"Rag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I see of you," said Mr. Iff, removing his coat, "the more qualities I discover in you to excite my admiration and liking. As in this instance when with thoughtfulness for my comfort"—he tore from his neck the water-soaked rag that had been his collar—"you combine a prudent, not to say sagacious foresight, whereby you plan to place the Cadogan collar far beyond my reach in event I should turn out to be ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... very well to say that children are happier with mud pies and rag dolls than with these elaborate delights. There may be something in this theory, but when their amusements are carried to such a point of luxurious and imaginative perfection it certainly gives them great ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... nerves and were naughty, I smacked them just enough to give them a good cry and a healthy nervous shock. They went to sleep and were quite good afterwards. Well, I can't smack Randall: he is too big; so when he gets nerves and is naughty, I just rag him till he cries. He will be all right now. Look: he is half asleep already [which ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... he can to rouse the Calabrians to resistance—he gives them money and the mob follow his officers—but the people of property have universally attached themselves to the French-not from liking them— but in the hope that in the end they may be left with the rag ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... on the bed, and all strip quite naked,—it's so hot." "Yes do," said Kitty. She stripped the girl of her pea-soup coloured rag, and we both stripped. There we were in a minute all three naked, close together, with but little room, the girl in the middle. I pressed to her, put her hand round my prick, talked baudy. Kitty said, "Now let him." The girl said no. I put ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... alteration in or addition to the telegram, not only to the newspapers, but also by telegraph to all our embassies, it will be known in Paris before midnight, and not only on account of its contents, but also on account of the manner of its distribution, will have the effect of a red rag upon the Gallic bull. Fight we must if we do not want to act the part of the vanquished without a battle. Success, however, essentially depends upon the impression which the origination of the war makes upon us and others; it is important ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... they were paid four cents apiece, and even at that price, out of which they had to support two small children, they could not get a supply of work—of another of about the same size occupied by a street rag-picker and his family, the income of whose industry was eight dollars a month—of another, scarcely larger, into which we were drawn by the terrific screams of a drunken man beating his wife, containing no article ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... presents arms to nobody; but a sentinel on camp-guard by day is expected to perform that ceremony to anything in human shape that has two rows of buttons. Here was a human shape, but so utterly buttonless that it exhibited not even a rag to which a button could by any earthly possibility be appended, buttonless even potentially; and my blameless Ethiopian presented arms to even this. Where, then, are the theories of Carlyle, the axioms of "Sartor Resartus," the inability of humanity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... old tale goes, that Herne the Hunter (sometime a keeper heere in Windsor Forrest) Doth all the winter time, at still midnight Walke round about an Oake, with great rag'd-hornes, And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle, And make milch-kine yeeld blood, and shakes a chaine In a most hideous and dreadfull manner. You haue heard of such a Spirit, and well you know The superstitious ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... medicine," or some such other formula for expressing their own ignorance and dread. Just so do the half-savage natives of Thibet, and the Irishwomen of Kerry, by a strange coincidence— unless the ancient Irish were Buddhists, like the Himalayans—tie just the same scraps of rag on the bushes round just the same holy wells, as do the Negros of Central Africa upon their "Devil's Trees;" they know not why, save that their ancestors did it, and it is a ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... imposture called The Passionate Pilgrim should be exposed and expelled from its station at the far end of Shakespeare's poems. What Coleridge said of Ben Jonson's epithet for "turtle-footed peace," we may say of the label affixed to this rag-picker's bag of stolen goods: The Passionate Pilgrim is a pretty title, a very pretty title; pray what may it mean? In all the larcenous little bundle of verse there is neither a poem which bears that name nor a poem by which that name would be bearable. The publisher ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the wart with a cotton rag, spit on the rag and hide it under a water-board (a wooden gutter used as a duct for rain-water off the roof of a house), where the water will drip on it. The whole operation must be kept ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... few weeks ago at Verona, while going to see a certain little church on the slopes above the Adige. You go through the priest's house and vineyard; there is a fine carved lintel and a bit of fresco, all in the midst of a rag fair of squalid streets. What a place this must once have been! I felt the charm and splendour of piled-up palace and hanging gardens in former days. In former days! And a little doubt dropped into it, "If ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... Society. Every variety of 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 his normally elongated companions. So I took thought, and invented ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... superintendent banished him from the little farmhouse (where Ham had kept two rooms); banished along with the superintendent the stiff plush furniture, the yellow-red carpets, the easels and the melodeon, and decked it out in bright chintzes, with wall-papers to match, dainty muslin curtains, and rag-carpet rugs on the hardwood floors. The pseudo-classic porch over the doorway, which had suggested a cemetery, was removed, and a wide piazza added, furnished with wicker lounging chairs and tables, and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to the heart of the city—a vast open space, where the shops seemed brighter, the crowds gayer; and, by contrast, the human rag and bone heaps, beggars and ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... back, please, everybody. I want to do a little stock-taking." With that, from every pocket he produced French notes of all denominations, in all stages of decay, and heaped them upon the table. "Now, this one," he added, gingerly extracting a filthy and dilapidated rag, "is a particularly interesting specimen. Apparently, upon close inspection, merely a valuable security, worth, to be exact, a shade under twopence-half-penny, it is in reality a talisman. Whosoever touches it, cannot fail ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... righted herself as she came before the wind, and rose like a duck on the back of the angry swells. It was a fearful night, and every incident of it is photographed indelibly on my memory. There was not a rag of canvas on the ship except her heavy main-staysail, and yet one after another the topmasts splintered and fell, hampering the lower rigging and littering the deck with the wreck, the broken royals making terrible work as they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... to dress the sick room in garments that are suitable, convenient, and capable of being thoroughly disinfected, fumigated, or even burned if the occasion demands. Hence, expensive rugs should be replaced by rag carpets or no rug at all, while unnecessary articles and garments should ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... had several rags and bottles and bones to sell; but instead he had to be content with watching two self-important little girls chaffer on behalf of their mothers, and go off counting their pennies. The voice of the rag-and-bone man, grew fainter and fainter round corners out of sight; Lima Street became as empty and uninteresting as the nursery. Mark wished that a knife-grinder would come along and that he would stop under the dining-room window so that he could watch the sparks flying from the grindstone. Or ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... drew back, and Catiline and Aurelia appeared. Fanny had dressed Francis, from Kennet's Antiquities, out of an old rag-chest, and a more complete little Roman figure I never saw, though made up no mortal can tell how, like one of your own doings, dear aunt, with a crown of ilex leaves. Aurelia was perfectly draped in my French crimson shawl; she looked extremely classical ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... small cage of slips of rattan. Festering wounds are dressed with the chewed leaves or the juice of the tobacco plant, or are washed with a solution of common salt. But a clean wound is merely bound up with a rag; or, if there is much haemorrhage, wood ashes are first applied. They practise no more efficient methods for ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... grass and new-sown wheat, Tho' here and there a brown stalk may appear, A dying rag-weed, ripened by the heat, To reproduce ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... carcass was another that jumped about in the moonlight in a foolish way. For some strange reason it seemed unable to get away. Wahb's old hatred broke out. He rushed up. In a flash the Coyote bit him several times before, with one blow of that great paw, Wahb smashed him into a limp, furry rag; then broke in all his ribs with a crunch or two of his jaws. Oh, but it was good to feel the hot, bloody juices oozing between ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... ever," continued Jack solemnly, "know me to cuss, sass, bully-rag, or say anything agin parsons, ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... adjournment. Oncle Jazon's elbow was tired and the enthusiasm generated by his unrecognized Bergonzi became fitful, while the relaxing crowd rapidly encroached upon the space set apart for the dancers. In the open lamps suspended here and there the oil was running low, and the rag wicks sputtered and winked with ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... to see a Tank come down the stalls, Lurching to rag-time tunes, or "Home, sweet Home,"— And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls To mock ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... person whose hand one takes. In giving her hand to a foreigner, a married woman always relaxes her arm and fingers, as it is customary for him to lift her hand to his lips. But by a relaxed hand is not meant a wet rag; a hand should have life even though it be passive. A woman should always allow a man who is only an acquaintance to shake her hand; she should never shake his. To a very old friend she gives a much firmer clasp, but he shakes her hand ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... King!" gulped Stalky, his head on the horsehair pillow. McTurk was eating the rag-carpet before the speckless hearth, and the sofa heaved to the emotions of Beetle. Through the thick glass the figures without showed blue, distorted, ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... about, I came to a place strewed with old bones, shells, parrots' feathers, etc., close to which stood a platform of interwoven sticks. I was terribly puzzled at first to account for the presence of this miniature rag and bone depot, and my astonishment culminated when Ferdinand ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... whistling in the vicinity of his cabin, but it was not from the valet's cabin that the cheery sounds proceeded. They found him in the bathroom with an oily rag, rubbing ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... worthless ballast, honour and fair-dealing, which any man cast overboard from the ship of his Good Name and Good Intent, the more ample stowage-room he had for dollars. Make commerce one huge lie and mighty theft. Deface the banner of the nation for an idle rag; pollute it star by star; and cut out stripe by stripe as from the arm of a degraded soldier. Do anything for dollars! What is a ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... for the purpose of making us, and of making plain to ourselves, what we are. 'To humble thee,' that is, to knock the self-confidence out of us, and to bring us to say: 'I am nothing and Thou art everything; I myself am a poor weak rag of a creature that needs Thy hand to stiffen me, or I shall not be able to resist or to do.' That is one main lesson that life is meant to teach us. Whoever has learnt to say by reason of the battering ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... about his clothing, brought to light a rag of cotton, much the worse for service, and ostentatiously wiped from the corner of each eye tears of grief at parting. Then, as the boat swung toward the farther shore, Kirkwood's back was to the brigantine, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... the Syrian retorted. "A fly can sting him; a little knife can bleed him; a red rag can enrage him; and the crows who devour that sort of meat won't worry as to whether he was killed according to ritual! He has money for Feisul, has he? Well, never mind. He has a letter as well, and that is what I want. Will ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... village home. The firewood was contributed, a load apiece, by the farmers of the country about, and the oil for the lamps was the common gift of the three grocery-stores. There was no carpet, but bright-colored rag rugs lay about on the bare floor, and it was a point of honor with the Ladies' Aid Society of the church to keep ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... carriage-horses, and one can often pick up a second-hand carriage as good as new. Shall save no end of money by not having to put "B" to my name in the assessed tax-payer. One club's as good as a dozen—will give up the Polyanthus and the Sunflower, and the Refuse and the Rag. Ladies' dresses are cheap enough. Saw a beautiful gown t'other day for a guinea. Will start Master Bergamotte. Does nothing for his wages; will scarce clean my boots. Can get a chap for half what I give him, who'll do double the work. Will make Beans ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... red clusters showing among the bright green leaves, are not at all lovely to climb into. Connie knew that by experience. Belonging to a family that wore its clothes as long as they possessed any wearing virtue, she found nothing in her immediate wardrobe fitted for the venture. But from a rag-bag in the closet at the head of the stairs, she resurrected some remains of last summer's apparel. First she put on a blue calico, but the skirt was so badly torn in places that it proved insufficiently protecting. Further search brought to light another skirt, pink, in a ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... remarkable for its accumulations of gnawed bones of the Pleistocene ages,—especially for its bones of hyaenas, tigers, bears, wolves, rhinoceroses, and elephants. The cave occurs in the moorlands of Yorkshire, in a limestone rock of that Oolitic division to which the Oxford Clay and the Coral Rag belong, and contains corals and shells that had passed into extinction long even ere the Tertiary period began; while in the cave itself, mixed with bones of the extinct mammals of the geologic age in immediate advance of the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... "Don't rag me, Avery! I've had a filthy time lately. And when I saw you cut and run at sight of me—I just couldn't stand it. I've been wanting to answer ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... letters, the name "Thunderbolt," which was in accordance with Tim Bunker's taste. She was pulled by eight oars, and the redoubtable leader of the gang sat in the stern-sheets as coxswain. Forward floated a blue cotton rag, with the letter "T" daubed upon it in white paint, and surrounded by half a dozen ill-shaped stars. At the stern was a ragged piece of bunting, which had once been the flag of the Republic, but which had been curtailed of nine of its stripes and a ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... in my life I nearly went to war on my own account, Shaw. We couldn't talk those fellows over. We couldn't bribe them, though the Frenchman offered the best he had, and I was ready to back him to the last dollar, to the last rag of cotton, Shaw! No use—they were that blamed respectable. So, says the Frenchman to me: 'My friend, if they won't take our gunpowder for a gift let us burn it to give them lead.' I was armed as you see now; six eight-pounders on the main deck and a long eighteen on the forecastle—and ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... neat and well kept. The first apartment, which opened from a tiny hall, served as sitting and dining room. Like most other French Canadian houses, Madame McAllister's was carpeted in all the rooms with a rag carpet of three colors—red, white and blue. This carpeting is extensively woven by the good nuns at Rimouski Convent, and is pretty and effective, besides having the advantage of ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... last fluttering rag vanished from sight, our lads, who had watched the latter part of this performance in silent wrath, turned to each ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... cleaning-rod through a couple of the chambers of the pistol before he spoke again. The rag jammed in the barrel and entailed a hard ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... de ghosts, whut name old Skull-an'-Bones, he place he hand on de head ob li'l black Mose, an' he hand feel like a wet rag, an' he say: ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... ammunition?) and professing to be quite ignorant of where they come from; marches of bodies of men across the island; concealment of ditto in the bush; the coming on and off of different chiefs; and such a mass of ravelment and rag-tag as the devil himself could ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... touch of sarcasm—only just enough to show how well she could have handled that weapon if she had chosen to fight with it—Rose calmly went her way, wetted a rag, and bound up her injured hand, and then drew the ale and carried it to ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... 'a tawdry tissue of tedious trumpery; a tessellated texture of threadbare thievery; a trifling transcript of trite twaddle and trapessing tittle-tattle.... Like everything that falls from her pen, it is pert, shallow, and conceited, a farrago of ignorance, indecency, and blasphemy, a tag-rag and bob-tail style of ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... dagger-like murderousness. Ranging in the hall of arms, there were two tattered banners that had gone through the Peninsular battles, one of them belonging to the gallant 42d Regiment. The armorer gave my wife a rag from each of these banners, consecrated by so much battle-smoke; also a piece of old oak, half burned to charcoal, which had been rescued from the panelling of the Douglas Tower. We saw better things, moreover, than all these rusty weapons ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... School for nothing; and MILLED away one, two, right and left—like a little hero as he is, with all his dear mother's spirit in him. First came a crack which sent a long dusky white hat—that looked damp and deep like a well, and had a long black crape-rag twisted round it—first came a crack which sent this white hat spinning over the gentleman's cab and scattered among the crowd a vast number of things which the cabman kept in it,—such as a ball of string, a piece ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... admission directed me to Buccleuch Place, a little off George Square; and here I found a wet rag of a crowd gathered about a couple of lanterns and a striped awning. Beneath the awning a panel of light fell on the plashy pavement. Already the guests were arriving. I whipped in briskly, presented my card, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Clan roared "Bellenden!" the Buchanans cried "Clare Innis," a rag of a hairy Highlander from the Lennox blew a wild skirl on the war- pipes, and hearing the Border slogan shouted in a strange country, nom Dieu! my blood burned, as that of any Scotsman would. Contrary to the Maid's desire, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... at the piano, used to such scenes, lulled the nerves of the company with a rag-time variation of "Oh, You Beautiful Doll," and Burke, the sergeant and Annie went out ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... deck, and there indeed was a change of days; for the sea was dark and tumbling mountain-high, and the white-horses were running down the valleys thereof, and the clouds drave low over all, and bore a scud of rain along with them; and though there was but a rag of sail on her, the ship flew before the wind, rolling a great wash of ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... of angels? Tinsel seraphs with paint on their cheeks, playing rag-time harps out of tune! There's a sickly slaver of sentiment over everything he touches that ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... muckle[obs3], well, indeed, very, very much, a deal, no end of, most, not a little; pretty, pretty well; enough, in a great measure, richly; to a large extent, to a great extent, to a gigantic extent; on a large scale; so; never so, ever so; ever so dole; scrap, shred, tag, splinter, rag, much; by wholesale; mighty, powerfully; with a witness, ultra[Lat], in the extreme, extremely, exceedingly, intensely, exquisitely, acutely, indefinitely, immeasurably; beyond compare, beyond comparison, beyond measure, beyond all bounds; incalculably, infinitely. [in a supreme degree] preeminently, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... very likely how Monsieur B. had made off without paying his bill, or how those trunks that Madame la Comtesse C. had left eighteen months ago, as a pledge of her return, had been opened at last, and been found to contain but old clothes, fit for the rag-market; how a few francs might be advantageously added on here and there in the bill for the rich English family at the premier; how the gentleman known as No. 5 was looked upon as a suspicious character; and how Pierre the waiter had been set to ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... well as by considering the imperfection of the goods on which man prides himself, according to Isa. 40:6, "All flesh is grass, and all the glory thereof as the flower of the field"; and farther on (Isa. 64:6), "all our justices" are become "like the rag of a ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... "You have to be a millionaire, don't you, and a great political bug, before they'd let you in? No place for poor soldiers! I have to be content with the Rag." ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... opened and a rather miserable-looking man shuffled out. There was a bloody rag on his head, and he seemed to have made more of an effort to escape than Koku described, for he appeared to have ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... don't you go home?" "Oh, Mr. Ranney," he said, "I wish I could, but I want to go back a little better than I am now." And God knows he was in bad shape; the clothes he had on you couldn't sell to a rag-man; ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney
... round a "pretty Poll," who scolded at them all. Mrs. Emerson was flitting like the spirit of a Lady Abbess in and out, in winged lace headdress and black silk. Your letter was a bomb of joy to me last evening.—I have taken heaps of your clothes to mend. What a rag-fair your closet was—and you did not tell me! Mrs. Alcott brought me some beer made of spruce only, and it was nice. Thou shalt have thy own beer, when you come home.—Bab went to see Mrs. Alcott, and I resumed weeding. At seven I heard thirteen ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... my first collision with the tenement. There was just one, and it stood over against the castle hill, separated from it only by the dry moat. We called it Rag Hall, and I guess it deserved the name. Ribe was a very old town. Five hundred years ago or so it had been the seat of the fighting kings, when Denmark was a power to be reckoned with. There they were handy when trouble ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... conjured up the scene that must have taken place if Pugsy had not mentioned his name and she had gone on into the inner room. In itself the thought that, after what she had said that morning on the island, after she had forced on him, stripping it of the uttermost rag of disguise, the realization of how his position appeared to her, he should have come, under orders, to bring her back, was well-nigh unendurable. But to have met him, to have seen the man she loved plunging still deeper into shame, would have been pain ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... lean witch-doctors, "Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle, Harry the uplands, Steal all the cattle, Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle, Bing. Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM," With a philosophic pause. A roaring, epic, rag-time tune From the mouth of the Congo To the Mountains of the Moon. Death is an Elephant, Shrilly and with a heavily accented metre. Torch-eyed and horrible, Foam-flanked and terrible. BOOM, steal the pygmies, BOOM, kill the Arabs, BOOM, kill ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... the old way; because she has happened to meet him in the garden in the old way; because he has taken her hand in the old way; because they have whispered to one another behind the old curtain (the gaping old rag, as if everybody could not peep through it!); because, in this delicious weather, they have happened to be early risers and go into the park; because dear Goody Jenkins in the village happened to ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... morning, however, our troubles began, since the friendly wind from the north grew steadily stronger, till at length it rose to a gale. Soon our little rag of canvas was torn away, but still we rushed on before the following seas at a very ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... the lounge was a light-stand, as they called it, and on it was a very brightly polished brass candlestick and a brass tray, with snuffers. That is all I remember of her describing, except that there was a braided rag rug on the floor, and on the wall was a beautiful flowered paper—roses and morning-glories in a wreath on a light-blue ground. The same paper was in the ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... three or four together, joining hands, dance slowly round and round, singing slowly rude rhymes describing marriage—and not over decent some of these rhymes are. She has no toys—not one in twenty such girls ever have a doll; or, if they do, it is but some stick dressed in a rag. Poor things! they need no artificial dolls; so soon as ever they can lift it, they are trusted with the real baby. Her parents probably do not mean to be unkind, and use makes this treatment bearable, but to an outsider it seems ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... BOY Naw, I don't want to play wringing no dish rag! We gointer play chick mah chick mah ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston
... gardens in seed-time to scare the sparrows. The gulls soon recover from their alarm, if they ever feel any; and it is somewhat suggestive of irony to watch a gull calmly wiping his beak on a piece of rag intended to scare him away. Whether meant as insulting or not, such conduct does not provoke the inhabitants to severe reprisals; the gulls are an institution of the place, to be grumbled at sometimes but always to be tolerated. And all the grumbling is not on one side, as one may ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... the front room on the second floor, peering through the blinds. It was the "best room." There was a very new rag carpet on the floor. The edges of it had been dyed with alternate stripes of red and green. Upon the wooden mantel there were two little puffy figures in clay—a shepherd and a shepherdess probably. A triangle ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... close together, were impatiently drumming with tin spoons on the wood. A haggard woman, in a soiled blue gingham dress, was bringing a pot of coffee from the adjoining room; and in one corner, on a sofa from which the stuffing sagged in bunches, a man sat staring vacantly at a hole in the rag carpet. Tied in a high chair, which stood apart as if it were the pedestal of an idol, a baby, with the smooth unlined face not of an infant, but of a philosopher, was mutely surveying ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... could have occurred to Emmy Lou that Billy had laid his cunning plans to this very end. Emmy Lou understood nothing of all this. She only pitied Billy. And presently, when public attention had become diverted, she proffered him the hospitality of a grimy little slate rag. When Billy returned the rag there was something in it—something wrapped in a beautiful, glazed, shining bronze paper. It was a candy kiss. One paid five cents for six of them ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... inking-balls. Between the logs of the wall near another corner a horizontal iron bar had been driven, and from the end of this bar hung a saucer-shaped iron lamp filled with bear-oil. Out of this oil stuck the end of a cotton rag for a wick; which, being set on fire, filled the room with a strong smell and a feeble, murky, flickering light. Under the lamp stood a plain oak slab on two pairs of crosslegs; and on the slab were papers and letters, a black ink-horn, some leaves of native tobacco, and a large gray-horn drinking-cup—empty. ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... impressed for a moment. His face was pale, and he had a blood-stained rag tied round his forehead, so that he looked very much as if he were a wounded hero returning after a brave fight to arrange terms of an honorable peace. But the cook, who heartily disapproved of admitting the boat ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... these men and women all the world over, in every stage of history, under every abuse of error, under every circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging to some rag of honor, the ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... feebly at his earnestness. "There is only one end," she whispered, and pointed to his picture. Clayton comprehended, and seizing a paint-rag would have ruined it, but ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... something very extraordinary about that albatross, father. I allowed you to suppose that I left it as it fell, but in reality I raised it to the deck of the canoe, and then perceived a piece of rag wound round one of its legs. This I removed, and, to my utter astonishment, saw English words written on it, which I plainly made out to be: 'Save an unfortunate Englishwoman ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... a great rogue, and there was very little dignity or soberness about him. He was brim-full of fun, and would play with anybody or anything that would allow him to take that liberty. He would amuse himself for hours with an old shoe or rag that he had found in the street, and it seemed as if he never would get tired of shaking, and tearing, and biting it. This disposition sometimes led him into mischief, in the house; but he was always so happy, so good-natured and so affectionate, that it was difficult to blame him ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... that he did not even know her name. Domini wondered suddenly how old he was. That look made him seem much older than he had seemed before. There was such an expression in his eyes as may sometimes be seen in eyes that look at a child who is kissing a rag doll with deep and determined affection. "Kiss your doll!" they seemed to say. "Put off the years when you must know that dolls can ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... Lieutenant Simmonds said. "We could show a rag of canvas outside now. We had best make a long leg out to sea, and then, when the wind goes down, we can ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... into a ball and flung it away into the bushes, where I daresay it is at this moment. "Away with you," I cried, "away with you, symbol of conventionality, of slavery, of pandering to a desire to please—away with you, miserable little lace-edged rag!" And so young had I grown within the last few minutes that I did not even ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... hardened the man's heart and embittered his nature. Strangers in distress, who appealed to the rich retired merchant for help, found in their excellent references to character the worst form of persuasion that they could have adopted. Paupers without a rag of reputation left to cover them, were the objects of charity whom Mr. Henley relieved. When he was asked to justify his conduct, he said: "I have a sympathy with bad characters—-I am one of ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... man who had captured the Wildcat. "Watch that rag-head Hindoo and that nigger in the fourth seat. He's gittin' bad, all the time mumblin' to himself about Lady Luck and Lily; he believes he's ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... next moment the tall bracken had closed on Whitefoot. Not the tremor of a leaf, not the swaying of a rag-weed told Patsy which way he had gone. In these days the very dogs had been trained to run invisibly and to bark under their breaths. The Traffic and the "press," but especially the latter, had silenced much of the immemorial ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... point that could give shelter to lurking foe, and all the time the brown muzzles of the carbines were trained low along the stream bed. No shot could now be thrown away at frowsy turban or flaunting rag along the cliffs. The rush was the one thing they had to dread and drive back. It was God's mercy the Apache dared not ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... in one paper—he proceeded to say—that a most difficult political situation had been avoided by the birth of this child, as there was no possible heir at all, and immense complications would ensue upon the death of the present ruler—the scurrilous rag even gave a resume of this ruler's dissolute life, and a broad hint that the child could in no case be his; but, as they pithily remarked, this added to the little prince's welcome in Ministerial circles, where the lady was greatly beloved and ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... A colored rag borne above troops and hoisted on forts and ships. It appears to serve the same purpose as certain signs that one sees and vacant lots in London—"Rubbish may ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... full well how he would be treated if the miser should return while he was there. So he replied, "Mother, language has no words to describe the miseries they are undergoing in the other world. They have not a rag of clothing, and for the last six days they have eaten nothing, and have lived on water only. It would break your heart to see them." The rogue's pathetic words deceived the good woman, who firmly believed ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... has minute rules for leading out animals on the Sabbath: An ass may go out with his pack saddle if it was tied on before the Sabbath, but not with a bell or a yoke; a camel may go out with a halter, but not with a rag tied to his tail; a string of camels may be led if the driver takes all the halters in his hand, and does not twist them, but they must not be tied to one another—and so on for pages. If, then, these sticklers for rigid observance of the Sabbath admitted that a beast's ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... grateful," Alyosha interrupted suddenly, "if you could give me a clean rag to bind up my finger with. I have hurt it, and it's ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the favored candidate, Sappy Westlake? Yep, big as life, with his slick, pale hair, his long legs, and his woodeny face! Looked like his admission card must have been punched for eight P.M., or else he'd been asked for dinner. Anyway, he was right on the ground, thumpin' out a new rag on the piano, and enjoyin' the full glare of the limelight. The only other entry I ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... whatever the cause, it is certain that even for the most secular types of our own time their relation to their native land has become not contractual but sacramental. We may say that flags are rags, that frontiers are fictions, but the very men who have said it for half their lives are dying for a rag, and being rent in pieces for a fiction even as I write. When the battle-trumpet blew in 1914 modern humanity had grouped itself into nations almost before it knew what it had done. If the same sound is heard a thousand ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... may be passed to-morrow changing the whole thing by demonetizing one or remonetizing the other; and the government finally opens a junk-shop, and is engaged actively in the "second-hand" trade, or is in sharp competition with the rag-picker. And our great political educators fall to wrangling about a proposition, that could be paralleled only by some phenomenal crank beating up recruits for a new party upon a platform that all yard-sticks must be made of hickory wood, and he shall be deemed a counterfeiter who dares to use any ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... cast into outer darkness where there is gnashing of teeth—the doctrine of art for art's sake which the advanced young leaders of the new generation assure me is hopelessly out of date. Pretence of any kind was as the red rag; "bleat" was the unpardonable sin; the man who was "human" was the man to be praised. I would not pretend to say who invented this meaning for the word "human." Perhaps Louis Stevenson. As far back as 1880, in a letter from Davos ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... out a rag which he called a "hangkercher,"—it had served to carry bait that morning,—and was making use of its best corner to dry the tears which were running down his cheeks. The whole village was proud of Euthymia, and with these more quiet signs of grief were ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... As a cotton rag placed near fire becomes burnt, so the heart of Hira became ever more inflamed by the remarkable beauty of Debendra. Many a time Hira's virtue and good name would have been endangered by passion, ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... went over to trim the candle, then drew up a chair without a back, a coarse rag doing the duty of a wicker bottom. The legs of the chair squeaked. War Paint's black horse snorted and whirled its crupper in wide circles. Luis Cervantes ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... A rag, a mock at first,—erelong When men have bled and women wept, To guard its precious folds from wrong, Even they who shrunk, even they who slept, Shall leap to bless it and to save. Strike! for the brave revere ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... for perusal by inexperienced and unsophisticated young ladies. Some of this literature is actually too vile for any one to read, and if written to-day by any poet of note would cause his works to be committed to the stove and the rag-bag ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... an hour. His Altitude the Prince sails at once for Cherson, and with a view to his immediate marriage. Was ever such a rash step heard of? Not twenty-four hours to get ready the marriage equipment of a Prince of Bosphorus. Well, well, I dare say they would be glad enough to take him with no rag to his back. I dare say these rascally republicans would know no better if he were to be married in his ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... are often carelessly exposed to cold water and inclement weather. Very cold water should never be used to bathe the ears and nostrils. Bathe moderately and gently in lukewarm water, using a wash-rag in preference to a sponge; dry gently and thoroughly. Children's ears are often rudely washed, especially in the auditory canal. This is not at all necessary to cleanliness, and may result in ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... water," he said, "a bowl, and some soft rag—that is all. By the time that is ready I shall be. You will have to hold his leg, Godfrey," he went on as the Buriat returned to his tent. "You must hold it just under the knee as firmly as possible, so as to prevent the slightest movement. But I am going to ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... the boys sing the rag-time, but this must not be the only side of the picture. They sing the old hymns, too, and memories of nights "down the line," when I have heard them in small groups and in great crowds singing the old, old hymns of the church, have burned ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... "Unseen Spirits," stories, and works of a more or less fugitive character, with such titles as Pencillings by the Way (1835), Inklings of Adventure, Letters from under a Bridge (1839), People I have Met, The Rag-Tag, The Slingsby Papers, etc., some of which were originally contributed to his magazines. He travelled a good deal in Europe, and was attached for a time to the American Embassy in Paris. He was a favourite in society, and enjoyed a wide popularity in uncritical circles, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... yourself up.... If anybody's to blame in this business, I don't think it's Tewfick—he's done the handsome thing by her—but the fool Frenchman who took his baby and his wife into the desert, and it's too late to rag him. Cheer up, old top, and forget it. There's nothing more ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... hide A sigh that he converted to a laugh. He seemed to hang rather than stand there, half Ghost-like, half like a beggar's rag, clean wrung And useless on the brier where it has hung Long years a-washing by sun and ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... 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
... thou thread, thou thimble, Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail, Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket, thou:— Brav'd in mine own house with a skein of thread! Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant; Or I shall so be-mete thee with thy yard, As thou shalt think on prating whilst thou liv'st." SHAK.: Taming of the Shrew, Act ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... made old and hopeless with unshed tears, stupid from sleepless nights, haunted with memories of all they had looked upon since His Excellency marched out of the city to the south of us, where the red rag now fluttered on fort and shipping from ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... pleasant hour pulling Dawson to pieces and leaving to him not a rag of virtue, except intense professional zeal. We exchanged experiences of him, those of the chief assistant being particularly rich and highly flavoured. It appeared that Dawson when off duty loved to occupy the platform at meetings ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... back every word I said yesterday about letting you off from being interviewed. I agreed to wait, but it's up to you. Every rag in town'll have some kind of feature about you next Sunday, and you wouldn't ask me to see the Star beaten? You'd better come right now to the Star photographer, or—see last night's papers?— you'll wish you'd never been born. I ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... remember Biddy O'Dolan, the little rag-picker and ash girl who found Lily De Koven's broken doll in the ash-can that cold winter's morning? I have not forgotten my promise to tell ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... rhythm unparalleled. Of this the long rag is their instrument. They draw it once or twice across the shoe to set the key and then they go into a swift and pattering melody. If there is an unusual genius in the bootblack—some remnant of ancient ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... detailed for guard-duty, walks off; his voice grows fainter and fainter in the distance, and we call forth our poet. One eye is bandaged with a dirty cotton rag. He is bareheaded, and his hair resembles a dismantled straw stack. His elbows and knees are out, and his pants, from the knee down, have a brown-toasted tinge imparted by the genial heat of many a fire. His toes protrude themselves prominently from his shoes. You would say, "What a dirty, ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... of rag from a satchel containing sewing materials, tore off a strip, which, like everything else, was tinged red, and proceeded to bind up ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... induce us to believe him guilty. Nothing was ever written more detestable in matter and manner. The narrations, the reflections, the jokes, the lamentations, are all the very worst of their respective kinds, at once trite and affected, threadbare tinsel from the Rag Fairs and Monmouth Streets of literature. A foolish schoolboy might write such a piece, and, after he had written it, think it much finer than the incomparable introduction of the Decameron. But that a shrewd statesman, whose earliest works are characterised by manliness of thought and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with it, is, to take some of the Blood upon a Rag, and put some of the Powder upon the Blood, then keep only the Wound clean, with a clean Linnen about it, and in a moderate Temper betwixt hot and cold, and wrap up the Rag with the Blood, and keep it either in your Pocket, ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... farinaceous diet? It came over him with some force that his opinions would not yield interest, and the evaporation of this pleasing hypothesis made him feel like a man in an open boat, at sea, who should just have parted with his last rag ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... shipmate!" says he, drawing me out of the wind. "Look yonder, d'ye see aught of a rag o' sail, Martin?" Following his pointing finger, I stared away into the distance across a tumbling spume of waters vague in the half-light. "D'ye glimpse ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... and held her little trembling hands fast in his cool grasp, while the letter that Holroyd had written in Ceylon with such wild secret hopes flared away to a speckled grey rag, and floated lightly up the chimney. 'Too late now, Dolly!' he said, with a ring of triumph in his voice. 'You would only have blistered those pretty little fingers of yours, my child. And now,' he said, indicating the scrap of paper which bore the stamp, 'if you'll take my advice, ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... ground-floor was one hundred and fifty feet long by forty broad; rows of pillars on each side were loaded to the most outrageous extent with carving and gilding, and the ceiling was to match; below that was another room, a little smaller, and rather less gaudy; both were crowded with the most tag-rag ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... 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
... frivolous at this moment, Maurice, you can be frivolous for ever," says his mother, weeping (presumably) behind her little lace rag, her voice like ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... heat their snow igloos, and in treeless regions their igloosoaks also, with lamps of hollowed stone. These lamps are made in the form of a half moon. Seal oil is used as fuel, and a rag, if there is any to be had, or moss, resting upon the straight side of the lamp, ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... her carefully in a miserable hut, and watched beside her. I opened her clinched teeth with a small wooden wedge and inserted a wet rag, upon which I dropped water to moisten her tongue, which was dry as fur. The unfeeling brutes that composed the native escort were yelling and dancing as though all were well, and I ordered their chief at once to return with them ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... dilapidated and gaunt, let out for the most part in flats and tenements. Screaming children swarmed naked and entirely unconcerned upon every landing, and out on the verandas that gave publicity to the way of life in the native quarter. Sometimes a rag of curtain covered the entrances to the houses, but just as often it did not. Women washed the big brass and earthenware pots, cooked the food, and played with the children in the smoky darkness, or sat to watch the evening show of ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie |
