"Patching" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... admitted that to 'patch' or to 'exult in the basest blank' is a form of conduct quite unbefitting an artist, the very obscurity and incomprehensible character of such a crime adding something to its horror. However, while fully recognising the wickedness of 'patching' we cannot but think that Professor Harald Williams is happier in his criticism of life than he is in his art criticism. His poem Between the Banks, for instance, has a touch of sincerity and fine feeling that almost atones ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... living in an old house, on unhealthy ground, with water in the cellar, a crumbling foundation, the beams like sponge, the roof leaking, the chimney full of cracks, would not spend large sums of money year after year, generation after generation, in patching up the old house on the same old spot, but with ordinary wisdom and economy, they would build anew, on higher ground, with strong foundations, sound timber, substantial chimneys, and solid roofing. True, they would patch up the old at as little cost as possible, merely to ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... single little turret that remains On the plains, By the caper overrooted, by the gourd Overscored, 40 While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks Through the chinks— Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time Sprang sublime, And a burning ring, all around, the chariots traced 45 As they raced, And the monarch and his minions and his dames ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... at a loss. He had no idea what had taken Varney up the road to Stanhope's that afternoon, much less of any shock that could conceivably have come to him. But he set himself to find out. By the next morning, partly through inquiry, partly through patching two and two together, he had worked out a theory. Guesswork, of course, was rather dangerous in a delicate matter such as this; but the doctor's report after breakfast had been the very worst yet. Peter never faltered. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... had not laid in his coal. They all said the same. "Now," said he, "the coal of this crowd for this winter will cost a thousand dollars, if you add in the kindling and the matches, and patching the furnace pots ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... I be patching torn trousers or darning ripped sweaters for if you were like Bob, I'd like to know? Who'd be pestering me to hunt up his cap and mittens? And who would I ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... worth it," Hastings explained. "This island land is the most productive in the world. This section of California is like Holland. You wouldn't think it, but this water we're sailing on is higher than the surface of the islands. They're like leaky boats—calking, patching, pumping, night and day and all the time. But ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... be seen about the streets, shivering and looking the very picture of absolute wretchedness. Amongst these, a few old women may be seen sitting by the side of the streets, earning a scanty subsistence by mending and patching the clothes of people as poor as themselves. These poor women, having all undergone the barbarous operation of cramping the feet during infancy, are consequently unable to undertake any thing but sedentary employment ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... repair, in good taste, spotless from dirt, and suited both to the weather and the occasion; doing for herself what her own personal needs require; arranging flowers; entertaining company; nursing the sick; "letting down" and "letting out" to suit the growing ones; patching, darning, knitting, crocheting, braiding, quilting,—but let us remember the warning of the old saying, and ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... wonderful faculty of invention and constitutes an inexhaustible source of pleasure. This pleasure is all the more pleasurable because the matter is always presented in a thoroughly workmanlike form. The shapelessness, the incoherence, the necessity for endless annotation and patching together, which mar so many even of the finest Elizabethan plays, have no place in Beaumont and Fletcher. Their dramatic construction is almost narrative in its clear and easy flow, in its absence of puzzles and piecings. Again, their stories are always interesting, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... saw it peeking over the eastern cliffs while Andy was patching me up." He carried one arm in a sling, and his other ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... volumes, mostly of old Scotch divinity, in the little bookcase at Dunglass was well thumbed. But reading of a lighter kind was also indulged in, and on winter nights, when the mother was plying her spinning-wheel and the father had taken down his cobbler's box and was busily engaged patching the children's shoes, it was a regular practice for John to sit near the dim oil-lamp and read to the rest. Sometimes the reading would be from an early number of Chambers's Journal, sometimes from ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... all about their great work? I hope it'll be finished by the end of the year. The bits they have sent me will do very well indeed. I knew they had it in them to put sentences together. Now I want them to think of patching up something or other for The English Girl; ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... like myself. No, he was but a cobbler. On the following day, going again to see her, I find this cobbler there. I remonstrate with her, but in vain. And what is worse, she had sent to him the shoes I made, to be repaired. He was patching my own work! I swallowed my ire and went back to my shop. A week later, to be brief, I went there again, and what I beheld made my body shiver. She, the wench. Forgive me, Allah! had her hands around his neck and her lips—yes, her lying lips, on his cheek! No, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... change had taken place on his outward man. Whenever they observed this dubious expression gather upon his countenance, accompanied with a glance that fixed now upon the sleeve of his coat, now upon the knees of his breeches, where he probably missed some antique patching and darning, which, being executed with blue thread upon a black ground, had somewhat the effect of embroidery, they always took care to turn his attention into some other channel, until his garments, 'by the aid of use, cleaved to their mould.' The only remark he was ever known to make on the ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... to the probable duration of the "spell o' weather," and John's or Pat's chance of getting or losing a job in consequence. The snow man stood there till long after all doubts were settled on these mooted points, falling slowly into helpless decrepitude in spite of occasional patching. But long before that time the frost succeeding the snow had paved the way for coasting in the hilly streets, and discovered countless "slides" in those that were flat, to the huge delight of the small boy and the discomfiture of his unsuspecting elders. With ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... Home in it for my fellow-traveller; and for her predictions of fair winds and fine weather (all wrong, or I shouldn't be half so fond of her); and for the ten thousand small fragments of genuine womanly tact, by which, without piecing them elaborately together, and patching them up into shape and form and case and pointed application, she nevertheless did plainly show that all young mothers on one side of the Atlantic were near and close at hand to their little children left upon the other; and that what seemed to ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... fatally result either in the defeat of the Russian Army by the Germans, and the patching up of a peace between the Austro-German coalition and the Franco-British coalition at the expense of Russia-or in a separate peace ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... better established than that till nearly the end of the nineteenth century it was the general belief that the ancient industrial system, with all its shocking social consequences, was destined to last, with possibly a little patching, to the end of time. How strange and wellnigh incredible does it seem that so prodigious a moral and material transformation as has taken place since then could have been accomplished in so brief an interval? The ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... Mr. Peggotty came home about nine o'clock, this unfortunate Mrs. Gummidge was knitting in her corner, in a very wretched and miserable condition. Peggotty had been working cheerfully. Ham had been patching up a great pair of waterboots; and I, with little Em'ly by my side, had been reading to them. Mrs. Gummidge had never made any other remark than a forlorn sigh, and had never raised her eyes ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... desired and setting him beside the tree returned to his own folk and the caravan loaded and left the place. Presently Mohsin swarmed up the trunk; and, taking seat upon a branch of its branches, fell to cropping the leaves and patching them upon either eye as he had heard the Jinni prescribe; and hardly had two days gone by when he felt healed of his hurt and opened his eyelids and saw what was around him. Then, after taking somewhat of its foliage, he came down from the tree ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... own resources could not provide. Because of the failure to paralyze Spain by a single blow, Napoleon had, for the first time in his history, returned after a "successful" campaign without an enormous war indemnity. Once again, after temporary patching, French finances were in disorder, and there was urgent need to repair them. The people desired peace for their enterprises, but the continental blockade so hampered commerce that any peace which did not include a pacification of the seas would avail them little. It was a customary ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... which her empty central gas-bags spread in canopies and festoons. Nothing, however, had caught fire, and her men were speedily at work upon her repair. They behaved with a confidence that verged upon indiscretion. While most of them commenced patching the tears of the membrane, half a dozen of them started off for the nearest road in search of a gas main, and presently found themselves prisoners in the hands of a hostile crowd. Close at hand was a number of villa residences, whose occupants speedily developed from an unfriendly curiosity ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... over his head; but who will give him a roof if mine be taken from me? Is not this so? All seemed in agreement, and Peter continued: I am thinking, John, that our new brother might help us to buy the Master a new cloak, for his is falling to pieces and my wife's mother is weary with patching it. He cured her of the fever, but she thinks that a great cost is put upon me and would ask the Master something for his keep. Whereupon John spoke out that the story of his mother-in-law was for ever the same; and seeing that ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... had to dance attendance on scores of intriguing factors and brokers ashore), the requisite stores for the fleet, Paul sat in his cabin in a half-despondent reverie, while Israel, cross-legged at his commander's feet, was patching up some old signals. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... long and confidential talk; and I perceived that, though he had finally given up all intention of getting me into the church, in the hopes of patching up the holes in the old roof with a mitre, he had fully made up his mind on the subject of a widow. I rejoiced that Mrs Coutts was already disposed of. He talked a long time of jointures, three per cents, India stock; and I—O youth! O hope!—I mused all the time ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... the window Simon's old shirt she had been patching, and gave it to the stranger. She also brought out a pair of trousers ...
— What Men Live By and Other Tales • Leo Tolstoy
... to see our institutions freed from every vestige of human oppression, of inequality of rights, of the recognized degradation of the poor and the superior caste of the rich. But that bright dream had vanished. "I find," said he, "that we shall be obliged to be content with patching up the worst portions of the ancient edifice, and leaving it in many of its parts to be swept through by the tempests, the frosts, and ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... sounds, my Philo, brought into my head that old anecdote about the Sinopean. A report that Philip was marching on the town had thrown all Corinth into a bustle; one was furbishing his arms, another wheeling stones, a third patching the wall, a fourth strengthening a battlement, every one making himself useful somehow or other. Diogenes having nothing to do—of course no one thought of giving him a job—was moved by the sight to gird up his philosopher's cloak and begin rolling ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... to thus helping in dressmaking there were lessons to be given in patching and darning, and in lengthening out, or adding to, the dresses of the ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... wagon wheels was broken, and in the course of an hour or two, Willis and I succeeded in patching up the shattered body sufficiently to hold the hogs. But how to get the heavy brutes off the ground and up into the wagon was a task beyond our resources. When you try to take a live hog off its feet, he is likely to bite as well as to squeal. We ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... me so in church to look at her elbows and back seams that I can't hardly listen to the Deacon pray. Patching is the most worrisome job a woman has to do, according to my mind," said the widow, with an expression of distaste on her beaming face. "I've done patched two men, and I ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Well, I really thought I should have burst—to be forced not to allow people to suppose that I cared, when I should like to tear the old wretch out of his coffin to beat him. His wardrobe! If people knew his wardrobe as well as I do, who have been patching at it these last ten years—not a shirt or a stocking that would fetch sixpence! And as for his other garments, why a Jew would hardly put them into his bag! (Crying.) Oh dear! oh dear! After all, I'm just like Miss Clementina; for Sergeant O'Callaghan, when he ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... girl and grade, and many were the exclamations of commendation from those who visited the rooms where the display was made. Works deserving special mention are buttonholes made by Martha Howard of the seventh grade; patching by Lulu Gaston, and darning by Gertrude Williams. The cooking-school, for lack of money, was discontinued after three months, but during that time substantial progress was made, and there can be no question about the advisability of pushing the industrial ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 48, No. 7, July, 1894 • Various
... find such a logic as would bring the conclusions they require out of the canonical books. And a queer logic it is; nothing but the Roman forge can be compared with the Protestant loom. The picking, the patching, the piecing, which goes to the Protestant termini ad quem,[73] would be as remarkable to the general eye, as the Roman manufacture of termini a quo,[74] if it were not that the world at large seizes the character of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... Downwards and seawards, though the hill is not half the altitude of Cissbury. Northwards are the beautiful woods of Castle Goring, once the residence of the Shelleys, through which we may walk to Clapham and Patching, villages on southern spurs of the Downs; the latter has a restored Early English church with a very beautiful modern reredos. Clapham has a Transitional church containing memorials of the Shelley family. Notice the blocked-up Norman arch which proves ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... is there, palefac'd, quiet; her young man went back on her four years ago; his folks would not let him marry a convict's sister. She sits by the window, sewing on the children's clothes, the clothes not only patching up; her hunger for children of her ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... with ye?" asked the Doctor, very coolly taking a third chair, seating himself astraddle on it, and crossing his arms over the top. "No harm to be taken patching up a bit of plaster, is there?" Again ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... all those Notions be found to be false and deceitful, that will not undergo all the Trials and Tests made of them by Experiments. And therefore such as will not come up to the desired Apex of Perfection, I rather wholly reject and take new, then by piecing and patching, endeavour to retain the old, as knowing such things at best to be but lame and imperfect. And this course I learned from Nature; whom we find neglectful of the old Body, and suffering its Decaies and Infirmities to remain without repair, and altogether sollicitous and careful ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... patching an old coat, Lulu an apron, Gracie a doll's dress; Eva and Rosie each had a worn stocking drawn over her hand, and was busily engaged in darning it; the other girls were mending gloves, the boys old shoes; and as they worked they talked ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... pushed stretchers on rubber-tyred wheels about the paths, stretchers on which motionless forms lay shrouded in blankets. One, concerning whom I asked, had just had part of his skull trepanned: another had suffered amputation. And all this pruning and patching up of broken men to win them a few more years of crippled life caught one's throat like the penetrating smell of the iodoform. Nor was I sorry to hasten away by the night mail northwards to the camps. It was still dark as we passed ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... theirs, and seeking out misery in order that he might heal it with words, with help, with attentions, and with money, according to the case: as ready to solace the rich in their misfortunes as the poor, patching up their souls and bringing them back to God; and tearing about hither and thither, watching his troop, the dear shepherd! Now the good man went about careless of the state of his cassocks, mantles, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... laughed to herself. "And here I've been hiring my own mending done! Theodosia Baxter, see what you are doing; you are patching a shirt for a man! No, I'm not, either! I'm doing it for Stefana—what ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... we put it off a month longer there won't be enough material on land or sea to supply the demand for ready-made garments. As it is, I'm afraid the poor devils will have to go naked themselves until a new crop springs up. I saw one of Pootoo's wives patching his best suit of breech clothes to-day, so he must be hard put for ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... how you tried to blast our medic," replied the captain with a grin which was close to shark-like, "he may not feel much like patching up those fingers of yours. Stick 'em in where they have no business, and they're apt to get burned. At any rate he's not going to look at 'em until he's had a chance to rest. I'll give you first aid. And while I'm ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... ashes. My unfortunate workman, having blundered on for certain millions of years tinkering and patching and improving his dismal colony, will give the thing up; and God will laugh and show him the mistakes and then blot the essay out, as a master runs his pen through the errors in a pupil's exercise. The earth grows cold at last, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... is the fact that we have had a constitution for one hundred and twenty-five years, and the Lord knows it needs patching. It needs something worse: It needs abolishing worse than ...
— Industrial Conspiracies • Clarence S. Darrow
... head-master, that Bolsover awoke to the knowledge that a change had taken place. Mr Frampton—he was not even a "Doctor" or a "Reverend," but was a young man with sandy whiskers, and a red tie—had a few ideas of his own on the subject of dry-rot. He evidently preferred ripping up entire floors to patching single planks, and he positively scared his colleagues and pupils by the way he set to work. He was young and enthusiastic, and was perhaps tempted to overdo things at first. When people are being reformed, they need a little breathing time now and then; but Mr Frampton ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... off my style, and can do nothing well; indeed, I fear I have marred Roads finally by patching at it when I was out of the humour. Only, I am beginning to see something great about John Knox and Queen Mary; I like them both so much, that I feel as if I could write ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inspiration ran low, he occupied himself doctoring books. Eternally, he hunted for the flat stones between which he pressed their swollen bulks back to shape. Eternally he puttered about, mending and patching them. He used to sit for hours at a desk which he had rescued from the ship's furniture. The others never became accustomed to the comic incongruity of this picture—especially when, later, he virtually boxed himself in with a ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... wish to dispose of, the same school will afford you instruction how to make the most of him, that is to say, to conceal his vices and defects, and by proper attention to put him into condition, to alter his whole appearance by hogging, cropping, and docking—by patching up his broken knees—blowing gun-powder in his dim eyes—bishoping, blistering, &c. so as to turn him out in good twig, scarcely to be known by those who have frequently seen and noticed him: besides which, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the fog we drove through the silent ruin of the streets, still on their feet, so to speak, as at Verdun, but eyeless, roofless, and dead, scarcely a house habitable, though here and there one saw a few signs of patching up and returning habitation. And in the great square before the Cathedral instead of the old comeliness, the old stir of provincial and commercial life—ruin!—only intensified by a group of motors, come to ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "Luck was with me. The knife went to his heart. I am merely scratched. His leap was short, but he caught me above the knees with his claws. Alas, your highness, these trousers of mine were bad enough before, but now they are in shreds. What patching I shall have to do! And you may well imagine we are short of thread and needles ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... press them too far. Do not drive them to the goal of last resort. Give them justice while you have it in your power to do so. Satisfy them that ultimately they shall have equality in this broken Government, or Union, if you will. But, sir, I leave the patching up of the Constitution to the distinguished Senator from Kentucky and other gentlemen, especially my friend from Pennsylvania [Mr. BIGLER], who has labored harder to patch up the Constitution than ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... me. I was content to be master, but she said there was better behind; She took the chances I wouldn't, and I followed your mother blind. She egged me to borrow the money, an' she helped me clear the loan, When we bought half shares in a cheap 'un and hoisted a flag of our own. Patching and coaling on credit, and living the Lord knew how, We started the Red Ox freighters—we've eight-and-thirty now. And those were the days of clippers, and the freights were clipper-freights, And ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... busy for weeks, in fact, ever since the show in the cellar, patching, sewing, and putting together old rag carpet, canvas, heavy with paint, that had been ripped from the hurricane deck ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... to life to go through that agony and ordeal of the inquest again and come out with the same result as if he hadn't been there at all? And I decided—no; no, thanks; not me. It was too much like patching up a dying man in a civilised country for the pleasure of hanging him, or like fatting up a starving man in a cannibal country for the satisfaction ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... Nomerfide, "that every one is like you, who would use one slander for the patching of another; but there is danger lest the patch impair what it patches and the foundation be so overladen that all be destroyed. However, if you think that the subtlety, of which all believe you to be fully possessed, is greater than that found in women, I yield place to ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... are good that way. I often envy you, for what with my health and every one's health to think about, doctoring one man for fever, putting all you fellows straight, and patching up squabbling savages, my appetite often feels as if it wants a fillip. A doctor's is an anxious life, my boy—more especially out here in a country like this, amongst a very uncertain people, when a man feels that he has ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... at this country all cut up into silly little parallelograms, look at all those villas we passed just now and those potato patches and that tarred shanty and the hedge! Somebody's minding every bit of it like a dog tied to a cart's tail. Patching it and bothering about it. Bothering! Yapping at every passer-by. Look at that notice-board! One rotten worried little beast wants to keep us other rotten little beasts off HIS patch,—God knows why! Look at the ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... tenderly and patted her plump shoulder. "Had a flat tire and had to stop, and get her pumped up," he explained, "and then the man found a place wanted patching. He took a little longer than I expected. I was afraid you ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... been with us two or three weeks, he began to make mistakes which I had difficulty in patching up for him. Approaching Benares one day, he got out of the train to see if he could get up a misunderstanding with somebody, for it had been a weary, long journey and he wanted to freshen up. He found what he was after, but kept up his pow-wow a shade too long and got left. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... violator to my heart? Can I vow duty to one so wicked, and hazard my salvation by joining myself to so great a profligate, now I know him to be so? Do you think your Clarissa Harlowe so lost, so sunk, at least, as that she could, for the sake of patching up, in the world's eye, a broken reputation, meanly appear indebted to the generosity, or perhaps compassion, of a man, who has, by means so inhuman, robbed her of it? Indeed, my dear, I should not think my penitence for the rash step I took, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... house a little later he found that the family had had supper, a single plate remaining for himself. His stepmother, looking jaded and nervous, was putting salted herring to soak in an earthenware bowl, while she scolded Sairy Jane, who was patching Jubal's apron. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... Rousseau's originality went infinitely further than this. He neither represented his age, nor led it; he opposed it. His outlook upon the world was truly revolutionary. In his eyes, the reforms which his contemporaries were so busy introducing into society were worse than useless—the mere patching of an edifice which would never be fit to live in. He believed that it was necessary to start altogether afresh. And what makes him so singularly interesting a figure is that, in more than one sense, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... make our education brave and preventive. Politics is an after-work, a poor patching. We are always a little late. The evil is done, the law is passed, and we begin the up-hill agitation for repeal of that of which we ought to have prevented the enacting. We shall one day learn to supersede politics by education. What we call our root-and-branch ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... nothing would have induced me to confess it then. He had served in the Crimea, and seemed to regard a dilapidated body very much as I should have regarded a damaged garment; and, turning up his cuffs, whipped out a very unpleasant looking housewife, cutting, sawing, patching and piecing, with the enthusiasm of an accomplished surgical seamstress; explaining the process, in scientific terms, to the patient, meantime; which, of course, was immensely cheering and comfortable. There was an uncanny ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... the Vandyke beard, cutting into a cake, you may not need to be told, is Patching, the painter of those delicious interiors which have been seen every year by those who had eyes to find them, in obscure corners at the rooms of the National Academy of Design. In short, Patching is the subject of a conspiracy in ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Tinker said, "but I ran out of paper and gave it up. Then, when the night fell," he resumed dolefully, after another long interval of silence, "I tried to prop it up. But I met with the same difficulty that confronted me in patching up the day, and was ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... thoroughly well learned. And the strangest things come of use, too, at the strangest times. A sailor teaches you to tie a knot when you are on a fishing party, and you tie that knot the next time when you are patching up the Emperor of Russia's carriage for him, in a valley in the Ural Mountains. But "getting ready" does not mean the piling in of a heap of accidental accomplishments. It means sedulously examining the coming duty or pleasure, imagining it even in its details, decreeing the utmost punctuality ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... that the prosecution was not satisfied with its case, and would have liked to find more definite proof of Lanrivain's complicity than the statement of the herb-gatherer, who swore to having seen him climbing the wall of the park on the night of the murder. One way of patching out incomplete proofs in those days was to put some sort of pressure, moral or physical, on the accused person. It is not clear what pressure was put on Anne de Cornault; but on the third day, when she was brought ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... I suppose it is useless for me to ask," he added, "but have you, by any chance, a bit of canvas—an old sail or hammock?—I don't need much. That's what I came for—and some shellac and wire, and a screwdriver of sorts? We need patching as well as petrol; and we're a little short ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... He had been sitting on the bed with a studiously vacant expression. It was Smith's policy not to seem, except by request, to take any interest in, or, in fact, to be aware of anything unusual that Steelman might be doing—from patching his ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... it," nodded Aldous cheerfully. "I went out for it, Mac, and I got it! Get out your emergency kit, will you? I rather fancy I need a little patching up." ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... could not at present do her own laundry-work, she insisted upon darning and patching and mending as only she could darn ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... without meaning, puns without point, cant without character, sentiments as dull as they were false, and a continual outrage on manners, morals and common sense, were its leading features. Yet, strange to tell, the audience endured it all; and, by copious retrenchments and plaistering and patching, this very piece had ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Thomas de Villeneuve, who were in charge of an immense hospital, had two old masons who might be seen at all times, trowel in hand, patching up the slightest damage to their buildings; the local manager of a Dufayel store had become almost a fanatic on the subject. His stock in trade consisted of furniture, china and crockery of all kinds, housed beneath a glass roof, which seemed to attract ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... about fifteen, dressed in European clothes. I fainted from loss of blood, and don't remember anything else until I found myself in a tent, with two Cossacks patching up my wound. When I came to, she rushed forward, and thanked me profusely for saving her. To my surprise, she spoke in French, and on inquiry I found that she was the daughter of a certain Baron Conrad de Hetzendorf, an Austrian, who possessed a house in Budapest ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... point, the Yenesei still swept along. The lagoon had been frozen over for some days, in spite of the water being kept almost perpetually in motion by the flocks of water-fowl, and the ground was as hard as iron. The Ostjaks were now for some days employed in patching up their huts and preparing them to withstand the cold ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... diligent patching and the strong tackle told. The question was not with regard to the strength of the net, it was rather with regard to the strength of the younger lads; for they had succeeded in enclosing a goodly portion of a large shoal of mackerel, and ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... deal of questioning and patching together, we finally got her story, but I cannot say that it threw much light upon the matter. She had put the chicken in the oven, and then she felt powerful queer, as if something were going to happen. Suddenly she ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... Crafts; and the rich raiment wherein her friends of the Castle of the Quest had clad her. Then she arose and sought needle and thread and some remnants of green cloth, and did off the ragged coat and fell to patching and mending it, and so sat at her work in smock-sewing till the night was old and she was weary and sleep overcame her, and she lay down in her bed and slept dreamlessly till the sun was high ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... as I work I say, All simply, to Him: "Come! And if to-day, Then wilt Thou find me thus: just as I am— Tending my household; stirring goose- berry jam; Or swiftly rinsing tiny vests and hose, With puzzled forehead patching some one's clothes; Guiding small footsteps, swift to hear, and run, From early dawn till setting of ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... or touched on in this report: ways of cleaning up rivers and assuring their flow, ways of halting erosion and siltation, ways of planning land's use by concentrated human populations with as little loss as possible of amenities, ways of patching up old damage. Many of them are imperfect as yet and for some problems tools are still missing, nor are the existing techniques being applied in a completely coordinated manner anywhere on this continent except in a few experimental places of restricted ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... days, were soaked with water and very soon hurt my feet so I had to take them off. I made my way into Kenyon and there saw the great destruction which had been done by the hail. There was not a whole pane of glass in the little village and the inhabitants were engaged in patching up their windows with boards and blankets, as best they could. The crops were entirely destroyed. Many people had suffered by being struck by hailstones, some of which were ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... often mention I feel the want of to a certain extent; but while I welcome it if it comes to me, I am not exactly beating the covert for it.[474] I am building in three places, and am patching up my other houses. I live somewhat more lavishly than I used to do. I am obliged to do so. If I had you with me I should give the builders full swing for a while.[475] But this too (as I hope) we ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... in its disgusting trade, And botching, patching, leaving still behind Something of which its masters are afraid, States to be curbed and thoughts to be confined, Conspiracy or congress to be made, Cobbling at manacles for all mankind, A tinkering slave-maker, who mends old chains, With God and ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... a change, where the stream darts along swiftly, after having escaped from a weir, and still streaked with foam. The shore rises like a sea beach, and on the pebbles men are patching and pitching old barges which have been hauled up on the bank. A skiff partly drawn up on the beach rocks as the current strives to work it loose, and up the varnish of the side glides a flickering light reflected ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... its power. Behind him that nation was patching up its one great quarrel, and now a gray phantom stalked out of the past to the music of drum and fife, and Crittenden turned sharply to see a little body of men, in queer uniforms, marching through a camp of regulars toward him. They were old ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... boarders loitering about with knitting work or book. The landlord brought cool tinkling glasses of water and rich milk from the spring-house, and they dropped into the chairs to wait while the men of the party gave assistance to the chauffeur in patching ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... chimney, on two dogwood forks, rested the long rifle with its fishtail sight and the brass plate on the stock for the bullets and the "patching." Below it hung the old powder-horn, its wooden plug dangling from a string,—tools of the long ago. Closing one's eyes one could see the tall grandsires fighting in the beech forest, a brown patch of hide sighted over the brass knife-blade bead, and death, and ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... in his old charge, and seems to have spent the rest of his life quietly in the country, enjoying the fresh air and the old English sports—'repenting at leisure moments,' as Shakspeare has it, of the early pruriencies of his muse; or, as the same immortal bard says of Falstaff, 'patching up his old body' for a better place. The date of his death is not exactly ascertained; but he seems to have got considerably to the shady side of seventy years ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... patches on elbows, on knees; colored binding round his jacket, scarlet edging at the bottom of his trousers; and the sunshine made him look extremely gay and wonderfully neat withal, because you could see how beautifully all this patching had been done. A beardless, boyish face, very fair, no features to speak of, nose peeling, little blue eyes, smiles and frowns chasing each other over that open countenance like sunshine and shadow on a windswept plain. 'Look out, captain!' he cried; 'there's a snag lodged in here last night.' ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... grip her, and let her float free. We have no tackle that would be of any use in hoisting her, but if we take the plug out of her bottom, she will empty as the river sinks, and hang there. Once she is in the air there will be no difficulty in patching her up." ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... but as crutches to our weakest plays. Nor were we so lost to all sense of what was valuable, as to dishonor our best authors in such bad company. We still had a due respect to several select plays, that were able to be their own support; and in which we found constant account, without painting and patching them out.... It is a reproach to a sensible people to let folly ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... girls had had their supper, they set out for the quarters. Dilsey and Chris and Riar, of course, accompanied them, though Chris had had some difficulty in joining the party. She had come to grief about her quilt patching, having sewed the squares together in such a way that the corners wouldn't hit, and Mammy had made her rip it all out and sew it over again, and had boxed her soundly, and now said she shouldn't go with the others to the quarters; ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... were seated the gunner and sailmaker, both engaged patching old clothes,—while the old carpenter, like the captain, was reading the bible,—and the armorer was lying flat on his back, and singing. A very pretty boy of fourteen, an apprentice to the captain, was playing, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... indignant surprise, in Cox's book on this campaign, then recently published, his statement that the brigades of Lane and Conrad rallied at the river but were not again carried into action. When Cox made that statement he was more concerned in patching up that fatal gap in the battle line of his own command without any outside assistance, than he was in ascertaining the truth, and he took that way to dispose of two entire brigades. In his first official ...
— The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee • John K. Shellenberger
... reached over and sheltered a snug little porch. There we sat, after the long hot drive, drinking cool water,—the talkative little storekeeper who is my daily companion; the silent old black woman patching pantaloons and saying never a word; the ragged picture of helpless misfortune who called in just to see the preacher; and finally the neat matronly preacher's wife, plump, yellow, and intelligent. "Own land?" said the wife; ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Uncle Remus—adjusting his spectacles so as to be able to see how to thread a large darning-needle with which he was patching his coat—"one time, way back yander, 'fo' you wuz bomed, honey, en 'fo' Mars John er Miss Sally wuz bomed—way back yander 'fo' enny un us wuz bomed, de animils en de creeturs sorter 'lecshuneer roun' 'mong deyselves, ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... by the report of the Mia-mia boundary rider, he drove slowly along the river frontage, and saw five miles of wagons, wagonettes, spring-carts, buggies, tents, women, children, dogs, cooking-utensils, and masculine laundry. He saw fellows patching tarpaulins, mending harness making yokes, platting whips, fishing, pig-hunting, reading Ouida, yarning round fires, or trying to invent some new form of gambling; but he only saw their backs, and they did n't see him at all. He took a tour round the paddock, and found a racecourse ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... While his crew was patching the Argo and pumping the water from her hold, the lookout yelled that another sail was making for them. Without hesitation Talbot somehow got this absurdly impudent one-masted craft of his under way and told those of his sixty men who survived to prepare for ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... Jessie demurely. She was patching a pair of leather trousers for Fergus and she did not raise ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... Silverado, when we were full of business, patching up doors and windows, making beds and seats, and getting our rough lodging into shape, Irvine and his sister made their appearance together, she for neighbourliness and general curiosity; he, because he was working for me, to my sorrow, cutting firewood at I forget how much a day. The way ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Sicilian war, but it was protracted by various delays during a long period [122]; at one time for the purpose of repairing his fleets, which he lost twice by storm, even in the summer; at another, while patching up a peace, to which he was forced by the clamours of the people, in consequence of a famine occasioned by Pompey's cutting off the supply of corn by sea. But at last, having built a new fleet, and obtained twenty thousand manumitted slaves [123], who were given ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... cleared the two old hulls lay shattered but safe on the surface of the ice-pack. The whole larboard side of the Dorothea was smashed, but they brought her somehow to Spitzbergen, and there by wonderful patching enabled ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... and both were fearfully knocked about. The Salvador had lost all her masts, every one of her boats had been smashed to pieces by the gun-fire of the English, and her sides were everywhere perforated with shot-holes. But a prize crew had been put on board her, and was now hard at work patching her up and rendering her seaworthy, rigging jury-masts, cutting away wreckage, and otherwise putting her once more into sailing trim. El Capitan was in a similar condition. She had still her mizzenmast standing; but otherwise she was as badly damaged as her ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... Northrup explained, sitting opposite Larry. "I couldn't wait to get word from you—my mother is ill. I must put this business through in a sloppy way. It may need a lot of legal patching after, but I'll take my chances. Heathcote has straightened out your wife's part—the Point is yours. I've made sure of that. Now I'm going to write out something that I think will hold—anyway, I want your signature to it and to a receipt for money I will give you. ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... Lent, 1595, Henslowe took occasion to make further repairs on his playhouse, putting in new pales, patching the exterior with new lath and plaster, repainting the woodwork, and otherwise furbishing up the building. The total cost of this work was L108 10s. And shortly after, as a part of these improvements, no doubt, he paid L7 2s. for "making the ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... n't put the instrument down immediately he would tear it from our hands and pitch it outside. If we DID lay it down quietly he would snatch it up and heave it out just as hard. The next evening he would devote all his time to patching ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... lid of the flesh-pot chattered high, The knives were whetted and—then came I To Mahbub Ali the muleteer, Patching his bridles and counting his gear, Crammed with the gossip ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... kitchen, and went into the living room. She sat down on the bench under the window, and began patching the children's clothes; at the same time she could see what was happening on the beach and on ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the mother, as though she were as much outraged as astonished. She was seated in the door, patching, by the waning light, an old pair of mud-spattered trousers, her own dress being very old-fashioned, coarse, and scanty,—so scant, in fact, as to reveal the angles of her form with ungraceful definiteness, especially the knees, that were almost ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... the dragon's toilet, patching up a fat white foot as he might have doctored the pad of an elephant, we wandered about, and finally decided to lunch in a secluded corner ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Ludar told me, had been found on the coast, a half wreck, some weeks since, and, by dint of great labour and patching, ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... but was found to be more or less like paper, and only a small portion could be used. One tent served me throughout Bornean travels, but finally the quality of the fabric became impaired to a degree which necessitated constant patching; it was made to last only by the exercise of great care and with the aid of a fly, three of these having been used on this expedition. If a journey to a country climatically like Borneo is planned to last only a year, rot-proof tents may be recommended on account of their ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... gift of making everybody laugh. I remember once seeing him patching his trousers with a Union Jack, and singing, "We'll never let the ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man: space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture. But his operations, taken together, are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching, and washing, that in an impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind they do not ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... planned his picture so as to convey its message and meaning, he did try to make it beautiful to look upon, and he often succeeded. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it was beauty of outline and a pleasant patching together of bright colours for which the painters strove, both in pictures and in manuscripts. If you think of this picture for a moment as a coloured pattern, you will see how pretty it is. The blue wings against the gold background make ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... is a stone-cutter and mason, much employed in patching dilapidated graves and cutting inscriptions, and popularly known in Bumsteadville, on account of the dried mortar perpetually hanging about him, as "Old Mortarity." He is a ricketty man, with a chronic disease called bar-roomatism, and so very grave-yardy in his very 'Hic' that one almost ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... the patching up of the barricades in which we assisted must be taken if Borth is to remain permanently in the roll of Welsh villages. Our storm-wave was but part of a system of aggression which the sea is carrying out upon these coasts. Older ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... Police Magistrate at Brantford, before whom many of these little domesticities come for their due appreciation (for they disclose, often, elements of really baffling complexity) not less than their ventilation and unravelling, is an eminently peace-loving man, and quite an adept at patching up such-like conjugal trifles. He will dispense from his tribunal sage advice, and prescribe remedial measures, which shall have untold efficacy, in dispelling mutual mistrust, restoring mutual ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... days and days, pressed by the favouring gale, meeting the sun each day a long span earlier, making daily four degrees of longitude. It was the time, on these bright days, to forearm with dry clothing against future stormy weather. Boxes and bags were brought on deck, and drying and patching went on by wholesale in the watch below, while the watch on deck bestirred themselves putting the ship in order. "Chips," the carpenter, mended the galley; the cook's broken shins were plastered up; and ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... way, sent as many spears at him as he would stand for. The detention caused by the loss of the horses, was a serious matter, whilst the hostility of the natives was very annoying, keeping the party constantly on the alert. The interval was occupied in patching up the ration tent, with portions of the other two, so that they had now one water-proof to protect their stores. Some good snipe and duck shooting might have been got round these lagoons, but as nearly all their caps ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... Lery. One and all supported that view of the despatches taken by the Governor and the Intendant. All agreed upon the necessity of completing the walls of Quebec and of making a determined stand at every point of the frontier against the threatened invasion. In case of the sudden patching up of a peace by the negotiators at Aix La Chapelle—as really happened—on the terms of uti possidetis, it was of vital importance that New France hold fast to every shred of her ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... began to frame her own laws, these, since they were blended with ancient ordinances which were bad, could not themselves be good; and thus for the two hundred years of which we have trustworthy record, our city has gone on patching her institutions, without ever possessing a government in respect of which she could truly be termed ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... in her cheeks, her garden meant so very much to her. Certainly the house had strong claims—and it was Monday morning—the very morning for forming and carrying out good plans and resolutions! Meals wanted cooking, cupboards and drawers tidying; garments darning and patching! But then—the garden! Did it not also need her. Ah! and did she not also ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... woman bearing burdens in the street, trotting along with a couple of heavy baskets swung from her shoulders, or they stop to stare at the neatly dressed mothers sitting on their low stools in the narrow alleyways, patching clothing or fondling their children. They see and hear the boat-women, the women who have the most freedom of any in all China, as they weave their sampans in and out of the crowded traffic on the canals. These same tourists visit the tea-houses and see the gaily dressed "sing-song" girls, or catch ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... to carry more than three hundred passengers, not less than nine hundred and fifty soldiers were packed. Most of the vessels were antiquated and inadequate; not a few were badly decayed. With a little superficial patching up they were imposed upon the Government. Despite his knowing that only vessels adapted for ocean service were needed, Vanderbilt chartered craft that had hitherto been almost entirely used in navigating inland waters. Not a single precaution was taken by him or his associates ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... all the castle is in such hurly-burly. Some of the men are loading the cannon, and some are examining the great gates, and the walls all round, and are hammering and patching up, just as if all those repairs had never been made, that were so long about. But what is to become of me and you, ma'amselle, and Ludovico? O! when I hear the sound of the cannon, I shall die with fright. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe |
