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More "Ragged" Quotes from Famous Books



... of cocks; the time seemed interminable; but when daylight came, I landed, and found a pair of scarlet trousers pacing on their beat before every house in the village, and a small squad of prisoners, stunted and forlorn as Falstaff's ragged regiment, already in hand. I observed with delight the good demeanor of my men towards these forlorn Anglo-Saxons, and towards the more tumultuous women. Even one soldier, who threatened to throw an old termagant into the river, took care to append ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... the labourers are few": here is only one, but he is quite sufficient—"the reaper whose name is Death," a skeleton over whose bones the peasant's dress—a shirt and a pair of ragged trousers—hangs loose. The shirt-sleeves of the skeleton are turned well up, as if for more active exertion, as he grasps the two holds of the huge scythe with which he is ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... the heads of waves; and then of a sudden—come and gone ere I could fix it, with a swallow's swiftness—one glimpse of what we had come so far and paid so dear to see: the masts and rigging of a brig pencilled on heaven, with an ensign streaming at the main, and the ragged ribbons of a topsail thrashing from the yard. Again and again, with toilful searching, I recalled that apparition. There was no sign of any land; the wreck stood between sea and sky, a thing the most isolated ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... life; but David cannot know even this, save by hearsay, for he never sees them. He is a moneyed man, and not a year ago, gave the town a new library. But is he happy? Or does the old wound still show a ragged edge? For that may be, they tell us, even "when ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... beautiful babe. Let us worship the sun, father and mother of light and love and joy." Then what would it be your duty to do—kill her? Do you believe a real God ever did that? Your hand should be first upon her, and when you took up some ragged rock and hurled it against the white bosom filled with love for you, and saw running away the red current of her sweet life, then you would look up to heaven and receive the congratulations of the infinite fiend whose commandments ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... seen such a shockingly muddy mackintosh, however, as the one she wore, never were hands so dirty as the slender ones which lay limp before her. With a determined shake of his head and a new flash of the eye he calmly seated himself and began to open his ragged pack. Once he paused, a startled look in his face. He caught sight of the revolver at Truxton's side for the first time. The instant of alarm passed and a braver smile than ever came. Ah, here was a knight who would fight for his lady love! ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... and Saduko and I, with our ragged band of Amangwane, sat one morning, after a long night march, in the hilly country looking across a broad vale, which was sprinkled with trees like an English park, at that mountain on the side of which Bangu, chief of the Amakoba, ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard

... buy a gig, which had lately become the fashion with the Maoris. He consequently wished to draw all the rent for four years from his tenant, and consulted Mr. Stack whether he could do so. The man was old, clumsy, poor, and ragged, and the idea of his driving himself about in his carriage for display amused Mr. Stack so much that he could not help bursting out into a laugh; and then "the old man blushed up to the roots of his ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... radical, the innovator of the family. She often brought her conservative mother to the verge of horror. Hers was the hardy, daring, and unconventional strain of the pioneer. She liked the edge; if the edge was a little ragged, ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... of the ragged old stone, called Jacob's pillow, is not very distinct, but it is the best we could do. As it is, it will aid the reader in forming a better idea. The stone in shape is an oblong square, about 32 inches long, 13 ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild

... and the two sallied out, bearing with them the various sections of their machine. The moon was shining cold and clear though an occasional ragged cloud drifted across her face. All was still and silent upon the Downs. They stood and listened before they entered the barn, but not a sound came to their ears, save the dull murmur of the sea and the distant barking ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... first; but, a second glance showing me Tom Jerrold, one of my berthmates who had turned out before me, washing his face and hands in a bucket of sea-water in the scuppers, I followed suit, drying myself with a very dirty and ragged towel which he lent me in a friendly way, albeit I felt inclined to turn ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... hardly understand myself. But please try to believe that what I say is true. I'm just back from the mountains, and listen, Margaret—" He halted a moment to steady his voice. "The Turners down there took me in when I was a ragged outcast. They clothed me, fed me, educated me. The Major took me when I was little more; and he fed me, clothed me, educated me. The Turners scorned me—Melissa told me to go herd with the Dillons. The Major all but turned me from his door. Your father ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... the doorway, a patched and ragged Cinderella of the desert. Upon her slim, ill-poised figure the descending sun slanted a shaft of glory. It caught in a spotlight the cheap, dingy gown, the coarse stockings through the holes of which white flesh peeped, the heavy, broken brogans that disfigured the feet. ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine

... through it but an elderly female cook. But everything exists in the human soul: that orchard grows in our own brain, and there it is the shrine and theatre of some strange chance between a girl and a ragged poet and a mad farmer. Stevenson stands for the conception that ideas are the real incidents: that our fancies are our adventures. To think of a cow with wings is essentially to have met one. And this ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton

... career had been actually unrolled before his eyes, of the part they will perform in life. They will all become leading members of Dorcas societies; they will find perpetual delight in carrying to the poor bundles of tracts and packages of tea; they will scour the highways and by-ways for dirty, ragged, hatless, shoeless, and godless children, whom they will hale into the Sunday-school; they will shine with unsurpassed skill in the manufacture of slippers for the rector; they will exhibit a fiery enthusiasm in the decoration and adornment ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... crossed through one of those broad halls to be found in the basement, lined on each side with public officers, and, mounting half a dozen steps, he found himself in the Park. An Irish woman sat upon the steps of the nearest entrance, holding a forlorn bundle in her lap, and with a ragged baby playing with its little soiled feet on the pavement before her. This woman turned her head, and nodded toward the door when he inquired for the Commissioner's office, then bent her eyes again with a dead heavy gaze upon the pavement. The stranger, mounting ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... to see one human bein' lookin' arter another! But my husban', as was natural, he bein' a householder, an' so many of his own, was shy o' children; for children, you know, miss, 'cep' they be yer own, ain't nice things about a house; an' them poor things wouldn't be a credit nowheres, for they're ragged enough—an' a good deal more than enough —only they were pretty clean, as poor children go, an' there was nothing, as I said to him, in the top-rooms, as they could do much harm to. The man said theirs weren't like other children, for they had been brought up to do the thing as they ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... upon my resource, readiness, and courage. And what was this success? Immediately, it meant getting out of the bay, and into the open sea in a twelve-foot dinghy looted from some ship years ago by the Rio Medio pirates, if that miserable population of sordid and ragged outcasts of the Antilles deserved such a romantic name. They ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... crib, moodily viewing the demolition of the last building. Three days before, we had considered ourselves millionaires; on that morning we looked around and saw that we were reduced to the ragged edge of poverty. Our sanguine expectations of realizing immense fortunes were dashed to the ground, and we felt pretty blue. The new town of Hays had swallowed Rome entirely. Mr. Rose facetiously remarked that he felt like "the last rose of summer," ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody

... day, when he said this, his trollop replied: "The king is here, old fellow!" And at the same time she presented a new comrade to them, who was no less ragged or wretched looking than the eighteen, but quite young by the size of him. He was a tall, thin fellow of about forty, and without a white streak in his long hair. He was dressed only in a pair of trousers and a shirt, which he wore ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... which is elastic, but has no holes in it. Remove the crust and cut it in slices about one inch thick, and from these slices cut little pieces about three inches long and about one inch wide. Trim them off well, so they will not be ragged or uneven. Put these pieces into a bowl and throw on them some boiling water, then remove them immediately and throw them into a big bowl of cold water. This operation should be done quickly, so as to make the bread ...
— Simple Italian Cookery • Antonia Isola

... a dreaming dolt, Still walking like a ragged colt, And oft out of a bush doth bolt, Of purpose to deceive us; And leading us makes us to stray, Long winter's nights, out of the way; And when we stick in mire and clay, Hob doth with ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... delapidation. However, since the holes did not occur simultaneously in the two garments, by wearing both she was amply covered. For a waist she wore a red crape dressing sacque, and about her hair she tied a broad, ragged ribbon of red to protect the soft waves from the ruthless twigs. She looked at herself in the mirror. Nothing daunted by the sight of her own unsightliness, she took a bucket and went into the ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston

... witnessed a scene of considerable bustle. Mrs. O'Shanaghgan, with all her English nerves, had plenty of pluck, and would scorn to show even a vestige of fear before the hangers-on, as she called the numerous ragged urchins who appeared from every quarter on each imaginable occasion. Although she was shaking from head to foot with absolute terror at the thought of a drive behind Black Bess, she stepped into her seat in the tall dog-cart without a remark. ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... placed before A low-price dealer's open door; Therein arrayed in broken rows A ragged crew of rhyme and prose, The homeless vagrants, waifs and strays Whose low estate this line betrays (Set forth the lesser birds to lime) YOUR CHOICE AMONG THESE ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... must all be with one up there in heaven!" Then he saw a poor gray-haired man who was coming along the road towards him, and he spoke to him, and asked, "How can I get to heaven?" The man answered, "By poverty and humility. Put on my ragged clothes, wander about the world for seven years, and get to know what misery is, take no money, but if thou art hungry ask compassionate hearts for a bit of bread; in this way thou wilt ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... and they had been decimated by disease. More than 2000 cases of enteric and dysentery had been in hospital at one time, and the total number of admissions had been nearly as great as the total number of the garrison. One-tenth of the men had actually died of wounds or disease. Ragged, bootless, and emaciated, there still lurked in the gaunt soldiers the martial spirit of warriors. On the day after their relief 2000 of them set forth to pursue the Boers. One who helped to lead them has left it on record that the most piteous sight that he has ever seen was these ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... returned to his lodging, where he passed the day in trouble and transports of grief, without finding ease or patience, till night darkened upon him, when his yearning and love-longing redoubled. Thereupon, by way of concealment, he disguised himself in the ragged garb of a Fakir,[FN42] and set out wandering at random through the glooms of night, distracted and knowing not whither he went. So he wandered on all that night and next day, till the heat of the sun waxed fierce and the mountains flamed like fire and thirst was ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... ragged rascals all," (As H——- would in his pulpit bawl With cheeks extended wide) Know, as you pass the crowded way, This is the happy natal day Of Him whose books demand your ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... he had to extricate himself from savage warriors, who vowed that he must go back, unless he gave them an ox, a gun, or a man. The ox he could ill spare, the gun not at all, and as for giving the last—a man—to make a slave of, he would sooner die. At the best, he was a poor ragged skeleton when he reached those who had hearts to feel for him and hands to help him. Had he not been a prodigy of patience, faith, and courage, had he not known where to find help in all time of his tribulation, he would never have reached ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... serve no longer. Hudson was compelled to arrest his old mate for mutiny and depose him with loss of wages. The trial brought out the fact that the crew had been plotting to break open the lockers and seize firearms. It must be remembered that most of Hudson's sailors were ragged, under-fed, under-clothed fellows, ill fitted for the rigorous climate of the north and unmoved by the glorious aims that, like a star of hope, led Hudson on. They saw no star of hope, and felt only hunger and cold and that dislike of the hardships of life which ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut

... turning-point, for from a slow falling back the pace grew swifter, the waving and tossing lights burned more brightly, and those who fired sent ragged volley after volley in amongst the now clearly seen chasseurs; while the Spaniards, forgetful now of the commands they had received, kept on advancing, in fact, pursuers in their turn, firing more eagerly ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn

... in spite of all that and our promise to meet her, we forgot every bit about it till half-past four! You see, it was election day, and we were frightfully busy. After the fifth hour recitation we hurried into the ragged blue overalls that we had worn in one of the torchlight parades. Lila punched up the crown of an old felt alpine hat, and I battered my last summer's sailor till it looked disreputable enough. Then we rushed over to the gymnasium to join our ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... had to work away in company with the two ragged urchins. Elsie was boiling with rage, but she hid it as well as she could; and as for poor Duncan, he worked away without uttering a word, but with only an occasional inquiring glance at ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... nice thing to tell a girl: that she looks like a ragged chrysanthemum! I have brushed my hair, too, so your 'comparison is odious.' I have a great mind not to introduce you to Miss Brown just to pay you back for being ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... he commenced, with one hand in the breast of his ragged vest, and the other, as usual, plucking nervously at his beard, "This kind o' work can't last for ever." (Deep and earnest exclamations, "It can't! It shan't") "Well, boys," continued the speaker, "Somebody'll have to find a road out o' this. What we want is work, not work'us bounty, though the parish ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... the coal mine," she went on, "at least Venetia did, and how they all bully-ragged you—Venetia was great on that. Venetia waggled that awful gobbly-Jick head of hers while she was telling me—they're mad over the loss of that coal thing—oh, Ju-Ju, I'm so glad you lost it. It's wicked, I suppose, but I'm glad. That's what made ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... a ragged object—a piece of social flotsam—a unit of London's misery. This poor filthy fellow was singing at the top of his voice, a music-hall song upon that fertile topic, "the girls," was dancing wildly around a dilapidated hat which stood upon the pavement at his feet, and was throwing sovereigns ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer

... quite evident that "my niece" was a young person of whims. The next time the "States" were mentioned and I ventured to speak in their defence, she calmly espoused the other side and "ragged" as mercilessly as the rest. I found myself continually on the defensive, and this state of affairs had one good effect at ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... passed, lying with nerves on edge and eyes wide open in that comfortless bed in the "furdest corner" of the loft of Pete Jones's house, shivering with cold, while the light snow that was falling sifted in upon the ragged patch-work quilt that covered him. Nerves broken by sleeplessness imagine many things, and for the first hour Ralph felt sure that Pete would ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston

... his death, which took place when he was seventy-eight, Borrow's Oulton home was pulled down. All that now remains to mark the spot where it once stood are the old summer-house in which he wrote Lavengro, and the ragged fir-trees that sighed the requiem of his last hours. Without appealing to "the shires," but in the Eastern counties alone, he has been commemorated since his death by such writers as Henry Dutt, and Whitwell Elwin, by Egmont Hake, by Theodore Watts-Dunton, and by Dr. Jessopp. And now ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... door of the Marabout with his head in his hands, his rifle between his knees and watched over by the camel... behold! The undergrowth opposite was thrust aside and the thunderstruck Tartarin saw not ten paces away a gigantic lion, which advanced towards him uttering roars which shook the ragged offerings on the wall of the Marabout and even the slippers of the holy man in their recess. Only Tartarin remained unshaken. "At last!" He cried, jumping to his feet with his rifle butt to his shoulder... Pan!... Pan!... Pft!... Pft!... The ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... representing a band of brigands in their mountain fastness, on the watch for plunder and rapine. The scenery in the background should resemble ragged rocks, made by fastening brown paper in a rumpled manner to a frame of wood, and shaded with light and dark-brown paints. This must extend two thirds across the stage, three feet from the extreme background. The sides should be covered with ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head

... "Rather a ragged lot," remarked Grandcourt, after a while. "Why did you ask the Gogoffs? When you write invitations in my name, be good enough to give me a list, instead of bringing down a giantess on me without my knowledge. She spoils the ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... much better of the coming age. What would you say, if we should first begin To stop the trade of love behind the scene, Where actresses make bold with married men? 40 For while abroad so prodigal the dolt is, Poor spouse at home as ragged as a colt is. In short, we'll grow as moral as we can, Save here and there a woman or a man: But neither you, nor we, with all our pains, Can make clean work; there will be some remains, While you have still your Oates, and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... Dick opposite her and she was both shocked and displeased. There were droppings of food all down the front of his coat; the mouth under the ragged ill-grown beard drooped sullenly; the forehead was lined and contracted; and on the lean temples the hair was a dusty indeterminate colour that might or might not have been called gray. The utter misery and self-abandonment of the man appealed to her, and at the bottom of her heart ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... decayed in many places, and covered partly with rank moss. It was situated in a hollow, and the marshy soil around bore evident proof that it was subject to be overflowed in rainy weather. Four or five squalid, ragged children, with pinched features and thin limbs, sat huddled in a heap on the muddy ground, watching the road with anxious eyes—eyes so bright with hunger that they seemed like those of so many rats. The youngest—it ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite

... of the Peace, was sitting in the office of the Golden Age when we found him, reading the exchanges and offering gratuitous advice to the editor. He was a shortish man, thick in body, with sparse hair and hay-colored, ragged mustache. His face was florid, his pale eyes protruded. He was a wise-looking man, excellently well suited in appearance for the office which he filled. We explained to him our errand. Gradually, as the sense ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... it isn't building bridges over boiling chasms three thousand feet below in the Andes river bottoms; it isn't leading ragged armies of half-baked South American natives against a mud stockade; it isn't shooting African animals and dining on quinine and hippopotamus liver. No, there's none of the soldier of fortune business about it. But vital! My heavens! ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... resolution. By the time she reached the Victoria Underground Station, her hunger was no longer under control. Her eyes searched the gutters greedily for anything that was fit to eat. She glared wolfishly at a ragged boy who picked up an over-ripe banana, which had been thrown on the pavement. The thought of the little one at home decided her. She turned in the direction of the post-office, having at last resolved to wire ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... in Towy's flood, His sides are clothed with waving wood, And ancient towers crown his brow, That cast an awful look below; Whose ragged walls the ivy creeps, And with her arms from falling keeps; So both a safety from the wind On ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... man in a straw hat and a flannel suit was walking towards them. As he came nearer Mike saw that he had a hard, thin-lipped mouth, half-hidden by a rather ragged moustache, and that behind a pair of gold spectacles were two pale and slightly protruding eyes, which, like his mouth, ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse

... the freshness of the daylight had faded, leaving a kind of semi-twilight in the room, which was of a fair size, and comfortably, though not luxuriously, furnished. On the end of the fender sat the solitary occupant, in a ragged and dirty old dressing-gown of pink flannel, her feet in dilapidated slippers, and her hair in curl-papers along her forehead. Although she saw that her visitor was quite a stranger to her, she did not offer to rise, but simply raising her pert, faded, but ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... mouth of the Gap a ragged private stood before a ragged tent, raised a long dinner horn to his lips, and a mighty blast rang through the hills, reveille! And out poured the Army of the Callahan from shack, rock-cave, and coverts of sticks and leaves, with squirrel rifles, Revolutionary muskets, shotguns, ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.

... covered with resin: The lances that are thus barbed, are indeed dreadful weapons, for when once they have taken place, they can never be drawn back without tearing away the flesh, or leaving the sharp ragged splinters of the bone or shell which forms the beard, behind them in the wound. These weapons are thrown with great force and dexterity; if intended to wound at a short distance, between ten and twenty yards, simply with the hand, but if at the distance of forty ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... takes his own seat in the sledge and rides in comfort. Widows, as might be expected, are not so well off as those whose husbands are living, and this difference is especially apparent in their clothes, which are usually very dirty, thin, and ragged; when, indeed, they happen to have no near relatives, their fate, as we have already seen, is still ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... had roused him from a bed where he had deposited himself without bothering to take off his clothes. At the sound of my voice, Ball peered out of his private smoking room, at the far end of the hall. He started forward; then, seeing how I was accompanied, stopped with mouth ajar. He had on a ragged smoking jacket, a pair of shapeless old Romeo slippers, his ordinary business waistcoat and trousers. He was wearing neither tie nor collar, and a short, black pipe was between his fingers. We had evidently caught the household ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... thanks for having given us one of the finest moonlight effects that it has ever been our lot to witness. We were returning home late one evening in our canoes, and as we rounded a corner of the island we came suddenly on their encampment. The men in their ragged but artistic costumes were sitting round numerous camp-fires cooking their evening meal on the bank, which sloped gently upwards, an old ruined fortress or "kula" forming ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... miles fled under their swift feet. The trim villas near the township gave place to scattered farms. These in their turn became further and further apart, and then they entered a wide belt of timber, ragged and wind-swept gums, with dense undergrowth of dogwood and bracken fern. The metalled road gave place to a hard, earthern track, on which the spinning tyres made no sound; it curved in and out among ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... threads Ran through the green, and gold of pasture-lands,— And here and there a hamlet, a white rose,— And here and there a city, whose slim spires And palace-roofs and swollen domes uprose Like scintillant stalagmites in the sun; I saw huge navies battling with a storm By ragged reefs along the desolate coasts,— And lazy merchantmen, that crawled, like flies, Over the blue enamel of the sea To India ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... a life-long lesson, dear Eric;—the lesson that when a sin is committed we may have done with it, but it has by no means done with us. It is always so, Eric when we drink the wine it is red and sparkling, but we come afterwards to the ragged and ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... for reasons which will afterwards appear, these honest vagabonds have been obliged to receive a new colony among them, and to submit to new laws and a new form of government. Instead of their former ragged and bare-legged captain, whom they took care, however, to keep innocent, they have now the honour of being governed by Don Jose Sylva de Paz, a brigadier of the armies of Portugal, who is accompanied by a garrison of soldiers, and has consequently a more ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... whinnied her thanks, and put her nose against Vivian's arm as she went to the spring for more water. For the first time in her life Vivian felt the comradeship, the dumb understanding of a horse. Then Siwash became glorified. He was something more than a ragged, decrepit old pony. He was a companion, and Vivian stopped to pat him before she hurried back to ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase

... of the forts is slackening," Jack said. "Look at that fort at the entrance to the harbour, its outline is all ragged and uneven. I wish the wind would freshen up a bit, to let us see a little more of what ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty

... to the huckster's stall, and there was the owner herself, superintending the sale of her small wares—a few loungers and ragged idlers were hanging round her stall—for Biddy was 'a character,' and, in her way, was one ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... storm; And whistle, whistle, warm or cold! Underneath his ragged coat There beats a heart of gold. He will keep a courage high, Bear the battle's brunt; Let the coward whine and ...
— A Jolly Jingle-Book • Various

... of the afternoon he reached the mill. Old Gabe sat smoking outside the door, and Isom stretched himself out on the platform close to the water, shading his eyes from the rich sunlight with one ragged sleeve. ...
— The Last Stetson • John Fox Jr.

... thirty-five, three months pregnant, weighing 135 pounds, who was horned by a cow through the abdominal parietes near the hypogastric region; she was lifted into the air, carried, and tossed on the ground by the infuriated animal. There was a wound consisting of a ragged rent from above the os pubis, extending obliquely to the left and upward, through which protruded the great omentum, the descending and transverse colon, most of the small intestines, as well as the pyloric extremity ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... of the Bay of Fundy, or the pressure of a square mile of sea water at the depth of five thousand fathoms, or a moment of the might of an earthquake or a volcano, our age—which moves no mountains and casts them into the sea by faith alone—might hope to scarp the ragged walls of the Alps and Pyrenees and Mount Taurus, robe them once more in a vegetation as rich as that of their pristine woods, and turn their wasting torrents into refreshing streams. [Footnote: Some well-known experiments ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... thin columns of smoke. Long rows of bateaux and canoes lined the beach below the log palisade; and others drew near the shore, laden with fish. There was a stir and bustle about the square within the stone bastions; orderlies hurried from quarters to barracks, bugles sounded, and groups of ragged soldiers sat about, polishing muskets and belts, and setting new flints. Men of the commissary department were carrying boxes and bales from the fort to a ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin

... resulting seemed to have crowded into one building this bright November morning; pitiful figures, men and women and even a few children—for some had been turned out of their homes, and had no place to go; ragged, haggard, and underfed; weeping, some of them, with pain, or lifting their clenched hands in a passion of impotent fury. My friend T-S, the king of the movies, with all his resources, could not have made a more complete picture of human misery—nor one more fitted to work on ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair

... without the chapter of accidents. In the Calle de los Desamparados, a cut across the face from the whip of the surly calesero, forced the ragged Mercury to let go his hold. Before he could pick himself up, and rub the dust and tears from his eyes, the vehicle was at the farther end of the street, and although Perico, impressed with the importance of his mission, followed it at the top of his speed, he lost sight of it in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... rifle bullet acts on a running animal, when it barks him, much the same as one of your spurs on a horse; that is, it quickens motion, and puts life into the flesh, instead of taking it away. But when it cuts the ragged hole, after a bound or two, there is, commonly, a stagnation of further leaping, be it Indian or ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... kennel dirt With ragged girls and boys; But I would not on Sunday touch My clean and ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... eyes on one another, they stared and laughed foolishly, so changed they were, and so ragged and surprised. And then ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... boys went up to the tent and Bob talked to Pierre in French. Pierre then pulled back the hair and showed the boys a white scar across his head and Jean showed them a ragged scar that ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton

... things the mere name recalled! How many hours, how many days she had passed there, leaning on that damp sill, without rail or balcony, looking toward the factory. At that moment she fancied that she could see up yonder little Chebe's ragged person, and in the frame made by that poor window, her whole child life, her deplorable youth as a Parisian street arab, ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... American readers and spelling-books we meet with much of a like nature, and the use of these test-phrases and sentences has not yet entirely departed from the schools. Familiar are: "Up the high hill he heaved a huge round stone; around the rugged riven rock the ragged rascal rapid ran; Peter Piper picked a peck of prickly pears from the prickly-pear trees on the pleasant prairies," and many others still in use traditionally among the school-children of to-day, together with linguistic exercises of nonsense-syllables and ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... that belonged to those times when every man went dressed in some gay livery wearing the colours and the crest of his lord. Who rides there, the hart couchant—the deer at rest—upon his helm? A Knight belonging to the Court: one of the Knights of King Richard the Second. Who march with the bear and ragged staff upon their arms? They are the Livery of the Earl of Warwick. The clash and gleam of arms and armour everywhere: colour on the men as well as the women: colour on the trappings of the horses: colour on the hanging arras of the wall: colour on the cloth of scarlet which they hang ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... from the speaker, the door slowly opened, and Hank, a ragged figure, with an immense matted beard, long tangled hair and dim blue eyes, that blinked like ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson

... way, Richard Frayne saw that his cousin was lifted on to a gate, and a ragged kind of procession was formed, as the men who had raised the bars on to their shoulders stepped off together under the doctor's direction; while he seemed to be, as the nearest relative, playing the part of ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn

... boss had all but agreed to take him on for some sort of unskilled labor, when, struck by the cadaverous look of the man, he told him to bare his arm. Up went the sleeve of his coat and his ragged flannel shirt, exposing a naked arm with the muscles nearly gone, and the blue-white transparent skin stretched over sinews and the outlines of the bones. Pitiful beyond words was his effort to give a semblance ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London

... to the N.W. of Woahoo, and is distant from it about twenty-five leagues. The face of the country to the N.E. and N.W., is broken and ragged, but to the S. it is more even; the hills rise with a gentle slope from the seaside, and, at some distance back, are covered with wood. Its productions are the same with those of the other islands; but ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... of Congress and the concurrence of the President could do it. If the Senate admitted their Senators, and the House their members, it would have no effect on the future action of Congress. The Fortieth Congress might reject both. Such is the ragged record of Congress for the last ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... Clive forded a deep water upon an unknown bottom, he left a bridge for his successors, over which the lame could hobble and the blind might grope their way. There was not at that time a knot of clerks in a counting-house, there was not a captain of a band of ragged topasses, that looked for anything less than the deposition of subahs and the sale of kingdoms. Accordingly, this revolution, which ought to have precluded other revolutions, unfortunately became fruitful of them; and when Lord ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the World Frank and Fearless Frank Hunter's Peril Frank's Campaign Helping Himself Herbert Carter's Legacy In a New World Jack's Ward Jed, the Poorhouse Boy Lester's Luck Luck and Pluck Luke Walton Only an Irish Boy Paul Prescott's Charge Paul, the Peddler Phil, the Fiddler Ragged Dick Rupert's Ambition Shifting for Himself Sink or Swim Strong and Steady Struggling Upward Tattered Tom Telegraph Boy, The Victor Vane Wait and Hope Walter Sherwood's Probation Young Bank Messenger, The Young Circus Rider Young Miner, The ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll

... who flitted about the shrubbery all day, threatened to annihilate him, but with infantile innocence he refused to understand hostility; he stared at his assailant, and he held his ground. The little flock of four was captivating to see, and though the mother looked ragged and careless in dress, one could but honor the little creature who had made the world so delightful a gift as four beautiful new bluebirds, in ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... you pass groups of tall slender birch-trees, with their white silvery bark, and their delicate thread-like fibres hanging in frozen showers from the ends of the branches, and clothing the birch with a kind of icy foliage, while the other trees remain bare and ragged. The birch is eminently a winter tree, and its tresses of fibres, whether petrified and covered with crystal by the frost, or waving freely in the breeze which has stripped them of their snow, are equally ornamental. The ground is strewed with ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... it, and with fluctuating color and a rapidly beating heart, she took hold of the knot of the silk, which had been used to mend it, and deliberately pulled it out, when the ragged edges fell apart, ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... congratulated me on having such a friend. Dolly carried a parcel of underclothing she had made, with a few toys, for the children of a poor man in the suburbs, and I accompanied her to the house. There was great excitement among the ragged children; in fact, the atmosphere became so dangerously full of love and charity that I commenced to feel uncomfortable,—the shower of roses again,—and was glad to find myself in the open air. We went for a walk and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... and wood. Always the same shops, without glass windows, open to all the winds, equally rudimentary, whatever may be sold or made in them; whether they display the finest gold lacquer ware, the most marvellous china jars, or old worn-out pots and pans, dried fish, and ragged frippery. All the salesmen are seated on the ground in the midst of their valuable or trumpery merchandise, their legs bared ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... disgusted with things as they now go here; and I suppose the senoritas are also. No wonder. Since these ragged and red-shirted gentry have taken possession of the place, it's not very agreeable for ladies to show themselves about; nor very safe, I should say. Good reason for Don Gregorio selling out, and betaking himself to ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid

... she was tired and jaded, and that a solitary ride would soothe her ragged nerves. And so, at the first opportunity after breakfast, she slipped quietly away, saddled her favorite horse, Freckles, and leaving word with Pedro that she would be ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... massy silver; and the meanest Roman could purchase, with a small copper coin, the daily enjoyment of a scene of pomp and luxury, which might excite the envy of the kings of Asia. [59] From these stately palaces issued a swarm of dirty and ragged plebeians, without shoes and without a mantle; who loitered away whole days in the street of Forum, to hear news and to hold disputes; who dissipated in extravagant gaming, the miserable pittance of their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... they reached the house, however, the door opened and two half-naked, tow-headed urchins came toddling out, and as soon as they saw the strangers scampered back in a state of great alarm. A lusty dame, ragged and shoeless, and with her hair hanging loose about her neck, now came to the door, with a broom in one hand and a ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams

... spiral. We do in order to be. What we are bears unconscious fruit in what we do. A woman who is cultivated in the true sense exerts a constant influence for good. One rich woman says, "I will not live to myself," and gives clothing to ragged children. Another rich woman says the same thing, and studies history and poetry and comes silently to just conclusions about the relative value of clothes and thought. She cannot be unjust to her smartly dressed ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}

... and came to newer streets. It was delightful out-of-doors. A light breeze met them as they turned, and a few ragged, fleecy clouds that it was driving up, only made the sky seem bluer, The two young men walked leisurely, laughing and talking rather loudly. Maurice Guest had already, in dress and bearing, taken on a touch of musicianly disorder, but Dove's lengthier residence had left no trace upon him; he ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... I spoke, and seemed to be inlaying my words upon his heart. He put out his right hand, I laid my left into it, and we held them together,—I deeply moved, and he with two big tears rolling down his cheeks. The sight of those tears wrung my heart. I was more moved still when Mongenod pulled out a ragged foulard handkerchief to wipe them away. 'Wait here,' I said; and I went to my secret hiding-place with a heart as agitated as though I had heard a woman say she loved me. I came back with two rolls of fifty louis each. 'Here, count them.' ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... after, at home again with father. Just as I was leaving the house on some errand, Sidney—ragged, wet, and bedraggled as a lost dog—sprang into my arms. When I had got her reclothed and fed I eagerly heard her story. Three of the four had come safely through; poor Mingo had failed; if I ever tell of him it must be at some other time. In the course of ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

... I again encountered him on The Mall. He was resting lazily on the green rails, watching two little sloops in distress, which two ragged ship-owners had consigned to the mimic perils of the Pond. The vessels lay becalmed in the middle of the ocean, displaying a tantalizing lack of sympathy with the frantic helplessness of the owners on shore. As the gentleman observed their dilemma, a light came into his faded ...
— A Struggle For Life • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... He wiped his ragged mustache above the drink; and, his teeth chattering in his head, began: "You know the Khye-Kheen-Malo't expedition, when we scared the souls out of 'em with a field force they daren't fight against? Well, both tribes—there was a coalition against us—came ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... If a Lambe you will kill, to feede the flocke with his bloud. Sheepe, with Lambes bloud, haue no naturall sustenaunce: No more, is Christes flocke, with horrible slaunders, duely aedified. Nor your faire pretense, by such rashe ragged Rhetorike, any whit, well graced. But such, as so vse me, will finde a fowle Cracke in their Credite. Speake that you know: And know, as you ought: Know not, by Heare say, when life lieth in daunger. Search to the quicke, & ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee

... property and at every sale. The people were compelled to grind their corn at their landlord's mill, to press their grapes in his press, and bake their bread in his oven. In consequence of these feudal laws and customs, the people were very poor, their houses dark and comfortless, their dress ragged and miserable, their food coarse and scanty. Not half of the enormous taxes which they paid reached the royal treasury, or even the pockets of the great proprietors. Officers were indefinitely multiplied. The governing classes looked upon the people only to be robbed. Their cry was unheard in the ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... women, and children set out, unorganized and almost unarmed, on the road to the Holy Land. One of these crusading bands, led by Peter the Hermit, managed to reach Constantinople, after suffering terrible hardships. The emperor Alexius sent his ragged allies as quickly as possible to Asia Minor, where most of them were slaughtered by ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... the afternoon the husband was lying on the ragged leather sofa, gazing at a window on the other side of the street. He was watching a woman of evil reputation who was dressing for her evening stroll. A spray of lilac and two oranges were lying by the ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... did to prevent it, and in spite of some unjust and cruel chastisement, Bonaparte continued, during his stay in Italy, an object of ridicule in conversation, as well as in pamphlets and caricatures. One of these represented him in the ragged garb of a sans-culotte, pale and trembling on his knees, with bewildered looks and his hair standing upright on his head like pointed horns, tearing the map of the world to pieces, and, to save his life, offering each of his generals a slice, who in return ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... walked about the room, with hasty and irregular strides and a prodigious swinging of his ragged dressing-gown, which swept away as many cobwebs as it would take a week to reproduce. After a few turns, as if to change the subject, the Doctor asked the schoolmaster if he had any taste for pictures, and drew his attention to the portrait which has been already mentioned,—the figure in antique ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... till she was out of breath, and then she fell into a little trot; but first she gave the half-penny to a ragged boy, and begged him earnestly never to tell stories; and after that she asked him the way to Belgravia. Not getting a lucid answer from him, as he only told her that he had been a cripple from his birth and had sold lucifers ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... round greatly surprised, for he did not know that anybody was near. But beside him stood an old woman, with a ragged mantle over her head, leaning on a staff, the top of which was carved into the shape of a cuckoo. She looked very aged and wrinkled and infirm; and yet her eyes, which were as brown as those of an ox, were so extremely ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... woods, and as she stumbled along the uneven trail Grace got disturbed. She felt the daunting loneliness, the quiet jarred her nerve. The pines looked ghostly in the gloom. They were ragged and strangely stiff, it looked as if their branches never moved, and the dark gaps between the trunks ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss

... and spoke no more, and poor Melchior stared sadly out of the window. As he was gazing at the crowd, he suddenly saw the dog-cart, in which were his brother and his wretched companions. Oh, how old and worn he looked! and how ragged his clothes were! The men seemed to be trying to persuade him to do something that he did not like, and they began to quarrel; but in the midst of the dispute he turned his head and caught sight of the old coach; and Melchior seeing this, waved his hands, and ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... were in keeping with the village, being old and worm-eaten, and the craziest craft imaginable. I would not have sailed one across a pond. However, I sought out the commander of this ragged squadron, and gave him the ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... hardly gone, when a third trader turned up, with a splendid collection of shells and coral, and the same scene was repeated. This time the "Can do" referred to some ragged old flannel shirts and pants that hung on the wall, in exchange for which the dealer handed over the entire contents of his basket. Frank, more puzzled than ever, went to old Herrick for ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... clear to me that he had ridden by to see if I was safe and to ask how I was getting along. I remember well how curiously those with him gazed at me, and I am sure that it must have struck them as very odd that such a dirty, ragged, unkempt youth could have been the son of ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son

... passing through what seemed to be a continued succession of villages and towns,—the carriage stopped before the door of a kind of inn in the midst of a crowded street. The moment that the carriage stopped, it seemed to be surrounded by a crowd of ostlers, donkeys and donkey drivers, ragged boys and beggars; and such a clamor arose from the crowd as was quite appalling to hear, the more so as nothing could be understood of what was said, since ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott

... like most German plains; mean little hamlets, which are full of litter when you enter them, lie sprinkled about; little church-spires (like suffragans to Chotusitz spire, which is near you); a ragged untrimmed country: beyond the Brook, towards the Dobrowa, two or more miles from Chotusitz, is still noticeable: something like a Deer-park, with umbrageous features, bushy clumps, and shadowy vestiges of a Mansion, the one regular edifice within your horizon. Schuschitz is the name of this ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... staring through the mosquito-barred entrance toward the narrow strip of beach where the dying fires of the scowmen glowed sullenly in the darkness, pierced now and again by the fitful flare of a wind-whipped brand. Two still forms wrapped in ragged blankets, lay like logs where sleep had ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx

... quite true. Bennett wrote with amazing rapidity and with ragged, vigorous strokes of the pen, not unfrequently driving the point through the paper itself; his script was pothooks, clumsy, slanting in all directions, all but illegible. In the end Lloyd had almost pushed him from his place at the desk, ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... not the ragged Marabout feathers, hanging half plucked from the posterior of the stork, upon which Karl was gazing; but its long legs, that, as the bird rose in its hurried flight, hung, slantingly downward, extending far beyond the tip of its tail. Not exactly these either ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid

... the lowest clump, opposite Syon House, has lost its pride of place, for now there are some by the Grove Park Estate below Kew Bridge. The centre of the eyot is yellow with patches of marsh-marigold in the hot spring days. Besides the marsh-marigolds there are masses of yellow camomile, comfrey, ragged robin, and tall yellow ranunculus, growing on the muddy banks and on the sides of the little creeks among the willows, and a vast number of composite flowers of which I do not know the names. Common reeds are also increasing there, with ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... telescope,—he lowered his hands, to rest his eyes by looking, unaided, at the immediate objects in the landscape before him. At that moment, the figure of a man appeared on the near-by trail below. It was a pitiful figure—ill-kempt ragged, half-starved, haggard-faced. ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... bulldog had ceased to strain at his leash. He lay again with his massive square head resting on his forepaws, a favorite attitude with him; and his bulging eyes seemed to be fixed on the two newcomers. Evidently he did not trust the ragged tramps, but as his protectors seemed to be granting them the privileges of the camp, far be it from him to interfere; all the same he was going ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie

... find a tattered tent-pole with a ragged robe below it; You will find a rusted gold-pan on the sod; You will find the claim I'm seeking, with my bones as stakes to show it; But I've sought ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service

... action scarcely permits the direction to be defined,—but which falls and returns in fits of varying force, like those which precede a thunderstorm—never wholly ceasing: the direction of its upper current is shown by a few ragged white clouds, moving fast from the north, which rose, at the time of the first leaf-shaking, behind the edge of the moors ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin

... the down train; then her time was her own till the next mail train came up at half-past five. At two o'clock she closed the office again and started on a long walk. She longed for the comfort of the solitary hillsides, where warm patches of sunlight lay at the foot of ragged stone walls, and there were long stretches of plain and meadow to be looked over, and rolling hills to comfort the soul. As she climbed a hill just before the place where a weedy untravelled road turned off from the highway leading between closely growing underbrush ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull

... before observed, that the country bears great resemblance to New South Wales, or New Holland, and that some of its natural productions are the same. In particular, we found here, the tree which is covered with a soft white ragged bark, easily peeled off, and is, as I have been told, the same that, in the East Indies, is used for caulking of ships. The wood is very hard, the leaves are long and narrow, of a pale dead green, and a fine aromatic; so that it may properly ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook

... sleeplessness and startling surprises, in which hunger counted for little, for he ate the fruits in the woods, whither he retreated whenever he made out from afar the uniform of the Civil Guard, a sight that recalled the origin of all his misfortunes. Once in Manila, ragged and sick, he went from door to door offering his services. A boy from the provinces who knew not a single word of Spanish, and sickly besides! Discouraged, hungry, and miserable, he wandered about the ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... hastily sitting up in bed; 'from Newgate, Mr Varden! How could you be so very imprudent as to come from Newgate! Newgate, where there are jail-fevers, and ragged people, and bare-footed men and women, and a thousand horrors! Peak, bring the camphor, quick! Heaven and earth, Mr Varden, my dear, good soul, how COULD you come ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... them with long, weary marching, and he knew that they were worthy of his trust. He gave his orders. The Leinsters and the Scots Guards, tall, gaunt, hunger-stricken warriors, whose ribs could be counted through their ragged khaki coats, swung out as cheerily as if they had never known the absence of a meal or the fatigue of a dreary march. The Irishmen chaffed the Scots, and the Scots yelled badinage back to the sons ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... evening—well, perhaps one afternoon, for the days are short—so short, the sun just coming over a little bend of sky, and sinking down like a big orange ball. I come out of a tumble of little hills, and there over on the plains I saw a sight! Ragged hills of ice were thrown up, as if they'd been heaved out by the breaking earth, jutting here and there like wedges—like the teeth of a world. Alors, on one crag, shaped as an anvil, I saw what struck me like a blow, and I felt the blood shoot ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... gave her the money for the funeral I went to Primrose Court. The woman took me upstairs, and there on the mattress lay—what the poor woman believed to be the earthly body of an earthly daughter. It was covered with a quilt. Over the face a ragged ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... the ragged coat dangling from the pitiful body, the little blue hands, the thin shoulders, the stringy hair, the big arctics on the feet. And in the road not far off was the curious chest of dark ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie

... Saturday from that time forward, Mary went to school followed by a crowd of clean little faces, which looked all the brighter and happier for their cleanliness. She was proud of her class, but their ragged clothes distressed ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... and utterly redeemed from savagery by old acquaintanceship with civilized eyes. The wildest things in England are more than half tame. The trees, for instance, whether in hedgerow, park, or what they call forest, have nothing wild about them. They are never ragged; there is a certain decorous restraint in the freest outspread of their branches, though they spread wider than any self-nurturing tree; they are tall, vigorous, bulky, with a look of age-long life, and a promise of more years to come, all of which will bring them into closer kindred with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... aesthetic. Bohemianism was the fashion, and the studio had to be furnished as a picturesque lounge:—ragged tapestries for backgrounds; antique chairs and bits of colour as cushions and draperies; shiny earthenware pots to hold a flower and to catch a high light. All these bridged the space between the new aestheticism and the old family museums; ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... knew him would have imagined he could do; he seemed to have made up his mind to behave himself, sure enough. Yet his being there was a trial to Edward in several ways: he had a great horror of being called "Tip;" that name belonged to the miserable, ragged, friendless, hopeless boy who used to wander around the streets in search of mischief, not to the young man who was a faithful clerk in one of the finest stores in Albany, besides being a teacher in Sabbath school, and a very fair scholar in Latin and algebra. But ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)

... to stand his Ground,—away hies Trim to make his Market at the Vicarage: What pass'd there, I will not say, intending not to be uncharitable; so shall content myself with only guessing at it, from the sudden Change that appeared in Trim's Dress for the better;—for he had left his old ragged Coat, Hat and Wig, in the Stable, and was come forth strutting across the Church-yard, y'clad in a good creditable cast Coat, large Hat and Wig, which the Parson had just given him.—Ho! Ho! Hollo! John! cries Trim, in an insolent Bravo, as loud as ever he could bawl—See here, my ...
— A Political Romance • Laurence Sterne

... Kaffir, and a miserable-looking object at that. I had never seen such an anatomy. It was a very old man, bent almost double, and clad in a ragged shirt and a pair of foul khaki trousers. He carried an iron pot, and a few belongings were tied up in a dirty handkerchief. He must have been a dacha[1] smoker, for he coughed hideously, twisting his body with the paroxysms. I had seen the type before—the old broken-down native who ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... me, they greet me, they wave their hats! There, one of them is putting his hand to his face. He is a day-laborer who formerly worked in my factory. This man is weeping, and because he knows that I have been unfortunate. See! here come others—poor people in ragged clothes—women with nurslings in their arms—tottering old men—they all bend dewy eyes on me. Do you see? they smile at me. Even the children stretch up their arms. Ah, they love me, although ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... were as ragged and wild as if they belonged to nobody. His son Rip, an urchin begotten in his own likeness, promised to inherit the habits, with the old clothes of his father. He was generally seen trooping like a ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... emptied its dwellers in long wavering lines. Into the open they came, slowly, and with downcast eyes, each with his remnant of a tribe. Though the columns were in order, they were ragged with many and varied statures—now a grown man, next to him a child, and then a woman. Here were the red-bearded sons of Reuben, shepherds in skins and men of great hardihood; the seafaring children of Zebulon; a ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... of Burke's Select Works, i. xxxviii, says:— 'Most writers have constantly beside them some favourite classical author from whom they endeavour to take their prevailing tone. Burke, according to Butler, always had a "ragged Delphin Virgil" not far from his elbow.' See ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... station through a long, lonely suburb, with dusty rows of stunted trees on either side, and some few miserable beggars, idle boys, and ragged old women under them. Behind the trees are gaunt, moldy houses; palaces once, where (in the days of the unbought grace of life) the cheap defense of nations gambled, ogled, swindled, intrigued; whence high-born duchesses used to issue, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... walls are also glass. The floor space is divided into sections for the setting or staging of different productions, therefore several representations can take place at the same time before the eyes of the cameras. There are "properties" of all kinds from the ragged garments of the beggar to kingly ermine and queenly silks. Paste diamonds sparkle in necklaces, crowns and tiaras, seeming to rival ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... cottage, from behind yon oak, Or let the ancient tree uprooted lie, That in some other way yon smoke May mount into the sky. If still behind yon pine-tree's ragged bough, Headlong, the waterfall must come, Oh, let it, then, be dumb— Be anything, sweet stream, but that which thou ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... representations of rebel detectives. The alarm is constantly abroad that the negroes are going to rise; this is utterly without foundation. The freedmen will not rise, though docile and submissive to every abuse that is heaped upon them in this city. If they are ragged and dirty, they are spurned as outcasts; if genteel and respectable, they are insulted as presumptive; if intelligent, they are incendiary; and their humble worship of God is construed as a designing plot to rise against the ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz

... rustle and the breathin' of men. There seemed a great multitude on every side of me, but I could see no one. There was a low chink of steel sometimes, and then a number of voices would whisper 'Hush!' I had a ragged club in my hand, and it had spikes o' iron near the end of it. My heart was beatin' quickly, and I felt that a moment of great danger and excitement was at hand. Once I dropped my club, and again from all round me the voices in the darkness ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... presumed London as their starting-point. It was then after all not very singular that on this first night of his return he should make a pilgrimage to the spot whence he had drawn such vital impressions. For a long time he stood looking down the grass slope ragged with brambles and stunted trees, and comprehending the whole ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason

... wagon having two wheels, to which an over-worked mule was harnessed. A youth, of may-be twelve years of age, blew upon a pipe for the bear to dance, and inasmuch as he had no clothes but a ragged little coat, and a sharp east wind was blowing, he quaked with cold and shivered as he piped. Notwithstanding he was a fine lad, well-grown, and with a countenance of outlandish but well nigh perfect beauty. He had come, for certain, from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... there were plants whose little, tight-fisted roots gripped a desperate, adventurous habitation in a soil scarcely more than half an inch deep. At some time these rocks had been smitten so fiercely that the solid granite surfaces had shattered into fragments. At one place a sheer wall of stone, ragged and battered, looked harshly out from the thin vegetation. To this rocky wall the he-goat danced. At one place there was a hole in the wall covered by a thick brush. The goat pushed his way behind this growth and ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens

... was my surprise, when on awaking I found myself lying in my first humble lodging, stripped of my rich vestments, and saw on the ground my former mean attire; namely, an old vest, a pair of tattered drawers, and a ragged turban, as full of holes as a sieve. When I had somewhat recovered my senses, I put them on and walked out in a melancholy mood, regretting my lost happiness, and not knowing what I should do to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.

... of the wood peeped in at the door, ragged and rosy and bright-eyed, and laughed, ...
— The Silver Crown - Another Book of Fables • Laura E. Richards

... cab drew up before the address indicated, the fog lifted a little, and showed him a dingy street, a gin-palace, a low French eating-house, a shop for the retail of penny numbers and twopenny salads, many ragged children huddled in the doorways, and many women of many different nationalities passing out, key in hand, to have a morning glass; and the next moment the fog settled down again upon that part, as brown as umber, and cut him off from his blackguardly surroundings. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... recalled—oh! the torture and suffering of poor young men! that his Sunday coat was almost as seedy as his everyday one, that his best pair of shoes were run-over at the heels, and that the collars and cuffs on his six white shirts were ragged on the edges from too frequent washings. Then, to go to dinner in the city, what an ordeal! What must he do to be presented in a drawing-room? The very thought of it made him shiver. But Maurice invited him so cordially that he was ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... moonlight sings "Sold again," and casts another missile still further from the mark. One of these goes violently to the nose of Mr. BUMSTEAD, who, after a momentary enjoyment of the evening fireworks thus lighted off, makes a wrathful rush at the playful child, and lifts him from the ground by his ragged collar, like a diminished suit of Mr. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various

... colour uniform through every region of the face, and suggested the idea of its being burnt and parched by the eternal fire that burned within him. His eyes were red, quick, wandering, full of suspicion and rage. His hair was neglected, ragged, and floating. His whole figure was thin, to a degree that suggested the idea rather of a skeleton than a person actually alive. Life seemed hardly to be the capable inhabitant of so woe-begone and ghost-like a figure. The taper of wholesome life was expired; but passion, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... by time and had ceased to spout, while others did very little. Many of the shields were broken and moss had obliterated the coats of arms; many of the griffins were headless and the figures on the sarcophagi appeared through a veil of moss like fragments of silver work through an old and ragged velvet cover. On the water in the basins—more green and limpid than emerald—maiden-hair waved and quivered, or rose leaves, fallen from the bushes overhead, floated slowly while the surviving waterpipes sent forth a sweet and gurgling music ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... She was very happy, for she was with the two she loved best on earth, and it seemed such a glad beginning to the year. She smiled, talked, and looked to where Guy pointed, seeing beauty in everything, even in the ragged children who begged pennies as they passed along, for an inward light gave the charm, and a sweeter voice than that of brother or sister, made gladness. Several visits were made that afternoon to old friends who urged them to stay for ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd

... that second, was sucking the beach dry, sucking with such force that gravel and small stones pattered down the slope in showers. And behind it a wave, its ragged top raveled by the wind into white streamers, was piling up, up, up, sheer and green and mighty, curling over now and descending with a hammer blow that shook the land beneath their feet. And back of it reared another, ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln

... Conny, whose make-up was a very delicate matter, were dressing at the school. They had gone as Gypsies—not comic opera Gypsies, but real Gypsies, dirty and ragged and patched. (They had daily dusted the room with their costumes for a week before the fete.) Patty wore one brown stocking and one black, with a conspicuous hole in the right calf. Conny's toes protruded from one shoe, and the sole ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster

... The open sky, the growing grass, the passing wind. No ragged child tending a browsing cow; not even, as elsewhere, some solitary goat sticking its shaggy head through an aperture in the walls to turn at our approach and flee in terror through the bushes; not a song-bird, not a nest, not a sound! This castle is like a ghost: mute and cold, it stands abandoned ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert

... the head from the body by a slight draw of the sword, and let it drop into the water;—there was a dying shriek—a convulsive struggle—and all I could discern was the arms dangling over the side of the canoe, and the ragged stump pouring out the blood ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins

... bore us down within a hundred feet of the ragged rocks. Groaning under the strain, the rope seemed ready to snap. Like a huge leviathan trapped in a net, the gas-bag writhed, twisted, bulged, shrank, gathered into a ball and sprang fiercely out. The loose folds of canvas sucked up until half the netting stood ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... Good! The caterpillar wraps itself in a winding thread, and we have an egg-shaped lump which lies as still as a pebble. Then presently from that bundle of thread there comes a glorious winged creature which flies away, leaving certain ragged odds and ends. But surely the bundle of threads and the moth were as much connected as the body and the soul? Logically, then, the moth does not exist after the cocoon is gone, any more than the soul exists after the body ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... the first day of January, a month that in the southern hemisphere corresponds with our own July. As Roswell picked his way among the broken rocks that covered the ascent to what might be termed the table-land of the island, if indeed any portion of so ragged a bit of this earth could properly be so named, his thoughts recurred to this question of the season, and to the probability of his getting a cargo before it would be absolutely necessary to go to the northward. On the whole, he fancied ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... a giant can-opener. Brion carefully felt the resilient metal skin that covered the lock entrance, until he was sure there was nothing on the other side. Then he jabbed the point through and cut a ragged hole in the thin foil. Dr. Morees boiled out of the sphere, knocking ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... beside the stove drew forth from a ragged pocket the plutocratic timepiece of a millionaire victim. The way his eyes narrowed as he looked at its face told the silent observers that it was twelve o'clock and after. Unconsciously every figure stiffened, every jaw was set, every nostril ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... river-banks are exactly the same colour as the Nile mud, with just the warmer hue of the blood circulating beneath the skin. Prometheus has just formed them out of the universal material at hand, and the sun breathed life into them. Poor fellows—even the boatmen, ragged crew as they are—say 'Ah, Fellaheen!' with a contemptuous pity when they see me ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... and working hard at his machine, had raised his head at Dickson's approach and beheld a wild apparition—a short man in ragged tweeds, with a bloody brow and long smears of blood on his cheeks. The next second he observed the threat of attack, and ducked his head so that the spanner only grazed his scalp. The motor-bicycle toppled over, its owner sprang to his feet, and found the short man, very pale and gasping, ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... speed of lightning. My hat fell off the first thing; and there I was, clinging with might and main to the neck of the fiery animal, my head bare, my feet bootless, and my old stripped shirt blown from my back, and streaming out behind, and fluttering like a banner in the breeze; my ragged pants off at the knees, and my long legs dangling down some length below; and at the same time crying "Whoa! whoa!" as loud as I could. Nor was this all; frightened as I was, nearly to death, I cast a despairing look behind me, and the ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward

... thy genuine worth, When late the[A] surly Rambler wandered forth In brown[B] surtout, with ragged staff, Enough to make a savage laugh! And sent the faithless legend from his hand, That Want and Famine scour'd thy ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... history romancers have taken liberties with the porcupine in one respect: they have shown him made up into a ball and rolling down a hill. One writer makes him do this in a sportive mood; he rolls down a long hill in the woods, and at the bottom he is a ragged mass of leaves which his quills have impaled—an apparition that nearly frightened a rabbit out of its wits. Let any one who knows the porcupine try to fancy it ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs

... like nature, and the use of these test-phrases and sentences has not yet entirely departed from the schools. Familiar are: "Up the high hill he heaved a huge round stone; around the rugged riven rock the ragged rascal rapid ran; Peter Piper picked a peck of prickly pears from the prickly-pear trees on the pleasant prairies," and many others still in use traditionally among the school-children of to-day, together with linguistic exercises ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... Conqueror. Its ancient castle surrendered to Fairfax with the agreement that "it be absolutely demolished and that no garrison hereafter be kept by either party." So well was this provision carried out that only a ragged fragment remains of the once impregnable fortress, which has an added interest from its connection with Scott's story, "The Fortunes ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy

... with the calm intelligence which demands judgment on other grounds than the common, he was in reality possessed by a spirit of perturbation. Such reason as he could command bade him look up and view with scorn the ragged defenders of the forts; but whence came this hail of missiles which kept him so sore? Clearly there was some element of his nature which eluded grasp and definition, a misty influence making itself felt here and there. To none of the sources upon which I have touched was it ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... enemy had again surprised and blown up one of our guns—none other than the howitzer visited by me the previous evening. Presently the young cadets themselves came riding into camp, bringing with them pieces of guncotton, and showing by the state of their ragged uniforms the hand-to-hand nature of the struggle that had ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar

... Polichinelle. Each one, as you perceive, is designed by Nature for the part he plays. This nimble, freckled jackanapes is Harlequin; not your spangled Harlequin into which modern degeneracy has debased that first-born of Momus, but the genuine original zany of the Commedia, ragged and patched, an impudent, cowardly, ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... draughts of cheap ale, and, in imitation of their superiors in station, listened to a low class of "japers" who recited "rhymes of Robin Hood," or told coarse and obscene stories for the sake of a share of the ale, or such few small coins as could be drawn from the ragged pouches of the bacchanals. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... was proceeding down the town, when he came in contact with a ragged, dissipated-looking young man, who had, however, about him the evidences of having seen better days. The latter touched his hat to him, and observed, "You seem to be examining ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... 350 As if the vegetables in store (Quiet and orderly before) Were all together peeling; You would have thought the thing was done By the spirit of some son of a gun, And that a forty-two-pounder, Or that the ghost which made such sounds Could be none other than John Pounds, Of Ragged Schools the founder. Through three gradations of affright, 360 The awful noises reached their height; At first they knocked nocturnally, Then, for some reason, changing quite, (As mourners, after six months' flight, Turn suddenly from dark to light,) Began to knock diurnally, And last, combining ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... straight nose, the small mouth were untouched by time. Susan felt the contrast even at that moment. She knew that her own skin was weather-beaten, furrowed, brown,—that her teeth were gone, and her hair gray and ragged. And yet she was not two years older than Nelly,—she had not been, in youth, when she took account of these things. Nelly stood wondering at the strange-enough horse-woman, who stopped and panted ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell

... of a placid life; but David cannot know even this, save by hearsay, for he never sees them. He is a moneyed man, and not a year ago, gave the town a new library. But is he happy? Or does the old wound still show a ragged edge? For that may be, they tell us, even "when you come ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... pastime," ruminated Amy, seating himself on the window-seat and hugging one knee. "All a fellow has to do is to go out and work like a dray-horse and a pile-driver and street-roller for a couple of hours every afternoon, get kicked in the shins and biffed in the eye and rolled in the dirt and ragged by one coach, one captain and one quarter-back. That's all he has to do except learn a lot of signals so he can recognise them in the fraction of a second, be able to recite the rules frontward and backward and both ways from the middle and live on indigestible things like beef and rice and ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... time they believed themselves to be in the centre of the stream, the two shores were discernible merely by masses of obscurity denser than common, the outlines against the clouds being barely distinguishable by the ragged tops of the trees. Once or twice the wanderers altered their course, in consequence of unexpectedly stepping into deep water; for they knew that the boat had lodged on the shallowest part of the rift. In short, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... At first I hadn't anything to wear but a ragged pair of trousers which Alaric lent me, though he hated to, and a blanket for a coat. But a few days ago White Feather and his braves came this way again. He brought quite a collection of old duds and gave 'em to Alaric. That paid him for what he'd ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond

... gondolas made the experience seem like a dream of a new and unbelievably beautiful world. Forty thousand persons were gathered in the Square of St. Mark and in front of the Palace, and I recall a pretty incident in which the gracious Queen and a little street urchin figured. The small, ragged boy had crept as close to the royal balcony as he dared, and then, unobserved, had climbed up one of its pillars. At the moment when a sudden hush had fallen on the crowd this infant, overcome ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw

... me here," and he pulled up his pants and showed us a ragged wound in the calf of his leg. After we had looked at the wounded leg, he continued his story. He said, "As soon as I heard the first yell, I ran for my horse and was fortunate in catching him. I think the reason of we four being so lucky in getting away was that we were a little ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan

... them together, for it was time to put up the shop shutters. It seemed just like the night when he had followed Susan and the little girl, and loitered outside in the doorway opposite, to see what would happen after she had left her in the shop. He fancied he was a ragged, shoeless boy again, nobody loving him, or caring for him, and that he saw old Oliver and Dolly standing on the step, looking out for the mother, who had gone away, never, never to see her darling again. ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton

... dirty ragged bit of fireworks, throwing tiny handfuls of sparks into the blackness. Something glowed red for ...
— Slingshot • Irving W. Lande

... walked me in the green, dreaming such foolish dreams as a fool may, there came, very suddenly, a sorry wight—a wild man, very ragged—who set me his ragged arm about my neck and a sharp dagger to my throat; and thus, looking him within the eyes, I knew him for that same Roger from whose hand thou did'st save me aforetime. 'Beda,' ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... all day long men toil for wife and child; Wife suffer and stint to make bigger plate for child; Child beg in street to get food for sick mother; Sister wear ragged clothes for sake of little brother. And none of these has bowed to Joss, Or marched with candle, Or washed in blood ...
— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke

... if possible, that nobody may know of our living here; and if anyone should call out and ask for a drink of water, or any poor beggar pray for food, before you give it to him be sure you put on ragged clothes and cover your face with charcoal, and make yourself look as ugly as possible, lest, seeing how fair you are, he should steal you away, and we never meet again." "Very well," the other Princess would answer, "I will ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... five men braced themselves as for a shock. When they crashed, involuntarily the five men started as if a bomb had struck. Beyond the wave-line, under a cover of foam, the jaded sea lay feebly palpitant like an old man asleep. Not far off, sucked close to a ragged reef, stretched the black bulk that had once been the Brian Boru. Continually it leaped out of the water, threw itself like a live creature, breast-forward on the rock, clawed furiously at it, retreated a ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... but whether she had done him any Injury, or that her Pride would not suffer her to turn Petitioner, she seemed ashamed to call to him for Help. Thus she went on tottering, 'till she tore all her Garments, so that her Robes appeared like the ragged Colours in Westminster-Hall; at length seeing her Danger, he reached her out a Pole, and then she shewed a tolerable Skill and Agility; which the People perceiving, who were towards France, they resolved to let go the Rope that she ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe

... and good resolutions, I would now do the same for myself. I have made some resolutions in my own mind, chiefly regarding the control and regulation of temper, irritability, forbearance, more composed and calm temperament, order, diligence, dispatch of work, etc." On January 6th there is a Ragged School meeting—"a long and tiresome meeting; the Duke of A—— speaks well; Guthrie amusing; Fox ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... He was riding an old cayuse pony, with an old saddle, a very old bridle, and a pair of elk-skin hobbles attached to his saddle, to which also hung a piece of elk-meat. He carried an old Hawkins rifle. He had an old shabby army hat on, and a ragged blue army overcoat, a buckskin shirt, and a pair of dilapidated greasy buckskin pants that reached only a little below his knees, having shrunk in the wet; he also wore a pair of old army government boots with the soles worn off. That was ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... up. The mists of sleep shredded away. A ragged youth with a crop of fiery red hair was standing in the doorway, regarding the occupants of the shelter ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... Many come bare-footed through the snow to our industrial schools. Children have been known to fall fainting on the floor of these schools through want of food. Hundreds enter our lodging-houses every night, who have no home. Hundreds apply to our office for a place in the country, who are ragged, half-starved, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... English of the composer. He has told us that the movement as a whole typifies the coming of Arthur, and as such we may leave it. The traditional sonata form is freely adapted to the poetic requirements of the movement, but the result is rather ragged. The music itself, however, is deeply inspired and full of fire. The simple, yet pathetic second subject is recalled again ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte

... went on a strike because they were being cheated and abused. Now they strike on the principle that it is excellent policy always to be demanding something; it keeps capitalism where it belongs—on the ragged edge of things. No matter what they demand they never expect to give an equivalent; and a just cause isn't necessary. Thus the present-day agitator has only one perplexity—that of eluding the iron hand ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... Burke in point and common sense, Sheridan in dignity and argumentative power, and all of them in the felicitous wedding of elevated thought or vigorous argument to noble diction. By the side of his serried yet persuasive periods the efforts of Fox seemed ragged, those of Burke philosophic essays, those of Sheridan rhetorical tinsel. And this harmony was not the effect of long and painful training. His maiden speech of 26th February 1781 displayed the grace and forcefulness which marked his classic utterance at the Lord Mayor's banquet ten ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... at their stupidity, they proceeded to untie the bundles again, when it became apparent to the eyes of Charley that his friend had put on his capote inside out; which had a peculiarly ragged and grotesque effect. These mistakes were soon rectified, and shouldering their beds, they carried them down to the boat and tossed them in. Meanwhile Mr. Park, who had been watching the movements of the boys with a peculiar ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... for a short distance. After having escorted her for about a mile, they handed her the keys of her boxes and cupboard, bade her a last farewell, and returned home, leaving the middleman and his assistant to escort her all the way. Some ragged little boys were carrying the large lanterns, on which was inscribed her husband's name, in front of her chair; others carried red banners; again, others were beating gongs. One carried the big red umbrella, which only a bride or a Mandarin is allowed to have ...
— Everlasting Pearl - One of China's Women • Anna Magdalena Johannsen

... of the beasts were so concealed by masks of knotted wool that at first I could distinguish neither eyes, noses, horns or ears; but in spite of their ragged trousers and their masked faces, the bison are sublime in their mighty strength and ponderous proportions, and as this was the first wild herd I had ever seen and one of the very few, if not the only one, then extant, I viewed them with ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard

... "that thing!" With some effort Bernie fished it from the capacious depths of a pocket, disentangling the sharp corners from the torn and ragged lining of his coat. ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve

... practically nothing. He started out with scarcely a name—poor, ignorant, degraded, demoralized, as slavery left him. Without a home, without a foot of land, without the true sense of real manhood, ragged, destitute, so freedom found him. He stood at one end of the cotton row with his master at the other and as he stepped out into the new and inexperienced life before him his master still claimed him and the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... in a listless manner, for his thoughts were elsewhere. Several hundred yards to the right stood the forest, glorious in its brilliant autumn hues. There among those trees the wary partridges were feeding or perching temptingly upon bough, fallen log or ragged stump. To the left the waters of the noble River St. John rippled and sparkled beneath the glowing sun. Over there amidst that long stretch of marshland, in many a cove and reedy creek, the wild ducks were securely hidden. What connection had a rugged, stirring lad with a brown sombre potato patch ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody

... remember that." Then she carefully instructed the Scarecrow what to do and gave him certain magical things which he placed in the pockets of his ragged Munchkin coat. ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... distinct a type as the fresh-complexioned, blue-eyed Alsatian. That the Nicois are French at heart is self-evident, and no wonder, when we compare their present condition with that of the past. We see no beggars or ragged, wretched-looking people. If the municipal authorities have set themselves the task of putting down mendicity, they have succeeded. French enterprise, French capital is enriching the population from one end of the ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... had gone by, and Saduko and I, with our ragged band of Amangwane, sat one morning, after a long night march, in the hilly country looking across a broad vale, which was sprinkled with trees like an English park, at that mountain on the side of which Bangu, chief of the Amakoba, ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard

... the three inquirers was shown me; he was described as the most advanced of the three in knowledge of the doctrine. Now I do not wish to write unkindly, but I am compelled to say that this man was a poor, wretched, ragged coolie, who sells the commonest gritty cakes in a rickety stall round the corner from the mission, who can neither read nor write, and belongs to a very humble order of blunted intelligence. The poor fellow ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... of a golden bell. Bonflon seconded him with coolness and decision. With us a moment sufficed to extinguish the burning garments of the engineer; but by that time the flames had burst from the engine-room, and that part of the beautiful boat was a ragged, crackling ruin. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... the floor,—the heat of the room made her a little faint,—and laid her head upon his knee; oddly enough, she noticed that the patch on it had given way,—wondered how many days it had been so,—whether he had felt ragged and neglected while she was busy about that blue neck-tie for Dick. She put her hand up and smoothed the corners of ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... began to despair of ever gaining attention. He was allowed to wander about as he pleased within the village gates, and Ulysse was apparently quite happy with the little children, who were beautiful and active, although kept dirty and ragged as a protection ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and you'll do well in it. I began life in a pair of ragged breeches that didn't fit me, shoving the corves of coal in a mine; and now," he exclaimed proudly, "I'm partner as well as manager in our pit. So what I say is, if I could do what I have done, beginning life in a pair of ragged breeches that didn't fit me, why, what can my boy do, ...
— Son Philip • George Manville Fenn

... stood a ragged object—a piece of social flotsam—a unit of London's misery. This poor filthy fellow was singing at the top of his voice, a music-hall song upon that fertile topic, "the girls," was dancing wildly around a dilapidated hat which stood ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer

... Duke. My d'Herouville will receive you as civilly as if you were the saviour of the State; and to-morrow you can decide. Come, be jolly, old boy! Life is a garment; when it is dirty, we must brush it; when it is ragged, it must be patched; but we keep it on as long as ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... there lies before me a soiled and creased sheet of vellum. It bears some lines traced in a cramped, peculiar, and all but illegible hand. This fragment was found by Inspector Weymouth (to this day a man mentally sound) in a pocket of his ragged garments. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... Chonos Archipelago, still further south, was explored. Here a storm worthy of Tierra del Fuego was experienced. "White, massive clouds were piled up against a dark blue sky, and across them black, ragged sheets of vapour were rapidly driven. The successive mountain ranges appeared like dim shadows; and the setting sun cast on the woodland a yellow gleam, much like that produced by the flame of spirits of wine on a man's countenance. The water was white with the flying ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... Miss Ferrier read us 'Thrawn Janet,' and was quite bowled over by my own works. The 'Merry Men' I mean to make much longer, with a whole new denouement, not yet quite clear to me. 'The Story of a Lie,' I must rewrite entirely also, as it is too weak and ragged, yet is worth saving for the Admiral. Did I ever tell you that the ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... was sprawling under a large oak tree, whose trunk, with a huge spread of bough and foliage, ragged with age, stood on the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... About 45, dishevelled, unshaved, bloated, yellow and trembling. Dressed in a ragged, light summer-overcoat and dirty trousers. Speaks hoarsely, ejecting ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... so much mothering and looking after. He has to be watched for fear his hair gets too long, and sent to the tailor's now and then for clothes. And if someone didn't turn his old pajamas into scrub rags and silver cloths, he would go on wearing their ragged skeletons long after the flesh had departed hence. (What comforting rags Irvin Cobb's ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... napping, and swarming into the breezy Prado in the light of moon and stars and gas. The Prado is ordinarily the promenade of the better classes, but every Spanish family has its John, Paul, and Peter, and the crowded barrios of Toledo and the Penue-las pour out their ragged hordes to the popular festival. The scene has a strange gypsy wildness. From the round point of Atocha to where Cybele, throned among spouting waters, drives southward her spanking team of marble lions, the park is filled with the merry roysterers. At short intervals are the busy ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... were of the lightest sort, having been procured in warm climates, and were well worn, in addition. The palms, needles, and shells, and carving in whale-bone, had all been sold, to meet their owner's wants, and nothing of that sort remained. There were two old, dirty, and ragged charts, and on these the deacon laid his hands, much as the hawk, in its swoop, descends on its prey. As it did, however, a tremor came over him, that actually compelled him to throw himself into a chair, and to rest for ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... from his pocket, poising it tantalizingly between his fingers. She recognized the handwriting and a wave of red mounted to her forehead. Also, she observed the ragged slit at the top of the envelope and the painful realization that he had read ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin

... one oil-lamp, which hangs from the roof, and burns dimly. Under this we place the "marmites," and all that I can see is one brown or black or wounded hand stretched out into the dim ring of light under the lamp, with a little tin mug held out for soup. Wet and ragged, and covered with sticky mud, the wounded lie in the salle of the station, and, except under the lamp, it is all quite dark. There are dim forms and frosty breaths, and a door which bangs continually, and then the train loads up, the wounded depart, and a heavy smell ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... a very quiet place, as such a place should be, save for the cawing of the rooks who had built their nests among the branches of some tall old trees, and were calling to one another, high up in the air. First, one sleek bird, hovering near his ragged house as it swung and dangled in the wind, uttered his hoarse cry, quite by chance as it would seem, and in a sober tone as though he were but talking to himself. Another answered, and he called again, but louder ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... mentioned before, the force that accompanied him was in forlorn case, reminding me strongly of Shakspere's description of Falstaff's ragged regiment. It consisted chiefly of raw, undrilled troops, quite unused to discipline, but, perhaps, as effective as veterans in the service in which they were employed, the adroitness of the enemy, accustomed to the interminable swamps, hammocks, and cane-brakes which abound in this ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... for all the frequency of the samurai uniform along the London ways the general effect is of a gaily-coloured population. You never see anyone noticeably ragged or dirty; the police, who answer questions and keep order (and are quite distinct from the organisation for the pursuit of criminals) see to that; and shabby people are very infrequent. People who want to save money for other purposes, or who do not want much bother with their clothing, seem to ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... witness—Mr. Buchanan, afterward President—who tells how he took a distinguished English lady to the White House when Old Hickory was President; how he went up to the general's private apartment, where he found him in a ragged robe-de-chambre, smoking his pipe; how, when he intimated that the President might before coming down slick himself a bit, he received the half-laughing rebuke: "Buchanan, I once knew a man in Virginia who made himself independently ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... a little nearer to the mainland, and the spit of sand that runs out towards it. You ascend to it by a hill, and a wide stretch of green sward lies before the door. The gray stone presbytery joins the church and communicates with it. A ragged boreen, or bit of lane, between rough stone walls runs zigzag from the gate, ever open, that leads to the church, and wanders away to the left to the village on the rocks above the sea. Everything is just the ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan

... caress and determined upon a merciless campaign of extermination just as soon as he could have fitted a new handle to his hoe. Then he paused in front of the Mission steps and lifted his hat, made an elegant bow, and smiled in his own inimitable, remarkably fascinating way. For, under the ragged brim, his eyes had caught a glimpse of a pretty pair of patent-leather slippers, a prettier pair of black-stockinged ankles, and the hem of a ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory

... of their cloudless future, the lovers enter the dingy mining town of Woodward. The weather-beaten cottages, which never have known a coat of paint, do not attract their attention. The groups of ragged children playing in the dusty road, scurry out of the path of the horses. On the hillside to the left stands the Jumbo Breaker, the largest coal crusher in the world. Its rambling walls rise to a height of several hundred feet up a steep incline. The noise of the ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... be made but of a little coarse straw full of dust and vermin, with the stems of boughs sticking up therethrough, for the cattle had eaten all the straw that was placed at the head and the foot. And upon it was stretched an old russet-coloured rug, threadbare and ragged; and a coarse sheet, full of slits was upon the rug, and an ill-stuffed pillow, and a worn-out cover upon the sheet. And after much suffering from the vermin, and from the discomfort of their couch, a heavy sleep fell on Rhonabwy's companions. But Rhonabwy, not being able either to sleep or to rest, ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards

... weather sign. Low clouds swiftly moving indicate coolness and rain. Soft clouds, moderate winds, fine weather. Hard-edged clouds, wind. Rolled or ragged clouds, strong wind. ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson

... not persuade her to sit by me or to do anything but move a ragged stool to where she was kneeling, and take that, and still hold my dress in the same manner. By degrees the poor tired girl fell asleep, and then I contrived to raise her head so that it should rest on my lap, and to cover us both with shawls. The fire went out, and all night long she slumbered ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... wind-swept rocky hills so inhospitably barren that even the snow could not find a lodgment on them, or over wide plains where the few trees that grew had been stunted and gnarled into mere shrubs by winter blasts. On every hand the mountains began to raise their ragged austere heads like grim giant sentinels placed there to guard the way. Finally they turned into a pass, which brought them, on the other side of the ridge it led through, to a comparatively well-wooded valley down which a wide river wound its way northward. The ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace

... and if you do not find me faithful, honest, and true to you, tell your men to string me up to a bough. I do not drink, and have been in so many services that, ragged as you see me, I can yet behave so as not ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty

... broad in relation to their depth, a strong-acid effect. Furthermore, illustrations of some of Rembrandt's original plates from this period show a similar broad line.[29] In addition, in the photograph (figure 14) of at least one of the plates there is seen a peculiarly ragged line which is often caused by bubbles formed on the plate by acid action.[30] This appearance of bubbles is characteristic only of the strong acids. Of the acid formulae suggested by Bosse in 1645, only one—a distillate of vitriol, saltpeter, and alum—appears to be ...
— Rembrandt's Etching Technique: An Example • Peter Morse

... which had crumpled the ship's lower shell had thrust up the flooring of the lock compartment, turned it into what was nearly level footing now. On the right, a twenty-foot black gap showed between the ragged edge of the deck and the far bulkhead from which it had been torn. The oily plant life spread over the edges of the flooring and on down into the flooded lower sections of the Antares. The pulse of Hovig's ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz

... free negroes of Boston. If, on the anniversary celebrated by the free people of color, of the day on which slavery was abolished, they looked abroad, what did they see? Not freemen, in the enjoyment of every attribute of freedom, with the stamp of liberty upon their brows! No, Sir; they saw a ragged set, crying out liberty! for whom liberty had nothing to bestow, and whose enjoyment of it was but in name. He spoke of the great body of the blacks; there were some few honorable exceptions, he knew, which only proved what might be done for all.'—[African ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... twists this body? Yes, but it shall not Distort my soul, by all the gods that be! And when it's done its worst, Pain's victory Shall be an empty one! Whate'er my lot, My banner, ragged, but nailed to the mast, Shall fly triumphant to the ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... to the appointed place, found him under the tree, dead, with a new shroud under his head, exhaling a fragrance of musk. So I washed him and shrouded him and prayed over him, then dug a hole in the sand and buried him, after I had taken his ragged gown and bottle and staff, with which I crossed the Nile to the western side and there nighted. As soon as morning dawned and the city gate opened, I sighted a young man known to me as a loose fellow, clad in fine clothes and his hands stained with Henna, who said to me, 'Art thou ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... the atmosphere of my upbringing, nor did it link me in sympathy with any of the profounder realities of poverty. It was a personal independent thing. The dingier people one saw in the back streets and lower quarters of Bromstead and Penge, the drift of dirty children, ragged old women, street loafers, grimy workers that made the social background of London, the stories one heard of privation and sweating, only joined up very slowly with the general propositions I was making about life. We ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... it would be a matter of only eight or ten days when he would be again in fairly good condition. He said, however, that wounds from fragments of shrapnel were of quite a different character; that they were ragged, unclean and usually gave much concern. He said, also, as a matter of fact, that the gun or rifle was performing a less and less important function in warfare. That many were even in favor of abandoning the rifle entirely as ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.

... ancient costume. Their cottages are generally neat and clean. Andre Romain, the chief, resides in the centre of the village, a high pole denoting his residence and rank. I found him bending over his simple dinner of milk and coarse bread. He was dressed in old, and somewhat ragged, garments. He seemed so extremely old, that I did not trouble him with more than a very short conversation, in French. He showed me a portrait of George IV., given to him, he said, from the hands of ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... Acklins and Crooked Islands, Bimini, Cat Island, Exuma, Freeport, Fresh Creek, Governor's Harbour, Green Turtle Cay, Harbour Island, High Rock, Inagua, Kemps Bay, Long Island, Marsh Harbour, Mayaguana, New Providence, Nichollstown and Berry Islands, Ragged Island, Rock Sound, Sandy Point, San Salvador and ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... peculiar voice, and was so assured of its identity, that she ran out under the awning and looked up and down the platform in front of the station buildings. The rain had ceased, but drops still pattered from the tin roof, and a few stars peeped over the ragged ravelled edge of slowly drifting clouds. By the light of a gas lamp, she saw an old negro man limping away, who held a stick over his shoulder, on which was slung a bundle wrapped in a red handkerchief; and while she ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... to do his grand vizier a favor; so he sent the black slave to bring the pedler up stairs. The pedler came. He was a little, dumpy man, with a dark complexion, and dressed in ragged garments. He bore a chest in which were wares of all sorts: pearls and rings, richly mounted pistols, drinking cups, and combs. The caliph and his vizier rummaged over the whole chest, and the caliph finally bought some pistols for himself and Mansor, and a comb for the vizier's wife. ...
— What the Animals Do and Say • Eliza Lee Follen

... Pasadena has no ragged shabby outskirts; the poorer classes seem to be able to own or rent pretty little homes, some like large birdcages, all well kept and attractive. Some gentlemen from Indianapolis came here in 1873 and started the town, planting their ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn

... came towards him, the figure of an old native with a ragged grey beard, all hunched ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps

... off to the camp-bed in the back room; and sure the picture was homelike, if you studied the handsome lady rather than the ragged chairs. 'Twas the best they could do, poor souls, in fifteen minutes, and wonderful in the time. 'Tis women for quick thinking and quick acting where men are concerned; and, indeed, the look of astonishment Mrs Gunning gave as the three entered was inimitable, though already she had every ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington

... dwellings with icy hearthstones and smokeless chimneys. Towering above all, on the right, is Storm King mountain, its granite rocks and precipices showing darkly here and there, as if its huge white mantle were old and ragged indeed. One might well shiver at the lonely, desolate wastes lying beyond it, grim hills and early-shadowed valleys, where the half-starved fox prowls, and watches for unwary rabbits venturing from their coverts to nibble the frozen twigs. The river, which above the Highlands broadens ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... Then she seized hold of the pendent casimere and dragged away with a hearty good-will. I was quickly reduced to my natural state with the exception of a pair of drawers, which, to my horror, I discovered were in a very ragged condition, owing to the roughness of my travels in this wild region. However, by an adroit movement I whirled into bed, and the young woman covered me up and wished me a good night's sleep. I thanked her very cordially, and so ended this ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... hear about some of the little black children in our mission Sunday-school down here in the Southland? One of our scholars, a certain ragged boy, was for many weeks among the missing. A few Sundays later, one of the first arrivals was master James, but he was so decently clad that I did not recognize him, and was obliged to inquire his name. A blue jacket, much too large for him, and ornamented ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 6, June, 1889 • Various

... stand on a level with those whose pupils were familiar with elementary algebra when they entered; yet its course of study may be the best to secure the usefulness of its members in their own community. If ragged village girls, untutored and uncombed, studying aloud in school hours, and at recess leaping over the benches like wild goats, now study diligently and in silence, move gently, and are respectful to their teachers and kind to each other, a thorough foundation ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary

... houses, drilled in every direction with narrow streets of labyrinthine crookedness, and amid which a miserable stream, probably the Gose, winds its sad and muddy way. The pavement of the town is as ragged as Berlin hexameters. Only the antiquities which are imbedded in the frame or mounting of the city—that is to say, its remnants of walls, towers, and battlements—give the place a piquant look. One of these towers, known ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... eyes opened in amazement. Framed in the long window that reached to the piazza floor stood a curiously garbed old man holding firmly before him two tiny children. He wore an old black skull cap and a ragged cassock, and he announced ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond

... face well. There were outcropping boulders, gravel pits, ledges of shale, brush clumps and a few ragged trees clinging tenaciously to ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe

... small bonfire of sticks in a sheltered thicket, where a miraculous being—who was, as a matter of fact, a rather ragged and dingy vagabond—was cooking a tin ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley

... the name of witches without making any pretensions to the art, merely because they are deformed or ill-looking. Persons esteemed witches or wizards are generally eccentric characters, remarkably wicked, of a ragged appearance and forbidding countenance. The way in which they are made is either by direct communication with the familiar spirit during the days of their fasting, or by being instructed by those skilled in ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman

... three-score years, maybe, (he lives to be a hundred) caws lustily from the bare white branches of a big sycamore, that queer anomaly of the forest which disrobes itself for the winter. The merry chickadees divide their time between the rustling, ragged bark of the red birches and the withered heads of heath-aster and blue vervain below. In the one they get the meat portion of their midday meal, and in the other the cereal foods. No wonder ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... clouds which hung about the entrance to Crescent Bay rifted sullenly and exposed the ragged line of rocks which ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... little dream she had forgot Crept near and clung and stayed— A roving, ragged vagabond Half daring, half afraid, And all because young love went by And one old ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison

... the Very Young Man, looking sorrowfully at the ragged shoes on his feet and the cuts and bruises ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... at their headquarters, killing time and waiting. Jack's nerves once more began showing signs of being frayed, or "ragged," as he called it. He jumped at the least unusual sound, and ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach

... other—Andy working the schemes that Pete usually invented for the occasion. Up to the time that he arrived at the Concho ranch, Young Pete had never known the joy of good-natured, rough-and-tumble horseplay, that wholesome diversion that tries a man out, and either rubs off the ragged edges of his temper or marks him as an undesirable and to-be-let-alone. Pete, while possessing a workable sense of humor, was intense—somewhat quick on the trigger, so to speak. The frequent roughings he experienced served to steady him, and also taught him to distinguish ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... the celebrated tree, with Napoleon's guide, De Coster, in the foreground, see Captain Arthur Gore's Explanatory Notes on the Battle of Waterloo, 1817; and for another view of the ragged old tree as it appeared the day before it was cut down, see Illustrated London News, 27th ...
— A Week at Waterloo in 1815 • Magdalene De Lancey

... lamps, &c., must be of flannel, linen, or silk. All these articles are to be made in the same manner, that is, hemmed neatly at the ends; or if there be no selvages, or but indifferent ones, all round. Nothing looks more slovenly than ragged or unhemmed cloths, which are for domestic use. Little girls of the humbler classes might be employed by the more affluent, in making up those articles and a suitable remuneration be given them. They would thus become more sensible of the value ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous

... when they reached Washington. The pain in his chest became acute as he walked down the gangway, and by the time he found a seat in the terminal and popped a nitro-tablet under his tongue he was breathing in deep, ragged gasps. He sat very still, trying to lean back against the seat, and quite suddenly he realized that he was very, very ill. The good red-headed Dr. Moss would smile in satisfaction, he thought bitterly. There was sweat on his ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse

... he, we would be glad to have the society of the body in this glory, we would not desire to cast off those clothes of flesh, but rather that the garment of glory might be spread over all, if it were not needful because they are old and ragged and would not suit well, and our earthly tabernacle is ruinous, and would not be fit for such a glorious guest to dwell into, and therefore, it is needful to be taken down. Well, then, here is an overplus, and, as it were, a surcharge of consolation, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... such a lion as I had been accustomed to meet in his native jungles, a yellow cowardly fellow, that had often slunk away from the very prey from which I had driven him, but a real red British lion, that, although thin and ragged in the unhealthy climate of Khartoum, looked as though he was pluck to ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... Pilgrim's Progresses. Here, too, it is possible that the enlightened onlooker may catch sight of the book-hunter plying his vocation, much after the manner in which, in some ill-regulated town, he may have beheld the chiffonniers, at early dawn, rummaging among the cinder heaps for ejected treasures. A ragged morsel is perhaps carefully severed from the heap, wrapped in paper to keep its leaves together, and deposited in the purchaser's pocket. You would probably find it difficult to recognise the fragment, if you should see it in the brilliancy of its resuscitation. A skilled and cautious ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... good dance-hall and hotel. Instead of guard-mounting, you would see a horse-race on the parade-ground, and there was no provost-sergeant to gather up the broken bottles and old boots. Heaps of these choked the rusty fountain. In the tufts of yellow, ragged grass that dotted the place plentifully were lodged many aces and queens and ten-spots, which the Drybone wind had blown wide from the doors out of which they had been thrown when a new pack was called for inside. ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister

... fleshpots again." He sleeps in a barn until he is waked, pursued and caught by Gypsies. He agrees to stay with them, and they have a debauch of eating, drinking and fornication, which makes him well content to join the "Ragged Regiment." They colour his face with walnut juice so that he looks a "true son of an Egyptian." Hundreds of pages are filled thereafter by tediously dragging in, mostly from other books, joyless and leering ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... Norse blood. Our independence is pure Norse. I have never met the like of it, except in Norway, where a Bergen policeman who had hunted all the morning for my lost umbrella would not take anything for his pains; and in Iceland, where a poor old woman in a ragged woollen dress, a torn hufa on her head, torn skin shoes on her feet, and with rheumatism playing visible havoc all over her body, refused a kroner with the dignity, grave look, stiffened lips, and proud head that ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine

... drove the poor hungry Alfred out of her house. In his ragged dress he certainly did not look like a king, and she had no idea that he was ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren

... and he scowled at the mountains on either side of the pass. The train was gathering speed, and the peaks lurched eastward in a confused, ragged procession. "And a durned hard ride ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... lottery of book- making were scarcely less ruinous than the blanks. If good fortune came, it came in such a manner that it was almost certain to be abused. After months of starvation and despair, a full third night or a well-received dedication filled the pocket of the lean, ragged, unwashed poet with guineas. He hastened to enjoy those luxuries with the images of which his mind had been haunted while he was sleeping amidst the cinders and eating potatoes at the Irish ordinary in Shoe Lane. A week ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... sharply on a whistle, and from the mouth of another cave a file of black boys in ragged robes made a straggling appearance. Burroughs gave orders which resulted in a kindling of fire and the opening of boxes, and then he walked back to where Billy was surveying the weary camels. At a distance, like an equestrian statue, the watching ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... horizon before us the mountainous cliffs, dark blue with a thick, ragged patch of mist at the top, towered steeply over the waves. In between, the sea stretched ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... towards the end when he headed into the foothills of the White Mountains. He drew up Molly for a breath on a level shoulder. Already he was close to the snow line with ragged heads of white rearing above him. Far below, a pale streak of moonlight was the Asper. Then, out of that blacker night on the slopes beneath, he heard the clinking hoofs of the posse; the quiet was so perfect, ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand

... array with an eager gaze. It was a noble sight, full of moral sublimity, and worthy of all admiration. The long, lean, sunburned, weather-beaten soldiers in ragged gray stepped forward, superbly, their ranks loose, but swift and firm, the men leaning forward in their haste, their tattered slouch hats pushed backward, their whole aspect business-like and virile. Their line was three battalions strong, far outflanking the Fifth, and at ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... stimulating, rehandling and heightening whatever could touch the imagination with fear, horror, and mysterious attraction. The Witches, that is to say, are not goddesses, or fates, or, in any way whatever, supernatural beings. They are old women, poor and ragged, skinny and hideous, full of vulgar spite, occupied in killing their neighbours' swine or revenging themselves on sailors' wives who have refused them chestnuts. If Banquo considers their beards a proof that they are not women, that only shows his ignorance: ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... and early on the following morning was puzzling. It might be that the storm was passing, and that the ragged clouds which still darkened the sky were the rear-guard or the stragglers that were following the sluggish advance of its main body; or it might be that there was a partial break in Nature's forces, and that heavier cloud-masses were still to come. Mr. Clifford inclined to the latter ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... gloomy; the slovenly, ragged, spongy clouds drifted heavily along; there was no variety even in the rain: it was one dull, continued, monotonous patter—patter—patter, excepting that now and then I was enlivened by the idea of a ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... variable in outline; the lower branches usually nearly horizontal, the upper ascending; head when young very regular, narrow-based, close and conical; in old trees frequently rather open, wide-spreading, ragged, roundish or flattened. In very exposed situations, especially along the seacoast, the trunk sometimes rises a foot or two and then develops horizontally, forming a curiously contorted lateral head. Under such conditions it occasionally becomes a dwarf tree 2-3 feet high, with wide-spreading branches ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame

... again encountered him on The Mall. He was resting lazily on the green rails, watching two little sloops in distress, which two ragged ship-owners had consigned to the mimic perils of the Pond. The vessels lay becalmed in the middle of the ocean, displaying a tantalizing lack of sympathy with the frantic helplessness of the owners on shore. As the gentleman observed ...
— A Struggle For Life • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... called woods," the captain answered; "trees of any size are few on the island. Except the shade trees in the town, I think some ragged, stunted pines are all you will find; but there are streams and ponds to fish in, to say nothing of the great ocean. There is some hunting, too, for there are plover ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley

... and over the tiny fireplace a binnacle lamp glowed softly. Forward in the bows, the Scotch engineer and the Indian pilot sat conversing in deliberate monosyllables, and in the east a horned moon floated just clear of the ragged tops of encircling pine trees. Clark ate slowly and felt the burden slipping from his shoulders. It was a strange sensation. Across the narrow table towered the bishop, the genius of the place. He was still reminiscent of American experiences ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... waiting," he said. Then as he looked at their torn, woolen suits that once were white, and the ragged shoes upon their feet, he added with a smile, "But I think I can make you ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... she had no head for figures; you have only got to read Chaucer's description of her to know that she was not a mathematician. Besides the nuns were exaggerating: their clothes were not in holes, only just a little threadbare. Madame Eglentyne was far too fastidious to allow ragged clothes about her; and as to the roof of the church, she had meant to save enough money to have some tiles put on to it, but it really was very hard to make two ends meet in a medieval nunnery, especially if (as I repeat) you had no head for figures. Probably ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... in innumerable misfortunes and mischances. Never were the heroic illusions of war more thoroughly dissipated than by the scenes which accompanied our landing! Boats and baggage-wagons upset; here, a wild, half savage-looking fellow swimming after a cocked hat—there, a group of ragged wretches scraping sea-weed from a dripping officer of the staff; noise, uproar, and confusion every where; smart aid-de-camps mounted on donkeys; trim field-pieces "horsed" by a promiscuous assemblage of men, women, cows, ponies, and asses. Crowds ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... temptation and antagonism of vice? How could Charity ever have appeared in the world, were there no dark ways to be trodden by its bright feet, and no suffering and sadness to require its aid? I look at these asylums, these hospitals, these ragged schools—a zodiac of beautiful charities, girdling all this selfishness and sin—I look at these monuments which humanity will honor when war shall be but a legend, and laurels have withered to dust; and when I think what they have grown out of, and why they stand here, I regard ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... redden, and in the brown pastures where watchful eyes can already see the green. The joy of the season is singing in a million bluebirds' and robins' throats; the cocks crow gayly; the caw of the big black crow flapping overhead with ragged wing has a cheery tone. All living creatures feel the tingle and throb of the great tide of life that sweeps in with the returning sun. See yonder two dogs, how they frolic, how they crouch and wheel and charge and roll ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... unto thee. The pretty-vaulting sea refus'd to drown me, Knowing that thou wouldst have me drown'd on shore, With tears as salt as sea, through thy unkindness. The splitting rocks cower'd in the sinking sands And would not dash me with their ragged sides, Because thy flinty heart, more hard than they, Might in thy palace perish Margaret. As far as I could ken thy chalky cliffs, When from thy shore the tempest beat us back, I stood upon the hatches in the storm, And when the dusky sky began to rob My earnest-gaping sight ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]









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