"Rag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lives had one taste or sight of a generous, clean, unmixed and unulcerated joy. For it follows not that, if it be vexatious to have one's body itch or one's eyes to run, it must be therefore a blessing to scratch one's self, and to wipe one's eye with a rag; nor that, if it be bad to be dejected or dismayed at divine matters or to be discomposed with the relations of hell, therefore the bare avoiding of all this must be some happy and amiable thing. The truth is, these men's opinion, though it pretends so ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... her lee-earrings dipped into the sea, but righted herself as she came before the wind, and rose like a duck on the back of the angry swells. It was a fearful night, and every incident of it is photographed indelibly on my memory. There was not a rag of canvas on the ship except her heavy main-staysail, and yet one after another the topmasts splintered and fell, hampering the lower rigging and littering the deck with the wreck, the broken royals making terrible work as they whipped about in the storm; but it was utterly impossible to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... out below, and therefore are not onely glutted, that is, can dissolve no more then what they are already acting upon, but they carry up with them abundance of unctuous and sooty particles, which meeting with that rag of the Week, that is plentifully fill'd with Oyl, and onely spends it as fast as it evaporates, and not at all by dissolution or burning, by means of these steamy parts of the filterated Oyl issuing out at the sides of this ragg, and being inclos'd ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... for ragging! What rags, in your day, were as good as ours; as the Carrie Nation rag, for instance, when five hundred people sat through a temperance lecture and never guessed they were listening to a man ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... Tinsel seraphs with paint on their cheeks, playing rag-time harps out of tune! There's a sickly slaver of sentiment over everything he touches that would make any ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... dipped a rag in the oil and began to rub a gun, and Foster went out, feeling satisfied. It was plain that he could rely upon the old fellow, who he thought was unflinchingly loyal to the Featherstones. After all, it was something ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... enough now abroad) was put a stop to in London at the end of Oct. 1840, though it was not until 1854 that the prohibition became general. Prior to the passing of the Act in that year, dogs were utilised as draught animals to a very great extent in this neighbourhood by the rag-and-bone gatherers, pedlars, and little merchants, as many as 180 of the poor brutes once being counted in five hours as passing a certain spot on the Westbromwich Road. There have been one or two "homes" for stray dogs opened, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... running into each other, instead of closing at each couplet; and of natural language, neither bookish, nor vulgar, neither redolent of the lamp, nor of the kennel, such as I will remember thee; instead of the same thought tricked up in the rag-fair finery of, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... imaginative creature. Men are ever lapsing into a beggarly habit, wherein everything that is not ciphering, that is, which does not serve the tyrannical animal, is hustled out of sight. Our orators and writers are of the same poverty, and, in this rag-fair, neither the Imagination, the great awakening power, nor the Morals, creative of genius and of men, are addressed. But though orator and poet are of this hunger party, the capacities remain. We must have symbols. The child asks you for a story, and is thankful ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... different ways of doing a disagreeable thing seemed to be practicable to that scuttle. Besides the bed on which the Lady of Shalott lay, there was a stove in the palace, two chairs, a very ragged rag-mat, a shelf with two notched cups and plates upon it, one pewter teaspoon, and a looking-glass. On washing-days Sary Jane climbed upon the chair and hung her clothes out through the scuttle on the roof; or else she ran a little rope from one of the windows to the ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... the food of plants, are thus absorbed. The removal of these substances from solution is easily illustrated by a simple experiment. It suffices to take a tall cylindrical vessel open at both ends, and filled with the soil to be operated upon, which is retained by a piece of rag tied over its lower end. A quantity of a dilute solution of ammonia being then poured upon the surface of the soil, and allowed to percolate, the first quantity which flows away is found to have entirely lost its peculiar smell and taste; and in a similar ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... neighbors have the opinion that a sick person's shirt thrown into the well will prognosticate the outcome of the disease; if it floats the sick one will recover, if it sinks he will die. To reward the saint for the information, they tear a rag off the shirt and hang it on the briers near by; "where," says the writer, "I have seen such numbers as might have made a fayre rheme in a paper-myll." Similar practices are related by other authors. Ireland formerly had a sanctified well in nearly every parish. ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... puzzles. It formulated itself in my mind a few weeks ago at Verona, while going to see a certain little church on the slopes above the Adige. You go through the priest's house and vineyard; there is a fine carved lintel and a bit of fresco, all in the midst of a rag fair of squalid streets. What a place this must once have been! I felt the charm and splendour of piled-up palace and hanging gardens in former days. In former days! And a little doubt dropped into it, "If former days there ever were." For who can tell? This crumbling, ragged business which to us ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... fine children that the mother has!' said an old duck, who belonged to the noblesse, and wore a red rag round its leg. 'All handsome, except one; it has not turned out well. I wish she could ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... along at about breakfast time, I should say, not being wise in biology or natural history; the entire Bird family are invited to supper with me, and I even have to carry a repast of corn over the meadows to my pet abhorrences, Rufus' swine, because he has retired to the hay-loft with a flannel rag around his head, which means I have offended him or that father has given him an extra absent-minded drink from the decanter that Matthew brought him. Peckerwood Pup is at this moment, you see, chewing the strings out of my shoes as an appetizer for her supper. How could I eat sweetbreads ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... may be an honorable—I believe you have such things—but your mother is not a lady; there are no ladies in America—born ladies, such as we have in the United Kingdom. And pray what have you Yankees done, except to make money, that you should all be so infernally proud of your country and that rag?' ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... in fighting anything in preference to his fists and a stone tied up in a kerchief or a rag makes no mean ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... A colored rag borne above troops and hoisted on forts and ships. It appears to serve the same purpose as certain signs that one sees and vacant lots in London—"Rubbish may ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... will be boat enough, With a rag for a sail, we can sweep through the sky. Who flies not to-night, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... they squabbled like rag-pickers! 'You make justice ridiculous,' shouted Fuselier. 'No one has the right to commit such blunders!' Well, they kept going on like that for a quarter of an hour. And then Fuselier rang and two Municipal guards came and ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... I hope! Hear, hear ye rocks! that Balder Ventures to hope!—stern fate is now contented! Blunted is Surtur's spear, and Nanna wavers! Oh virtue! which, when blood rag'd high didst triumph, How sure, how nobly thou reward'st thy lover! Ye rocks which so lately gave ear to my groans, Now hear of my hope and my gladness the tones, And reply ye proud woods that no longer seem drear; In vain fate and heaven, ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... 14: It is proper to take notice, that Mr. Samwell spells the names of several persons and places differently from what is dune in the history of the voyage. For instance, Karakakooa he calls Ke, rag, e, goo, all, Terreeoboo Kariopoo, Kowrowa Kavaroah, Kaneecab areea Kaneekapo, herei, Maiha ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... Goblin. Mash, mash, mash! An endless routine of heavy hammers. Mash, mash, mash! upon the sufferer's limbs. See the stone trough! says Goblin. For the water torture! Gurgle, swill, bloat, burst, for the Redeemer's honour! Suck the bloody rag, deep down into your unbelieving body, Heretic, at every breath you draw! And when the executioner plucks it out, reeking with the smaller mysteries of God's own Image, know us for His chosen servants, true believers in the Sermon on the Mount, elect disciples of Him who ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... were ranged before the blackboards, so that the weary patrons could sit and watch the game. The Chicago stocks had a blackboard to themselves, and this was covered with the longest lines of figures. Iron, Steel, Tobacco, Radiators, Vinegar, Oil, Leather, Spices, Tin, Candles, Biscuit, Rag,—the names of the "industrials" read like an inventory of a country store. "Rag" seemed the favorite of the hour; one boy was kept busy in posting the long line of quotations from the afternoon session of the Exchange. A group of spectators watched the jumps as quotation ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... terribly diminished crew lay down as they stood by the guns, in readiness to repel another attack, should it be attempted. The next morning one of the French eighty gun ships got under way, and, with merely a rag of canvas shown, and her boats rowing ahead and sounding to find a channel through the reefs, gradually made her way ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... for the last hour he had forgotten Isabel's existence except when her eyes had looked at him out of her brother's face. "The child will enjoy it, I never knew any one so easily pleased; and you and Lawrence and Bernard can rag one another to your heart's content. Yes, you will, I know you will, Army men always do when they get together; and you're all boys, even Bernard, even you with your grey hair, my dear Val; as for Lawrence, he's only ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... length by 10 miles in width, and 1,000 yards in depth, would contain 743,000 million tons of carbon, or sufficient to provide carbon for 875,000 million tons of petroleum. Deposits of oil-bearing shale have also limestone close at hand; e.g., coral rag underlies Kimmeridge clay, as it also underlies the famous black shale in Kentucky, which is extraordinarily ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... from the song, to look at it better, and said 'How must that notion of ideal wondrous perfection have impressed itself in this old Jacobite's "young Cavalier"—("They go to save their land, and the young Cavalier!!")—when I who care nothing about such a rag of a man, cannot but feel as he felt, in speaking his words after him!' After saying which, he would be sure to counsel everybody to get their heads clear of all singing! Don't let me forget to clap hands, we got the letter, dearly ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... be friendly with the Chinese laundryman in Chestnut Street. We regarded the nations of Europe as repositories of splendid traditions, magnificent even in their decay. Miss Fraenkel regarded them as rag-baskets from which the American Eagle was picking a heterogeneous mass of rubbish, rubbish that might possibly, after much screening, become worthy of ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... to be an oily piece of cotton rag, sticking out from the side pocket of his Norfolk jacket, which looked already, since she had seen it first, ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... ramrod. As soon as the antelope saw it, it gradually walked toward him until so near that he was assured that his piece would carry that far. It actually came within thirty yards of him, and he shot it while lying prone on the ground, the graceful animal noticing nothing but the white rag ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... rested them, and drunk a cup of wine, and when they had seen the chaplets and wreaths of the spring-flowers wherewith they were bedecked, and had smelt the sweet savour of them, fell to walking proudly, heeding not their nakedness; for no rag had they upon them save breech-clouts of deer-skin: they had changed weapons with the Burgdale carles; and one had gotten a great axe, which he bore over his shoulder, and the shaft thereof was all done ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... visited the stables of Augeas. The instruments of his profession are there, a large handie full of very greasy water, with bits of lemon peel and fragments of broken victuals swimming in it, and a short, stout stick, with a little bunch of foul rag tied to one end of it. Here the Mussaul sits on the ice numda while we have our meals, and as each plate returns from the table, he takes charge of it, and transfers to his mouth whatever he finds on it, for he is of the omnivora, like ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... seldom more than two of them occupied at one time—often only one. Tenants never shift in, or at least are never seen to, but they get there. The sign is a furtive candle light behind an old table cloth, a skirt, or any rag of dark stuff tacked across the front bedroom window, upstairs, and a shadow suggestive of a woman making up a ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... you a suit of my clothes, and some change of linen," said Maurice. "I have them in a bundle here, done up in a great sheet. Hullo! there are two bundles. I didn't notice that you had brought a second one, Brown-Eye. You'll not leave me a rag to my back if you ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... grandmamma had just given her, was all bent and torn and twisted, till from a nice little round hat, it came to be a queer-looking, five-cornered one, with one end of ribbon over her nose, and another sticking out behind; and the beautiful lace cap inside was only fit for the rag-bag. Did you ever hear any thing ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... bird-cage, which still stood in the window, and let the yellow yite go. Many things were where no woman would have left them: clothes on the floor with the nail they had torn from the wall; on a chair a tin basin, soapy water and a flannel rag in it; horn spoons with whistles at the end of them were anywhere—on the mantelpiece, beneath the bed; there were drawers that could not be opened because their handles were inside. Perhaps the windows were closed hopelessly ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... war there will come a new religion. It won't be a sin any more to sing rag-time on Sunday, as it was in the days of my childhood. It won't be a sin to play a game on Sunday. After church parade in France we rushed to the playing fields behind the lines, and many a time I've seen the chaplain umpire the ball game. Many a time I've seen him take a hand in a friendly game ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... was dark with threat'ning clouds, And fiercely on the raging sea, The roaring tempest wilder swept, And fiercer rag'd old Galilee. ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... six of the elements of functional foremanship quietly, and get them running smoothly in a shop before calling attention to the principle involved. When the time for this announcement comes, it invariably acts as the proverbial red rag on the bull. It was some years later that the writer subdivided the duties of the "old gang boss" who spent his whole time with the men into the four functions of (1) speed boss, (2) repair boss, (3) inspector, and (4) gang boss, and it is the introduction of these four shop bosses directly helping ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... day he did not leave his room, save at meal times; for he wished to be alone and hug his exultation. To the four flat walls he repeated snatches of the things he had done the night before; up and down the rag carpet he smirked and grimaced and laughed and jigged. He sang the songs that had "taken" so well. He went through certain gestures and then deliberately exaggerated them, in a high good-humor. He was as young again ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... not ashamed, Mr. Mauverensen," she said, heatedly, "to belong to an army made up of such ruffians. Every rag of raiment that man has on he stole from my husband's wardrobe at the Hall. To think of calling such low fellows officers, or consorting ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... 196: The 10th day of January the ambassadors rode into Hampton Court, and there they had as great cheer as could be had, and hunted and killed, tag and rag, ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... back to town. How are you, anyhow? Scared plumb to death, I'll bet, when that fire come over the hill. You needn't 'a' tramped clear down here—we was coming on to the house in a minute. I got to chewin' the rag with Kent. Git in; you might as well ride back to ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... retain some superstitious inklings. The feeling that is called "eerie" came upon him. He closed the door of the room, came forward to the dressing-table, and put down his burdens. Suddenly, with a start, he perceived a coiled and blood-stained bandage of linen rag hanging in mid-air, between him and ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... "Ain't you sweet to come over here in the headache department and help me out! Here's the wine list. You'll prob'ly need it. Say, who do you suppose invented New Year's Eve? They must of had a imagination like a Greek 'bus boy. I'm limp as a rag now, and it's only two-thirty. I've got a regular cramp in my wrist from checkin' quarts. Say, did you ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... melodramatic tragedian observes, "'Tis now some twenty-five years ago" that FRED DEWAR strutted the first of his five hundred nights or so on the stage as Captain Crosstree, that PATTY OLIVER sang with trilling effect her "Pretty Seeusan," and that DANVERS, as Dame Hatly, danced like a rag-doll in a fantoccini-show. To quote the Poet CRABBE, and to go some way ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... and her family had a very happy time. Evidently Marie Georgiannamore liked her new home for she seemed very content with the other members of Mary Jane's numerous family. There was the sailor doll and the rag doll, Mary Jane, Jr., and small bears and dolls and kewpies too many to count. And of course each doll had its own chair and bed so there was quite a household out on that sunny ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson
... was heard by the Duchesse de Chartres, who replied, loud enough to be heard, in her slow and trembling voice, that she preferred to be a "winesack" rather than a "rag-sack" (sac d guenilles) by which she alluded to the Clermont and La Choin adventure I have ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and left behind, and still no Crossing, but late in the afternoon a shot was heard; then we saw a white rag on a pole; then we landed and beheld a large pile of rations, in charge of three men. These men, Dodds, Bonnemort, and Riley, as we were days overdue, had about made up their minds we were lost, and had contemplated departing in the morning and ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... brief, hurried entries further on. He found himself, as he had anticipated, in a society composed of some of the most heterogeneous elements. Stillwater, viewed from a certain point, was a sort of microcosm, a little international rag-fair to which nearly every country on earth had contributed one of its shabby human products. "I am moving," wrote Mr. Taggett, "in an atmosphere in which any crime is possible. I give myself seven ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... mine looks beside yours! What a mean, skimpy little rag! I am ashamed to appear in it. You will look beautiful, perfectly beautiful! You have ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... Lucca in Italy, is very poor and has only enough for herself and my little sister, Christina. When Garofoli came to beautiful Lucca last year he brought me back with him. Oh, it was hard to leave my little sister.... Signor Garofoli has a lot of boys here, some of them are chimney sweeps, others rag pickers, and those who are not strong enough to work, sing in the streets or beg. Garofoli gave me two little white mice to show to the public and I had to bring him back thirty sous every night. As many sous as you are short a day, so many blows you get. It is hard to pick up thirty sous, ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... man, such carles as thou and I can hardly be called better than old hemlocks, decayed nettles, or withered rag-weed; but I suppose you think that we are ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... says I. "You'll cut it out. I ain't no wine agent, and I left me rag doll to home; so if there's any funny stunts expected, you tell 'em I've put on a sub. Oh, sure, I'll stay to dinner, but as for leadin' any ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... one dirty old Englishman in the party, who, Turner was convinced, had money concealed about his person. He compelled him to strip off everything, and stand shivering in the sharp cold, while he took up one filthy rag after another, felt over each carefully, and scrutinized each seam and fold. I was delighted to see that after all his nauseating work he did not find so much ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... house, and he was evidently pleased when he saw the ring, which I had washed and wrapped up carefully in a bit of rag, and it looked clean and bright. He then took me into the parlour, where two ladies were sitting at breakfast, where he made me join them, all untidy as I was, at their meal; after which he desired me to give a full account of myself, and to recite some more poetry, all of which ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... seeming humble functions are intimately related to our highest powers. Sir William's couplet gives a hint of the dominance of the classical method of his day. It overemphasized the importance of reason and too often converted the youthful mind into a rag bag of useless information. The educators of that time and since have thought more highly of human reason than experience justifies. With their medieval bias for a world of will and reason, they drove the young with the whip and spur of emulation ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... to hand yesterday, and in reply I have to state that the widow Doherty (my grandmother) left the Parish of Rag, County Donegal, Ireland, about the year 1820, and landed with her family in Magudavic, walked to St. John, N.B., and eventually got by schooner up to Great Village, N.S., except my father, William, who remained for some time longer in St. John, but also got to Great Village, ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... that the boys sing the rag-time, but this must not be the only side of the picture. They sing the old hymns, too, and memories of nights "down the line," when I have heard them in small groups and in great crowds singing the old, old hymns of the ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... a partial success has been obtained in a small portion of the field; sometimes, because half a dozen horses have run away with a gun, carrying it into the hostile ranks; and, again, because a bit of rag has fallen from the hands of a dead man, and been picked up by one of the opposing side. How often has it happened that a belligerent, well practised in his art, has kept his own colors out of the affair, and then boasted that they ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... Next he selected a bullet out of a dozen which Jonathan held toward him. He examined it carefully and tried it in the muzzle of the rifle. Evidently it did not please him, for he took another. Finally he scraped a bullet with his knife, and placing it in the center of a small linsey rag, deftly forced it down. He adjusted the flint, dropped a few grains of powder in the pan, and then looked around for a mark ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... sharp arrows of sarkasm and argument through his coat armor of dignified complacency and self-esteem, for truly his idees wuz to her like a red rag to a bull. ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... said, "have got into a frightful state. In fact there are hardly any politics at all. We haven't had a decent rag since the war began. We all sit round cooing at each other like beastly little green lovebirds in a cage. It can't last long, of course. Sooner or later somebody's bound to break out and try to bite; but for the present Parliament's the ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... his dinner, Miss Anna, for there is nothing so bad for the digestion; a good digestion comes next to a good conscience in my opinion," and Dawson hurried away, all ready primed with a scolding for her mistress—sandwiches being like the proverbial red rag to a bull ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... such outrageous folly? One is sure, in the fine picturesque words of Chaucer, that, 'for very filth and shame,' neither admiral nor the youngest middy would disgrace himself by such ridiculous finery from the rag-fair of cosmopolitan swindling. The real origin of so savage an absurdity is this:—Amongst the commercial bodies of the three presidencies in all the leading cities, it became a matter of difficulty often to ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... as payment may be purchased at Rag Fair, being extremely partial to cast off wearing ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... in clean white flannels, white shoes, a panama set rakishly on his handsome head, his fingers twirling a cane, came head-on into the storm. The very jauntiness of his stride was as a red rag to the captain. So then, a hand, heavy and charged with righteous anger, descended upon ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... squall; lost both masts and ran aground on Gull Marsh. The tide will take her off at the full of the moon. Sambo 's been playing 'possum again. Said he'd cut his foot with his hoe so badly that he couldn't stand upon it. Said I could see that by the blood on the rag that tied it up. I made him take off the rag and wash the foot, and there wa'n't no cut there. The blood was puccoon. If he'd waited a bit he could 'a' had all he wanted to paint with, for I gave him the rope's end, lively, ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... as poor as a church mouse, yet the moment he stepped ashore he made it fly by the handful and squandered it, as the saying went, like an ass. When he was sober, which was seldom enough provided he could obtain drink, he possessed scarcely a rag to his back; but when he was drunk he was himself the first to acknowledge that he had "too many cloths in the wind." According to his own showing, his wishes in life were limited to three: "An island of tobacco, a river of rum, and—more rum;" but according to ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... kist for bandages, and Alan held up the injured paw and tried to see if any bones were broken, while Sandy helplessly stroked Tam's tail, murmuring, "Good dog! good old Tam!" as he did so. By dint of their combined efforts the wound was cleansed and carefully bound with a rag, and by the time the Shepherd got home, Tam was lying on the hearth beside the fire, with Alan on his knees before him feeding him ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... four hours; so distil it in a Limbeck, keeping the strongest water by it self, put some sugar finely beaten into your glasses. If your first water be too strong, put some of the second to it as you use it. If you please you may tye some Musk and Ambergreese, in a rag, and hang it by ...
— A Queens Delight • Anonymous
... coincidence, that the only one of Margaret's treasures which reached the shore, was the lifeless form of Angelino. When the body, stripped of every rag by the waves, was rescued from the surf, a sailor took it reverently in his arms, and, wrapping it in his neckcloth, bore it to the nearest house. There, when washed, and dressed in a child's frock, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... "The rag pedler that comes by every fall lets me look in his bags, 'cause sometimes there are paper books in them, and he gave me this for nothing, 'cause ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... ignored or sat down upon whenever possible. He once said, "I don't know a man on the press who would do me a favor. The press is a great engine, of course, but its influence is vastly overrated. It has the credit of leading public opinion, when it only follows it; and look at the rag-tag-and-bobtail that contribute to it. Even the London 'Times' only lives for a day. My books have made their way in spite ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... too wonderful a superintendent to be quite true," said Peggy when Peter had finished. "But do give us a 'rag.'" ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... that the sport is, in my opinion, a most barbarous one, and likely to operate unfavourably on the national morals; the arena is sometimes drenched in the blood of bulls, horses, and even of the unfortunate picadores and matadores, whose sole defence is the red rag with which they ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... me to sleep in. At the foot of the bed was my baby brother's cradle. As Mam' Chloe was walking with him in the garden, it should have been empty. Whereas, Mary 'Liza was putting her doll-baby to sleep in it. We said "doll-baby" in those days. There was Musidora, my rag-baby, who was a beauty ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... cavalry of Burgundy, strange steel monsters, half bird, half reptile, with steel beaked and winged helmets and claw-like steel shoes, and jointed steel corselet and rustling steel mail coat; before the infantry of Gascony, rapid and rapacious with their tattered doublets and rag-bound feet; before the over-fed, immensely plumed, and slashed and furbelowed giants of Switzerland, and the starved, half-naked savages of Brittany and the Marches—before this multifaced, many-speeched army, gathered from the rich cities of the ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... every danger, the tail would follow it; and even if the tail did get entangled, it would have a good chance of being freed while the kite was still flying. But of what use is it to save a worthless piece of rag, if the kite—the valuable thing—is lost? Just in the same way, of what use is our body if our soul is lost? And remember we have only one soul. Therefore, make sure to save the soul, and the body also will be saved—that ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... and the Cheshire Cat took turns on a diminutive springboard. The March Hare and the Dormouse energetically jumped over a small barrel. The Queen and the Duchess had a fencing match, the Queen using her sceptre, the Duchess the rag baby she carried, and to which she had sung the "Pepper Song" at intervals during the performance. The King tossed four colored balls into the air, keeping them in motion at once. The Rabbit went on balancing his plate until it slid off his nose, but being tin it struck the ring without ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... promise as good as made. She said her husband had a way of indulging his daughter's fancies—but after all, I took her to be a woman who could turn husband and daughter and everybody else round her little finger, if she chose. So this rag of a letter came upon me like a thunderbolt. Is that it? Has the young girl taken a dislike to me? Why, mille tonnerres, she has not even spoken to me, nor I ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... Pemberton, is it?" remarked Frank, "I think it'll pay us to slow down a little, and look into this white rag-waving business." ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... was pleasant, with rag rugs on the painted floor and crisp, worn curtains. The table and chairs were cream-color, and the table wore an embroidered flour-sack cover. Grandpa pottered with a loose door-latch until Grandma wrung the suds from her hands and cried fiercely, ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... to say that children are happier with mud pies and rag dolls than with these elaborate delights. There may be something in this theory, but when their amusements are carried to such a point of luxurious and imaginative perfection it certainly gives them great and even unlimited enjoyment at the time. Whether such indulgence and ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... present; but, till we are out of pain, cannot make use of it, for fear we should partake of the price of our poor daughter's shame: so have laid it up in a rag among the thatch, over the window, for a while, lest we should be robbed. With our blessings, and our hearty ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... Not a rag of clothing was in sight, and no cajolery or promise of reward could persuade the ship's men into supplying his need. He received consignments of food; short rations they would be, he judged, for an able-bodied seaman. But inactivity and confinement to the fo'cas'le soon worked havoc with ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... to see those poor souls lying about like rag dolls," she explained. "The only thing that keeps me sane is the hope that we ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... admit there's money in it eventually. Talent doesn't starve any more. Even art gets enough to eat these days. Artists draw your magazine covers, write your advertisements, hash out rag-time for your theatres. By the great commercializing of printing you've found a harmless, polite occupation for every genius who might have carved his own niche. But beware the artist who's an intellectual also. The artist who doesn't fit—the Rousseau, ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... way, they soon filled themselves & they were drove up & tied each one by a rope, to the waggon, or bushes nearby. There were several campfires burning in sight, we at length went to bed, Loyd & I occupied the waggon, while the boys slept in the tent, I had bought rag carpet enough to spread over the ground in the tent which proved excellent for keeping the wet, or sand, from getting on the bedding, which consisted of buffalo robes & blankets, which I considder the best for this journey, as they keep cleaner & do not get ...
— Across the Plains to California in 1852 - Journal of Mrs. Lodisa Frizzell • Lodisa Frizell
... reiterated the voice, which I was now able to trace to its origin, on the lips of a small, unseemly rag of human-kind. The speaker's skin was gray and blotched; he spoke in a kind of broken song, with much variety of key; his gestures seemed (as in the disease called Saint Vitus's dance) to be imperfectly under control; he was badly dressed; he carried himself with an air of shrinking ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... likely how Monsieur B. had made off without paying his bill, or how those trunks that Madame la Comtesse C. had left eighteen months ago, as a pledge of her return, had been opened at last, and been found to contain but old clothes, fit for the rag-market; how a few francs might be advantageously added on here and there in the bill for the rich English family at the premier; how the gentleman known as No. 5 was looked upon as a suspicious character; and how Pierre the waiter had been set ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... time ago the bending of a studding-sail. From that period the ship, being thrown dead off the wind, has continued her terrific course due south, with every rag of canvas packed upon her, from her trucks to her lower studding-sail booms, and rolling every moment her top-gallant yard-arms into the most appalling hell of water which it can enter into the mind of a man to imagine. I have just left the deck, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... "Mother, the Lord who gave each of us our talents will come home some day, and will demand from all an account. The teapot, the old stocking-foot, the linen rag, the willow-pattern tureen will yield up their barren deposit in many a house. Suffer your daughters, at least, to put their money to the exchangers, that they may be enabled at the Master's coming to pay Him His own ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... as much shame as an egg has hair;" of a garrulous one, "He has no bone in his tongue" or "His tongue is always wet;" of a spendthrift, "Water does not stand on a hillside;" and of a noble family in reduced circumstances, "It is a decayed rag, but it is silk." All these metaphors are clear, vivid and forcible, and the list of such proverbs might be almost indefinitely extended. With all their vividness of imagery, however, Caucasian sayings are sometimes as mysterious and unintelligible as the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... that the patient was her husband.[FN447] As for his strangerhood, I noted that the dress of the woman differed from that of the townsfolk, wherefore I knew that she was a foreigner; and in the mouth of the phial I saw a yellow rag,[FN448] which garred me wot that the sick man was a Jew and she a Jewess. Moreover, she came to me on first day;[FN449] and 'tis the Jews' custom to take meat puddings[FN450] and food that hath passed the night[FN451] and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... there were two or three rag babies; but as you could not tell by the looks of them what they were thinking about, I will not say anything about them. They had no virtues worth telling; they never ate soup with a fork, or gave ...
— Proud and Lazy - A Story for Little Folks • Oliver Optic
... moment Roy's artificial feeding began. Peggy raised his head while Mammy opened his mouth by inserting a skilful finger where later the bit would rest, then slipped in the milk-sopped woolen rag. After a few minutes the small beastie which had never known fear, understood and sucked away vigorously, for he had not fed for hours and the poor inner- colt was grumbling sorely at the long fast. The bowlful of milk soon disappeared, ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... And, meanwhile, his granddaughter grew up with no one to care for her, or clothe her; only the old nurse, when no one was by, would sometimes give her a dish of scraps from the kitchen, or a torn petticoat from the rag-bag; while the other servants of the Palace would drive her from the house with blows and mocking words, calling her "Tattercoats," and pointing at her bare feet and shoulders, till she ran away crying, to ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... fare little better. 'The French Bossuets, Bourdaloues, Fenelons, &c., whatever may be thought of their meagre and attenuated rhetoric, are one and all the most commonplace of thinkers.' In fact, the mere mention of France acts upon him like a red rag on a bull. The French, 'in whom the lower forms of passion are constantly bubbling up, from the shallow and superficial character of their feelings,' are incapable of English earnestness. Their taste is 'anything but good in all that department of wit and humour'—the department, apparently, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... you're smart, Ruth Fielding? Why, I can see right through you—just as though you were a rag of torn mosquito netting! You won't go because ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... cut up; add a head of celery cut small. Put in a very small head of cabbage, cut into little pieces. If you have any objection to cabbage, substitute a larger proportion of the other vegetables. Put in also a bunch of sweet marjoram, tied up in a thin muslin rag to prevent ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... at the top of a very steep staircase and it was even more stuffy than the sitting room. A rather dirty white blind hung in the window, which Marshland instantly tore down, "the filthy rag" she exclaimed "never mind Miss Helen, in a few weeks, I'll have this fit for a lady and the sitting room too for ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... all suffering—too feeble to conceive faith—death must be darkness—God, spirits, religion can have no place in our collapsed minds, where linger only hideous and polluting recollections of vice; and time brings us on to the brink of the grave, and dissolution flings us in—a rag eaten through and through with disease, wrung together with pain, stamped into the churchyard sod by the inexorable ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... Schump. I always say there ain't a finer girl on the floor than Stella. When I see other girls, most of 'em fresh little rag-timers that ain't worth powder and shot, bringing down the finest kind of fellows, and Stella never asked out or nothing, I always say to myself, 'I can't understand it.' Take me—what Arch Sensenbrenner ever seen in me, with Stella and her complexion ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... of a rag-picker's wife as dining sparingly out of a bag—not with her head inside like a horse, but thrusting her scrawny arm elbow deep to stir the pottage, and sprinkling salt and pepper on for nicer flavor. Following such preparation ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... be grieved, But that I'll not out-live you: chuse your death; For, I have seen him in such various shapes, I care not which I take: I'm only troubled, The life I bear is worn to such a rag, 'Tis scarce worth giving. I could wish, indeed, We threw it from us with a better grace; That, like two lions taken in the toils, We might at last thrust out our paws, and wound The ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... reached the city gate my brother-in-law made us get out, because he wanted to see how becoming the clothes were. Lulu looked very well in them, for she has a splendid figure and the fit was perfect, whereas all my clothes were too loose and too long and looked as if I had bought them at a rag fair. My brother-in-law laughed at me and said I looked like a Savoyard boy and could be of great service to them. The coachman had driven us off the road through a forest, and when we came to a cross-road he didn't know which way to turn. Although it ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... toward the land; for if vessels get within three miles of a neutral shore, no hostile craft can touch them. We came to anchor in plain sight of Cuba's green hills, and waited anxiously for our pursuers, who had fired a second cannon. They both lowered a boat. We feared we should see the rebel rag, but were joyful when our own stars and stripes were unrolled to the breeze. The vessels proved to be the Wachusett, Com. Wilkes's flag-ship, and the gunboat Sonoma, Capt. Stevens. So there ended our fright ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... the privet bush about nine in the morning. If you need me, hang a white rag on it, and I'll stop at the ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... little craft slips along, a large gar—green-backed, silvery-sided, and more than a yard long—may dart after you like a gleaming, hiltless rapier skimming the surface of the water. If you put out a line with a hook—baited with almost anything—a bit of fish a strip of white or red rag—you will have some sport, for these great gars are a hard-fighting fish, and do the tarpon jumping-trick to perfection. But if you have not a line in readiness you can wait your chance, and as he comes close alongside, break his back with a blow from the sharp blade of your paddle, and jump overboard ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... Jelly.—After the rhubarb has been thoroughly washed and cut up in small pieces, stew until tender in a preserving kettle. Strain through a jelly rag and flavor with extract of lemon. Put in enough to suit the taste. To each pint of juice add a pound of sugar; boil until it jellies on the skimmer, then remove and place in glasses. Keep in a ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... the voice, which I was now able to trace to its origin, on the lips of a small unseemly rag of human-kind. The speaker's skin was grey and blotched; he spoke in a kind of broken song, with much variety of key; his gestures seemed (as in the disease called St. Vitus's dance) to be imperfectly under control; he was badly dressed; he carried himself with an air of shrinking assumption, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bullock-car in English, and a carro in Portuguese. We got into one of them, with a great deal of laughter, and drove to the hotel. The driver walked by the side of the carro, and threw the end of a greasy rag first under one runner and then under the other, to make it ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... fell drop by drop upon her forehead, covered with large bluish spots. The table and mantel-piece were covered with little pots, medicine bottles, and half-emptied glasses. At the foot of the bed, a piece of rag stained with blood showed that the doctor had just had ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... into my thoughts, that if there were white men among them, it would be much easier to make them understand what we meant as to peace or war, than we found it with others; so tying a piece of white rag to the end of a stick, we sent two negroes with it to the bank of the water, carrying the pole up as high as they could; it was presently understood, and two of their men and the white man came to the shore on the ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... the corpse of its ill-starred owner, he secreted it inside his tattered rag of a coat, ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... grandfather's gold-topped club, his grandpa havin' been a p'liceman with a pull in the ward. An' while they stand a-waitin' for all the grandjer they're expectin', suddenly it all goes past, an' they don't see nothin' but p'raps a milk-wagon bringin' up the rear, an' the ashfalt all strewed with rag-tag-an'-bobtail, an' there's nothin' doin' in their direction, except turn around an' go home. Now, what's the matter with Mr. Van Brandt? If you marry him you'll be all to the good. No worry about the rent, no pinchin' here an' plottin' there to keep the bills down. No goin' out by the ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... tiger or a leopard should be thoroughly syringed with cold water mixed with 1/35th part of carbolic acid, and this syringing process should be continued three times a day whenever the wound is dressed. Nothing should be done but to wrap the wound with linen rag soaked in the same solution, ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker |
