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More "Patching" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... France was again in need of funds which her 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 ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... OF SEWING-STITCH (fig. 12)—For dress-seams and patching; sew left to right, tacking or pinning the edges together first, and holding them tightly with the thumb and finger, to keep ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... the 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 ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... around hoss-swappers enough to know that it never was a good idea to be the first to propose a trade, and so I hitched at the post in front of Wilks's store and went in. I bought a pound of tenpenny nails, that I thought would come in handy in patching fences at home, and while the clerk was weighing 'em up I saw Tobe leave his chair behind a counter and go out and walk around the hoss. Finally he come to me and said, ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... a surgeon. It would be fine patching people up, setting their bones, and trying things no one had dared to do before; but I couldn't stand driving round every day to look after their wretched colds, and vaccinate the babies. I'd like to be an army doctor best ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... now enters, 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, ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... here was close and hot. We had so much of sewing to do that we set to work with a will; our clothes also require as much attention as the pack-bags and pack-saddles. No one could conceive the amount of tearing and patching that is for ever going on; could either a friend or stranger see us in our present garb, our appearance would scarcely be thought even picturesque; for a more patched and ragged set of tatterdemalions it would be difficult to find upon the face of the earth. We are ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... it because your Home Rule Bill (Though perfect) craves to be amended, And to the Lords you love so ill That you would gladly see 'em ended The delicate task has been referred Of patching up the places where ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... a 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... know that Akakiy Akakievitch's cloak served as an object of ridicule to the officials: they even refused it the noble name of cloak, and called it a cape. In fact, it was of singular make: its collar diminishing year by year, but serving to patch its other parts. The patching did not exhibit great skill on the part of the tailor, and was, in fact, baggy and ugly. Seeing how the matter stood, Akakiy Akakievitch decided that it would be necessary to take the cloak to Petrovitch, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... tourists see only the coolie 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 ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... the mixture to be well distributed throughout. The wet concrete was well spaded in an effort to secure a smooth surface next to the forms. This was generally accomplished, but some rough places which showed after the removal of the forms required patching up. ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... foreign language to each other. Indeed, many of these gentlemen appear to me to be a sort of tinkers, who, unable to make pots and pans, set up for menders of them, and, God knows, often make two holes in patching one. The sixth canto is altogether redundant; for the poem should certainly have closed with the union of the lovers, when the interest, if any, was at an end. But what could I do? I had my book and my page still on my hands, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... 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. What we both know ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... 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 territory, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... measures than 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 residents remember a coach-road ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... with all the discussion. I understood, however, that they were revising the creed. You might as well try to patch up your grandfather's overcoat. It will be much better to get a new one. The recent sessions of the Presbytery had been divided into two parties. One was in favour of patching up the old overcoat, the other in favour of a new one. Dr. Briggs had pointed out the torn places—at least five of them. He had revealed it, shabby and somewhat threadbare. Presbyterians had practically discarded the garment. Why should they want to flaunt any of its shreds? ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... had 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 Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... following treatises of this book superabundance of solemn warnings, that all might become our zealous fellow laborers for the accomplishment of the glorious promises, and that especially President Buchanan might give to others good example and come from patching the old house which must crumble to pieces, in our peace union and give powerful assistance for the introduction of the promised New Era. Great mercy was shown through him to the country while he is yet in Babylon, but was quenching the fire which would have consumed the country, if ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... 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.' ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... if you don't look out you'll end different. Patching a boat with tin!" Mr. Job let out a rasping kind of laugh. "But that's Polperro, all over. Do you know what they tell about you, down to St. Ann's?"—Mr. Job came from St. Ann's—"They say, down there, that every man-child ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Hor leaned his cheek on his hand, covered his eyes, and continued to mourn over his fate.... Yet at other times there could not be a more active man; he was always busy over something—mending the cart, patching up the fence, looking after the harness. He did not insist on a very high degree of cleanliness, however; and, in answer to some remark of mine, said once, 'A cottage ought to smell as if it ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... the carpenters were busily employed in patching up some of the boats, so that the prisoners might be removed from the prize, while the rest of the crew were engaged in clearing away the wreck of the masts, and in preparing to make sail ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... for adornment. Quilting—the method of fastening together layers of cloths in such a manner as to secure firmly the loose materials uniformly spread between them, has resulted from the need of adequate protection against rigorous climates. The piecing and patching provide the maker with a suitable field for the display of artistic ability, while the quilting calls for particular skill in handling the needle. The fusing of these two kinds of needlework into a harmonious combination is a task that requires great patience and calls ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... than a century old. No historical fact is, however, 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 readiness with which ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... he 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 ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... 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 he ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... and worn, but it was well darned, and pure as the driven snow. The two chairs were old, as was also the table, but they were not rickety; it was obvious that they owed their stability to a hand skilled in mending and in patching pieces of things together. Even the squat little stool in the side of the chimney corner displayed a leg, the whiteness of which, compared with the other two, told of attention to small things. There ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 sort of fascination in watching him, as ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... whilst the rest of the day was devoted to such much-needed recreation as they thought in their consciences might legitimately be indulged in. Manners and Nicholls, after the manner of seamen, usually devoted a great deal of time on this particular day to the requirements of the toilette and the patching up of their clothes; whilst the two married men devoted themselves entirely to their families, taking their wives and the youngsters for tolerably long walks when the weather permitted. Sometimes the two families ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... residence wherever we are). The ground was, of course, saturated by the rain, which continued unceasing all day. Huddled together in the cribbed, cabined and confined space of our "home, sweet home," half-naked, but fairly cheerful, we passed the time in everlastingly patching up the leaks and defects in the construction of the Villas. The next morning we had reveille at six, and turned out promptly to feed the wretched horses; the poor, woe-begone looking creatures, hardly one of ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... Gammer Gurton is patching the leather breeches of her man Hodge, when Gib, the cat, gets into the milk pan. While Gammer chases the cat the family needle is lost, a veritable calamity in those days. The whole household is turned upside ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... James understand the deep-hidden reason that kept his friend George behind. He worked faithfully nearly a year, kept the suit I gave him for his Sunday suit, and used his old Kentucky suit for his work, patching them himself, until patch upon patch nearly covered the old brown jeans of his plantation wear. When warm weather again returned, without revealing his design of going back to his master in Kentucky, for he knew his abolition friends would discourage his project, he took the eighty ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... in the Bay, and after patching up a lumberman at Grampus River, and providing some medicine for old Molly Budd's rheumatics, Andy and Jamie ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... reason, the worst was over. As I went off the campus the top of my hat was hanging over my left ear, my collar and cravat were turned awry, my trousers gaped over one knee. I was talking with a fellow sufferer and patching the skin on my knuckles, when suddenly I ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... knob and entered a lighted room, where sat his sister and Bernard Higginbotham. She was patching a pair of his trousers, while his lean body was distributed over two chairs, his feet dangling in dilapidated carpet-slippers over the edge of the second chair. He glanced across the top of the paper he ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... 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 what is called ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... field hospital! My first! We were within earshot of the front—that is to say, we could hear the platoon firing. And when the wounded came in we thought only of patching them up temporarily—sewing, bandaging, and plastering them into travelling order, and sending them down to the headquarters at the coast. It was a weary journey across the desert, and I am afraid a few were ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... that remains On the plains, By the caper overrooted, by the gourd Overscored, 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 round, the chariots traced As they raced, And the monarch and his minions and ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... like him, Willie," said Mrs Willders, who was busy patching the knees of a pair of small unmentionables; "but I wish, dear, that you would not use slang in your speech, and remember that fellow is not spelt with an e-r at ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... Ludar told me, had been found on the coast, a half wreck, some weeks since, and, by dint of great labour and patching, had ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... men 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 Estcourt, ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... to include the just and the unjust, a rusty, old-fashioned stock, and the very ancientest brown Prince Albert coat still in reputable existence,—a strange historical epitome of brushings and spongings, of camphor exile and patient patching. Quite evidently he was not among the prosperous, even in his stellar world. But not for that would he repine. This present planet was an admirable plot of ground, and here he stood, cheerfully ready to induct us, the Puritan-born, into the fictitious joys thereof. And ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... through the days. This pressure of work relieved him, at first, from too close consideration of his relation to Bessy. He had yielded up his dearest hopes at her wish, and for the moment his renunciation had set a chasm between them; but gradually he saw that, as he was patching together the ruins of his Westmore plans, so he must presently apply himself to the reconstruction of his ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... Bay Psalm-Book," "Welde, Eliot, and Mather mounted the restive steed Pegasus, Hebrew psalter in hand, and trotted in warm haste over the rough roads of Shemitic roots and metrical psalmody. Other divines rode behind, and after cutting and slashing, mending and patching, twisting and turning, finally produced what must ever remain the most unique specimen of poetical ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Vanderbilt, vessels that under the immigration act would not have been allowed 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 ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... accumulated. One doorway in this street struck me particularly, from the exquisite ornamentation of its stone doorway; but the palace to which it opened is abandoned, and in ruins. Most of the better class of these houses are in the same state, modern repair being only a shabby patching up and whitewashing. The quarter is inhabited almost entirely by Mussulmans; and, though habitable houses are greatly in demand in the business parts of Canea, and many of these old palaces could be made available ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to recount some of his visits to the Hawk's Lynch, in which we have accompanied him. Then they talked on about Katie, and East, and the Englebourn people, past and present, old Betty, and Harry and his wife in New Zealand, and David patching coats and tending bees, and executing the Queen's justice to the best of his ability in the village ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... she said abruptly. 'He knew every animal on the place. In his regiment they called him the "vet.," because he was always patching up the sick and broken mules. One of his last messages to me was about an old horse. He taught me a few things—and sometimes I am ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... accustomed to the hazy grey light and the moving figures that looked so like shadows. He could distinguish isolated groups now, women and girls sitting together under the colonnaded arcades, some reading, others busy, with trembling fingers, patching and darning a poor, torn gown. Then there were others who were actually chatting and laughing together, and—oh, the pity of it! the pity and the shame!—a few children, shrieking with delight, were playing hide and seek in ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... plenty"—and "I think he cheat too much." For the first two classes he expressed perfect toleration; sometimes, but not always, for the third. I was present when a certain merchant was turned about his business, and was the means (having a considerable influence ever since the bag) of patching up the dispute. Even on the day of our arrival there was like to have been a hitch with Captain Reid: the ground of which is perhaps worth recital. Among goods exported specially for Tembinok' there is a beverage known (and labelled) as Hennessy's brandy. It is neither Hennessy, nor even ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... journeys and sails through Pliny, Marco Polo, Odoric de Pordenone,[675] Albert d'Aix, William of Boldensele, Pierre Comestor, Jacques de Vitry, bestiaries, tales of travels, collections of fables, books of dreams, patching together countless marvels, but yet, as he assures us, omitting many so as not to weary our faith: It would be too long to say all; "y seroit trop longe chose a tot deviser." With fanciful wonders are mingled many real ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... with odd bits of sacking, and in one case the words "Lime Juice Cordial" were still plainly visible on the sacking. So came that "cordial" and its victorious wearer into the vanquished capital. Others despairingly gave up all further attempts at patching, having repeatedly proved, as the Scriptures say, that the rent is thereby made worse. So they were perforce content to go about in such a condition of deplorable dilapidation as anywhere else would inevitably result in their being "run in" for flagrant ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... Concert in E moll. Op. 11." Bearberet von Carl Tausig. Score, pianoforte, and orchestral parts. Berlin: Ries and Erler.] I shall only say that his cutting-down and patching-up of the introductory tutti, to mention only one thing, are not well enough done to excuse the liberty taken with a great composer's work. Moreover, your emendations cannot reach the vital fault, which lies in the conceptions. A musician may have ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... sympathy, all example, all brotherly aid, all protection and countenance in high places? Try yourselves to speak to your brethren heart to heart, conscience to conscience! Try it! but you cannot, busied as you are with watching and patching up in all directions your dykes which the flood is invading: the material existence of this society of yours absorbs all your cares, and requires more than all your efforts. Meanwhile the powers of human thought are growing into strength and rise on all sides around you. ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... she was a good housewife and when Washington was in public life she played her part well. No brilliant sallies of wit spoken by her on any occasion have come down to us, but we know that at Valley Forge she worked day and night knitting socks, patching garments and making shirts for the loyal band of winter patriots who stood by their leader and their cause in the darkest hour of ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... wrote his last letter to Pitt. He had asked the doctors to 'patch him up,' saying that if they could make him fit for duty for only the next few days they need not trouble about what might happen to him afterwards. Their 'patching up' certainly cleared his fevered brain, for this letter was a masterly account of the whole siege and the plans just laid to bring it to an end. The style was so good, indeed, that Charles Townshend said his brother George must have been the real author, and that Wolfe, whom he dubbed ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... "If 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 ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... hands, and the boy beside her, gnawing at his lump of bread. But many a long seam had passed through her fingers since then, for she worked at a clothes-shop all the week with the sewing-machine, whence arose the possibility of patching Charley's clothes, for the overseer granted her a cutting or two now ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... every house, sir," said Mr. Gray, as they passed to the next door. "There isn't one of the lot but wants patching up almost ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... Jean together made the best job they could of patching up Jan's wounds a little against the frost and the rub of trace ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... Vixen. There was no delight for her in the green solemnity of the forest glades, where the beechen pillars led the eye away into innumerable vistas, each grandly mysterious as a cathedral aisle. The sun shot golden arrows through dark boughs, patching the moss with translucent lights, vivid and clear as the lustre of emeralds. The gentle plash of the forest stream, rippling over its pebbly bed, made a tender music that was wont to seem passing sweet to Violet Tempest's ear. To-day she heard nothing, ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... Zoe was 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
... arabesques upon the arms and especially the breasts of women. "Kataba" would also be applied to striping the fingers with Henna which becomes a shining black under a paste of honey, lime and sal-ammoniac. This "patching" is alluded to by Strabo and Galen (Lane M. E. chapt. ii.); and we may note that savages and barbarians can leave nothing of beauty unadorned; they seem to hate a plain surface like the Hindu silversmith, whose art is ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... 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. If I could but catch the great gate open for ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... 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 ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... soon commenced 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 ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... brief and casual utterance, ragbags of items, where you have to elucidate, weigh, and use your judgment whether more (or less) is meant than meets the eye; and after whose perusal you are left for hours, sometimes days, patching together suggestions and wondering what they suggest. Some persons' letters seem almost framed to afford a series of alibis for their personality; not in this thing, oh no! not concerned in such a matter by any means; always elsewhere, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... Lincoln. On the floor a home-made toy boat. At rise of curtain there are on the stage an old woman and a young man. GRANDMOTHER MORTON is in her rocking-chair near the open door, facing left. On both sides of door are windows, looking out on a generous land. She has a sewing basket and is patching a boy's pants. She is very old. Her hands tremble. Her spirit remembers ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... the dogs scratch about their foundations; yet there are no luxuriant weeds, for their ragged leaves are blanched with lime, crushed under perpetually falling fragments, and worn away by listless standing of idle feet. There is always mason's work doing, always some fresh patching and whitening; a dull smell of mortar, mixed with that of stale foulness of every kind, rises with the dust, and defiles every current of air; the corners are filled with accumulations of stones, partly broken, with crusts of cement sticking to them, and blotches ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... not!" cried Waitstill passionately. "It is not seemly for Ivory to sew and mend, and I will not allow it. You shall bring me those things that need patching without telling any one, do you hear, and I will meet you on the edge of the pasture Saturday afternoon and give them back to you. You are not to speak of it to any one, you understand, or perhaps I shall pound you to a jelly. You'd make a sweet rosy jelly to eat with turkey for ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that is what they themselves produce. At Antwerp our wounded men were begging us to go up to the hospital to fetch their purses from under their pillows! At present women are only repairers, darning socks, cleaning, washing up after men, bringing up reinforcements in the way of fresh life, and patching up wounded men, but some day they must and will have to say, "The life I produce has as much right to protection as the property you produce, and I claim my right to ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... doing here, anyhow?" he snarled with his lips drawn back from his teeth. "Piddling with bugs—Me! Patching up their dinky little wings and stretching out their dam' little legs and feelers—me being what I am, and they being what they are! Say, I've got to quit this, once for all I've got to quit it. I'm not a man any more. I'm a dead one, a he-granny cutting silo for lady-worms ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... of the lower classes for clothes was almost equal to their other wants. The stores had been long exhausted, and winter was at hand. Nothing more ludicrous can be conceived than the expedients of substituting, shifting, and patching, which ingenuity devised, to eke out wretchedness, and preserve the remains of decency. The superior dexterity of the women was particularly conspicuous. Many a guard have I seen mount, in which the number of soldiers without shoes exceeded that ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... VANITAS VANITATUM. LADIES turn conjurers, and can impart The hidden mystery of the black art, Black artificial patches do betray; They more affect the works of night than day. The creature strives the Creator to disgrace, By patching that which is a perfect face: A little stain upon the purest dye Is both offensive to the heart and eye. Defile not then with spots that face of snow, Where the wise God His workmanship doth show, The light of nature and the light ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... Property! Ugh! Look 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 weeds in it. Look at the mended fence!... There's no property worth ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the breaking of the defenders. But he knew it was like patching rotten material. His influence could not last without Bill and his reinforcements. He plied his guns with a discrimination which no heat or excitement could disturb, and the first invaders fell under his attack amidst a din of fierce-throated cries. His men rallied. But ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... also in our cell that night a photographer (a kind of artist who makes likenesses of people with a machine), who had been for some time patching the pictured heads of well-known and respectable young ladies to the nude, pictured bodies of another class of women; then from this patched creation he would make photographs and sell them privately at high prices to rowdies and blackguards, averring that these, the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wouldn't! Who would 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 ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... and 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 ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... second time while they sat and smoked. There was a seeking out and sharpening of picks blunted by inumerable taps on forgotten ridges, and a stuffing of dunnage bags, and a sortie to Filmer's store for flour and bacon and a few sticks of forty per cent. dynamite, and patching of leaky shoe packs. Twenty-four hours later the little station up at the works was crammed with men whose leathern faces were alight with an old time joy, and whose eyes sparkled with the flame of a nearly ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... fairy-tales, and to keep him amused; albeit she was now busy at carefully overhauling, patching, and repairing her scanty wardrobe—trying to make neat mending do duty for new clothes, and getting ready against any sudden summons. She could not bring herself to ask her father for money, sadly as she wanted new garments. He had given her five pounds in August, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Here a young architect is in charge of the reconstruction. No attempt is being made at present to re-build the farms entirely. Labour is difficult to obtain—it is all required for military purposes. The same applies to materials. Patching is the best that can be done. Just to get a roof over one corner of a ruin is as much as can be hoped for. Until that is done the people have to live in cellars, in shell-holes, in verminous dug-outs like ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... merriment; now the sculptured chimney lay open to the weather, and the sweeping winds had made its smooth hearthstone clean as if fire had never been there. Its floor was covered with large flags, a little broken: these, in prospect of the coming entertainment, a few workmen were leveling, patching, replacing. For the tables were to be set here, and here there was to be dancing ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... an example of inconsistency in the rubrics of our Communion Office referred to in the comment on the last rubric, and which is caused by successive attempts at patching (instead of revoking) the alterations made at the revision ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown
... did our Lord proclaim the newness and completeness of His gospel. It was in no sense a patching up of Judaism. He had not come to mend old and torn garments; the cloth He provided was new, and to sew it on the old would be but to tear afresh the threadbare fabric and leave a more unsightly rent than at first. ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... the skipper one day, pointing out over the bow. "We'll make a round of the fleets, and you'll have a chance to get busy patching the men up." ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... Could glide with lightness airier than she To hang the garment round her mother's neck; And then strike, womanlike, the folds in place; Kissing the thankful lips, and deftly fix The fastening at her throat. While pondering thus And patching these rich fragments, strange it seems What little things obtrude on my regard! I now remember every sculptured group, And painted scene, and portrait, figured vase, Each print unique, and gem, we once beheld When visiting ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... recognizing their voices; "I'll be with you in a moment. I'm not proud; I am patching up ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... patching her poor little gifts, with a vague feeling that every stitch made the time a moment shorter until he should be free, with his life in his hand again. She left the hospital at last, sorrowfully enough, but he made her go: he fancied the close air was hurting her, seeing at night the strange ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... darkness with all belt lights out, but he groped his way to the Connie Dowst had been patching, felt for his helmet, and put his own against it. He yelled, "Do you ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... 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 ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... which the community had of his change of attitude was the conspicuous and even defiant closure of his shop, and the scornful rejection of custom, however urgent or necessitous. All Equity might go in broken shoes, for any patching or half-soling the people got from him. He went about collecting his small dues, and paying up his debts as long as the money lasted, in token of his resolution not to take any favors from any man thereafter. ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... 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 from the wavelets. A fleet of such skiffs are waiting ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... be a famous surgeon some day, I feel sure," Roxanne said, as she began on another interminable job of stocking-patching. "And Douglass is going to be a Supreme Judge of the United States while I help him. Just as soon as the money comes we shall all go to college, Lovey, Douglass, Uncle Pomp and I, to get ready ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... insatiate demand finally consumed the whole coat, in a vain attempt to prevent an exposure of person greater than consistent with the usages of society. The pantaloons—or what, by courtesy, I called such, were a monument of careful and ingenious, but hopeless, patching, that should have called forth the admiration of a Florentine artist in mosaic. I have been shown—in later years—many table tops, ornamented in marquetry, inlaid with thousands of little bits of wood, cunningly ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... Nature in her various forms, kissed into renewed activity by the radiance of morn; by the sweet smelling air filled with the perfume of a multitude of opening flowers which had drunk again the dew of heaven; by the sight of flitting clouds across the bluest of skies, patching the green earth with moving shadows, and sweetest of all, by the twittering, calling, musical sounds of love and joy which came to the ear from the throats of the feathered throng. How pleasant to lie prone on one's back on the cool grass, and ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... simple, at least at this period; they compensated themselves, however, for any plainness in dress, by additional extravagances in their head-dresses, and wore "heart-breakers," or artificial curls, which were set out on wires at the sides of the face. Patching and painting soon became common, and many a nonconformist divine lifted up his voice in vain against these vanities. Pepys has left ample details of the dress in this century; and, if we may judge from the entry under the 30th of October, 1663, either he was very liberal in his own expenditure, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... the crown of sovereignty upon the head of whatever person first enters the city gate in the morning, and commit the kingdom to his charge." It happened that the first man that presented himself at the city gate was a beggar, who had passed his whole life in scraping broken meat and in patching rags. The ministers of state and nobles of the court fulfilled the conditions of the king's will, and laid the keys of the treasury and citadel at ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... you are having holidays, With hikes and camps galore; We are patching sick and wounded, ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... us, she gave me such a slap that my ears rang again. Well, to tell truth, we had so much playing in the convent garden, and such a long walk home in the evening, that we were generally rather tired and glad to get quickly to bed as mamma bade us. She, poverina! always sat up, patching and darning, long after we were in bed, so that we ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... settlement before dusk. For scarcely had they travelled five miles next morning before they came on an outpost of it: a large hut, half dwelling-house, half boat-shed. It stood in a clearing on the left shore, and close by the water's edge was a young man, patching the bottom of an upturned canoe. Two children—a boy and a girl—had dropped their play to watch him. A flat-bottomed boat lay moored ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... two hours, three, four, five, six hours they drifted. Their wireless kept going out of commission, and their radio operator kept patching it up and getting it going again. S O S—he never let up with that call. It was midnight when a British mine-sweeper bore down and hailed. By then they could hear the high seas breaking on the rocks abeam. ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... Was I going to put in affidavits for a stay of hearing for the pleasure of seeing him nursed back 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 ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... for 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, and breeches, so that the naked members of the church were covered. ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... 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 it pays. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... her last birthday. "What is it that saves you?"—saved her, he meant, from that appearance of variation from the usual human type. If he had practically escaped remark, as she pretended, by doing, in the most important particular, what most men do—find the answer to life in patching up an alliance of a sort with a woman no better than himself—how had she escaped it, and how could the alliance, such as it was, since they must suppose it had been more or less noticed, have failed to make ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... as the little 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; but here Dumps interfered, and said Mammy shouldn't be "all ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... their days. Before sunup, while the air was still cool from the night, the two boys were awakened by Ned Cilley or Abner Cloud. They joined the sailors on deck to do their share of chores—mending rigging, patching sails, scrubbing decks, or polishing brass. When the sun ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... gift of making everybody laugh. I remember once seeing him patching his trousers with a Union Jack, and singing, "We'll never let ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... only too willing, if I knew how," instantly flashed back the other, "but unfortunately my education was neglected when it came to patching up boats, and tinkering with machinery. I'm ashamed to confess to that, but it's the whole sad truth. But, thank goodness, we've got a scoutmaster who can do the job mighty near as well as any machinist going. ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... carried him off to dinner and tried to console him. The next morning at seven o'clock Fougeres was at his easel working over the rejected picture; he warmed the colors; he made the corrections suggested by Schinner, he touched up his figures. Then, disgusted with such patching, he carried the picture to Elie Magus. Elie Magus, a sort of Dutch-Flemish-Belgian, had three reasons for being what he became,—rich and avaricious. Coming last from Bordeaux, he was just starting in Paris, selling old pictures and living on the boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. Fougeres, ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till the South begs for mercy; indeed, I know, and you know, that the end would be reached quicker by such a course than by any seeming yielding on our part. I don't want our Government to be bothered by patching up local governments, or by trying to reconcile any class of men. The South has done her worst, and now is the time for us to pile on ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... house, whose motherly roof 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; "well, only this house." Then she added quietly. "We ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... makin' auld clothes do; his mither patching and mending; his faither getting up when there was just licht to see by in the morn and working aboot the place to mak' it fit to stand the storms and snows and winds o' winter, before he went off to his long day's work. And he'd see all aboot him a hard working folk, winning from a barren ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... will find trouble facing her when she imagines her happiest moments are approaching near. If she tries to hide the patches, she will endeavor to keep some ugly trait in her character from her lover. If she is patching, she will assume duties for ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... an East London clergyman that the "poor go on living in wretched places, but have much ill-health." He showed from Mr. Burdett's figures that the London voluntary hospitals and dispensaries cost nearly 600,000 a year to administer—an expenditure incurred mainly for the purpose of "patching up" the wretched poor who had been injured by bad drainage, want of ventilation and the like; and he urged that it might be safely assumed preventive measures would bring down the death-rate of the wage class to one-half, reducing also the sickness rate in at least ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... of his water skins for the journey, which as usual required patching and supplying with fresh handles ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... 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
... in her duty. This marriage was soon celebrated, because the Sire de Rohan had seven daughters, and hardly knew how to provide for them all, at a time when people were just recovering from the late wars, and patching up their unsettled affairs. Now the good man Bastarnay happily found Bertha really a maiden, which fact bore witness to her proper bringing up and perfect maternal correction. So immediately the night arrived when it should be lawful for him to embrace ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... Chris!" he exclaimed. "What are you patching those old things for? Why don't you pitch 'em out and ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... cigars to a brick-red Hercules patching his overalls. From him they went to his neighbor. Presently the cheroots came back to their owner. They had been offered to every man in the room and not one had ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 confidence, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... marry a wife and get tall sons, and lay his bones in his native village; till which time (for death to the aged poor man is a Sabbath, of which he talks freely, calmly, even joyously) 'he just got his bread, by the squire's kindness, patching and mending at ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... Coulmiers. One can fancy in the "Atlantic cable" columns of the "Morning Meteor" the tokens of a standing prescription to dilute foreign facts with nine parts domestic verbiage; and this kind of "editing" educates mankind to padding and patching with superfluous material. ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... The little fellows who accompanied them, up to the age of twelve, usually ran about with no article of clothing save their little breech-clouts and white cotton shirts. In the early afternoon, serious work began, and everywhere we saw these men patching coverings, greasing wheels, readjusting cargoes, feeding and watering their animals, harnessing, and making other preparations for leaving. During the idle portion of the day, dice were in evidence, and ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... 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 we knew we were making our fortune, but she died in Macassar Straits— By the Little Paternosters, ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... One doorway in this street struck me particularly, from the exquisite ornamentation of its stone doorway; but the palace to which it opened is abandoned, and in ruins. Most of the better class of these houses are in the same state, modern repair being only a shabby patching up and whitewashing. The quarter is inhabited almost entirely by Mussulmans; and, though habitable houses are greatly in demand in the business parts of Canea, and many of these old palaces could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... me was simply a blank. During my whole life I have been singularly incapable of mastering any language. Especial attention was paid to verse-making, and this I could never do well. I had many friends, and got together a good collection of old verses, which by patching together, sometimes aided by other boys, I could work into any subject. Much attention was paid to learning by heart the lessons of the previous day; this I could effect with great facility, learning forty or fifty lines of Virgil or Homer, whilst ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin
... consciousness that a 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 ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... not in the least care about your son-in-law's visits; you brought him here—take him away again! If you have any authority in your family, it seems to me that you may very well insist on your wife's patching up this squabble. Tell the worthy old lady from me, that if I am unjustly charged with having caused a young couple to quarrel, with upsetting the unity of a family, and annexing both the father and the son-in-law, I will ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... the same pensioner whom I had seen patching his uniform in the Commandant's ante-room, came in with an invitation to dinner for me from ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... monograph. When 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 trio ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... he wrote his last letter to Pitt. He had asked the doctors to 'patch him up,' saying that if they could make him fit for duty for only the next few days they need not trouble about what might happen to him afterwards. Their 'patching up' certainly cleared his fevered brain, for this letter was a masterly account of the whole siege and the plans just laid to bring it to an end. The style was so good, indeed, that Charles Townshend said his brother George must have been the ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... it was heaven-like. For all of its size, the hut was frail, and the winter wind blew coldly through its many cracks; but compared with the soldier's billets, it was a cozy palace. The Salvationists spent hours each week sitting on the roof in the driving rain patching leaks with tar-paper ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... proposition aunt Mary fully agreed; and thus it was decided that the extra patching for the longer journey need not be accomplished. Miss Baker would explain the matter to Sir Lionel in her way; and Caroline would do the same to George Bertram in hers. On one other point, also, Miss Baker made up her mind fully; though on this matter she did not think ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... things were happening, at the other end of the Tour de Ville, in the pharmacy, Bezuquet's pupil, seated before his master's desk, was patiently patching and gumming together the fragments of Tartarin's letter overlooked by the apothecary at the bottom of the basket. But numerous bits were lacking in the reconstruction, for here is the singular and sinister enigma spread out before him, not unlike ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... 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, he was right. It was necessary to start afresh; ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... at best only copying, patching and imitating went on here; which he fancied to be owing to some temporary and local cause. He did not at that time see that mediaevalism was as dead as a fern-leaf in a lump of coal; that other developments were shaping in the world around him, in which Gothic architecture ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... his martial grandeur, and I hated him for his greatness, and despised myself for my pettiness. All the same it was unendurable, and it was a relief to see Joe Braggs tiptoeing carefully across the yard dairywards. The rascal should have been patching a gap in the hedge of Ten-acres, and here he was, foraging for a jug of ale. He could wheedle Jane as easily as he could snare a rabbit, but I would scarify him out of ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... I muttered to myself, in a voice about as amiable as the growlings of a panther, "it only shows that it is quite hopeless. We're an ill-tempered family—a hopelessly ill-tempered family; and to try to cure us is like patching the lungs of a consumptive family, I don't even wish that I could forgive Philip. He ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... absence of all sympathy, all example, all brotherly aid, all protection and countenance in high places? Try yourselves to speak to your brethren heart to heart, conscience to conscience! Try it!—but you cannot, busied as you are with watching and patching up in all directions your dykes which the flood is invading. The material existence of this society of yours absorbs all your care, and requires more than all your efforts. Meanwhile the powers of human thought are growing into strength, and rise on all sides around ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... time to repent she had cried out:—"Oh, there now! See what I have done again! I did not mean it. Do forgive me!" Neither saw a way to patching up this lapse, and it was ruled out by tacit consent. Gwen resumed:—"You know, I mean, how one dreams a thousand things in a minute, and everything is as big as a house, even when it's only strong coffee. This was worse than strong coffee. There ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... have hot work before you in more ways than one—get to the sharp corner curves of both the other ribs, face against iron afterwards, inside against it. Mind, as is your true shape to mould, so will your ribs be when it comes to be attached to the back; and there is no patching or trickery allowed here; so do your best. After this, fix the three sections into the mould, and keep them in position by means of cramp 2, and the centre one with block 33, held firmly by ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... of you: here's a lad that has been half-killed for standing by his colors to-day. Look here, Armstrong, would you mind going for Dr. Maverick? this poor chap needs some patching-up. And, Kit, give me some water and a napkin: we'll get his face a little ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... his water skins for the journey, which as usual required patching and supplying with fresh ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... 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
... along the tunnel, step by step, He winked his prying torch with patching glare From side to side, ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... to be a surgeon. It would be fine patching people up, setting their bones, and trying things no one had dared to do before; but I couldn't stand driving round every day to look after their wretched colds, and vaccinate the babies. I'd like to be an army doctor best ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... their morning bath, the cessation of the flow— as agoas estao paradas, "the waters have stopped." The muddy streets, in a few days, dry up; groups of young fellows are now seen seated on the shady sides of the cottages making arrows and knitting fishing-nets with tucum twine; others are busy patching up and caulking their canoes, large and small; in fact, preparations are made on all sides for the much longed-for "verao," or summer, and the "migration," as it is called, of fish and turtle— that is, their descent ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... May 28th.—Great doings here to-day. For weeks past all the Conservative Ladies of Billsbury have been hard at work, knitting, sewing, painting, embroidering, patching, quilting, crocheting, and Heaven knows what besides, for the Bazaar in aid of the Conservative Young Men's Club and Coffee-Room Sustentation Fund. You couldn't call at any house in Billsbury without being nearly smothered in heaps of fancy-work of every kind. When I was at ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... not without reason, the worst was over. As I went off the campus the top of my hat was hanging over my left ear, my collar and cravat were turned awry, my trousers gaped over one knee. I was talking with a fellow sufferer and patching the skin on my knuckles, when suddenly ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... of Russia will 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 ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... them; for, as they do not understand what I call poetry, we talk in a foreign language to each other. Indeed, many of these gentlemen appear to me to be a sort of tinkers, who, unable to make pots and pans, set up for menders of them, and, God knows, often make two holes in patching one. The sixth canto is altogether redundant; for the poem should certainly have closed with the union of the lovers, when the interest, if any, was at an end. But what could I do? I had my book and my page still on my hands, and must get ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... enters, 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 ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... 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 reforms ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... "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 ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... 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 ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... little turret that remains On the plains, By the caper overrooted, by the gourd Overscored, 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 round, the chariots traced As they raced, And the monarch and his minions and his dames ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... century old. No historical fact is, however, 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 readiness with which men accustom themselves, as matters of course, to improvements ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... birthday. "What is it that saves you?"—saved her, he meant, from that appearance of variation from the usual human type. If he had practically escaped remark, as she pretended, by doing, in the most important particular, what most men do—find the answer to life in patching up an alliance of a sort with a woman no better than himself—how had she escaped it, and how could the alliance, such as it was, since they must suppose it had been more or less noticed, have failed to make her ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... all. But now I have become the most miserly creature; and I have a little packet of money upstairs which you shall put in the Unitas Bank with the rest of your wealth. Diana and I have been darning, and patching, and cutting, and contriving, in the most praiseworthy manner. Even this silk has been turned. You did not think that, did you, ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... thought. Accordingly, patching together all the old bits of net that could be found and mending the holes, the Irishman made a huge net two or three hundred yards long. Then he drove a number of stakes into the mud, working almost night and day, and ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... forecast the end, nor estimate the claims that are yet to be made in the cause of patriotism. The nations engaged, at least the chief of them, are fixed irrevocably in their determination that peace, when it comes, shall be no temporary patching up of hostilities and arranging of indemnities, but a solid, lasting settlement, which shall, as far as possible, place another vast European war out of the ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... from camp, we passed a party of Russians en route to Kalgan. They were sitting disconsolately beside two huge cars, patching tires and tightening bolts. Their way had been marked by a succession of motor troubles and they were almost discouraged. Woe to the men who venture into the desert with an untried car and without a skilled mechanic! ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... and the blood-spitting returned at the end of cruel intervals, when he had begun to hope that at least that trouble was done with. One morning he told his wife that he was going to ask the doctors to examine him again. They had spoken of patching up; but he wanted to know whether he was going to live or die. There was a certain relief in hearing him speak so plainly; she had had enough of the torture of hope, and would like to know the worst. He liked better to go to the hospital alone, ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... has wings. Yet my heart watches . . . 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 ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... rest in a churchyard, where two men were sitting patching a Punch-and-Judy show booth, while the figures of Punch, the doctor, the executioner and the devil were lying on the ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... several causes of weakness in the Florentine State-system, partly because they show how irregularly the Constitution had been formed by the patching and extension of a simple industrial machine to suit the needs of a great commonwealth; partly because it was through these defects that the democracy merged gradually into a despotism. The art of the Medici consisted ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... labor appliances, which was a great relief to all having the care and responsibility of the concern, rendering the task of keeping things tidy and in comfortable order much easier than formerly. It is better and more economical for the State. That constant patching up and fixing over in numerous places, swallowing up money, no one hardly knowing how, is now nearly ended, permitting the real gains of the institution to accumulate and stand prominently in view, though everything there is not ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... O son of Hur," she said, presently, "workmen who make pictures by gathering vari-colored shells here and there on the sea-shore after storms, and cutting them up, and patching the pieces as inlaying on marble slabs. Can you not see the hint there is in the practice to such as go searching for secrets? Enough that from this person I gathered a handful of little circumstances, and from that ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Matigny. Here a young architect is in charge of the reconstruction. No attempt is being made at present to re-build the farms entirely. Labour is difficult to obtain—it is all required for military purposes. The same applies to materials. Patching is the best that can be done. Just to get a roof over one corner of a ruin is as much as can be hoped for. Until that is done the people have to live in cellars, in shell-holes, in verminous dug-outs like beasts ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... first morning at 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 ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of that 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 ...
— Industrial Conspiracies • Clarence S. Darrow
... on a last, studded its spiked surface with clouts, hammering away in complete disregard of the night-watchman's uneasy slumbers. The big sewing-machine raced at top-speed round the flounce of a tent, and in odd corners among the bunks were groups mending mitts, strengthening sleeping-bags and patching burberrys. The cartographer at his table beneath a shaded acetylene light drew maps and sketched, the magnetician was busy on calculations close by. The cook and messman often made their presence felt ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... tear up the system, then shall we all have reason to rejoice at these disasters, apart from our sympathy with individual sufferings. More good will have been done by this one great shock to the heart of England than by fifty years' more patching, and pottering, and knocking impotent heads together. What makes me most angry is the ministerial apology. 'It's always so with us for three campaigns,'!!! 'it's our way,' 'it's want of experience,' &c. &c. That's precisely the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... thousand islands, he journeys and sails through Pliny, Marco Polo, Odoric de Pordenone,[675] Albert d'Aix, William of Boldensele, Pierre Comestor, Jacques de Vitry, bestiaries, tales of travels, collections of fables, books of dreams, patching together countless marvels, but yet, as he assures us, omitting many so as not to weary our faith: It would be too long to say all; "y seroit trop longe chose a tot deviser." With fanciful wonders are mingled many real ones, which ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... she will find trouble facing her when she imagines her happiest moments are approaching near. If she tries to hide the patches, she will endeavor to keep some ugly trait in her character from her lover. If she is patching, she will assume duties for which she ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... he'd say to mine. I was jest a boy, but I'd hung around hoss-swappers enough to know that it never was a good idea to be the first to propose a trade, and so I hitched at the post in front of Wilks's store and went in. I bought a pound of tenpenny nails, that I thought would come in handy in patching fences at home, and while the clerk was weighing 'em up I saw Tobe leave his chair behind a counter and go out and walk around the hoss. Finally he come to ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... 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 from the wavelets. A fleet of such ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... catholic smile, tolerant enough to include the just and the unjust, a rusty, old-fashioned stock, and the very ancientest brown Prince Albert coat still in reputable existence,—a strange historical epitome of brushings and spongings, of camphor exile and patient patching. Quite evidently he was not among the prosperous, even in his stellar world. But not for that would he repine. This present planet was an admirable plot of ground, and here he stood, cheerfully ready to induct us, the Puritan-born, into the ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... the old in years, in sorrow and knowledge, will sit darning the rents and patching the bad places with their trembling hands, as their wise old heads nod and their dear old mouths murmur a prayer, and yet be unable to teach the young how to keep the fabric of life whole, or safeguard it with the lavender of love and ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... WAS a field hospital! My first! We were within earshot of the front—that is to say, we could hear the platoon firing. And when the wounded came in we thought only of patching them up temporarily—sewing, bandaging, and plastering them into travelling order, and sending them down to the headquarters at the coast. It was a weary journey across the desert, and I am afraid a few were buried on ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... They had tried their best to make up for Mariette—with lovely rashers of our own ham, and plum brandy, and patching up my linen, and all sorts of little spoiled-kid tricks—and I noticed they were still slanging each other in the old familiar way! But you talk about a difference! I always had my eye on the door to see if some time or other it wouldn't get a move on and turn ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... thern," I said, and was about to explain that I was from another world, thinking that by patching a truce with these fellows and fighting with them against the therns I might enlist their aid in regaining my liberty. But just at that moment a heavy object smote me a resounding whack between my shoulders that nearly felled ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... because Maciek was in the habit of talking to her about his work, whatever he might be doing, manuring, threshing, or patching his clothes. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... afterwards, when she could breathe more freely and 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 ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... I doing here, anyhow?" he snarled with his lips drawn back from his teeth. "Piddling with bugs—Me! Patching up their dinky little wings and stretching out their dam' little legs and feelers—me being what I am, and they being what they are! Say, I've got to quit this, once for all I've got to quit it. I'm not a man any more. I'm a dead one, a he-granny ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... ones were tumbling about on the grass. The oldest girl was grinding at the rude mill, a boy was making something out of birch branches, interlaced with willow. A round, cheerful face glanced up from patching a boy's garment, and smiled. Madame Gaudrion's mother had been a white woman left at the Saguenay basin in a dying condition, it was supposed, but she had recovered and married a half-breed. One daughter ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... 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
... Hereupon one hent him by the hand and after doing as he 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 and went on his wayfare until he ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... you think on the essentials of a real lady—and then picture me patching, with a First Reader propped before me; facing Indians, Gypsies, wild animals—and they used to be bad enough—why, I mind one time in Ohio when our first baby was only able to stand beside a chair, and through the rough puncheon floor a copperhead ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... replace absent buttons. With this experience, it will not be long before she will begin to take an interest in her own clothes, and so will not need to be warned that a button is coming off or that the hem of her skirt is coming out. But, of course, she could not begin by sewing or patching her own clothes, nor by mending intricate tears. First see that she sews on buttons correctly and then let her ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... "Grosses Concert in E moll. Op. 11." Bearberet von Carl Tausig. Score, pianoforte, and orchestral parts. Berlin: Ries and Erler.] I shall only say that his cutting-down and patching-up of the introductory tutti, to mention only one thing, are not well enough done to excuse the liberty taken with a great composer's work. Moreover, your emendations cannot reach the vital fault, which lies in the conceptions. A musician may have mastered the mechanical trick of instrumentation, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... incidentally involved patching one of half a dozen over-worn tubes—I looked her over more in detail. The customary frame, strut rods, and torsion rods had been supplemented by the most extraordinary criss-cross of angle-iron braces it ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... confusion of the elements, and when the storm 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 ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... 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' ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... will be a famous surgeon some day, I feel sure," Roxanne said, as she began on another interminable job of stocking-patching. "And Douglass is going to be a Supreme Judge of the United States while I help him. Just as soon as the money comes we shall all go to college, Lovey, Douglass, Uncle Pomp and I, to get ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... 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. He picked up his hat from the study table, ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... took off his fur cap. "If Miss Rawlinson would like to see Mrs. Sandberg, I'll drive her round," he suggested. "We'll catch you in a league or so. Gregory has a bit of patching to do ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... consciences might legitimately be indulged in. Manners and Nicholls, after the manner of seamen, usually devoted a great deal of time on this particular day to the requirements of the toilette and the patching up of their clothes; whilst the two married men devoted themselves entirely to their families, taking their wives and the youngsters for tolerably long walks when the weather permitted. Sometimes the two families took these excursions in company, sometimes separately, according to their ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... 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
... 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 ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... considering light and shade when unaccompanied by colour, I may notice that those portions where the dark and light masses come in contact are the places where both the rounding of the objects by making out the forms, and also the patching down the half-tint with visible lines, may be followed out with the greatest success, as it prevents the work being heavy in effect, and also assists the passage of the light into the shadow. The quality of the lights and darks is flatness. The ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... nation was concentrating 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 boys, and they went rather ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... the coal pits for sixpence a day, patching the clothes and mending the boots of his fellow-workmen at night, to earn a little money to attend a night school, giving the first money he ever earned, $150, to his blind father to pay his debts. People say ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... the diligent patching and the strong tackle told; for they had succeeded in inclosing a goodly portion of a large shoal of mackerel, and the weight seemed more than they ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... Thunder Run Mountain. Sairy turned again the drying apples, then brought her patching out upon the porch and sat down in a low split-bottomed chair opposite Tom. The yellow cat at her feet yawned, stretched, and went back to sleep. The china asters bloomed; the sun drew out the odours of thyme ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... benches in front of but not facing them. The individuals on these benches were as yet few, and Cyrene looked apprehensively around the place, while Dominique took mental notes. They saw, forming the sides of the hall, two amphitheatres filled with Jacobin women knitting, patching trousers or waistcoats, and watching the benches of supplicants for the cards of civism, and made ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... good gift of making everybody laugh. I remember once seeing him patching his trousers with a Union Jack, and singing, "We'll never let the Old ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... 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 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... lop off. A family 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, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... bidding and must first of all apologize for some little delay; the cause being that your messenger found me busy patching up a bullet-hole in ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... Never in her life had these three who loved her seen her so beautiful, so enchantingly confident and gay. Rose and her mother had some little trouble, later on, in patching the sequence of events together for the delighted but bewildered Harry, Rose's husband. But there could be no doubt, even to the shrewd eyes of her Aunt Kate, that Norma was ecstatically happy. Her mad kisses for Rose, the laughter with which she described the expedition to ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... polishing which will determine whether or no you are serious in your endeavor to break into literature, for here the real labor of authorship begins. All that went before was simply child's play compared to this grubbing, plodding, tinkering, and patching, and pottering; so if you have no stomach for this, you had better learn a trade. "Whatever you do, take pains with it. Try at least to write good English: learn to criticise and correct your work: put your best into every sentence. If you are too ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... cleaned of blood and dried somewhere. When the doctor had finished sewing and patching Bryce showered and dressed in a small dressing room beside the emergency ward, where he found his clothes hanging neatly in a ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... about their foundations; yet there are no luxuriant weeds, for their ragged leaves are blanched with lime, crushed under perpetually falling fragments, and worn away by listless standing of idle feet. There is always mason's work doing, always some fresh patching and whitening; a dull smell of mortar, mixed with that of stale foulness of every kind, rises with the dust, and defiles every current of air; the corners are filled with accumulations of stones, partly broken, with crusts of cement sticking to them, and blotches of nitre oozing ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... have given universal dissatisfaction. Whigs, Tories, and Radicals join in full cry against them, and the 'Times,' in a succession of bitter, vituperative articles, very well done, fires off its contempt and disgust at the paltry patching up of the Cabinet. The most unpopular appears to be Lord Auckland's appointment, and, though I like him personally, it certainly does appear strange and objectionable. He has neither reputation nor political calibre to entitle him to such an elevation, and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... 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 ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... Government was lost. The result was, the Government was weakened, and no one was satisfied. 'Whigs, Tories, and Radicals,' wrote Greville, 'join in full cry against them, and the "Times," in a succession of bitter vituperative articles very well done, fires off its contempt and disgust at the paltry patching-up of the Cabinet.' ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... instance and you know what Bergson calls the devenir reel by which the thing evolves and grows. Philosophy should seek this kind of living understanding of the movement of reality, not follow science in vainly patching together ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... against the side, then leap clear over the boat. Every wave seemed powerful enough to crush in the sides. But they came out dripping, glistening red after each onslaught. The boatman had succeeded in patching the rent caused by the collision, but the upper deck was leaking in many places. The "Red Rover" had been strained almost to the breaking-up point. It was now fairly wallowing in the foaming sea dashing against ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... 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, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... received with a joy that was modified by recollections of the past. Burgundy and Orleans had once before sworn a solemn friendship, and yet a week or two later Orleans lay dead in the streets of Paris, murdered by the order of Burgundy. Was it likely that the present patching up of the quarrel would have a much longer duration? On the former occasion the quarrel was a personal one between the two great houses, now all France was divided. A vast amount of blood had been shed, there had been ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... little 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; but here Dumps interfered, and said Mammy ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... example of inconsistency in the rubrics of our Communion Office referred to in the comment on the last rubric, and which is caused by successive attempts at patching (instead of revoking) the alterations made at the revision ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown
... comfort, and it's my belief there's no one at home within but a woman and a few bairns. The odd thing is that as I get a look of the woman between the door-post and the wall, she sits with her back to the cruisie-light, patching clothes and crooning away at a dirge that's broken by her tears. If it had been last week, and our little adventures in Glencoe had brought us so far up this side of the glen, I might have thought she had suffered something ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... groove at its widest end and leave it at the narrowest, lowering the handle of the tool gradually as you go along to lift the gouge out of the wood, producing the drawing of the forms at the same time. A gouge cut never looks so well as when done at one stroke; patching it afterward with amendments always produces a labored look. If this has to be done, the tool should be passed finally over the whole groove to remove the superfluous tool marks—a sideway gliding motion of the edge, combined with its forward motion, often succeeds in this operation. ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... myself: Was I going to put in affidavits for a stay of hearing for the pleasure of seeing him nursed back 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 ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... fitted things together. He knew that Sandy's right moccasin was almost invariably worn through at the toe. Before they left he had seen him patching them, and because they wore through at the same place the patches were of nearly the same shape. So that if Glass had found a patched moccasin it was not necessarily the one which had made the track. But that would make little difference. Either Farwell or his assistant ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... asked Jessie demurely. She was patching a pair of leather trousers for Fergus and she did not raise her eyes ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... getting along rapidly. If I could go to school two years more, I should be glad, but of course that is out of the question.... It is easier for you to write often than it is for me. You have not three tearing, growing brothers to mend and make for. I am become quite expert in the arts of patching and darning. I am going to get some pies and cake and raisins and other goodies to send to our girl's sick brother. If I had not so dear and happy a home, I should envy you yours. You say you do not remember whether ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... moment, busy patching the pieces of the story together into one connected whole. Then, leaning forward suddenly, she cried, excitedly, "Then M. Charloix deliberately made up that wicked, cruel lie that separated ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till the South begs for mercy; indeed, I know, and you know, that the end would be reached quicker by such a course than by any seeming yielding on our part. I don't want our Government to be bothered by patching up local governments, or by trying to reconcile any class of men. The South has done her worst, and now is the time for us to pile on our blows thick ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... neglecting his own interests for 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, and breeches, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... two classes he expressed perfect toleration; sometimes, but not always, for the third. I was present when a certain merchant was turned about his business, and was the means (having a considerable influence ever since the bag) of patching up the dispute. Even on the day of our arrival there was like to have been a hitch with Captain Reid: the ground of which is perhaps worth recital. Among goods exported specially for Tembinok' there is a beverage known ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... quilt patching, sheet making, or other plain sewing that the good women of Harvey have to give out. I know certain worthy women with families, who need this work. Also wood-sawing orders promptly filled by competent men out of work. I will ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... 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 ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... 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 ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... day we shall cast out the passion for Europe by the passion for America." As to our political doings, he can never regard them with complacency. "Politics is an afterword," he declares—"a poor patching. We shall one day learn to supersede politics by education." He sympathizes with Lovelace's theory as to iron bars and stone walls, and holds that freedom and slavery are inward, not outward conditions. Slavery is not in circumstance, ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... that under the immigration act would not have been allowed 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. ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
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