"Rat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... them and one has a waterfall dividing it into two distinct caves. Plemont is the spot where the cable comes in from England, crawls out of the ocean like a great dripping hoary old sea-serpent to trail through a cleft to the station on the cliff above. This is a rat-hole beside those caves." ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... singular creature from the stones, dry as a board, his innocent heart long quiet, and all warm with sunshine. His long hind legs were stiff, his tiny forepaws clutched upon his breast, as if to leap; his poor life cut short upon that mountain by some unknown accident. But the Kangaroo rat, it proved, was no such unknown animal; and my discovery ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Cranford ladies, and send notes of invitation all round for a small party on the following Tuesday. Mr Mulliner himself brought them round. He WOULD always ignore the fact of there being a back-door to any house, and gave a louder rat-tat than his mistress, Mrs Jamieson. He had three little notes, which he carried in a large basket, in order to impress his mistress with an idea of their great weight, though they might easily have gone ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... experiment and the Socratic method of inquiry. Exercise of the limbs under the direction of a skilled instructor, so that all the muscles of the body may be duly trained, and a healthy body built up to support a healthy mind. The kinds of recreation to be selected, whether bull-baiting, cock-fighting, rat-catching or prize-fighting, should be preferred to games of skill and strength, to the drama, literature, works of art, public walks, gardens, and museums; the comparative influence of all these upon the health, strength, courage, activity, humanity, refinement and happiness of society; ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... sitting close on the nest in the presence of danger. Here, too, the instinct is of prime importance to the species, since the bird by quitting the nest reveals its existence to the prowling, nest-seeking enemy—dog, cat, fox, stoat, rat, in England; and in the country where I first observed animals, the skunk, armadillo, opossum, snake, wild cat, and animals of the weasel family. By leaving its nest a minute or half a minute too soon the bird sacrifices ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... the evening and night of that first day; the tea and fresh milk and bread and butter; and how, when settling ourselves to sleep for the night, we saw a large white rat crossing the stovepipe which ran through our bedroom from the great Canadian stove in the sitting-room. It is curious how trifling things cleave to the memory, while the monotonous things of everyday life, which are our proper business, ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... a little further, and she met a rat. So she said: "Rat! rat! gnaw rope; rope won't hang butcher; butcher won't kill ox; ox won't drink water; water won't quench fire; fire won't burn stick; stick won't beat dog; dog won't bite pig; piggy won't get over the stile; and I shan't get home ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... deuce did you get by the lodge, Joe?" inquired Drysdale. Joe, be it known, had been forbidden the college for importing a sack of rats into the inner quadrangle, upon the turf of which a match at rat-killing had come off between the terriers of two gentlemen-commoners. This little event might have passed unnoticed, but that Drysdale had bought from Joe a dozen of the slaughtered rats, and nailed them on the doors of the four college tutors, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... other, that the dog had a hard task to retain any hold on the track he followed. But he kept on his way, though the cold pierced him to the bone, and the jagged ice cut his feet, and the hunger in his body gnawed like a rat's teeth. He kept on his way, a poor gaunt, shivering thing, and by long patience traced the steps he loved into the very heart of the burgh and up to the steps ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... do not love this run," said one, "they fear the rat-catcher's stick. This is good sport," ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... migratory birds and fowls which at certain seasons swarmed on the different islands, supplemented by various nuts and fruits growing spontaneously, provided a varied and ample food supply. Mammals, except the pig, dog, and rat (really a large mouse), which came in with the early natives, were unknown prior to the advent of the whites. There were no land reptiles and few indigenous noxious insects; although mosquitoes, not to mention certain domestic pests, abound in a few places, and there are some ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... have been observed within the limits of the ancient Media are the lion, the tiger, the leopard, the bear, the beaver, the jackal, the wolf, the wild ass, the ibex or wild goat, the wild sheep, the stag, the antelope, the wild boar, the fox, the hare, the rabbit, the ferret, the rat, the jerboa, the porcupine, the mole, and the marmot. The lion and tiger are exceedingly rare; they seem to be found only in Azerbijan, and we may perhaps best account for their presence there by considering that a ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... curious person at Low-hill who had peculiar tastes. He built a place which was called "Rat's Castle." It stood on the brink of a delf, the site of which is now occupied by the Prescot-street Bridewell. This person used to try experiments with food, such as cooking spiders, blackbeetles, rats, cats, mice, and other things not in common use; and, it is said, was wont to play off ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... profiting, the entire six being first regaled with a brief but pithy character analysis of the offender, portraying him as a loathsome biological freak; headless, I gathered, and with the acquisitive instincts of a trade rat. ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... sleek in the rain, not a quarter of a mile from him. The vast mind was sheeted with stone; and each compartment in the depths of it was safe and dry. The night-watchmen, flashing their lanterns over the backs of Plato and Shakespeare, saw that on the twenty-second of February neither flame, rat, nor burglar was going to violate these treasures—poor, highly respectable men, with wives and families at Kentish Town, do their best for twenty years to protect Plato and Shakespeare, and then ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... And by these the true colour one can no more know, Than by mouse-skins above stairs, the merkin below. Now such as the beast was, even such was the rider, With a head like a nutmeg, and legs like a spider; A voice like a cricket, a look like a rat, The brains of a goose, and the heart of a cat: Even such was my guide and his beast; let them pass, The one for a horse, and the other an ass. But now with our horses, what sound and what rotten, Down to the shore, you must know, we were gotten; And there we ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... in which we must suppose that this is the way that the various domesticated forms have arisen. Such, for example, is the case in the rabbit, where most of the colour varieties are recessive to the wild agouti form. Such also is the case in the rat, where the black and albino varieties and the various pattern forms are also recessive to the wild agouti type. And with the exception of a certain yellow variety to which we shall refer later, such is also the case with the many fancy ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... looking after its own welfare unhindered, finding its food, or taking care of its young, or associating with others of its kind, and so on! This is exactly what ought to be and can be. Be it only a bird, I can look at it for some time with a feeling of pleasure; nay, a water-rat or a frog, and with still greater pleasure a hedgehog, a weazel, a roe, or a deer. The contemplation of animals delights us so much, principally because we see in them our own existence ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... could not leave him to die like a rat. Then Pillot came with one of his fellows and we carried him through the secret passage into the ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... above list it will be perceived, with the exception of the three bats, two mice, and one water-rat, that all our mammals are either Marsupial (pouched) or Monotrematous (a closely-allied form, to which belong the platypus and porcupine of the colonists). Orders found in other countries, such as the Pachydermata and Ruminantia, ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... ceremony dawned inauspiciously for somebody. For one thing, the blasting powder laid ready by the sappers under the pipal trees for explosion the day following, blew up prematurely. Some idiot had left a kerosene lamp burning in the dug-out, probably, and a rat upset it; or some other of the million possibilities took place. Nobody was killed, but a dozen pipal trees were blown to smithereens, and the ghastly fact laid bare for all to see that in the irregular chasm that remained ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... overhauling of gear, and we are off for Vallejo where the little Roamer lies, waiting, always waiting, for the skiff to come alongside, for the lighting of the fire in the galley-stove, for the pulling off of gaskets, the swinging up of the mainsail, and the rat-tat-tat of the reef-points, for the heaving short and the breaking out, and for the twirling of the wheel as she fills away and heads up ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... something else. A practical consequence of this disarmament idea must be an effective control of the importation of arms into the "tutelage" areas of Africa. That rat at the dykes of civilization, that ultimate expression of political scoundrelism, the Gun-Runner, has to be kept under and stamped out in Africa as everywhere. A Disarmament Commission that has no forces available to ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... scarcely a thousand yards. Apparently it was still asleep, for no smoke was rising, and, strain his ears as he might, he could hear no sound of a sentry's walk. This looked awkward indeed for him. If the people were not awake to receive him, he would be potted against its wall as surely as a rat in a corner. He grew acutely nervous, and as he drew nearer he made the air hideous with shouts to wake the garrison. A clear race in the open he did not mind; but he had no stomach for a game of hide-and-seek around an unscalable wall ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... summer-house—an elephantine blue-bottle on his proboscis, and a sleeping bull-dog, the size of an Alderney steer, at his feet;—here Master Brown, with a grin, calls the house Victoria Villa, and the paste-board mask his papa. Now enters the rat, to eat the good things that lay in the house that John built, represented by a stealthy seedy gentleman, who, after reading a board intimating that apartments were to let, crept slyly past the sleepy Bull, to mount the house-steps; and ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... live on plants, but it came upon botanists as a surprise when our countryman Ellis first discovered that some plants catch and devour insects. This he observed in a North American plant, Dionsea, the leaves of which are formed something like a rat-trap, with a hinge in the middle, and a formidable row of spines round the edge. On the surface are a few very sensitive hairs, and the moment any small insect alights on the leaf and touches one of these hairs the two halves of the leaf close up quickly and catch it. The surface then throws ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... a thing of nerves and passion now, all energy and muscle and concentrated purpose. He shook the man off like a rat, and the next moment ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Last evening crowds surrounded the place. We did something dreadful, Ada Peirce, Miriam, and I. We went down to the confectionery; and unable to resist the temptation, made a detour by the Custom-House in hope of seeing one of our poor dear half-starved mule and rat fed defenders. The crowd had passed away then; but what was our horror when we emerged from the river side of the building and turned into Canal, to find the whole front of the pavement lined with Yankees! Our folly struck us so forcibly that we were almost paralyzed with fear. However, that ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... sometimes, should the pageant cloy, Supposing Nurse has left the room, We'll take again that outcast toy From the deep cupboard's inmost gloom; We'll shell that buccaneering barque With the good guns of England's ark; We'll chase it flying like a rat For some fort-guarded Ararat, And leave it flotsam ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... beast, not as large as a good-sized rat, quite smaller than our own fence-corner chipmunks of the East. It's little sides were daintily striped, its little whiskers were as perfect as those of the great squirrels in the timber bottom. ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... shelf in the closet was quite low, and removing the shelves above it, Artie used it as a seat, and gave himself up to his reflections. It must be confessed that he felt decidedly blue. He was caged like a rat in a trap, and what his captors intended to do next with him there ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... mind of me? I have e'en great mind of thee. Who shall this marriage make? Our lord, which is the rat. ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... dear, that won't do; leave an old sailor to find out a rat. I tell you that 'tis the common report of the day. Besides, is not the Leaftenant gone this morning with that scapegrace, Tom W——, to hear some lying ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... on Jeanie's journey to England, is comparatively a good fellow, and the scoundrel Ratcliffe is not a scoundrel utterly. "'To make a Lang tale short, I canna undertake the job. It gangs against my conscience.' 'Your conscience, Rat?' said Sharpitlaw, with a sneer, which the reader will probably think very natural upon the occasion. 'Ou ay, sir,' answered Ratcliffe, calmly, 'just my conscience; a body has a conscience, though it may be ill wunnin at it. ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... kine with one bull. Having slain a dog or bear or camel, one should perform the same penance that is laid down for the slaughter of a Sudra. For slaying a cat, a chasa, a frog, a crow, a reptile, or a rat, it has been said, one incurs the sin of animal slaughter, O king! I shall now tell thee of other kinds of expiations in their order. For all minor sins one should repent or practise some vow for one year. For congress ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... education—Keredec's phrase is 'restore mind to his soul'! What must have been quite as vital was to get him out of his horrible wife's clutches. And they did it, for she could not find him. But she picked up that rat in the garden out yonder—he'd been some sort of stable-manager for Harman once—and set him on the track. He ran the poor boy down, and yesterday she followed him. Now it amounts to a ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... about over the surface; and one glorious dragon-fly made a mist about him with his long wings. And over all, the sun hung in the sky, pouring down life; shining on the roots of the willows at the bottom of the stream; lighting up the black head of the water-rat as he hurried across to the opposite bank; glorifying the rich green lake of the grass; and giving to the whole an utterance of love and hope and joy, which was, to him who could read it, a more certain and full revelation of God than any display of power in thunder, in avalanche, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... position we were able to sustain without loss a brisk fire of explosive missives which continued unchecked for some weeks. Speaking quite candidly, and dropping the language of the Press Bureau for the moment, there has never been a time when the postman's rat-tat has occasioned me ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... living things about him. At this sign of defeat many of the crows left him to join in the feast. By the time he was half way to the cover into which Maheegun had gone all but one had left him. That one may have been Kakakew himself. He had fastened himself like a rat-trap to Neewa's stubby tail, and there he hung on like grim death while Neewa ran. He kept his hold until his victim was well into the cover. Then he flopped himself into the air and rejoined his brethren at the ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... of Attila's wedding day, there were moving about in this camp thousands of little men with crooked legs and broad shoulders, clothed in rat-skins and with rags tied round their calves. They looked out of their tents with curiosity, when strangers who had been invited to the marriage feast came riding ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... yourselves. I don't care, however, whether you believe me or not. The fact remains that I have eaten one fried pyramid and countless stewed icicles, and the stewed icicles were finer than any diamond-back rat Confucius ever had served ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... John Aubrey, rat-major, receiving his emoluments of the Treasury for five years, and declaring himself unconnected with any, afforded a subject of general laugh. Master Popham, Sir Samuel Hurmery, James Macpherson, W.G. Hamilton, &c., &c., followed the illustrious Aubrey. Fox, ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... You sorter look at me sometimes as if I was a rat. I don't s'pose you can help it, and I don't mind. I'd ruther stay here and work than go a-visitin' again. Why can't I work outdoors when there's nothin' for me to do ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... the Irishman, looking up into that thin, sun-tanned face, was speechless as though he faced some apparition. Then with a yell of delight he caught the lank form of the Seer's assistant in a bear-like hug. "For the love av Gawd is ut ye, ye owld sand-rat? Where the hell did ye drop from, an? fwhat are ye doin' in this dishreputable company? Look at Uncle Tex, there! The sentimental owld savage is fair slobberin' wid delight an' eagerness to git at ye. Come, come; we ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... with the fresh memory of Alpine snows, Will Warburton sprang out of the cab, paid the driver a double fare, flung on to his shoulder a heavy bag and ran up, two steps at a stride, to a flat on the fourth floor of the many-tenanted building hard by Chelsea Bridge. His rat-tat-tat brought to the door a thin yellow face, cautious in espial, ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... noticing the rustle and stir of a new-comer who had crowded up behind him, until he caught the wondering glances of those in front and saw that the Israelite was staring past him, his money forgotten, his eyes beady and sharp, his rat-like teeth showing in a grin of admiration. Swede Sam glared from under his unkempt shock and felt uncertainly towards the open collar of his flannel shirt where a kerchief should have been. The men who were standing ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... told me, was an ancient hereditary property called Lauckend, about as valuable as the patrimonial estate of Don Quixote, and which, in like manner, conferred an hereditary dignity upon its proprietor, who was a laird, and, though poor as a rat, prided himself upon his ancient blood, and the standing of his house. He was accordingly called Lauckend, according to the Scottish custom of naming a man after his family estate, but he was more generally ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... and he wanted it. His mother wouldn't let him steal it; but if the United States could make it right for him to do wrong, he had got ten cents of his own, and he'd buy the right to get that white rat. And if Tom wanted to cry about it, let him. If the United States sold him the right to do it, he guessed he could do it, no matter how much whimperin' there was, and no matter who said it was wrong. He ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... flood which we had about a fortnight since. The water on that occasion must have risen twenty feet perpendicularly, and many of the trees evidently but recently fallen, are the effects of its might. The walk to Rat, or Ra-at, is about two miles along a decent path. Nothing can be more picturesque than the hill and the village. The former is a huge lump (I think of granite), almost inaccessible, with bold bare sides, rising out of a rich vegetation at ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... Green Forest he found Drummer the Woodpecker making a great racket on the hollow limb of an old chestnut. Sammy sat down near by and listened. "My, that's fine! I wish I could do that. You must be practising," said Sammy at the end of a long rat-a-tat-tat. ...
— The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum • Thornton W. Burgess
... nodded. "So actually the whole rat's nest was stamped out without attention being brought to it so far as the Magnitogorsk public is concerned." He nodded heavily again. "You can almost always be depended upon to do the right thing, Ilya. If you weren't so confoundedly ...
— Freedom • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... to have hidden anything, so went off rather flatly. But an exemplary lady named Wilcocks, who had stowed away gold and silver in a pickle-pot in a clock-case, a canister-full of treasure in a hole under her stairs, and a quantity of money in an old rat-trap, revived the interest. To her succeeded another lady, claiming to be a pauper, whose wealth was found wrapped up in little scraps of paper and old rag. To her, another lady, apple-woman by trade, who had saved ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... was the fraternity—that goddamned rat house! That was what he had pledged allegiance to, was it? Those were his brothers, were ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... marked off dangerous places with their sticks; and behind them rode Lenox, muffled to the eyes in poshteen and Balaklava cap, his league of leg barely two feet off the ground; his keen little pony—long since christened 'The Rat'—almost as trustworthy on dangerous ground as the donkey himself. And wherever he led, all self-respecting Kashmiri ponies ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... thousand millions. Your day will come, and in due course the graveyard rat will gnaw as calmly at your bump of acquisitiveness as at the mean coat ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... a high ambition or a splendid dream? Do you think that our gallant and sublime adventure has any appeal to them? Here am I, the last and greatest and most romantic of the Caesars, and do you think they will miss the chance of hanging me like a dog if they can, killing me like a rat in a hole? And that renegade! He who was once an ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... comforting. He did not come near me all day. It may have been the expectation of food, together with the hot coffee, which stimulated my stomach, for that day I experienced what starving men dread most of all—the hunger-pain. It is like a famished rat that gnaws and tears. I writhed on the floor and cried aloud in my agony, while the cold sweat dripped from my face and hands. I do not remember what I said... I ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... Dugi Rat, Omisalj, Ploce, Pula, Rijeka, Sibenik, Split, Vukovar (inland waterway port on ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... not seem able to explain what it was, and only answered by a tearful sob. Jonas did not say a word; but, with the lithe quickness of a dog after a rat, he began to search behind and under benches, in the bushes, on the grass, here, ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... de Faust are taken from Goethe's tragedy, translated by Gerard de Nerval, and they include: (1) Chants de la fete de Paques; (2) Paysans sous les tilleuls; (3) Concert des Sylphes; (4 and 5) Taverne d'Auerbach, with the two songs of the Rat and the Flea; (6) Chanson du roi de Thule; (7) Romance de Marguerite, "D'amour, l'ardente flamme," and Choeur de soldats; (8) Serenade de Mephistopheles—that is to say, the most celebrated and characteristic pages of the ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... the spring is said to be tender and toothsome, but that overpowering smell of musk proved too much for our determination. You may break, you may shatter the rat if you will, but the scent of the musk-rose will cling to it still. There is a limit to every one's scientific research, and, personally, until insistent hunger gnaws at my vitals and starvation looms round the edge ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... will be a big scar, growin' big as the tree grows big, and grown over, maybe, but still a scar; or worse, it may stay open more or less and rain and frost will get in, and insects, and after a while it will be a great rotten place, a hole for a snake or a rat, or maybe a bird.' Well, pa says that Linkern lost Anne Rutledge and that he thinks Linkern's beautiful talk and wonderful words came from losin' Anne Rutledge. I don't quite see how—but if it did, then if a bird gets into the hole in the tree, that's a sign that ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... boy in Rat Hollow on Sunday, I returned to the camp. The men were lounging around the stove, smoking, and exchanging experiences. In one corner, a German sailor was playing his wheezy accordion, and in another, ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... accounted for by events that happened 'once upon a time'—for instance, the stumpy tail of the bear, by his misfortune when he went out fishing on the ice—so we find in the American tales, 'that it was when the two principal heroes (Hun-Ahpu and Xbalanque) had caught the rat and were going to strangle it over the fire, that le rat commenca a porter une queue sans poil. Thus, because a certain serpent swallowed a frog who was sent as a messenger, therefore aujourd'hui encore les serpents ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... will find many ways of adapting games to large numbers. Among such devices may be mentioned (1) increasing the number of runners and chasers; for instance, in the game of Cat and Rat, there may be several cats and several rats; (2) in the circle games of simple character, especially the singing games, the circle may be duplicated, thus having two concentric circles, one within the other; (3) in many ball ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... Ailesbury from Minorca, but originally from Africa, a Jeribo. To be sure you know what that is; if you don't, I will tell you, and then I believe you will scarce know any better. It is a composition of a squirrel, a hare, a rat, and a monkey, which altogether looks very like a bird. In short, it is about the size of the first, with much Such a head, except that the tip of the nose seems shaved off, and the remains are like a human hare-lip; the ears and its timidity are like a real hare. It has ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... lives only in memory. That part of the county seat is a ghost town. Timbermen and loggers gather no more for revelry at the riverfront saloon. And should you ask the reason, the old river rat will answer with a slow-breaking smile, "See off yonder—locks and dams! Can't run the logs ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... had taken, and as I went on I heard the queer chirrup (like a bird's note) of Adjidaumo the squirrel! and he ran across my path and into a hollow tree. It is a much smaller squirrel than ours, about the size of a water rat, and beautifully striped. ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... down here in the darkness? 'Tis only the rat that squeals, Crushed down under the iron hoof. 'Tis only the fool ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... you before you say anything more foolish," said Delverton. "At that time my brother was very ill and as weak as a rat. How could he have administered poison ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... held the towel for Archie, and a spectacled girl with a mouth like a rat-trap, who was something to do with the Woman's Movement, saw fair play for Eunice. And then they went off to Scotland for their honeymoon. I wondered how the Doughnuts were going to get on in old Archie's absence, but it seemed that he had ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... nor moister Than a too-long-opened oyster, Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous For a plate of turtle green and glutinous) "Only a scraping of shoes on the mat? Anything like the sound of a rat Makes my heart ...
— The Pied Piper of Hamelin • Robert Browning
... cutting out. The best we could do was a slow, difficult movement, in column of fours, and this would have been suicide. On the other side of the Town the Rebels were massed stronger, while to the right and left rose the steep mountain sides. We were caught-trapped as surely as a rat ever ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... shoot them. This he was doing one morning with a 22-calibre rifle. He had shot one after another and seen them drop from sight into the crannies of the lumber-pile, when the old Cat came running along the wall from the dock, carrying a small Wharf Rat. He had been ready to shoot her, too, but the sight of that Rat changed his plans: a rat-catching Cat was worthy to live. It happened to be the very first one she had ever caught, but it saved her life. She threaded the lumber-maze to the cracker-box ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... very warm and wiped the perspiration frequently from his forehead. Observing that the sloop was not so near the wreck as he had expected, he suddenly seized the small steersman by the neck and shook him as a terrier dog shakes a rat. ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... comes to me of a bunk-house on an Arizona range. The time was evening. A half-dozen cowboys were sprawled out on the beds smoking, and three more were playing poker with the Chinese cook. A misguided rat darted out from under one of the beds and made for the empty fireplace. He finished his journey in smoke. Then the four who had shot slipped their guns back into their holsters and resumed their cigarettes ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... here on my promise, or I'd kill you like a rat. As it is, out of that door! One, two, three (drawing his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... proportions the better looking the cur would have been. But his ears, although not cut, were torn to ribbons by the various encounters with dogs on shore, arising from the acidity of his temper. His tail had lost its hair from an inveterate mange, and reminded you of the same appendage to a rat. Many parts of his body were bared from the same disease. He carried his head and tail low, and had a villainous sour look. To the eye of a casual observer, there was not one redeeming quality that would warrant his keep; to ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... like a rat in a trap!" Prather groaned. "When I have all life before me! In sight of millions and power—a rat in a trap out on this damnable desert, as if I were of no more account than ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... vast masses of warm clouds and the sea quiet and peaceful. He began to take observations with the [v]sextant, which shook in his trembling hand. Presently a loud buzzing was heard in the sky, followed by the measured crackling of a machine gun; from the hull of the boat came a sharp rat-a-tat, as if some one was throwing dry peas on it. A hydroplane was ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... grass that it is scarcely distinguishable at first sight from the remaining country in no man's land. All went well until 12.30 a.m. But for the rumble of the guns on both sides of us and the periodical sound of the shells flying high over our heads, the Very lights and the occasional rat-tat of a machine-gun, there was little in the peaceful, moonlit country-side to suggest to us the fact that we were between our own lines and those of the enemy! However, at 12.30 a.m. we received a curt reminder that there was a war ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... drowned rat, Pink," struck in Clancy, "and if you don't go back to town Chip and I will worry our ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... Then first was seen the mighty bird which builds its nest on trees which none can climb, and in the crevices of inaccessible rocks—the eagle, which furnishes the Indians with feathers to their arrows, and steals away the musk-rat and the young beaver as his recompense. Then was the sacred falcon first seen winging his way to the land of long winters; and the bird of alarm, the cunning old owl, and his sister's little son, the cob-a-de-cooch, and the ho-ho. All the birds which skim through the air, or plunge into ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... gold-field Chinaman, and sharper than a sewer rat: he wouldn't give his own father a feed, nor lend him a sprat—unless some safe person backed the ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... Tuileries, the police made a sudden investigation of the palace at four o'clock in the morning; when a scene of the most whimsical confusion ensued. Hosts of supernumerary inhabitants were found foisted into the huge edifice; every rat-hole had its occupant; and places which had been considered as tenanted only by spiders were found crowded with a surreptitious population. It is added that many ludicrous accidents occurred; great scampering ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... born, had appeared to me as plain as the men I passed in the street. Though I had beheld them but the space of a lightning-flash, I could call up their faces like those of my comrades. One, the nearest me, was small, pale, with pinched, sharp face, somewhat rat-like. The second man was conspicuously big and burly, black-haired and-bearded. The third and youngest—all three were young—stood with his hand on Blackbeard's shoulder. He, too, was tall, but slenderly built, ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... him. He wanted to look about him. He passed in front of taverns frequented by belated bohemians, gazing at the different faces, seeking to discover the artists. Finally, he came to the sign of "The Dead Rat," and, allured by the name, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... me that a similar want of animal life is characteristic of those climates at the level of the sea, which I have adduced as bearing a great analogy to the Himalaya, in lacking certain natural orders of plants. Thus, New Zealand and Fuegia possess, the former no land animal but a rat, and the latter very few indeed, and none of any size. Such is also the case in Scotland and Norway. Again, on the damp west coast of Tasmania, quadrupeds are rare; whilst the dry eastern half of the island ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... by St. Pether, they both desarve it as well as a thief does the gallows,' said a little blustering voice belonging to the tailor, who came forward in a terrible passion, looking for all the world like a drowned rat. 'Ho, by St. Pether, they do, the vagabones; for it was myself that won the bottle, your Reverence; and by this and by that,' says he, 'the bottle I'll have, or some of their crowns, will crack for it: blood or whiskey I'll have, ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... Oh, I'd be sorer'n a scalded wharf rat in a barrel of pepper. But I don't count. There's the real ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the first field, a large and park-like area, out of which, within brick walls, the vegetable garden had been carved. Old Jolyon avoided this, which did not suit his mood, and made down the hill towards the pond. Balthasar, who knew a water-rat or two, gambolled in front, at the gait which marks an oldish dog who takes the same walk every day. Arrived at the edge, old Jolyon stood, noting another water-lily opened since yesterday; he would show it to Holly to-morrow, when 'his little sweet' had got over the upset ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... be going on when we are asleep? Sometimes the stars, sometimes the moon, sometimes the clouds, sometimes the wind, sometimes the snow, sometimes the frost, sometimes all of them together, are busy. Sometimes the owl and the moth and the beetle, and the bat and the cat and the rat, are all at work. Sometimes there are flowers in bloom that love the night better than the day, and are busy all through the darkness pouring out on the still air the scent they withheld during the sunlight. Sometimes the lightning ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... rat," replied Jack, aiming both revolvers at a huddled figure well in under the lower berth. "Come out, Gray! You won't be hurt unless you ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... snakes they meet with, it is well to mention that the tank snake—a large snake often from nine to ten feet long—is not only harmless but useful, as it lives so largely on rats and mice, and is in consequence sometimes called the rat snake. On one occasion a manager shot one of these snakes near my house, and it had a rat in its mouth when killed, and such snakes, so far from being killed, ought to be carefully protected. I was this year rather interested in observing ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... or the ill-tempered boys who used to make me anxious. Those were definite faults and brought definite punishment; it was the hard-hearted, virtuous, ambitious, sensible boys, who were good-humoured and respectable and selfish, who bothered me; one wanted to shake them as a terrier shakes a rat—but there was nothing to get hold of. They were a credit to themselves and to their parents and to the school; and yet they ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... lying down, half sitting on the edge of one of the bunks, nursing the big stray tortoise-shell tom-cat which had shared his lodgings in the forepeak, and he had mistaken it for a rat as it crept up and down the chain-pipe to see what it could pick up in the cook's galley at meal-times, which it seemed to know by some peculiar instinct of its own; and although thus partially partial to Ching Wang's society, the cat ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... playing Jonah Vark you should ought to quit telling us to come on boys and give them hell because Jonah Vark wouldn't never use a word like that." So I said "I guess he would say a whole lot worse then that if he had a dirty rat like you in his command." So ...
— Treat 'em Rough - Letters from Jack the Kaiser Killer • Ring W. Lardner
... and sat down to think. But at first she had to receive the attentions of Jessie, who was even more surprised than Mrs. Brigg at her unexpected return, and who began to bark with shrill joy and run violently round the room with the speed of a rat emancipated from a cage. As she would not consent to repose herself again, Cuckoo at last put her into the next room, on the bed, and shut the door on her. Then she returned, lit all the three gas-burners and turned them full on, before she removed her hat, and definitely settled herself in for ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the relative protein content of nuts, milk, and meat shows that, pound for pound, the almond, beech nut and walnut contain on an average as much protein as does meat and five times as much as is found in milk, and protein which from rat feeding experiments appears to be of equal value. The chestnut, the chinquapin, the filbert, the hickory, pecan and pine nut contain on an average as much protein as is found in fish, while the butternut, the peanut and the pignolia contain twice as much or 50 per cent more than ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... spoken of for years afterwards. She must, therefore, retire to her den immediately after impregnation; and cannot go above three months with young; as instances have occurred of their being found suckling their young in the month of January, at which period they are not larger than the common house-rat, presenting the appearance of animals in embryo, yet perfect ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... aboard with the identical bandbox and your funny story about how you happened to have it. I smelt a rat: Miss Landis hadn't sent you that bandbox anonymously for no purpose. Then one afternoon—long toward six o'clock—I see Miss Landis's maid come out on deck and jerk a little package overboard—package just about big enough to hold a razor. That night I'm dragged up on the carpet before ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... a thick plug of tobacco, and gazed out over the marsh, which showed only the light yellow of the dry stalks and the brown domes of the rat-houses. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... agony, he feebly declared that "these things were as good as hartshorn to him;" but he appeared at that moment rather to want a little. And it is probably true, what Cibber facetiously says of Pope, in his second letter:—"Everybody tells me that I have made you as uneasy as a rat in a hot ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Old Meg's den some time later the little gutter rat who, a few hours before, had brought the two thugs back to Balcom and Old Meg was coiled up ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... moreover, very liable to find auguries in things they witnessed. For example, if they left their house and met on the way a serpent or rat, or a bird called Tigmamanuguin which was singing in the tree, or if they chanced upon anyone who sneezed, they returned at once to their house, considering the incident as an augury that some evil might befall them if they should continue ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... the building was a circular cage that looked like an old fashioned wire rat trap greatly enlarged. Into this cage the animals were introduced to go through with ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... the winter's broken, mother dear!" said Gilbert, as a terrific blast shook the blinds as a terrier would a rat. "Don't listen to that wind; it 's only a March bluff! Osh Popham says snow is the poor man's manure; he says it's going to be an early season and a grand hay crop. We'll get fifty dollars for ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... had to submit to the martyrdom of the dungeons in the Fortress of SS. Peter and Paul, or be hung at Schlusselburg. Isn't that what always happens? That is the way he would have done, and not have acted like a hotel-rat! Now, there is someone in your home (or who comes to your home) who acts like a hotel-rat because he does not wish to be seen, because he does not wish to be discovered, because he does not wish to be ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... proceeded with the experiment, and fixed into the object-glass the little animal, who was struggling in our tweezers. We then requested the Regent to apply his eye to the glass at the top of the machine. "Tsong-Kaba!" said he; "the louse is as big as a rat."... Having viewed it for an instant, he hid his face in his hands, saying, that it was a horrible sight. He tried to prevent the others from looking, but his expostulations were unavailing. Every body in turn bent over the microscope, and started back with cries of horror. The ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... in his single person the varied offices of ferryman, rat-catcher, jobbing gardener, amateur barber, mender of sails and of nets, brought the heavy, flat-bottomed boat alongside the jetty. Shipping the long sweeps, he coughed behind his hand with somewhat sepulchral politeness to give warning of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... plague, which is one of the most frightful diseases known, is conveyed to man by the rat and mouse.[1] Hydrophobia is usually contracted from the bite of the dog, and it is a well-known fact that this animal often harbors a minute tapeworm, a single egg of which, when swallowed by the human being, is often ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... circuits, and devising things to make the work of telegraphy less irksome. He also relieved the monotony of office-work by fitting up the battery circuits to play jokes on his fellow-operators, and to deal with the vermin that infested the premises. He arranged in the cellar what he called his 'rat paralyzer,' a very simple contrivance consisting of two plates insulated from each other and connected with the main battery. They were so placed that when a rat passed over them the fore feet on the one plate and the hind feet on the other completed the circuit ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... be a large apartment, void of anything save a few broken sticks of furniture, and a litter of papers. The paper on the walls was mildewed and hanging in strips. There was a damp and musty smell in the place, but—joy of joys to Mollie—no rat holes. The floor was solid, and she could see no openings where the ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... him but myself. I have faithfully followed your orders, and kept him like a rat in a trap. He takes to eating and sleeping prodigious kindly, and has shown no disposition to do any ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... every way of amusing ourselves; the idlers played at drogue[1], the younger ones drank. We had also a game called "Cat and Rat," which we played in front of the barracks. A stake was planted in the ground, to which two cords were fastened; the rat held one of these, and the cat the other. Their eyes were bandaged. The cat was armed with ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... in my life because it wasn't a Hydrophobic Skunk at all. It was a pack rat, sometimes called a trade rat, paying us a visit. The pack or trade rat is also a denizen of the Grand canyon. He is about four times as big as an ordinary rat and has an appetite to correspond. He sometimes invades your camp and makes free with your things, but he never steals anything outright—he ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... was considered by all my masters and by my father as a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect. To my deep mortification, my father once said to me, 'You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and to all your family.'" Harriet Martineau was thought very dull. Though a horn musician, she could do absolutely nothing in the presence of her irritable master. She wrote a cramped, untidy ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... likely, that suspicion should again enter the brain of the Captain, when he gained time to think over the extraordinary situation? Suppose, what was also likely, that General Yozarro should arrive while the bogus messenger was inside the Castle? He would be caught like a rat in a trap. ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... liberal intentions with a sign; "no; when I do you a service you make me a present; well and good. When I conclude a bargain you execute the conditions. But I to ask without having a right to ask! It may do for a church rat, but not for a soldier; although I am only a simple gentleman, I am as proud as a duke or a peer; but, pardon me, if you want me, you know where to find me. Au revoir, chevalier! ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... his head; "a poor crittur, of no manner of kin whatever. Her father war an old friend, or acquaintance-like; for, rat it, I won't own friendship for any such apostatised villians, no how:—but the man war taken by the Shawnees; and so as thar war none to befriend her, and she war but a little chit no bigger nor my hand, I took to her myself and raised ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... rat and a frog. And the rat said to the frog, "Go and get me some sticks, while I go and get some flour and milk." So the frog went out far into the jungle and brought home plenty of sticks, and the rat went out and brought home flour and milk for their dinner. Then she cooked the dinner, and ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... A faint rat-tat came up the road. Valmond bowed. "Sire," the old man continued, "I would not act till ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in the spring, and the ground is damp, it is best to put the hen and her brood in some building. During the most of the season the best thing is an outdoor coop. The first consideration in making a chicken-coop is to see that it is rain-proof and rat-tight. The next thing to look for is that the coop is not air-tight. Let the front be of rat-tight netting or heavy screen. The same general plan may be used for small coops for hens, or for larger coops to be used as colony-houses for growing chickens. The essentials ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... collected during the journey included several birds and animals not hitherto mentioned in this Journal. Amongst the most remarkable of these was the pig-footed animal found on June 16. It measured about ten inches in length, had no tail, and the forefeet resembled those of a pig. There was also the rat which climbs trees like the opossum; the flat-tailed rat from the scrubs of the Darling, where it builds an enormous nest of branches and boughs, so interlaced as to be proof against any attacks of the native dog. The unique specimen from the reedy ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... life, Sir. I am insured at the Pelican, Sir. I am threescore years and six,—six; mark me, Sir: but I can play Polonius, which, I believe, few of your corre—correspondents can do, Sir. I suspect tricks, Sir; I smell a rat: I do, I do. You would cog the die upon us: you would, you would, Sir. But I will forestall you, Sir. You would be deriving me from William the Conqueror, with a murrain to you. It is no such thing, Sir. The town shall know better, Sir. They begin to smoke your flams, Sir. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... other. Mother used to ask them if they had met Dad? None ever did until an old grey man came along and said he knew Dad well—he had camped with him one night and shared a damper. Mother was very pleased and brought him in. We had a kangaroo-rat (stewed) for dinner that day. The girls did n't want to lay it on the table at first, but Mother said he would n't know what it was. The traveller was very hungry and liked it, and when passing his plate the second time for more, said it was n't often ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... rat-line or two in height while waiting on the lower part of the rigging for the order to go aloft. Also, a vessel is said to steal ahead when she moves with the lightest ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... say?—but suddenly all four started in their saddles, and Sadie gave a sharp cry of dismay. In the hush of the night there had come from behind them the petulant crack of a rifle, then another, then several together, with a brisk rat-tat-tat, and then, after ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... rusty chains were attached—all too significant of the purpose to which the room was dedicated. In the dirt floor near the wall were two or three holes resembling the mouths of burrows—doubtless the habitat of the giant Martian rat. He had observed this much when suddenly the dim light was extinguished, leaving him in darkness utter and complete. Turan, groping about, sought the table and the bench. Placing the latter against the wall he drew the table in front of him and sat ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... imagine un gnie rat,' said Phillips. 'Your conception is clear enough; why don't you write ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... the poor. But no prayers will ever stay Galors, and the alms your people want I spell with an 'r.' I know Master Galors, and he me. If he comes here the town will be carried, the men hanged, the women ravished, and I shall be killed like a rat in a drain. Now I set little store by my life, but I and the man I have brought with me intend to die in the open. Do what you choose, but understand that unless things alter to my liking, I take myself, my sword, and my head for affairs ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... Zilla went right on talking about the little chap, and screeching that 'folks like him oughtn't to be admitted in a place that's SUPPOSED to be for ladies and gentlemen,' and 'Paul, will you kindly call the manager, so I can report this dirty rat?' and—Oof! Maybe I wasn't glad when I could sneak inside ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... harm Pamba, the rat," he said. "It is but a little balu and very frightened. Let Gazan play ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... tenderness which he had always assumed towards my mother, yet I was his daughter, and I felt sure that he would want to leap out of bed that he might take my husband by the throat and shake him as a terrier shakes a rat. But what happened ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... woods, and was never so happy as when surrounded by their solitude. The cawing of the crows, the tapping of the sapsucker, the rat-tat-tat of the bold red-headed woodpecker inviting insects in the rotten limb to look out, and he gobbled up, the frisking of the red squirrel as he darted like a flash around to the other side of a tree trunk—-all these and more he noted as ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... [Points downwards.] In the long-boat we found a very old rat; a tough morsel; but we ate him, and drank sea-water. We were forced to throw the gold overboard! [Looks around.] Is there nothing we can get to ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... the only attraction challenging the popularity of Lola Montez at this period. There was another rival, and one in more direct competition with herself. This was Sam Cowell, a music-hall "star" from England. A comedian of genuine talent, he took America by storm with a couple of ballads, "The Rat-Catcher's Daughter" and "Villikins and his Dinah." The public flocked to hear him in their thousands. Lola's lectures fell very flat. Even fresh material and reduced prices failed to serve as a lure. The position was ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... The musk-rat, Fiber zibethecus, sometimes called musquash from the Algonquin word, m8sk8ess8, is found in three varieties, the black, and rarely the pied and white. For a description of this animal vide Le Jeune, Jesuit Relations, 1635, pp. ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... born with caul. Loss he caul. Rat carry 'em. Ain't here; he see nothin. (The custom seems to ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, cap. cxxv. Domesticated dogs were found generally in aboriginal America, but they were very paltry curs compared to these fierce hounds, one of which could handle an unarmed man as easily as a terrier handles a rat.] ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... 'lands on the coast of Queensland; he comes to Sydney—no work; to Melbourne—no work; he goes to Ball'rat—work there at a gold-mine. Braulard takes the name of Vandeloup and makes money; he comes to Melbourne, lives there a year, he is in want of money, he is in despair; at the theatre he overhears a plan which will ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... good book and some money, and could do no more. When I was a very small boy I was deeply impressed with the story in the "Arabian Nights" of the prisoner who knew that he was going to be set free because a rat had run away with his dinner. So I, at the age of seven, announced to my father that I believed that whenever a man had bad luck, good was sure to follow, which opinion he did not accept. And to this day I hold it, because, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... are right. You know how to make yourself respected, I believe. But many women like to be beaten. I know that I should love the man who could beat me. But he would have to fight with me first. My husband is as timid as a Norway rat. You don't see him here often." Gudrid had never seen him. "He comes when I ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... we were compelled to exchange our perfectly good uniforms for some old rags that would disgrace a wharf rat!" was Ned's indignant response. "Then we simply took the privilege of putting on these garments. They are not what we would have ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... his appearance about mid-summer, making its web on the leaf, drawing it together, and then devouring his own house. It is a small, greenish, and very active worm, who, if he "smells a rat," will drop out of his web, and descend to the ground in double-quick time. I know of no other plan, than to catch him and crush his web between ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... to"—laconically. "That top story may go at any minute. It would collapse like a pack of cards if another bomb fell near enough for us to feel the concussion. And young Durward would have about as much chance as a rat in a trap." ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... act as copyists? . . . Whatsoever questions I may put to you in my letters, dearest, I pray you to answer them. I am sure that you need me, that I can be of use to you; and, since that is so, I must not allow myself to be distracted by any trifle. Even if I be likened to a rat, I do not care, provided that that particular rat be wanted by you, and be of use in the world, and be retained in its position, and receive its reward. But ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... steps that led to the front door, and knocked; but as she could only just reach the high knocker, she was not likely to alarm anybody with the noise she made. After a great many little faint raps, which, if anybody heard them, might easily have been mistaken for the attacks of some rat's teeth upon the wainscot, Ellen grew weary of her fruitless toil, and of standing on tiptoe, and resolved, though doubtfully, to go round the house and see if there was any other way of getting in. Turning the far corner, she saw a long, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... because of the ravages of wolves and dogs and partly because the sheep is a perverse animal that often seems to prefer dying to keeping alive and requires skilled care to be made profitable. The breeds were various and often were degenerated. Travelers saw Holland or rat-tailed sheep, West Indian sheep with scant wool and much resembling goats, also a few Spanish sheep, but none would have won encomiums from a scientific English breeder. The merino had not yet been introduced. Good breeds of sheep were difficult to obtain, for both the English ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... as he had heard no movement or sound of voices to give evidence of life anywhere near the bateau. Instantly he made up his mind that it was not Bateese who had uttered the mysterious words of a few hours ago, for the half-breed had evidently experienced a most uncomfortable night. He was like a rat recently pulled out of water. His clothes hung upon him sodden and heavy, his head kerchief dripped, and his lank hair was wet. He slammed the breakfast things down on the table and went out again without so much as nodding ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood |
