"Ragged" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... till all was still again, then crept, cat-like, along the rock-foot, and hit, at length, the track up which a while before had fled Killer and victim. Up that ragged way he crawled on hands and knees. The perspiration rolled off his face; one elbow brushed the rock perpetually; one hand plunged ever and anon into that naked ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... taking the command. The whole force in Navarre consisted but of nine hundred men—peasants for the most part, many without arms, others with old and unserviceable ones; yet was the colonelcy of this ragged and badly equipped regiment an object of competition. Iturralde, who held it, refused to give it up, although—with the exception of Juan Echevarria, the priest of Los Arcos, who afterwards made his name infamous for his crimes and excesses—all the officers and influential ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... contraction which no ordinary convulsion can imitate, which no illness gives, but which says to the physician, "Go your ways!" and is, as it were, a standard which Death plants on his conquests. He clutched in one hand his pen, his poor last pen, inky and ragged, in the other a crust of his last piece of bread. His legs knocked together, so as to make the crazy bed crackle. I listened carefully to his hard breathing; I heard the rattle with its hollow husk; and I recognised Death ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... it being somewhat troublesome to carry to the canoes, we thought to have made these men to have carry'd it for us, and therefore we gave them some clothes; to one an old pair of breeches, to another a ragged shirt, to a third a jacket that was scarce worth owning. We put them on, thinking that this finery would have brought them to work heartily for us; and our water being filled in small, long barrels, about six gallons in each, we brought these our ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... sayd he had 3 things to tell them, the first thing he know and they know it not, and this was that under his gown he had a pair of ragged breitches; the 2d thing they know and he know it not, and this was, whither they would give him new ones or no; the thrid thing nether of us knows, and that is the true meaning of thir words: and thus out of the ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... and shivered. The inquiry into rare cases of disease after vaccination had been interesting work, which, whatever deductions people might choose to draw, in fact committed me to nothing. But to become one of the ragged little regiment of medical dissenters, to swallow all the unscientific follies of the anti-vaccination agitators, to make myself responsible for and to promulgate their distorted figures and wild statements—ah! ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... the hill behind it are rough with ragged pine-woods, and, below, the banks shelve to the river with a broken scattering of deciduous trees, that leave on the eye the chill impression of leafless branches tangled against a background of grey and ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... declaration of his submission to the royal authority. Copies of it were dispersed through the country, after which numbers flocked in daily, to make their peace and obtain protection. The contrast between the splendid appearance of the pursuing army, and that of the ragged Americans who were flying before them, could not fail to nourish the general opinion that the contest was approaching ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... skin and bone, was seen approaching us at a foot's pace. Trembling, and drooping its head, it scanned us, as it drew level, with a round black eye, and snorted. Upon that, its rider pushed back a ragged fur cap, glanced warily in our direction, and ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... all the inconsequential sawmills and trees and telegraph poles that were turning around him so fast. Outside it played its heavy tremolo over olive roads and fallow cotton-fields, back of which ran a ragged line of woods broken with eminences of gray rock. The foreground was dotted sparsely with wretched, ill-patched shanties, among which there would flash by, now and then, a specimen of the languid yokelry of South Carolina, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... forest. So, at a bound, she left the discretion and the cheerful lamps of Palace evenings; ceased utterly to be a sovereign lady; and, falling from the whole height of civilisation, ran forth into the woods, a ragged Cinderella. ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that constitutes the true wealth of states, Spain was poor indeed. Her treasury was empty; her arsenals were unfurnished; her ships were so rotten that they seemed likely to fly asunder at the discharge of their own guns. Her ragged and starving soldiers often mingled with the crowd of beggars at the doors of convents, and battled there for a mess of pottage and a crust of bread. Russell underwent those trials which no English commander whose hard fate it has been to cooperate with ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... or three ragged, super-annuated soldiers, dozing on a stone bench, the successors of the Zegris and the Abencerrages; while a tall, meagre valet, whose rusty-brown cloak was evidently intended to conceal the ragged state of his nether garments, was lounging in the sunshine and gossipping ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... to be a hundred) caws lustily from the bare white branches of a big sycamore, that queer anomaly of the forest which disrobes itself for the winter. The merry chickadees divide their time between the rustling, ragged bark of the red birches and the withered heads of heath-aster and blue vervain below. In the one they get the meat portion of their midday meal, and in the other the cereal foods. No wonder they are ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... publication, entitled, "Ragged and Industrial School Rhymes," appeared in 1854, and has well sustained his reputation. Imbued with a keen perception of the beautiful and pleasing, alike in the natural and moral world, his poetry is marked by refinement of thought, elegance of expression, and an earnest devotedness. In social ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... lung were pervious to air and emphysematous, but the greater part was disorganized, and contained carbonaceous matter in a solid and fluid state. The left lung was light and flaccid, when compared to the right. The upper lobe was extensively excavated. The parenchymatous substance was found ragged and unrespirable, and many large blood-vessels crossing from either side of the cavity, pervious to blood. With the aid of the magnifier, a variety of open-mouthed bronchial twigs and minute blood-vessels were visible, communicating with the cavity. The upper part of ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... apothecary's shop. When a certain number of grosses of pots had attained this pitch of perfection, I was to paste on each a printed label, and then go on again with more pots. Two or three other boys were kept at similar duty down-stairs on similar wages. One of them came up, in a ragged apron and a paper cap, on the first Monday morning, to show me the trick of using the string and tying the knot. His name was Bob Fagin; and I took the liberty of using his name, long ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... the Splendor. Deep distress and hesitation Mingled with his adoration; Should he go or should he stay? Should he leave the poor to wait Hungry at the convent gate, Till the Vision passed away? Should he slight his radiant guest, Slight this visitant celestial, For a crowd of ragged, bestial Beggars at the convent gate? Would the Vision there remain? Would the Vision come again? Then a voice within his breast Whispered, audible and clear As if to the outward ear "Do thy duty; that is best; Leave unto ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... Y's stand a gaudy chance. He won't get any further than the C's in THIS world, and I reckon that after a good deal of eternity has wasted away in the next one, I'll still be referred to up there as "that poor, ragged pilot that came here from St. Louis in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... as the Earl of Warwick reached London, he proceeded at once to the Tower to release old King Henry from his confinement. He found the poor king in a wretched plight. His apartment was gloomy and comfortless, his clothing was ragged, and his person squalid and dirty. The earl brought him forth from his prison, and, after causing his personal wants to be properly attended to, clothed him once more in royal robes, and conveyed him in state through London to the palace in Westminster, ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... on Wednesday evening, Letty with her, and in a telescope basket her costume—a simple affair. A plaid shawl borrowed from the washerwoman, a ragged scrubbing skirt borrowed from the charwoman, and a gray wig rented from a costumer for twenty-five cents a night, completed the outfit; for Edna had elected to be an old Irishwoman singing broken-heartedly after ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... was a poor ragged chap, without any shoes to his feet; but he had a jaunty devil-me-care air, and such a pleasant smile and merry twinkle about the corners of his mouth, that I could not help taking a fancy to him, at once hoping that we ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... life, of fine dinners at restaurants, gay excursions to Joinville-le-Pont, and masked balls at Montparnasse or the Elysee Montmartre. Ah! experience is quickly gained in these work-shops. Sometimes those who went off at night with ragged dresses and worn-out shoes, returned the next morning in superb toilettes to say that they resigned their situations, as they were not made for work, and intended to live like ladies. They departed radiant, but often before a month ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... a philanthropist, born at Exeter, daughter of Dr. Lant Carpenter, Unitarian minister; took an active part in the establishment of reformatory and ragged schools, and a chief promoter of the Industrial Schools Act; her philanthropic efforts extended to India, which, in her zeal, she visited four times, and she was the founder of the National ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the strife was ended which made dim The orb I rule, and shook the solid stars, The terrors of his eye illumined heaven With sanguine light, through the thick ragged skirts 5 Of the victorious darkness, as he fell: Like the last glare of day's red agony, Which, from a rent among the fiery clouds, Burns far along ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... included in the conscription, Fernand, and are only at liberty on sufferance, liable at any moment to be called upon to take up arms. Once a soldier, what would you do with me, a poor orphan, forlorn, without fortune, with nothing but a half-ruined hut and a few ragged nets, the miserable inheritance left by my father to my mother, and by my mother to me? She has been dead a year, and you know, Fernand, I have subsisted almost entirely on public charity. Sometimes you pretend I am useful ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is distinctly uncomfortable. The medical orderly thinking that I should lose consciousness and seeing the commandant enter the room, explained the circumstances and asked if he might give me a little brandy. After due consideration and much chewing at the ragged end of his eternal cigar, he replied that as water would be given to a wounded German soldier, it was good enough for me. Though I pretended not to hear, these remarks impressed me considerably. The N.C.O. looked after me very well, and ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... continually issuing from the press at Seville; the other day it was stated that his army had been utterly defeated, himself killed, and that 1200 prisoners were on their way to Seville. I saw these prisoners; instead of 1200 desperadoes, they consisted of about twenty poor lame ragged wretches, many of them boys from fourteen to sixteen years of age; they were evidently camp-followers, who, unable to keep up with the army, had been picked up straggling in the plains and amongst the hills. It now appears that ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... George Sand's first tale of exclusively peasant-life, is usually considered her masterpiece in this genre. It was suggested to her, she tells us, by Holbein's dismal engraving of death coming to the husbandman, an old, gaunt, ragged, over-worked representative of his tribe—grim ending to a life of ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... showed what an enormous strain was brought upon them, and almost any other person detecting the rasping of the ragged edges of iron against each other would have started back appalled, believing that everything was about to fly apart. But it was precisely what the mate expected, and what was inevitable under the circumstances. Then, at his request, the ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... figure as a "down and out," made many amusing statements. "By the way I look in these ragged clothes, you might take me for a Democrat, but I'm a red ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... and narrow; banked its whole length by benches that had once been covered with red velvet, but now showed torn patches and the protruding wool of the stuffing. Mirrors were raised from the dado of the ragged seats to the frieze of the smoke-blackened ceiling; but they were for the most part cracked, and some had lost much of their glass. The accommodation for drinkers consisted of marble-topped tables, old and worn and ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... witnesses was full of people, mostly inmates from Helenenthal. In one corner stood a small party of beggars, a woman with a bloated face, a gay red shawl tied round her waist, in which a little baby slept. A little troop of ragged children were clinging to the folds of her dress. They scratched their heads or secretly pinched each other. This was the family of the accused, who wished to state that their father had been at ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... a Franciscan friar, on a journey to Ancona, having lost his way, sought direction from a wretched lad keeping hogs—deserted, forlorn, his back smarting with severe stripes, and his eyes suffused with tears. The poor ragged boy not only went cheerfully with him to point out his road, but besought the monk to take him into his convent, volunteering to fulfill the most degrading services, in the hope of procuring a little learning, and escaping from 'those filthy hogs.' How incredulously would the friar ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... days later a middle-aged, ragged fellow, with a grinding organ, arrived at the inn, and called for a glass. In the guest-room were the "packmen," and some equally wild-looking girls. The grinding organ was put in requisition, and to its strains they danced till past midnight, when Babinsky himself entered and ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... lived near together, and they had been cronies from their earliest school-days. Two of them were usually well dressed; and the others were somewhat ragged, and considerably patched, showing the efforts of their protectors to keep them decent. They had all been to school up to the present time, and now it was vacation; and the next thing to be decided by their friends was what should be done with them. ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... awoke to the realization that she was a woman. It was a smoky one in November, the first cool day of autumn. The sunset was dimmed by the smoke of burning prairies, the air was full of the ashes of grass and reeds, ragged urchins were lugging home sticks of cordwood, and when a bit of coal fell from a cart in front of Kookoo's old house, a child was boxed half across the street and robbed of the booty by a blanchisseuse de fin ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... haze for some defect of vision; but gathering and gaining body rapidly, and rising a certain height clear from the ground, then seeming to hover, a thick cloud poised between earth and sky, not touching either, but drawn horizontally over the fields like a pall with ragged edges through which the trees showed in blurred outline, their leaves dripping miserably with an intermittent patter of uncertain drops as the moisture collected upon them and fell, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... one to whom, to use the common phrase, dirt would not stick. His face was clean and fair, his hands smooth, and his hair in order after rough and tumble experiences that sent his companions home begrimed, ragged, and unkempt frights. To-night, he had ridden a dozen miles in the teeth of the storm, and made no pause before appearing before his wife and sister, except to lay off his hat and overcoat in the hall. But had he expected ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... What a pity, sure! It war a plumb mistake, Copenny," plained an elder man, whose rifle had not been fired. There was a regretful cadence in his voice akin to tears, and he held his long, ragged red beard in one hand as he peered down ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... again, anxiously hoping that my contraband had not been too hastily spirited away. Just as night fell there came a tap, and opening, I saw Robert literally "clothed and in his right mind." The Doctor had replaced the ragged suit with tidy garments, and no trace of that tempestuous night remained but deeper lines upon the forehead and the docile look of a repentant child. He did not cross the threshold, did not offer me his hand,—only took off his cap, saying, with a traitorous falter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... sandbank, we had a view of all that was going on in the plain below. There was our friend at the wicket, with his coat off, and the grey spectacles on, in an attitude which it must have taken him some study to accomplish, and Bill, with the ball in his hand, vociferating "Plaiy." A ragged urchin behind the wicket, attempting to bag the balls as Dawson missed them in what had once been a hat, and Sholto looking on with an air of mystification, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... Islands, Bimini, Cat Island, Exuma, Freeport, Fresh Creek, Governor's Harbour, Green Turtle Cay, Harbour Island, High Rock, Inagua, Kemps Bay, Long Island, Marsh Harbour, Mayaguana, New Providence, Nichollstown and Berry Islands, Ragged Island, Rock Sound, Sandy Point, San Salvador and ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... said Jesse Wilcox, the youngest of the three boys who stood now at the ragged railway station of Athabasca Landing, where they had just disembarked, "here we are once more. For my part, I'm ready ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... women no style such as relieves the commonplace rash of the New York streets. The Berliners are plain and ill dressed, both men and women, and even the little children are plain. Every one is ill dressed, but no one is ragged, and among the undersized homely folk of the lower classes there is no such poverty-stricken shabbiness as shocks and insults the sight in New York. That which distinctly recalls our metropolis is the lofty passage ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... bell for you, ye ragged few; A beggar goes a-wedding; The people sneer, the thing's so queer, And tears the ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... sharply at the ragged youth before him and then put his feet back into the stirrups again and settled himself firmly in the saddle. He felt safer there. "I'll be even with you for that," said he. "You shan't catch any quail in these woods this winter. I'll break ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... absolute necessity, or more of the nerve poison would enter her system. But her heart couldn't stop. The brain can only stand a few seconds of that. I hadn't let it miss three beats. Even as I carried her from the casino, I lifted the main coronary muscle and started a ragged pumping, maybe forty beats a minute. Once in the smaller room I began artificial ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... moved to take my last views of the Moon. For ragged and jagged cliffs of almost total barrenness, and yawning chasms lined with intolerable precipices, the Moon outrivals the Earth. I took a passing glimpse of the famous crater-mountains, called by our astronomers Copernicus and Theophilus, ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... the Plaza and a night air that occasionally flared the smoky lamps. The clerk's voice was droning away at some routine when the outer door opened and a most extraordinary quartette entered the chamber. Three of these were the ordinary, ragged, discouraged, emaciated, diseased "bums," only too common in that city. In early California a man either succeeded or he failed into a dark abyss of complete discouragement; the new civilization had little use for weaklings. The fourth man can be no better ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... neither awkward nor one whit abashed upon his entree into a sphere so entirely new to him as a well-ordered, handsomely furnished house. Once inside the parlor, Jud had lost courage and stood fumbling his ragged cap, but Nib had bounced forward, in the best of good spirits, barking in friendly recognition of Miss Barholm's greeting caress, and licking her hand. Through Nib, Anice contrived to inveigle Jud into conversation and make him forget his overwhelming confusion. Catching her first ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of the committee to see a poor sick woman who is in awful destitution. There are three small children, and when she is well she goes out washing. They send her driftwood and old stuff from the ship-yards, and one of the companies pays her rent. But you should see the things! Such ragged quilts that hardly hold together, and one little boy was without stockings. There are so many things up in the garret that you ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... most German plains; mean little hamlets, which are full of litter when you enter them, lie sprinkled about; little church-spires (like suffragans to Chotusitz spire, which is near you); a ragged untrimmed country: beyond the Brook, towards the Dobrowa, two or more miles from Chotusitz, is still noticeable: something like a Deer-park, with umbrageous features, bushy clumps, and shadowy vestiges of a Mansion, the one ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... length, but had cut them off of various lengths, taking care however not to have any of them too short. The result was that the ends of the wires projected to various distances above the board, presenting a ragged and unworkmanlike appearance. ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... our new maid came, on the supposition that Miss Woodbourne took care of her own clothes, she never touched them; and as Margaret's work was not endowed with the fairy power of lasting for ever, I soon grew as ragged as any ragged-robin in the hedge. Mamma used to complain of my slovenliness, but I am afraid I was naughty enough to take advantage of her gentleness, and out-argue her; so things grew worse and worse, till at last, one fatal day, Papa was aware of ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the young Englishman hardly fit for human beings to live in. Indeed, from the hordes of wretched curs which barked after the heels of his horse, Edward might have supposed them meant to serve as kennels—save, that is, for the ragged urchins who sprawled in the mud of the road and the old women who, distaff in hand, dashed out to rescue them from being trampled upon ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... came upon a stagnant ditch, The slippery sloping banks of which More varied blossoms line; Some ragged-robins baby spies, Stretches his hands, and crows and cries, Plain ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... fourth day I came to a wild locality among the Ragged Mountains, where there was not a human being nor a house to be seen. I had got up before breakfast was ready that morning, and I was quite anxious to see the smoke curling up from some kitchen chimney. Here, ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... sudden blows with a ragged stick, And one with a heavy stone, One hurried gash with a hasty knife, And then the deed was done: There was nothing lying at my feet, But ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... fierce tirades against snobbery and hustle him out of the house to amuse himself with half-a-dozen little girls looking after a dozen babies in dilapidated perambulators, and countless smaller boys and girls ragged and grubby ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... could see that the French army was breaking up. The columns and squadrons which had stood so squarely all day were now all ragged at the edges; and where there had been thick fringes of skirmishers in front, there were now a spray of stragglers in the rear. The Guard thinned out in front of us as we pushed on, and we found twelve guns looking us in the face, but we were over them in a moment; and I saw ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I am turn'd to clay, Shall duly to her grave repair, And pluck the ragged moss away, And weeds that have ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... of Hanging Rock. Not less generous than brave, steady on the march, and true on the field, he voluntarily carried the gold to his commanding general, and requested him to use it in the purchase of clothing and shoes for his ragged and suffering fellow-soldiers. It is needless to say that this brave and meritorious officer faithfully applied it according to the request of the ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... we call him, the scribe, was the mainspring of all this machinery. We come across him in all grades of the staff: an insignificant registrar of oxen, a clerk of the Double White Storehouse, ragged, humble, and badly paid, was a scribe just as much as the noble, the priest, or the king's son. Thus the title of scribe was of no value in itself, and did not designate, as one might naturally think, a savant educated in a school of high culture, or a man of the world, versed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... visitors stood looking at the great staring-eyed, one-horned beast, the place was quite well, and but for the one-sided appearance given to him by the ragged stump having been sawn short off, there was no trace of the feat he had performed in ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... ugly and as insolent, but lodged on Snow Hill, and tricked out in second-hand finery for the Hampstead ball; an old woman, all wrinkles and rouge, flirting her fan with the air of a miss of seventeen, and screaming in a dialect made up of vulgar French and vulgar English; a poet lean and ragged, with a broad Scotch accent. By degrees these shadows acquired stronger and stronger consistence; the impulse which urged Frances to write became irresistible; and the result was the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to the farm-house where they had been born, the sun was sinking behind the ragged spears of the mountain-top, and its last fires were mirrored in the lake whose name was like an ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... sometimes seek to abridge the tedium and length of his stay at Rome, by episodes of lark-shooting at Subiaco, or by looking after wild-boars at Ostia; and some, to whom hunting was indispensable, would hire dogs and make them chase each other, while they harked on the ragged pack, on the best hacks they could procure for the purpose. This, however, which might have proved excellent sport had the dogs always chosen to run properly, was oft-times tried and relinquished, in consequence of a practical ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Jim he straddled the bow to dig through the fog with his eyes and watch out for danger ahead. We went along a steady gait, but not very fast, and the fog got solider and solider, so solid that Jim looked dim and ragged and smoky through it. It was awful still, and we talked low and was anxious. Now and then ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was one, but she was a poor ragged thing, of no account, and fit for nothing in the world ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... back door was a large vacant piece of ground, a wilderness of cans, bottles, packing boxes, broken barrels. On one corner, diagonally across from where Morgan stood, facing on the other street, a ragged, weathered tent was pitched. Out of this the sound of contending children came, the strident, commanding voice of a woman breaking sharply to still the commotion that shook her unstable home. Morgan knew this must be the home of the cattle ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... door, "Walk in, gentlemen; I've a nice clean room and boiling hot water"—for the seamen used to come in to take tea, drink, and smoke; and so did the old pensioners occasionally, for my mother had made acquaintance with several of them. I was always very ragged and dirty, for my mother neglected and ill-treated me. As soon as my sister was born she turned all her affections over to Virginia, who was always very much petted, well dressed, ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... it in the North. By the canal road between the Venern and Vigen, on the bare, dry rocky plain there stood, like beauty's thistles in that poor landscape, a couple of beggar-boys, so ragged, so tattered, so picturesquely dirty, that we thought we had Callot's originals before us, or that it was an arrangement of some industrious parents, who would awaken the traveller's attention and benevolence. Nature does not form such things: there was ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... the forts for the defence of the Thames. During this quiet and uneventful period of routine work he devoted his spare time to the poor and sick of the neighborhood, stinting himself that he might have larger means wherewith to relieve others. He took special interest in the infirmary and the ragged schools. He took many of the boys from the schools into his own house, starting them in life by sending them to sea, and he continued to watch the future progress of his kings, as he called them, with ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... account. Another reason is that signs were taken from the armorial bearings, or crests, of some popular character, or of some great family in the neighbourhood. For example, I may mention "The Bear with the Ragged Staff," which was the crest of Richard Nevil, Earl of Warwick, commonly called "The Kingmaker," who was slain in the battle of Barnet, 1471 A.D. "The Blue Boar" was one of the badges of the House of York. "The Bull" is a very common sign, because it was a very ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... servant, a fellow quite like a savage. I must observe here, that in Sky there seems to be much idleness; for men and boys follow you, as colts follow passengers upon a road. The usual figure of a Sky-boy, is a lown with bare legs and feet, a dirty kilt, ragged coat and waistcoat, a bare head, and a stick in his hand, which, I suppose, is partly to help the lazy rogue to walk, partly to serve as a kind of a defensive weapon. We walked what is called two miles, but is probably four, from the castle, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... tree, because when egg-laying time comes it cuts a long slit in the trees in which to lay its eggs. Just a minute!" The old man shifted the position of the baker, and out came such a good odor of cookies that all the children sniffed with delight. "Here, Jack," he said, to a brown little fellow in ragged clothes and bare feet, "you have a ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... objects of interest, however, soon gave way before another, to the contemplation of which every eye was turned. This was a small fishing-boat, which, with a low mast and ragged piece of canvas was seen standing boldly out for us; a red handkerchief was fastened to a stick in the stern, as if for a signal, and on our shortening sail, to admit of her overtaking us, the ensign was lowered, as though in acknowledgment ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... in the last days of Greece. In fact then the darlings of the gilded world struck attitudes of abandon in order to look like the Spartans. They refused to cut their hair and they would not wash their hands, and even boasted of their ragged clothes after fist fights in the streets. ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... lines, one up either wall, which have never been swept away since the clock was sold for drink. A couch-chair extends under the window the whole length, but one of its arms is gone, and the stump which supported it thrusts up its ragged top to wound any hand that may incautiously rest there; the couch itself is but a tumbled mass of rags and straw. A table, nearly as dilapidated, and foul with countless beer-stains, stands before the fire, which is the only cheerful thing in the house, and blazes away as ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... drew on, and they made their sad preparations for it by huddling together as closely as they could, to keep alive the little warmth that remained in their bodies, and covering themselves with the few ragged garments that were left. Happily the weather was more moderate, and they hoped to be able to get through the night; but worn out as they were, the ravings of some of their companions banished sleep from the eyes of the rest. In the middle of the night they were unexpectedly hailed by the ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... place where Ridge landed on the coast, the way to it was so obstructed, first by swamps and dense forests, and later by wooded hills and swollen streams, that evening shadows were closing in when Ridge and his ragged escort came within sight of its low roofs. On the still air were borne to their ears at the same moment the clear notes of Spanish bugles ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... go, you find the best women, in and out of the churches, all absorbed in establishing or maintaining benevolent or reform institutions; charitable societies, soup-houses, ragged schools, industrial schools, mite societies, mission schools—at home and abroad—homes and hospitals for the sick, the aged, the friendless, the foundling, the fallen; asylums for the orphans, the blind, the deaf and dumb, the insane, the inebriate, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... pushed west—so tahsome. We climbed a little narrow track up a mountain, in a light buggy that a goldminer lent us. Oh, of course, you'll think us mad, Meta, but, do you know, we actually found the world's edge, a place with no horizon; we looked between ragged pine trees, and saw over the shoulders of great old violet mountains—we saw right down into the stars for ever.... There was a tower of rocks—rose-red rocks in sloping layers—sunny hot by day, my dears, and a great shelter by night. You know, the little ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... both; for my albatross can't arrange the details of its partnership, sell out some investments in order to pay the money down, and join us again before Chester. There I shall certainly hear from you; and I have such infinite faith in your dove-like serpentineness, that I let myself cling to the ragged edge of hope. Meanwhile, I shall enjoy myself as much as I possibly can, so that, at worst, I shall have more good days to remember when bad days come. For the days will be very bad indeed if I have to bear Sir Lionel's silent scorn, and still remain ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... of the year is stirring in the trees whose tops begin to redden, and in the brown pastures where watchful eyes can already see the green. The joy of the season is singing in a million bluebirds' and robins' throats; the cocks crow gayly; the caw of the big black crow flapping overhead with ragged wing has a cheery tone. All living creatures feel the tingle and throb of the great tide of life that sweeps in with the returning sun. See yonder two dogs, how they frolic, how they crouch and wheel and charge and roll ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... at this simple feast, The while they did regale, I drew each ragged capitalist Down ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... what a formalist you have become. You stand on a fine point of etiquette, as if it were the broad foundation of hospitality; while only last week you wanted a ragged tramp, who had every appearance of being a thief, to stay all night. Your brother thinks it a special providence that his friend should have turned ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... trying to loosen the knot in the rope by which Toby was tied to a stake in the ground, and Sue was helping, when a shadow on the grass told the children that some one was walking toward them. They looked up quickly, to see a ragged gypsy man, with a straggly black moustache, scowling at them. In his hand he held a ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue and Their Shetland Pony • Laura Lee Hope
... meeting. I am writing this letter on the 23rd at three o'clock in the morning. Milo is already in possession of the campus. The candidate Marcellus[417] is snoring so loud that I can hear him next door. I am told that Clodius's vestibule is completely deserted: there are a few ragged fellows there and a canvas lantern.[418] His party complains that I am the adviser of the whole business: they little know the courage and wisdom of that hero! His gallantry is astonishing. Some recent instances of his superhuman excellence I pass over; but the upshot is ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... you will be mobbed and that there will be a row, and that then the Germans may come back and the evacuation be postponed, and I'll get wigged by the Prefect and the Minister of the Interior and bully-ragged in the newspapers, and St. Meuse will get abused and the fat will be ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... by no means the less a deity. His name is a derivation of the Greek Simia—what great fools are antiquarians! But see!—see!—yonder scampers a ragged little urchin. Where is he going? What is he bawling about? What does he say? Oh! he says the king is coming in triumph; that he is dressed in state; that he has just finished putting to death, with his own hand, a thousand chained Israelitish ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... guitar accompaniment on the saab were also wont to wound the drowsy ear of night for the diversion of the guests. Drowsier and more sleep-compelling still were the interminable tales spun out by the professional story-teller, giving ragged versions of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments for the delectation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... me—their Colonel—a disdain Sufficient! call me plotter, wily courtier! It does not please their mightiness to see A point-lace collar on my steel cuirass,— And they enrage, because a man, in sooth, May be no ragged-robin, yet a Gascon! (Silence. All smoke and play): Shall I command ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... him by the arm to lead him off: Bellfrey was in his boots. As she was hurrying him away, his spurs takes hold of her petticoat; his whip throws down a cabinet of china: he cries, "What! are your crocks rotten? Are your petticoats ragged? A man can't walk in your house for trincums." Every county of Great Britain has one hundred or more of this sort of fellows, who roar instead of speaking. Therefore if it be true, that we women are also given to greater fluency of words than is necessary, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... dark a light was seen a short distance ahead, and there was a 'sound of revelry.' On approaching, the light was seen to proceed from a large fire, built on the floor of an old and dilapidated outhouse, and surrounded by a ragged, hungry, singing, and jolly crowd of paroled prisoners of the Army of Northern Virginia, who had gotten possession of a quantity of cornmeal and were waiting for the ash-cakes then in the ashes. Being liberal, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... narrow, steep, wooden stairway between two walls of solid masonry, not over two feet apart, we passed, and arrived on a none too stable wooded runway with a guide rail on either side. Looking up through the ragged remains of the wooden roof frame, now almost nude of tiles, we could see the starry sky. Proceeding along the runway, we arrived, somewhere in that cluster of ruins, in a darkened chamber whose interior blackness was relieved by a lighter slit, ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... of persons of quality; for the citizen still contents himself with a suit of fine cloth, a good hat and wig, and fine linen. Everybody is well clothed here, and even the beggars don't make so ragged an appearance as they do elsewhere." After our friend, the man of quality, has had his morning or undress walk in the Mall, he goes home to dress, and then saunters to some coffee-house or chocolate-house frequented by ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... gathering light in a vast silver shimmer almost too dazzling for the eye to endure. In another hour it would be as light as day. A few dim clouds were floating over the stars, filmy wisps that had escaped from the ragged edges of a dark curtain that had veiled the sun before its time. The breeze that had blown them free wandered far overhead; below, especially on the shore, it was almost tropically warm, and no breath of air ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... of. Old Rouget, who knew the whole country-side, did not know this miracle of beauty. The child, who was half naked, wore a forlorn little petticoat of coarse woollen stuff, woven in alternate strips of brown and white, full of holes and very ragged. A sheet of rough writing paper, tied on by a shred of osier, served her for a hat. Beneath this paper—covered with pot-hooks and round O's, from which it derived the name of "schoolpaper"—the loveliest mass of blonde hair that ever a daughter of Eve could ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... shop-keeper and every passer, but no one had seen a girl in black, with a little boy. There were plenty of girls, and an abundance of little boys to be found at a great variety of places, but most of the girls wore green-checked dresses, and the boys were in ragged jackets. Gypsy retraced every step of the way carefully from the roadside to the chestnut-trees. Mr. Jonathan Jones, delighted that he had actually caught somebody on his plowed land, came running down with a terrible scolding on his lips. But when he saw Gypsy's utterly wretched face and heard ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... Lane, Chancery Lane, and the Strand. They appeared to the citizens a very rough and battered soldiery indeed after their month's march through the English snows, the horses especially lean and ragged. That night, and all Saturday and Sunday, Monk was in quarters at Whitehall, receiving distinguished visitors. Though asked to take his seat in the Council of State on Saturday, he declined to do so till he should see ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... the full-rigged ship on a rude wall-bracket, and the moaning wind outside were memories of after years. At the moment, wrapped in a blanket, Phyllis was conscious only of security and warmth. She smiled up at the big fisherman who had rescued her, and made friendly advances to the cluster of ragged little ones who gathered around her, with scared faces and brown, bare legs and feet. When the fisherman's wife tucked her into a warm bed, she inquired sleepily for her mamma. A reassuring caress was the ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... done much for the cause of temperance, and in all philanthropic movements they are busy; they have organised schools for the deaf, dumb, blind, and crippled, and look after night shelters, mothers' unions, ragged unions, rescue homes, working homes for children, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... I cross that threshold again—" he muttered with tragic emphasis. His face was still red, and he swung his stick ferociously as he strode towards the vicarage. Several little boys in ragged smock-frocks saw him and thought he had had some beer, even as their own fathers, and made vulgar gestures ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... of field-mice; nor do they wear a different dress out of doors from that which they wear at home; but after a tunic is once put round their necks, however much it becomes worn, it is never taken off or changed till, from long decay, it becomes actually so ragged as to fall ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... to side in the roomy coach, now and then grabbing a fellow passenger with desperation, gazing down from lofty peaks to yawning chasms below, hearing the crack of the long-lashed whip urging the noble steeds to faster speed, turning the rough, ragged, serpent-shaped drive, thundering through clouds and mist with lightning rapidity, and always in constant terror of a breakdown or error on the part of the fearless driver, gave one a sensation that would nearly make his hair stand on end. During the descent a slight error on ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... poke of meal. At his heels followed his bedraggled, snaggle-toothed wife, a babe in her arms and another tugging at her skirts. Her faded calico dress that dragged in the back was tied in at the waist with a ragged apron. There was a look of sad resignation in her eyes. Now and then she brushed a hand up the back of her head to catch the drab stray locks. She might have been fifty, judging from the stooped shoulders and weary step. Yet the rounded arms—her sleeves were ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... child in all the town who could find as much as sixpence to pay for standing room was there. But the strangest circumstance was that before the show began a man went out from the brightly-lit doorway and called in a loud voice to the beggars and little ragged boys and girls who had come to survey the tent on the outside, and he brought them all in and gave them a good part of the tent to sit in, although they had not sixpence to pay, ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... quality of that supreme moment in the life of Balboa has impressed itself upon the minds of the successive generations that have read of it since that day. It stands as one of the great episodes of history. That little band of ragged, weather-beaten, hard-bitten soldiers, under the leadership of the most lovable and gallant of the Spaniards of his time, on that lonely mountain peak rising above the almost limitless sea of trackless verdure, gazing upon the great ocean ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the "Bois Triangulaire," a bit of woodland exposed to constant shelling. Half the poor spindling trees were down, and patches of blackened undergrowth and ragged hollows marked the path of the shells. If the trees of a cannonaded wood are of strong inland growth their fallen trunks have the majesty of a ruined temple; but there was something humanly pitiful in the frail trunks of the Bois Triangulaire, ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... to see a ragged little boy in the street, mamma called him, and told him to go out and find eleven more poor little boys, and tell them to come with him and get a ...
— The Nursery, February 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... served. The consequence was, that I had full employ, my camels were always engaged; and, as I invariably accompanied them that they might not be ill-treated, I have several times been to Mecca, as this ragged green turban will testify. My life was one of alternate difficulty and enjoyment. I returned to my wife and children with delight after my journeys of suffering and privation, and fully appreciated the value of my home from the short time that my occupation would permit ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... admirably situated for measuring out a regular portion of blood at every contraction. John Bell, believing in the Harveian theory, said, "It is awful to think of the unfixed position of the heart;" and Dr. Arnott declared that "the heart, the heart alone, is the ragged anomaly in the laws of fitness in mechanics." The heart was now seen to have a right position; for it should swing loose that its moorings be not endangered; and, as whatever impugns the Creator's unerring wisdom must be wrong, so the presumption ...
— Theory of Circulation by Respiration - Synopsis of its Principles and History • Emma Willard
... wearing her nightcap. I doubt if any one but ourselves who had seen the progress of that article of dress, could by this time have told what it was meant for. It had got so limp and ragged that she couldn't see out of her eyes for it. It was so dirty, that whether it was vegetable matter out of a swamp, or weeds out of the river, or an old porter's-knot from England, I don't think any new spectator could have said. Yet, this unfortunate old woman ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens
... of these shining veins, Rhine, from his snow cradle to his salt decease, glimmered Stygian horrors as the Infernal Comet, sprung over Bonn, sparkled a fiery minute along the face of the stream, and vanished, leaving a seam of ragged flame trailed on the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... realized, for the first time, that Constance herself bore many traces of these last few terrible days. In some mysterious fashion her face and collar seemed to have escaped scot free; but her dress was torn, ragged, and stained; and the intense weariness of her expression was something I ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... cultivated fields, all the while under a galling fire from the enemy's batteries and sharpshooters, and they felt somewhat jaded and worn out when they came upon their bristling bayonets, ready for combat. A great number of our men were barefooted, some with shoes partly worn out, clothes ragged and torn, not an overcoat or extra garment among the line officers or men throughout the army, as all surplus baggage had been left in Virginia. But when the battle was about to show up the soldiers were on hand, ready and willing as of old, to plunge headlong into ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... Lifter. The fellow wore a very ragged coat, and corresponding breeches; but our hero could not remember having seen him before. He stood close to the mouth of the pit looking first at Nancy, and then upon Roland. The jealous glare setted the point in ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... that if they remained quietly in their places they would be unmolested. Chunk and a few of the boldest of his fellow conspirators had full scope therefore to perfect their final arrangements. In a disused room of one of the outbuildings the most ragged and blood-stained uniforms of the Union soldiers had been cast and forgotten. These were carried to a point near the burying- ground, tried on and concealed. Chunk found it was no easy task to keep even the reckless fellows he had picked ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... back in their chairs, he watching the ragged, dirty, scurrying clouds, she watching him. After a while he said: "Where are you going when we reach ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... me, too," said Grahame, looking out of the dark window at the watery clouds, ragged, uncanny, whirling one by one like tattered witches across the disk ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... patrimonial groves The tawny father with his offspring roves; When summer suns lead slow the sultry day, In mossy caves, where welling waters play, Fanned by each gale that cools the fervid sky, With this in ragged luxury they lie. Oft at the sun the dusky elfins strain The sable eye, then snugging, sleep again; Oft as the dews of cooler evening fall, For their ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... they had hardly entered Nueva Vizcaya when they started to give themselves up furiously to robbery, looking upon all things as loot; in the very shadow of these soldiers the province was invaded by a mob of adventurous and ragged persons from Nueva Ecija; between the two they picked Nueva Vizcaya clean. When they had grown tired of completely shearing the unfortunate Vizcayan people, leaving them poverty-stricken, they flew in small bands to the pueblos ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... his arms raised, his hands in the form of fangs, with nails crooked, appearing inflamed by the fiery light of the sun. His head was covered with his dirty tiara, and he was enveloped in his gorgeous gown, showing when flying open his meagre bow-legs in ragged breeches. He looked like some begging magician, immortal, and very old. His eyes glared, and ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... provision for their families; and whereas, in all industrious nations, children are looked on as a help to their parents; with us, for want of being early trained to work, they are an intolerable burthen at home, and a grievous charge upon the public, as appeareth from the vast number of ragged and naked children in town and country, led about by strolling women, trained up in ignorance and all manner ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... Ragged and dirty children were playing in the street. Lack of food and pure air, together with unsanitary surroundings, had set its mark upon them. The deathly pallor that was in Peter's face was characteristic of most of the ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... I was not there to listen to such a world-old hypothesis—to such a time-worn, long-ago-refuted, bald, feeble, illogical, vicious, patent sophistry—to an ancient, baseless, wearisome, ragged, unfounded, insidious, falsehood originated by women themselves, and by them insinuated, foisted, thrust, spread, and ingeniously promulgated into the ears of mankind by underhanded, secret and deceptive methods, for the purpose of augmenting, furthering, and reinforcing their ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... as if those ragged women, instead of crying out for bread, had cried out for powder and patches. By the time they were wearing them they would be the only people wearing them. For powder and patches soon went out of fashion, but bread does not go out of fashion. In the same way, if women ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... was pointed out all over England as a godless town. The bishops issued a general address to all rectors and curates warning them against "any system of morals that does away with God and His Son, Jesus Christ, fixing its salvation on flowerbeds and ragged schools." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... uniform and felt I would cut a smarter figure before my sweetheart, than I did in the ragged "cast-offs" I ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... listless apathy, which belied the general expression of his dark and rugged features. He seemed a very tall man, but was scarce better clad than the younger. He had on a loose Lowland greatcoat, and ragged tartan trews or pantaloons. All around looked singularly wild and unpropitious. Beneath the brow of the incumbent rock was a charcoal fire, on which there was a still working, with bellows, pincers, hammers, a movable anvil, and other smith's tools; three guns, with two or three sacks and barrels, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... he waited for Billie to make her appearance. He had had an excellent lunch; his pipe was drawing well, and all Nature smiled. The breeze from the sea across the meadows, tickled pleasantly the back of his head, and sang a soothing song in the long grass and ragged-robins at his feet. He was looking forward with a roseate glow of anticipation to the moment when the white flutter of Billie's dress would break the green of the foreground. How eagerly he would jump from the gate! How ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... and fresh in the open glade. The blood- red glamour of a frosty sunset was fading from the sky as the daylight died away; all round the wood was populous with shadows; and over its ragged edge the moon hung pale ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... widened the crack and let the bag fall down. The ragged edge of a broken brick tore the leather and the two coins that Vladimir and Elisabeth found slipped out and fell just inside the plank covering of the chimney and below it ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... stretched down towards him. Gripping it, digging his toes into the sides of the tunnel, and seizing the edge above with his other hand, he was half dragged, and half forced his way upward, then, flinging himself on the ground beside Stuart, he leant over the ragged hole and ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... he will only get the ferret (with which the hare was hunted) for his dinner. Then, inasmuch as the ferret was and for following the bare or rabbit into "scruposae viae," "impervious" or "rocky places" where they had burrowed, he adds: "For my dinner, ferret-like, frequents ragged places;" by which he probably means that it is nothing but a meagre repast of vegetables, of which possibly capers formed a part, which grow plentifully in Italy, in old ruins and craggy spots. Some suggest that it was a custom with ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... day; the blow was too crushing for a brain harassed by a life with this debauched worthless man. Her warders struggled with one gone clean daft. Years after men grown up from childhood in the ward looked with pity at the feeble ragged old mad beggar woman who crouched by the beautiful bronze dragon which ornaments the water basin of the Ten-o[u] Jinja. They would drop in her hand a copper "cash," and drive off with rebuke the children who taunted and ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... bowels were coming out! He had his senses about him, and reminded me of our conversation just before the battle. He was taken to the Hotel Dieu, where he died the next morning, in great agony. When I first saw the French soldiers I thought them a dirty, ragged set—their clothing was originally white. Many of them, particularly in the 'Regiment de la Reine,' had a bit of blue ribbon to the buttonhole of their coat, with a little white shell fixed to it, which they called 'Papa,' and this, it seems, was a mark of honour for having ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... room, sat back in his chair, pushed up his golfing cap, and smiled as he meditated the periods of his editorial. In a few moments a thin, ragged-headed youth entered with an air of haste and terror. He carried a paper-block, which he set on his knee, looking anxiously at the editor. Mr. McMurtrie began to dictate, the stenographer's pencil flying over ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... you." We followed the officer who spoke, as he marshalled us along, and in an inner chamber, wherein there were also several large holes in the ceiling through which the sun shone, we found President Petion, the black Washington, sitting on a very old ragged sofa, amidst a confused mass of papers, dressed in a blue military undress frock, white trowsers, and the everlasting Madras handkerchief bound round his brows. He was much darker than I expected to have seen him, darker than ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... London. In that dying speech he called upon Parliament to defend the purity of the city. As far back as 1840, his voice in Parliament rang out against the oppression of factory workers, and he succeeded in securing better legislation for them. He worked and contributed for the ragged schools of England, by which over 200,000 poor children of London were redeemed. He was President of Bible and Missionary Societies, and was for thirty years President of the Young Men's Christian Association. ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... memories of yesterday the fears and wild tales of that one terrible winter when the "Red Terror"—the smallpox—swept in a pitiless plague of death throughout the northern wilderness. It was then that there came down from the north, one bitter cold day, a ragged and half-starved boy, whose mother and father had died of the plague in a little cabin fifty miles away, and who from the day he staggered into the home of Henry Janesse, became Meleese's playmate and chum. This boy was ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... white rapid and then shot across the glassy green surface of the pool below in a raised-up wedge of foam. Wet boulders and outcropping fangs of rock hemmed in the water, and among them lay stranded logs and stream-packed masses of whitened branches. Farther back, ragged cypresses and cedars, half obscured by the drifting haze of spray, climbed the sides of the gorge, and beyond rose the dim, rounded summits of treeless hills. There were streaks of snow on some of them, for winter threatened to close in ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... with much hesitation and uncertainty. For all this the captain has, as the boys say, plentifully "bawled us out," constantly working us more than any other officer has done in the battalion. We can't deny that we are ragged and slovenly, ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... feet in Towy's flood, His sides are clothed with waving wood, And ancient towers crown his brow, That cast an awful look below; Whose ragged walls the ivy creeps, And with her arms from falling keeps; So both a safety from the wind ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum |
