"Fag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was saying just before you came in that I had half a mind to pop over. Only it's rather a bally fag, starting. Getting your luggage packed and all ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... have we tasted anything of its kind so good as a buttered roll toasted. It was a French roll buttered all over outside, and then skillfully grilled until the outside was a rich crisp brown. This was brought by the fag to his master "hot and hot," and, being cut open, eaten with butter. The rooms were warmed by immense open fireplaces, there being no limit to the expenditure ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... myself about the task of describing, I must at once begin to reckon. Twelve days' difference! Yes, I have already grasped that fact, but then in which direction must the deduction begin?—backward or forward? Such is the question that instantly arises, and if we are at the fag end of one month and the beginning of another, the amount of reckoning involved seems somewhat inadequate to the occasion. The Russian clergy, it is said—those, at any rate, of the lowest class, designated as "white priests," many of them peasants ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... little taken aback): Him? Grannie's white-headed boy, you mean? Oh, he's all right. (Heavily.) A bit slow on the uptake, of course. I wish he'd occasionally take that fag-end out of his mouth. ...
— Night Must Fall • Williams, Emlyn
... cast a shadow, if you except the telephone poles. For the first time I realized there was danger in walking in such heat, and even contemplated the shade of the telephone poles as a possibility! Fortunately a light breeze sprang up—the fag end of the trade wind—and, though hot, it served to dispel that stagnation of the atmosphere which in sultry weather is so trying to the nervous system. Marysville is nearly one hundred miles due north of Stockton—of course, much farther ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... Grey Friars Thomas Newcome was accordingly sent, exchanging—O ye Gods! with what delight!—the splendour of Clapham for the rough, plentiful fare of the place, blacking his master's shoes with perfect readiness, till he rose in the school, and the time came when he should have a fag of his own: tibbing out and receiving the penalty therefore: bartering a black eye, per bearer, against a bloody nose drawn at sight, with a schoolfellow, and shaking hands the next day; playing at cricket, hockey, prisoners' base, and football, according to ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that had died down to allow Halfman a hearing began again with fresh vigor. It was obvious to the most unsophisticated listener that here was the fag end of a feast and the moment for the genial giving of toasts. Many voices swelled a loyal chorus of "The King, the King!" and had the great doors of the banqueting-hall been no other than bright glass it would have been scarce easier for the man and ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Ned had said, the reverse of lively. It was a pretty country place, with a sort of fag-end by way of a little fishing village, huddled on a wind-swept bit of beach, locally known as the "Cove." Aunt Eleanor was one of those delightful people, so few and far between in this world, who have perfectly mastered the art of minding their own business ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... he was happy himself and made others happy; and then it would rather be from some special piece of drollery that the joy of the moment would come, than from the discussion of ordinary topics. After so many years his old friends remember the fag-ends of the doggerel lines which used to drop from him without any effort on all occasions of jollity. And though he could be very sad,—laden with melancholy, as I think must have been the case with him always,—the feeling of fun would quickly come to him, and the queer rhymes would be poured ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... pirates coming to slit our throats from ear to ear. I have forgotten that part, but I remember the tiny spot of courtplaster just above your painted lips. . . . Such are the jumbled pictures. They are bred of brain-fag, no doubt; yet, whatever be their lineage," said Charteris, happily, "they render glum discussion and platitudinous moralizing quite out of the question. So, let's pretend, Pauline, that we are not a bit more ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... "Honesty is a very good thing, perhaps, but it is by no means the best policy,—it is simply no policy at all,—it is sheer stupidity. What can be more politic than for me to pocket this windfall and turn the corner quick?"—So preacheth his crooked fag-end of a conscience, that very, very small still voice, in very husky tones; but he knows that a policeman, walking behind him, saw him pick up the purse, which alters the case,—which, in fact, completely ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... various reasons, was not a very regular one. It began, indeed, in the usual English way by my going to a very bad private school at Sunbury, and my being transferred to a public school at Westminster at ten or eleven. But I never entered the upper school. The hard life of a fag—for in those days it was a hard life—and the unwholesome food disagreed with me so much that my stepmother, the Duchess of Bedford, insisted that I should be taken away and sent to a private tutor.' At Westminster School ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... are no new thing belonging to the fag-end of this century. Young Adams wrote letters over the "nom de plume" of Pro Bono Publico, and then replied to them over the signature of Rex Americus. He did not adopt as his motto, "Let not thy left hand know ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... shall be too late for the summer's printing. If it isn't done by June, what will become of me? I shall go back to Italy in disgrace, and considerably poorer than I need be, which is of more practical consequence. So I fag. Then there's an hour and a half in the morning for Penini's lessons. We breakfast at nine, and receive nobody till past four. This will all prove to you two things, dearest friend—first (I hope) that I'm pardonable for making you wait a few days ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... keep thyself calm; fear not, neither be fainthearted because of these two fag ends of smoking firebrands, because of the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria and of the son of Remaliah. Syria, with Israel, hath purposed evil against thee, saying, 'Let us go up against Judah and distress it and ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... who on the next Sunday borrowed my only decanter, in return, and, hang them, cracked it!—Curse me, say I, if this life is worth having! It's all the very vanity of vanities—as it's said somewhere in the Bible—and no mistake! Fag, fag, fag, all one's days, and—what for? Thirty-five pounds a-year, and 'no advance!' (Here occurred a pause and revery, from which he was roused by the clangor of the church-bells.) Bah, bells! ring away till you're all cracked!—Now do you think I'm ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... shaved and washed its face, and put on a clean shirt for a shocking length of time. It was dark when I reached it; having walked twelve miles after three p.m. There was only one inn, properly speaking, in the town, and since the old coaching time, it had contracted itself into the fag-end of a large, dark, seedy-looking building, where it lived by selling beer and other sharp and cheap drinks to the villagers; nineteen-twentieths of whom appeared to be agricultural laborers. The entertainment proffered on the sign-board over the door was ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... Washington, when we heard of her the second time. Now she's followed him over here, or got here first, tried the same game probably, met with a refusal, and this anonymous note is her revenge. The man she married was a crack-brained weakling who got into the army the fag end of the war, fell in love with her pretty face, married her, then they quarrelled, and he drank himself into a muddle-head. She ran him into debt; then he gambled away government funds, bolted, was caught, and would have been tried and sent to jail, but some powerful relative saved him that, ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... mankind.' He goes on to bid me 'live and labor for the fallen, the neglected, the suffering, and the poor'; and finally ends by advising me to help upset any, or all, institutions, laws, and so forth, that bear hardly on the fag-ends of society; and tells me that what he calls 'a service to humanity' is worth more to the doer than a service to anything else, or than anything we can gain from the ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... or three leagues from shore make the attempt to land a very dangerous piece of business. And another thing, I know. Let the natives boast as they will about their splendid climate, they are visited by the most frightful hurricanes. They get the fag-end of the storms that rage over the Antilles; and the fag-end of a storm is like the tail of a whale; it's just the strongest bit of it. I don't think you'll find a sailor listening much to your poets — your ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... yus, there isn't many left that started out so cheerily; There was no bands a-playin' and we 'ad no autmobeels. Our tummies they was 'oller, and our 'eads was 'angin' wearily, And if we stopped to light a fag the 'Uns was on our 'eels. That rotten road! I can't forget the kids and mothers flyin' there, The bits of barns a-blazin' and the 'orrid sights I sor; The stiffs that lined the wayside, me own pals a-lyin' there, Their faces covered over wiv a ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... cleaned plates for him in his study, and Ferris watched him. Ferris was kind and talked about many things out of his great wisdom, and then he asked Peter whether he would always like to be his fag, and Peter, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... cast Mrs. Wilder upon one side, as March throws February to the fag end of winter, and rushes on to meet the primrose girl bringing spring in her wake. He had dealt simultaneously with Mrs. Wilder's little part in the drama and the part of Francis Heath, Priest in Holy Orders. How they had both stood the test of detection he did ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... 'below-par-ness,' which lead to all kinds of fanciful fears, such as having Brain Fag, Neurasthenia, and other conditions ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... revolutionary type would be great, if only I could feel as I should so much like, that the Christian socialism to which you have consecrated the whole prime of your life, and the Marxian socialism, to which I have consecrated all of the little that remains of mine, the fag-end, are not utter incompatibilities, so much so that it is absolutely impossible that they can co-exist and co-operate ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... for three hours, whether you accomplish anything or not. Before long you will find that you are writing madly, not waiting for inspiration. And you will have Clavey to criticize you. The rest is only stern self-discipline. Here is another suggestion: when you have brain fag go to bed for two days and starve. The ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... neglect children? Umm! Some folks and some fields never alter. But the People of the Hills didn't work any changeling tricks. They'd tiptoe in and whisper and weave round the cradle-babe in the chimney-corner—a fag-end of a charm here, or half a spell there—like kettles singing; but when the babe's mind came to bud out afterwards, it would act differently from other people in its station. That's no advantage to man or maid. So I wouldn't allow it with my folks' babies ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... was on board yesterday. He looks thin. The fag in a brig is very great; and I see no prospect of his either making prize-money, or being made post, at present: but, I ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... pushing against the foremost cattle on the left so as to turn them to the right. When once the leaders were turned the rest blindly followed and thus, by constantly turning them to the right, the leaders were finally swung clear around, and overtook the fag end of ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... we'm both lonely souls, and we've both lost a good partner; and so it falls out very suent and convenient like that we should wed. But now he hears tell as I ban't to have the cottage, he's off it. He won't hear of marrying if there's no cottage. So the fag end of my life's like to be ruined ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... the other three, who were tolerably discreet, and found the debate on the White gentility had been resumed. Ivinghoe was philosophically declaring 'that in these days one must take up with everybody, so it did not matter if one was a little more of a cad than another; he himself was fag at Eton to a fellow whose father was an oilman, and who wasn't half ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... no fag-out to them. Look how Scott went on in the Antarctic with his feet frozen... It's in the blood; it was ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... only very often caned, but he was fag to a tyrannical private pupil, who made him suffer severely. The private pupils upheld the sacred institution of fagging, which gave them a pleasant sense of authority, and as they sat like gods above us, they were not in danger of retaliation. Brokenribs ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Well, if you don't want me to take you to the Haighs' I'll cry off myself; it's a fearful fag playing a tournament in this weather. Good-bye; I'm off,' he added, as he rose ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... o' guess you've made, any way, old stranger," laughed his tormentor, clapping his foot against the companion, and taking the pull of a giant on the reef-tackle as he spoke. "If you ever know'd where to look for the fag-ind of a north-easter at this time o' year, it's more nor you ever larn'd me to do, and that I do say wasn't doin' your honest duty by me. I'd lay a pistreen this breeze would last the Washy, to the south'ard o' the Tortugas, and ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... my mouth. I realised it was the cigarette to which I had helped myself from the beautifully chased silver casket I had taken from the mantelpiece. I eyed the thing and concluded it was made of the very cheapest tobacco, and was what the street urchin calls a "fag." I learned afterwards that I was right. She purchased them at the rate of six for a penny, and smoked them in enormous quantities. For politeness' sake I continued to puff at the unclean thing until I nearly made myself sick. Then, simulating absentmindedness, ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... called him "Carrots." In fact he laughed. And as he no longer objected when he was called "Carrots" the boys dropped that name, and the shortest one survived. The boys started to call him "Tims" and in a few months he had won their affection from the lowest fag to the ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... the London Hotel and dozed away the afternoon. Weather fearfully hot. Had arranged to make a call upon a distant cousin—a man named Tarling—who is in the police force at Shanghai, but too much of a fag. Spent evening at Chu Han's dancing hall. Got very friendly with a pretty little Chinese girl who spoke pigeon English. Am seeing her to-morrow at Ling Foo's. She is called 'The Little Narcissus.' I called her 'My ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... in one charming person up to London from the country at the latter end of August? The town house long since dismantled for the grand tour now finished—the charms of the season abandoned for peaceful Suffolk—why should Lilian care to return thus at the fag end of London's feast of folly? Has the bronzed and bearded Barndale anything to do with it? Lady Dives Luxor gives a ball; and Lady Dives, being Lilian's especial patroness and guardian angel and divinity, insists on Lilian being present thereat. ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... that"—and good, lumbering John Peerybingle, her husband, often so near to something or another very clever, according to his own account, and Boxer, the carrier's dog, "with that preposterous nothing of a fag-end of a tail of his, describing circles of barks round the horse, making savage rushes at his mistress, and facetiously bringing himself to sudden stops,"—all bear upon them unmistakably the sign-manual ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... vision she saw what lay before her—the hurried preparations, the long tedious voyage on a steamer chosen at haphazard, the arrival in the deadly July heat, and the relapse into all the insufferable daily fag of nursery and kitchen—she saw it and her ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... sudden and marvellous increase. I seemed to tread on eider-down, and, cigar in mouth, strolled along Fleet-street and the Strand, towards my domicile in Half-Moon street—"nescio quid meditans nugarum"—sometimes humming the fag end of an Irish melody; anon stopping to stare in a print-shop window; and then I would trudge on, chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy as I conned over the various ups and downs that had chequered my life since Jack Withers and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... groups like TGW, FLT, USA and the like. Structure makes them happy. [...] Warez d00dz will never have a handle like "Pink Daisy" because warez d00dz are insecure. Only someone who is very secure with a good dose of self-esteem can stand up to the cries of fag and girlie-man. More likely you will find warez d00dz with handles like: Doctor Death, Deranged Lunatic, Hellraiser, Mad Prince, Dreamdevil, The Unknown, Renegade Chemist, Terminator, and Twin Turbo. They ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... of the system. Its basis is the tyranny of brain force, which, among civilized men, is allowed to do what muscular force does among schoolboys and savages. The schoolboy proposition is: 'I am stronger than you, therefore you shall fag for me.' Its grown up form is: 'I am cleverer than you, therefore you shall fag for me.' The state of things we produce by submitting to this, bad enough even at first, becomes intolerable when the mediocre or foolish descendants of the clever fellows claim ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... call 'intellect,' read up for the exams, and don't give US a look-in; I call it sheer piffle. Then the Guv'nor set me on electrical engineering—electrical engineering's played out. I put no stock in it; besides, it's such beastly fag; and then, you get your hands dirty. So now I'm reading for the Bar; and if only my coach can put me up to tips enough to dodge the examiners, I expect to be called some time ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... "You've got brain-fag to-night, Hildreth. It's a bribe, pure and simple. They argue that it is merely a matter of dollars and cents to me, as it would be to one of them; and they propose to retain me just as they would any other attorney whose opposition ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... generic term, to express the condition of all overworked, ill-paid, badly-housed workers in our cities. It sums up the industrial or economic aspects of the problem of city poverty. Scarcely any trade in its lowest grades is free from it; in nearly all we find the wretched "fag end" where the workers are miserably oppressed. This is true not only of the poorest manual labour, that of the sandwich-man, with his wage of 1s. 2d. per diem, and of the lowest class of each manufacturing trade in East and Central London. It is true of the relatively unskilled labour in ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... will appear in the sequel, are apposite to the parties whom I am about to introduce to the readers. As, however, they are people of some consequence, it may appear to be a want of due respect on my part, if I were to introduce them at the fag-end of a chapter. ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... your dreaming! See that vessel, strong and bold, On her banner proudly streaming, California for gold! See a crowd around her gather, Eager all to push from land! They will have all sorts o' weather Ere they reach the golden strand. Rouse to action, Fag and faction; Ho, for mines of wealth untold! Rally! Rally! All for Cali- Fornia in search of gold! Away, amid the rush and racket, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... neckerchief over her shoulders, her hair clumsily braided—though it was lovely hair, thick and black, you could see that it was badly brushed—she stretched out towards a chair hands like those of a servant, and removed an infant's robe, a knife, a fag-end of packe-bread, an empty flower-pot, and a greasy plate left on the seat, which she then moved over ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... much to destroy in him,' said the Pussum. 'He's so thin already, there's only a fag-end ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... "Tis quite a fag, this 'chay' to drag—the babbies too is cross, And Mrs. S is riled. 'Tis quite a bore; the task is more—more fitt'rer for an horse; And vith the heat ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... burning. When winter reigns and sheets of snow, The flowers and grass lie under; The sparkling hoar frost yet shall show, A world of fairy wonder. To me more dear such scenes appear, Than this eternal racket, No longer will I fret and fag! Hey! call a cab, bring down my bag, And help me quick to pack it. For here one must go where every one goes, And meet shoals of people whom one never knows, Till it makes a poor fellow dyspeptic; And the world wags along with its sorrows and shows, And will do just ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... trebling may be counted the performance, on the same night, by a Mrs. Stanley, at the Coburg Theatre, of the parts of Lady Anne, Tressell, and Richmond, in "Richard III." A Mr. W. Rede once accomplished the difficult feat of appearing as Sir Lucius O'Trigger, Fag, and Mrs. Malaprop in a representation of "The Rivals," the lady's entrance in the last scene having been preceded by the abrupt exit of Sir Lucius and the omission of the concluding passages of his part. The characters of King Henry, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... for a minute, because it would be grand if I could say when Brian came back, "I have sold your cathedral for you." But I might have saved myself brain fag. Madame Mounet had settled everything in her head, and was merely playing me, like ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... I had struck a snag, And must creep through the battle spume All a flamin' age, with a grinnin' jag In me thigh, for water, or jest a fag. Like a crippled snake I was forced to drag Shattered flesh till the ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... we did meet the French "fag." When Tommy gets one puff of this article of combustion he never wants another. It is one puff too many. Of course our first race was to buy ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... How time dragged on. But he did not move from his ambush, though he felt his limbs stiffening and his brain begin to fag. The thoughts of dire punishments had passed from his mind. That, indeed, had become a blank. What was he doing there? He couldn't quite remember at times—all his energies were so centered in his eyes, which not for a second even left ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and parties nightly, dinners, luncheons, garden-parties; and yet there was a sense of waning in the glory of the world—everybody felt that the fag-end of the season was approaching. All the really great entertainments were over—the Cabinet dinners, the Reception at the Foreign Office, the last of the State balls and concerts. Some of the best people had already left town; ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... impregnable, and bestow on the hero their invincibility. "It was a great instruction," said a saint in Cromwell's war, "that the best courages are but beams of the Almighty." Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone. Let us not lie and steal. No god will help. We shall find all their teams going the other way,—Charles's Wain, Great Bear, Orion, Leo, Hercules:—every ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... Westminster of whom we shall have occasion to make frequent mention, Elijah Impey. We know little about their school days. But, we think, we may safely venture to guess that, whenever Hastings wished to play any trick more than usually naughty, he hired Impey with a tart or a ball to act as fag in the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a wool magnate—and a chance to earn steady money for himself and his mother, who was every year, in spite of her stout heart, slipping into the weakness of the chronic invalid. Raven wrote his books at the fag end of days given to his dull industry, and he succeeded in calling attention to himself as a classical scholar, and then, as he impatiently hit out with what he called pot-boilers in dialect, he got a popular hearing and more money as well. All the time he was advancing in the mills, and, as ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... this is the most convenient place for pointing out the full meaning of the first scene of "Macbeth," and its necessary connection with the rest of the play. It is, in fact, the fag-end of a witches' sabbath, which, if fully represented, would bear a strong resemblance to the scene at the commencement of the fourth act. But a long scene on such a subject would be tedious and unmeaning at the commencement of the ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... conceived it not impossible that the Army of the Valley might be on its way to Tennessee to take Memphis, or even to Vicksburg, to sweep the foe from Mississippi. The men lounged beneath the trees, or watched the weary Virginia Central bringing in the fag end of things. Fredericksburg was now the road's terminus; beyond, the line had been destroyed by a cavalry ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... for some petty jobs among architects, outside his studies at the School of Arts. As for Claude, thanks to his thousand francs a year, he had his full liberty; but the latter days of each month were terrible enough, especially if he had to share the fag-end of his allowance. Luckily he was beginning to sell a little; disposing of tiny canvases, at the rate of ten and twelve francs a-piece, to Papa Malgras, a wary picture dealer. After all, he preferred starvation to turning his art into mere commerce by manufacturing ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... to saddle that the fag end of the dawn was still sweet in the air when he passed under the great limbs of the stragglers of the forests clothing his eastern hill-slopes. He noted how between the widely separated boles the grass was thick and ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... exposes his Puritanic education, and he also places too high a value on the carving of button-holes and shoestrings by Italian workmen. Such things are the fag-ends of statuary. ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... horse, for all she was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards start, and then pass her under way; but always at the fag-end of the race she'd get excited and desperate-like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side amongst the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... the utmost speed, but the people soon began to fag, and the lady of the Fellata chief, who rode not far from Clapperton, began to complain of fatigue. In the evening they halted at the wells of Kamoon, all extremely fatigued, and on the following morning, they discovered that all their camels had strayed away in quest of food; ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... play of that first healthy instinct in a true man which scorns a mean act, which will not allow him to take part in the making of a mean custom, which for example, if he be a college fellow, will not suffer him to treat another fellow as a fag. I am entirely sure that ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... relentless, give and take fight such as this promised to be is common enough wherever hard men foregather, dirt-common in a country where the fag end of a long winter of enforced idleness leaves restless nerves raw. The uncommon thing about the brief battle or in any way connected with it lay in the attitude of the onlookers. Rarely is a crowd so unanimous both in expectation and desire. George would kill Drennen or would nearly kill him, ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... romantic desire to render homage to the angelic heroine of his dreams. He had, he said, cast aside his life of ease and luxury; he would devote his days and nights to the service of that gentle lady; he would perform the most menial offices, he would 'fag' for her, he would be her footman— and feel requited by a single smile. A single smile, indeed, he had, but it was of an unexpected kind. Miss Nightingale at first refused to see him, and then, when she consented, believing that ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... morning after Day's second innings, a fag from Day's brought Clephane a message from Henfrey. Henfrey was apparently in bed. He would be glad if Clephane would go and see him in the dinner-hour. The interview lasted fifteen minutes. Then Clephane burst out of the house, ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Journals and Letters. At the beginning of 1821, when he was fairly at work on his Lazarus, he confides to his Journal his conviction that difficulties are to be his lot in pecuniary matters, and adds: 'My plan must be to make up my mind to meet them, and fag as I can—to lose no single moment, but seize on time that is free from disturbance, and make the most of it. If I can float, and keep alive attention to my situation through another picture, I will reach the shore. I am now clearly in sight ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... the case of a man who is just fifty. But, otherwise, he positively looks younger than he did when he was a Cabinet Minister. There is colour where there used to be nothing but deadly pallor—freshness where the long and terrible drudgery of official life had left a permanent look of fag and weariness. Sir Charles Dilke has taken up the broken thread of his life just as if nothing had occurred in that long period of exile and suffering. He is never out of his place: attends every sitting as conscientiously ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... suffice to maintain human stamina if we neglect other co-operatives—namely the obedience to the laws of abstinence, and those of ordinary gratification. We rise with a headache, and we set about puzzling ourselves to know the cause. We then recollect that we had a hard day's fag, or that we feasted over-bounteously, or that we stayed up very late: at all events we incline to find out the fault, and then we call ourselves fools for falling into it. Now, this is an occurrence happening almost every day; and ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... is where your golden noon hour is spent, standing, running, waiting, serving in the ill-smelling restaurant I shall name later; and not your dinner hour alone, but the long day's fag end! ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... table; and it is supposed he forgot to call for it, as this was the only instance in which he was known not to carry it when engaged. At about six o'clock he summoned Captain Blackwood on board the "Victory." This officer had had a hard fag during the past forty-eight hours, dogging the enemy's movements through darkness and mist; but that task was over, and his ambition now was to get command of one of two seventy-fours, whose captains had gone home with Calder to give evidence at his trial. "My signal just ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... far as our experience has gone, in no other way. He is generous enough to hate all oppression in every form, and therefore to hate the oppression exercised by a noble as heartily as oppression exercised by a king. He is a big boy ready to fight anyone who bullies his fag; but with no doubts as to the merits of fagging. But then he never chooses to look at the awkward consequences of his opinion. When talking of politics, an aristocracy full of virtue and talent, ruling on generous principles a people sufficiently ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... good for nothing. But as the store-keepers say of their remnants of cloth, 'I am but a fag end, and you may have me for what ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... School in winter is quite tiring enough, but school all the year round would about wear me out. Store work is just play compared with the fag of simple equations and ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... duels, bloody Monday, the fag system and hazings are all surviving traditions of these so-called universities where people who had the price sent their sons ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... would have led to the expectation of an orator. Altogether, his conduct at Harrow indicated a clever, but not an extraordinary boy. He formed a few friendships there, in which his attachment appears to have been, in some instances, remarkable. The late Duke of Dorset was his fag, and he was not considered a very hard taskmaster. He certainly did not carry with him from Harrow any anticipation of that splendid career he was destined to run as ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... seen a more gloomy sky or a more forbidding scene. Gray clouds, gray sea, brown bare fields; the village of white or gray-shingled houses set, for the most part, along the winding main street; the elms and silver-leaf poplars waving bare branches in the cutting wind; a picture of the fag end of loneliness and desolation, so it looked to her. She remembered Mr. Graves's opinion of the place, as jokingly reported by Sylvester, and she sympathized with the dignified ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... about that moribund period of the social solstice when the fag end of the season had fizzled out like a wet firecracker in the April rains; and Geraldine and Kathleen were tired, mentally and bodily. And Scott was buying polo ponies from a British friend and shotguns from a needy ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... necks; but from me they angrily wrench themselves free. Is indifference the best plan? I walk apart with step I try so hard to render careless; but none follows, no little friendly arm is slipped through mine. Should one seek to win one's way by kind offices? Ah, if one could! How I would fag for them. I could do their sums for them—I am good at sums—write their impositions for them, gladly take upon myself their punishments, would they but return my service with a little love and—more ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... Byron and Mr. Peel were at Harrow together," says Moore, "a tyrant some few years older, whose name was N——, claimed a right to fag little Peel, which claim Peel resisted. His resistance was vain, and N—— not only subdued him, but determined also to punish the refractory slave by inflicting a bastinado on the inner fleshy side of the boy's right arm. While the stripes were succeeding each other, and poor Peel ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... unusual physical endurance are able to do even a small amount of steady, fine-grained work in the city. The rest are as effectually debarred from it as factory children are debarred from learning the violin well at the fag end of their days of toil. In her autobiography Miss Jane Addams speaks some luminous words about the state of society which forces finely organized artistic talent into the wearing struggle for mere existence. She refers to it as "one of the haunting problems of life; why do we permit the ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... "He was my fag at Eton," Warrington said. "I ought to have licked him a little more." He and Pen had had some bouts at the Oxbridge Union debates, in which Pen had had very much the better of Percy: who presently appeared, with his hat under his ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... just as Fag told me, indeed!—Whimsical enough, 'faith! My father wants to force me to marry the very girl I am plotting to run away with! He must not know of my connection with her yet awhile. He has too summary a method of proceeding in these matters; however, I'll read my recantation instantly. My conversion ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... sought to have a particular fag to attend to him and his wishes, and no cadet could demand service of another fellow's fag without danger of ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... resignation. "I can't lie to you. I have only a broken heart. Beyond friendship and gratitude, I have nothing to offer you. I can't even promise that I will ever stop loving—him. But—" her words came with the flatness of unending soul-fag—"I suppose I can give you the lesser things; fidelity, respect; all the petty allegiance that can go on without ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... sale at a shop which she passed on the way to school, to be a first-form girl and have one of the new desks, and, incidentally, to pass the Cambridge examination if it could be done without too much "fag." She put on her clothes any way, did her hair in the twinkling of an eye, and ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... wealth as books seldom boast; his mind was indeed my library, and whenever it was opened to me, I entered bliss. Intellectually imperfect as I was, I could read little; there were few bound and printed volumes that did not weary me—whose perusal did not fag and blind—but his tomes of thought were collyrium to the spirit's eyes; over their contents, inward sight grew clear and strong. I used to think what a delight it would be for one who loved him better than he loved himself, to gather and store up those handfuls of ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... a good feller, am I? Thank ye, sir, thank ye," said Dagley, with a loud snarling irony which made Fag the sheep-dog stir from his seat and prick his ears; but seeing Monk enter the yard after some outside loitering, Fag seated himself again in an attitude of observation. "I'm glad to hear I'm a ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... an afternoon's drill. It was a little of a fag, being in fact rather like a dish heated up a second time, as a duty twice done mostly always is. But the evening was particularly gay. Then the Yeomen were supposed to be enjoying themselves. Pleasant, if they had always enjoyed themselves in an innocent ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... These outbreaks had the kind of morbid interest for the Pocket Hunter that a house of unsavory reputation has in a respectable neighborhood, but I always found the accounts he brought me more interesting than his explanations, which were compounded of fag ends of miner's talk and superstition. He was a perfect gossip of the woods, this Pocket Hunter, and when I could get him away from "leads" and "strikes" and "contacts," full of fascinating small talk about the ebb and flood ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... companion, I guess to sort o' pacify him, broke out kinder a singin' in a tone full of fag, "'In Adam's fall, we ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... full speed. Dean's Yard was but a few minutes' run distant. He dashed through the little archway into the yard, down the side, and then in at another archway into Little Dean's Yard, where some elder boys were playing at racquets. A fag was picking up the balls, and two or three others were standing at the top of the steps ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... footsteps of George Sand and of Balzac. He belongs to the school of "Impressionists," and, although he has a liking for exceptional situations, wherefrom humanity does not always issue without serious blotches, he yet is free from pessimism. He has no nervous disorder, no "brain fag," he is no pagan, not even a nonbeliever, and has happily preserved his wholesomeness of thought; he is averse to exotic ideas, extravagant depiction, and inflammatory language. His novels and tales contain the essential ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... purpose of executing commissions; but this was not easy, as all the regular outlets were closed at an early hour. In such a dilemma, any route, that was barely practicable at whatever risk, must be traversed by the loyal fag; and it so happened that none of any kind remained open or accessible, except one; and this one communication happened to have escaped suspicion, simply because it lay through a succession of temples and sewers sacred to the goddesses Cloacina and Scavengerina. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... country), the sin of sins? Have you any right to read, especially novels, until you have exhausted the best part of the day in some employment that is called practical? Have you any right to enjoy yourself at all until the fag-end of the day, when you are tired and incapable of enjoying yourself? I am aware that this is the practice, if not the theory, of our society,—to postpone the delights of social intercourse until after dark, and rather late at night, when body and mind are ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... yourself, it's one more for little Willie. All I can say is that you're foolish not taking a good fag when it don't cost you nothing. You don't catch me refusing a free fag even when I don't want to smoke. I takes it and puts it in my cap for when I do. Pounds I've saved that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... nodded. The next moment she seemed to repent the nod, for she flared up and snapped: "Oh, shut up, for Christ's sake, cancher? Give any one the fair pip, you do. Ain't I answered enough damsilly questions from ev'body without you? Oo's got a fag?" ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... at him. He made the other boys laugh at him whenever he could. He bullied him in the play-ground. He proposed to introduce fagging at Mr. Gray's. He praised it as a splendid institution of the British schools, simply because he wanted Gabriel as his fag. He wanted to fling his boots at Gabriel's head that he might black them. He wanted to send him down stairs in his shirt on winter nights. He wanted to have Gabriel get up in the cold mornings and bring him his breakfast in bed. He wanted to chain Gabriel to the car of his triumphal ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... spheres—not in its supply of coal, its volume of trade, its accumulated capital, or its multiplication of railways. Above all—and this was to some of our Party the unkindest cut—he asserted for Religion the chief place among the elements of national well-being. We were just then living at the fag-end of an anti-religious time. The critical, negative, and utilitarian spirit which had seized on Oxford after the apparent defeat and collapse of Newman's movement had profoundly affected the Liberal Party. It was an ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... unexpected application of his moist nose to her countenance; now, exhibiting an obtrusive interest in the baby; now, going round and round upon the hearth, and lying down as if he had established himself for the night; now, getting up again, and taking that nothing of a fag-end of a tail of his, out into the weather, as if he had just remembered an appointment, and was off, at a ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... pouch the fag of a cigarette, lit it, and puffed meditatively. "I did a reckonissince mysel' this morning. I was up at the Hoose afore it was light, and tried the door o' the coal-hole. I doot they've gotten on our tracks, for it was lockit—aye, and ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... reunion of the Russian divisions at Nossi Be, Madagascar, January 9, 1905, came news of the fall of Port Arthur. The home government now concluded to despatch the fag-ends of its navy, though Rojdestvensky would have preferred to push ahead without waiting for such "superfluous encumbrances" to join. Ships, as his staff officer Semenoff afterward wrote, were needed, but not "old flatirons and galoshes"; guns, but not "holes surrounded by iron."[1] After ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... him sink, as I was his fag!' said Mr. Tartar. 'But the truth being that he was my best protector and friend, and did me more good than all the masters put together, an irrational impulse seized me to pick him up, or ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... appointed to be the fag of one Loman, and as the story unfolds we begin to see life through the eyes of the older boy. There is an interesting moment when Steevie refuses to do the work of fag to Loman, and is soundly beaten up for ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... showered upon Dam from all sides. He was counselled to live on meat, to be a vegetarian, to rise at 4 a.m. and swim, to avoid all brain-fag, to run twenty miles a day, to rest until the fight, to get up in the night and swing heavy dumb-bells, to eat no pudding, to drink no tea, to give up sugar, avoid ices, and deny himself all "tuck" and everything else that makes life ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... tale receives, Whilst stupid matrons start, and think of thieves, Now daily fools unbar the narrow soul, All wise and gen'rous o'er the nightly bowl. The haunted wood receives its motley host, (By trav'ller shun'd) tho' neither fag nor ghost; And there the crackling bonfire blazes red, While merry vagrants feast beneath the shed. From sleepless beds unquiet spirits rise, And cunning wags put on their borrow'd guise: Whilst silly maidens mutter o'er their boon, And crop ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... completely fagged out; it did seem, as I told Tirzah Ann one day in confidence, "that I never knew the meanin' of the word 'fag' before." ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley) |
