"Bobtail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Billy Bobtail" is evidently founded upon "The Bremen Town-Musicians"; and, as it is given here, it is an adaptation of a story heard frequently during the writer's childhood. It will readily be seen that "Kid Would Not Go" is only another form of "The Old Woman and Her Pig," ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie
... Harold, "and so does my mother. I don't believe in being friends with the ragtag and bobtail ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... can find no authority for the old frontiersman's use of the word but in a certain Elizabethan dramatist; and as he uses the word "scut" for the bobtail of a fleeing rabbit or sheep, perhaps the meanings of the word ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... 's the use o' meetin-goin' Every Sabbath, wet or dry, Ef it 's right to go amowin' Feller-men like oats an' rye? I dunno but wut it's pooty Trainin' round in bobtail coats,— But it 's curus Christian dooty This ere ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... and blue, Who are brought to my house as an inn, to my cost— For the bill here, it seems, is defrayed by the host— No pleasure! no leisure! no thought for my pains, 20 But to hear a vile jargon which addles my brains; A smatter and chatter, gleaned out of reviews, By the rag, tag, and bobtail, of those they call "Blues;" A rabble who know not——But soft, here they come! Would to God I were deaf! as I'm not, I'll ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... in your in'ards and a heart in your chest. When you've slept under a wagon to Salt Lake and l'arned to sling a bull whip and relish your beans burned, you can look anybody in the eye and tell him to go to hell, if you like. This roarin' town life—it's no life for you. It's a bobtail, wide open in the middle. I'll be only too glad to get away on the long trail myself. So you come with me," and he smiled winningly. "I hate to see you ruined by women and likker. Mule-skinnin' ain't all beer ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... sure Solly would be tickled to death with these hands, after the bobtail flushes he'd been eating on the ranch; and I was a little anxious that he should, for I didn't remember his having honoured my efforts with a smile since we left ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... who always sallied forth from Marlborough on that day; and as the manor was not large the ground was generally pretty thickly occupied before sun rise on the first of October; for it will be recollected that, on these gala days, "tag, rag, and bobtail," all had leave, whether they were qualified or not, and all who professed to be sportsmen hurried there, whether they had certificates ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... you better leave that kind of talk to your funny man? Can't you tell whether a man's guying you or whether you're being offered the biggest scoop your dull dishrag of a paper ever had? . . . Well, that's so; it's a bobtail scoop—but you can hardly expect me to 'phone in my name and address . . . Why? Oh, because I heard you make a specialty of solving mysterious crimes that stump the police. . . No, that's not all. I want to tell you that your rotten, lying, penny sheet is of no more use in tracking an intelligent ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... he; "not till it got about that there was no protection on the premises, and it come to be considered dangerous, with convicts and Tag and Rag and Bobtail going up and down. And then I was recommended to the place as a man who could give another man as good as he brought, and I took it. It's easier than bellowsing and hammering.—That's ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... these mills were located about Mountain City and Blackhawk and in Nevada and Russell's gulches. The rest of them were scattered in other small gulches or mountain valleys in the vicinity. The richest mines being worked were the Bobtail, Gregory, and others, in Gregory gulch between Mountain City and Blackhawk. The other principal gold diggings were some seventy miles further south, near the present site of Leadville. These I did not then visit. Nearly all of these mills had ...
— A Gold Hunter's Experience • Chalkley J. Hambleton
... a standing warning against spoiling one's patients. I wouldn't have them and their whole tag-rag and bobtail about my ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in these robes of my high office I am a high priest of the law; just as you, my dear girl, are one of its many devoted and worthy priestesses. Can you imagine me going to court in a bowler hat or arguing to the jury in a cutaway coat or bobtail business suit? Can you picture Ephraim Tutt with his hair cut short or in an Ascot tie, any more than you can envisage him in riding breeches or wearing lilacs? No! There is but one Mr. Tutt, and these are his only garments. ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... an' boxes, and the like—Mis' Grace should hire a nelephant at this time of the year, an' so I tell her. An' what with these here foreigners too—bad 'cess to them! I have to chase ev'ry rag tag and bobtail on the ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... and substractors that say so of me. Mrs. Turner, you—you make me blush. Ray, come hither and bear me consolation. Friend of my youth, Merrill calls me Jenkins; Mrs. Turner calls me bad as you; and you—called me with a pair of kings when mine was a bobtail. ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... said the sparrow. 'Well, my name is Brownie. Captain Bobtail's Brownie, they call me, because Brownie is such a common name in our family. It's pleasant out-of-doors, isn't it? Oh, never mind the fuss over there!'—for Tufty's attention was constantly diverted to the scene of the quarrel—'they are ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... so it be lost with honour; but think, ye brawling canaille, how will it be when a whole Bastille springs skyward!—In such statuesque, taper-holding attitude, one fancies de Launay might have left Thuriot, the red Clerks of the Bazoche, Cure of Saint-Stephen and all the tagrag-and-bobtail of the world, to ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... have been with us on Easter Monday, when we passed the day at Greenwich, and were at the renowned Greenwich Fair, which lasts for three days. The scene of revelry takes place in the Park, a royal one, and really a noble one. Here all the riff-raff and bobtail of London repair in their finery, and have a time. You can form no notion of the affair; it cannot be described. The upper part of the Park, towards the Royal Observatory, is very steep, and down this boys and girls, men and women, have a roll. Such scenes as are here to be witnessed ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... to lay down a bobtail straight flush when there's such a chance for action if he fills," chimed ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... them again!), hats were made into boots, gowns into doublets, cloaks into hose, Sunday bonnets despoiled of their plumage, silken cauliflowers sown broadcast over the land, and cocked-up caps erected in every style of architecture, while "Tag, Rag, and Bobtail" drove a smashing business, and everybody knew what everybody else was going to be, and solemnly vowed they didn't—which transparent falsehood was the ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... chaff, rout, horde, canaille; scum of the people, residuum of the people, dregs of the people, dregs of society; swinish multitude, foex populi^; trash; profanum vulgus [Lat.], ignobile vulgus [Lat.]; vermin, riffraff, ragtag and bobtail; small fry. commoner, one of the people, democrat, plebeian, republican, proletary^, proletaire^, roturier^, Mr. Snooks, bourgeois, epicier [Fr.], Philistine, cockney; grisette^, demimonde. peasant, countryman, boor, carle^, churl; villain, villein; terrae filius [Lat.], son of the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... he who held the first place got them all with the exception of the queen—that is the boy who held the second place! who got two; and the prince, the third who got one. The last boy in the class was called Bobtail. ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... fight between two parties of valiant warriors, who easily knew each other apart by the peculiar fashion of their armor. For the Spaniards fought in their shirts, and in no other garments: but the English in all other manner of garments, tag, rag, and bobtail; and yet had never ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... to a stage when it is difficult for a child to hold the thread of a narrative, and at this stage, along with simple stories of little ones like themselves, repetition or "accumulation" stories seem to give most pleasure. "Henny Penny" and "Billy Bobtail"—told by Jacobs as "How Jack went to seek his Fortune"—are prime favourites. Repetition of rhythmic phrases has a great attraction, as in "Three Little Pigs," with its delightful repetition of "Little pig, ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... with the rest, as he dabbed at his heated, powder-stained countenance. "Come," said he, "that's no fair,—they're as white as I am, then, when I've just scrubbed; and some of them are first-raters, too; none of your rag, tag, and bobtail. There's one I remember, a man from Philadelphia, who walks round like a prince. He's a gentleman, every inch,—and he's rich,—and about the handsomest-looking specimen of humanity I've set eyes ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... with the loyalists I hold the same place as when you left town, with the tagrag and bobtail of the city I hold a much better one than at your departure. For it does me no harm that my evidence appears not to have availed. Envy has been let blood without causing pain, and even more so from the fact that all the supporters of ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... handling them as did their rightful commander. He set out his men on some thin pieces of board, which could be moved forward up the room, it having been agreed that he should be allowed to stand and deliver his fire from the spot reached by his advancing line of battle. Each group of these tag-rag-and-bobtail metal warriors was dignified by the name of some famous regiment. Here was the "Black Watch," and there the "Coldstream Guards;" while this assembly of six French Zouaves, a couple of red-coats, a bugler, and a headless mounted ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... Every Sabbath, wet or dry, 50 Ef it's right to go amowin' Feller-men like oats an' rye? I dunno but wut it's pooty Trainin' round in bobtail coats,— But it's curus Christian dooty This 'ere ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... poet, nor poker a great pleader. And yet I have seen poets who relied on the potency of their breath, and lawyers who knew more of the habits of a bobtail flush than they ever did of the statutes in such case made ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... temperament, and many of them make better cattle than sheep dogs. This dog and the Old English Sheepdog are much alike in appearance, but that the bearded is a more racy animal, with a head resembling that of the Dandie Dinmont rather than the square head of the Bobtail. The strong-limbed bearded Collie is capable of getting through a good day's work, but is not so steady nor so wise as the old-fashioned black and white, or even the smooth coated variety. He is a favourite with the butcher and drover who have sometimes a herd ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... was silent. She was thinking, "My daughter won't answer me; she would rather be with those inquisitive old maids than with Freddy and me. Any rag, tag, and bobtail apparently does if she can leave her home." And as in her case thoughts never remained unspoken long, she burst out with: ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... "how could you be so foolish? What made you encourage all these people in the absurdity of wishing to attend that Easter ball?—a mob of tag, rag, and bobtail, tradespeople and people from Heaven knows where: very good fun, no doubt, for the officers from Rockcliffe, Jim, or any other young men, but no place for ladies and their ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... made the right men bishops," said Monseigneur. "But so long as they think at Westminster that we're going to convert England with a tagrag and bobtail mob of Irish priests, we never shall make the right men. You were looking round my church just now. Didn't it remind you of an ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... woman, or one that plays with her tail; also an impotent man, or an eunuch. Tag, rag, and bobtail; a mob of all sorts of low people. To shift one's bob; to move off, or go away. To bear a bob; to join in chorus with any singers. Also a term used by the sellers of game, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al. |
