"Ragged" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... In a ragged school in the neighborhood of Posen where the children could hardly speak German they could sing; in a public school in Charlottenburg fifty boys, aged between eight and fifteen, sang the part-song known to every college man in America, "On a Bank Two Roses ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... in her little room, and she went and brought the ragged little boy and girl, saying she was very poor, and couldn't afford to dress them better; for she had been careful to hide the well-dressed little boy and girl ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... since so many different kinds of howl, so many threats of death, so many rags; so many odd weapons, from the matchlock of the time of the Michelade to the steel-tipped goad of the bullock drovers of La Camargue, so that when the Nimes mob; which in all conscience was howling and ragged enough, rushed out to offer a brotherly welcome to the strangers, its first feeling was one of astonishment and dismay as it caught sight of the motley crew which held out to it ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... laughing nervously. "No, no; we mustn't spoil the magic of the ring." Her voice trailed off into a dreamy, wistful monotone. "Who knows—Cinderella's godmother came to her when it was only a matter of ragged clothes and a party; the need here was far greater. Who knows?" She caught her breath with a sudden in-drawn cry. "Why, to-night is ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... up suddenly, "perhaps to you, too, Nature has opened her sky picture page by page! Have you seen the lambent flame of dawn leaping across the livid east; the red-stained, sulphurous islets floating in the lake of fire in the west; the ragged clouds at midnight, black as a raven's wing, blotting out the ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... and a volley followed. In the hall some stumbled forward, some hurtled backward, and some sank down in nerveless heaps. But those that remained did not again retreat. Reinforced by others, that crowded in behind, they charged boldly up the stairs, headed by a ragged, red capped giant named Souvestre—a man whom the Marquis had ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... Nature beautiful?" he said to Denzil, pointing to the ragged sky and the dripping ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... he withdrew from the clammy interior a series of ragged garments, the garments of a tramp. A pair of heavy boots there were, a pair of patched trousers and an old shabby coat, a greasy cap, and finally a threadbare ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... morning a multitude of excited women made their way into the Hotel de Ville. They wanted to destroy the heaps of papers, as all that writing did them no good. They seized a priest, and set about hanging him. They rang the tocsin, bringing all the trained battalions and all the ragged bands of the city to the Place de Greve. They carried away several hundreds of muskets, and some useless cannon; and they fetched torches, that they might burn the building to the ground. It was the headquarters of the elected municipality; but the masses were becoming conscious that ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... front of them not fifty yards away. Then they saw in the opening the two children, closely followed by two young bears. As the children slowly moved along they kept plucking the berries and feeding them to the greedy young animals. The children were ragged and sadly changed as, from their still hidden position, the boys watched them; they could see that Wenonah, at least, seemed to know that they must act cautiously, and they observed that frequently she spoke to the little ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... full of dirt and deviltry; one of the streets led to a ferry, and at the corner an old woman had an apple- stall. The poor soul had dropped asleep, worn out with the cold, and there were her goods left, with no one to watch 'em. Somebody was watching 'em, however; a girl, with a ragged shawl over her head, stood at the mouth of an alley close by, waiting for a chance to grab something. I'd seen her there when I went by before, and mistrusted she was up to some mischief; as I turned the corner, she put out her hand and cribbed an ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... has every comfort around him—his house finished, his garden fenced, and a strong stockade enclosing all, to keep off the "pagan" savages. This done, then commences the easy task of preaching. They collect a few ragged urchins of natives, whom they teach to read and write their own language—the English tongue being forbidden; and when these children return to their families, they are despised by them, as being effeminate ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... their lives. The cold nights and warm days of Tuscan springtime are like a Swiss summer. They make rich pasture and a hardy race of men. Tracts of corn and oats and rye alternate with patches of flax in full flower, with meadows yellow with buttercups or pink with ragged robin; the young vines, running from bough to bough of elm and mulberry, are just coming into leaf. The poplars are fresh with bright green foliage. On the verge of this blooming plain stand ancient cities ringed with hills, some rising to snowy Apennines, some covered ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... furnished without stint, it was not long before it was almost literally a huge reeling mass of drunkenness. Ever and anon some hero, smitten by the deadly shaft of king alcohol, would tumble from the ranks of the ragged regiment, his place being immediately supplied by another volunteer, who was also willing to vigorously tackle the enemy, though he should ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... reddish eyes gleamed like little chinks. But there was something very strange in him; there was a light in his eyes as though of intense feeling—perhaps there were even thought and intelligence, but at the same time there was a gleam of something like madness. He was wearing an old and hopelessly ragged black dress coat, with all its buttons missing except one, and that one he had buttoned, evidently clinging to this last trace of respectability. A crumpled shirt front, covered with spots and stains, protruded from his canvas waistcoat. Like a clerk, he wore no beard, nor moustache, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... was my surprise, when on awaking I found myself lying in my first humble lodging, stripped of my rich vestments, and saw on the ground my former mean attire; namely, an old vest, a pair of tattered drawers, and a ragged turban, as full of holes as a sieve. When I had somewhat recovered my senses, I put them on and walked out in a melancholy mood, regretting my lost happiness, and not knowing what I should do to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... fit to be kept on board such a fine vessel would be retained, and that he himself, for the present at least, would take command of the ship, would haul down that brand-new bit of woman's work at the masthead and fly in its place his own black, ragged Jolly Roger, dreaded wherever seen upon the sea. At this a shout went up from the crew; the heart of every scoundrel among them swelled with joy at the idea of sailing, fighting, and ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... drawn swords and hooted at by a mob of howling sans-culottes. Better far to be a mimic queen than to be hurled from the most radiant and splendid place in European royalty, to be the scorn and plaything of the ragged ruffians of Paris, and to finish with the guillotine in the Place de la Greve! About this time she was freed from the bete noire of her life, her drunken worthless husband, who agreed to trouble her no more if she would settle an annuity on him. Thenceforward they never met, though she ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... got it all O. K.," replied the taller figure, "and now we're going to beat it. Good-night. Did you get ragged again?" ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... mile from the barracks to the Alameda. Chona covered the distance rapidly. As she entered the ragged pleasure-ground, she turned to make sure that Pedro was following her, and then crossed it quickly and disappeared through a gap in a hedge beyond. When Pedro passed through the gap he found her seated on the ground between the bushy screen and the cane-field ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... the schooner was ready for sea, Harry and I were one evening leaving the quay, when I saw a lad in ragged clothes, who, on catching sight of me, tried to hide himself behind a stack of planks lately landed. In spite of his forlorn and dirty condition, I recognised him as the young stowaway who had come out with me on board ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... steep cliffs and sides of the hills, on whose backs we find extensive areas covered with reed-grass. Even a luxuriant forest does not look gay on a dull day, and this barren landscape looked most inhospitable in the grey mist of the afternoon. We slowly followed a coast of ragged coral patches, alternating with light sand beaches. Towards nightfall we anchored near a stony shore, flanked by two high cliffs, in about 10 fathoms of the most transparent water. We could see in the depths the irregular ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... patience and industry he worked his way upwards, and succeeded in carving his name higher than the most ambitious had done before him. He could now triumph, but his triumph was short; for he was placed in such a situation that it was impossible to descend, unless he fell upon the ragged rocks beneath him. There was no house near, from whence his companions could get assistance. He could not long remain in that condition, and, what was worse, his friends were too much frightened to do anything for ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... opposite the mouth of the Great Kanawha. His retreat had been through a sparsely settled country, much of which was a wilderness, rugged and broken in the extreme. His wagons had broken down, his teams were used up, his soldiers were worn out, ragged, and barefoot. [Footnote: Id., pt. i. p. 990.] Many arms and accoutrements had been lost, and the command was imperatively in need of complete refitting and a little rest. The men had been largely recruited in East ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... the prison about two hours, when a lad in a very greasy, ragged jacket, with a pale emaciated face, came up to us, and said, "I perceive by your uniforms that you are both officers, ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... then, leading the little black boy by the hand, and following him was the negro woman carrying a baby at her breast, and holding by the hand a little woolly-headed pickaninny about three years old. They were ragged and poverty-stricken, and seemed scared at everything. The woman came in bowing and scraping to me, and the two little boys hid behind her skirts and peeked around at ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... into his throat as he watched its growing outlines from the small boat that brought him ashore. He could see one of the only two brick chimneys in northern Alaska gleaming in the sun; beyond it, fifty miles away, were the ragged peaks of the Saw-Tooth Range, looking as if one might walk to them in half an hour, and over all the world between seemed to hover a misty gloom. But it was where he had lived, where happiness and tragedy and unforgetable memories had come to him, and the welcoming of its frame ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... then they waited on the pavement under the gas lamp, where ragged children had been standing all the evening to listen to the band, and their feet slipped about in the greasy mud till Mrs Biddle came out and was driven away in a cab with the many things she hadn't sold, and the few things she had bought—among others the carpet. The other stall-holders left their ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... swimmer, battling with a swoon, Silent I fought, yet seemed to cry aloud. When, at the challenge of a marching tune, Heard in a sudden stillness of the crowd, I looked aloft, and saw the great round moon Steadfast behind her ragged rout ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... 1855 Dr. Laseron and his wife lost their only child; and as Mrs. Laseron walked through the streets with burdened heart she looked at the little children with quickened sympathy, and noticed how many were poor and hungry and scantily clothed. She talked with her husband, and they opened a "ragged school" for children. This increased and branched off, until now there is an orphanage, workhouses for boys, and a servants' training school for girls. Requests were frequently made for some of the older ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... friendships, be less anxious about social standing, and more particular about character. Remember that President Garfield used to say that he never passed a ragged boy in the street without feeling that one day he might owe him a salute, No one knows what possibilities of goodness and greatness are buttoned up under ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... that pleasure was the end of life. Antisthenes, the founder of the Cynics, was both virtuous and arrogant, placing the supreme good in virtue, but despising speculative science, and maintaining that no man can refute the opinions of another. He made it a virtue to be ragged, hungry, and cold, like the ancient monks; an austere, stern, bitter, reproachful man, who affected to despise all pleasures, like his own disciple Diogenes, who lived in a tub, and carried on a war between the mind and body—brutal, scornful, proud. To men who maintained that science ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... more respectable aspect than most of them, tho I hesitate in saying so. It was not a separate structure, but under the same continuous roof with the next. There was an inscription on the door, bearing no reference to Burns, but indicating that the house was now occupied by a ragged or industrial school. On knocking, we were instantly admitted by a servant-girl, who smiled intelligently when we told our errand, and showed us into a low and very plain parlor, not more than twelve or fifteen feet square. A young woman, who seemed to be a teacher ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... trivial but essential conveniences devised here for the civilisation of human life! What an air of decency and respectfulness about the servants! what a feeling of homeishness in a house exclusively our own! The modes of life may be easier on the Continent,—but it is the ease of a beggar's ragged coat which has served twenty masters, and is twitched off and on till it scarcely holds together, in comparison with the decent, close-fitting suit ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Iroquois and discussed the plan of attack, the ship and barque kept closely together, so closely that North, who had not yet placed foot on board the sandalwooder, had now an opportunity of looking down upon her decks, and watching the actions of those who manned her. A more ragged and desperate looking lot of ruffians he had never seen in his life; and their wild, unkempt appearance was in perfect accord with the Lucy May herself, whose dirty, yellow sides were stained from stem to stern with long streaks and broad patches of iron-rust. Aloft she was in as equally ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... the rock to climb foot by foot. The way was still steep, and the darkness so thick that for a time Chris could make out nothing of the sides; but in time the strip of purply-black sky gemmed with stars became wider, the edges not so ragged, and all at once it struck the boy that they were not climbing over stones, for the sound of the hoofs ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... Nearby three ragged burros were cropping the scanty growth. Behind them the sharp elbow of the mountain ascended, scarred and furrowed and littered with rocky debris. Before them the hill sloped for a few rods and levelled into a narrow plateau, across which, ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Hospitality for entertaining Strangers;" "Suffragan Bishops, both at home and in the Western Plantations;" "Colleges for receiving Converts from Popery." Some of Nelson's suggestions read like vaticinations. He points out the need of Ladies' Colleges,—of a Hospital for Incurables,—of Ragged Schools, (for what else is a school "for the distressed children called the Black-guard?"),—and of Houses of Mercy for the reception of penitent fallen women.—Is it right to speak of a century ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... favor those who were on the side of the government. I asked them why they did not themselves remain in their old homes? "We came 'case our men was conscripted," they said. One woman and her daughter of eighteen had each a filthy, ragged bed quilt over her shoulders, and their faces were so swarthy that their eyes and teeth presented as great a contrast as those whose natural skin was of darker hue. As the little boy of four years had no shoes, and I had a pair left that would fit him, I told the mother to wash ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... in their place. Genius in every situation takes hold on reality, a tap-root going down to the source. Equilibrium appears in a staggering as well as a standing figure, and is perfectly restored in every fall. The landscape seen in detail is broken and ragged,—here a raw sand-bank, there a crooked butternut-tree, yonder a stiff black cedar: but look with a larger eye; the straight is complement to the crooked tree, color balances color, form corrects form, and the entire effect of every scene is completeness. The artist restores this harmony ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... education in England is carried on at the comfortable breakfast and dinner table, and by the cosy fire, as well as in the church and school. Few English people with stomachs painfully empty would be decorous at church any more than they are when these organs are overcharged. Ragged schools would have been a failure had not the teachers wisely provided food for the body as well as food for the mind; and not only must we show a friendly interest in the bodily comfort of the objects ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... the tension held firmly yet a little longer. The night had come on heavy and dark. Behind him he could hear the fitful sounds of the Northern and Southern cavalry still skirmishing with each other. Before him he saw dimly the Southern regiments, retreating in ragged lines. It was almost more than he could stand, and his feelings suddenly found vent in an ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... but a dreaming dolt, Still walking like a ragged Colt, 290 And oft out of a Bush doth bolt, Of purpose to deceiue vs. And leading vs makes vs to stray, Long Winters nights out of the way, And when we stick in mire and clay, Hob doth ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... mirth, found envy vanquishing scorn. As for the ladies, they had ceased to smile at the mention of Rosalind, whom none had seen, though all had heard of the girl who had been turned from her ruin at Maudlin's whim; and that this ragged lady should be vaunted over their heads was an insult only equaled by the presence among their shining champions of the Rusty Knight. For by this name only ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... busily during this time in making various garments of cocoa-nut cloth, as those with which we had landed were beginning to be very ragged. Peterkin also succeeded in making excellent shoes out of the skin of the old hog, in the following manner. He first cut a piece of the hide, of an oblong form, a few inches longer than his foot. This he soaked in water, and while it was wet he sewed up one end of it, so as to ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... owed at least sixty-eight millions of dollars. To this fruit of the war he added the four hundred millions of paper money issued by the Federal and State Governments, estimated, in its depreciated condition, at about seventy-two millions more of debt. The ragged Continental soldiers, frequently reduced to seven-tenths of a pound rations, their arrearages of wages paid in Continental currency worth four pence on the dollar, were now about to be discharged to return to their needy families ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... white wings full of eyes, and robes with jagged, strap-like edges of a pale green colour; their legs were bare, and they were represented as floating. These two angels had jujube yellow aureoles tilted to the back like sailors' hats; and this ragged attire, the feathers folded over the breast, the hat of glory, with their general expression of refractory wilfulness, suggested the idea that these beings were at once paupers, Apaches ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... consideration. So I kept silent, though secretly wishing he had not taken the trouble to throw cold water on my hopes, for I had built several air castles with the money which seemed within my grasp. We had been out then over four months, and I, like many of the other boys, was getting ragged, and with Ogalalla within a week's drive, a town which it took money to see properly, I thought it a burning shame to let this opportunity pass. When I awoke the next morning the camp was astir, and my first look was in the direction of the harness mare, ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... and betook themselves to the dwelling of the visitor. Arriving there Abe beheld a painful yet by no means uncommon picture. A room miserably furnished, and not the ghost of comfort anywhere; several little ragged children stood grouped together, and in the midst of them was the saddest figure of all—"the missus," the wife, the mother, in tears, and on her lap, wrapped in an old faded shawl, was a dying infant. The woman tried to ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... the great majority is absolute poverty; they are clothed in thin and ragged garments for the most part, and while here have been supported to some extent by public, but ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... head; there could be no doubt about that. His dormitory made him apple-pie beds, and soaked his candle in water, so that it would not light. The day-room ragged him mercilessly. Gordon had never minded. In comparison with Rudd's weakness his own strength shone the more. It made him so essentially the big power in the House. But things reached a limit shortly after half term, when Rudd tried to drag him in to help him in his ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... he said, "are not like the rest. Our fathers and mothers remember their sufferings in the old country, kept ragged and hungry and wretched, in such way as my negroes do not dream of, all that some scoundrel baron might have gilding on his carriage, and that the Elector might enjoy himself in his palace. They were beaten, hanged, robbed of their daughters, worked ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... neared the three-quarter buoy it was plain to all who looked that the real race was yet to come. Hillton suddenly hit up her stroke to thirty-four, to thirty-six, to thirty-eight, and, a bit ragged perhaps, but nevertheless at a beautiful speed, drew up to St. Eustace, shoved her nose a quarter length past, and hung there, despite St. Eustace's best efforts ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... towards the west, where the low sun hung over a ragged range of hills topped with everlasting white. The great valley, dark with an untrodden wilderness of birch and spruce and alder, lay on this side, sombre and changeless, like a great, dark-green mat too large for its resting-place, its edges turned up towards the line of ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... no means complete. In the first place, Katie would not go to bed, and could not be persuaded to leave the room any longer than just to bring in her ragged black Dinah, ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... my habit, among zese Arabs, zese negroes, zese ragged Kabyles from ze mountains. I would not trust my life ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... a biped I felt sorry for. He was a little man with sandy hair and whiskers a good deal like mine. Henpecked?—well, toucans and flamingoes and pelicans all had their bills in him. He wiped the dishes and listened to my mistress tell about the cheap, ragged things the lady with the squirrel-skin coat on the second floor hung out on her line to dry. And every evening while she was getting supper she made him take me out on the end of ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... dolls in flimsy muslin. The church was going to hold a fair! Everything and everybody succumbed graciously or ungraciously to the inevitable. The prayer-meetings were neglected, the missionary meetings postponed, the children went ragged to school, and the men sewed on their own buttons. In time, however, the men had to forego even that luxury, and were obliged to remain buttonless, for they themselves were dragged into the dizzy whirl and set to making ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... pavement that evening, huddled close to the wall, was a little boy of six or seven years of age. His fair hair hung in tangled curls all round his head. His clothes, which had never been made for him, were much too large, and so ragged that they could scarcely hold together. As he sat there, with his little bare feet stretched out on the pavement, he seemed to be watching for somebody, for he kept continually; looking towards the end of the court which opened out on to the main road. ...
— Willie the Waif • Minie Herbert
... a boy of ten, pinched and ragged, was gazing in a window as Mr. Blake passed along. A question from the man, a quick and pathetic answer from the boy—and they went in together. Then the man came out alone, and the fervent joy of an hour ago was gone, but a deeper gladness had taken the room it ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... steaming clothing. Men crawled over one another, then dropped to the first open spot, to flounder there a moment, then roar in snoring sleep. Against the wall a bearded giant half leaned, half lay, one tooth touching the ragged lips and breaking the filmy skin, while the blood dripped, slow drop after slow drop, upon his black, tousled beard. But he ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... or Kaffir tongues. He stood upon the fringe of the gaunt Karoo. On either hand stretched a waste of lone prairie—a solitude of gathering night. Out of its deepest shades rose masses of jet-black hill: the ragged outline of their crests bathed purple and grey in the last effort of the expiring twilight. Already the great dome of heaven had given birth to a few weary stars, and but for the shrinking wake of day still lingering in the west the ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... letting me fall back again. He did not understand his duties, and did not know what my signals on the life-line meant. It was two hours and a half before I was relieved, and there was not a moment that I was not looking to see the hose cut by the ragged wood. It's a strange feeling you have down there. You go walking over a vessel, clambering up her sides, peering here and there, and the feeling that you are alone makes you nervous ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... shaking a little now. Charon takes from him his mask and his ragged philosopher's cloak, and, sure enough, as they hang where he places them they seem to cover a ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... and became a minister in Edin. Possessed of a commanding presence and voice, and a remarkably effective and picturesque style of oratory, he became perhaps the most popular preacher of his day in Scotland, and was associated with many forms of philanthropy, especially temperance and ragged schools, of the latter of which he was the founder. He was one of the leaders of the Free Church, and raised over L100,000 for manses for its ministers. Among his writings are The Gospel in Ezekiel, Plea for Ragged Schools, and The City, its ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... on the bank of the river, and in a few moments more the dingy old boat with the patched and ragged sail was standing out towards the open bay. The wind in the river was very light, and the old craft was a heavy sailor, so that her progress was very slow; but the tongues of the two boys moved fast enough to ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... here, on this one side of the house alone, than mother had in her whole yard," he said, after a little. "Let's see—I know that one: that's columbine, isn't it? And that's London pride, and that's ragged robin. I don't ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... misery to its cause. He who makes himself a beggar, by having made himself a brute, is miserable indeed. He who has no solace, who has only agonizing recollections and harrowing remorse, as he looks on his cold hearth, his scanty table, his ragged children, has indeed to bear a crushing weight of woe. That he suffers, is a light thing. That he has brought on himself this suffering by the voluntary extinction of his reason, that is the terrible thought, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... louder threats and menaces of death to the king. Unable to reach him through the hedge of bayonets crossed in front of him, they waved beneath his eyes and over his head hideous flags, with sinister inscriptions, ragged breeches, the guillotine, the bleeding heart, the gibbet. One of them tried perpetually to reach the king with his lance in his hand; it was the same cut-throat who, two years before, had washed with his own hands ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... over wind-swept rocky hills so inhospitably barren that even the snow could not find a lodgment on them, or over wide plains where the few trees that grew had been stunted and gnarled into mere shrubs by winter blasts. On every hand the mountains began to raise their ragged austere heads like grim giant sentinels placed there to guard the way. Finally they turned into a pass, which brought them, on the other side of the ridge it led through, to a comparatively well-wooded valley down which ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... woman were sitting at the opening of the former's tent, their backs toward the approaching ruffians. The first intimation that either had of the presence of strangers in camp was the sudden appearance of a half-dozen ragged villains ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... behold there drew near a lean and ill-favoured person, clad in ragged and sad-coloured attire, whose doublet was much out at the elbows, and who looked ever towards the ground; and no sooner did Stagman see him drawing nigh, than he threw his scrip on the ground, and, hurrying ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... shelter of the forest. So, at a bound, she left the discretion and the cheerful lamps of Palace evenings; ceased utterly to be a sovereign lady; and, falling from the whole height of civilisation, ran forth into the woods, a ragged Cinderella. ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was coming in across the bay, and the sea was moaning at the ragged base of Black Bluff, on the heights of which the fight was to take place. There were scudding clouds in the sky, but the night did not promise to be ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... be an American, too. Didn't Aunt Prissy tell you?" she responded; "and it's all because you were my friend, Faith," she added more soberly, as the two girls entered the house, and stood hand in hand at the door where, but a few months ago, Louise had entered a ragged, ...
— A Little Maid of Ticonderoga • Alice Turner Curtis
... yes! Such quaint, charming people. Of course, they're all poor, and they wear such funny ragged clothes, and travel about in rackety old aircars, it's a wonder they don't fall apart in the air. But they're so wonderfully happy and carefree. I often wish I were one of them, ...
— Ministry of Disturbance • Henry Beam Piper
... upon an unknown bottom, he left a bridge for his successors, over which the lame could hobble and the blind might grope their way. There was not at that time a knot of clerks in a counting-house, there was not a captain of a band of ragged topasses, that looked for anything less than the deposition of subahs and the sale of kingdoms. Accordingly, this revolution, which ought to have precluded other revolutions, unfortunately became fruitful of them; and when Lord Clive returned to Europe, to enjoy his fame and fortune ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a moment they stood against the bar that protected the window. The saloon was full of men, foul with tobacco smoke, and the floor was filthy. Flies sluggishly buzzed about the pools of beer on the bar counter. The men were talking excitedly; a few thin, ragged hangers-on were looting the free-lunch dishes surreptitiously. Miss Hitchcock's face expressed her disgust, but she said nothing. She had learned ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... a ruinous space—a great ragged gap in a lofty block of brick and mortar. This block had evidently, at one time, consisted of two high semi-detached houses, and of these, one lay a monstrous heap of tumbled and shattered debris. A ruin, but not quite; for, as the course of a landslip will often ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... public-house in Rotterdam one day, he heard a well-known voice, He looked up, and there was Denys of Burgundy, but sadly changed; his beard stained with grey, and his clothes worn and ragged; he had a cuirass still, and gauntlets, but a staff instead of an arbalest, To the company he appeared to be bragging and boasting, but in reality he was giving a true relation of Edward the Fourth's invasion of an armed kingdom with 2000 men, and his march ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... dinner was over, you would think there was as much left as would sarve a regiment; and sure enough, a right hungry ragged regiment was there to take care of it—though, to tell the truth, there was as much taken into Finigan's as would be sure to give us all a rousing supper. Why, there was such a troop of beggars—men, women, and ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... ground floor room which I used as my study, I hung an old sheet, which reached to the ground, on a long spear inserted in a heavy wooden disk; I surmounted it with a ragged hunting cap, and so arranged the sheet as to give it some resemblance to the human form. When my dog came in as usual, he looked suspiciously at the object, snuffing about and gradually approaching to walk round and observe it. At last he was satisfied, and curled himself up by the skirts of ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... for Bensersiel, one of the mainland villages south-west of us, on the evening flood, as it seemed just the right opportunity, if we were to visit one of those "siels" at all. Davies was very lukewarm, but events overcame him. At 3.30 a black, ragged cloud, appearing to trail into the very sea, brought up a terrific squall. This passed, and there was a deathly pause of ten minutes while the whole sky eddied as with smoke-wreaths. Then an icy puff struck us ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... short distance much more rapidly than he had gone up. He was often badly bruised by these falls. The bushes and the sharp points of the rocks tore his clothing, and it was not long before he was as ragged as any beggar he had ever seen in the streets of his ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... the thought of it? Here was freedom from a brutal tyranny that was crushing out his young life; here was a dream of the wild world coming true, with gratification of all the hunter instincts that he had held in his heart for years, and nurtured in that single, ragged volume of "Robinson Crusoe." The plunge was not a plunge, except it be one when an eagle, pinion-bound, is freed and springs from a cliff of the mountain to ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... districts; Acklins and Crooked Islands, Bimini, Cat Island, Exuma, Freeport, Fresh Creek, Governor's Harbour, Green Turtle Cay, Harbour Island, High Rock, Inagua, Kemps Bay, Long Island, Marsh Harbour, Mayaguana, New Providence, Nicholls Town and Berry Islands, Ragged Island, Rock Sound, Sandy Point, San ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... received a sheep it was always the same way—between his knees—and he commenced and finished the shearing of each animal exactly the same way, every clip of the large shears counting to the best advantage. They told me that he gained much time by the unvarying precision that left no ragged strips to be trimmed off. The docility of those wild sheep was astonishing. Almost while the last clip was being made the sheep was seized by a second assistant standing at the shearer's left, who at once threw ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... got together some two thousand men, more or less, and he had also the remains of his cavalry. His king had, as usual, left him to fend for himself, and sent him nothing but an incapable Irish officer called Cannon and some ragged Irish recruits, while MacKay was watching him and following him with a well-equipped force. Now and again the sun shone on him and he had glimpses of victory, driving MacKay for days before him, ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... across the Ragged Mountains," said the youth. "These"—and he pointed with contempt to the small trophies at his belt—"will do for the darkies at the stables. I put yon old ringtail up a tree last night, on my way home, and thought it was as well to wait till dawn, till I could see the ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... her feet. With a quick and pathetically humble gesture she drew her ragged, muddy skirts over her ankles and her tattered ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... from prying eyes concealed, Is yet how flagrant! Here's ragged-robin in the field, A ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... fine-looking fellow—every inch a man," said the major carelessly. "Voice orotund, magnetic. Easy manners. Good figure;" and he walked up and down complacently, slapping his own shrunk shank. There had been a well-shaped leg inside of the ragged linen trousers once, and the conscious merit which infused every atom of his lean little body still ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... ordered something to drink, and waited quietly till Strickland had finished. I welcomed the opportunity to examine him at my ease. I certainly should never have known him. In the first place his red beard, ragged and untrimmed, hid much of his face, and his hair was long; but the most surprising change in him was his extreme thinness. It made his great nose protrude more arrogantly; it emphasized his cheekbones; it made ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... of those whom he had most faithfully served. The consequence was, that I had full employ, my camels were always engaged; and, as I invariably accompanied them that they might not be ill-treated, I have several times been to Mecca, as this ragged green turban will testify. My life was one of alternate difficulty and enjoyment. I returned to my wife and children with delight after my journeys of suffering and privation, and fully appreciated the value of my home from the short time ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... extracted, which was not until suppuration took place, it was found to have entered his body under the left arm, to the depth of seven inches and a half. It was armed for five or six inches from the point with ragged pieces of shells fastened in gum. His recovery was immediately pronounced by Mr. White ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... through what I did! It was all very well the first night, though I slept on the floor of a miserable little hut,—well, I may as well compress it, for I see you know something about it,—in the bed, then, of that little ragged berry girl who lives up on the mountain. I slept on the floor at first, but it was so cold that I had to ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... broad morning, going on toward noon: I was half a mile away, I was fifty yards. But on board the Boreal, though now they must have heard me, seen me, I observed no movement of welcome, but all, all was still as death that still Arctic morning, my God. Only, the ragged sail flapped a little, and—one on each side—two ice-floes sluggishly bombarded the ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... not more than a hundred yards across, lay a mass of ragged bowlders piled together in inextricable confusion; beyond these a chasm with steam rising from it, whose bottom I could not see—a crack as though the ground had suddenly cooled and split apart. Across the entire surface ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... great! You ought to heard the drums an' smelt the smoke, an' felt your feet marchin' under you, an' your knapsack poundin' your back—yes, sir, an' bein' hungry an' thirsty an' wore out! You'd ought to seen how ragged the boys got, an' heard 'em whistlin' 'Through Georgy' while they sewed on patches—oh, you'd ought ...
— Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... upon the hill's steepest, most craglike face. A door opened on a hand's-breadth of level turf across from which rose the broken and ruined wall that once had surrounded the keep. Ivy overgrew this; below a wide and ragged breach a pine had set its roots in the hillside. Its top rose bushy above the stones. Beyond the opening, one saw from the school-room, as through a window, field and stream and moor, hill and dale. The school-room had been some old storehouse or office. It ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... of these were dragged from the waves, some perfectly uninjured, others snapped in two, others again twisted and torn asunder, leaving long ragged threads of fibre, while others again were regularly beaten by the waves and rocks, so that the ends were like bunches of wood gnawed by some monster ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... one evening, for some purpose, when a soldier accosted me and inquired for the One Hundred and Ninetieth. He was ragged, thin, and pale. His hair and beard were of long growth. Looking into his haggard face and sunken eyes, there was not an ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... unexpected;—which made the name of Elbingerode famous for eight months to come. Of which let us hastily give the bare facts, Fancy making of them what she can. Was Monseigneur aware that this Elbingerode, with a patch of territory round it, is Hanoverian ground; one of those distracted patches or ragged outskirts frequent in the German map? Prussia is not yet, and Hessen-Cassel has ceased to be. Undoubtedly Hanoverian! Apparently the Landgraf and Monseigneur had not thought of that. But Munchhausen of Hanover, spies informing him, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... approvingly. Most of the visitors were poorly dressed, even ragged, but, judging by outward appearance, there were also some decent men and women among them. Beside Nekhludoff stood a well-dressed man, clean shaven, stout and with rosy cheeks, who carried a bundle of what looked like linen. Nekhludoff ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... able to do something," returned Tantaine, as, drawing out a ragged check pocket-handkerchief, ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... pregnant designation of God say? That was a strange shrine for God, that poor, ragged, dry desert bush, with apparently no sap in its gray stem, prickly with thorns, with 'no beauty that we should desire it,' fragile and insignificant, yet it was 'God's house.' Not in the cedars of Lebanon, not in the great monarchs ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... plumage and song has diminished. At this time few of their human admirers intrude upon them and the birds themselves are only too glad to escape observation. Collectors of skins disdain to ply their trade, as the ragged, pin-feathery coats of the birds now make sorry-looking specimens. But we can find something of interest in ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... "By the Twelve Ragged Apostles!" This was Cappy's most terrible oath and he never employed it unless rocked to his very foundations. "Bill, as one bandit to another—come clean. When did you first make up your mind to go ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne
... steps died away, and Polly was wondering how it would seem to live all alone in the wood, when a little girl came trudging by, with a great pail of berries on her arm. She was a poor child: her feet were bare, her gown was ragged, she wore an old shawl over her head, and walked as if lame. Polly sat behind the ferns, and the child did not see her till Polly called out. The sudden sound startled her; and she dropped her pail, spilling the berries all over the path. The little girl began to cry, and Polly to laugh, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... not thought of it in Dorchester; but I thought of it now, with a feeling that it was strange to meet again thus in Lyme. I took good stock of the man, wondering if he were a spy. He was a dirty old man enough. His dirty fingers poked through ragged mittens. His cheeks were all swathed up in a woollen comforter. I made the mistake of looking at him so hard that I made him look at me. Seeing that I was staring at him, with a face full of suspicion, he walked boldly up to me, holding out his ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... didn't search me that day," she thought. "I never saw a sheriff or a near-sheriff so slack. If they'd been in my business, they'd have known that you can't always tell what's in the pocket of a ragged frock." ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... snags, and hanging for two or three hours at a time upon sand-bars. We entered the mouth of the Missouri in a drizzling rain, but the weather soon became clear, and showed distinctly the broad and turbid river, with its eddies, its sand-bars, its ragged islands, and forest-covered shores. The Missouri is constantly changing its course; wearing away its banks on one side, while it forms new ones on the other. Its channel is shifting continually. Islands are formed, and then washed away; and while the old forests on one side are undermined ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... should have surged. He is a man slightly above the middle height, thin in face and in figure. Somehow or other, there is a general air about him that I can only describe by the word shabby—I had almost ventured on the term ragged. The clothes hang somewhat loosely—are of a pattern that recalls a half century ago—and have all the air of having been worn until they are positively threadbare. Altogether, there is about this inheritor of a great name—of vast estates—of a ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... of the church, in the thick of the ragged, dirty, unsavoury villagers. When Mass was over, he returned to the cloisters, and there, face to face, he met ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... last alongside a stranded barge, crossed it, and, filing down a plank to the shore, gathered in ragged line along the beach to await orders. What was expected of them that night, none knew. A few of the earlier arrivals, not too fully occupied with work or sleep completely to ignore them, welcomed them warmly, and immediately launched ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... way by which he had descended. Nor did he tire of holding me clasped till he had borne me up to the summit of the arch which is the passage from the fourth to the fifth dyke. Here softly he laid down his burden, softly because of the ragged and steep crag, that would be a difficult pass for goats. Thence another great valley ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri |
