"Frayed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were scarce upon the horizon of the Brentons. Catie was not perfect; but, at least, she might be infinitely worse. And Scott would be sure to need a practical wife, to counteract his habitual disregard of concrete things. Catie would see to it that his wristbands were not frayed and that his buttons were in their proper places. She might not enter into his ideals, but she would mend his socks and insist upon his changing them when he had wet his feet. Socks were more important to a man than ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... of the tower moved on its rusty hinges under the hand that struck it and Prince Michael came into the room. Nobody had the smallest doubt about his identity. His light clothes, though frayed with his adventures, were of fine and almost foppish cut, and he wore a pointed beard, or imperial, perhaps as a further reminiscence of Louis Napoleon; but he was a much taller and more graceful ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... usual at the music hall that night, but with a heavy heart. The difference communicated itself to the audience, and the unanimous applause which had greeted her before frayed off at length into separate hand-claps. Crossing the stage to her dressing-room she met Koenig, who came to conduct ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... it. The coat had been bought ready-made, of a Chatham Street Jew, without any question—about 1848. It probably cost four dollars when it was new. It was ripped, it was frayed, it was napless and greasy. I could not resist showing him where it was ripped. It so affected him that I was almost sorry I had done it. First he seemed plunged into a bottomless abyss of grief. Then he roused himself, made a feint with his hands as if waving ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... little conversation to interrupt the monologue of the river, which seemed to find itself many voices under the bridge. The one unceasing rustle of the main stream was frayed along its margin into a myriad finer noises of murmuring and plashing, as the massed foliage on a bough dwindles at its edges into more delicate traceries of distinct sprays and leaves. Round some stones the water whispered mysteriously, coiling in ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... sitting in the chair also was clearly not an ordinary labourer. His brown suit, though worn and frayed, had once been such a suit as Messrs. Carter, tailors, of Pengarth, were accustomed to sell to their farmer clients, and it was crossed by an old-fashioned chain and seal. The suit was heavily splashed with mud; so were the thick boots; and on the drooped brow shone beads ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ha—say, Anna, that's the funniest thing I ever did see. The tramp wasn't frayed of him, but his pants was 'fraid of him. Gee, ain't that a funny joke? And say, Anna, there's a picture with his ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... almost impossible to get our sleds through them. At times we were testing our agility by climbing over fallen trees, and then on our hands and knees had to crawl under reclining ones. Our faces were often bleeding, and our feet bruised. There were times when the strap of my snowshoes so frayed and lacerated my feet that the blood soaked through the moccasins and webbing of the snowshoes, and occasionally the trail was marked with blood. We always travelled in Indian file. At the head ran or ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... in the peculiar case of Front-de-Boeuf they only added to the ferocity of his countenance and to the dread which his presence inspired. The formidable baron was clad in a leathern doublet, fitted close to his body, which was frayed and soiled with the stains of his armor. He had no weapon, except a [v]poniard at his belt, which served to counter-balance the weight of the bunch of rusty keys that hung at his ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... be the Tour of Babiloyne the grete: of the whiche I have told zou before, where that alle the langages weren first chaunged. And that is a 4 jorneyes fro Caldee. In that reme, ben faire men, and thei gon fulle nobely arrayed in clothes of gold, or frayed and apparayled with grete perles and precyous stones, fulle nobely: and the wommen ben righte foule and evylle arrayed; and thei gon alle bare fote, and clothed in evylle garnementes, large and wyde, but thei ben schorte to the knees; and longe ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... nerves; As once a ram's-horn solo maddened all The sober-minded stones in Jerich's wall. A year's exemption from the critic's curse Mends the bard's courage but impairs his verse. Thus poolside frogs, when croaking in the night, Are frayed to silence by a meteor's flight, Or by the sudden plashing of a stone From some adjacent cottage garden thrown, But straight renew the song with double din Whene'er the light goes out or man goes in. Shall I with arms unbraced (my ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... yet withal triumphantly, out of the cab. The same height as the great man himself, and built after the same pattern; a perfect reproduction also in dress, except that the trousers were baggier, and the coat shabbier, and the collar frayed at the edges, and the hat had the appearance of having been used either as a seat or as a pillow, or perhaps for both purposes, at different times; and the air of this second, but by no means ghostly, Bailie was like that of the first, as confident, ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... that she had some difficulty in composing her face to a proper degree of gravity. His trousers of brown cloth, burnt at the knees into a green hue, were turned up above each ankle, exhibiting his blue woollen stockings and a tattered pair of black cloth shoes, his coat was of black cloth, very much frayed at the collar and cuffs, his white hair flew about in all directions, as the draught from the back door swirled in when the front door was opened. He had his finger in the leaves of an old book, ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... final effort not to be separated and to save if possible the fragile life. The faces of both were scarred and disfigured from contact with floating debris. The single garment of the baby—a thin white slip—was rent and frayed. The body of the young woman was identified, but the babe remained unknown. Probably its father and mother were lost in the flood, and it will never ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... Antoine came to inform me that a gentleman desired to see me. He would not give his name. I directed Antoine to show him up. He was a man of about forty years of age with a very dark complexion, lively features, and whose correct dress, slightly frayed, proclaimed a taste that contrasted strangely with his rather vulgar manners. Without any preamble, he said to me—in a rough voice that confirmed my suspicion as ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... combatants and you will see how far less imaginative and reflecting, (though shrewd, practical, and humorous,) the English are than any others; you will gain, too, a profound, a deadly conviction that behind them is a fibre like rubber, that may be frayed, and bent a little this way and that, but can neither be ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... forth the contents of his trousers' pockets. The chain kinked time and again as he groped with the undermost hand for the openings; his dumpy, pudgy form writhed grotesquely. But finally he finished. The search produced four cigars somewhat crumpled and frayed; some matches in a gun-metal case, a silver cigar cutter, two five-dollar bills, a handful of silver chicken feed, the leather case of the eyeglasses, a couple of quill toothpicks, a gold watch with a dangling fob, a notebook and ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... heat and cold, there was never a change in the old man's raiment. The rusty frock coat—black where it was not green, grey along the seams, and ravelled at the skirts—the broad-brimmed and battered slouch hat, and the frayed string tie had seen fat years and lean years on all the tracks of the Jungle Circuit, and no man could say when these things had been new or their wearer had been young. Old Man Curry was a fixture, as familiar a sight as the fence about the track, and his shabby ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... circle of unarmed guards about the rocket. He waited. The guards were tense. They did not like trying to protect something with no weapons. They were jumpy. The endlessly repeated messages booming into the night frayed their nerves. They were plainly ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... in an arcade somewhat like the Burlington, an agent for everything ... circus, music-hall, theater ... artistes formed in a week ... white flesh at famine salaries. There were all sorts of people there, a moving heap of frayed velvet and shabby plush. Lily passed by with great dignity. Next, she came to the big agent, with offices in Berlin and London ... the ting-ting of telephones, the tick-tack of typewriters all day ... business ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... the bar a smaller counter held a collection of plates upon which swarmed frayed fragments of crackers, slices of boiled ham, dishevelled bits of cheese, and pickles swimming in vinegar. An odor of grasping, begrimed hands and munching ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... though seedy his hat and his coat. That his pantaloons bagged and were ragged and frayed? Still the world by its modern, unanimous vote Says it danced to the tune that his chin-music played! At the touch of his hand, at the thrill of his thought, It leaped on the paths where the greater truths ran, And though in the ways that ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... shape and color like the bowl of his own pipe, but not at all, according to the received idea, like a Dutchman. His dress was quizzical enough—white-trousers, a long-flapped embroidered waistcoat that might have belonged to a Spanish grandee, with an old-fashioned French-cut coat, showing the frayed marks where the lace had been stripped off, voluminous in the skirts, but very tight in the sleeves, which were so short as to leave his large bony paws, and six inches of his arm above the wrist, exposed; altogether, it fitted him like a ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... it was a daguerreotype case, much worn and frayed along the leather back, and without the little brass hooks which used to fasten it; instead, a bit of ribbon had been tied about it to keep it closed. Mr. Denner did not open it; he patted the faded green bow with his little ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... the dog drop his nose and sniff. There were the missing riches, priceless beyond gold—the little leaden balls, the powder, dry in its horn, the little rolls of tow, the knife swung at the girdle! I knelt down there on the sand, I, John Cowles, once civilized and now heathen, and I raised my frayed and ragged hands toward the Mystery, and begged that I might be forever free of the great crime of thanklessness. Then, laughing at the dog, and loping on tireless as when I was a boy, I ran as though sickness and weakness had never ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... it telepathy, does not alter the fact that they have a rare and special sensitiveness, a new faculty which science must investigate. They come, poor people mostly—for the well-to-do will seldom give their time to exacting and wearisome experiments. They come, wearing frayed and thin clothing, shivering with cold, obviously undernourished; and their survival depends upon their producing "phenomena"—which phenomena are capricious, and will not come at call. So, what more natural than that mediums should resort to faking? That the whole field should be ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... Gray's Inn, and I myself was uncommercially preparing for the Bar—which is done, as everybody knows, by having a frayed old gown put on in a pantry by an old woman in a chronic state of Saint Anthony's fire and dropsy, and, so decorated, bolting a bad dinner in a party of four, whereof each individual mistrusts the other three—I say, while these things were, there was a certain elderly gentleman who lived ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... for trouble." Slowly Kootanie George slipped his heavy coat from his shoulders. His deep, hairy chest, swelling to the breath which fairly whistled through his distended nostrils, popped a button back through a frayed button hole and stood out like an inflated bellows. "I just say, 'Damn you.' That is nothin' for a man to fight. You look for trouble, an' by God, ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... could hear beating, I turned my back on the bay, and, crossing the little drawbridge, craved of a warder at the gate—half fisher, half ecclesiastic, in a frayed frock and seamen's shoes—an audience of my Lord the Archbishop for the delivery of a missive from the Abbot of the Vale, that must be delivered ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... was likely to be spotted of vest and a little frayed as to collar. You saw them going on errands for their daughters-in-law. A loaf of bread. Spool of white No. 100. They took their small grandchildren to the duck pond and between the two toddlers hand in hand—the old and infirm and the infantile and infirm—it was hard ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... similar dyes the protoplasm stains unequally, which is not to be considered as the expression of a granulation, as Ehrlich first assumed, but rather of a reticular structure. The contour of the lymphocytes is not quite smooth as a rule, at least in the larger forms, but is somewhat frayed, jagged, and uneven (Fig. 1). Small portions of the peripheral substance may repeatedly bud off, especially in the large forms, and circulate in the blood as free elements. In stained specimens, especially from lymphatic leukaemia, these forms, which completely resemble the protoplasm of the ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... Dahomey's state umbrella, stood the regimental Colours. Dan lifted them tenderly and unrolled in the light of the candles the record of the Mavericks - tattered, worn, and hacked. The white satin was darkened everywhere with big brown stains, the gold threads on the crowned harp were frayed and discoloured, and the Red Bull, the totem of the Mavericks, was coffee-hued. The stiff, embroidered folds, whose price is human life, rustled down slowly. The Mavericks keep their colours long ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... been new instead of tattered and torn; while above, on a peg, hung belts, sword, pouches, and the strong cord-like lanyard stiffened and strained about the noose and slipping knots, while the other end was broken and frayed where the spring ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... dull glimmer only in his one eye, and his whole features of a crafty, selfish character—such he was; clad in a long, threadbare, snuff-coloured great-coat, reaching almost to his heels, and which served to hide the trowsers, the frayed ends of which explained their condition; on his bare feet he wore a pair of trodden-down slippers, with upper leathers gaping in front with open mouths; a despicable rascal to look at, and yet this was a brother of one of ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... Tregenza was a careless young woman, it seemed. Her dress had a button or two missing in front, and a safety-pin had taken their place. Her drab skirt was frayed a little and patched in one corner with a square of another material. But the colors were well enough, from the artist's point of view. He noted also that the girl's stockings were darned and badly needed further ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... woods, mixed with the sharpness of the morning air, gave him an appetite to which, since his enforced idleness, he had been a stranger. He drew his chair up to the rickety little table with its covering of frayed oil-cloth, and, breaking a couple of eggs over his bacon, ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... configuration of their coasts, but from their hinterland, according to the length and nature of their connection with the same. This determines the degree of their isolation from the land-mass. If they hang from the continent by a frayed string, as does the Peloponnesus, Crimea, Malacca, Indian Gutjerat, and Nova Scotia, they are segregated from the life of the mainland almost as completely as if they were islands. The same effects follow where the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... every clump of bushes, every jagged, rough group of bowlders. But those that remained were wiped out by the American method of the rush and the bayonet, and in the days that followed every foot of Belleau Wood was cleared of the enemy and held by the frayed lines ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... costume of Queen Garee of Pingaree must have become sadly worn and frayed, owing to her hardships and adventures, Ozma ordered a royal outfit prepared for the good Queen and had it laid in her chamber ready for her to put on as soon as she arrived, so she would not be shamed at the banquet. New costumes were ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the parks—those silent, inert figures that lie under the trees all the long summer day, their shabby hats over their faces, their hands clasped above their heads, legs sprawled in uncouth comfort, while the sun dapples down between the leaves and, like a good fairy godmother, touches their frayed and wrinkled garments with flickering figures of golden splendor, while they sleep. They always seemed so blissfully care-free and at ease—those sprawling men figures—and I, to whom such simple joys were forbidden, being a ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... you calling me? Father! I thought I heard you call me twice before! Words never to be answered, those, upon the earth-side of the grave. The wind sweeps jeeringly over Father, whips him with the frayed ends of his dress and his jagged hair, tries to turn him where he lies stark on his back, and force his face towards the rising sun, that he may be shamed the more. A lull, and the wind is secret and prying with him; lifts and lets falls a rag; hides palpitating under another rag; runs nimbly ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... people of fashion promenading the street to and from the barracks, and of his uniform becoming, as at Quebec, a subject of public curiosity. He stopped at length to note a prisoner in the town pillory, when a promenader of somewhat frayed attire and a countenance which bore marks of dissipation looked ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... the party stretches a rattan across its mouth; and, where they leave the river, they erect on the bank a pole or frayed stick.[55] Other persons seeing such sticks set up will understand and respect the party's desire for privacy. They then march through the jungle to the place where they expect to find a group of camphor trees, marking their path by bending the ends of twigs at certain intervals in the ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... shot with an undertone of flesh colour. For at least a century these were in the possession of a yeoman family in the neighbourhood of Wortley village. The toes are pointed, the heels high, and on the lappets are frayed marks where the pins of the jewelled buckles pierced the fabric. The insteps do not belie the tradition that a kitten could lie beneath the arch of the wearer's naked foot, for they are so high that it seems as if the blue blood of the Pierreponts were ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... in profile to Althea, her back to the room, facing the open window, out of which she gazed vaguely and unseeingly. She was dressed in black, a thin dress, rather frayed along the edges—an evening dress; though, as a concession to Continental custom, she had a wide black scarf over her bare shoulders. She sat, leaning forward, her elbows on the table, and once, when she glanced round and found ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... aback by this unfair introduction of a floral stranger, were silent. Cressy thoughtfully accepted botany on those possibilities. A week later she laid on the master's desk a limp-looking plant with a stalk like heavy frayed worsted yarn. "It ain't much to look at after all, is it?" she said. "I reckon I could cut a better one with scissors outer an ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... paradox, but what an unquestionable fact, is the wayward irritability of some of the finest geniuses, which is often weak to effeminacy, and capricious to childishness! while minds of a less delicate texture are not frayed and fretted by casual frictions; and plain sense with a coarser grain, is sufficient to keep down these aberrations of their feelings. How mortifying is the ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... over the gas-jet, close to the window; they were all dark blues or grays, and most of them frayed. He expected a new ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... preceding is the badly frayed bag shown in plate V. It is 20 inches in length and 13 inches in depth. The style of weaving is the same as that of the two preceding examples; a peculiar open effect is produced by the rotting out of certain strands of dark color, which were arranged in pairs alternating ...
— Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States • William Henry Holmes
... been frogged and tasseled magnificently. But now the frogs and tassles were gone. In their stead had been patiently stitched (I surmised by some surviving "black mammy") new frogs made of cunningly twisted common hempen twine. This twine was frayed and disheveled. It must have been added to the coat as a substitute for vanished splendors, with tasteless but painstaking devotion, for it followed faithfully the curves of the long-missing frogs. And, to complete the comedy and pathos of the garment, all its buttons ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... importance." He paused slightly. "I have learned how to kill, or at least arrest, the bacillus of old age. It is a bacillus, you know. We grow old because every day we live beyond the age of thirty—the bacillus of old age is attacking us. I call them the Brende-bacilli—these tiny, frayed discs that make us grow old. I have ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... specimen of an old rustic priest, who was not the less to be respected because he took a great deal of snuff, hated shaving, wore hob-nailed shoes of the roughest make, and a threadbare, soup-spotted soutane with frayed edges. He was not a bit ascetic, and although he had lived so many years by himself, his good-humour and gaiety continually overflowed. It may be that a housekeeper tends to sour a priest's temper ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... servant showed the letters to his father, who in some alarm revealed the matter to the Governor. It is curious as illustrating the state of suspicion then prevalent at St. Helena, that Las Cases accused the Scotts of being tools of the Governor; that Lowe saw in the affair the frayed end of a Longwood scheme; while the residents there suspected Las Cases of arranging matters as a means of departure from the island. There was much to justify this last surmise. Las Cases and his son were unwell; their position in the household was very uncomfortable; ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... untie the knots round the bale. Then, after the manner of a sailor who is working out of sight with a life-line, he jerked the rope, which immediately began to ascend rapidly and with irregularity. Coil after coil ran easily away, and at last the frayed end passed into the darkness above Christian's head. He stood there watching it, and when it had disappeared he burst into a low hoarse laugh which suddenly broke off into a sickening gurgle, and he fell sideways and backwards on to the box, clutching at it with ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... different kinds of material, still we see, when we turn our microscopes upon it, that its parts are structurally the same. Reduced to lowest terms, the nervous system is found to be composed of minute units of structure called nerve-cells or neurones. Each of these looks like a string frayed out at both ends, with a bulge somewhere along its length. The nervous system is made up of millions of these little cells packed together in various combinations and distributed throughout the body. Some of the neurones are as ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... neglected, were rusted in their bearings, and without them and the pipe line there could be no electric power on which the mill depended. The mill had been stripped of all smaller stuff, and its dynamos had been chipped with an ax until the copper windings showed frayed and useless. The shoes of the huge stamps were worn down to a thin, uneven rim, battering on broken surfaces. The Venners rattled on their foundations, and the plates had been scarred as if by a chisel in the ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... rocked backward and forward in the intensity of its emotion. It stretched out its arms and wagged a threatening forefinger, while it mumbled some unintelligible warning in a voice that faltered and wavered, and then frayed off to a mere wheeze that sounded suspiciously ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... be cut into short threads, never more than half the length of the skein. If a long needleful is used, it is not only apt to pull the work, but is very wasteful, as the end of it is liable to become frayed or knotted before it is nearly worked up. If it is necessary to use it double (and for coarse work, such as screen panels on sailcloth, or for embroidering on Utrecht velvet, it is generally better doubled), care should be taken never to pass it through the eye of the needle, knotting ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin
... propose enlarging this little circle; for as she went her motherly rounds among the young women she found a sad lack of order, skill, and industry in this branch of education. Latin, Greek, the higher mathematics, and science of all sorts prospered finely; but the dust gathered on the work-baskets, frayed elbows went unheeded, and some of the blue stockings sadly needed mending. Anxious lest the usual sneer at learned women should apply to 'our girls', she gently lured two or three of the most untidy to her house, and made the hour so pleasant, the lesson so kindly, that they took ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... reached their destination, their conversation had given out, the M. O. sucking sullenly at his pipe, the bowl upside down. The rear end of the column was very frayed and straggling. Why it is that a perfectly fit company will invariably fray out if placed at the rear of a marching column, no military expert has quite succeeded ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... did she put two of the hundred-dollar bills that by noon she was arrayed in a semi-tailored suit of gray, spring hat, shoes, and gloves to match. She felt once more at ease, less conscious that people stared at her frayed and curious habiliments. With a complete outfit of lingerie purchased, and a trunk in which to store it forwarded to her hotel, her immediate activity was at an end, and she had time to think of ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... clothing, half-hiding the badly- rubbed red plush of the sofa—a mussy flannel nightshirt with mothholes here and there; kneed trousers, uncannily reminiscent of a rough and strenuous wearer; a smoking-jacket that, after a youth of cheap gayety, was now a frayed and tattered wreck, like an old tramp, whose "better days" were none too good. On the radiator stood a pair of wrinkled shoes that had never known trees; their soles were curved like rockers. An old pipe clamored at his ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... probably what is true of the workroom is equally true of the region behind the counter. Is it not a fact that the smart saleswoman is usually rather particular about her dress, is averse to wearing dingy collars, frayed cuffs; and faded ties? The truth of the matter seems to be that extra care as regards personal habits and general appearance is, as a rule, indicative of a certain alertness of mind, which shows itself antagonistic to ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... girl hurriedly descended to the servants' entrance, where she found a sturdy, old, grey-bearded peasant, bearing a long, stout stick. He raised his frayed cap politely and asked whether she ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... are the more frayed you get. Little Wilbur comes home from school, where he has been put to bed at 8:30 every night with the rest of the fifth form boys: and has had to brush his hair in the presence of the head-master's wife, and dives into what might be called a veritable maelstrom of activity. ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... The life—the one fragile life—that had been used as a measuring-tape of time by law, was in danger of being frayed away. It was the last of a group of lives which had served this purpose, at the end of whose breathings the small homestead occupied by South himself, the larger one of Giles Winterborne, and half a dozen others that had been in the possession of various Hintock village families for the previous ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... sang as he worked over the stove. Judah had had a glorious afternoon. His chanteys had cast off the hawsers, had walked away with the ropes, had hoisted the sails, had bade the tug good-by. Now his voice was a thought frayed, but he sang on. ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... was to discover the only true and allowable and womanly sphere of feminine work, and, though the theme was threadbare, she fearlessly picked up the frayed woof and rewove it. ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... all. If Peter heard the noise attending the disposal of his comrade, he was justified in believing that the girl had offered some resistance. When a tall, grunting man emerged from the inner room, bearing the limp figure of a girl in a frayed raincoat, he did not wait to ask questions, but rushed over and locked the cell-door. Then he led the way down the narrow stairway, lighting the passage with a candle. His only reply to King's guttural remark in ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... call that a steady hand?" he asked then. "Man, you're ill, I tell you. Your face is hot and your hands are cold, and your nerves are worn to shoestrings, frayed shoestrings at that. If you keep on, you'll be down flatter than you like. You ought to ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... that this is an easy mistake to make. You find the lavatory of Hip Tee, who pronounces the hieroglyphics all correct, and delivers you your lost and found shirts clean, with half the buttons broken, and the bosoms pounded, scrubbed and frayed into ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... inflammation extending up the arm to the shoulder produced suffering which he could not conceal. Each day that we had a fire, I watched mother sitting by his side, with a basin of warm water upon her lap, laving the wounded and inflamed parts very tenderly, with a strip of frayed linen wrapped around a little stick. I remember well the look of comfort that swept over his worn features as she laid the soothed arm back ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... finger between his stringy neck and the frayed stand-up collar that would have sawn his head off but for the toughness of his hide. To do Paul honour he had arrayed himself in his best—a wondrously cut and heavily-braided morning coat and lavender-coloured trousers of eccentric shape, and ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... gentleman with a remarkably fierce pair of whiskers; he wore a coat of ultra-fashionable cut, and stood with his booted legs wide apart, staring up at the inn from under a curly-brimmed hat. But the hat had evidently seen better days, the coat was frayed at seam and elbow, and the boots lacked polish; yet these small blemishes were more than offset by his general dashing, knowing air, and the untamable ferocity of his whiskers. As Barnabas watched him, he drew a letter from the interior of his shabby coat, unfolded it with a prodigious flourish, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... or three hours' soaking will suffice. Care should also be taken in hanging and fastening properly upon the line. Fold the cloth over the line six or eight inches at least, and in such a manner as to keep the thread straight, and fasten with three or more clothes pins. Table linen is often sadly frayed at the corners by being pinned so that all strain comes upon the corners, and if left to whip in the wind, is soon ruined. Napkins in summer are much nicer if dried upon the grass. Only the merest trifle of starch, if any, should be used for ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... of field and barn on the edges of the thick hair about the ears; dust around the eyes and the nostrils. He was resting on one knee; over the other his hands were crossed—enormous, powerful, coarsened hands, the skin so frayed and chapped that around the finger-nails and along the cracks here and there a little blood had ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... deem him not absurd, He utters wisdom's latest, greatest word. All coats, we know, are best when frayed with wear; Trousers we love when most they need repair, Boots without heels, completely lacking soles, And hats all crushed and battered into holes. Nay, we'll go farther, and, to prove him true, Do all the vanished ages ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... lot stood a large show tent, so grayed and frayed, so altogether dingy as to suggest that it had seen some summers of service ere it became briefly the property ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... has come into my possession, which I publish because it is history, and descends to the list of those humble beings who builded so well for us the institutions which we now enjoy in this country. It is yellow with age, and much frayed out at the foldings, being in those spots no ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... a few books and pipes, which were the companions of his odd moments of leisure, and he read and smoked in a hard wicker chair, destitute even of a cushion. He ate sparingly, of food scarcely better than that on which his neighbors subsisted, and drank little. His clothes were poor, his shirts frayed, and his boots patched—and his income was a ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... that he seemed to shake the floor as he walked; everything was big about him, his hands and feet, his voice and his laugh, and when he whispered his words were audible at the other end of the room. This giant among men wore an old brown velvet coat, very frayed about the elbows, and though he was by no means handsome, there was such a pleasant, kindly expression on his face that Anna felt drawn to him ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... his waistcoat pocket a newspaper cutting and compared the two then stepped briskly, almost jauntily, into the hall, as though all his doubts and uncertainties had vanished, and waited for the elevator. His coat was buttoned tightly, his collar was frayed, his shirt had seen the greater part of a week's service, the Derby hat on his head had undergone extensive renovations, and a close observer would have noticed that his gloves ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... brother. Adrian was dressed in the uniform of a Spanish officer, with a breast-plate over his quilted doublet, and a steel cap, from the front of which rose a frayed and weather-worn plume of feathers. The face had changed; there was none of the old pomposity about those handsome features; it looked worn and cowed, like that of an animal which has been trained to do tricks by hunger and the use of the whip. Yet, through all the shame and degradation, Foy ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... by the scuffle of the negro's feet as he ran and cowered in the furthest corner, and the soft creaking of the iron door, and a sudden suck and soughing of the night air. Then the moon slipped slyly from its frayed woolly covers, and relit the donjon keep. "Holy God and Father," and the halberd clanked noisily to the floor. In the half open doorway stood the king's favorite, the Lady Suelva. Against the frosted green background of the moonlit courtyard her ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... deep-set, were surmounted by heavy brows once black, now of an iron grey. His mouth was of prodigious width, the lips thin and straight and his nose long, narrow and pointed. He wore a dirty wig which was always awry, a faded mulberry coloured coat, and a frayed velvet waistcoat reaching halfway down his thighs. His stockings were dirty and hung in bags about his ankles, his feet were cased in yellow slippers ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... there the slightest sign about him of any desire to redeem a sinister appearance by attention to the toilet; his threadbare jacket was all but dropping to pieces; a cravat, which had once been black, was frayed by contact with a stubble chin, and left on exhibition a throat as wrinkled ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... of all was worn and frayed, With tatters grotesquely mended; But flouting the world, and undismayed, The ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... England over sea, "In peace be friend, in war my enemy"; Then countering pride with pride, and lies with scorn, Broke with the man[2] whose ancestor had borne A sharper pain for no more injury. How otherwise should free men deal and be, With patience frayed and loyalty outworn? No act of England's shone more generous gules Than that which sever'd once for all the strands Which bound you English. You may search the lands In vain, and vainly rummage in the schools, To find a deed more English, or a shame On England with more ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... with him. Not only was his clothing frayed and soiled; but his face was so unnaturally pale that the deep-set eyes beneath their lowering black brows seemed to burn like embers, and there were many new lines on his countenance not graven ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... about the bearing of any part on its immediately neighbouring parts, and yet may have no present notion of the whole; or may prescind entirely from the question of its origin or its purpose. Thus our thoughts are always unfinished and frayed round the edges, and we do not know how much they involve and drag along with them. We can think of the mechanism, and the organism, and the design, without thinking of the mechanist, or the organizer, or the designer; and so in all cases where two ideas are connected without being actually correlative. ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... and that this man could not take ten paces without his having to stop to pull them up and to readjust them. Did he wear a vest? The mere thought of his boots and that which they enveloped filled me with horror. The frayed cuffs were as perfectly black at the edges as were ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... always holding up his grave patience, his bleeding, his most eloquent refusals, for her wonder. Wonder, indeed, she did, and much more than that. The thought sat upon her like a brooding evil spirit, frayed her nerves to waste. He used to move her so much by this policy of negation that she found herself panting as she sat among her women; or when from her throned seat at table she saw his pale profile burn like a silver ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... went on Tom easily, with a warning glance at Ned. "But I dare say they were old cables, that had been used on other work, and may have become frayed. Everything is safe now, though. New cables ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... against the bows of a little schooner lying some thirty yards from the bank. She had been seized for illegal sealing some years earlier, and it was evident that she had been very little used since then. The paint was peeling from her cracked and weathered side, her gear was frayed and bleached with frost and rain, and only very hard-pressed men would have faced the thought of going to sea in her. Wyllard and his companions were, however, very hard-pressed indeed, and they preferred the hazards ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... Then we put our arms around each other and went up-stairs without a word. It was mother's door we opened, and we stood there and gazed as if we'd never seen that room before. She had been darning her carpet again. We could see the careful stitches and the frayed edges her art couldn't quite conceal. "She has polished her furniture, too! See how it shines, Meta. She tried to make it look its best." Rose's voice was mournful, so I tried to ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... deeply, and his voice dropped below the regulation whisper in which one is permitted to speak in the Reading Room. Celia glanced at him, and saw that he was poorly dressed, that his shirt-cuffs were frayed, and that he had the peculiar look which is stamped on the countenances of so many of the ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... hours before, although a prisoner, he had looked the dashing young Cavalier in his scarlet, feathers, and gold, and, in spite of his uniform being stained and frayed with hard service, the lad's mien had hidden all that, and he seemed one to look up ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... and stood on either side of him as he surveyed his visitors. They in turn surveyed him. They saw a tall, slight old man, still unbent. It seemed as though dignity defied time and kept him upright. His frayed white shirt was spotless, and his gray trousers, held up by thongs of skin, were neatly darned and clean. The lines in his smoothly shaven face vied in intricacy with the streets of Boston; his thin hair was neatly brushed; his faded blue eyes were gentle. He was the kind of an old man to whom ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... his work was concerned he could go without regrets. He left his career behind him with no frayed edges that could tangle. He had fulfilled all his ambitions. He had "bought back Kilmoriarty and got a title too," as he promised his aunt he would while still a boy in his teens. He had collected an almost unprecedented number of honours, been decorated no less than twenty-four times, ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... under lids were puffy and discolored, and a dozen heavy creases ran, fan-like, from the corners of his eyes. Hair already turning white and an unkempt mustache and beard completed the picture. His clothes were faded and frayed, no linen was visible, and his boots were cracked and soggy. There was nothing about him to suggest the former estate of gentleman save his hands, which, while thin and tremulous, were clean and well-kept, in singular contrast to the ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... at once, unhesitatingly, have declared to be a doctor in moderate practice—pushed open the swing doors of the restaurant and made his way to the desk. He was of medium height; he wore a frock-coat—a little frayed; gray trousers which had not been recently pressed; and ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... an edge is a fringe. This can be made either by fraying out the material or by adding a detached fringe, either knotting it in or attaching it in some other way. If the fringe is to be a frayed-out one, the best way to do it is to first draw out a few warp threads where the head of the fringe is to come, then hem stitch the upper edge of this, see the right-hand end of fig. 155; this makes the heading ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... costume of the seventeenth century. The coat of tattered, weather-stained brown velvet, the puffed sleeves slashed with tan satin that is soiled and frayed. Great tan boots coming to the knee. A white lace collar at neck, much the worse for ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... honesty was widespread. He would fling his dearest friend into prison for such a swindle as that arranged between Coke and the shipowner. But it was a positive relief to divulge everything that concerned Iris. From his pocket-book David produced her frayed letter, and Bulmer read it slowly, aloud, through eyeglasses held ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... she slipped gently from my arms, put back her beautiful hair under her cap, and when I had helped her on with her chemise, the coarseness of which horrified me, I told her she might calm herself. I told her how sorry I felt to see her delicate body frayed by so coarse a stuff, and she told me it was of the usual material, and that all the nuns wore chemises of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... or frayed? The plumes, the armours—friend and foe? The cloth of gold, the rare brocade, The mantles glittering to and fro? The pomp, the pride, the royal show? The cries of war and festival? The youth, the grace, the charm, the glow? Into the night go one ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... like rockers over the well-polished deck, and the lad returned to his place to turn the winder where he had stood the line to dry. This process was going on rapidly, and he stopped bending over the apparatus to examine the hook and stout snood, to see that it had not been frayed by the fish's teeth. This done, he turned to speak to Fitz again, and ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... seemed to beat quite loudly. The instant that I found myself alone in this calm retreat all other thoughts and recollections left my head as completely as though they had never been there, and I subsided into an inexpressibly pleasing kind of torpor. The rusty alpaca cassocks with their frayed linings, the worn black leather bindings of the books with their metal clasps, the dull-green plants with their carefully watered leaves and soil, and, above all, the abrupt, regular beat of the pendulum, ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... the bows of the Wavecrest was the cable by which she had been moored in Bolderhead Harbor. I had never chanced to draw it aboard. Now I did so. It was only a bit, some three or four feet long. And instead of finding it frayed and broken by the strain of the sloop as she dragged at her old anchorage, I found that the hemp had been cut sharply across. Nothing less than a knife—and a sharp one—had severed that cable when ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... gentle an' considerate, too, that when we passes the Mexican next day on our way in, except he's some raveled an' frayed coastin' along where it's rocky, an' which can't be he'ped none, he's as excellent a corpse as when he comes off the shelf, warm as the ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... little garrison; but danger was not over. The sharp-eyed Gauls observed that the shrubs and creepers were broken, the moss frayed, and fresh stones and earth rolled down at the crag of the Capitol: they were sure that the rock had been climbed, and, therefore, that it might be climbed again. Should they, who were used to the snowy peaks, dark abysses, and huge glaciers of the ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... servers of the chalices, the whole body of assistants inside the railing, fell upon their knees while the banner was borne through the gate, and planted on the floor there. Its face was frayed and dim with age, yet the figure of the woman upon it was plain to sight, except as the faint gray smoke from the censers veiled it ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... cotton blouse, the sleeves of which were a little rumpled as if they had been rolled up above her elbows, and her skirt of some ugly brown stuff was shabby and partly frayed about the edges—but when she looked at him with her sincere blue eyes, he forgot the disorder of her dress in the touching pathos of her gallant little figure. She was very pretty, he saw, in a fragile yet resolute way—like a child that ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... splendid the little, scrawny Professor had been! How quick to resent an insult and how bold to avenge it! His absurd little tweed cap was lying on the seat, and I picked it up almost sentimentally. The lining was frayed and torn. From my suit case in the van I got out a small sewing kit, and hanging the reins on a hook I began to stitch up the rents as Peg jogged along. I thought with amusement of the quaint life Mr. Mifflin had led in his "caravan of culture." ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... whip-lash to him is as dear as a rose Would be to a delicate maid; He carries his darlings wherever he goes, In a pocket-book tattered and frayed. ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... down!" commanded Perez, whose temper was becoming somewhat frayed. "You make me think of the walkin' beam on a steamboat. If you'd stop tryin' to fly and go straight ahead we'd ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... advice to fill her mind with something good and helpful, the old lady vowed to pick up the frayed ends of her life and ask Ruth how to use her money and time to create some lasting good for others. As she smiled contentedly over the idea of her grand-niece of tender years advising and helping her, an old lady of three score and ten, ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... up my pen to write, some evil spirit whispered, Cui bono? and I laid down my pen and hid my manuscript. Once or twice I took up some old Greek poets and essayed to translate them. I have kept the paper still, frayed and yellow with age; but the fatal Cui bono? disheartened me, and I flung it aside. Even my love for the sea had vanished, and I had begun to hate it. During the first few years of my ministry ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... near them the smiddy. The mountains rose grandly on every side, throwing up their great peaks into the sky. The clearing in which the camp stood was hewn out of a dense pine forest that filled the valley and climbed halfway up the mountain sides and then frayed out in ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... engagement near there yesterday, and that our army is victorious. I have heard, also, that we were driven in, and that your regiment lost a great many men and horses . . . I don't know which is true," she added, listlessly picking at her frayed gown; "only, as we haven't heard the guns to-day, it seems to me that if we had lost the battle we'd have Confederate cannon thundering all ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... politics with him and keep womanly. One great secret of their joyful married life was found in the perfect frankness each showed the other, and also in the blessed fact that each of them had almost a perfect physical constitution, not frayed nor tortured with ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... Newbern was still slumberous. Smoke issued from a chimney here and there, but mostly the town would partake of a cold supper. The boy came beside his father, with Frank, the dog, again on his leash of frayed rope. Dave Cowan ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... appearance, my dear fellow," said Argyle. "I am frayed at the wrists—look here!" He showed the cuffs of his overcoat, just frayed through. "I've got a trunkful of clothes in London, if only somebody would bring it out to me.—Ready ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... lonely and deserted. Jordan shut himself up in his room. It was rare now that he took his accustomed evening walks; his coat-sleeves and the ends of his trouser legs had become more and more frayed. He pined away; his hair became snow white, his walk unsteady, his eye dim. But he was never ill, and he never complained of his fate. He never said anything at the table; he ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... be wise if I resigned my seat to the chauffeur before I am requested," chuckled Myra, still laughing immoderately at thought of her father's undignified attitude as he was dragged through the dust, clinging desperately to the frayed end of the broken rope. So she scrambled nimbly to her place on the running board, and there Mr. Haskell found her sitting prim and decorous when he had finally recovered his breath and made himself sufficiently presentable to face the ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... rebound of the ax nearly wrenched it from his grasp, the boat shifted as the cable seemed to stretch ever so slightly, and the Texan noted with satisfaction that the edge was no longer awash. Another flash of lightning and he could see the frayed ends where the severed strands were slowly untwisting. Another blow, and the cable parted. With a jerk that nearly threw the occupants into the river the boat righted herself, the flat bottom striking the ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... the officer going off to the little boat; but with repeated instructions to examine carefully before touching it. It proved to be a beautifully built lady's pleasure boat that had broken from its moorings and drifted seaward, a piece of frayed line still hanging from her bow. She was painted white and gilded, elegantly furnished with cushioned seats and handsomely ornamented. An open book was found on one seat and a single oar rested on the bottom. The officer carefully ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... you. Now the overshoes. No, pardon me, Miss Wallen, you're not going to put them on yourself. Sit down, if you please, or stand, if you don't." And down he dropped on one knee and in a trice had stowed away the thin, worn little boots, with their frayed button-holes, within the warm yet clumsy Arctics. "You are sensible to wear such things as these," he said. "The snow is falling heavily, and I mean to walk you home to-night. Now the gloves.—Yes, you may ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... but if you get a blue you can wear it anywhere. It's dressy, and at the same time it's quiet, too." Eva, the expert, wrestling with Carrie over the problem of the new spring dress. They never guessed that the commonplace man in the frayed old smoking jacket had banished them all from the room long ago; had banished himself, for that matter. In his place was a tall, debonair, and rather dangerously handsome man to whom six o'clock spelled evening clothes. The kind ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... Ben got him into the monkey skin,—an old brown flannel petticoat that Grandma Bascom had given the children to play with, "'Cause it's so et up with moths, 'tain't fit to set a needle into to fix up," as she said. And Ben made a long, flapping tail out of an old, frayed rope, and Polly had sewed a little tuft of hair, that came out of Mamsie's cushion, on top of the monkey's head, pulling it all around the face for some whiskers; so, when Joel was really inside of it, he was perfectly awful. Particularly as he ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... possibilities and its significance. It ought in the nature of things, she felt, to mean so much more than it had meant; it ought to have been so much more vital, so much more satisfying and complete. As it was, she could remember of it only scattered ends, frayed places, useless beginnings, and broken promises. With how many beliefs had she started, and now not one of them remained with her—well, hardly one of them! The dropping of illusion after illusion—that was what the years had brought to her as they passed; for she ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow |
