"Fag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... at the end of a hard-fought game of football. In fact, he hardly knew what physical fatigue was; and only once, when he was suffering from a chill, and had to sit for his senior scholarship examination, do I recollect his exhibiting any sign of mental fag. He found rest in change of employment. Athletic exercises were a natural antidote to his strenuous intellectual work; and music lifted him into the region of pure emotion and soothed his soul with the concord of ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... 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
... Lisle said; "it has been very pleasant to be regarded as a boy, and therefore to act as a sort of general fag to you. I hope you will continue to regard me as so. I have always considered it a privilege to be able to make myself useful to you, and I should be ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... aching clearness of 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
... Fag, v. [fag] Desfallecer desmayarse de cansancio; trabajar demasiado por otro. Mapat, mapagal; mapat ...
— Dictionary English-Spanish-Tagalog • Sofronio G. Calderon
... Fag today. Send her a postal order two shillings, half a crown. Accept my little present. Stationer's just here too. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... miles, a furlong, and few odd yards from that oft-recorded good town, a dry stone wall, some thirty inches in height, runs from the lofty and perpendicular sea-banks, over a portion of what may be termed the fag-end of Lammermoor, and now forming a separation between the laws of Scotland and the jurisdiction of the said good town; and on crossing to the northern side of this humble but important stone wall, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... perhaps, a man whose heart was weighted by a great woe. You have seen the eye darken, the soul fag, and the spirit congeal under the breath of an icy disaster. At ten-thirty of this particular evening Cowperwood, sitting alone in the library of his Michigan Avenue house, was brought face to face with the fact that he had lost. He had built so much on the cast of this single die. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... 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 shall omit ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... chairs from the people below, 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 ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... Massachusetts. To us there was something hideous in the aspect of their mountains; but this may have been partly owing to our own hideous habitation, and low spirits. The same objects may have appeared charming in the eyes of a Scotch family, just arrived from the fag-end of the Island of ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... 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 ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... parishioners goes, he declares he will lose no chance. He says he knows some gipsies on the common who have got scarlet-fever in their tent; and he is going to give them half-a-crown if they can bring it into the village, to be paid upon the breaking out of the first undoubted case. This will fag the Union doctor to death, who is my chief opponent, and I shall come in for some of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... attributes of modesty and assurance. From an early age he will have been noted for the qualities which in after-life render him humbly celebrated in subordinate positions. At school he will have had the good fortune to be attached as fag to a big boy who occupied an important place as an athlete, and whose condescending smiles were naturally an object of greater ambition to the small fry than the approval of the school authorities. For him he performed with much assiduity the various duties of a fag, happy to shine amongst ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... air-passages, and equally futile to attempt to arrest its course by treatment directed to the lung, or even the chest. The best place to wear a chest-protector is on the soles of the feet, and poulticing the chest for pneumonia is about as effective as shampooing the scalp for brain-fag. ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... at this time that Lord William came to stay with us. He was introduced to me as a schoolfellow of my father's; at Eton he had been Sir John's fag, and indeed was his junior by only a few years. For some reason, unexplained to me, it was said he had been obliged to leave England, and my father offered him the suite of rooms left vacant by my grandfather. Lord William ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... after Lonegan left he plunged into his work, but there was no sleep for him afterward. He lay very still, breathing easily, as the fag-end of the night crawled by. At dawn he arose, dressed noiselessly, and went out into ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... there is another boat out there somewhere, and she must be prevented from coming alongside at all costs. Light another port-fire forward, there!" as the man in the fore-rigging dropped the fag-end of the first into the water alongside and the blackness of darkness once more enshrouded us ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... he had touched bottom, as he thought: become ready to face anything. When Keith came in he would without murmur have accepted the advice: "Give yourself up!" He was prepared to pitch away the end of his life as he pitched from him the fag-ends of his cigarettes. And the long sigh he had heaved, hearing of reprieve, had been only half relief. Then, with incredible swiftness there had rushed through him a feeling of unutterable joy and hope. Clean away—into ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... roughest-looking men she had ever encountered, Mrs. Hastings began to fear that in his zeal to obey instructions, the agent had exceeded them, and in packing the first three coaches with first-comers, had left this one to catch up the fag end of travel. If the first impression, gained from sight, had made her shrink a little, what was her dismay when, at the end of ten minutes, one of her fellow-travelers—the only American of the three—produced a bottle of ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... on that 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 ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... sat among 'em all at my old 33 years desk yester morning; and deuce take me if I had not yearnings at leaving all my old pen and ink fellows, merry sociable lads, at leaving them in the Lurch, fag, fag, fag. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... In his private conscience he says, "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 sets aside his fag-end of a husky-voiced ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... all fledglings get—the kind that big lawyers do not want, and so they pass it over to the boys. Doctors are always turning pauper patients over to the youngsters, and so in successful law-offices there is more or less of this semi-charitable work to do. Business houses also have fag-end work that they give to beginners, as kind folks give bones to Fido. Wendell Phillips' law-work was exactly of this contingent kind—big business and big fees only go ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... you leave the study for the field, the Switcher instantly declares his superiority. He had the happiness to practise his craft in its heyday, while Simms knew but the fag-end of a noble tradition. Haggart, moreover, was an expert, pursuing a difficult art, while Simms was a bully, plundering his betters by bluff. Simms boasted no quality which might be set off against the accurate delicacy of Haggart's hand. The Englishman ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... into the woods behind him and making his way cautiously out, found a road, doubling to the other side of the garage along which he went on his hands and knees and crawling from shrub to shrub in the shadows reached the portico without detection. Here he lighted a fag and quietly strolled down to the spot where he had left Shad Wells, to whom he offered a cigarette by way of consolation. Wells took it grudgingly. But he took it, which was ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... 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 ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... face blanched with fear, and his terror was so manifest that the bully, who was threatening him with all manner of evils, began to enjoy himself. Chalkeye, returning from watering the horses, got back in time to hear the intemperate fag-end of the scolding. He glanced at Hughie, whose hands were trembling in spite of him, and then darkly at the brute who was attacking him. But he said ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... as white as flax, which the crew told us was from constant use of holystones. There was no foolish gilding and gingerbread work, to take the eye of landsmen and passengers, but everything was "ship-shape.'' There was no rust, no dirt, no rigging hanging slack, no fag-ends of ropes and "Irish pendants'' aloft, and the yards were squared "to a t'' by lifts and braces. The mate was a hearty fellow, with a roaring voice, and always wide awake. He was "a man, every inch of him,'' as the sailors said; and though "a bit of a horse,'' ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... 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, ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... 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 ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... manufacturing of engines, iron puddling, rolling, etc.; a delegate to a national convention, thoughts of the death of a near relative; add to this a security debt to meet during a money panic. By this time the mind begins to fag ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... have been handsome enough in the Spaniard's Reign, or in King Charles the Second's; but I have heard that its most comely parts had been swallowed up by an Earthquake, and, when I remember it, the Main thoroughfare was like nothing half so much as the Fag End of Kent Street in the Borough, where the Broom-men live. As for public scavengers—humane at least—there were none; for that salutary practice of putting rebellious Blacks into chain-gangs, and making ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... that before," said my friend, "and I understand. The simple truth of the matter is that this is the fag-end of the season, and you have run low in your subjects. Now take my advice and don't write about spring; it will make everybody hate you, and will do no good. Write about advertising." He tapped the book under his arm significantly. "Here is a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Evandale (I suppose because he is a lord, and has interest with the privy-council) a request which he refused to so old a servant of the king as I am. But so long as the poor young fellow's life is saved, I can comfort myself with the fag-end of a ditty as old as myself." And therewithal, he ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 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, ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... this page chance to fall under your eye, for my sake read, fag, subdue, and take up into your proper mind this chapter 10 ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... daughter feels, "It isn't to please myself that I slave at my lessons; mother would be vexed if I didn't; and it's very hard that I should be both hindered in them and made to do other things as well,—it's quite bad enough in term-time to have to fag at lessons." But just consider, for a moment, this "fagging at lessons:" you feel that in so doing you are making a concession to your mother, for which she ought to show unbounded gratitude by all manner of sweetmeats in the holidays. But who profits ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... 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 worst part of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 that ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... coming to look forward to that last hour of the school week, very often to schoolgirls a wasted hour at the fag end ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... the difficult business of walking, and with long hours spent in the open in the lively companionship of his brothers he grew up in vigorous and healthy boyhood. He had an enquiring mind, and never seemed to look upon lessons as a "fag." He was always "wanting to know," and there was almost as much eagerness on the little chap's part to be able to decline mensa and conjugate amo as he evinced in competing with his brothers in their sports and games. Such was his gentle, placid nature that the tutor who ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... have cost tim. In short, Ned was never out of a speculation, and whatever he undertook was sure to prove a complete failure. But he had one mode of consolation, which consisted in sitting down with the fag-end of Nancy's capital in his pocket, and drinking night and day with this neighbor and that, whilst a shilling remained; and when he found himself at the end of his tether, he was sure to fasten a quarrel on some friend ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... this Angel was a wag, A novice-friar and a convent fag; Like him the others round had parts to act, And were disguised in dresses quite exact. Our penitent most humbly pardon sought; Said he, if e'er to life again I'm brought, No jealousy, suspicion's hateful bane, Shall ever enter my ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... simplicity she determined to follow the course recommended by the Head. Though by the time she had corrected some seventy manuscripts in marble-backed covers, and prepared her lesson for the next day, she had nothing but the fag-end of her brain to give to the healers and regenerators; as for rising, Miss Quincey felt much more like going to bed, and it was as much as she could do to drag her poor little body there. Still Miss Quincey was nothing if not heroic; night after night twelve o'clock would ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... matter Hawthorne certainly 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
... other Americans in the hotel. She imagined they slighted her, or disapproved of her, or watched her course with misgiving. With a family of good, simple people, who apparently had nothing to strive for with the restlessness which characterized the social fag-ends whom she was now in the habit of meeting, she would have been glad to establish relations; but she never got beyond an occasional bow or smile, generally over some incident connected with the children. ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... suppose it was deeply laden with 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 worldly-wise than those youngsters ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... which did not appear in the bills, under a system of cricket, foot-ball, and paper-chases, from four to five days a week, which provided for three lawful cuts of a ground-ash if any boy absented himself from these entertainments. He became a rumple-collared, dusty-hatted fag of the Lower Third, and a light half-back at Little Side foot-ball; was pushed and prodded through the slack backwaters of the Lower Fourth, where the raffle of a school generally accumulates; won his "second-fifteen" cap at foot-ball, ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... called The Moral Philosopher lately published. Is it looked into? I should hope not, merely for the sake of the taste, the sense, and learning of the present age.... I hope nobody will be so indiscreet as to take notice publicly of the book, though it be only in the fag end of an objection.—It is that indiscreet conduct in our defenders of religion that conveys so many worthless books from hand to hand.'—Letter to Mr. Birch in 1737. In Nichols' Literary Illustrations of the Eighteenth Century, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Slavonic tepl, topl (for tep or top), in modern Persian tab. Thymele refers to the hearth as the place of smoke ([Greek], thus, fumus), but familia denotes household from famulus for fagmulus, the root fag being equated with the Sansk. bhaj, servira. Lucan's Hesus or Esus may fairly be compared with the Welsh Hu Gadarn by legitimate process, but no letter-change can justify his connection with Gaisos, the spear, not the ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... faciligi. Facility facileco. Facsimile faksimilo. Fact fakto. Fact, in (adv.) ja. Faction sekto. Factious malpaca. Factor (agent) faktoro. Factory fabrikejo. Faculty fakultato. Faculty kapablo. Fade velki. Fading velkanto. Fag laboregi. Fagot brancxaro. Fail manki. Fail malprosperi. Fail (bankruptcy) bankroti. Failure malprospero. Failing (fault) kulpo. Faint sveni. Faint (swoon) sveno. Faint hearted timema. Fair (market) foiro. Fair (complexion) blonda. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... school is divided into six forms, of which the sixth ranks the highest. This, and the fifth form, comprise about half the number of boys, for whom the lower half fag. An upper boy may fag a lower one to Windsor, ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... for some further account of you, dearest: sir, and how you bear the mixture of business and company, of "fag and frolic," as ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... mace, or mack; Or moskeneer, or flash the drag; Dead-lurk a crib, or do a crack; Pad with a slang, or chuck a fag; Bonnet, or tout, or mump and gag; Rattle the tats, or mark the spot; You can not bag a single stag; Booze and ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... 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 what ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... couldn't very well imagine it, although I tried. But I was extremely noisy, and I heard two or three of the bridesmaids, to say nothing of the maid of honor and the bridegroom's mamma, tapping their gentle hammers, at my expense, at the breakfast. It was a year afterward that I began to fag regularly for the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... are after all small matters. It is the real hardships of the game that most need to be tackled. Why should one player be born into the sport with a prescriptive right to fill some easy place in the field, while another has to fag on from morning to night in the most uninteresting and fatiguing position? Why should pate de foie gras and champagne-cup in the tent be so unequally distributed? Why should those who have made fewest runs and done no fielding be ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... and see all my philosophy refuted, all my prim little opinions lying prone like dolls with the sawdust knocked out of them. All these years I have been judging Judith with an ignorance as cruel as it has been complacent. Verily I have been the fag end of wisdom. So I forbear ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... my boy to be a man, And yet, in distant years, I pray that he'll have eyes that can Not quite keep back the tears When, coming from some foreign shore And alien scenes that fag, Borne on its native breeze, once more He sees ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... want to do is to bring me down off my moral high horse. And I loathe the high horse. I am in a position of special moral superiority to men who are on the whole as good men as I am or better. That shows all the time. You see the sort of man I am. I've a broad streak of personal vanity. I fag easily. I'm short-tempered. I've other things, as you perceive. When I fag I become obtuse, I repeat and bore, I get viciously ill-tempered, I suffer from an intolerable sense of ill usage. Then that ass, Wagstaffe, who ought to be working with me steadily, sees his chance to be pleasantly witty. ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... and brilliant expression to the feelings of his hearers and the doctrines of his party, had less originating power, whether of intellect or of will, than any other man of equal eminence that ever lived. He adhered to the fag end of the old party, until it was absorbed, unavoidably, with scarcely an effort of its own, in Adams and Clay. From 1815 to 1825 he was in opposition, and in opposition to old Federalism revived; and, consequently, we believe ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... out of the darkness, about fifty yards away, the cry rose again, but short and sudden, like a bit of the fag end of the shriek which had roused them from ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... understanding that an attempt is being made by some of the big boys to introduce a system of fagging into the school, bind ourselves to resist such a proceeding by every means in our power, and under no consideration to obey any boy who may order any of us to fag ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... earnestly hope you are by yourself now, and relieved from the fag of entertaining guests. You do not complain, but I am afraid you have ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... the 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 ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... 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. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... with disgust because it had not occurred to him before. There was now opened to him a new scope of inquiry, an altogether different matter of evidence. But the idea was by far too important to be brought in and explained at the fag-end of a chapter. ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... "Everything gets on in this world with a little energy and bustle—and everybody as well as everything. My old cronies, fellows not half so clever as I am, are all doing well. There's Tom Stevens, my very fag at Eton—snivelling little dog he was too!—just made under-secretary of state. Pearson, whose longs and shorts I always wrote, is now head-master to the human longs and shorts of a public school—editing ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... passed Ringgold, where they began to fag. They were out of wood, water, and oil. Their rapid running and inattention to the engine had melted all the brass from the journals. They had no time to repair or refit, for an iron-horse of more ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... 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, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... nursing-chair near the fire, by the 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 round ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... Kinlochaline to Kingairloch, where he stays the night with the good catechist; that is where I am; next day he is to be put ashore in Appin, and be present at Colin Campbell's death. To-day I rest, being a little run down. Strange how liable we are to brain fag in this scooty family! But as far as I have got, all but the last chapter, I think David is on his feet, and (to my mind) a far better story and far sounder at ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I have ever heard since from the commander of a grand army; and then, scraping a match—my match—upon the wall, he would begin attending to his 'military duties' by lighting a cigar—my cigar—and strolling up the avenue, on exhibition, preparatory to going home to dine, while the fag remained driving the pen madly, kindly assisted sometimes by Quartermaster-Sergeant Oates, until long after the dinner hour of the non-commissioned staff. I think the company commanders must sometimes have doubted (unless they carefully refrained ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... on not being able to roll a cigarette. If he were forced, at the point of the bayonet, to roll a fag, it would ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... my packet to the last shred and crumb, and I found a couple of fag ends in my pocket. We smoked silently. Mick's manner gradually affected me. We became somehow mentally detached from the place in which we sat. We were in a corner of the room, at the end of the longest table, and so incurious about the rest of the company that neither of us knew ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... 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 ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... the men thought, though most of our fellows are teetotallers. We get rum now, few (p. 035) drink it; we are sated with cigarettes, and smoke them as if in duty bound; the stolen delight of the last "fag-end" is a dream of the past. Parades are endless, we have never worked so hard since we joined the army; the minor offences of the cathedral city are full-grown crimes under long artillery range; a dirty rifle was only a matter for words of censure a month ago, a ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... Parliament. He had previously been sent to prison for inciting to the Plan of Campaign, and for criminal conspiracy. He had also taken a leading part in the cattle-driving agitation (to which I shall refer later) and had announced that his policy was "to enable the Board to get land at fag-end prices." He was therefore appointed by Mr. Birrell to be a member of the Board, as being a suitable person to decide what compensation should be paid for land taken compulsorily. He publicly stated that his object was to carry out ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... celebrated the coronation at Dizful, in bed. And by the time he had slept off his fag, Bala Bala and the Father of Swords and the green chest and the ingenious Magin looked to him more than ever like figures of myth. He was too little of the timber out of which journalists, romancers, or diplomats ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... by, Mervin leant out of the window to read their names, but was never successful. Cigarettes were smoked, the carriage was full of tobacco fumes and the floor littered with "fag-ends." Rifles were lying on the racks, four in each side, and caps, papers and equipment piled on top of them. The Jersey youth ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... is a thoroughly developed man. Goethe, with all his boundless knowledge, his universal curiosity, and his admirable capacity for work, was not a "dig." But this matter can only be hinted at: it is too large to be well discussed at the fag end of an essay while other points are pressing ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... to be Berry's fag, and, though beaten by him daily, he allowed, of course, no one else to lay a hand upon me, and I got no more thrashing than was good for me. Thus an intimacy grew up between us, and after he left Slaughter ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I'm indisposed—ain't 'ad a long enough rest yet. An', 'ere, lets 'ave a fag. Wot with that there news and my ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... the mountains; he neglected both rules. He was inclined to despise rest. He used to say: "When I want a thing to be done quickly, I always go to a busy man: the unoccupied man never has any time." He, himself, did not know how to be idle; yet he was painfully conscious of overwork and brain-fag. He told his friend Castelli that he was tormented by sleeplessness, but still more by certain ideas which assailed him at night, and which he could not get rid of. He got up and walked about the room, but all was useless; ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... followed, until the fag end of the lot was reached, consisting of a number of greenhorns who had never been to sea previously; and these, on declaring their willingness to serve Her Gracious Majesty, were sent down into the ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... intention," observed Caddy, "but it hasn't the effect he means, poor fellow!" Caddy then went on to reason, how could he be expected to be a scholar when he had passed his whole life in the dancing-school and had done nothing but teach and fag, fag and teach, morning, noon, and night! And what did it matter? She could write letters enough for both, as she knew to her cost, and it was far better for him to be amiable than learned. "Besides, it's not as if I was an accomplished girl who had any right to give herself airs," ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... event, though it might be surprising to many people, would not be incredible, nor without many parallel cases. He was poor, a miserable fag, under the control of that mean wretch up there at the school, who looked as if he had sour buttermilk in his veins instead of blood. He was in love with a girl above his station, rich, and of old family, but strange in all her ways, and it was conceivable that he should become suddenly ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... ascended the stairs very slowly, for he felt the necessity of regaining all his composure, and it was not until he had brought himself to a proper frame of mind that he rang the bell. A small servant, M. Wilkie's fag, who took his revenge in robbing his employer most outrageously, came to the door, and began by declaring that his master was out of town. But M. Fortunat understood how to force doors open, and his manoeuvres succeeded ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... wuz 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)
... suddenly round towards the church, and at the point of the turn is a pretty low iron railing with a gate, and with a covered way, which leads up to the front door of the house which stands there, I will only say here, at this fag end of a chapter, that it is the Small House at Allington. Allington Street, as I have said, turns short round towards the church at this point, and there ends at a white gate, leading into the churchyard by ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... death; cock-fighting and bull-baiting have ceased to charm: politics alone remains to gratify the pugnacity and cruelty that civilisation has robbed of their due objects. How we brighten up again at a bye-election, when duels which passed unregarded in the big battle, when towns scarcely noted at the fag-end of the great campaign, become the cynosure of every eye. Through Slocum or Eatonswill the hub of the universe temporarily passes: to its population of four thousand, mostly fools, are entrusted the destinies of the Empire; it is theirs to ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... unconsciously, as a turkey-cock does when he intends to make himself very agreeable. He was walking rather fancifully up and down the room, partly singing, partly whistling 'The Bay of Biscay O,' and at the long-lived, but most nonsensical chorus, he shook the fag-ends of his divided coat tail, as if in derision of that fatal 'short sea,' so well known and despised in that salt-water burial-place. I was pretending to read a paper, when a carrier entered, and placed a play-bill before ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... as fag and afterwards as House-prefect, finally as School-prefect, did exactly what he ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... that state of life wherein it has pleased a merciful providence to place him; and St. Peter would never be so churlish as to close the golden gates in the face of an ancient canon who sauntered to them jauntily, with the fag end of a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Let us cultivate our cabbages in the best of all possible worlds; and afterwards—Dieu pardonnera; c'est ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... madly at them yelling "Fag!" When somehow something gives and your feet drag. You fall and strike your head; yet feel no pain And find ... you're digging tunnels through the hay In the Big Barn, 'cause it's a rainy day. Oh, springy hay, and lovely beams to climb! You're back in the old sailor ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... 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 qualities which ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 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 that door of ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... fags of an establishment like this, kept merely to do what the upper-servants are too fine to do. In households like the one before us, you must have two in every department—there is a chance, then, if you want any thing done, you may get it done. The under-servant is always, as I said, a sort of fag or slave in the eyes of the upper ones. They will allow her to make herself useful, though it should not be exactly her place. Mrs. Melwyn had provided for the attendance upon Miss Arnold by having recourse to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... 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 way, pounds ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... 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 god will leave us. Work rather for those interests which the divinities honor and promote,—justice, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and rudiment— And he, the fag-end of creation, Meaningless sculpture of journeymen, Doomed to the curse of extinction. Curious, also, that I, An islander from far-off Britain Should meet them, Or, the rude scrolls of them. Both together in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... was out of reach, in the second, the young ladies were present, in the third he was a little boy, and a stupid one, and Fred had temper enough left to see that there would be nothing gained by quarrelling with him, so contenting himself with a secret but most ardent wish that he had him as his fag at school, he turned to Jessie, and asked her what she thought of the weather, if the white frost ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the nightingales. She wrote briefly to her father, giving him, as he had requested, an account of things; and he wrote back that since she was so contented—she didn't recognise having told him that—she had better not return to town at all. The fag-end of the London season would be unimportant to her, and he was getting on very well. He mentioned that Godfrey had passed his tests, but, as she knew, there would be a tiresome wait before news of results. The poor chap was going abroad for a month with young Sherard—he ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... Gipsy will make four harvests in one year; first he goes 'up the country,' as he calls going into Middlesex, for 'peas-hacking.' That over, he goes into Sussex (Chichester—'wheat-fagging' or tying), and on that being done, returns toward Hampshire—North Hants—to 'fag' or tie, and that being done he enters Surrey for hop-picking (previously securing a 'bin' in one of the gardens). Some idea of his gross earnings may be obtained from the following fact:—Two able-bodied men, an old woman of about 75 years of age, and two women, earned on a farm in one ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... engagements to come." Betty's eyes sparkled and she lifted her head with a motion peculiar to her when reminded that she was the favoured of the gods. "I suppose there is a good deal of fag about this sort of life to you, but it has all the charm of ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... own hands at the work which is sometimes described as menial work; and it is contrary to the fundamental principle of the Mission that anyone should connect with the idea of white man the right to fag a ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of a week, young Blackball had constituted little Rawdon his fag, shoe-black, and breakfast toaster; initiated him into the mysteries of the Latin Grammar; and thrashed him three or four times, but not severely. The little chap's good-natured honest face won his way for him. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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
... things showed a new meaning. I looked with rather changed sentiments, for example, upon the noisome pigsties—for were they not a survival of a venerable thrift? I viewed the old tools—hoes and spades and scythes and fag-hooks—with quickened interest; and I speculated with more intelligence upon those aged people of the parish whose curious habits were described to me with so much respect. But of all the details that now gained significance, most to be noted were the hints of the comparative prosperity of that ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... shipmates, that a song without a chorus is no better than it should be. It's wus nor nothin'. It puts them wot listens in the blues an' the man wot sings into the stews—an' sarve him right. I wouldn't, no, I wouldn't give the fag-end o' nothin' mixed in bucket o' salt water for a song without a ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... absurd, from the spurious waterfall pinned to the back of their heads down to the train that sweeps the muddy pavement. Their hair is infested with beads, bits of lace and of ribbons, or mock jewelry. A bonnet is an epitome of fag-ends. The poor crazy creatures in the asylum, who pick up any rag, or wisp of straw, or scrap of tin, they may find, and wear it proudly upon their frocks, are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... characteristic feature of Jesuit schools is the habit of telling off some boy to act as companion and cicerone to a newcomer for his first week or fortnight; and the ridiculous English fashion which prescribes that the smallest fag should be described as a "man" is unknown. Christian names, not surnames, are used generally. The unpopularity of boarding schools in Ireland is due to the great value set upon home life; and an Irish boarding school is far less distinct from home ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... 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 here. ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... to write at once and warn a younger brother who had fallen into the habit. By great effort he got himself rapidly under control. His nervous twitchings disappeared, his vitality improved, the brain-fag gradually ceased; and when he left, eighteen months later, he was fairly normal. His improvement continued afterwards, and he is now a successful man of business ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... known by his gray cloth puttees with white stripes, commandeered from a pair of civilian trousers that was hanging goodness knows where at the beginning of the war. As for Marthereau's puttees, they are not both of the same hue, for he failed to find two fag-ends of greatcoat equally worn and equally dirty, to be ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... mittens, as also in her French girl with, by the way, a beautiful gown of rich yellow silk Frenchily trimmed in vermilion or orange, I couldn't make out which. The amusing French girl, who having picked up many fag-ends of English from her experience with the soldats Americains—got her "animals" mixed—"you have my goat, I have your goat, et—tie ze bull outside," and so on. I am crossing Irene and Fay here because I think them similar, only I must say I think the magic was ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... 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 ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... 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 that ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... social qualities, and courted his acquaintance as the sine qua non of society; and the younger members of the school looked up to him for protection and assistance. If power was abused by the upper boys, Bernard was appealed to as the mediator between the fag{9} and his master. His grants of liberties{10} to the commonalty were indiscriminate and profuse, while his influence was always exerted to obtain the same privileges for his numerous proteges from the more close aristocrats.{11} He was always to be seen attended by a shoal ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... 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 ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... chance. By taking the collar of their coat and tucking it around their faces, lighting the match under their coat next to their ribs, burying their faces in their coat, they get a light without much danger of detection. In puffing it a man will hold the fag in his closed fist to his mouth, take the inhale, and, if there should happen to be a provo or other suspicious guardian of the rules in sight, down into his stomach would go the smoke. I don't know why it is but it has always seemed to me that the more stringent the rules are against ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... to part from our charming friends; realising, too, that this was the end of our holiday, and that before us lay merely the toil and bustle of a return to commonplace, everyday life. At last, though, the final fag-end of a cheroot was thrown away, the last hand-grips given, and ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... quarrel which ensued between the two houses, prevented the passing of every bill projected during the present session. One Dr. Shirley, being cast in a lawsuit before chancery against Sir John Fag, a member of the house of commons, preferred a petition of appeal to the house of peers. The lords received it, and summoned Fag to appear before them. He complained to the lower house, who espoused his cause. They ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... my bagful of pebbles, I had gotten great plenty of nuts; and as soon as my companions had in like manner gotten as many nuts as they could carry, we returned to the city, where we arrived at the fag-end of day. Then I went in to the kindly man who had brought me in company with the nut- gatherers and gave him all I had gotten, thanking him for his kindness; but he would not accept them, saying, "Sell them and make profit by the price; and presently ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... aft, and as white as snow, which the crew told us was from constant use of holystones. There was no foolish gilding and gingerbread work, to take the eye of landsmen and passengers, but everything was "ship-shape and Bristol fashion." There was no rust, no dirt, no rigging hanging slack, no fag ends of ropes and "Irish pendants" aloft, and the yards were squared "to a t" by ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... right if—if—Longworth is dealing honestly with us. If he is not, then everything is all wrong, and I should feel a great deal easier if we had in our possession another three months' option of the mine. We are now at the fag-end of this option, and, it seems to me, as protection to ourselves, we ought either to write to Von Brent—By the way, have you ever ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... to be made by scheming and bribery, she was there to make it. At play she always cheated, and if found out stormed and raged; but pocketed what she had won. People looked upon her as they would have looked upon a fish-fag, and did not like to commit themselves by quarrelling with her. At the end of every game she used to say that she gave whatever might have been unfairly gained to those who had gained it, and hoped that others would do ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... mental 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 ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... When that young Sophomore told me the boys of Eta Bita Pie had just spent twenty dollars apiece on a formal dance and house party, I put up the same kind of a lecture to him that my father gave me when I explained that we simply had to spend five dollars apiece on our party, or belong in the fag end of things. And I suppose when my father's crowd blew in a couple of dollars for a load of wood, his father reminded him that when HE went to college they didn't coddle themselves with fires in their dormitories. ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... me back. 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 ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... 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 ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... takes a mighty leap. Unprepared for this. Am cast into the air. Picked up. Can't stand. Something broken. Doctor will say what. Anyhow, clothes torn, bruised, disheartened. Dare not catch the eye of pretty girl. Carried home. Shall give up bicycle riding. Awful fag, and ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... contemplating a farm-labourer the other day, who was drinking his mug of beer on a settle at a roadside ale- house door, we fell to humming the fag-end of an old ditty, of which the poor man and his beer, and the sin of parting them, form the doleful burden. Philosewers then mentioned to me that a friend of his in an agricultural county—say a Hertfordshire friend—had, for two years last past, endeavoured ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... cherish wrathful scorn for the English boy who makes another boy his fag, and you express a sneering pity for the boy who consents to fag. You have read Dr. Birch and His Young Friends, and you would like to break the head of Master Hewlett, who shies his shoe at the poor ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... hidden reefs that lie in a semicircle about two 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 Moores, and ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... and entered a sort of ante-room, hung round with old maps, architectural elevations, and genealogical trees. A pair of folding-doors opened from this into Mr. Inglewood's sitting apartment, from which was heard the fag-end of an old ditty, chanted by a voice which had been in its day fit ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... king of the school, ruled over his subjects, and bullied them, with splendid superiority. This one blacked his shoes: that toasted his bread, others would fag out, and give him balls at cricket during whole summer afternoons. "Figs" was the fellow whom he despised most, and with whom, though always abusing him, and sneering at him, he scarcely ever condescended ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... more drinking in Chile than in any other South American country. A portion of the city of Valparaiso seems to be given over almost entirely to the liquor dealers and the people who throng that district are hard-looking folks. The fag ends of civilization seem to have gathered here. This is the only city in South America where I was accosted by both men and women and they almost try to hold one up in the streets in ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... to have a particular fag to attend to him and his wishes, and no cadet could demand service of another fellow's fag without ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... days of the examinations, during which time I scarcely closed my eyes in sleep, devoting every moment to cramming and reviewing. And when I turned in my last examination paper I was in full possession of a splendid case of brain-fag. I didn't want to see a book. I didn't want to think or to lay eyes on anybody who was liable ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... made bets on the length of the shoe, and recalled the time, barely five years ago, when the same man—Jonah the hunchback—had astonished Botany Road with his flaring signs in red and white. True, his shop was still on the Road, for Regent Street is but the fag end of a long, dusty road where it saunters into town, snobbishly conscious of larger buildings and higher rents. Since then his progress had been marked by removals, and each step had carried him nearer ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... scholar having received a liberal contribution towards expenses, and Butzbach being equipped with new clothes, the pair set out together. The boy was now ten, and looked forward hopefully to the future; but the scholar quickly showed himself in his true colours. He treated Butzbach as a fag, made him trudge behind carrying the larger share of their bundles, and when they came to an inn feasted royally himself off the money given to him for the boy, leaving him to the charity of the innkeepers. At the ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... brother—throw a rather lurid light upon the spiritual and intellectual limitations of the Bench? In respect of the British aristocracy, his social betters, he also kept an open mind. For had not Lord Bulparc's son and heir, little Oxley, acted as his fag, boot-black and bacon-frier, for the best part of a year at school? Notwithstanding which fact—Lord Oxley was of a mild, forgiving disposition—had not he, Tom, spent the cricket week several summers running at Napworth Castle; where, on one celebrated occasion, he ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... nursing or "trotting" them; and the passions of all—jealousy, rage, love—were as strongly marked as in men. They had a language as distinct to them as ours to us; and their women were as noisy and as fond of disputation as any fish-fag in Billingsgate. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... when he wanted Irene so violently, and she consented to be his, that she would never love him? The tune died and was renewed, and died again, and still Soames sat in the shadow, waiting for he knew not what. The fag of Fleur's cigarette, flung through the window, fell on the grass; he watched it glowing, burning itself out. The moon had freed herself above the poplars, and poured her unreality on the garden. Comfortless light, mysterious, withdrawn—like the beauty of that woman ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... earth, finding that even the life of a settler may be filled with "sweet dreams, and health and quiet." But the great majority seem to have taken to the scrap heap of Federal politics with such ardour that they clutch but the fag ends of ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... in penetrating to these rugged wilds was to visit one of the Pringles, a relative of personal friends on the borders of my own land. Finding that Mr Pringle was absent from home, we turned aside to visit a cousin of Hobson's, a Mr John Edwards, who dwelt in what appeared to me the fag-end of the world,—a lonely farmhouse, at the head of the mountain gorge ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 fashion. That many of them ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler |
