"Patch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... trade routes to the interior having drawn the caravans in other directions. Soon it turned up the side of the ravine. The sayall bushes began to grow more densely, and the wady spread to a great width. Beyond a patch of pebbles lay a brown carpet of tough grass. In the center stood seven date-trees and a considerable number of stunted bushes, these latter differing from the sayall only in the size of their thorns, which were fully two inches long and seemingly untouchable. Yet, ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... involved nothing less than the imminent peril of that political supremacy which the party had so long enjoyed. With Mr. Atwood as candidate, success might be considered as certain. To a short-sighted and a weak man, it would have appeared the obvious policy to patch up the difficulty, and, at all events, to conquer, under whatever leadership, and with whatever allies. But it was one of those junctures which test the difference between the man of principle and the mere politician—the man of moral courage and him who yields to temporary ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dog's barking, the old captain, who was at work in a small potato patch he cultivated, came hobbling to meet the boys as they tied ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... up yonder," said the little man. "It was smashed to atoms in the world and thrown away. But, ho, ho, ho! there is nothing that I cannot mend, and a mended fiddle is an amended fiddle. It improves the tone. Now teach me that dance, and I will patch up all the rest of the ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... heart from his apparent mood to speak of some facts of the morning that had moved her fancy. "What a strange little nest it is up here among these half-thawed hills! and imagine the winter, the fifteen or twenty months of it, they must have every year. I could almost have shed tears over that patch of corn that had escaped the early August frosts. I suppose this is a sort of Indian summer that we are enjoying now, and that the cold weather will set in after a week or two. My cousin and I thought that Tadoussac ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... she tripped over roots and stones, and snagged her hair and clothing on branches she could not see in time to fend off. As a last resort, she turned straight for the light patch still showing in the northwest, hoping thus to cross the wagon road that ran from Soda Creek to the Meadows—it lay west, and she had gone northeast from town. And as she hurried, a fear began to tug at her ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... city friend, Charles Hutchinson, imagined me spending my summers in a noble mansion on the bank of a shining river it was not my duty to shock him by declaring that there was no water in sight and that my garden was only a truck patch. On the other hand, if my neighbors in West Salem thought of me as living in a handsome brick mansion in Chicago, and writing my stories in a spacious study walled with books, I was ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the last decent dwelling on that side of the village; between ourselves and the heath and pine wood there was one miserable shanty, worthy of the poorest potato patch in Ireland. It was inhabited by a ragged ruffian of the name of E——, whose small domain we sometimes saw undergoing arable processes by the joint labor of his son and heir, a ragged ruffian some sizes smaller than himself, and of a half-starved jackass, harnessed together to the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... after night, and writing blindly in the dark I tried to jot down what he saw—gigantic shapes and shadows, some motionless, some rushing by with their dim spectral little lights, and over all the great arch of the Bridge rearing over half the sky. The lantern in the cave behind threw a patch of light on the water below, and across that patch from under the pier where the water was slapping, slapping, there came an endless bobbing procession—a whisky bottle, a broken toy horse, a bit of a letter, a pink ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... where Bastien-Lepage began to curtail, deform, and degrade the original inspiration. Mr. Clausen, I said, overcame the difficulty of the trousers by generalisation. Mr. Stanhope Forbes copied the trousers seam by seam, patch by patch; and the ugliness of the garment bores you in the picture, exactly as it would in nature. And the same criticism applies equally well to the faces, the hands, the leather aprons, the loose iron, the hammers, the pincers, the smoked walls. I should not be surprised ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... head upon the back of the sofa and looked awhile at the oblong patch of sky to which the window served as frame. The snow was ceasing; it seemed to him that the sky had begun to brighten. "I count upon their being rich," he said at last, "and powerful, and clever, and friendly, and elegant, and interesting, and generally delightful! Tu vas voir." And he ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... not Benny's face, either, that frightened the ground squirrels away, though everybody had to admit that he had a queer one. A black patch spread over his eyes and ran like the point of a V down his nose. For the most part, however, he was of a grayish color, with still more black running in streaks across his back. Underneath he was a—yes! a dirty white color. ...
— The Tale of Benny Badger • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Alamitos rather than only to the northwestern part of Coahuila as reported by Aldrich and Duvall (1955:17). In northeastern Coahuila pallida seems to intergrade with castanogastris; No. 29414 has an indistinct rusty chestnut patch on its ...
— Birds from Coahuila, Mexico • Emil K. Urban
... strange feeling that overpowered me. I felt as if my very soul were going out of my body to meet that oncoming boat which was cleaving its way through the darkness. Another brief interval and then we saw it shoot out into a patch of moonlight—we could perceive Mr. Swinton seated in the stern with another figure beside him—that of a man who stood up as he neared our yacht and lifted his cap with an easy gesture of salutation, and then as the boat came alongside, ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... whole countrey to be as common. 4 To neglect all daintinesse and varietie of meates, and to content themselues with that which commeth next to hand, for more hardnesse, and readines in the executing of their affaires. 5 To weare any base attire, and to patch their clothes whether there be any neede or not: that when there is neede, it be no shame to weare a patcht coate. 6 To take or steale from any stranger whatsoeuer they can get, as beeing enemies of all men, saue to such as will subiect themselues ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... side of the rock, fair as his own side with its ripple of muscles, could have hurt him thus. He let the water carry him till he might climb out on to the shingle. There he sat upon a warm boulder, and twisted to look at his arm. The skin was grazed, not very badly, merely a ragged scarlet patch no bigger than a carnation petal. The bruise, however, was painful, especially when, a minute or two later, he bent ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... having a fine time roving at will wherever their fancy led. They had left the uninviting rectory grounds and were revelling in their master's turnip patch when discovered by Mrs. Jukes. When the men at last arrived and dislodged them from this delectable spot, they scampered across the fields, trampling through the young corn and potato patch until they reached the peas, beets and carrots, where they stopped for another feast. Jake was almost in ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... later, Johnny lay sprawled upon a double thickness of long haired deer skins. He was reading a book. Two seal oil lamps sputtered in the igloo, but these were for heat, not for light. Johnny got his light in the form of a raggedly round patch of sunlight which fell straight down from the top where the ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... of the road a few acres of ground were lying under disorderly cultivation. In one patch the stalks of sweet maize had been fastened together in high stooks, disclosing the pumpkin vines, which beneath them had plentifully borne their huge fruit, green as yet. At the back of this cultivated portion an old man, the elder Joseph Smith, ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... villa," her husband emended, glancing upward through the branches at a long low patch of paleness to which the moonlight was beginning to give the form ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... to have penetrated to his own veins now; he felt its serene glow mounting when he spent solemn evenings in John Burleson's room, the big sculptor lying in his morris-chair, sometimes irritable, sometimes morose, but always now wearing the vivid patch of colour on his flat ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... seem to realize my perfidy. They saw me always laboring diligently in the melon-patch, and as time enters not into the reckoning of Pellucidar-ians—even of human beings and much less of brutes and half brutes—I might have lived on indefinitely through this subterfuge had not that occurred which took me out of the melon-patch ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... some business about this building or little house of man, whereof nature is as it were the tiler, and he the plaisterer. It is ofter out of reparations than an old parsonage, and then he is set on work to patch it again. He deals most with broken commodities, as a broken head or a mangled face, and his gains are very ill got, for he lives by the hurts of the commonwealth. He differs from a physician as a sore does from a disease, or the sick from ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... region of the back brought his head round. Then he yelled in earnest, for the roaring flame from the other brazier had set the quickset hedge, inflammable with drought, burning as fiercely as the naphtha torch of a fair-booth, while a black patch, widening every moment, was spreading through the dry, white grasses under the clumsy wheels of the living-van, whose brown painted sides were beginning to blister and char, as Billy, rendered intrepid by desperation, grabbed the broken furnace-rake handle, usually employed as a poker, and beat frantically ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... its banks that it is quite impossible to drink from it lying. By the edge grasses, water-plantains, forget-me-nots, frequently fill the space within reach. If you brush these aside it disturbs the bottom, and the mud rises, or a patch of brown 'scum' comes up and floats away. A cup, though gently used, generally draws some insects in with the water, though the liquid itself be pure. Lapping with the hollowed palm requires practice, and, unless the spot be free from weeds and of some little depth, soon disturbs the bottom. ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... self-contempt, to find inexplicable tears in his eyes. And just then an interruption came, not altogether unwelcome, in the greeting of a familiar voice. It was Lightmark, who had discovered him in the course of a rapid walk down the Row, and had crossed over the small patch of intervening grass ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... but started boldly for the barren patch where they had dug the day before. It looked now like a piece of plowed ground over which were scattered blocks of lava of ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... old man spends a long time crossing himself in the direction in which the monastery walls make a patch of darkness in the fog. Yasha sits beside him on the very edge of the seat with his legs hanging over the side. His face as before shows no sign of emotion and expresses neither boredom nor desire. He is not glad that he is going home, nor sorry ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... BANTING, the native name of the wild ox of Java, known to the Malays as sapi-utan, and in zoology as Bos (Bibos) sondaicus. The white patch on the rump distinguishes the bantin from its ally the gaur (q.v.). Bulls of the typical bantin of Java and Borneo are, when fully adult, completely black except for the white rump and legs, but the cows and young are rufous. In Burma the species ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... threatening language: he accused the French Government of bad faith in procuring the release of a large force of French prisoners, ostensibly for the overthrow of the Commune, but really in order to patch up matters with the "Reds" of Paris and renew the war with Germany. Misrepresentations and threats like these induced Thiers and Favre to agree to the German demands, which took form in the Treaty of ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... twenty feet above it, now thirty. And the character of the cliffs was changing. Veins of quartz shone under the metallic plating like cut crystal, like cloudy opals; here was a splash of vermilion, there a patch of amber; bands ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... what a poor thing my world would be! My garden would be a silent patch of earth strewn with sticks of a variety of shapes and smells. But when the eye of my mind is opened to its beauty, the bare ground brightens beneath my feet, and the hedge-row bursts into leaf, and the rose-tree shakes ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... eight-and-thirty years ago. We thought we'd like to see the Paris Exposition, but my! it ain't to be compared to the Chicago Exhibition, and as for Paris, it can't come up to Noo York, and these river steamers ain't a patch on the Hudson River boats, and I don't think much ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... came about the station to beg, and also to ascertain the strength of the company, and one evening word came that they were going to have a corroboree in a little patch of forest near the station. Perhaps you don't know ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... was buggy tracks at the foot o' the melon patch, and the widder's missin'. She's put it up to marry my Johnnie. I suspicioned something, but I counted on Johnnie. I sez to myself: 'Others might be tempted by a plump, well-lookin' widder, but not Johnnie.' Ye see, boys, Johnnie ain't quite ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... labour on the mountain know something which the mere visitors (though they be members of many Alpine Clubs) know not. We have a sense of home which no other habitation can impart—a passionate love of the soil, a unity with the little patch that is our own, bringing joys undimmed by any descriptions of other-worldly possessions. Our trees may be wrecked by an avalanche, our garden plot may be obliterated by a land slip; the stone walls we ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... come here today to take these jewels, I came to give them to you. You would have done wrong to take my gift at Amulya's hands. In order to prevent it, I had first to make them clearly mine. Now these my jewels are my gift to you. Here they are! Patch up any understanding with this boy you like. I must go. You have been at your special talks all these days together, leaving me out of them. If special happenings now come ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... sorry about the Jones's losing their cow; it comes hard for them. It's better for our potato patch, particularly if they do not have another. Cyrus ought to ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... in your stage clothes, Dare quit, upon your oathes, The stagers, and the stage-wrights too (your peers), Of larding your large ears With their foul comic socks, Wrought upon twenty blocks: Which if they're torn, and turn'd, and patch'd enough The gamesters share your gilt and you ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... discharge at half pistol-shot into the densely crowded defenders. Thus the storming party won steadily its way, till at length Dennie and his leading files discerned over the heads of their opponents a patch of blue sky and a twinkling star or two, and with a final charge found ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... continuing, seemed to put it into Mr. Traveller's mind to have another word or two with the Tinker. So, holding Miss Kimmeens (with whom he was now on the most friendly terms) by the hand, he went out at the gate to where the Tinker was seated at his work on the patch of grass on the opposite side of the road, with his wallet of tools open before him, and ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... limited extent, and, as I emerged from beneath its shadow, I came suddenly to a patch of cultivated land, bisected by a small stream, the path I was following leading along its bank. Holding to this for guidance, within less than a hundred yards I came to the house I was seeking, a small, log structure, overshadowed by a gigantic oak, and standing isolated and ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... clearing nor homestead. One solitary rancho stood at about equal distances between the town and the rancheria; and was known among the rangers by the familiar sobriquet of the "half-way house." It was a poor hovel of yucca, with a small patch around that had once grown yams, chile-pepper, and a stock of maize for whoever had tilled it; but the occupants of the little rancho had long since disappeared—the prowling soldier-robber from the camp had paid it many a visit, and its household gods lay ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... concentrated in the house and its immediate patch of garden. Their rear, to the seaward, was unmolested; but on three sides they were beleaguered. On the left, the Samoans occupied and fired from some of the plantation offices. In front, a long rising crest of land in the horse-pasture commanded the house, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as I sometimes call him, is in hospital. He was seriously wounded at the battle of The Little Go-Cart, on the 9th instant. On returning from my office yesterday evening, I found that scarred veteran stretched upon a sofa in the sitting-room, with a patch of brown paper stuck over his left eye, and a convicting smell of vinegar ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... dat roat. But, I tell you vat, you musht go right straight by the parn, and vere you see yon roat dat crooks just so—see here'—bending his elbow—'you must go right strait—ten you vill turn de potato patch round, de pridge over, and de river up stream, and de hel up; and tirectly you see mine prother Haunse's parn shingled mit straw; dat's his house, vare mine prother Schnven lives. He'll tell you so petter as I can. ...
— Whig Against Tory - The Military Adventures of a Shoemaker, A Tale Of The Revolution • Unknown
... will go and find him; but first, I must return to where I left my man. He had, of course, the Mahdist's patch on his clothes; and I told him to lie still, as if dead, till I came for him; as, in the melee, it would have been impossible for me to ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... was a farmer before he went into politics, was doing his district not long ago, and in his rambles he saw a man in a stumpy patch of ground trying to get a plow through it. He went over to him, and after a brief salutation he asked the privilege of making a turn or two with the plow. The native shook his head doubtfully as he looked at his visitor's store clothes and general ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... Cardinal Wolsey afforded the description of his household taken from his faithful Cavendish, and likewise the story of Patch the Fool. In fact, a large portion of the whole book was ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... "bed-tick." He never had any bedstead or other furniture kind. The men had no hats, waistcoats or handkerchiefs given them, or the women any bonnets. These they had to contrive for themselves. Each labouring man had a small "patch" of ground allowed him; from this he was expected to furnish himself and his boys hats, &c. These patches they had to work by night; from these, also, they had to raise their own provisions, as no potatoes, cabbage, &c., were allowed them from the plantation. ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... Glynde had been going about the world with a bright red patch on either cheek; and it would seem that on the third day, namely, the Sunday, things came to a crisis in her disturbed mind. At morning service her fervour was something astonishing—the quaver in her voice was more noticeable in the hymns than ever, and the space devoted to silent prayer ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... morning till his dinner was brought to him, knowing sometimes what passed—how a rat came out and looked on him awhile, moving its whiskers; how the patch of sunlight upon the wall darkened and passed; and how a bee came in and hummed a great while in the room; and sometimes conscious of nothing but his own soul. He could make no effort, he told me, and he did not attempt it. He only lay still, ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... fall. It was a long job digging the tent out. Soon after the start the sun gleamed and the weather improved. The three-thousand-foot crest of the plateau had been crossed and I was bearing down rapidly on Commonwealth Bay, the vicinity of which showed up as a darker patch on the clouds of ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... quickly waved a signal of assent, drew the water with what was a great effort for one of his stature, landed and emptied the big bucket into his own pair of smaller ones, and pausing a moment for breath, started with them across the patch of clammy greensward whereon the well stood—nearly in the centre of the little village, or rather ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... my line and creel many a day. Trout couldn't fool Joe. He was the one to find plovers' eggs, and to spot a blaeberry patch. Joe has some senses ordinary people do not have, I think. I should like to hear about Joe and ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... whole country, is very small. Large patches of mapira continued to grow,—as it is said it does from the roots for three years. The mapira was mixed with tall bushes of the Congo-bean, castor-oil plants, and cotton. The largest patch of this kind we paced, and found it to be six hundred and thirty paces on one side—the rest were from one acre to three, and many not more than one-third of an acre. The cotton—of very superior quality—was now dropping off the bushes, to be left to rot—there was ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... stackyard at the Traveller's Delight the ground dipped down into a hollow, which, even in daylight, was completely screened from the view of any one within the house or about the yard by a great clump or patch of scraggy furze bushes. In this secluded spot there stood a lime-kiln, one of those built somewhat like a low circular tower, with gaping mouth and open roof; but for many a day the kiln had not been used—not since the present tenant entered on possession of the farm at Hanleigh Heath. During ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... out at random from his books innumerable poetic conceits; the closed gentian is the "nun among flowers"; a patch of fringed polygalas resembles a "flock of rose-purple butterflies" alighted on the ground; the male and female flowers of the early everlasting are "found separated from each other in well-defined groups, like men and women ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... on behalf of the said islands, to order that encomiendas be granted with the condition and obligation upon the encomenderos that some patch of ground should be cultivated, and that the farmers and Indians should be aided so that they also may till and cultivate. I charged Gomez Perez straitly in his instructions with this, and now ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... before this, the Blackfeet (Sik-si-kau) had been camped on this bottom, and a woman had been killed in this same patch of rye-grass where Heavy Collar had lain down to rest. He did not know this, but still he seemed to be troubled that night. He could not sleep. He could always hear something, but what it was he could not make out. He tried to go to sleep, ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... relatives. Duhaut, who had saved his baggage from the wreck of the "Aimable," was required to contribute to the necessities of the party; and the scantily furnished chests of those who had died were used to supply the wants of the living. Each man labored with needle and awl to patch his failing garments, or supply their place with buffalo or deer skins. On the twenty-second of April, after mass and prayers in the chapel, they issued from the gate, each bearing his pack and his weapons; some with kettles slung at their backs, some with axes, some with gifts for Indians. ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... saw a park—just a tiny patch of greenery, two or three stunted trees and a bench, but it was a genuine park. It looked almost forlorn surrounded ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... centuries ago, In the hot sunshine two Franciscan friars Wended their weary way with footsteps slow Back to their convent, whose white walls and spires Gleamed on the hillside like a patch of snow; Covered with dust they were, and torn by briers, And bore like sumpter-mules upon their backs The badge of poverty, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... away and raced before the wind, and for two hours Johnson and Leach pursued us. We hove to and ran away, hove to and ran away, and ever astern the struggling patch of sail tossed skyward and fell into the rushing valleys. It was a quarter of a mile away when a thick squall of rain veiled it from view. It never emerged. The wind blew the air clear again, but no patch of sail broke the troubled surface. I thought I saw, for an instant, the boat's bottom show ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... would be hard to know when she was on an even keel. The uneven planking, inboard and out, was scarred like a chopping-block, possibly from a former and intimate acquaintance with the coal trade. Aloft were dingy gray spars, slack hemp rigging, untarred for years, and tan-colored sails, mended with patch upon patch of lighter-hued canvas that seemed about to fall apart from their own weight. She was English-built, bark-rigged, bluff in the bow, square in the stern, unpainted and leaky—on the whole as unkempt and disreputable-looking a craft as ever flew the black flag; ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... and low, so that it seemed a terrestrial object in comparison with the stars scattered above, glory beyond glory, and in that lucent Italian atmosphere making him feel himself of their shining company, whirling through the infinite void on one of the innumerable spheres. A broad silver green patch of moonlight lay on the dark water, dwindling into a string of dancing gold pieces. Adown the canal the black gondolas clustered round a barca lighted by gaily colored lanterns, whence the music came. Funiculi, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... (there were no stones), to prove whether she could rise, while I stood ready with the rifle. She merely replied with a dull roar, and I terminated her misery by a ball through the head. She was a beautiful animal; the patch of the bullet was sticking in the wound; she was shot through both shoulders, and as we were not far from the tent, I determined to have her brought to camp upon a camel as an offering to my wife. Accordingly ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... o'clock, I was at the farmer's spoken of, and there was no mistake as to the bears. A patch of Indian corn had been ruined by them, and two dogs had been killed. The native was in a terrible state of rage and alarm. He said that on moonlight nights he had seen eight of them, and they came and sniffed around the ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... pony close to him, and whispered, "Never mind that little cross-patch. She does not care a pin about the horse; you interrupted her ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... panting. His face was splotched with red, and the little hollows at the sides of his forehead pulsed rapidly up and down like the bellies of scared tree frogs. The bent outer case of the watch littered a bare patch on the log; its mainspring had gone the way of the fragments of the gun-metal match safe which were lying all about, each a worn-down, twisted wisp of metal. The spring of the eyeglasses had been confiscated long ago and the broken crystals ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... it makes me long to take off my coat and practise some honest trade or other—plastering, or carpentering, or painting. What useless drones we upper classes are! Neither you nor I could mend that ceiling or patch ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she sighed, with all the dreariness which a ten-year-old is capable of feeling, "why must I patch when it's so nice out? I just ain't goin' to sew ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... the six grandchildren. He has a good appetite at meal time, digestive organs good, sleeps well, and is the early riser in the mornings. He says the Negro half of his nature objects to working on Saturday afternoon, and at such times his tall figure, with a green patch cloth over the left eye, which is sightless, may be seen strolling to and fro on the ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... into the hall, which he had failed to lock, stood partially ajar, and his eyes caught the vague glimpse of a figure gliding swiftly through the opening. With one bound he was upon his feet, springing recklessly forward. The hall was dark, but for a patch of moonlight at the further end. Against this he caught an instant, flitting glimpse of the intruder. It was a woman, yet even as his eyes told him this, she seemed to vanish into thin air—the ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... distance of 1,100 geographical miles, were examined by me, and they all belonged to this class. Inland, along the whole northern bank of the Plata, I saw, besides modern tertiary beds, only one small patch of slightly metamorphosed rock, which alone could have formed a part of the original capping of the granitic series. Turning to a well-known region, namely, to the United States and Canada, as shown in Professor H.D. Rogers' beautiful map, I have estimated ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... was relinquished, although so many romances of nature, so much dishonest patch-work, won the applause ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... tiny vine running from the base; on another a bunch of lilies of the valley; and another showed a little bough of apple blossoms. On the remaining three the subjects were strangely unusual,—a palm and tent, with a patch of sky; a bird with outstretched wings, soaring upward with open beak, as if singing in its flight; a cherub head with ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... was granted. Indeed all, sky, flowers, breeze, absence of dust and curious animals, helped to make this a day of days. When they reached Suzanna's little patch of woods with many spreading oak trees that invited rest beneath their sheltering branches ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... man in the clothes of a calendar, with a patch on his right eye, laid aside his long-necked lute and rose ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... ridden through the Park for about three miles, and had just turned round the corner of a patch of jungle, when we came suddenly upon a large rogue elephant, who was standing in the open, facing us at about seventy yards. The moment that he saw the horses he turned sharp round, and retreated to a long belt of fine open forest which was close behind him. There was no resisting the invitation ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... for the discovery of a magical island, a Cuba, of spices and delectable palms. Peyton had looked with a stolid indifference at the dangerously fascinating, the incomprehensible, smile of Cytherea. Yes, if the young donkey could be forced past this tempting patch of grazing, if he could only be driven a short distance farther down the highway of custom, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... led the way through the gap to a patch of turf on the heathy ground, screened by bushes and dwarf trees on the side nearest to the road, and commanding in the opposite direction a grandly desolate view over the broad brown wilderness of the moor. The clouds had gathered, within the ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... silent by a wholly unexpected display of energy on the part of Tots, who had suddenly hurled a piece of chalk at him from the other end of the room. It hit him smartly on the shoulder, leaving a white patch to testify to the ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... and Claude's. They had abundance of clothing for themselves, but Claude had nothing but the garb in which he had swum ashore. The two women contrived, by taking to pieces some of the stoutest of their own outdoor garments, to patch him up a homely suit. Rough, indeed, it was, and Claude felt like the King's jester when he put it on; but no gay gallants of France were there to see him, and he was even able to smile at ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... patch of color: a blur of pale yellow. He hurried, stumbling over bone heaps, crunching eyeglasses underfoot. He reached the still figure where it lay slackly, face down. Gingerly he squatted, turned it on ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... poor fellow now," said Cousin Egbert almost gleefully, and our host entered. He carried a patch over his right eye and was not attired for sport on the lake, but in a dark morning suit of quietly beautiful lines that I thought showed a fine sense of the situation. He shot me one superior glance from his left eye and turned to ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... patch of jungle in preparation for sowing PADI, it is usual to leave a few trees standing on some high point of the ground in order not to offend the TOH of the locality by depriving them of all the trees, which they are vaguely supposed to make use of as resting-places. Such trees ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... which turned a narrow strip of Abyssinian mud and a triangular patch of swamp at the end of it into the most fruitful land of antiquity. They had also that genius which impels man to look out over the horizon around him, see more than the material problems of life, and gaze into the beyond, ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... travels into the Mahometan countries, seasoned up for the English reader with some fragments of our own ballads, and shreds of our older sermons. The composition and harmony of the work, accordingly, is much like the pattern of that patch-work drapery that is sometimes to be met with in the mansions of the industrious, where a blue tree overshadows a shell-fish, and a gigantic butterfly seems ready to swallow up Palemon and Lavinia. The author has the merit merely of cutting out each of his figures from the piece where ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Kim flitted into the dusk. He knew that in all probability there would be sentries round the camp, and smiled to himself as he heard the thick boots of one. A boy who can dodge over the roofs of Lahore city on a moonlight night, using every little patch and corner of darkness to discomfit his pursuer, is not likely to be checked by a line of well-trained soldiers. He paid them the compliment of crawling between a couple, and, running and halting, crouching ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... oldest captain shook my hand warmly when the breast-hooks were put in, declaring that he could see no reason why the Spray should not "cut in bow-head" yet off the coast of Greenland. The much-esteemed stem-piece was from the butt of the smartest kind of a pasture oak. It afterward split a coral patch in two at the Keeling Islands, and did not receive a blemish. Better timber for a ship than pasture white oak never grew. The breast-hooks, as well as all the ribs, were of this wood, and were steamed and bent into shape as required. It was hard upon March when I began work in earnest; ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... is often asked about. The whale is represented as a great green monster with a large black patch for the open mouth. Jonah is shown in a recumbent position on the ground. At the back is part of a ship, while in the extreme background may ...
— A Short Account of King's College Chapel • Walter Poole Littlechild
... lit up. And you can't fancy how beautiful was the contrast of the great masses of lamplit foliage and the dark sapphire night sky with just one blue star set overhead in the middle of the largest patch. In the dark walks, too, there are crowds of people whose faces you cannot see, and here and there a colossal white statue at the corner of an alley that gives the place a nice, ARTIFICIAL, eighteenth century sentiment. There was a good deal of summer lightning blinking overhead, ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... searching and shouting were vain. At length one of my companions, who had entered a tangled patch of underwood which we had not before thought of looking, suddenly uttered a cry of horror. We ran up to him, and found him gazing on the dead body of our master, who lay on his face, transfixed by a native spear, which still stood upright in his back. It was one of those spears which the aborigines ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... later her ruse would be discovered by the watchers of the conspiracy, but she asked only two hours of freedom. After that she would be as difficult to find as the rabbit that has gained the heart of the briar patch. ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... stands. Every spot of this low earth is smiled upon by that serene apocalypse of the loving will of God. No lane is so narrow and foul in the great city, no spot is so bare and lonely in the waste desert, but that thither the sunlight comes, and there some patch of blue above beckons the downcast eye to look up. The day opens its broad bosom bathed in light, and shows the sun in the heavens, the Lord of light, to preach to us of the true light. The night opens ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... on that soft ground," said Karlsefin, moving slowly along, with the torch held low, "but there is no sign of Snorro's little feet. Olaf always carried him—yet—ah! here they are on this patch of sand, look. They had halted here—probably to rest; perhaps to change Snorro's position. I've lost them again—no! here they are, but only Olaf's. He must have lifted ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... sea, for soon the current and his own exertions were taking him away from the rocks, the light of the burning ship was ceasing to be effective. It was just enough to hinder his vision; looking from the patch of light which bathed the light and him he could just see far off the white water which marked the cliff fronts, and on the edge of his horizon the grim moving white wall where the ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... of arson, and set out to arrest him, accompanied by the Nelson police magistrate, at the head of a posse of some fifty Nelson settlers very badly equipped. Rauparaha, surrounded by his armed followers, was found in a small clearing backed by a patch of bush, his front covered by a narrow but deep creek. The leaders of the arresting party crossed this, and called on the chief to give himself up. Of course he defied them. After an argument the police magistrate, an excitable man, made as though to arrest ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... out of the hospital Joe was able to take up light work, and did his share of making pictures of trench life. He had a big bruise on one side, a discolored patch that had an unpleasant look, but which soon ceased to give much pain except after a ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... alley called Cross Court which connects them, is what appears at first sight to be a solid block of tenements. The graveyard is in the very heart of this populous block. The door of one of the houses stood open, and through a barred staircase window at the back of the entry I caught a glimpse of a patch of grass—a sight so strange in this part of London that I went around to the other side of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... it if Milly flirts? I don't believe I can help it if I do myself. But I can tell you this, Ian—yes, really—" Her soft white arms went about his neck. "I've never seen a man yet who was a patch upon you for cleverness and handsomeness and goodness and altogetherness. No! You really are the very nicest ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... kraal. On the right flank in like manner the western razor-back is similarly continued in a northerly direction by two other small kopjes, the more northern of which is situated on the west side of the railway. A Nek of land connects this kopje with the apex of a triangular patch of broken ground, stretching several miles northward, with its eastern side at right angles to the railway. Yet further north, beyond the base or northern side of this third cluster of hills, a valley some two miles broad runs from the railway on the east to the open veld on the west, and thus ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... travellers, as permanent and satisfactory a public pipe as could well have been devised. It had just been in requisition before we passed, for a small quantity of newly-burned tobacco lay in the bowl; and a fresh patch of clay on the mouthpiece had probably been added, either in the way of general repairs or by some extra-fastidious traveller, who preferred having a private mouthpiece of his own. After rather ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... the house in which Christophe and Olivier lived, tucked away between the four walls, was symbolical of that part of the life of France. It was a little patch of green earth shut off from the outer world. Only now and then did the mighty wind of the outer air, whirling down, bring to the girl dreaming there the breath of the distant fields and ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... out the lamp and threw herself fully dressed upon the bed. Sleep would not come. She stared long at the little patch of moonlight that showed upon the bare floor. She tried to think, but her heart was filled with a strange restlessness. Arising from the bed, she crossed to the window and stared out across the moonlit clearing toward the dark edge of the forest—the mysterious forest whose ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... that he would keep on to see the Great World instead of going back to his big green lily-pad in the Smiling Pool, where he could take care of himself. You remember Peter Rabbit felt re-spon-sible when he brought little Miss Fuzzy tail down from the Old Pasture to the dear Old Briar-patch. He felt that it was his business to see to it that no harm came to her, and that is just the way Danny Meadow Mouse felt about ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess
... to Church; I, God forgive me, finished the Chronicles[41] with a good deal of assistance from Colonel Ferguson's notes about Indian affairs. The patch is, I suspect, too glaring to be pleasing; but the Colonel's sketches are capitally good. I understand, too, there are one or two East Indian novels which have lately ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... is a sensible man; He stays to his home an' looks arter his folks; He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can, An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes; But John P. Robinson he Sez he ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... Here, the Now, the vast Forlorn around us; The gold-delirium, the ferine strife; The lusts that lure us on, the hates that hound us; Our red rags in the patch-work quilt of Life. ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... hills. There were no trees, and but few houses. The chief signs of human labour were the rounded piles of peat, and the square cuttings in the moor marking the places where the subterranean wood-choppers had gathered their harvests. The long straths were once cultivated, and every patch of arable land had its group of cottages full of children. The human harvest has always been the richest and most abundant that is raised in the Highlands; but unfortunately the supply exceeded the demand; and so the crofters were evicted, and ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... and abundant the hair must have been. The mummy is that of a fine, vigorous man, who might have lived to a hundred years, and he must have defended himself resolutely against his assailants; his features bear even now an expression of fury. A flattened patch of exuded brain appears above one eye, the forehead is wrinkled, and the lips, which are drawn back in a circle about the gums, reveal the teeth still biting into the tongue. Kamosu did not reign long;'we know nothing of the events of his life, but we owe to him ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... roughest tracks imaginable, with the result that we were thoroughly tired and somewhat bad tempered. However, the tent had to be erected and our goods stowed away before we could think of food or rest. And so we set to work, with the aid of our driver, and soon had the tent up upon a small patch of ground just outside the little village, and quite near to ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... off and crumpled it in his hands, and the circular brown patch of hair in the middle of his bald head looked like an island in the midst of a pond, for in Connaught they had not yet abandoned the ancient tonsure for the style then coming into use. 'If we do not somewhat,' ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... full of water, delicately balanced in a bully-beef tin containing sodium. The tins were tied to the barbed-wire entanglements in front of our trenches, and when the stealthy Hun, creeping on his stomach, bumped against the wire the test-tube overflowed into the tin and a lurid patch of greenish flame revealed the clumsy visitor to our look-outs. That was before we were supplied with calcium flares. Then, too, the sappers went in for experimental research by making ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... that the girls had chosen for their picnic was ideal. It was a patch of short fine grass near the edge of the cliff, with a bank for a seat. The ground was blue with the beautiful little flowers of the vernal squill, and clumps of sea-pinks, white bladder campion, and golden lady's fingers bloomed in such profusion that the place was like a wild garden. The ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... forward with a degree of comfort. Presently she was brought to a stop by a small stream. It was a mere brook—probably the water from a single spring such as the one which issued from the knoll; but at this point it spread out and took the form of a wide patch of marsh grass. Farther down it gathered its laggard waters together and became a brook again. Janet, keeping clear of the bog, went down here intending to jump across. Finding it too wide for her, she followed it along, its ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... a goodman and his wife who had a little field on which they grew flax. One season their patch yielded a particularly fine crop, and after it had been cut they laid it out to dry. But Norouas, the North-west Wind, came along and with one sweep of his mighty wings tossed it as high as the tree-tops, so that it fell into the sea and ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... Morvah rises the tor of Carn Galva, standing stern and solitary like a little patch of Dartmoor. On the coast is the grand sheer cliff of Bosigran, the western protection of Porthmeor Cove, with traces of prehistoric fortification; it is a noble bluff of granite, with a drop of 400 feet. Puffins nest in the crevices below. ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... backed by popular sentiment, refused to see in Russia's stubborn demand about her fleet in the Black Sea other than a perpetual menace to Turkey. They argued that England had made too heavy a sacrifice to patch up in this fashion an inglorious and doubtful peace. The attitude of Napoleon III. did more than anything else to confirm this decision. The war in the Crimea had never been as popular in France as it was in England. ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... laughing at Sylvia's significant colour and noting Plank's direct gaze as the waiter filled Leila's slender-stemmed glass. And "nothing but Apollinaris," he said coolly, as the waiter approached him; but though his voice was easy enough, a dull patch of colour came out under ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... old amusements with new industry. Our little parlor received constant accessions of new pictures. All our leisure was employed in exploring the scenery of the neighborhood; and not a bit of forest, or patch of hill, or streak of rivulet or stream, to whiah the genius of art could lend loveliness, but she picked up, in these happy rambles, and worked into fitting ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... peculiar to that region, (Solanum rostratum, Dunal.) When civilization marched up the Rocky Mountains, and potatoes began to be grown in that region, this highly improved pest acquired the habit of feeding upon the cultivated potato. It went from potato-patch to potato-patch, moving east-ward at the rate of about sixty miles a year, and is now firmly established over all the country extending from Indiana to its old feeding-grounds in the Rocky Mountains. In about twelve years it will have ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... I'll try whether my old wit be in request With those that have but little: this must be patch'd With cloth ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... island, which seemed to rise like a mountain straight out of the sea, we could make out a crowd of people in their holiday clothes standing or sitting along the brow of the cliff watching our approach, and just beyond them a patch of cottages with roofs of tarred felt. A little later we doubled into a cove among the rocks, where I landed at a boat slip, and then scrambled up a steep zig-zag pathway to the head of the cliff where the people crowded round us ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge |
