"Rag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was mad because he found out you had a few books! But here you've got a decent pair of shoes to your feet—for once in your life! and a decent suit of clothes to your back—so that you look like a human being instead of the rag bag! And you've got the first hat you've had since you were five ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... two ounces of essence of lemon and one ounce of oil of turpentine. Grease and other spots in silk must be rubbed gently with a linen rag dipped in the above composition. To remove acid stains from silks, apply with a soft ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... consistent, always showing contempt for money, stubborn persistence in the right, and courage in the face of danger. Some people thought him too ambitious, for even with philosophers 6 the passion for fame is often their last rag of infirmity. After Thrasea's fall Helvidius was banished, but he returned to Rome under Galba and proceeded to prosecute Eprius Marcellus,[251] who had informed against his father-in-law. This attempt to secure a revenge, as bold as it ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... too tired to sleep, too excited to think, sat sipping thick coffee the whole night through, while the things that were happening soaked into me like petrol into a rag. About two hours before dawn I pulled myself together and climbed into the loft for ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... politicians and presses heartily seconded their chieftain in this war, promising the people "Benton mint-drops instead of rag-money." Jackson clubs were everywhere organized, having opposite to the tavern or hall used as their headquarters a hickory-tree, trimmed of all its foliage except a tuft at the top. Torch-light processions, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... were closing round him fast. His will had been the first to suffer, his conscience next. Then with a rush had gone honour, temperance, and purity; and now finally the flimsy rag, his good name, had been torn from him, and he stood ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... general bankruptcy, together with the artist's own poverty, you would imagine an auction going on in every other house, by the Turkey carpets and odds and ends hanging from the windows. We have even seen a "Rag Fair" in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... three, or four additional wives, and defends his action by appealing to Moses. They have taken out of Moses such things as please them and pander to their lust. In Turkey they are very cruel to women; any woman that will not submit is cast aside. They toy with their women like a dog with a rag. When they are weary of one woman, they quickly put her beneath the turf and take another. Moses has said nothing to justify this practise. My opinion is that there is no real married life among the Turks; theirs is ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... it's my twenty guineas that we thought they'd stolen. What in the name of forceps and lancets did they tie them up in this old silk rag for? It's a bit ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... foolish enough to wish that he had been his wife's first lover. But a man has to get up pretty early to be that to any woman. The minxes begin to flirt with the milk-bottle, then with the doctor, and then to cherish a precocious passion for the first rag sailor-doll. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... time in a sitting position, when I felt something tickle the top of my head. The idea that it might be a large spider caused me to start, when, stretching up my hand, it came in contact with what seemed to be a rag, which I had not observed. Getting carefully up, I perceived a faint light gleaming through the aperture, and then saw that a hand was protruded through it, apparently waving the rag. As I felt instinctively that the hand was Valeria's, I seized the finger-tips, ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... never occupied such a room, with that peculiar, bracing atmosphere. The small mantel with its prim vases looked a veritable home shrine, and the center table with the sprigs of budding lilacs, seemed to the forlorn girl something to reverence. The rag rugs under her feet were so spotless, the curtains so white—it suddenly occurred to the girl these things could not exist in the smoke and grim of a mill town. It was the mill—always the mill found ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... quarters: In barns, in lofts of houses, in cellars, in vacant stores—everywhere that human beings could slip in, the American soldiers had installed themselves. The Y.M.C.A. hut was finished, and in it a score of boys were writing letters, playing rag-time on the pianos, and jollying the handsome, wise-looking American women at the counter across one end of the room. An Irish Catholic padre in a major's uniform was in charge of the sports of the camp and he literally permeated the Y.M.C.A. hut. He was the leader of the men. The little ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... serve thee; neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment;" Luke xv. 29. But alas! poor Publican, thy guilt, as to these pleas, stops thy mouth; thou hast not one good thing to say of thyself, not one rag of righteousness; thy conscience tells thee so; yea, and if thou shouldst now attempt to set a good face on it, and for thy credit say something after the Pharisee in way of thine own commendations, yet here is God on ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... scarred with the records of old wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all over it; one eye out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop Leighton's father's; the remaining eye had the power of two; and above it, and in constant communication with it, was a tattered rag of an ear, which was forever unfurling itself, like an old flag; and then that bud of a tail, about one inch long, if it could in any sense be said to be long, being as broad as long,—the mobility, the instantaneousness of that bud were very funny and surprising, and its ...
— Rab and His Friends • John Brown, M. D.
... he congratulated her. "It's wonderful. And now in the matter of dolls," he went on referring to the list, "no rag ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... was a ball on the flat above. It was refreshingly democratic. The rag-pickers who lodged with Madame Gougeon and laid the foundation of her iron business, attended. Thither thronged the beggars, the knife-grinders, the old-bottle collectors of the neighbouring rookeries. The crookedest men of Paris, the most hideous women, the ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... food, and she worked for twelve hours, leaving off work at six, when she began her 'evening out.' I am fain to add the sartorella was often a sort of whited sepulchre. She was gorgeously clad without, but as a rule had not a rag, not even a chemise, underneath, unless she were 'in luck.' 'In luck,' I grieve to say, meant that every boy, youth, and man in Trieste, beginning at twelve and up to twenty-five and twenty-eight, had ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... feeling that the deer had vindicated me, I had a pride in him, and kept him from a timely end. We turned him loose in a corral with a blooded bull-calf, some milch cows, work-steers, and other tame animals. "And I bet you he has 'em all chewing the rag inside of twenty-four hours," said ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... this wild, sterile, hopeless coast! A touch of civilization, to contrast with the impression of that Labradorian rag-tag existence which we had hitherto seen, and which one could not call human without coughing! I like deserts and wilds,—but, if you please, by way of condiment or sauce to civilization, not for a full meal. I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... sing to another tune when you see and understand and feel what a Conne'ticut man can do. You say Boe, Boe! like a poor benighted crittur as you are, but what do you say to that?" cried the pedlar in a triumphant voice, as he held close to the negro's nose a piece of linen rag on which he had smeared a green greasy substance bearing a strong resemblance to paste-blacking in a state of decomposition. Then, taking up the box which contained this precious compound, he put it in close proximity to the obtuse snout of the blackamoor, who made ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... corn elaborately plaited: and almost directly beneath it stood a circular table with a lamp and a set of dominoes, the half of them laid out in an unfinished game. The floor was of slate but strewn with rugs, some of rag-work others of badgers' skins. A tall clock ticked sedately in a corner. On one side of the chimney a weather-glass depended, on the other a warming-pan—symbols, as it were, of conjugal interests, male and female, drawing together by ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... "Your friend's this w'y." He waved his fat red hand toward the door. "Them fools back there 'll think you're tryin' for a berth with Abercrombie, the ship-master. I 'opes you'll not tyke offense at the w'y I 'ad to rag you back there, sir." ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... and Fleda's cheeks growing crimson, Mrs. Plumfield stepped forward to ask after the old lady's health; and while she talked and listened Fleda's eyes noted the spotless condition of the room—the white table, the nice rag-carpet, the bright many-coloured patch-work counterpane on the bed, the brilliant cleanliness of the floor where the small carpet left the boards bare, the tidy look of the two women; and she made ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... dreadfully. I never let them know that they are dolls. They think that they are real children, only sometimes when they are very bad I use the word for a punishment. I've got several other children. There's old Ragazza. My uncle named her, and she's made of rag, but she has such bad rheumatism that I don't play with her any longer; I just give her medicine. Then there's Effie Deans, she's only got one leg; and Mopsa the Fairy, she's a tiny one made out of china; and Peg of Linkinvaddy,—but ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... fire-arms, which he carefully loaded, in readiness for a hostile visit from a foe. The stranger approached very slowly, and the exiles were at last satisfied that he was not an Indian. As he drew nearer to the island, he waved a white rag, which was intended and understood ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... the engineers' maps and her general knowledge of construction conditions told her much. She decided on the logical place where the inevitable "rag town" would spring up. This, she reasoned, would be as close as possible to the biggest camp of the main ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... is not worth while to notice that rag. Half of what it says is clearly a downright invention. If only you could get hold of the writer and thrash him, it might do some good; but these liars are very hard to catch. As to the 'other lady,' there is nothing in that, ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... hang it, Blyth, it's plain enough what has been wrong with him since supper came in! He's fairly knocked up with doing Hercules for you. You have kept the poor old Guy for near two hours standing in one position, without a rag on his ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... and yawp less," said I, interrupting him. "Between you and Jane I shan't have a rag of ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... tho' I must beg, with a wooden arm and leg, And many a tattered rag hanging over my bum, I'm as happy with my wallet, my bottle, and my callet, [trull] As when I used in scarlet to follow ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... the consul, reoiling his cleaning rag. "No, the other one—that bamboo thing won't hold you. Why, they're cocoanuts—green cocoanuts. The shell of 'em is always a light green ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... like, "I must say you were very brave to kill that wooden figure. I'm not afraid of snakes, but I'd certainly be afraid of a wooden figure. Tell me, did you ever kill a rag doll?" ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... wrathfully. "Puff, puff, puff, thou thing of straw and emptiness! thou rag or two! thou meal bag! thou pumpkin head! thou nothing! Where shall I find a name vile enough to call thee by? Puff, I say, and suck in thy fantastic life with the smoke! else I snatch the pipe from thy mouth and hurl thee where that red coal ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Friend, my Friend,—You behold before you a remorseful man! It is well-nigh a year now since I despatched some hurried rag of paper to you out of Scotland, indicating doubtless that I would speedily follow it with a longer letter; and here, when gray Autumn is at hand again, I have still written nothing to you, heard nothing from you! It is miserable to think of:—and yet it is a fact, and there ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... my heart and all my love; I cannot love a coward, by my faith. For certes, what so any woman saith, We all desiren, if it mighte be, To have husbandes hardy, wise, and free, And secret,* and no niggard nor no fool, *discreet Nor him that is aghast* of every tool,** *afraid **rag, trifle Nor no avantour,* by that God above! *braggart How durste ye for shame say to your love That anything might make you afear'd? Have ye no manne's heart, and have a beard? Alas! and can ye be aghast of swevenes?* *dreams Nothing but vanity, God wot, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Ben, my boy," said the Captain, "hold the oar well up, and don't let the rag clap round the blade. Shake it out so. God grant ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... came shyly up to offer two of their best, leaving the teacher to explain in English their wish to be polite to their distinguished guest. Like the little gentlewoman she was, Annie graciously accepted the ugly bits of rag with answering nods and smiles, and carried them away with her as carefully as if they were ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... nonplussed. "May I have this?" she asked at last, picking up a bit of rag from a pile of things untidily heaped on a chair. Mrs. Lang, though, was gone, and did not hear her. Jessie looked at the rag, and pondered. At last, however, the temptation to wipe off some of ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... know! You're going to the theater to see the Seven Castles!" she cried, adding resolutely, "and I shall go, for Mother said I might see it, and I've got my rag money, and it was mean not ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... the extreme tips of his fingers a piece from a penny cake, carried it to his lips with the delicate air of a dandy, and ate it as if he were an Epicurean philosopher. His collation over, he drew from the pocket of his coat a torn rag, wiped his hands elaborately upon it, dusted his costume airily and then resumed his leisurely promenade up the boulevard. "I've got him!" cried Lemaitre; for here he saw the flesh-and-blood reality ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... will make yourself worse—besides, I shall catch my death of cold. I have scarce a rag on, but I ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... observes, "'Tis now some twenty-five years ago" that FRED DEWAR strutted the first of his five hundred nights or so on the stage as Captain Crosstree, that PATTY OLIVER sang with trilling effect her "Pretty Seeusan," and that DANVERS, as Dame Hatly, danced like a rag-doll in a fantoccini-show. To quote the Poet CRABBE, and to go some way back ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... both masts and ran aground on Gull Marsh. The tide will take her off at the full of the moon. Sambo 's been playing 'possum again. Said he'd cut his foot with his hoe so badly that he couldn't stand upon it. Said I could see that by the blood on the rag that tied it up. I made him take off the rag and wash the foot, and there wa'n't no cut there. The blood was puccoon. If he'd waited a bit he could 'a' had all he wanted to paint with, for I gave him the rope's end, lively, until ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... by themselves to-day, for I wanted to clean the gun ready for winter," said the fisherman, still rubbing at the lock with a piece of oiled rag. ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie
... As the last fluttering rag vanished from sight, our lads, who had watched the latter part of this performance in silent wrath, turned to each other and burst ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... dolls were very fine ladies indeed; they came from Paris, and had trunks full of splendid dresses. The children did not care much for them, and liked better certain decrepit babies of rag and composition, which were thought too shabby to be ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... man's hat was lying on a broken-down bureau. An armchair stuffed with straw and a couple of chairs completed the list of ramshackle furniture. From the tester of the bed, tied to the ceiling by a piece of rag, hung a strip of some cheap material in large red and black checks. No poor drudge in a garret could be worse lodged than Father Goriot in Mme. Vauquer's lodging-house. The mere sight of the room sent a chill through you and a sense of oppression; it was like the worst ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... young man, renowned for the charm of his oratory; smooth-shaven, pink-and-white-cheeked, exquisite in his manners, gracious and insinuating. His ideas and his language and his morals were all as perfectly polished as his finger-nails; and never before in his life had Thyrsis had such a red rag waved in his face. But he had come there for the dinner, and he attended to that, and let Dr. Holland provide the flow of soul; until at the very end, when the doctor was ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... and justified the repetition of Francois. She was indeed very far from being clean; she had scarcely a rag upon her back—and seemed, in every way, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... looking down into an attic, which was also a lumber-room. It had boxes and broken chairs, old fenders and picture-frames, and rag-bags hanging ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... wants me to wear a veil and keep white; but I'd rather be black and speckled all over, than make a mummy of myself. I think fresh air and sunshine were made to be enjoyed, and not to be peeked out at through a rag." ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... example of patriotism has just come to the notice of the Rag and Bones Controller. A copy of The Times (including the Uruguay Supplement of 94 pages), issued four months ago, was purchased, under permit of the R. and B. Controller, by Baron Goldenschein, who read it from the top of col. 1, page 1, to the foot of col. 6, page 108. ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... cry and attended her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. To-morrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... squabbled like rag-pickers! 'You make justice ridiculous,' shouted Fuselier. 'No one has the right to commit such blunders!' Well, they kept going on like that for a quarter of an hour. And then Fuselier rang and two Municipal guards came and he said: 'Arrest that man there!' pointing to Juve. And ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... still young and inexperienced, that is one of her great cheating times. At some seasons of the year, and in some waters, to the fisherman's surprise and confusion, the fish will sometimes take his bare hook; a bit of a red rag is a deadly bait. And Madam Bubble's poorest and most perfunctory busking is quite enough for the foolish fish she angles for. And not in our salad days only, when we are still green in judgment, but even to grey ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... mean," Theron responded. "I'm not particularly surprised myself that Octavius doesn't love us, or look to us for intellectual stimulation. I myself leave that pulpit more often than otherwise feeling like a wet rag—utterly limp and discouraged. But, if you don't mind my speaking of it, YOU don't belong, ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... Jule, he had to be helped out of the boat and led home; for he was, as they said, "limp as a rag;" and it was noticed that after this perilous adventure he was a much more ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... dreadful. Again, in the morning, a great stone, being six-pound weight, did remove from place to place,—we saw it,—two spoons throwed off the table, and presently the table throwed down. And, being minded to write, my inkhorn was hid from me, which I found, covered with a rag, and my pen quite gone. I made a new pen; and, while I was writing, one ear of corn hit me in the face, and fire, sticks, and stones throwed at me, and my pen brought to me. While I was writing with my new pen, my inkhorn taken ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... that, for a moment, I felt as weak as a rag. The vengeful gleam of the light on hostile steel is apt, I think, to give one such a feeling the first time he sees it. The captain stood leaning on the rail, with the glass to his eye, evidently at his wits' end, and in no little trepidation. Very likely at that moment ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... amused at the whole thing; but, alas! my steed was gone. The young scoundrels had stolen him, to revenge themselves on me, I suppose, for disturbing them; and to relieve me from all doubt in the matter they left two bits of rag, one white and the other red, attached to the branch I had fastened the bridle to. For some time I wandered about the wood, and even shouted aloud in the wild hope that the young fiends were not going to carry things so far as to leave me without a horse in that solitary place. Nothing could ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... notice Pat wagged his tail and immediately followed the old woman into her bright kitchen and stretched himself on the gay rag carpet ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... carriage, a great sleigh drawn by bullocks. This is called a bullock-car in English, and a carro in Portuguese. We got into one of them, with a great deal of laughter, and drove to the hotel. The driver walked by the side of the carro, and threw the end of a greasy rag first under one runner and then under the other, to ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... them! They own the political parties, and they name the candidates, and trick you into voting for them—and they call it the law! They herd you into armies and send you to shoot your brothers—and they call it order! They take a piece of coloured rag and call it the flag and teach you to let yourself be shot—and they call it patriotism! First, last, and all the time, you do the work and they get the benefit—they, the masters and owners, ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... starboard bow, the low, reedy levels of Foam Island came into view, and in a few minutes more the dory lay in the shallows, oars, mast, and rag stowed; and the two young people splashed busily about in their hip boots, carrying guns, ammunition, and food ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... of the coming morn were blushing in the east, and the rag-women, with their bags and ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... artistic impulse, the artistic intentions of the composer. As to type music to whose appeal I as an American am susceptible, I confess to a very sympathetic reaction to the syncopated rhythms known as 'rag-time,' and which appear to be especially American in character." For the benefit of those readers who may not chance to know it, Lieutenant Spalding's "Alabama," a Southern melody and dance in plantation style, for violin and piano, ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... as the French say for over there itll come handy to be able to sit down and have a dosy dos with them poilus. (That means chew the rag in English.) A poilus Mable is a French peasant girl an they say that they are very belle. (Now don't mispronounce things an get sore till you know. You pronounce that like the bell in push button. It means good lookers.) There crazy about us fellos. They call ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter
... a consultation going on among them, and, presently, one of the number, evidently a chief or a spokesman, gave his gun to one of his followers, and, holding his hands above his head, while he waved a rag that might have ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... interrogation, but before it is possible he should understand the answer puts another. His desire to be informed torments himself and every man of his acquaintance, which is almost every man he meets; yet, though he lives inquiring, he will die consummately ignorant. His brain is a kind of rag shop, receiving and returning nothing but rubbish. It is as difficult to affront as to get rid of him; and though you fairly bid him begone to-day, he will knock at your door, march into your house, and if possible ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... don't need to go to things like this for happiness. You find it at home if you stop huntin' for it outside. It's like my specs that I go lookin' all over the house for and find up on my forehead where they was all the time. Now, dear, don't make a mistake and go fishing for happiness with a red rag instead of a real live worm, and then think there ain't no fish 'cause they won't bite. You got the right kind of bait in your pretty self, in your nice home, and in that great big husband, who, a person can see as plain as a wart on a ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... is a pneumatic beer-pump, by means of which the bar-tender can flood the bar with beer. Afterwards he wipes up the beer with a rag. By this means he polishes the bar. Some of the beer that is pumped up spills into glasses and ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... all! a big, fine generous-hearted fellow, who doesn't bother to keep accounts to the last penny. I heartily approve of Setebos, and Bettie ought not to rag Him so. She would think it tremendously nice and boyish of me if I were to go impulsively and tell her something ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... was scarcely worth while to try falls with a walking-stick, with legs like pipe-stems and calves like fly-specks. With his brown hairy arms he grasped Uli as if he would pull him apart like an old rag. But Uli held his ground and the milker made no headway. He grew more and more angry, took hold with ever greater venom, spared neither arms nor legs, and butted with his head like an animal, until at last Uli had enough of it, collected all his strength, and gave him such ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... times. It was quite a diversion to the Lady of Shalott to see how many different ways of doing a disagreeable thing seemed to be practicable to that scuttle. Besides the bed on which the Lady of Shalott lay, there was a stove in the palace, two chairs, a very ragged rag-mat, a shelf with two notched cups and plates upon it, one pewter teaspoon, and a looking-glass. On washing-days Sary Jane climbed upon the chair and hung her clothes out through the scuttle on the roof; or else she ran ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... blinds or curtains, and in the streaming sunlight Annie could see that everything was clean and polished to the last flicker of high light. Here and there were bits of colour—crimson and blue in the rag carpet, golden brass candlesticks on the mantel, a red-beaded mat on the table under the lamp, the lamp itself clear glass and filled with red kerosene that happily repeated the tint of the mat. It all pleased Annie, touching some hitherto ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... the last craft in the convoy had succeeded in getting her anchor and making a start; but by noon the whole of the fleet was fairly in the Channel, when the Tremendous made the signal to fill, and away they all went, bowling along to the southward and westward, the dull sailers under every rag they could spread to the wind—now settled into a fine steady royal-breeze from east-south-east, while the smarter craft were compelled to show only such a spread of canvas as would enable the dullards to keep ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... his silence, crushing his cap in his big hands and glowering at the rag-mat under his feet. Two kinds of love, several kinds of devils, pride, anger and despair ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... this morning! You have deceived mother and me; you have let us enjoy our holiday, which I didn't a bit, for I had a sort of nasty presentiment and a heap of uncomfortable thoughts; and all the while you were slaving away at this hideous dressmaking,—I wish I could burn the whole rag, tag, and bobtail,—and never let us know you wanted anything. And ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors, "Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle, Harry the uplands, Steal all the cattle, Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle, Bing. Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM," With a philosophic pause. A roaring, epic, rag-time tune From the mouth of the Congo To the Mountains of the Moon. Death is an Elephant, Shrilly and with a heavily accented metre. Torch-eyed and horrible, Foam-flanked and terrible. BOOM, steal the pygmies, BOOM, kill the Arabs, BOOM, kill the white men, HOO, HOO, HOO. ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... Ypsilante. He wouldn't be so cocksure of himself if he did. She's the kind of woman who throws things about if she's the least irritated. If the Emperor suggests her selling those jewels there'll be a riot. But it's no business of mine. If that Emperor of yours really enjoys a rag with a woman like Madame Ypsilante—I should have thought a man in his position wouldn't care to be mixed up in the sort of scene there ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... go back to-night. How wet you are, though! There's not a dry rag to your body, man. You must first return with me to the fire at the Red Lion, and ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... the old-fashioned rag carpeting and rugs to match. Vases of roses were on the bureau and stand, evidently put there by "Mr. Thomas" as she ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... I feel as though I had just come out of a rag-bag. I can't say that you look much better, ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... I'd come on out and take you back to town. How are you, anyhow? Scared plumb to death, I'll bet, when that fire come over the hill. You needn't 'a' tramped clear down here—we was coming on to the house in a minute. I got to chewin' the rag with Kent. Git in; you might as well ride back to the house, now ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... P. on a charge of attempted suicide. Mrs. M'Bean vehemently repelled the accusation. She explained that she had said her heart was broke only "because she had lost her ould hat, and every thread of a rag on her had been dhrenched and ruinated with the salt water. How could she go for to do such a sin as destroy herself, she urged, and she wid a houseful of little childer waitin' for her at home, ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... it, Martin!" said Cameron impatiently. "Don't rag. She's an awful decent sort. Her looks are not the best ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... gray and shrill. Workers stream from dilapidated gates. A weary person moves quietly in a round tower. A hearse crawls along the street, two steeds out front, Soft as a worm and weak. And over all lies an old rag— The sky... pagan ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... and drawn, her eyes, closed under their dark lids, so deeply sunken, and her teeth so exposed by the thin fleshless lips, that she seemed scarcely human. One bony arm with its clawlike hand encircled the rag doll that she had held that day when Helen took the two ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... newspapers, magazines, old letters, pipes, and tobacco. Odd tools—a hammer, a file, a wrench, and a brad awl—mingled with them. On top of the medley lay a heavy revolver, with the cylinder swung out and empty, a box of cartridges, a dirty rag, and an oil can. In one corner stood half a dozen rifles and shotguns. From a set of antlers on the wall depended a case of binoculars, a lariat, and a pair of muddy boots. The last ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... Wadys from hence to Egypt are of this description. The coloquintida grows in great abundance in all of them, it is used by the Arabs to make tinder, by the following process: after roasting the root in the ashes, they wrap it in a wetted rag of cotton cloth, they then beat it between two stones, by which means the juice of the fruit is expressed and absorbed by the rag, which is dyed by it of a dirty blue; the rag is then dried in the sun, and ignites with the slightest spark of fire. ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... longer; but it was drawing towards sunset, and the evening, though bright, was unusually cool, so we drove home; and on the way, Mr. Story told us of the horrible practices of the modern Romans with their dead,—how they place them in the church, where, at midnight, they are stripped of their last rag of funeral attire, put into the rudest wooden coffins, and thrown into a trench,—a half-mile, for instance, of promiscuous corpses. This is the fate of all, except those whose friends choose to pay an exorbitant ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in shanty-boats, skiff's, fancy little yachts, and jon-boats, rag-shacks on rafts, and serviceable cruisers drift down with the flood, and are a part ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... an hour to boil, and the later kinds rather longer; the water should boil when they are put in; when they are tough and yellow, they may be made tender and green, by putting in a little pearl-ash, or ashes tied up in a rag, just before they are taken up; this will tender all green but do not put too much—when done, dip them out: drain and season them with butter, pepper and salt; put a bunch of parsley in the middle ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... young millionaire's name would be the final red rag and that her escort would roar his opinion of him for the benefit of all Fillmore Street. But he surprised ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... end was in sight, and the enemy realised that further resistance would be useless. They were caught. About half a dozen men sprang on to the railway bank and began furiously to wag white sheets of paper or rag—anything white. They must have been brave men to do such a thing. The British gunners either did not see their signs, or perhaps refused to accept them on account of various "jokes" that the enemy had at other times played with the white flag. Anyway the firing continued with unabated fury. ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... had most opportunely died the very day a real grown up funeral had passed the house. What a funeral that was—with an old shoe box for a coffin, the boy's wagon draped with pieces of black cloth borrowed from the rag bag for a hearse, the shepherd dog for a proudly stepping team, and all the dolls in their carriage following slowly behind! In a corner of the garden, not far from the cherry tree, they dug a real grave and set up a real tombstone, fashioned by the boy, to mark the spot. And the little ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... going to bed at night. A good oil is made by simmering: Sweet oil, one pint; Venice turpentine, three ounces; lard, half a pound; beeswax, three ounces. Simmer till the wax is melted. Rub on, or apply with a rag. ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... woman turn on that "loveliest eyes" gag about an actor I always feel that a swift slap from a wet dish-rag would look well on her ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... were to be bent, and I had my full share in the performance of this duty. I actually furled the mizen-royal with my own hands—the ship carrying standing royals—and it was said to be very respectably done; a little rag-baggish in the bunt, perhaps, but secured in a way that took the next fellow who touched the gasket five minutes to cast the sail loose. Then it rained, and sails were to be loosened to dry. I let everything fall forward with my own hands, and, when we came ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... not the discourses of the elders," though put now in the Apocrypha, is a wise precept, but incomplete unless we add, "Nor cease from recording whatsoever thing thou hast gathered therefrom,"—so ready is Oblivion with her fatal shears. The somewhat greasy heap of a literary rag-and-bone-picker, like Athenaeus, is turned to gold by time. Even the Virgilium vide tantum of Dryden about Milton, and of Pope again about Dryden, is worth having, and gives a pleasant fillip to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... said that you couldn't read and write, I could have told you what would happen. But, don't be cast down, Ned. Little more than three years ago, I couldn't read nor write, and hadn't shoes to my feet, and scarce a rag on my back. I was a poor outcast boy, without father or mother—no shelter for my head, and often no food to eat. I picked up a living as I could, holding horses, running errands, when anybody would trust me. I didn't steal, but I was often and often very near doing so, as I passed the butchers', ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... and chimney pots A rag of sunset crumbles gray; Below, fierce radiance hangs in clots O'er the streams that never stay. Shrill and high, newsboys cry The worst of the city's infamy For one more ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... strokes of his arms he reached the opposite bank, which with great difficulty he crawled up. He, at length, felt that he was safe from his pursuers. Still, the forlorn situation in which he was placed, without even a rag to cover his body, almost overwhelmed him. Yet, fully alive to the danger to which he was exposed, he had began to plan how he could best rest on the top of a tamarind tree, in order to escape from panthers, when the idea of liffas, almost ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... use it. Let all the air out of the tire, then with a flat piece of wood force the gum into the hole—of course the gum must be "chewed" first to make it soft. Plaster some over the hole, then bind the place with a strip of rag on your handkerchief. This done, pump in the air ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... current until it struck an eddy, which carried it in again, when it was finally stranded. No vestige of le Feu-Follet, however, was to be seen. Not even a tent on the shore, a wandering boat, a drifting spar, or a rag of a sail! All had disappeared, no doubt, in the conflagration. As Cuffe went below he walked with a more erect mien than he had done since the affair of the previous morning; and as he opened his writing-desk it was with the manner of one entirely satisfied with ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Pasha and depart also, thinking sadly that if this Turkish people, so brave on the field of battle and apparently still so devoted to its sovereign, and so firm in its religious faith, is truly, in spite of all, a rapidly decaying nation, the miserable rag of paper read out this day ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... circumstance of that atrocious deed, Her own oppress'd and miserable life, The prosperous traitor's insolent demeanor, The perils threat'ning Agamemnon's race From her who had become their stepmother, Then in his hand the ancient dagger thrust, Which often in the house of Tantalus With savage fury rag'd,—and by her son Was ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... their hearts. After being driven to the Kotwali, or chief magistrate's house, in the centre of the Chandni Chauk, on the very spot where our country men and women had suffered death, the three bodies were stripped save a rag around the loins, and laid naked on the stone ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... master misses his shaving-rag, and he says he won't come to the Mogul till he's found it." And then he went on with ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... exactly one month after the tragedy of Cuzco that the way-worn troop marched into the village; and a fearful-looking lot of scarecrows the prisoners were by that time, in truth. They had scarcely a rag to their backs, while their boots and stockings had long since worn away from their feet, and they had to tramp along barefooted. They were lean and gaunt, with scarcely an ounce of flesh on their poor starved bodies; in fact they ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... gnawed bones of the Pleistocene ages,—especially for its bones of hyaenas, tigers, bears, wolves, rhinoceroses, and elephants. The cave occurs in the moorlands of Yorkshire, in a limestone rock of that Oolitic division to which the Oxford Clay and the Coral Rag belong, and contains corals and shells that had passed into extinction long even ere the Tertiary period began; while in the cave itself, mixed with bones of the extinct mammals of the geologic age in immediate advance of ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... have plastered it on thick; they look like living statues. Not a rag on them except 'breech-clouts.' Hello, there comes a troop around that mound to the right. Must ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... next day he did not leave his room, save at meal times; for he wished to be alone and hug his exultation. To the four flat walls he repeated snatches of the things he had done the night before; up and down the rag carpet he smirked and grimaced and laughed and jigged. He sang the songs that had "taken" so well. He went through certain gestures and then deliberately exaggerated them, in a high good-humor. He was as young again ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... dey hab lib under de flag, dey got dere wealth under it, and ebryting beautiful for dere chilen. Under it dey hab grind us up, and put us in dere pocket for money. But de fus' minute dey tink dat ole nag mean freedom for we colored people, dey pull it right down, and run up de rag ob dere own." (Immense applause.) "But we'll neber desert de ole flag, boys, neber; we hab lib under it for eighteen hundred sixty-two years, and we'll die for it now." With which overpowering discharge of chronology-at-long-range, this most effective of stump-speeches ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... always buying, and living large; but that can't last for ever. I saw him first at a muster. I was then just eighteen, and went out with the rest, for the first time. Maybe, 'squire, I didn't take the rag off the bush that day. I belonged to Captain Williams's troop, called the 'Bush-Whackers.' We were all fine-looking fellows, though I say it myself. I was no chicken, I tell you. From that day, Mark Forrester wrote himself down 'man' And well he might, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms |
