"Frayed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vine-mantled hills, on creamy marble walls, on columned campaniles; and standing there, I seemed verily to absorb, to become saturated as it were, with the reigning essence of beauty. I walked on, a few steps, lifted a worn, frayed leather curtain, and looked into a small gray, dingy church, where a mist of incense blurred the lights on the ancient altar, and the muffled roll of an organ broke into sonorous waves, like reverberations ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... he said importantly, and glanced at Stanton as though to signify that at a word from him he would take this suspicious character into custody. The young man pulled the frayed cuffs of his shirt over his wrists and tucked his hands, which the cold had frozen into an ashy blue, under his armpits to ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... It is black here, pitchy black." A full, heavy minute elapsed, disturbed by the scuffle of the negro's feet as he ran and cowered in the furthest corner, and the soft creaking of the iron door, and a sudden suck and soughing of the night air. Then the moon slipped slyly from its frayed woolly covers, and relit the donjon keep. "Holy God and Father," and the halberd clanked noisily to the floor. In the half open doorway stood the king's favorite, the Lady Suelva. Against the frosted green background of the moonlit courtyard her shimmering robe, her white ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... a tall man who had worn one suit of clothes for ten years. It was frayed at the sleeves and little holes had appeared at the knees and elbows. In the office he wore also a linen duster with huge pockets into which he continually stuffed scraps of paper. After some weeks the scraps ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... Wallen, you're not going to put them on yourself. Sit down, if you please, or stand, if you don't." And down he dropped on one knee and in a trice had stowed away the thin, worn little boots, with their frayed button-holes, within the warm yet clumsy Arctics. "You are sensible to wear such things as these," he said. "The snow is falling heavily, and I mean to walk you home to-night. Now the gloves.—Yes, you may have your own way there, as I shouldn't know how." And, so saying, ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... into a small room with a low ceiling. It was furnished with a cookstove, a table, a small side-board, an old conch and a few chairs. The floor was splintery and only partly covered by frayed rugs and worn oil cloth. The paper on the walls was a dark mottled green. The ceiling was discoloured ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... bird has hidden remains a puzzle. It moves not, it may not blink. Its crafty parent has so nibbled and frayed the edges of the decaying brown leaves among which it nestles that it has become absorbed in the scene. There is nothing to distinguish between the leaf-like feathers and the feather-like leaves. The instinct of the bird has blotted itself out. It is there, but invisible, and to be discovered only ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... carefully over his patent boots. Certainly the contrast between this scrupulously dressed young man and Naudheim, bordered upon the absurd. Naudheim was shabby, unbrushed, unkempt. His collar was frayed, he wore no tie. The seams of his long black frock-coat had been parted and inked over and parted again. He wore carpet slippers and untidy socks. There were ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... again; at that moment a quick cry went up. Lashed round and round to the fish's back; pinioned in the turns upon turns in which, during the past night, the whale had reeled the involutions of the lines around him, the half torn body of the Parsee was seen; his sable raiment frayed to shreds; his distended eyes ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... and copied many times. Choice remnants of prints and calicoes were also shared with the neighbours. Occasionally from trunks or boxes, long hidden in dusty attics, some of these old blocks come to light, yellowed with age and frayed at the edges, to remind us of the simple pleasures of ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... former bashfulness. But the face and figure she turned towards him were neither young nor fair: a woman past forty, with gray threads and splashes in her brushed-back hair, which was turned over her ears in two curls like frayed strands of rope. Her forehead was rather high than broad, her nose large but well-shaped, and her eyes full but so singularly light in color as to seem almost sightless. The short upper lip of her large mouth displayed her teeth in an habitual smile, which was in turn so flatly contradicted ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... slightly dazed, had been forced to turn her attention to Barby and Jan. The two girls were on the verge of sheer hysteria with fear for their fathers. Scotty had joined Mrs. Brant, in an effort to soothe the girls' frayed nerves. Now, as Rick opened the library door, he could see that the two pretty young faces were tear-streaked, but as calm as could be expected under the circumstances. Scotty looked worn out. Rick could only marvel ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... town to the metropolis was a journey of about five hours. It was a little past midday when the four-horse stage-coach by which I was a passenger, got into the ravel of traffic frayed out about the Cross Keys, Wood Street, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... tenderly collects Mike, who's in a frayed an' fragmentary condition, an' gently freights him over to us on a buckboard. It's a week before Peets allows he's ag'in ready for the show ring, an' he uses up enough co't plaster on him to kyarpet the ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... deeply, and his voice dropped below the regulation whisper in which one is permitted to speak in the Reading Room. Celia glanced at him, and saw that he was poorly dressed, that his shirt-cuffs were frayed, and that he had the peculiar look which is stamped on the countenances of so many of the frequenters ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... was not a trace of moisture in his eyes, but the uncannily aged face seemed older than before. He went over to a peg where his clothes were hanging and took down the frayed garment that answered as an overcoat. From the bunk there came another cough, quickly muffled; but he did not turn. Cap followed coat, mittens cap; then, suddenly remembering, he turned to the stove and scattered fresh chips upon ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... not the hearse though. Four helpers entered hastily in single file, with their red faces, their hands all lumpy like persons in the habit of moving heavy things, and their rusty black clothes worn and frayed from constant rubbing against coffins. Old Bazouge walked first, very drunk and very proper. As soon as he was at work he found his equilibrium. They did not utter a word, but slightly bowed their heads, already weighing mother Coupeau with a glance. And they did ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... yon second-sighted wench that has bewitched Elliot, and you too, for all that I can see. Never did I think to be frayed with a bogle, {14} and, as might have been deemed, the bogle but a prentice loon, when all was done. To my thinking all this fairy work is no more true than that you are a dead man's wraith. But they are all wild about it, at ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... appeared to be somewhat in a daze as he padlocked the cabin door, put on his "sundown" hat, took up his stout stick and tottered down the steps. He wore a frayed sweater with several layers of shirts showing at the cuffs. On the way he recalled the first railroad train that passed through ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... character to his undistinguished features. He was something above the medium height, broad-set, and with rather more thick black hair than he knew how to arrange advantageously. He wore a shirt which was somewhat frayed, and an indifferent tie; his boots were heavy and clumsy; he wore also a suit of ready-made clothes with the air of one who knew that they were ready-made and was satisfied with them. People of a nervous or sensitive disposition would, without doubt, have found ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... accounts, he was never so ill-inspired as on that tramp; having set forth indeed, upon a moment's notice, from the most unfashionable spot in Europe, Barbizon. On his head he wore a smoking-cap of Indian work, the gold lace pitifully frayed and tarnished. A flannel shirt of an agreeable dark hue, which the satirical called black; a light tweed coat made by a good English tailor; ready-made cheap linen trousers and leathern gaiters completed his array. In person, he is exceptionally lean; and his face ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... under the Republican flag was, I knew, very different from that on our own ships. The principles of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, if getting somewhat frayed and threadbare, still tempered the treatment of the masses, and so long as men reasonably obeyed orders, and fought when the time came, little more was expected of them, and they were left ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... strangely enough, was likely to be spotted of vest and a little frayed as to collar. You saw them going on errands for their daughters-in-law. A loaf of bread. Spool of white No. 100. They took their small grandchildren to the duck pond and between the two toddlers hand in hand—the old and infirm and the infantile and infirm—it was hard to tell ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... I laid it down and took from an inner pocket another letter, somewhat worn and frayed by over-much handling, which bore these words, smudged and blotted a little, though written ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... changed not my apparel, still I wore my bezan robe, Still I donned the self-same turban with its frayed and faded red; I would have no other garb then had I owned the whirling globe; Better rich to wear a tatter, than poor, wear silk, ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... a quick turn of the awl which he carried in his belt he snapped the sewing at the join of the leg and the upper leather, bringing the frayed ends of the thread out ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... breaking point, and that the enthusiasm and energy with which, seeking an anodyne to pain, she had flung herself into her work, would act either one way or the other—would either finish the job, so that the frayed nerves gave way, culminating in a serious breakdown of her health, or so fill her horizon that the memories of the past ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... fellow rose, and, putting his hands behind his back, placed himself before the blackening fire. Whole centuries of authority stood behind him. It was an accident that the mantelpiece was chipped and rusty, the fire-irons bent and worn, his linen frayed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the Major curtly, and a brush was brought from the stable, and scrubbed vigorously up and down, with the result that the surface of the cloth was frayed and roughened, though there was no ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... braveries, fresh or frayed? The plumes, the armours—friend and foe? The cloth of gold, the rare brocade, The mantles glittering to and fro? The pomp, the pride, the royal show? The cries of war and festival? The youth, the grace, the charm, the glow? Into the night go one ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... real buffalo my heart gave a great jump of joy. I tried to view them so as to take in their details, but the apparently shapeless masses of dark reddish brown wool appeared to have none, unless indeed the comical fur trousers with frayed bottoms on their front ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... man keenly as he made the introductions, saying to himself that this was better than he had hoped. The ragged black moustache had been shaved away; the frayed but spotless suit of white drill fitted the heavy-shouldered, thin-flanked, muscular figure perfectly; the faded blue flannel shirt, with the white double collar and narrow black tie; the shabby black kamarband about his waist, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... and cold, there was never a change in the old man's raiment. The rusty frock coat—black where it was not green, grey along the seams, and ravelled at the skirts—the broad-brimmed and battered slouch hat, and the frayed string tie had seen fat years and lean years on all the tracks of the Jungle Circuit, and no man could say when these things had been new or their wearer had been young. Old Man Curry was a fixture, as familiar a sight as the fence about ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... sat at the feet of Barbara Harding and learned many things, including love. It was the voice of culture and refinement. Billy strained his eyes through the darkness to have a closer look at the man. The light of the camp fire fell upon frayed and bagging clothes, and upon the back of a head covered by a shapeless, ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... you couldn't find on a map, and more squalid than the most poverty-stricken Malay settlement had a right to be, this European woman coming swishing out of the long grass in a fanciful tea-gown thing, dingy pink satin, with a long train and frayed lace trimmings; her eyes like black coals in a pasty-white face. Davidson thought that he was asleep, that he was delirious. From the offensive village mudhole (it was what Davidson had sniffed just before) a couple of filthy buffaloes uprose with loud snorts and lumbered off crashing through ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... candidly. She did not think it worth while to blush over so settled a fact. "I think the world and all of Ludovic. And he certainly does need somebody to look after HIM. He's neglected—he looks frayed. You can see that for yourself. That old aunt of his looks after his house in some fashion, but she doesn't look after him. And he's coming now to the age when a man needs to be looked after and coddled a bit. I'm lonesome here, and Ludovic is lonesome up there, and it does seem ridiculous, ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... condition of the end of the line until he had drawn in over eighty feet. Then at last he saw. Though he had not forgotten to wrap the line with canvas where it passed over the cliff edge, he had thought the strands must have been frayed through on a sharp corner of rock. Instead, he found himself staring at the clean-cut string-wrapped rope end that he had knotted to ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... in hand, rose from her knees, and stumbled through the slough of frayed garments and old studio properties. Before the group of mother and son she fell into a ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... to and intolerant of domestic discomforts such as these; in the nights his nerves were frayed; at the breakfast-table he showed it: "You look tired to death, and I'm sure I am," he grumbled. "If this is marriage, give me single blessedness every time. Worry and expense! Expense and ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... him is as dear as a rose Would be to a delicate maid; He carries his darlings wherever he goes, In a pocket-book tattered and frayed. ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... concerned. I'm going home now, and I want you to follow me; but for heaven's sake keep your distance, and don't speak to me again till I speak to you. There—give me a start." And he was off again, a decrepit vagabond, with his hands in his pockets, his elbows squared, and frayed coat-tails swinging raggedly from side ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... the palm of his strong hand, his lips moved for a few moments, but they gave forth no sound. When the words at last came they were pitifully broken: "His, his boots! My poor, poor darling!" Over and over again he repeated the words as he passionately stroked the frayed little toes. ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... had taken his seat was standing a person in broken shoes, an old straw hat, a coat, with parcels evidently in the tail pockets, and trousers frayed at the heels. He had a red unshaven face, and ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... of evil that ill-fortune and want of combination could accomplish had been done in the West, he was singled out, and sent forth to reap the harvest so bitterly sown. He was told, in effect, to take the frayed and scattered ends of armies and campaigns and bind them into a firm and resisting chain of strategy; or—to bear the sins of others upon his shoulders and have the finger of History point to him as the man ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... last bend of the descent, the Mercury purred into the midst of a collection of horsed vehicles and frayed motors. By some unhappy chance the whole countryside seemed to have chosen Tintern as a rendezvous that Saturday. The patrons of a neighboring hotel overflowed into the roadway; the brooding peace of the dead-and-gone monks ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... crack of a whip or splinter of wood than thunder. The cliff swallows dipped almost to the grass; and the flowers were hanging their heads in miniature umbrellas. All the trembling poplars and cotton-woods seemed to be furled waiting. Then, the lower side of the slate clouds frayed in the edge of a sweepy garment to sheets and fringes of rain. A little tremor ran through the leaves. The horses laid ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... covered the rest of his countenance. He wore a pair of spectacles with colored glasses, which, to a great extent, concealed the expression of his face. His whole attire indicated extreme poverty. He wore a greasy coat, much frayed and torn at the pockets, and which had carried away with it marks of all the walls against which it had been rubbed when he had indulged a little too freely in the cheerful glass. He seemed to belong to that class who consider ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... with jocular scoff unto Joseph Carnaby, thus accosting him, whom his shirt, being made stiffer than usual for the occasion, rubbed and frayed, - ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... be considered as the expression of a granulation, as Ehrlich first assumed, but rather of a reticular structure. The contour of the lymphocytes is not quite smooth as a rule, at least in the larger forms, but is somewhat frayed, jagged, and uneven (Fig. 1). Small portions of the peripheral substance may repeatedly bud off, especially in the large forms, and circulate in the blood as free elements. In stained specimens, especially from lymphatic leukaemia, these forms, which completely resemble the protoplasm ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... th' cat. Thin I'd cut th' cable to England; an' thin I'd gather all the journalists iv Paris together, an' I'd say, "Gintlemen," I'd say, "th' press is th' palajeem iv our liberties," I'd say; "but our liberties no longer requires a palajeem," I'd say. "This wan, whativer it means, is frayed at th' risbands, an' th' buttonholes is broken, annyhow," I'd say. "I've bought all iv ye tickets to Johannisberg," I'd say, "an' ye'll be shipped there tonight," I'd say. "Ye'er confreres iv that gr-reat city is worn out with their exertions, ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... or not. His breeches, of apricot-colored cassimere, were so old that the color had disappeared in spots; and the buckles, instead of being of steel, seemed to me to be made of common iron. His white, flowered waistcoat, now yellow from long wearing, also his shirt, the frill of which was frayed, betrayed a horrible yet decent poverty. A mere glance at his coat was enough to convince me that my friend had fallen into dire distress. That coat was nut-brown in color, threadbare at the seams, carefully brushed, though the collar was greasy from pomade or powder, ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... were sizzling in a pan over the wood-fire, and the pungent smell of the woods, mixed with the sharpness of the morning air, gave him an appetite to which, since his enforced idleness, he had been a stranger. He drew his chair up to the rickety little table with its covering of frayed oil-cloth, and, breaking a couple of eggs over ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... a Dutchman. His dress was quizzical enough—white-trousers, a long-flapped embroidered waistcoat that might have belonged to a Spanish grandee, with an old-fashioned French-cut coat, showing the frayed marks where the lace had been stripped off, voluminous in the skirts, but very tight in the sleeves, which were so short as to leave his large bony paws, and six inches of his arm above the wrist, exposed; altogether, it fitted him like a purser's ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... nor weel hained nor clean, Tight straps his short trews to meet shiny boots drew, Where wee tae an' big tae alike keeked through, His coat ance black braid-claith, was rusty enough, It was oot at the elbows an' frayed at the cuff, It was white at the seams, it was threadbare and thin An' to hide a defects, buttoned up to the chin Bruised and dinged in the crown and the brim was his hat, But set jauntily on his few hairs for a that, Paper collar an' cuffs showed in lieu of a ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... also to the veranda posts. Except that he was black as a coal, save for the whites of his eyes and his gleaming teeth, he seemed a grotesque understudy of the stockman—moleskins, not too clean and rubbed and frayed in places, fastened up with a strap; faded Crimean shirt exposing a wealed and tattooed breast; old felt hat—not a cabbage tree—with a pipe stuck in its greasy band; an ancient red silk handkerchief with ragged ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... Stafford scrutinized his guest more narrowly. Quickly he took note of his ill-fitting clothes, cheap tie, frayed linen and shabby shoes. He hardly looked the kind of man likely to be burdened with heavy business responsibilities. Nodding sympathetically, so as to ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... emplacements that were behind almost every clump of bushes, every jagged, rough group of bowlders. But those that remained were wiped out by the American method of the rush and the bayonet, and in the days that followed every foot of Belleau Wood was cleared of the enemy and held by the frayed lines ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... page of his notice of the new play at Palmer's, was confronted by the office-boy ushering to the side of his desk a tall, spare, smooth-faced man with a sober countenance, an ill-concealed manner of being somewhat over-awed by his surroundings, and a coat frayed ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... could not. She became suddenly sad with sympathy, and this sadness was beautiful to her. Already, when he was scribbling on it, she had noticed that his wristband was frayed. Now, silhouetted against the window, the edge of the wristband caught her attention again, and grew strangely significant. This man was passing through adversity! It seemed tragic and shocking to her that ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... right and ready loosened his knife in its snake-skin sheath; and then we set about hauling poor Silence out, binding him up where necessary with cool green leaves; for he, not having a skirt, had got a good deal frayed at the edges on those spikes. Then we closed up, for the Fans said these pits were symptomatic of the immediate neighbourhood of Efoua. We sounded our ground, as we went into a thick plantain patch, through which we could see ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... skirts, much worn, and even with holes in some places. These holes were the work of moths and not of balls, as has been said in certain memoirs. On his head his Majesty wore an old hat edged with gold lace, tarnished and frayed, and at his side a cavalry saber, such as the generals of the Republic wore; this was the coat, hat, and sword that he had worn on the day of the battle of Marengo. I afterwards lent these articles to Monsieur David, first painter to his Majesty, for his picture of the passage of Mont ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... legs, with large swelling calves;—the kind of legs, which in such costume, always look in an unfinished and incomplete state without a set of fetters to garnish them. He had a brown hat on his head, and a dirty belcher handkerchief round his neck: with the long frayed ends of which he smeared the beer from his face as he spoke. He disclosed, when he had done so, a broad heavy countenance with a beard of three days' growth, and two scowling eyes; one of which displayed various parti-coloured ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... might see, now, some of the chief characteristics by contrast. There was a wooden leg in the line. Hats were all drooping, a group that would ill become a second-hand Hester Street basement collection. Trousers were all warped and frayed at the bottom and coats worn and faded. In the glare of the store lights, some of the faces looked dry and chalky; others were red with blotches and puffed in the cheeks and under the eyes; one or two were rawboned and reminded one of railroad hands. A few spectators came ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... object that most drew my attention, in the mysterious package, was a certain affair of fine red cloth, much worn and faded. There were traces about it of gold embroidery, which, however, was greatly frayed and defaced; so that none, or very little, of the glitter was left. It had been wrought, as was easy to 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 ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the snow from his hat and coat into the passageway and took the single chair; Selwyn, tall and gaunt in his shabby dressing-gown, stood looking at him and plucking nervously at the frayed and tasselled cord around ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... Siramita or Little Sirama, for the reason, probably, as H. suggested, that it is four times as large as the Sirama. It flows through a bed twenty feet deep and upwards of two hundred feet wide, paved with water-worn stones, ragged with frayed fragments of trees, and affording abundant evidence that during the season of rains it is a rough and powerful torrent. Between this stream and the Goascoran there is a maze of barren hills, relieved by occasional level reaches, covered with acacias and deciduous ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... toward the wide prairie unrolling to the westward. Overhanging it were writhing clouds, hurled hither and thither, twisted, frayed, and burst asunder by the titanic forces of the upper air, and all converging with centripetal violence toward one vast maelstrom. Its long, funnel-shaped form dipped and lifted, trailing back and forth like ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... for some time. I shall not allow any one to see her, except the nurse. It will be a matter of weeks. She'll be lucky if she gets back her sanity at all. She was entirely out of her head there at the theater. She's worn out, nerves frayed to a frazzle. Horribly unhealthy life and unnatural. To take a country girl, an ignorant, untrained, healthy animal, bring her to the city and force her under terrific pressure into a life so foreign to her—well! it was just a ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... descriptions which we find in China many hundreds of years before the Christian era shows no vestiges of a manufacture of lace; but, in the tombs of ancient Egypt, garments have been discovered with the edges frayed and twisted into what we may call a primitive lace, and in some of the Coptic embroideries threads have been drawn out at intervals and replaced with those of coloured wools, making an uncouth but striking design. ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... common things in an uncommon way led him into intolerable affectation. Thus we have "the knightly growth that fringed his lips" for a moustache, "azure pillars of the hearth" for ascending smoke, "ambrosial orbs" for apples, "frayed magnificence" for a shabby dress, "the secular abyss to come" for future ages, "the sinless years that breathed beneath the Syrian blue" for the life of Christ, "up went the hush'd amaze of hand and eye" for a ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... pieces of furniture which were associated in her mind with various events in her life, for the furniture among which we live becomes, in time, part of our lives—almost of ourselves—and, as it gets old, and we look at its faded colors, its frayed coverings, its tattered linings, we are reminded of the prominent dates and events of our existence by these time-worn objects which have been the mute companions of our happy and ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... he got up and drew an old portmanteau from the closet and threw the contents out on the bed. From among them he picked up the thing he sought and sat on the edge of his bed with it in his hands, turning it over and regarding it, tieing and untieing the worn, frayed, but still bright ribbons, which had once been the cherry-colored hair ribbons of ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... the ragged sansculotte to the life, with bare and muddy feet, frayed breeches, and shabby, black-shag spencer. The four men stood waiting together with Juliette, whilst Sir Percy gave ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... next house Clutching Hand had literally come out of an upright piano into the room corresponding to that he had left. Hastily he threw off his handkerchief, slouch hat, old coat and trousers. A neat striped pair of trousers replaced the old, frayed and baggy pair. A new shirt, then a sporty vest and a frock coat followed. As he put the finishing touches on, he looked for all the world like a ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... must always be secured in some way, or it is evident from its construction that it will on the slightest usage become frayed out. The commonest method is by placing on an ordinary whipping, which is done as follows:—First lay the end of a length of twine along the end of the rope, and then commencing at the part furthest from the rope's ...
— Knots, Bends, Splices - With tables of strengths of ropes, etc. and wire rigging • J. Netherclift Jutsum
... names, the homely altar where they knelt in after life, the plain black tressels that bore their weight on their last visit to the cool old shady church. Everything told of long use and quiet slow decay; the very bell-rope in the porch was frayed into a fringe, and hoary ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... is quite as necessary as a well-balanced top. It should have a button, never a loop, to keep it from slipping through the fingers, and it should be of a thickness to fill, without overlapping the grooves. The end should be frayed and moistened to insure a firm grip when starting to wind. It requires much practice to become expert in spinning the peg, but, as in everything else, ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... her supple body balancing itself instinctively. But to-day, for the first time, she felt suddenly nervous as she neared the crag and, glancing downward, caught sight of the sullen billows thundering far below on either side. Perhaps the events of the day had frayed her nerves more than she knew. It was only by an effort that she dismissed the unaccustomed sensation of malaise which had assailed her and determinedly began the ascent to the castle by way of a series of primitively rough-hewn ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... sacking. The dragoman is exquisitely arrayed, galabeah and kaftan gray-blue, with a pink petticoat, and a white one under that. I suspect that he sleeps beneath the dining-table—and the other Arabs among the kitchen pots—yet they are smarter than any of us Europeans, all of whom have a frayed air. This, I suppose, would not be so in desert-fiction. Nothing would be said about hot-water bottles leaking, or beetles beetling (one doesn't come to Egypt to see live scarabs), or draughts raging, or camels gobbling, or flags flapping ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... had taken it back with him to the nursery and eked it out to wile away this endless afternoon. The prospect of going back to the nursery depressed him; and he turned aside to linger in the dining-room whence there was a view of Lima Street, down which a dirty frayed man was wheeling a barrow and shouting for housewives to bring out their old rags and bottles and bones. Mark felt the thrill of trade and traffick, and he longed to be big enough to open the window and call ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... old woman meant was the workhouse master, and the packet was opened in his presence, and found to contain a child's linen under-garment plainly marked—"Max Vanburgh, 12," and a child's highly-coloured toy picture-book, frayed and torn, and further disfigured by having been doubled in half and then doubled again, so that it would easily go in a ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... frayed kid shoes upturned on the fender, little Katie Lowry, confident that she had found an all-powerful friend in this queer long man who smoked such queer long cigars, sipping her tea only when she had to pause for breath, ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... precisely the same impression as when one enters at the theatre into a grated baignoire, before the grating is lowered and the chandelier is lighted. One was, in fact, in a sort of theatre-box, narrow, furnished with two old chairs, and a much-frayed straw matting, sparely illuminated by the vague light from the glass door; a regular box, with its front just of a height to lean upon, bearing a tablet of black wood. This box was grated, only the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... obsequiously. "Mr. Penny!" she echoed the girl's announcement; "and here I haven't got a thing fit for you. Thomas Gilkan has been too busy to get out, and Fanny she'll fetch nothing unless the mood's on her. If I only had a fish I could turn over." She brushed the end of the table with a frayed sleeve. "You might just take a seat, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... cruise of the yacht club, finish up a round of house-parties at Bar Harbor and Lenox, and get ready for the partridge-shooting in England with his friend the Duke of Bangham,—it was a dog's life, he said, and he had no time to himself at all. I rather pitied him; he looked so frayed. It seems to me that the best way for a man or a woman of pleasure to get a day off would be to do a little ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... there was little conversation to interrupt the monologue of the river, which seemed to find itself many voices under the bridge. The one unceasing rustle of the main stream was frayed along its margin into a myriad finer noises of murmuring and plashing, as the massed foliage on a bough dwindles at its edges into more delicate traceries of distinct sprays and leaves. Round some stones the water whispered mysteriously, coiling in and out of gurgling recesses, and against ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... look threadbare at the seams; his shirt front was hidden underneath a large tie, his trousers were frayed. It was an undeniable fact that the porters at the office looked down on him on ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... on Washington Heights, a walk of such vigor and happy absorption with new problems as she had never known in Panama, she caught herself being contemptuous about their frayed poverty. With a sharp emotional sincerity, she rebuked herself for such sordidness, mocked herself for assuming that she was ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... the Aorist! Infinitely freely exact!— As the fragrance of fiction is fairest If frayed in the furnace of fact— Though nine be the Muses in number There is hope if the handbook be one,— Dispelling the planets that cumber The ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... districts the people worshipped Gladstone, and neither knew nor cared for any other politician. His was the name to conjure with. His picture hung in every cottage. His speeches were studied and thumbed by hard hands till the paper was frayed into tatters. It was Gladstone who had won the vote for the labourer, and it was Gladstone who was to lead them into the Land of Promise. "Three Acres and a Cow," from being a joke, had passed into a watchword, though Gladstone had never given it the faintest ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... you some ointment—some nice cooling ointment," said he, "to rub on your neck. I saw it was frayed ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... got him into the monkey skin,—an old brown flannel petticoat that Grandma Bascom had given the children to play with, "'Cause it's so et up with moths, 'tain't fit to set a needle into to fix up," as she said. And Ben made a long, flapping tail out of an old, frayed rope, and Polly had sewed a little tuft of hair, that came out of Mamsie's cushion, on top of the monkey's head, pulling it all around the face for some whiskers; so, when Joel was really inside of it, he was perfectly awful. ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... shabby hats over their faces, their hands clasped above their heads, legs sprawled in uncouth comfort, while the sun dapples down between the leaves and, like a good fairy godmother, touches their frayed and wrinkled garments with flickering figures of golden splendor, while they sleep. They always seemed so blissfully care-free and at ease—those sprawling men figures—and I, to whom such simple joys were forbidden, being a ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... Paddy!" The words were on my lips when a "waddy," torn from the vindictive tree and flung, high and straight into the inoffensive sky, descended flat on the red stump with a gunlike report. The swish of the waddy down-tilted the frayed brim ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... strike. He came up and lumbered on the surface of the pool. Gradually I drew him, plunging ponderously, to the gravelled beach, where I meant to 'tail' him. He yielded to the strain, he was in the shallows, the line was shortened. I stooped to seize him. The frayed and overworn gut broke at a knot, and with a loose roll he dropped back towards the deep. I sprang at him, stumbled, fell on him, struggled with him, but he slipped from my arms. In that moment I knew more than the anguish of Orpheus. Orpheus! Had I, too, ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... robbed, until the Crow stood before them in his customary suit of solemn black, a bird ashamed and sore. For they had pecked him with their bills and beaten him with their wings and scratched him with their claws until even his own plain old coat was frayed and rent. ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... ought in the nature of things, she felt, to mean so much more than it had meant; it ought to have been so much more vital, so much more satisfying and complete. As it was, she could remember of it only scattered ends, frayed places, useless beginnings, and broken promises. With how many beliefs had she started, and now not one of them remained with her—well, hardly one of them! The dropping of illusion after illusion—that was what the years had brought ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... and such a day as we had! We climbed Grizzly Peak,—only we did not know it for the fog and rain,—and just over the summit, in the shelter of a very drippy oak tree, we sat down for lunch. A fairly sanctified expression came over Carl's face as he drew forth a rather damp and frayed-looking paper-bag—as a king might look who uncovered the chest of his most precious court jewels before a courtier deemed worthy of that honor. And before my puzzled and somewhat doubtful eyes he spread his treasure—jerked bear-meat, nothing but jerked bear-meat. ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... joy in a bayonet charge—who wins new territory from the powers of Darkness and the Devil. Man IS a savage, and civilization but a cloak with which he covers his ferocity as best he can. If the cloak be scant—as with the Turk—or frayed by time—as with the Spaniard—we may expect to catch frequent and shocking glimpses of the predacious animal. But Mr. Johnson is mistaken in supposing that the lynchings of which he complains evidence an abnormal thirst for blood on the part of the ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... seclusion of our offices we are in touch with the world at large. But as a symbol only it must remain, for the voices of the outer world that call us up as they search for other friends or obstruct us when we in turn are, as it were, groping after ours, have already frayed the temper of our staff. It was inevitable that under such constant irritation these ex-Service men of ours would one day burst into strong military idiom, so we have disconnected our telephone in order to avoid the calamity of losing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... cab, but I soon became doubtful as to whether it was not a carriage in which I found myself. It was certainly more roomy than the ordinary four-wheeled disgrace to London, and the fittings, though frayed, were of rich quality. Mr. Latimer seated himself opposite to me and we started off through Charing Cross and up the Shaftesbury Avenue. We had come out upon Oxford Street and I had ventured some remark as to this being a roundabout way to Kensington, when my words were arrested by the extraordinary ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... was frayed and stained by the friction of often-tried armor, and in his richly studded belt glistened a diamond handled poniard. Around his massive settle stood servants to do his bidding, while at his side were two or three shaggy ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... their wash-houses, are so much alike that this is an easy mistake to make. You find the lavatory of Hip Tee, who pronounces the hieroglyphics all correct, and delivers you your lost and found shirts clean, with half the buttons broken, and the bosoms pounded, scrubbed and frayed into an ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... From their plumed hats. "Veracious witnesses," The snuffle of Bame arose anew, "declare It was a surfeit killed him, Rhenish wine And pickled herrings. His shirt was very foul. He had but one. His doublet, too, was frayed, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... by the size of his purse or the style and cut of the coat he wears. There are parents who would not mind their children's sitting beside a little darkey, but who do object most strenuously to their occupying the same bench with a dirty little Irish child. A calico dress or a coat frayed at the edges are certainly not badges of high social standing, but they are not incompatible with honesty, purity, industry and respect for God, which things create a wholesome atmosphere to live in and make the world better in every sense of the word. There is no refinement in these little ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... "I shall give you a holiday after dinner. The Queen comes to Lincoln on that day, and I wish to give as many as are good girls the chance of seeing her enter. But I shall expect to have no creased work like Antigone's; nor split and frayed like Geneveva's; nor dirtied like Femiana's. ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... little baby as if its protector had made a final effort not to be separated and to save if possible the fragile life. The faces of both were scarred and disfigured from contact with floating debris. The single garment of the baby—a thin white slip—was rent and frayed. The body of the young woman was identified, but the babe remained unknown. Probably its father and mother were lost in the flood, and it will never be ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... with her head high, her chin lifted, determination in her eyes. Thorned shrubs and stones had left their marks on her strong boots, the little teeth of the range had frayed the hem of her short cloth skirt, but she was as fresh to see as a morning-glory in the sun. Defiance outweighed the old cast of melancholy that clouded her eyes; her lips were fixed in an expression which was denial in itself as she stood looking into the wind, her little brown hands clenched ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... some of the commonplace facts concerning the lives of theatrical people, and show her the frayed tinsel and worn faces by daylight. This will do more for her than all your sermons on the dangers of ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... flavour of a social system the exceptional features of which were too often by both friend and foe made to stand for the system itself. His tall beaver, with its curled brim, and his blue broadcloth dress-coat, faded and frayed, with its brass buttons, bore unmistakable evidence of their age and origin, but they seemed to be a reasonable and ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... wretched old man; see how he hugs the rags of his respectability; his old frayed frock-coat is buttoned tightly around him, and his outstretched hands tell that he is eager for the least boon that pity can bestow. He has found that the way of the transgressor is hard; he has kissed the bloom of pleasure's painted lips, he has found ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... a loud knocking on the door. Simons opened it quickly, admitting a most strange old gentleman—tall and ramshackle—who was buttoned up in a chess-board inverness; whose trousers frayed out over his lustreless boots like much-defiled lace; whose coat-sleeves, protruding from the cape of his inverness, sought to make amends for the dullness of his footwear. He wore a turned-down collar and a large, black French knot. His hirsute ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... feet, and began to pace the greensward before the door. My eyes followed his trim figure, richly though sombrely clad, then fell with a sudden dissatisfaction upon my own stained and frayed apparel. ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... which Mrs Murchison was wont to say that a man might do nothing but weed them and have his hands full. In the middle of the lawn was a fountain, an empty basin with a plaster Triton, most difficult to keep looking respectable and pathetic in his frayed air of exile from some garden of Italy sloping to the sea. There was also a barn with stabling, a loft, and big carriage doors opening on a lane to the street. The originating Plummer, Mrs Murchison often said, must have ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... song. The burden was taken up by the laborers, whose constant movement to keep a good view was attested by the hollow sound of their wooden-soled boots on the stone walks. And the refrain was hummed by the shawled, frayed-skirted creatures who were coming up from Talbot street, Gloucester street, Peterson's lane, and all the family-to-a-room districts in Dublin. On the skeletonish railroad crossing suspended over the Liffey, tin-hatted and bayonet-carrying British soldiers were silhouetted against the moon-whitened ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... advantage did she put two of the hundred-dollar bills that by noon she was arrayed in a semi-tailored suit of gray, spring hat, shoes, and gloves to match. She felt once more at ease, less conscious that people stared at her frayed and curious habiliments. With a complete outfit of lingerie purchased, and a trunk in which to store it forwarded to her hotel, her immediate activity was at an end, and she had time to ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of Lil's attraction for Dicky Graham, anyway?" the soprano voice queried. "She's a good seven years older than he is, and both her past and her youth are rather frayed at ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... were the yards beyond. Being for the most part attached to boarding-houses they were in a state of chronic untidiness and fluttering, on certain days of the week, with miscellaneous garments and frayed table-cloths. In spite of this Mrs. Manstey found much to admire in the long vista which she commanded. Some of the yards were, indeed, but stony wastes, with grass in the cracks of the pavement and no shade in spring save that afforded by the intermittent leafage ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... imagination rests. Were some great painter, gifted with the sense of historic fitness, to place on his canvas the council in the Virginia homestead, two figures only would occupy the foreground: the one weary with travel, white with the dust of many leagues, and bearing on his frayed habiliments the traces of rough bivouacs and mountain roads; the other, tall, straight, and stately; still, for all his fifty years, remarkable for his personal beauty, and endowed with all the simple dignity of a noble character and commanding intellect. In that humble chamber, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... himself for having done a rather poor job of connecting up the servomotor, was busily ripping it out when Miller came over to see what he was doing. Without waiting for an explanation, the design engineer launched into a tirade. Rick's face slowly reddened and his temper grew frayed. It was so completely unjust that he was on the verge of swinging at the engineer when Dick ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... the more frayed you get. Little Wilbur comes home from school, where he has been put to bed at 8:30 every night with the rest of the fifth form boys: and has had to brush his hair in the presence of the head-master's wife, and dives into what might ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... shoulder a battered electric standard with a frayed cord and a dingy shade remained alight long enough to permit Nogam to spell out a short chapter. Then he put the Bible aside, yawned wearily, and switched out ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... machines, and not a maid With fingers fatuously plied, The collars and the cuffs have frayed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... pleased him. For so many nights to come there would be none of it; but ceaselessly the drumming of the engines, quiver of the screw, and wash of the water against the ship's side.—All the same he did not quite like the colour of the moon or that frayed flattened edge of it westward. Why is there always something a trifle menacing about a waning moon? He did not like the smell of the mud-flats either. It might not be actually unhealthy; but it suggested a certain ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... honesty. But it seems that we look in vain. You have behaved like a mighty fine skunk, sir. And if you don't see that there's any crying need for a very humble apology, you've got about the thickest hide that ever frayed ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... slang on the lips of the octogenarian made Barraclough laugh. But the nerves of Nugent Cassis were frayed ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... shoulders, his head protruding from the torn eb, frayed ends of broken horse-hair sticking up round his neck, the water trickling down his clothing and dripping from his thin locks, from his big flaring ears, from the end of his long nose, his face rueful and stultified, he ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... quick acceptance from the Bench, but the scowl with which the burglar favored him was not pleasant. Hitching at his frayed flannel collar, the man partly turned his back on the lawyer and listened with a heavy frown to Helen's quick answers to ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... Poor splendid wings so frayed and soiled and torn! Poor kind wild eyes so dashed with light quick tears! Poor perfect voice, most blithe when most forlorn, That rings athwart the sea whence no man steers Like joy-bells crossed with death-bells ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne |
