with it, if by some unforeseen working of Divine Providence, he got ten dollars. Father said he ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... a battle, too—no doubt it is A right fine thing; or rather to have been there. But all things have their price; and this, methinks, Is rather dear sometimes. Oh! glory's but The tatter'd banner in a cobwebb'd hall, Open'd not once a-year—a doubtful tomb, With half the name effaced. Of all the bones Have whiten'd battle-fields, how many names Live in the chronicle? and which were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Belike 'twas she, the maiden all forlorn. What the she milk no cow with crumpled horn, Yet, aye she haunts the dale where erst she stray'd: And aye, beside her stalks her amorous knight Still on his thighs their wonted brogues are worn, And thro' those brogues, still tatter'd and betorn, His hindward charms gleam an unearthly white. Ah! thus thro' broken clouds at night's high noon Peeps to fair fragments forth the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... they hollo'd, an' the first thing they did find Was a tatter't boggart, in a field, an' that they left behind. Look ...
— The Three Jovial Huntsmen • Randolph Caldecott
... once for a neighbour's daughter, one Anty Dooley, who had died a few months before, and who, when she was alive, could beat the whole county round at any sort of reel, jig, or hornpipe. The music struck up 'Tatter Jack Walsh,' and maybe it's she that didn't set, and turn, and thrush the boords, until the young prince hadn't as much breath left in his body as would blow out a rushlight, and he was forced to sit down puffing and panting, and laving his partner standing in the middle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... be a sailor. When the high water came in the spring, the sofa went sailing. He had a Rooster for a crew, while Tatter, the rag doll with one shoe ...
— The Story of a China Cat • Laura Lee Hope
... saddle-crupper, Ambling no farther than thy supper— Thou, by the light of heaven-lit taper, Mendest thy prospective paper! Then, jolly pauper, stitch till day; Let not thy roses drop away, Lest, begrimed with muddy matter, Thy body peep from every tatter, And men—a charitable dose— Should physic thee with food and clothes! Nursling of adversity! 'Tis thy glory thus to be Sinking fund of raggery! Thus to scrape a nation's dishes, And fatten on a few good wishes! Or, on some venial treason bent, Frame thyself a ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... joining his old friend Sheiner, much to the tatter's secret discomfiture. It was obvious that the drum snuffer, having made a recent haul, would be amenable to persuasion. And, like all yeggs, he was an upholder of the "moccasin telegraph," a wanderer and a carrier of stray tidings as to the movements of others along the undergrooves of the world. ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... waves of men no longer broke from the woods to lap up and recede sullenly down the slope. Out of nowhere, just as they fell back to the first fringe of trees, came an officer on a tall gray horse. His coat was gone, he rode in his shirt sleeves, and a bullet-torn tatter waved from one wide shoulder. Above prominent cheekbones, his eyes were hot and bright, his clipped beard pointed sharply from a jaw which must be grimly set, his face was flushed, and his energy and will was like a cloud to engulf ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... half the Fury of an English General, Troy had ne'er bully'd out a Ten Years Siege—but Ladies are more craftily subdu'd; you mustn't storm a Nymph with Sword and Pistol, pursue her as you wou'd a tatter'd Frenchman, push her Attendants into the Danube, then seize her, and clap her into a Coach—I'll baffle her at her own Argument, swear I'd not wed a Phoenix of her Sex, and laugh at Dress and Beauty, Wit and Fortune, when purchas'd only at the Price of ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... importance, the position of the question may easily be understood. Dr. Lightfoot, however, evidently seems to suppose that I can be charged with want of candour and of fulness, because I do not reproduce every shred and tatter of apologetic reasoning which divines continue to flaunt about after others have rejected them as useless. He again accuses me, in connection with the fourth Gospel, of systematically ignoring the arguments ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... will never be fatter, All the domestic tribes of hell, Shrieking for flesh to tear and tatter, Bones to shatter, And limbs to scatter, And who it is that must furnish the latter, Those blue-looking ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... tell him well enough', said the old wife, and rose up. 'Our Halvor was so lazy and dull, he never did a thing; and besides, he was so ragged, that one tatter took hold of the next tatter on him. No; there never was the making of such a fine fellow in him as ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... very tatter-demalions—and the front man led them, tapping the ground with a long stick. The others clung to him in line, one behind the other. He was the only clean-shaven one, and he was the tallest. He looked as if he had not been blind so long, for his physical health was ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... speedy, and on the ever-to-be-remembered 13th of May we sighted the entrance of Port Royal harbour, where we dropped anchor in the afternoon. I found that I had been absent exactly nine months and three days. In spite of my tatter-demalion appearance and my consciousness that I was much like the wretched apothecary who supplied the love-lorn Romeo with the fatal potion, as soon as I got on shore I hastened up to pay my respects to Sir Peter Parker. He received me, as I ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... alighting just inside the entrance of one of our operating tents it was blown into tiny shreds, and ten stretchers were riven into matchwood. Strange to say, although this was in the middle of our camp not a soul was injured. The excitement was of course great, every little bit of shell and every tatter of the tent were carefully gathered to be kept as souvenirs. Three men and a number of horses had been killed in the afternoon's work. Many of the shells to-day were bigger than usual and some think the "Goeben" is the culprit. ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... grown double, Picking dry Sticks, and mumbling to her self. Her Eyes with scalding Rheum were gall'd and red, Cold Palsy shook her Head; her Hands seem'd wither'd; And on her crooked Shoulders had she wrap'd The tatter'd Remnants of an old striped Hanging, Which served to keep her Carcase from the Cold: So there was nothing of a Piece about her. Her lower Weeds were all o'er coarsly patch'd With diff'rent-colour'd Rags, black, red, white, yellow, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Route of tatter'd Rascalls starued so, As forced through extreamity of need To rake for scraps on Dunghils as they goe, And on the Berries of the Shrubs to feed, Besides with fluxes are enfeebled so, And other foule diseases that they ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... figure is charming and bright, And to speak in thy praise all the world doth delight, But I'm a poor fellow all tatter'd and torn, Whom all the world treateth with insult ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... of propping the tatter's pretensions, I was throwing out a hint concerning Kentucky, as a land of tall men, when our Vine-yarder turned away abruptly, and desired to hear nothing more. It was evident that he took Long Ghost for ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... thy bloody hand! Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back; Thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind For which thou whipp'st her. The usurer hangs the cozener. Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it. None does offend, none, I say, none; I'll able 'em: Take that of me, my ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... all that was doing in the county, and never was barren in his information wherever his imagination could come into play. Mickey was the best hurler in the barony, no mean performer on the violin, could dance the national bolero of "Tatter Jack Walsh" in a way that charmed more than one soft heart beneath a red woolsey bodice, and had, withal, the peculiar free-and-easy devil-may-care kind of off-hand Irish way that never deserted him in the midst of his wiliest and most subtle moments, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... love pursue, In Sunday gear and bonnets new; And every fair before thee lay Their silken gifts, with colours gay— They love thee not, alas! so well As one who sighs, and dare not tell; Who haunts thy dwelling, night and noon, In tatter'd ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... doubt there is justification enough for his suspicion in the exploits of pretentious and garrulous souls. But it is the superficial justification of a profound and disastrous error. A gap in a man's vocabulary is a hole and tatter in his mind; words he has may indeed be weakly connected or wrongly connected—one may find the whole keyboard jerry-built, for example, in the English-speaking Baboo—but words he has not signify ideas ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... wonderingly at the dismal chamber. Dismal to her, who beheld it only for an instant; and how much more so to him, into whose brain each bare spot on the ceiling, every tatter of the paper-hangings, and all the splintered carvings of the mantelpiece, seen wearily through long years, had worn their several prints! Inexpressibly miserable is this familiarity with objects that have been from the ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... boy," Darrel continued. "A pride in rags an' poverty. Bring that into thy book an' let thy best thinking bear upon it. Show us how patch an' tatter were for the poor man as badges ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... they will be driven out of their slight literary entrenchments. Perhaps they were disarmed by the fact that the acrid criticism in the London Quarterly Review was accompanied by a cordial appreciation of the novels that seemed to the reviewer characteristically American. The interest in the tatter's review of our poor field must be languid, however, for nobody has taken the trouble to remind its author that Brockden Brown—who is cited as a typical American writer, true to local character, scenery, and color—put no more flavor of American ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... In tatter'd old slippers that toast at the bars, And a ragged old jacket perfumed with cigars, Away from the world and its toils and its cares, I've a snug little kingdom ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... friend at home, they were quickly supplied with tatter'd garments and slouch'd hats, in which they again sallied forth, and about nine o'clock they entered a low ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... good Acastus' friendly care consign'd: But other counsels pleased the sailors' mind: New frauds were plotted by the faithless train, And misery demands me once again. Soon as remote from shore they plough the wave, With ready hands they rush to seize their slave; Then with these tatter'd rags they wrapp'd me round (Stripp'd of my own), and to the vessel bound. At eve, at Ithaca's delightful land The ship arriv'd: forth issuing on the sand, They sought repast; while to the unhappy kind, The pitying gods themselves my chains unbind. Soft I descended, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... my taking you from beggary? Are these the thanks I get for freeing you from rags that you might have hung distaffs with? Is this my reward for having put good clothes on your back when you were a poor, starved, miserable, tatter-shod ragamuffin? But such is the fate of him who washes an ass's head! Go! A curse upon all I have done for you! A fine gold coffin you had prepared for me! A fine funeral you were going to give me! Go, now! serve, labour, toil, sweat to get this fine reward! Unhappy is he who does a good ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... not one word of humility tack'd to't, for fear of spoiling the Character; there you may find 24 pages, one after another, all written to prove most gloriously, that 'tis impossible for a Chaplain to be a Servant; that tho' you find a poor fellow in a tatter'd Excommunicated Gown with one sleeve, Shoes without heels, miserable Antichristian breeches, with some two dozen of creepers brooding in the seams; and tho' you take him charitably to your House, feed, clothe, and give him wages, yet he belongs only ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... far more beautiful, though smaller, than Palmyra; and it can be seen without danger—Palmyra cannot. The ruins are very beautiful. The village hangs on to the tail of the ruins—not a bad village either, but by comparison it looks like a tatter clinging to an empress's diamond-bespangled train. The scenery around ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... confidence repay, Commence your lords, and govern or betray. [z]By numbers here from shame or censure free, All crimes are safe, but hated poverty. This, only this, the rigid law pursues, This, only this, provokes the snarling muse. The sober trader at a tatter'd cloak Wakes from his dream, and labours for a joke; With brisker air the silken courtiers gaze, And turn the varied taunt a thousand ways. [aa]Of all the griefs, that harass the distress'd, Sure the most bitter is a ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... Poole, sir—fine! There's only one thing wanted to put it right, and that's them Sallies sitting round the fire. I wouldn't have Sallies. I'd have guys. I could knock you up half-a-dozen with crossed bamboos, each on 'em looking like tatter-doolies looking after crows with a gun. I says ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... on a field of battle or in the theatre of war—that is, either tactically or strategically—then in the first of these cases it would not be sufficient to specify some lost battles in which the cavalry was on the flanks and some gained in which the cavalry was in rear of the infantry; and in the tatter of these cases it is not sufficient to refer to the battles of Rivoli and Wagram, to the attack of the Austrians on the theatre of war in Italy, in 1796, or of the French upon the German theatre of war in the same year. The way in which these orders of battle or plans ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... deeper sympathy than that commonly felt for the oppressed, even by women. And such a sympathy existed, strange as it may seem, between the beautiful girl (for many called her a bonnie lassie) and this 'tatter of humanity.' Nothing would have been farther from the thoughts of those that knew them, than the supposition of any correspondence or connection between them; yet this sympathy sprung in part from a real similarity in their history ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... hill that leads to Capernaum. He had not recognised him as he passed, which was not strange, so unseemly were the ragged shirt and the cloak of camel's or goat's hair he wore over it, patched along and across, one long tatter hanging on a loose thread. It caught in his feet, and perforce he hitched it up as he walked, and Joseph remembered that he looked upon the passenger as a mendicant wonder-worker on his round from village to village. But Jesus had not gone very far when Joseph was stopped by a memory of a ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... turns must be, 230 Like that small wit in modern tragedy,[88] Who, to patch up his fame—or fill his purse— Still pilfers wretched plans, and makes them worse; Like gypsies, lest the stolen brat be known, Defacing first, then claiming for his own. In shabby state they strut, and tatter'd robe, The scene a blanket, and a barn the globe: No high conceits their moderate wishes raise, Content with humble profit, humble praise. Let dowdies simper, and let bumpkins stare, 240 The strolling pageant ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... heritage he wan, And enterit by brieve of richt.[143] Then cried Mahoun for a Hieland Padyane:[144] Syne ran a fiend to fetch Makfadyane, Far northwast in a neuck; Be he the coronach[145] had done shout, Ersche men so gatherit him about, In hell great room they took: Thae tarmigants, with tag and tatter, Full loud in Ersche begoud to clatter, And roup like raven and rook.[146] The Devil sae deaved[147] was with their yell; That in the deepest pot of hell He smorit[148] ...
— English Satires • Various
... we went with Mahon The wily Boers to scatter; Burnt many a farm and useful barn, And got—our clothes a-tatter. ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... work, begins the simple lay; The full-charg'd udder yields its willing streams, While Mary sings some lover's amorous dreams; And crouching Giles beneath a neighbouring tree Tugs o'er his pail, and chants with equal glee; Whose hat with tatter'd brim, of nap so bare, From the cow's side purloins a coat of hair, A mottled ensign of his harmless trade, An unambitious, peaceable cockade. As unambitious too that cheerful aid The mistress yields beside ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... dear? Back! come back, and never fear.— You may wander where you will, Over orchard, field and hill; You may kill the birds, or do Anything that pleases you! Ah, this empty coat of his! Every tatter worth a kiss; Every stain as pure instead As the white stars overhead: And the pockets—homes were they Of the little hands that play Now no more—but, ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... the tatter'd ensigns of Rag-fair,[245] A yawning ruin hangs and nods in air;[246] Keen hollow winds howl through the bleak recess, Emblem of music caused by emptiness; Here in one bed two shivering sisters lie, The cave of ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... Each grabbed a tatter of the good flag, pressing hard upon D'ri, and put it to his lips and kissed it proudly. Then we marched up and down, D'ri waving it above us—a bloody squad as ever walked, shouting loudly. D'ri had begun ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... regard; The true physician walks the foulest ward. See on the floor, where frousy patches rest! What nauseous fragments on yon fractured chest! What downy dust beneath yon window-seat! And round these posts that serve this bed for feet; This bed where all those tatter'd garments lie, Worn by each sex, and now perforce thrown by! See! as we gaze, an infant lifts its head, Left by neglect and burrow'd in that bed; The Mother-gossip has the love suppress'd An infant's cry once waken'd in her breast; And daily prattles, as her round ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... poor old scarecrow, sir!" said Buck. "He only wants one or two old clothes put on him, and he'd make a fine tatter-dooley. Not much to be afraid of in him! Well, gentlemen, we ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... their cells, And stroll about, but hide their quality, To try good people's hospitality. It happen'd on a winter night, As authors of the legend write, Two brother hermits, saints by trade, Taking their tour in masquerade, Disguis'd in tatter'd habits went To a small village down in Kent; Where, in the stroller's canting strain, They begg'd from door to door in vain, Tried every tone might pity win; But not a soul would take them in. Our wandering saints, in woful ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... Yonder wind howls wild. Hearken, how the rain makes sprays And how neighbour's doggie bays. Doggie has gripped the man forlorn Has the beggar's tatter torn——" ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... sword, having the name of Time. This is he that hath called the hours from beyond and he it is that is their master, and it is his work that the hours do as they devour all green things upon the earth and tatter the tents and weary all the travellers. As each of the hours does the work of Time, Time smites him with his nimble sword as soon as his work is done, and the hour falls severed to the dust with his ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... double, Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself; Her eyes with scalding rheum were gall'd and red: Cold palsy shook her head, her hands seem'd wither'd, And on her crooked shoulders had she wrapp'd The tatter'd remnant of an old strip'd hanging, Which serv'd to keep her carcase from the cold: So there was nothing of a piece about her. Her lower weeds were all o'er coarsely patch'd With diff'rent colour'd rags, black, red, white, yellow, And seem'd to speak variety of wretchedness. ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... compiled now," replied the Commissioner. "We already have, Matter, Batter, Tatter, Smatter Patter, ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs |
