"Patching" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flow— as agoas estao paradas, "the waters have stopped." The muddy streets, in a few days, dry up; groups of young fellows are now seen seated on the shady sides of the cottages making arrows and knitting fishing-nets with tucum twine; others are busy patching up and caulking their canoes, large and small; in fact, preparations are made on all sides for the much longed-for "verao," or summer, and the "migration," as it is called, of fish and turtle— that is, their descent from the inaccessible pools in the forest to the main ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... all. 'Tis she that's a stooping to he—that's my opinion. A widow man—whose first wife was no credit to him—what is it for a young perusing woman that's her own mistress and well liked? But as a neat patching up of things I see much good in it. When a man have put up a tomb of best marble-stone to the other one, as he've done, and weeped his fill, and thought it all over, and said to hisself, 'T'other took me in, I knowed this ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... sunshine patching, And streaming and streaking across The gray-green oaks; and catching, By its soft brown beard, the moss. 1833 BAILEY: Festus, ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... incidentally involved patching one of half a dozen over-worn tubes—I looked her over more in detail. The customary frame, strut rods, and torsion rods had been supplemented by the most extraordinary criss-cross of angle-iron braces it has ever been my fortune to behold. They ran from anywhere to everywhere ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... breaking of the defenders. But he knew it was like patching rotten material. His influence could not last without Bill and his reinforcements. He plied his guns with a discrimination which no heat or excitement could disturb, and the first invaders fell under ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... Vawse, to beg her help in the mending and patching line. Her old friend was very glad to see her take up anything with interest, and readily agreed to do her best in the matter. So some old clothes were looked up; pieces of linen, cotton, and flannel gathered together: a large basket found to hold all these rags of shape and no shape; and for the ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Ludar told me, had been found on the coast, a half wreck, some weeks since, and, by dint of great labour and patching, had ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... broken old clerk who went wrong and was found out, and who steadied down in jail, and there's more than one poor girl that's been deceived. I could easily replace 'em. And the Lost Souls' Hotel might be the means of patching up many wrecked lives in that way—giving people with pasts the chance of ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... little turret that remains On the plains, By the caper overrooted, by the gourd Overscored, While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks Through the chinks— Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time Sprang sublime, And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced As they raced, And the monarch and his minions and his ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... are constantly at work mending garments apparently unmendable, pressing, steaming, patching, sewing on buttons. The ragged uniforms come out of that big bare room clean and whole, ready to be tied up in new burlap bags, tagged, and placed in racks of fresh white cedar. There is no odour in this room, ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... laid in his coal. They all said the same. "Now," said he, "the coal of this crowd for this winter will cost a thousand dollars, if you add in the kindling and the matches, and patching the furnace pots ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... ready, nice and clean, but his shoes badly needed repairing, and this fact caused his devoted wife much anxiety. She took from her own feet the thick woollen stockings she was wearing, and gave them to Polikey. She then began to repair his shoes, patching up the holes so as to protect his ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... tumbling about on the grass. The oldest girl was grinding at the rude mill, a boy was making something out of birch branches, interlaced with willow. A round, cheerful face glanced up from patching a boy's garment, and smiled. Madame Gaudrion's mother had been a white woman left at the Saguenay basin in a dying condition, it was supposed, but she had recovered and married a half-breed. One daughter had cast in her lot with a roving tribe. Pierre Gaudrion had seen the other ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... in the least care about your son-in-law's visits; you brought him here—take him away again! If you have any authority in your family, it seems to me that you may very well insist on your wife's patching up this squabble. Tell the worthy old lady from me, that if I am unjustly charged with having caused a young couple to quarrel, with upsetting the unity of a family, and annexing both the father and the son-in-law, I will deserve my reputation by annoying them in my own way! Why, here is Lisbeth ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... and remonstrance. When these failed, he only did his duty in attempting—vainly, as it proved—a compromise; and it was with disgust as well as weariness that he turned away from the degrading and hopeless task of patching up the strife that was undermining all his efforts at reconstruction. The Court which he dreamed of restoring, chastened by adversity, enhanced in dignity, resting upon a sound constitutional foundation, and fenced ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... moss upon the north side, and on the west the whole framework inclined over the river, as though the timbers of the old galleon regretted their proper element and strained towards it tenderly, quietly, persistently. But careful patching and repairing had kept the building to all appearance as stout as ever; and any doubts of its stability were dispelled in a moment by a glance at Master Simon, the landlord. Master Simon's age by parish register fell short of forty, ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Mademoiselle Reisz's front room door and entered, she discovered that person standing beside the window, engaged in mending or patching an old prunella gaiter. The little musician laughed all over when she saw Edna. Her laugh consisted of a contortion of the face and all the muscles of the body. She seemed strikingly homely, standing there in the afternoon light. She still wore the shabby ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... "I'll have to try to get somewhere. I suppose it is useless for me to ask," he added, "but have you, by any chance, a bit of canvas—an old sail or hammock?—I don't need much. That's what I came for—and some shellac and wire, and a screwdriver of sorts? We need patching as well as petrol; and we're a ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... even afterwards, when she could breathe more freely and began to frame her own laws, these, since they were blended with ancient ordinances which were bad, could not themselves be good; and thus for the two hundred years of which we have trustworthy record, our city has gone on patching her institutions, without ever possessing a government in respect of which she could truly be ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... a serious danger, though the allies are said to have formed a plan for the partition of all the Angevin empire among themselves. For some reason their campaign does not seem to have been vigorously pushed. The young duke was able to force his brother to come to terms, and he succeeded in patching up a rather insecure truce with King Louis. On this, however, he dared to rely enough—or perhaps he trusted to the situation as he understood it—to venture at last, in January, 1153, on his long-deferred expedition ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... heartily when the same pensioner whom I had seen patching his uniform in the Commandant's ante-room, came in with an invitation to dinner for me ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... lantern and a big bowl of soup, good soup such as we get in the Islands, and half a loaf of bread, and a pannikin of water. He set the things beside me, and untied my hands, and placed the light so that it fell upon me, and stood patching ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... the carpenters were busily employed in patching up some of the boats, so that the prisoners might be removed from the prize, while the rest of the crew were engaged in clearing away the wreck of the masts, and in preparing to make sail on ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... some of his visits to the Hawk's Lynch, in which we have accompanied him. Then they talked on about Katie, and East, and the Englebourn people, past and present, old Betty, and Harry and his wife in New Zealand, and David patching coats and tending bees, and executing the Queen's justice to the best of his ability in ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... her duty. This marriage was soon celebrated, because the Sire de Rohan had seven daughters, and hardly knew how to provide for them all, at a time when people were just recovering from the late wars, and patching up their unsettled affairs. Now the good man Bastarnay happily found Bertha really a maiden, which fact bore witness to her proper bringing up and perfect maternal correction. So immediately the night arrived when it should be lawful for him to embrace her, he got her with a child so roughly that ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... ashes. My unfortunate workman, having blundered on for certain millions of years tinkering and patching and improving his dismal colony, will give the thing up; and God will laugh and show him the mistakes and then blot the essay out, as a master runs his pen through the errors in a pupil's exercise. The earth grows cold at last, and the herds of humanity die, and the ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... since, with those wonderfully-patched trousers in her hands, and the boy beside her, gnawing at his lump of bread. But many a long seam had passed through her fingers since then, for she worked at a clothes-shop all the week with the sewing-machine, whence arose the possibility of patching Charley's clothes, for the overseer granted her a cutting or two ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... average healthy, fine American girl brought up in a normal, small-town American family. As the eldest, she had been her mother's assistant. She had served her apprenticeship in cooking, nursing babies, patching small clothes, turning old things around and upside down, in order to make them over. She could market wisely, she could ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... ridicule to the officials: they even refused it the noble name of cloak, and called it a cape. In fact, it was of singular make: its collar diminishing year by year, but serving to patch its other parts. The patching did not exhibit great skill on the part of the tailor, and was, in fact, baggy and ugly. Seeing how the matter stood, Akakiy Akakievitch decided that it would be necessary to take the cloak to Petrovitch, the tailor, who lived somewhere on the fourth floor up a dark stair-case, and ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... thoroughly well learned. And the strangest things come of use, too, at the strangest times. A sailor teaches you to tie a knot when you are on a fishing party, and you tie that knot the next time when you are patching up the Emperor of Russia's carriage for him, in a valley in the Ural Mountains. But "getting ready" does not mean the piling in of a heap of accidental accomplishments. It means sedulously examining the coming ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... right by patching up wrong. A new and effective system cannot be created by changing the features of an old and putrid one. An entirely new foundation must be constructed in order to insure solidity and strength. That was the reason ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... best only copying, patching and imitating went on here; which he fancied to be owing to some temporary and local cause. He did not at that time see that mediaevalism was as dead as a fern-leaf in a lump of coal; that other developments were shaping ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... turn back? Such a thing had never been known in the history of the Northwest Fur Company. It would disgrace them forever. Think of the honor of conquering disaster. Then he vowed that he would go ahead, whether the men accompanied him or not. Then he set them to patching the canoe with oil-cloth and bits of bark; but large sheets of birch bark are rare in the Rockies; and the patched canoe weighed so heavily that the men could scarcely carry it. It took them fourteen hours to make the three-mile portage of ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... that concerning the Eucharist grows so directly and necessarily out of the great doctrine of Christ's Person, that for me to give up those doctrinal points alleged to be non-essential is to give up all, to give up the whole Gospel. And what good would come of patching up such a hollow peace? At the first favorable opportunity Schmucker would break it, and even if he seemed to keep quiet, he would be secretly and incessantly working and machinating against our side of the house. And, what is ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... dress and make it, but I can use a needle on patching and quilting. Can't nobody beat me doin' that. I can knit, too. I can make stockings, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... find her talking to a young man, a shoemaker like myself. No, he was but a cobbler. On the following day, going again to see her, I find this cobbler there. I remonstrate with her, but in vain. And what is worse, she had sent to him the shoes I made, to be repaired. He was patching my own work! I swallowed my ire and went back to my shop. A week later, to be brief, I went there again, and what I beheld made my body shiver. She, the wench. Forgive me, Allah! had her hands around his neck and her lips—yes, her lying lips, on ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... solemn warnings, that all might become our zealous fellow laborers for the accomplishment of the glorious promises, and that especially President Buchanan might give to others good example and come from patching the old house which must crumble to pieces, in our peace union and give powerful assistance for the introduction of the promised New Era. Great mercy was shown through him to the country while he is yet in Babylon, but was quenching ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... without character, sentiments as dull as they were false, and a continual outrage on manners, morals and common sense, were its leading features. Yet, strange to tell, the audience endured it all; and, by copious retrenchments and plaistering and patching, this very piece had what is ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... motherly roof reached over and sheltered a snug little porch. There we sat, after the long hot drive, drinking cool water,—the talkative little storekeeper who is my daily companion; the silent old black woman patching pantaloons and saying never a word; the ragged picture of helpless misfortune who called in just to see the preacher; and finally the neat matronly preacher's wife, plump, yellow, and intelligent. "Own land?" said the wife; "well, only this house." Then she added quietly. "We did buy seven ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... cause the mixture to be well distributed throughout. The wet concrete was well spaded in an effort to secure a smooth surface next to the forms. This was generally accomplished, but some rough places which showed after the removal of the forms required patching up. ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... neither represented his age, nor led it; he opposed it. His outlook upon the world was truly revolutionary. In his eyes, the reforms which his contemporaries were so busy introducing into society were worse than useless—the mere patching of an edifice which would never be fit to live in. He believed that it was necessary to start altogether afresh. And what makes him so singularly interesting a figure is that, in more than one sense, he was right. It was necessary to start afresh; and the ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... [FOOTNOTE: "Grosses Concert in E moll. Op. 11." Bearberet von Carl Tausig. Score, pianoforte, and orchestral parts. Berlin: Ries and Erler.] I shall only say that his cutting-down and patching-up of the introductory tutti, to mention only one thing, are not well enough done to excuse the liberty taken with a great composer's work. Moreover, your emendations cannot reach the vital fault, which lies in the conceptions. A musician may have mastered the mechanical trick of instrumentation, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... over which her empty central gas-bags spread in canopies and festoons. Nothing, however, had caught fire, and her men were speedily at work upon her repair. They behaved with a confidence that verged upon indiscretion. While most of them commenced patching the tears of the membrane, half a dozen of them started off for the nearest road in search of a gas main, and presently found themselves prisoners in the hands of a hostile crowd. Close at hand was a number of villa residences, whose occupants speedily developed from an unfriendly curiosity to aggression. ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... acquaintance; for occasionally a flash of foreign individuality would break through the husk of satisfaction in which he had inclosed himself, compelling him to feel that another man might have claims. And hitherto he had been very successful in patching up and keeping entire his eggshell of conceit. But that affair with Alec was a very bad business. Had Beauchamp been a coward, he would have suffered less from it. But he was no coward, though not quite so courageous as ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... be right by your side to help, sympathetic, experienced, strong; and He will stay with you all the time. In the kitchen, in the sitting-room, the sick-room, with the children, when work piles up, when things jangle or threaten to, when the baby's cross, and the patching and sweeping and baking, and all the rest of it seem endless, on the street, in the office, on the campus, in the store, when tempted—almost slipped, when opportunity opens for a quiet personal word, everywhere, every ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... was seated in the breakfast-room at her usual employment, mending and patching; no sinecure now. Fleda opened the kitchen door and came in folding up a calico apron she ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... sudden violence upon the fortunes of a great number of people, making his path through manifold slaughter and destruction, loading the bodies of free-born men with chains, and crushing some with fetters, while patching up all kinds of accusations far removed from the truth. And to this man is owing one especial atrocity which has branded the time of ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... taking in water in case of a storm. Meanwhile the fo'c's'le was in as filthy a state as could well be imagined. Herriot thrust his head down the hatch once during the morning and as he caught the sickening stench of the place he called the two boys, who had been up forward helping the patching. ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... branches we are trying to lop off. A family living in an old house, on unhealthy ground, with water in the cellar, a crumbling foundation, the beams like sponge, the roof leaking, the chimney full of cracks, would not spend large sums of money year after year, generation after generation, in patching up the old house on the same old spot, but with ordinary wisdom and economy, they would build anew, on higher ground, with strong foundations, sound timber, substantial chimneys, and solid roofing. True, they would patch up the old at as little cost as ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... the morning, and commit the kingdom to his charge." It happened that the first man that presented himself at the city gate was a beggar, who had passed his whole life in scraping broken meat and in patching rags. The ministers of state and nobles of the court fulfilled the conditions of the king's will, and laid the keys of the treasury and citadel at ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... concentrating its power. Behind him that nation was patching up its one great quarrel, and now a gray phantom stalked out of the past to the music of drum and fife, and Crittenden turned sharply to see a little body of men, in queer uniforms, marching through a camp of regulars toward him. They were old boys, and ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... Paris, giving the geography, history, and commerce of Coulmiers. One can fancy in the "Atlantic cable" columns of the "Morning Meteor" the tokens of a standing prescription to dilute foreign facts with nine parts domestic verbiage; and this kind of "editing" educates mankind to padding and patching ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... Varney up the road to Stanhope's that afternoon, much less of any shock that could conceivably have come to him. But he set himself to find out. By the next morning, partly through inquiry, partly through patching two and two together, he had worked out a theory. Guesswork, of course, was rather dangerous in a delicate matter such as this; but the doctor's report after breakfast had been the very worst yet. Peter ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... activity of inoccupation. Idleness, partly induced by the temperature of the climate, and partly consequent on the decaying prosperity of the nation, leaves indications of its influence on all his undertakings. He prefers patching up a ruin to building a house; he raises shops and hovels, the abodes of inactive, vegetating, brutish poverty, under the protection of aged and ruined, yet stalwart, arches of the Roman amphitheater; and the habitations of the lower orders frequently ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... your bidding and must first of all apologize for some little delay; the cause being that your messenger found me busy patching up a bullet-hole in ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... both Downwards and seawards, though the hill is not half the altitude of Cissbury. Northwards are the beautiful woods of Castle Goring, once the residence of the Shelleys, through which we may walk to Clapham and Patching, villages on southern spurs of the Downs; the latter has a restored Early English church with a very beautiful modern reredos. Clapham has a Transitional church containing memorials of the Shelley family. Notice the blocked-up Norman arch which proves the existence of an earlier building. ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... accoutrements about them to depart; my "brother" stands before me and loads up his flintlock rifle; it is a fearful and wonderful process; it takes him at least two minutes; he does not seem to know on which particular part of his wonderful paraphernalia to find the slugs, the powder, or the patching, and he finishes by tearing a piece of rag off a by-standing villager to place over the powder in the pan. While he is doing all this, and especially when ramming home the bullet, he looks at me as though expecting me to come and pat him approvingly ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... days. This pressure of work relieved him, at first, from too close consideration of his relation to Bessy. He had yielded up his dearest hopes at her wish, and for the moment his renunciation had set a chasm between them; but gradually he saw that, as he was patching together the ruins of his Westmore plans, so he must presently apply himself to the reconstruction ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... concluded should be of a permanent nature; no perfunctory patching up should be permitted. The horror of all the civilized nations of the Old World slaughtering one another, every one convinced of the perfect righteousness of their own cause—a recurrence, if it could not be avoided absolutely, should ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... his Tongue, as the dint of his Sword. Seeing then we borrow (and that not shamefully) from the Dutch, the Britaine, the Roman, the Dane, the French, the Italian, and Spaniard, how can our Stock be other than exceeding plentifull? It may be objected, that such patching maketh Littletons Hotch-pot of our Tongue, and in effect, brings the same rather to a Babelish Confusion, than any one entire Language. It may again be answered, that this Theft of Words is no less warranted by the Priviledge of a Prescription ancient and universall, than ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... place on his outward man. Whenever they observed this dubious expression gather upon his countenance, accompanied with a glance that fixed now upon the sleeve of his coat, now upon the knees of his breeches, where he probably missed some antique patching and darning, which, being executed with blue thread upon a black ground, had somewhat the effect of embroidery, they always took care to turn his attention into some other channel, until his garments, 'by the aid of use, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... pickets guards were driven in and forced to join the main ranks for safety. The Mormon troops were placed in position by the officers, so as to guard every point. We all had a large supply of bullets, with the patching sewed on the balls to facilitate the loading of our guns, which were muzzle loaders. The Mormon force was about eight hundred strong, poorly armed; many of the men had no guns; some had single-barrel pistols and a few homemade swords. These ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... placing the best pieces in the pawnbroker's shop. But among very large numbers, especially among the Irish, the prevailing clothing consists of perfect rags often beyond all mending, or so patched that the original colour can no longer be detected. Yet the English and Anglo- Irish go on patching, and have carried this art to a remarkable pitch, putting wool or bagging on fustian, or the reverse—it's all the same to them. But the true, transplanted Irish hardly ever patch except in the extremest necessity, when the garment would otherwise fall apart. Ordinarily ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... Mr. Peggotty came home about nine o'clock, this unfortunate Mrs. Gummidge was knitting in her corner, in a very wretched and miserable condition. Peggotty had been working cheerfully. Ham had been patching up a great pair of waterboots; and I, with little Em'ly by my side, had been reading to them. Mrs. Gummidge had never made any other remark than a forlorn sigh, and had never raised her eyes ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... are good that way. I often envy you, for what with my health and every one's health to think about, doctoring one man for fever, putting all you fellows straight, and patching up squabbling savages, my appetite often feels as if it wants a fillip. A doctor's is an anxious life, my boy—more especially out here in a country like this, amongst a very uncertain people, when a man feels that he has a stake ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... country, O son of Hur," she said, presently, "workmen who make pictures by gathering vari-colored shells here and there on the sea-shore after storms, and cutting them up, and patching the pieces as inlaying on marble slabs. Can you not see the hint there is in the practice to such as go searching for secrets? Enough that from this person I gathered a handful of little circumstances, and from that other yet another handful, and that ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... we all have reason to rejoice at these disasters, apart from our sympathy with individual sufferings. More good will have been done by this one great shock to the heart of England than by fifty years' more patching, and pottering, and knocking impotent heads together. What makes me most angry is the ministerial apology. 'It's always so with us for three campaigns,'!!! 'it's our way,' 'it's want of experience,' &c. &c. That's precisely the thing complained of. As to want of experience, if the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... he brought with him, who had been unfortunately reprieved from the gibbet in their own country, served to swell the mass of mutiny. The admiral exhausted art, negotiation, entreaty, force, and succeeded at length in patching up a specious reconciliation by such concessions as essentially impaired his own authority. Among these was the grant of large tracts of land to the rebels, with permission to the proprietor to employ an allotted number of the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... the primitive desire for adornment. Quilting—the method of fastening together layers of cloths in such a manner as to secure firmly the loose materials uniformly spread between them, has resulted from the need of adequate protection against rigorous climates. The piecing and patching provide the maker with a suitable field for the display of artistic ability, while the quilting calls for particular skill in handling the needle. The fusing of these two kinds of needlework into a harmonious combination is a task that requires ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... afternoon, while he was patching the lot fence, with Buck sunning himself near the woodpile, came Old Man Thornycroft. Davy recognized his buggy as it turned the bend in the road. He quickly dropped his tools, called Buck to him, and got behind the house where he could see without being seen. The buggy stopped in the road, and ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... and tear during the dark winter days. In direct reference to this matter, we may here remark, that sheets should be turned "sides to middle" before they are allowed to get very thin. Otherwise, patching, which is uneconomical from the time it consumes, and is unsightly in point of appearance, will have to be resorted to. In June and July, gooseberries, currants, raspberries, strawberries, and other summer fruits, should be preserved, and jams and jellies made. In July, too, the making of walnut ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... by his faithful Bulke, and Jacob Fleischmann strolled about on deck, or reclined in the steamer chairs, which even the trading vessel possessed. Stoss needed some massaging and patching up, and while the physicians were busy with him, he crowed and cawed in his most ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... daughter is there, palefac'd, quiet; her young man went back on her four years ago; his folks would not let him marry a convict's sister. She sits by the window, sewing on the children's clothes, the clothes not only patching up; her hunger for children of ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... be worn out. Donald is already too big for his, and though they may do for David for a few months longer, with patching and mending, I would na' like to ha' the poor boys pointed out by their school-mates as young gaberlunzies; and the siller I get for the yarn will only just pay the rent and find porridge for the bairns," she thought to herself. "The Bible says that it is the duty of Christians to support ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... been allowed to carry more than three hundred passengers, not less than nine hundred and fifty soldiers were packed. Most of the vessels were antiquated and inadequate; not a few were badly decayed. With a little superficial patching up they were imposed upon the Government. Despite his knowing that only vessels adapted for ocean service were needed, Vanderbilt chartered craft that had hitherto been almost entirely used in navigating inland waters. Not a single precaution was taken by him or his associates to safeguard ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... for surgery. The ten dollars paid my board for six weeks, giving me a chance to take some extra cases for the doctor. The war looks bad, doesn't it? They need surgeons and though I'm doing something in patching up these poor fellows and sending them back, I wonder often if I oughtn't to go into a war hospital. Do you remember the little cameo pin you used to wear till father thought it was too dressy for you? If you haven't lost it, I wish you'd send ...
— Benefits Forgot - A Story of Lincoln and Mother Love • Honore Willsie
... wouldn't! Who would I be patching torn trousers or darning ripped sweaters for if you were like Bob, I'd like to know? Who'd be pestering me to hunt up his cap and mittens? And who would ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... Hastings explained. "This island land is the most productive in the world. This section of California is like Holland. You wouldn't think it, but this water we're sailing on is higher than the surface of the islands. They're like leaky boats—calking, patching, pumping, night and day and all the time. But it ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... her great joy at the thought of living with "Miss Agnes," seemed to have forgotten the painful circumstance which compelled her to leave home. But on the day that her mother finished patching her few clothes, tying them up and telling her she might go at once to her new home, there came sad tidings from the hospital. They need never hope to have the husband and father home again, unless to take one last look before they ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd
... experience, it will not be long before she will begin to take an interest in her own clothes, and so will not need to be warned that a button is coming off or that the hem of her skirt is coming out. But, of course, she could not begin by sewing or patching her own clothes, nor by mending intricate tears. First see that she sews on buttons correctly and then let her ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... huge disorder scarfs, lace cravats, muffs, and other necessary equipment were littered about the room. I much missed the neat touch of my valet Simpkins, and the gillie Hamish Gorm, whom Major Macleod had put at my service, did not supply his place by a deal, since he knew no more of patching the face or powdering a periwig than he had arrived at by the light of nature. But despite this handicap I made shift to do myself justice before I set off for the lodgings of Lord Balmerino, by whom I was ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... be all fixed up by next month. I'll tell you, daughter, your dad will have to hustle to beat you and me, I'm thinking," and with pardonable pride the mother, who had often been termed "Chief of Franklin police," went on with the mending of socks and thrifty patching ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... what tools still remained from the time when all surplus weight had been jettisoned, and with some improvised apparatus, they set vigorously to work repairing the engines, fitting new rudder-plates, patching up the floats and providing the burned propellers ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... once," the Itinerant Tinker said, "but I ran out of paper and gave it up. Then, when the night fell," he resumed dolefully, after another long interval of silence, "I tried to prop it up. But I met with the same difficulty that confronted me in patching up the day, and was forced to abandon ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... for weeks, in fact, ever since the show in the cellar, patching, sewing, and putting together old rag carpet, canvas, heavy with paint, that had been ripped from the hurricane ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... the little bookcase at Dunglass was well thumbed. But reading of a lighter kind was also indulged in, and on winter nights, when the mother was plying her spinning-wheel and the father had taken down his cobbler's box and was busily engaged patching the children's shoes, it was a regular practice for John to sit near the dim oil-lamp and read to the rest. Sometimes the reading would be from an early number of Chambers's Journal, sometimes from Wilson's Tales of the Borders, which were then appearing—both of these being loans from ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... sometimes unjust, against the home government, which was constantly accused of parsimony, of shortsightedness, of vacillation, of sentimental weakness, in sending out too few troops, in refusing to annex fresh territory, in patching up a hollow peace, in granting too easy terms ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... the plays (Bacon, by the theory) had to work over old pieces. All this is the work of the hack of a playing company; it is not work to which a man in Bacon's position could stoop. Why should he? What had he to gain by patching and vamping? Certainly not money, if the wealth of Shakespeare is a dark mystery to the Baconian theorists. We are asked to believe that Bacon, for the sake of some five or six pounds, toiled at refashioning old plays, and handed the fair manuscripts to Shakespeare, who passed them off, among ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... of your ship, lieutenant," said Captain Keogh. "To be sure, the carpenter has been pestering me this morning about the timbers; but I told him he'd probably only make things worse by patching. You can't put new wine into old bottles, you know,"—here he poured himself out a fresh glass—"and we shall hold well enough together ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... over the eastern cliffs while Andy was patching me up." He carried one arm in a sling, and ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... seated the gunner and sailmaker, both engaged patching old clothes,—while the old carpenter, like the captain, was reading the bible,—and the armorer was lying flat on his back, and singing. A very pretty boy of fourteen, an apprentice to the captain, was playing, or in sea language "skylarking," with ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... endless obstacles (for he had to dance attendance on scores of intriguing factors and brokers ashore), the requisite stores for the fleet, Paul sat in his cabin in a half-despondent reverie, while Israel, cross-legged at his commander's feet, was patching ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... stretchers on rubber-tyred wheels about the paths, stretchers on which motionless forms lay shrouded in blankets. One, concerning whom I asked, had just had part of his skull trepanned: another had suffered amputation. And all this pruning and patching up of broken men to win them a few more years of crippled life caught one's throat like the penetrating smell of the iodoform. Nor was I sorry to hasten away by the night mail northwards to the camps. It was still dark as we passed Estcourt, but ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... where the stream darts along swiftly, after having escaped from a weir, and still streaked with foam. The shore rises like a sea beach, and on the pebbles men are patching and pitching old barges which have been hauled up on the bank. A skiff partly drawn up on the beach rocks as the current strives to work it loose, and up the varnish of the side glides a flickering light reflected from the wavelets. A fleet of such skiffs are waiting ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... the Sicilian war, but it was protracted by various delays during a long period [122]; at one time for the purpose of repairing his fleets, which he lost twice by storm, even in the summer; at another, while patching up a peace, to which he was forced by the clamours of the people, in consequence of a famine occasioned by Pompey's cutting off the supply of corn by sea. But at last, having built a new fleet, and obtained twenty thousand manumitted slaves [123], who were given him for the oar, he formed the Julian ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... hammering away in complete disregard of the night-watchman's uneasy slumbers. The big sewing-machine raced at top-speed round the flounce of a tent, and in odd corners among the bunks were groups mending mitts, strengthening sleeping-bags and patching burberrys. The cartographer at his table beneath a shaded acetylene light drew maps and sketched, the magnetician was busy on calculations close by. The cook and messman often made their presence felt and heard. In the outer Hut, the lathe spun round, its whirr and ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... Hector went on, "lies a pair of slippers that want patching. They belong to William Webster, the weaver, round the corner. They're very much down at heel too. But isn't it an honour to patch or set up slippers for a man who keeps his neighbours in fine linen all the days of ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... Never in her life had these three who loved her seen her so beautiful, so enchantingly confident and gay. Rose and her mother had some little trouble, later on, in patching the sequence of events together for the delighted but bewildered Harry, Rose's husband. But there could be no doubt, even to the shrewd eyes of her Aunt Kate, that Norma was ecstatically happy. Her mad kisses for Rose, the ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... first morning at Silverado, when we were full of business, patching up doors and windows, making beds and seats, and getting our rough lodging into shape, Irvine and his sister made their appearance together, she for neighbourliness and general curiosity; he, because he was working for me, to my sorrow, cutting ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... patching up of the barricades in which we assisted must be taken if Borth is to remain permanently in the roll of Welsh villages. Our storm-wave was but part of a system of aggression which the sea is carrying out upon ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... Rossitur was seated in the breakfast-room at her usual employment, mending and patching no sinecure now. Fleda opened the kitchen door and came in, folding up a calico apron ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... times, the heart never can. When it stops, we stop! Naturally, with such a constant strain upon it, we should expect it to have a tendency to give way, or break down, at certain points. The real wonder is that it breaks down so seldom. It has great powers of endurance and a wonderful trick of patching up break-downs ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... reason, the worst was over. As I went off the campus the top of my hat was hanging over my left ear, my collar and cravat were turned awry, my trousers gaped over one knee. I was talking with a fellow sufferer and patching the skin on my knuckles, when suddenly I met ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... or standardized phrase has left too deep a wound or gross a blemish I have had to rewrite. And, as I have rarely succeeded in recovering the original idea, I have had to borrow from my later thought. Of such patching I have been as thrifty as possible: also, I have not attempted to square the opinions and sentiments of early days with my later pronouncements, so, I make no doubt, some very clever readers will have the pleasure of catching me in inconsistency. ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the Bezesten, or cloth-market, he saw an old man in a stall, so narrow that he could scarce turn himself about in it, who was taken up in patching an old cloak. He was almost bent double with constant labour at his shopboard; and his eyes seemed not to have benefited by his application, for a pair of glasses were mounted on his nose. "This is precisely the man I want," said the slave to himself: "I am sure he can be of no repute." So intent ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... his savings on it. Some of his decorations, indeed, were so awkward that they would have excited many people's smiles. The replastering of the stonework soon tired him: so he contented himself with patching up the church walls all round to a height of some six feet from the ground. La Teuse mixed the plaster. When she talked of repairing the parsonage as well, for she was continually fearing that it would topple down on their heads, he told her that he ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... you will need him, her Grace insists on dressing for dinner. Likewise my Trafalgar coat begins to need skilled patching, here and there; it ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... I would have offered to do the patching, but feared Uncle Jake might suspect me of matrimonial designs upon him, such being the conceit of ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... themselves, however, for any plainness in dress, by additional extravagances in their head-dresses, and wore "heart-breakers," or artificial curls, which were set out on wires at the sides of the face. Patching and painting soon became common, and many a nonconformist divine lifted up his voice in vain against these vanities. Pepys has left ample details of the dress in this century; and, if we may judge from the entry under the 30th of October, 1663, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... ridge, fast to the block-house, to which level the water had not yet reached, Ross found the boat. Moreover, to his great delight, he saw that Anton had been patching it up, so that it was now ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... five thousand islands, he journeys and sails through Pliny, Marco Polo, Odoric de Pordenone,[675] Albert d'Aix, William of Boldensele, Pierre Comestor, Jacques de Vitry, bestiaries, tales of travels, collections of fables, books of dreams, patching together countless marvels, but yet, as he assures us, omitting many so as not to weary our faith: It would be too long to say all; "y seroit trop longe chose a tot deviser." With fanciful wonders are mingled many ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... seem to manage the job very well; and I have a trunk, by the bye, that wants patching up before my boy carries it off with him; I'll send it round to you; Hopkins. But stay—what's this?" and the doctor took up a soiled, yellow sheet of paper, from the heap rejected by the workman; it contained ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... to one of the repair bays of the great, doom-bound starship. In one corner, beyond the now useless patching equipment, was a table. On the table stood a model of the Star of Fire. It was six feet long and perfect in every external detail. He hadn't got around to the inside yet. The inside was completely empty. It had rockets and everything. There was no reason why it wouldn't ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... induced me to confess it then. He had served in the Crimea, and seemed to regard a dilapidated body very much as I should have regarded a damaged garment; and, turning up his cuffs, whipped out a very unpleasant looking housewife, cutting, sawing, patching and piecing, with the enthusiasm of an accomplished surgical seamstress; explaining the process, in scientific terms, to the patient, meantime; which, of course, was immensely cheering and comfortable. There was an uncanny sort ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... and all of you: here's a lad that has been half-killed for standing by his colors to-day. Look here, Armstrong, would you mind going for Dr. Maverick? this poor chap needs some patching-up. And, Kit, give me some water and a napkin: we'll get his face a ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... than a century old. No historical fact is, however, better established than that till nearly the end of the nineteenth century it was the general belief that the ancient industrial system, with all its shocking social consequences, was destined to last, with possibly a little patching, to the end of time. How strange and wellnigh incredible does it seem that so prodigious a moral and material transformation as has taken place since then could have been accomplished in so brief an interval? The readiness with which men accustom themselves, ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... no other arts was she But dressing, patching, repartee; 40 And, just as humour rose or fell, By turns a slattern or a belle; 'Tis true she dress'd with modern grace, Half naked at a ball or race; But when at home, at board or bed, 45 Five greasy nightcaps wrapp'd her head. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... number of very small stars around it. But the moon is not a success because it can only be understood if the stars too are intelligible, and the stars are not worked out. And so what I produce is not literature, but something like the patching of Trishka's coat. What am I to do? I don't know, I don't know. I must trust to time ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... had balloon silk, big shears, a quick-drying gum solution and a pot of gasproof varnish, ready for the job of patching up the hole. But first they had to empty the big bag of gas. This was speedily done, for already enough had escaped to wrinkle the bag like a walnut, with ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... a pair of shoes had to be condemned as "not worth mending," he endeavoured to retain them for a purpose of his own, sometimes paying a few pence for them as "old leather." When summer came round he set to work patching the derelicts as best he could, and would sometimes have thirty or forty pairs in readiness by the end of June. This was the season when the neighbourhood was annually invaded by troops of pea-pickers—a ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... weather," and John's or Pat's chance of getting or losing a job in consequence. The snow man stood there till long after all doubts were settled on these mooted points, falling slowly into helpless decrepitude in spite of occasional patching. But long before that time the frost succeeding the snow had paved the way for coasting in the hilly streets, and discovered countless "slides" in those that were flat, to the huge delight of the small boy and the discomfiture of his unsuspecting ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... that," John went on. "Then understand it about the rest of the country as well. Understand that we are all the time patching our income with our capital; and it answers pretty well because there is a good deal of capital and not so very many of ourselves, as yet. There will be twice as many of us in a few years, and very much less than half as much capital. Understand ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford |
