"Rag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it down, and examined it. Holding it in his hands, he gazed about the floor. A rag which the ashes in the fireplace had not ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... religious doctrines or articles of faith, he would not have been very clear, or very ready to give you any explanation at all, for the very best of reasons,—he was not so superstitious as to have a creed. A creed! that was a rag of the old woman of Babylon. No, if you wanted to know all about doctrines and disputations, why, you might look into Barclay's Apology. There was a book big enough for you, he should think. For himself, like most of his cloth, he would confine himself to his feelings. He would ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... disdains of the young artistic bloods of 1830, who held their clan composed the loftier, super-human race, the only one that counted. Berlioz carried this folly of pride to its highest pitch. In his Memoirs, he declared that the public (of course excluding himself) were an infamous tag-rag-and-bob-tail. The people of Paris, he protested, were more stupid and a hundred times more ferocious, in their caperings and revolutionary grimaces, than the baboons and orang-outangs of Borneo. Balzac at times adopted and expressed similar opinions. Gozlan relates that one day ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... trapeze. The Mock Turtle and the Cheshire Cat took turns on a diminutive springboard. The March Hare and the Dormouse energetically jumped over a small barrel. The Queen and the Duchess had a fencing match, the Queen using her sceptre, the Duchess the rag baby she carried, and to which she had sung the "Pepper Song" at intervals during the performance. The King tossed four colored balls into the air, keeping them in motion at once. The Rabbit went on balancing his plate until it ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... not to be here. How often have I told you that!" His moderation swept over into the feverish irritation she knew so well how to kindle in him, and his lisp became so marked that he was almost unintelligible. "You won't have a rag of reputation left." ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the hunters poured volley after volley of lead into the forest. Suddenly a white rag tied to a stick was thrust out ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... with the two girls, who were making a rag hearthrug. With the nervousness of women of anxious temperaments she began to explain their occupation, talking quickly in a voice with a shrill ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... dish-cloth? "—a natural question, as any woman will agree, but what a consternation it evoked! A just perceptible delay, a fumbling among pots and pans, and he came toward me with a most apologetic air, and with the sorriest-looking rag I had ever seen—its narrow circumference encircling a very ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... half a dozen privates, all plainly in great agitation, and in the midst of them stood the lank messenger who had brought the first message from Black Tom, delivering another from the same source. Black Tom was coming, coming surer and unless that flag, that "Rebel rag," were hauled down under twenty-four hours, Black Tom would come over and pull it down, and to that same poplar hang "Captain Mayhall an' his whole damn army." Black Tom might do it ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... care he poured the powder into the palm of his hand, measuring the quantity with his eye—for it was an evidence of a hunter's skill to be able to get the proper quantity for the ball. Then he put the charge into the barrel. Placing a little greased linsey rag, about half an inch square, over the muzzle, he laid a small lead bullet on it, and with the ramrod began to push the ball into ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... philosophical and theological opinion was represented there, and expressed itself with entire openness; most of my colleagues were -ists of one sort or another; and, however kind and friendly they might be, I, the man without a rag of a label to cover himself with, could not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings which must have beset the historical fox when, after leaving the trap in which his tail remained, he presented himself to ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... stout sons set off on an autumn night for the meeting of patriots at a house on the Wissahickon,—a meeting that bodes no good to the British encamped in Philadelphia, let the red-coats laugh as they will at the rag-tag and bob-tail that are joining the army of Mr. Washington in the wilds of the Skippack. The farmer sighs as he thinks that his younger son alone should be missing from the company, and wonders for the thousandth time what has become of the boy. They sit by ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... Whitey Wimble without troubling himself to look into his till. "We don't see overmuch rag money in ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... stop to chew the rag none. I left him right there, with his mouth wide open, staring after me like I was crazy. Half a block away I looked back and I seen him double over and slap his knee and laugh loud, like he had hearn a big joke, but what he was laughing ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... 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
... grows upon one. One doesn't take in the whole of such a misfortune at once. We must hold on to the last rag of hope, and in the meantime I'll half work myself to death. Are you ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... rag vanished from sight, our lads, who had watched the latter part of this performance in silent wrath, turned to each other and ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... woman turn on that "loveliest eyes" gag about an actor I always feel that a swift slap from a wet dish-rag would look ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... they came into a great plain, acres and acres of green rag-weed where the wheat had grown, all so flat one thought of an enormous billiard table, and now, where the railroad crossed the country roads, they saw the staunch brown thistle, sometimes the sumach, and ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... source of great annoyance both to Maddy, and to some one else of whose proximity Maddy did not dream. Thinking that Uncle Joseph referred to her grandfather, and feeling glad that the latter had attempted a reform, she entered the room known at the cottage as the parlor, the one where the rag carpet was, the six cane-seated chairs and the Boston rocker, and where now the little round table was nicely laid for two, while cozily seated in the rocking-chair, reading last night's paper, and looking very ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... ball, we do not recollect ever to have seen one in the works of any of the old masters so true to nature. In conclusion, the buttons on the jacket, and the button-holes, companions thereto, would baffle the criticism of the most hyper-fastidious stab-rag; and the shirt collar, with every other detail—never forgetting the chiaro-scuro—are equal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... of his, which, for the most part, are painted on small sheets, his sports, banterings, quarrellings, sledge-parties of children, with their half-frozen but still merry faces, in their puffy yet not unpicturesque costume; his beggar-boys, with their rag-ware on their backs, are almost always genial and pleasing. In the course of his narrow, in-doors life, he had worked himself into a friendly, nay, as it were, almost paternal relation with domestic and fire-side animals, especially with cats. While he sat painting, a cat might ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... by a brilliant red and yellow scarf. She asks the sleepy merchant nodding before his wares, "What is this rag worth?" ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... you could put your finger on. Same old rag-chewin' going on up at Cat Biggs's and the other waterin' troughs about how you've got to be done up, if ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... girlhood, not even in her childhood, had there been days of such utter uselessness—rag dolls and mud pies need some care! As for her married life, there were Eben, the babies, the house, the church—and how absolutely necessary she ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... time fer playin' when I wus little cause I wuz allus busy waitin' on my mistis er taking care of my little brothers and sisters. But I did have a doll to play with. It wuz a rag doll an my mistis made it fer me. I wuz jes crazy 'bout that doll and I learned how to sew making clothes fer it. I'd make clothes fer it an wash an iron 'em, and it wasn't long 'fo I knowed how to sew real good, an I been ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... recognised the voice of Bennet Ma., known—strictly out of earshot—as Scab Major. Is any school, at any period, quite free of the type? It sounded more like a rough than an ill-natured rag; but the whimpering unseen victim seemed to have no kick in him: and Roy could only sit there wondering helplessly what people were made of who found it amusing to hurt and frighten other people, who ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... high silliness of the militarist it is particularly effective. It is the laughter of wholesome men that will finally end war. The stern, strong, silent man will cease to trouble us only when we have stripped him of his last rag of pretension and touched through to the quick of his vanity with the realization of his apprehended foolishness. Literature will have failed humanity if it is so blinded by the monstrous agony in Flanders as to miss the essential triviality at the head of the present war. Not the slaughter ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... out of the subsiding pandemonium darted Nance Molloy, covered with mud from the shoestring on her hair to the rag about her toe, giving and taking blows with the best, and emitting yells of frenzied victory over every vanquished foe. Suddenly her transports were checked by a disturbing sight. At the end of the alley, locked in ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... it in his breech-cloth," remarked the corporal seriously, for not a rag besides had he about him. "No, no it couldn't be him, and ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... can give you something much better than that cotton rag." And she tripped up the shop and came back presently, and as she passed the boy whispered something in his ear, and he nodded and got up and went out. The girl held up in her finger and thumb a red morocco bag, gaily embroidered, and said, "There, I have chosen ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... better for it. Some of them can what they call 'read in the Testament,' and all of them confound b and d when they meet with them. They are at one point of general information; namely, they all know what you have just told them, and will none of them know it by next time. I call it the rag-tag and bob-tail class. John says they are like forced tulips. They won't blossom simultaneously. He can't get them all to ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... of primeval forest surrounding the clearing on three sides. The atmosphere is heavy, and a fine spray floats in the air and covers everything with moisture. Knives rust in one's pocket, matches refuse to light, tobacco is like a sponge and paper like a rag. It had been like this for three months; no wonder malarial fever raged among the white population. Mr. Ch., after only one year's sojourn here, looked like a very sick man; he was frightfully thin and pale and very ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... use your legs," she said. "See that you can bustle about, and bend your necks before the old Duck yonder. She's the grandest of all here; she's of Spanish blood—that's why she's so fat; and do you see? she has a red rag around her leg; that's something very, very fine, and the greatest mark of honor a duck can have: it means that one does not want to lose her, and that she's known by the animals and by men too. Hurry! hurry!—don't turn in your toes, a well brought-up duck turns it's toes quite out, just ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Perhaps because his fire was lacking coal, His cupboard bare, no money in his purse. Perhaps . . . they say he labored hard and long, And see now, in the harvest of his fame, When round his pictures people gape and throng, A scurvy dealer sells this on his name. A wretched rag, wrung out of want and woe; A soulless daub, not David Strong a bit, Unworthy of his art. . . . How should I know? How should I know? ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... violin, however," said Lambert lazily, and thinking what a picturesque girl she was in her many-hued rag-tag garments, and with the golden coins ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... my tent—at least it will be, as soon as my fellows pitch it. N. B.—For special information I would add that this is not done, as I have seen a Kalmouk do it, with a bucket of pitch and a rag on a stick. One way, however, of pitching tents is to pitch 'em down when the enemy is coming, and run like the juice. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... not by a peremptory public letter, like Olney's to Salisbury, which enrages a whole people and makes temperate action doubly difficult, but thus, by a private letter to the proper persons, very plain, very unmistakable, but which remains private, a sufficient word to the wise, and not a red rag to the mob. "To have the affair settled peacefully and with due regard to England's honor." Thus Roosevelt. England desired no war with us this time, any more than at the other time. The Commission went to work, and, after investigating the facts, ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... Remington," he went on after a pause, "I didn't rag your other guests too much. I've a sort of feeling at moments—Remington, those chaps are so infernally not—not bloody. It's part of a man's duty sometimes at least to eat red beef and get drunk. How is ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... that not only were all the waters in it turned to blood, but so many corpses grounded on the bank of the little island of Louvre that the air became infected with the smell of corruption." The living, tied hand and foot, were thrown off the bridges. One man—probably a rag-gatherer—brought two little children in his creel, and tossed them into the water as carelessly as if they had been blind kittens. An infant, yet unable to walk, had a cord tied round its neck, and was dragged through the streets by a troop of children nine or ten years old. Another played with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... Hopedale, after all 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 have not the heroic Thoreau-digestion, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... village sitting-room. A cylinder heater full of wood stood at one side of it. A rag carpet, much faded, covered the floor. The paper on the wall was like striped candy, and the chairs were nondescript; but everything was clean—worn more ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... rag of a merchant,' he cried out. 'If this were the Queen's cousin should we bear ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... precede the Chief Justice at official ceremonies, and peace amongst the devout was only restored by the Bishop's graceful relinquishment of a position to which his legal right was undeniable. Even now the title 'My Lord' as applied to Bishops acts as a red rag on many ex-Dissenting bulls, and they are as jealous of the slightest official preference of the Church of England as if their dearest religious liberties were ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... magazines, songs and special literature. The boys make sleds and carts, hall stands, umbrella racks, center tables and stools. They make cupboards and shelves for the school, quilting-frames on which the girls do patchwork. Rags are woven into rag carpets and sold. The print shop prints all of the stationery for the school. Each can of preserves, in the ample stock put up by the girls, is ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... here, Captain Lingo," said Aunt Amanda, "I want to know where we are going and all about it. The idea of me sitting here a-straddle of a mule! And this bonnet simply ruined, and my dress just about fit to go to the rag-bone man, and my hair—Look here, Captain Lingo, I ain't going a step on this mule until ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... are! There's a rag carpet on the floor; see it? hit-or-miss pattern. Mother made it herself; leastways, the mother of the boy I'm comin' to bimeby. I always liked hit-or-miss better than any other pattern. Then there's smaller ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... a lean, sallow hand and felt of the dainty fabric. "It is just as limp as a rag," ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... bounds. We shall not stay long in Tuscany. We want to be in England late in June or very early in July, and some days belong to Paris as we pass, since Robert's family are resident there. To leave Rome will fill me with barbarian complacency. I don't pretend to have a rag of sentiment about Rome. It's a palimpsest Rome—a watering-place written over the antique—and I haven't taken to it as a poet should, I suppose; only let us speak the truth, above all things. I am strongly a creature of association, and the associations of ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... powerful current to whelm opposition. But the appearance of the woman, his wife, here, her head surrounded by destructive engines in the form of trophy, and the knowledge that this woman bearing his name designed to be out at the heels of a foreign army or tag-rag of uniformed rascals, inspired him to reprobate men's bad old game as heartily as good sense does in the abstract, and as derisively as it is the way with comfortable islanders before the midnight trumpet-notes of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... up in the fish market in all freedom and neglect. When but three years old the youngster had been brought there, and day by day remained squatting on some rag amidst the fish. He would fall asleep beside the big tunnies as though he were one of them, and awake among the mackerel and whiting. The little rascal smelt of fish as strongly as though he were some big fish's offspring. For a long time his favourite ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... said savagely, springing up, and growing even angrier when she found the rain had really stopped, so that her indignation sounded only like acquiescence. She strode ahead of him, silent, through the wet bracken, her frock growing a limp rag as it brushed aside the ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... fish for bonitos, a large fish over two feet long, the deadly enemy of the beautiful flying fish that every now and then fell panting upon the deck in their mad flight from marine foes. The bait was made to resemble the flying fish itself, the hook being hidden by white rag stuffing, with feathers pricked in to counterfeit ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... coveted beauty (owned now by a girl I know), bowing and singing to the new owner, who exultantly exhibits her as she departs; and into my outstretched arms falls something hideous enough to play Medusa in a tableau, a rag baby with grinning Senegambian lips, rayless owlish eyes, and a concave nose whose nostrils suggest the Catacombs! Bitter rage and murderous fury possess me, but I am much too wise to show my tempers at the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... legs," said she, "keep together, and bow to the old Duck you see yonder. She is the most distinguished of all the fowls present, and is of Spanish blood, which accounts for her dignified appearance and manners. And look, she has a red rag on her leg! That is considered extremely handsome, and is the greatest honor a Duck can have. Don't turn your feet inwards; a well-educated Duckling always keeps his legs far apart, like his father and mother, just so—look! Now bow your necks, and ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... of C.N. Morse & Company considered. "Why, yes, seems to me I have—heap much swagger and noise, plenty rag-chewin' ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... sedition among the Hindus of British Columbia as among Canadian-born Socialists, who rant of the flag as "the bloody rag." ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... that I have ever seen, comprised men of all classes. Some might once have belonged to the learned professions, while others had fallen so low that they looked scarcely human. Every grade of rag-clad misery was represented here, and every stage of life from the lad of sixteen up to the aged man whose allotted span was almost at an end. Rank upon rank of them, there they sat in their infinite variety, linked only by the common bond of utter wretchedness, the most melancholy sight, I think, ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... "You rag of a woman! And don't everybody know who you are? A back-biter, a cheap gossip, and a trouble-maker. You hate Dolores! You'd do anything to hurt her! You've driven my poor brother to the dogs with ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... carrying a little bottle of witch hazel in his haversack, which he often found exceedingly useful. This he got out, and after warning the other that it might sting a little at first, he poured some of the extract on the lump; and then wetting a piece of rag with it, he laid this over the wound, Cale's cap ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... couple of ladies, but she not being there, we hunted her out, and found that she and another had hid themselves behind a door. Well, they all went down into the dining-room, where it was full of tag, rag, and bobtail, dancing, singing, and drinking, of which I was ashamed, and after I had staid a dance or two I went away. Going home, called at my Lord's for Mr. Sheply, but found him at the Lion with a pewterer, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... a clear idea of the state of your own mind," I said, "for to me it really seems as chaotic as a rag-bag." ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... wonderful a superintendent to be quite true," said Peggy when Peter had finished. "But do give us a 'rag.'" ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... were all as proud as Lucifer; and, to be sure, my birth was as good as that of any man in Europe. Demmy! Where was my lord himself when the Esmonds were lords of great counties, warriors, and Crusaders? Where were they? Beggarly Scotchmen, without a rag to their backs—by George! tearing raw fish in their islands. But now the times were changed. The Scotchmen were in luck. Mum's the word! "I don't envy him," says Sampson, "but he shall provide for you and my dearest, noblest, heroic captain! He SHALL, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rag and rub the heavy grease off; then get a soft pine stick, pointed at one end, and with this point remove the grease from the cracks, crevices and corners. Clean the bore from the breech. When the heavy grease has been removed, the metal part of the gun, bore included, ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... treatment a fair trial on our lines. We claim that ours are common sense methods. Anyone can see that if a head is hot and fevered the application of a cold towel is likely to lower that heat and reduce the fever. But it is no use putting a little bit of wet rag on and then saying our treatment has failed. Large towels repeatedly changed for an hour or more may be needed, and this will give more trouble than administering some dose from the chemist's shop, but the results are well ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... prophet has to have food. He has frequently got along with almost none, and with only a rag for clothing; in Palestine and India, where the climate is warm, a sincere faith has been possible for short periods. But the modern prophet who expects to influence the minds of men has to have books and newspapers; he will find a telephone ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... on the rusted skates and allow it to remain until the rust becomes softened, after which it can be easily removed by rubbing with fine sand paper or emery cloth. After using, they should be wiped dry and then rubbed with an oily rag before being placed in the ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... the lounge of the Hotel M—— at the Base. "I'll introduce you to young C—— of the Guards when he comes in," the Major was saying to me. "He is going up to the Front with me to-night by the troop train. You don't mind if I rag a bit, do you, old chap? You see he's only just gazetted from Sandhurst, a mere infant, in fact, and he's a bit in the blues, I fancy, at having to say good-bye to his mother. He's her only child, and she's a widow. The father was an old friend of mine. Hulloa, C——, my boy. Allow ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... suddenly made aware by the very words himself had uttered, what—contrasted with the unsullied dignity of the tradesman's life, the spotless innocence of the tradesman's daughter—what a foul tattered rag, fit to be torn down by an honest gust, was that flaunting emblazonment, ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... and once the pale moon gleamed through the storm wreath. The dawn broke cheerless and dreary, disclosing the great turmoil of endless slate-coloured waves and the solitary little barque, with her rag of canvas, like a broken-winged seabird, staggering to ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Bumble, 'see anything like the pitch it's got to. The day afore yesterday, a man—you have been a married woman, ma'am, and I may mention it to you—a man, with hardly a rag upon his back (here Mrs. Corney looked at the floor), goes to our overseer's door when he has got company coming to dinner; and says, he must be relieved, Mrs. Corney. As he wouldn't go away, and shocked the company very much, our overseer sent him out a pound of potatoes ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... Every rag of sail was now piled on to the ship, and as many of the others were showing nothing above their topgallant sails she rejoined the ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... noiselessly unlimbered the guns and dug them in. We had to tie the horses' heads up to prevent them from grazing on the barley around us, and muffled their bits and other steel work on the harness with bits of rag, for the least sound carries a long way in this clear atmosphere. Then, the drivers in each team taking turns to watch their horses, we lay down in the barley and slept. "Zero" was at 0530, when it was just light enough to fire, and by dawn we were up and about, tightening ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... light a weight was she. There I stood for a minute or two. "My prick is small now," said I, "unroll the handkerchief." "No," said the woman. "I will give you ten shillings extra if you do, my prick can't hurt now." The oddity of a woman attempting to unroll from a prick a slip of white rag, whilst the prick was up a cunt; but out came my prick from the little hole before she ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... eight-o'clock din of a commencing work-day. Three brawny, perspiration-streaked young fellows were engaged in loading bags of sand on the stripped cars about to start out, to supply the weight of the missing bodies, and whistling rag-time melodies ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... motives, and the stirrers up Of humours in the blood. It may be so, When as the work is done, the stone is made, This heat of his may turn into a zeal, And stand up for the beauteous discipline, Against the menstruous cloth and rag of Rome. We must await his calling, and the coming Of the good spirit. You did fault, t' upbraid him With the brethren's blessing of Heidelberg, weighing What need we have to hasten on the work, For the restoring of the silenced saints, Which ne'er will be, but by the philosopher's stone. ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... 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 you call that ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... the Duchesse de Chartres, who replied, loud enough to be heard, in her slow and trembling voice, that she preferred to be a "winesack" rather than a "rag-sack" (sac d guenilles) by which she alluded to the Clermont and La Choin ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... plum happy. Then she went on to tell as she washed the dishes and Nancy and Rosie dried them and Lizbeth packed them off to the cupboard, about the strange man. 'He laid powerful admiration on our little girls.' Levicy was wipin' off the oilcloth on the table with her soapy dish rag. 'He had them line up in a row to see which was tallest, whilst I set him a snack. "Shut your eyes," sez he, "and open your mouth." They did, and bless you, Captain Anderson, what did he do but put a sil'er dollar in their mouth—each one.' By this time Nancy ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... of sensual Elysium, where sailors are represented as enjoying, for "a full due," those amenities for which Wapping, Castle Rag, and the back of Portsmouth Point were ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... your neck in my hand like that," he clenched his two fists together with a horribly suggestive motion and the frightened girl watched him, fascinated. "I'll break you as if you were a bit of china! I'll tear you as if you were a rag! You needn't think you'll ever get away from me—I'll follow you to the ends of the earth. You're paid like a queen and treated like a queen and you play straight—there was a ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... Skeet passed me, she wiped a paw on a paint rag and offered it to me without another word. I got a grip and a look that told me there was no hang-over with her from that scene yesterday in her mother's sick-room. Vandeman was commenting on his depleted ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... neighbors have the opinion that a sick person's shirt thrown into the well will prognosticate the outcome of the disease; if it floats the sick one will recover, if it sinks he will die. To reward the saint for the information, they tear a rag off the shirt and hang it on the briers near by; "where," says the writer, "I have seen such numbers as might have made a fayre rheme in a paper-myll." Similar practices are related by other authors. Ireland formerly had a sanctified well in nearly every parish. ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... the way to a small room with white curtains at the windows and rag rugs upon the floor and a big silk crazy-quilt on an old four-poster bed. She hurried about and found soap and towels for him, and left him with the hope that he ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... before the executioner, for he will find me dead—by your hand. You might have spared me that—and spared yourself. You still had the remnant of a good name, and your lover being dead, you might have worn the rag of your honour still. You have chosen to throw it away, and let me know my full disgrace before I die a disgraceful death. And yet you wish to speak to me. Do ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... were so dark, When the wretched Blitzen wrote to make his mark. Certainly he scored it, bold, and black, and firm, In that Indian paper—made his seniors squirm, Quoted office scandals, wrote the tactless truth— Was there ever known a more misguided youth? When the Rag he wrote for praised his plucky game, Boanerges Blitzen felt that this was Fame; When the men he wrote of shook their heads and swore, Boanerges Blitzen ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the cleanest and brightest of rag carpets on the floor; a paper on the walls, cheap enough, but gay with scarlet rosebuds and green leaves, rivalled by the vines and berries on the pretty chintz curtains; chairs of a dozen ages and patterns, but all of them with open, ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... person, but having fallen on evil days, was dusty and rusty, while the knees of Mr. Crips poked familiarly through a long slit in each leg of the stained trousers. The frock coat went badly with the damaged tan boots and the moth-eaten rag cap ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... being seriously discussed. It never has—not at least in connection with the name of its propounder. To mention Lamarck's name in the presence of the conventional English society naturalist has always been like shaking a red rag at a cow; he is at once infuriated; "as if it were possible," to quote from Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire, whose defence of Lamarck is one of the best things in his book, {235b} "that so great labour on the part of so great a naturalist should have led him to 'a fantastic ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... half bird, half reptile, with steel beaked and winged helmets and claw-like steel shoes, and jointed steel corselet and rustling steel mail coat; before the infantry of Gascony, rapid and rapacious with their tattered doublets and rag-bound feet; before the over-fed, immensely plumed, and slashed and furbelowed giants of Switzerland, and the starved, half-naked savages of Brittany and the Marches—before this multifaced, many-speeched army, gathered from the rich cities of the North and the ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... 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
... against the grain to put that rag on," Martin said; "but your idea is a good one, and I would dress up as a general of the Blues, or as Robespierre himself, on such an errand ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... been instituted for the special aggravation of those Frenchmen who believe that the history of France did not begin with the 14th of July, 1789. It is no longer, to employ the energetic expression of Gambetta, anything but 'a rag of the civil war.' It glorifies an event which, according to the testimony of contemporaries the least suspected of moderation in politics (Marat, Saint-Just), had not the importance nor, above all, the beauty ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... me," said Ordee, "a half a dollar in his life. Didn't more than half feed, said that meat and fish was too high to eat. As for clothing, he never gave me a new hat for every day, nor a Sunday rag in his life." Of his mistress, he said, "She was stingy and close,—made him (his master) worse than what he would have been." Two of his brothers were sold to Georgia, and his uncle was cheated out of his freedom. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... name of Weber was a red rag to Leopold Mozart, and he began a series of bitter rebukes, which the son answered with ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... however, revived him, and with three 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 as numerous, excited a shudder of despair. ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... there was a rag on, and a bonner in the quad, you always knew you could help yourself ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... powdered cinnamon. Beat ten eggs very light, and add them gradually to the mixture, alternately with the flour; stirring the whole very hard. Put your griddle into the oven of a stove; and when it is quite hot, grease it with fresh butter tied in a clean rag, and set on it a tin cake-ring, (about the size of a large dinner plate,) greased also. Dip out two large table-spoonfuls and a half of the cake batter; put it within the tin ring, and bake it about five minutes (or a little longer) without turning it. When it is done, take it carefully ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... get Polly's head round again—for she had availed herself of our pause to whisk homeward—we proceed on our way to Ragland. Welsh precisians, we perceive, call it Rhaglan—and probably attach a nobler meaning to the name than can be forced out of the Saxon Rag and Land; but as novelists and historians have agreed in calling it Ragland, we shall keep to the old spelling in spite of sennachie and bard. A short way beyond Llansaintfraed is the handsome gate and beautiful park of Clytha; the gate surmounted by a magnificent and highly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... doc," he said, "when you goin' to take this rag off o' my eyes? I hain't seen a wink since I ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... 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
... went proudly over the collar: for she fancied she was a steam-engine, that would go on the railroad and draw the waggons. "Rag!" ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... struck upon his beaver, thence spreading on all sides. His carefully starched collar became instantly as limp as a rag, while his coat suffered severely from ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... singing placidly to itself and puffing steam with an air of lazy comfort, as if it were smoking a cigarette. The stove had stood in the southwest corner of the room, and the room was warm with the heat of it; and the floor was white and had a strip of rag carpet reaching from the table to a corner of the stove. There was a red cloth with knotted fringe on the table, and a bed in another corner had a red-and-white patchwork spread and puffy white pillows. There had been a woman—but Charming Billy shut his eyes, mentally, to ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... struggled mightily with her next question, but he did not note her emotions, for his elbows were on his knees and he was staring at the rag carpet. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... such evil for the sake of something better and to avoid something worse. So Queen Esther wore her royal crown, and yet said to God, Esther xiv, "Thou knowest, that the sign of my high estate, which is upon my head, has never yet delighted me, and I abhor it as a menstruous rag, and never wear it when I am by myself, but when I must do it and go before the people." [Beth. 14:16 Vulgate] The heart that is so minded wears adornment without peril; for it wears and does not wear, dances and ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... trying, in a small way, than to get a diaper that cannot be folded true. These should be made double and the edges turned in and sewed around. By the time the baby has outgrown them they will be fit only for the rag- bag, and may be thrown aside. The second size diaper, also the third should be many times washed to make them soft enough for use. These may be used at first folded eight times and put under the baby next ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... illuminated transparency, on which were written lines so bad that a king alone could have been the author of them. These lines, which were published in the official gazette, have been handed down to us by one of those indiscreet persons who suffer no follies of the past to be lost. Such persons are the rag-pickers ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... battle, armed men should never leave their ranks to attend a dead or wounded comrade—this should be seen to in advance by the colonel, who should designate his musicians or company cooks as hospital attendants, with a white rag on their arm to indicate their office. A wounded man should go himself (if able) to the surgeon near at hand, or, if he need help, he should receive it from one of the attendants and not a comrade. It is wonderful how soon the men accustom themselves ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... hand, and trying to keep her mobile, inattentive eyes upon Ellen's face. She was a little woman, youthfully dressed, but not dressed youthfully enough for the dry, yellow hair which curled tightly in small rings on her skull, like the wig of a rag-doll. Her restless eyes were round and deep-set, with the lids flung up out of sight; she had a lax, formless mouth, and an anxious smile, with which she constantly watched her son for his initiative, while she recollected ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... began to appear, and all hands might have been towing astern all night by the look of them. But the Johnnie Duncan was doing well and the opinion of the crew generally was that the skipper could slap every rag to her and she'd carry it—that is, if she had to. The skipper put her more westerly after we had passed the ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... first subject clatters in, the second is even more jubilant. In the development a dance misterioso is used with faithful screaming repetitions, and the work ends regularly and brilliantly. There is much syncopation, though nothing that is strictly in "rag-time;" banjo-figurations are freely and ingeniously employed, and the whole is a splendid fiction in local color. Schoenefeld's negroes do not ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... grew big as a harvest moon and they brought Le Grand Diable to me. Knowing his covetous heart, I told him if he still had the woman and the child, I'd get him a big ransom. At that they all jangled a bit, the old squaw clouting me with her filthy rag as if she wanted to slap me to a peak. At length they let Le Grand Diable unfasten the bands. With my hands tied behind my back, I was taken to his lodge. Miriam and the boy were kept in a place behind the Sioux squaw's hut. Once when ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... bottle with him before they turned. For banished people, in those days, seem to have set out on their own responsibility, in their own guard, and at their own expense. It was no joke to make one's way from Paris to Roussillon alone and penniless in the fifteenth century. Villon says he left a rag of his tails on every bush. Indeed, he must have had many a weary tramp, many a slender meal, and many a to-do with blustering captains of the Ordonnance. But with one of his light fingers, we may fancy that he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... How can one love a rag torn by every wind? Their affairs were in dreadful shape; their estate mortgaged; no money anywhere. Finally his uncle sends them two thousand rubles to pay the interest on the estate. He takes it, disappears, leaves Lisa home and the baby sick—when suddenly she gets a note ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... and a headlong chaos Murmurs within me, which I must digest, And not drowne her in my confusions, 165 That was my lives joy, being best inform'd. Sweet, you must needs forgive me, that my love (Like to a fire disdaining his suppression) Rag'd being discouraged; my whole heart is wounded When any least thought in you is but touch't, 170 And shall be till I know your former merits, Your name and memory, altogether crave In just oblivion their eternall grave; And then, you must ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... everyone as an old pal, seemed to be the order of the day, and in that atmosphere it was impossible to feel anything but quite at home. Before tea was over we new arrivals were infected with the same spirit of joviality, and were ready for the first 'rag.' ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... you are!" he said to himself, limping back and forth across the narrow space of the cabin. "You've got them all beaten to a rag when it comes to playing the chump, Phil Steele. Here you go up to Big Chief MacGregor, throw out your chest, and say to him, 'I can get that man,' and when the big chief says you can't, you call him a four-ply ignoramus in your mind, and get permission to ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... Vavasour has just warned my wife about her. It's no good arguing, Georgie, my boy. Nowadays you can't draw the line too rigidly. Things permissible in Paris or Nice won't pass muster here. I'm sorry, Georgie. She's a high stepper and devilish taking, I admit. Writes for some ha'penny rag—er—for some cheap society paper, I hear. Why, dash it all, she will be lampooning us in it before we know where we are. Just you go and tell your mother you'll behave better in future. Excellent woman, Mrs. Vavasour. She never makes a mistake. Gad! don't you remember ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... her sharp chin uncertainly again. "There's no 'ell fire in it. An' there ain't no blime laid on Godamighty." (The word as she uttered it seemed to have no connection whatever with her usual colloquial invocation of the Deity.) "When a dray run over little Billy an' crushed 'im inter a rag, an' 'is mother was screamin' an' draggin' 'er 'air down, the curick 'e ses, 'It's Gawd's will,' 'e ses—an' 'e ain't no bad sort neither, an' 'is fice was white an' wet with sweat—'Gawd done it,' 'e ses. An' me, I'd nussed the child ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... RAG. This word is used at Union College, and is thus explained by a correspondent: "To rag and ragging, you will find of very extensive application, they being employed primarily as expressive of what is called by the vulgar thieving ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... besides playing "The Mountain Maid and the Shepherd's Bride," exhibited part of the tail of Balaam's ass, the helm of Noah's ark, and the tartan plaid in which Flora McDonald wrapped Prince Charlie. More select entertainment, such as Shuffle Kitty's waxwork, whose motto was, "A rag to pay, and in you go," were given in a hall whose approach was by an outside stair. On the Muckle Friday, the fair for which children storing their pocket money would accumulate sevenpence-half-penny in less than six months, the square was crammed with ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... me that the earth lurched as it swung, and every joint in my body went limber as a rag. I caught at El Mahdi's mane, then I felt Jud's arm go round me, and heard Ump talking at my ear. But they were a long distance away. I heard instead the bees droning, and Ward's merry laugh, as he carried me on his shoulder ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... were made for her?" answered the father, very angry now at Kate. "You are near of a size. What will do for one is good enough for the other, and Kate may be angry and get over it, for not one rag of it all will she get, nor a penny of my money will ever go to her again. She is no daughter of mine from henceforth. That rascal has beaten me and stolen my daughter, but he gets a dowerless lass. Not a penny will ever ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... not to say a necessary precaution. A man has to be young and innocent sometime or what would become of the Devil. I did not see that the stove-pipe hat was the red rag of insurrection and, when I did see it' I was up to my neck in ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... James Clayton who found it," continued the old man. "He was at work in the jetty this morning when he caught sight of something moving up and down with the waves. At first he thought it looked like an old rag, and he took no notice of it; then something about it attracted his attention more and more. He went nearer, and found that it was a gray and black shawl, that had caught on some large hooks which had been driven into the wooden pillars for some purpose or other—a woman's shawl, sure as could ...
— The Tragedy of the Chain Pier - Everyday Life Library No. 3 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... the evening and remained until two o'clock in the morning, or at whatever hour sleep came to the relief of the sick man. One of the compensations of those long vigils was the phonograph. Frohman was very fond of a tune called "Alexander's Rag-Time Band." The nurse would put this record in the machine and then leave. When it ran out, Potter, who never could learn how to renew the instrument, simply turned the crank again. There were many nights when Frohman listened to this famous rag-time song not less than twenty times. But ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... in from the orchard a ragged looking thing like parchment wrapped up with some tangled hair; it was really the bundle-baby of this Moth. He kept it all winter, and when the spring came, I saw for the first time the great miracle of the insect world—the rag bundle was split open, and out came this glorious creature with wings of red and brown velvet, embroidered with silver and spots that looked like precious stones. It seemed the rarest thing in the world, but I have found out since, ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... besides the lanthorn, a bowl of water and a piece of rag in his hand. He set them down, and going out again, fetched in a stool. Then he hung up the lanthorn on a nail, took the bowl and rag, and invited me to ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman |
