|
|
|
More "Rat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they walked around the old house and gazed through several of the broken-out windows. Inside all was dirt and cobwebs, with a few pieces of broken-down furniture scattered about. As he looked in one window Tom saw a big rat scurry ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... do? Where can I turn? What hope have I, except, as Swift's phrase has it, to "die like a poisoned rat in a hole"? I could wish that you would think over that phrase a little while, cultivated ladies and gentlemen. It is not pleasant—to die like a poisoned rat ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... limp, and dead. A solemn pause: this was more than any of us had bargained for. I turned the little fellow over, and saw he was quite dead; the mastiff had taken him by the small of the back like a rat, and broken it. ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... is rather larger than a good-sized rat, and rather like that animal in general appearance. Its colour is a red-brown, speckled with grey and black hairs above, but whitish-grey below. The tip of its tail is tufted with black hair, which is rather ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... wanted courage, have ended in unbelief; in "faint possible Theism," which I like considerably worse than Atheism. Such, I could not but feel, deserve the fate they find here; the bat fate: to be killed among the rats as a bird, among the birds as a rat.... Nay, who knows but it is doubts of the like kind in your own mind that keep you for a time inactive even now? For the rest, that you have liberty to choose by your own will merely, is a great blessing: too rare ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... again he examined them in fascinated contemplation. He had already charged them, and he amused himself by thinking of the mischief he could do, by a single touch upon the trigger, to a poor little wood-rat, that once or twice ran along a decaying log some five steps from his feet. But his object being secrecy, the rat brushed his whiskers in safety. Still he amused himself by aiming at this and other objects, until suddenly reminded of the very important ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... known to eat 'bakolo,' as human flesh is termed, and there are a few men who have refrained from cannibalism through superstition. Every Fijian has his special god, who is supposed to have his residence in some animal. One god, for example, lives in a rat, another in a shark, and so on. The worshiper of that god never eats the animal in which his divinity resides, and as some gods are supposed to reside in human beings, their worshipers never eat the flesh ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... black rat-like eyes this way and that, the chief of our wild allies, who held a naked kris from which drops of blood were falling, stood beside Roger. Blodgett was at the wheel, nervously fingering the spokes; Neddie Benson stood behind him, obviously ill at ease, and Davie Paine, who had got ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... father, I heard him shout with joy as he trampled upon Brother John, and had you seen him tossing the subprior as a dog shakes a rat you would perchance have felt even ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the strange sonority of his own name, ran to hid himself under a bookcase in an orifice so small that a rat could not have squeezed himself ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... at little Vivian!' cried Muscula. 'He has the eyes of an angry rat. What vexes him? Is it because he saw Basil touch ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... looks drinking tea," Kate had whispered; "like a thirsty rat dipping its whiskers ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... her!—she began to rout about, and presently she began to dig with her claws in a corner under the ruined window. I was so lost in thought that I stood and watched her in an absent kind of way: but presently I heard her bark and saw her tearing away like mad, as if she had found a rat or a rabbit. I went up to where she was clawing and saw—what do ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... casu, it is equivalent to a Paction. This Mark is given to them, as is alledg'd, by a Nip in any part of the Body, and it is blew. Delrio calls it Stigma, or Character, and alledges that it is sometimes like the impression of a Hare's foot, or the Foot of a Rat or Spider.'[283] ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... crow found a piece of meat on the ground. He picked it up and flew to the top of a tree. While he was sitting there eating his meat, a kasaykasay (a small bird) passed by. She was carrying a dead rat, and was flying very fast. The crow called to her, and said, "Kasaykasay, where did you get that dead rat that you have?" But the small bird did not answer: she flew on her way. When the crow saw that she ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... cunning, and may have lost in wariness and suspicion, yet they have progressed in certain moral qualities, such as in affection, trust- worthiness, temper, and probably in general intelligence. The common rat has conquered and beaten several other species throughout Europe, in parts of North America, New Zealand, and recently in Formosa, as well as on the mainland of China. Mr. Swinhoe (36. 'Proceedings Zoological Society,' 1864, p. 186.), who describes ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... was nothing else left, one pull'd up a wooden Image of the Virgin Mary, rotten, and rat-eaten, and embracing it in his Arms, try'd to swim ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... whisper of the truth coming to his lips. He heard the scurrying flight of a starved wood-rat, a flutter of loose papers, and then the silence of death fell about him. The door of Nada's little room was open and he entered through it. The bed was naked and there remained only the skeleton of things ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... squirrel!" said a man watching the antics of the white rats and mice among Mr. Capper's buns. If this man had only known it, squirrels and rats belong to the same family, that called "rodents," only a squirrel has a much larger tail than a rat ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... Sherring (JRAS. V. 376) says decidedly that Bh[a]rs, or Bh[a]rats, and Ch[i]rus cannot be Aryans. This article is one full of interesting details in regard to the high cultivation of the Bh[a]rat tribe. They built large stone forts, immense subterranean caverns, and made enormous bricks for tanks and fortifications (19 X 11 X 2-1/2 inches), the former being built regularly to east and west (surajbedi). One of their chief cities lay five miles west of Mirz[a]pur, and ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... food, or taking care of its young, or associating with others of its kind, and so on! This is exactly what ought to be and can be. Be it only a bird, I can look at it for some time with a feeling of pleasure; nay, a water-rat or a frog, and with still greater pleasure a hedgehog, a weazel, a roe, or a deer. The contemplation of animals delights us so much, principally because we see in them our ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... only in memory. That part of the county seat is a ghost town. Timbermen and loggers gather no more for revelry at the riverfront saloon. And should you ask the reason, the old river rat will answer with a slow-breaking smile, "See off yonder—locks and dams! Can't run the ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... by the constrainin' atmosphere of a onwelcome and onlawful attachment. And it took all the principle I had by me to git up even a emotion of pity for the one-eyed watcher, whose only recreation seemin'ly durin' that long, long day wuz to watch our party as clost as any cat ever watched a rat hole, and to kinder hang round us. Faith kep' pretty clost to me all day and seemed to take a good deal of comfort watchin' the entrancin' scenery ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... household. It was only through Dom Manuel's happening to arise very early one morning, at the call of nature, that he chanced to be passing through the hall when, at the moment of sunrise, the night-porter turned into an orange-colored rat, and crept into the wainscoting: and Manuel of course said nothing about this to anybody, because it was none of ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... for it all came, when the immeasurable second's length was past, and he was thrown down against the wall, and torn, and shaken like a rat; it all came just as he had felt that it was coming, and it lasted long, a long, long time, while he tried to howl, and the blood only gurgled in his throat. And then, just as many strong hands dragged away the thing of terror, and the light of a lantern ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... rat," muttered the old sailor. "Like as not they've dropped anchor here to see if there are any likely-looking lads waiting to be picked up after dark. Why, there's a good dozen that would be worth anything to a skipper, and I could put the press-gang on to their trail as easy ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... angry, and envious, and dejected, and frantic, and disregard all present things, as becomes a madman to do. I am infinitely pleased, though it is a gloomy joy, with the application of Dr. Swift's complaint, that he is forced to die in a rage, like a rat in a poisoned hole." Let the lover of solitude muse on its picture throughout the year, in this stanza, by the same amiable but ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... very American, that, you know, that picking of holes in excellent material, furbishing up your consciences, running after your motives as if you were ferrets in a rat-hole. If all you have to say against it is that it's too perfect, too happy,—why, then I keep to my own conviction. She'll be peacefully married and back ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... been suspected. I sent her a letter of thanks by her brother, and a little present for her and one for the child. The brother was to give them to her as if from himself, so that the husband should not smell a rat, but of course to make her understand who they ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... the Vicar and the murderer had been very dear friends. It was certainly believed at Turnover that the Vicar and Sam Brattle had for years past spent the best part of their Sundays fishing together. There were tales of rat-killing matches in which they had been engaged,—originating in the undeniable fact of a certain campaign against rats at the mill, in which the Vicar had taken an ardent part. Undoubtedly the destruction of vermin, and, in regard to one species, its preservation for the sake ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... dispersion of, a consequence of superior cunning; supplantation of the native in New Zealand, by the European rat; common, said to be polygamous; numerical proportion ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... wished and wished, and cursed himself for a fool, and wished again.... At last he could bear it no longer, so he went to a water-rat who was so old that he was said to be wise, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... kitchin winder! They put him wery nigh the top. They was obliged to stamp upon it to git it in. I could unkiver it for you with my broom if the gate was open. That's why they locks it, I s'pose," giving it a shake. "It's always locked. Look at the rat!" cries Jo, excited. "Hi! Look! There he goes! Ho! Into ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the fresh-water and sea otter; the musk-rat, and a species of long lizard, with sharp teeth, very like the cayman as regards the head and tail, but with a very short body. It is a very fierce animal, killing whatever it attacks, dwelling in damp, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... to quit," he muttered. "I'd be a blooming jackass to waste any more time here. I'll have to work it naturally, though, or Lynch will smell a rat." ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... he understood and Foster, moving forward quietly, stopped again for a moment at the mouth of the adit. Pete had vanished, but could be trusted to watch the mine as a terrier watches a rat-hole, and Foster knew that if he were attacked and overcome his assailant would not escape. A gray sky hung over the black tops of the firs and the wet snow threw up a curious livid light. It was an unpleasant raw morning, ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... of yours I must repay.— Thou art not yet the man to hold the devil fast!— With fairest shapes your spells around him cast, And plunge him in a sea of dreams! But that this charm be rent, the threshold passed, Tooth of rat the way must clear. I need not conjure long it seems, One rustles hitherward, and soon my voice will hear. The master of the rats and mice, Of flies and frogs, of bugs and lice, Commands thy presence; without fear Come forth and gnaw ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... decked out, she got up into her coach; but her godmother, above all things, commanded her not to stay till after midnight, telling her, at the same time, that if she stayed one moment longer, the coach would be a pumpkin again, her horses mice, her coachman a rat, her footmen lizards, and her clothes become just as ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... said Gordon. "I'd sooner run a mile than fight, any time. I'm like a rat if I'm cornered, but it takes a man with a stockwhip to corner me. I never start fighting till I'm done running. But we needn't get into a row. I vote we ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... reproof, so I turned round and felled him like an ox. He up and at me. We closed just as an awful sea made for the ship. All hands saw it coming and took to the rigging, but I had him by the throat, and went on shaking him like a rat, the men above us yelling, "Look out! look out!" Then a crash as if the sky had fallen on my head. They say that for over ten minutes hardly anything was to be seen of the ship—just the three masts and a bit of the forecastle head and ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... of the Azores are limited to the rabbit, weasel, ferret, rat (brown and black), mouse and bat, in addition to domestic animals. The game includes the woodcock, red partridge (introduced in the 16th century), quail and snipe. Owing to the damage inflicted on the crops by the multitude of blackbirds, bullfinches, chaffinches and green canaries, a reward ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... muddying the water, and away she went in a rage. The guardian of the well was enraged, so he wished her three evil wishes, as a punishment for her wickedness. He wished that she should become three times as ugly as she was, that a dead rat should fall from her mouth whenever she laughed, and that the fox-tail grass might spring up in the footsteps wherever she trod. So it was. From that day the wicked girl was called Maiden Foxtail, and very much talk was there among the folk ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... hall. She glanced at the clock, wondering if it could possibly be the postman already, found it was only ten minutes past four, and dismissed the supposition with a sigh. "I don't—think—I want—" she was beginning slowly, when, of a sudden, there came a tremendous rat-tat-tat on the schoolroom door; the handle was not turned, but burst open; a blast of chilly air blew into the room, and in the doorway stood a tall, handsome youth, with square shoulders, a gracefully poised head, and Peggy Saville's eave-like ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... and merry laugh. The ornaments on the wall of the general's quarters gave Stuart many a topic of badinage. Affecting to believe that they were of General Jackson's selection, he pointed now to the portrait of some famous race-horse, and now to the print of some celebrated rat-terrier, as queer revelations of his private tastes, indicating a great decline in his moral character, which would be a grief and disappointment to the pious old ladies of the South. Jackson, with a quiet smile, replied ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... of the city had quieted. Except for an occasional street car or passing automobile a silence brooded over the downtown district. Stray cats appeared to rummage in battered cans and a huge rat darted between ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... should do her a mischief, cried out; and a voice was heard from behind the hangings: 'Help, help, the queen!' which Hamlet hearing, and verily thinking that it was the king himself there concealed, he drew his sword and stabbed at the place where the voice came from, as he would have stabbed a rat that ran there, till the voice ceasing, he concluded the person to be dead. But when he dragged for the body, it was not the king, but Polonius, the old officious counsellor, that had planted himself as a spy behind ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... title of his majesty. God, who had not punished him, cannot, will not punish me, who have done nothing." A strange sound attracted the young man's attention. He looked round him, and saw on the mantel-shelf, just below an enormous crucifix, coarsely painted in fresco on the wall, a rat of enormous size engaged in nibbling a piece of dry bread, but fixing all the time, an intelligent and inquiring look upon the new occupant of the cell. The king could not resist a sudden impulse of fear and disgust: he moved back towards the door, uttering a loud cry; and as if he ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... get back to the room right away," Tommy suggested, "and have peroxide applied to the wounds. I've known of people dying of blood poison occasioned by rat bites." ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... often seen in cultivation, and seemingly a favorite with many. It belongs to a poisonous family and is a dangerous poison. A decoction of its leaves forms a wash, employed in the south of Europe to destroy vermin; and its powdered wood and bark constitute the basis of an efficacious rat-poison. Children have died from eating the flowers. A party of soldiers in Spain, having meat to roast in camp, procured spits and skewers of the tree, which there attains a large size. The wood having been stripped of its bark, and ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... two of them—so far," Ramos hissed. "Maybe here's our chance, Frank, to really smear that rat!" Ramos' eyes had a battlelight. "All right, Tiflin—approach. These guns are lined ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... his fellow-labourer were soon bathed in sweat, while Douglas's hands, unaccustomed to such toil, grew red and raw and blistered under the friction; for the files, as is quite usual in engineering departments, were unprovided with wooden handles over the rat-tail shank. Moreover, the task threatened to be long and difficult, in consequence of the awkwardness of the conditions. Jim's spell of work came to an end after a quarter of an hour, however, and another couple of men took their places at the chain. But they had not been working ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... women. Fash. Thou sayest true. But now for my reception. Lord Fop. [To TAILOR.] Death and eternal tortures! Sir—I say the coat is too wide here by a foot. Tai. My lord, if it had been tighter, 'twould neither have hooked nor buttoned. Lord Fop. Rat the hooks and buttons, sir! Can any thing be worse than this? As Gad shall jedge me, it hangs on my shoulders like a chairman's surtout. Tai. 'Tis not for me to dispute your lordship's fancy. Lory. There, sir, observe ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... belly with a spotted, ash-gray back and was carried along by the currents like a huge, wide-open shawl. Other rays passed by so quickly I couldn't tell if they deserved that name "eagle ray" coined by the ancient Greeks, or those designations of "rat ray," "bat ray," and "toad ray" that modern fishermen have inflicted on them. Dogfish known as topes, twelve feet long and especially feared by divers, were racing with each other. Looking like big bluish ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... presence, remained, which mingled strangely with the odours of the clover in the neuk, and the sour night-smell of the byre. Again there was a perfect silence. Without, a corncrake ground monotonously. A rat scurried along the rafter. Ebie in the silence and the darkness had almost persuaded himself that he had been dreaming, when his foot clattered against something which fell over on the cobble-stones that paved the byre. He ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... the rat meaning Ratcliffe, the cat Catesby, and the hog King Richard, whose cognisance was a boar. Robert Catesby, the descendant of the "cat," was said to be one of the greatest bigots that ever lived; he was the friend of Garnet, the Jesuit, and had been concerned in many plots against ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... stays all to pieces in saving it from being squeezed out of shape, and now this old brute has made a brandy-bottle of it."—"Oh! oh! my young Miss in disguise," replied the farmer, "I thought I smelt a rat when the Captain left the coach, under pretence of walking up the hill—what, I suppose vou are bound for Gretna, both of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Along by the fences, behind the stack, And one by one, through a hole in the wall, In under the dusty barn they crawl, Dressed in their Sunday garments all; And a very astonishing sight was that, When each in his cobwebbed coat and hat Came up through the floor like an ancient rat. And there they hid; And Reuben slid The fastenings back, and the door undid. "Keep dark!" said he, "While I squint an' see what ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... their sticks; and behind them rode Lenox, muffled to the eyes in poshteen and Balaklava cap, his league of leg barely two feet off the ground; his keen little pony—long since christened 'The Rat'—almost as trustworthy on dangerous ground as the donkey himself. And wherever he led, all self-respecting Kashmiri ponies would ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... as nervous as a rat; and, come to think of it, she was the first one to see 'em after they was picked up. It happened right below lawyer Varnum's, down at the bend of the Corbury road, just round about the time that Ruth got engaged to Ned Hale. The young folks was all friends, and I guess she just can't bear to ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... subjects. Biquet tells the story of a rat he has seen: "He was cheeky and comical, you know. I'd taken off my trotter-cases, and that rat, he chewed all the edge of the uppers into embroidery. Of ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... that there bird was like this," he began. "It were about half after four in the morning, summer before last, an' I was just having what I may call my beauty sleep, when all of a sudding there came a most thundering rat-a-tat-tat at ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... finally assented, and at once exchanged the hair-cloth rocker for the sea chair, which she found a great improvement. When Tim came from school he was told of the addition to the furniture in the parlor by his mother, who added, "I smelt a rat at once, and thought it a pity to spoil the young men's fun. Mrs. Amy don't know nothin' about them chairs, no more than the man in the moon, and if Miss Smith had much worldly sense she'd know they never came from Mrs. Amy. But she hain't. She's nothin' but a child, and don't dream that both them ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... insult our men. But they can fight, Madre de Dios! I like see General Castro take your little Commodore Sloat by the neck. He look like a little gray rat." ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... longer the fashion to regard the British as a degenerate race. Still it is good to know that one of our rat clubs has killed no fewer than three hundred of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... large and park-like area, out of which, within brick walls, the vegetable garden had been carved. Old Jolyon avoided this, which did not suit his mood, and made down the hill towards the pond. Balthasar, who knew a water-rat or two, gambolled in front, at the gait which marks an oldish dog who takes the same walk every day. Arrived at the edge, old Jolyon stood, noting another water-lily opened since yesterday; he would show it to Holly to-morrow, when 'his little sweet' had got over the upset which had followed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sofa, licked Daphne's face, put a foot in Berry's eye, barked, hurled himself across the room to where Jonah was playing Patience, upset the card-table, dashed three times round the room, pretended to unearth a rat from the depths of Jill's chair, and finally flung himself exhausted at ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... of the long line of boxes the Ambler was awaiting his toilette, a dark-brown horse, about sixteen hands, with well-placed shoulders, straight hocks, a small head, and what is known as a rat-tail. But of all his features, the most remarkable was his eye. In the depths of that full, soft eye was an almost uncanny gleam, and when he turned it, half-circled by a moon of white, and gave bystanders that look of strange ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... think of. The tide is right out, and there are mysterious green pools under the pier, full of feathery red sea-weed and little darting fishes. Of course, Sam falls into one in his clothes, and comes out looking like a drowned rat. Akela wrings him out and sends him home to get into dry clothes, for the sun is ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... give my name, ma'am. My false friend, the rat, got me into a sad scrape once; and Rowley insists upon it that a duck destroyed me, which ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... at teetotal meetings, to say nothing of the teas to the poor school children and things of that sort. In short, he had been quite an active politician, in the Tory sense of the word, for months past and the poor Liberals had not smelt a rat until the election was ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... a rat in a trap, I had no alternative but to comply with this man's outrageous demands. Despairingly I plied that abominable instrument of torture, the national bucksaw of America. This is the only American institution ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... you're a wise old desert rat, an' I'm a young fool," he said with a twinkle in his gray eyes. "If Bob Long happens this way give him my regards an' tell him they got the reward notices over in California all right, for I saw 'em stuck ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... Brookes, giving him a defiant look: "why, I know it's that there Leather as is skulking about like a rat, and snatching a sheep ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... a millepede, a milleantenna, he knows too well that as a discerner, one who has lost his self-respect no longer commands, no longer LEADS, unless he should aspire to become a great play-actor, a philosophical Cagliostro and spiritual rat-catcher—in short, a misleader. This is in the last instance a question of taste, if it has not really been a question of conscience. To double once more the philosopher's difficulties, there is also the fact that he demands from himself a verdict, a Yea or Nay, not concerning science, but concerning ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... you said no word outright of wipin' out the officers an' takin' control of the ship. You sneaked up to me in the dark; you felt me out before you said a word; you were like a cat watchin' a rathole. Am I a rat? Am I a sneak? Do I have to be whispered to? No, I'm Harrigan, an' anyone who wants to talk to me has got to ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... I think we might and ought to consider a little more fully, and that is, what guarantees have we that Freistner really has the people at the back of him, that he'll be able to cleanse that rat pit at Berlin of the Hohenzollern and his clan of junkers—the most accursed type of politician who ever breathed? We ought to be very sure about this. Fenn's our man. What ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... little further, and she met a rat. So she said: "Rat! rat! gnaw rope; rope won't hang butcher; butcher won't kill ox; ox won't drink water; water won't quench fire; fire won't burn stick; stick won't beat dog; dog won't bite pig; piggy won't get over the stile; and I shan't get home ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... suppressed. Flore sent her master, as the children say, into disgrace. No more tender glances, no more of the caressing little words in various tones with which she decked her conversation,—"my kitten," "my old darling," "my bibi," "my rat," etc. A "you," cold and sharp and ironically respectful, cut like the blade of a knife through the heart of the miserable old bachelor. The "you" was a declaration of war. Instead of helping the poor man with his toilet, handing him what he wanted, forestalling his wishes, looking ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Colonel had been silent also—for what could he say?—but suddenly all four started in their saddles, and Sadie gave a sharp cry of dismay. In the hush of the night there had come from behind them the petulant crack of a rifle, then another, then several together, with a brisk rat-tat-tat, and then after an interval, ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bloodless cheeks, straight as silk. Temple Grace looked as if he were blighted by lightning; and his deep blue eyes gleamed like a hyaena's. The Baron was least changed. Tom Cogit, who smelt that the crisis was at hand, was as quiet as a bribed rat. ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... And thus fanatic saints, though neither in Doctrine nor discipline our brethren, Are brother Protestants and Christians, As much as Hebrews and Philistines: But in no other sense, than nature Has made a rat our fellow-creature. Lice from your body suck their food; But is a louse your flesh and blood? Though born of human filth and sweat, it As well may say man did beget it. And maggots in your nose and chin As well may claim you for their kin. Yet critics may object, why not? Since lice are brethren ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... World's Fair in New York in 1853 President Pierce might have been seen watching a young man exhibiting a patent rat trap. He was attracted by the enthusiasm and diligence of the young man, but never dreamed that he would become one of the richest men in the world. It seemed like small business for Jay Gould to be exhibiting a rat trap, but ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... arrival a prisoner gave me a young rat which became the solace of an otherwise miserable existence. Nothing could he cleaner in its habits or more affectionate in disposition than this pet member of a despised race of rodents. It passed all its leisure time in preening its fur, and after eating always most ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... sides, and fill it with unnecessary doors that can't be shut, and will not open, and abut on pitchy darkness! I wonder why it is not enough that these distrustful genii stand agape at one's dreams all night, but there must also be round open portholes, high in the wall, suggestive, when a mouse or rat is heard behind the wainscot, of a somebody scraping the wall with his toes, in his endeavours to reach one of these portholes and look in! I wonder why the faggots are so constructed, as to know of no effect ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... one of the worst rat holes in the port. Like as not that youngster would have had his brains kicked out in a brawl, or been fried to a crisp when some drunk got wild with a blaster, before the year was out. He'd done him a real ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... could make nothing of the name they gave it, but wrote it down as best he could—Araughcoune. Another new kind of creature was of the size of a rabbit, grayish white, with black ears and a tail like a rat. It would hang by its tail from a tree, until knocked off with a stick, and then curl up with shut eyes and pretend to be dead. It was excellent eating when roasted with wild yams,—rather like a very ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... be, ''The Cat and the Mouse" as in the headings of the Mac. Edit. and "What befel the Cat with the Mouse," as a punishment for tyranny. But all three Edits. read as in the text and I have not cared to change it. In our European adaptations the mouse becomes a rat. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... little children who had been thrown out on the ash heap were being well taken care of. A large rat, of the kind called Bandicote, had heard them crying and had taken pity on them. She drew them down into her hole, which was close by and where they would be safe. She then called twenty of her friends ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... golf to grandchildren. That is what makes dogs the most sympathetic listeners in the world. Could they speak, I fear me they would only tell us about their puppies, or of their new bone, or of the rat they worried to death the last time they scampered through the wood. Cats are far more egotistical, and consequently far more human. They can't talk, it is true; neither can they listen. By their manner we know exactly what interests them at the moment, and if they appear to sympathise with ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... red fire woke in the heart of the town, And a fox from the glen ran away with the hen, And a cat to the cream, and a rat to the cheese; And the stock-dove coo'd, till a kite dropt down, And a salt wind burnt the blossoming trees; O grief for the promise of May, of May, O grief for the promise ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... once said to Miss Burney of her brother Charles:—'I should be glad to see him if he were not your brother; but were he a dog, a cat, a rat, a frog, and belonged to you, I must needs be glad to see him.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 233. On Nov. 25 she called on him. 'He let me in, though very ill. He told me he was going to try what sleeping out of town might do for him. "I remember," said he, "that my wife, when she ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... certain savages, who leave their children to shift for themselves as soon as they are "tall enough to look into the pot"; or, until, as Reclus declares of Apache babies, "they can pluck certain fruit by themselves, and have caught a rat by their own unaided efforts. After this exploit they go and come ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... who came forward to receive them, was a tall, bony woman of very swarthy complexion, with beady eyes and teeth prominent as a rat's. But if ill-favoured, she seemed, at least, well-intentioned, in addition to which the tricolour scarf of office round La Boulaye's waist was a thing that commanded respect and servility, however much it might be the insignia of a Government of ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... of Rose in cap and apron with a big white fichu at her throat, with one red cheek and the corner of the most kissable mouth on the avenue maddeningly visible, soon drove all memory of the Gladwin mansion and the suspicious antics of the "rat-faced little heathen" out of his mind. His one thought was that Rose would have to cross over the way at the fall of dusk and trundle her millionaire infant charge home for its prophylactic pap. There would be a bare chance for about seven or ten words with Rose. But ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... terrible feeling of hopelessness assailed him. His only chance was to reach the valley where he had little fear of capture; but wounded, as he was, that seemed out of the question, and he saw himself caught like a rat in a trap. In an access of rage at the situation in which he was placed he made another effort to raise himself up on his elbow and peer through the window at the Sierras. The noise that he made, slight though it was, awoke the ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... ostler, "I shall manage that easily enough. I shall bolt the doors and fasten them in, and nothing except a rat could get out then." ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... honey," said Uncle Remus, in a soothing tone, "I'll des snatch down yo' pa buggy umbrell' fum up dar in de cornder, des lak I bin a-doin', en I'll take'n take you und' my arm en set you down on Miss Sally h'a'th des ez dry en ez wom ez a rat'-nes' ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... the King caused Douglas' face to darken and his eyes to blaze. He sprang quickly forward, and seized the wretch by the collar just as Nell forced his grip from her arm. He shook him as a terrier would shake a rat and left him at length sprawling in the middle of the road, his clothes all ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... lean-to was a chaotic place, filled to overflowing with pick-axes, spades, elk-horns, musk-rat traps, mining tools, samples of coal, and curiously-colored pieces of rock. Some skins, stretched on boards, were drying on the wall; some rude fishing-rods stood in one corner. The little room was strangely like the Emperor's ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... long over his pet; but from this experience he acquired a great control over animals and always had a supply in hand to train. He carried snakes and bugs and mice and lizards in his pockets and at one time had a white rat that came very near to filling the place of the lost May. If the boys captured an old squirrel, they generally let it go; but sometimes it was retained ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... rats which, amid squeals from the rats and curses from her, she kills amongst the china collection. Then she comes to me, triumphant, expecting congratulations, and accompanied by mosquitoes, and purrs and kneads upon my chest until she hears another rat. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the morning, hung a small colored print of the Madonna. No wonder the people of this land spent so much time crossing themselves and calling upon her for protection—they certainly had cause to. The room, in his opinion, was a veritable rat-hole; the place little better than what one might expect to find in a ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... their own ancient legend of King Lear. Nennius calls it Cair Lerion; and that unblushing romancer, Geoffrey of Monmouth, makes it at once into Cair Leir, the city of Leir. More probably the name is a mixture of Legionis and Ratae, Leg-rat ceaster, the camp of the Legion at Ratae. This, again, grew into Legra ceaster, Leg ceaster, and Lei ceaster, while the word, though written Leicester, is now shortened by south midland voices to Lester. The third Legionis Castra remained always Welsh, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Cairn resumed. "A water rat rose within a foot of me and a kingfisher was busy on a twig almost at my elbow. Twilight was just creeping along, and I could hear nothing but faint creakings of sculls from the river and sometimes the drip of a punt-pole. I thought ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... my prize into port. Had I been followed by the curse of some revengeful old witch I could scarcely have been compelled to encounter more difficulties and mishaps; such a witch as Shakespeare describes as sailing in a sieve, and like a rat without a tail ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... request you to introduce Mr. Peter Bell to the respectable family of the Fudges. Although he may fall short of those very considerable personages in the more active properties which characterize the Rat and the Apostate, I suspect that even you, their historian, will confess that he surpasses them in the more peculiarly legitimate ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... one day, the boy discovered that this wonderfully wise one could neither read nor write. Everybody that the boy knew, in the grown up world, could read and write. The boy himself could even read "cat" and "rat" and "dog." Vaguely the boy wondered, even then, if the old black saint's lack of those commonplace accomplishments accounted, in any way, for his marvelous knowledge ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... questioned the beadle who was coming out of the presbytery. The old Church rat replied:—"Oh, those here are not bad; they are not Prussians, according to what I hear. They come from farther off, I don't know exactly where; and they have all left wives and children at home; they are not so fond of war, I assure you; I am positive that over there they ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... last volume (16) of your interesting miscellany, I was much amused with a humorous legend at page 108, called the Rat's Tower, and according to your reference, having turned to page 68, of vol. xii. was equally entertained with the same laughable and well told story versified. This humorous production is extracted from a work entitled, if I mistake not, "The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... overnight. Some few, in the earlier days of frenzied fiction, had played the market, others the ponies, still others had gone West and developed abandoned gold-mines or obscure water- powers. A number also had grown disgustingly rich from patenting rat-traps or shoe-buttons. One young man had discovered a way to keep worms out of railroad-ties and had promptly bludgeoned the railroad companies out of ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... apologised for the stupidity with which he had fallen aside, thanked his recapturers as for a service, and rejoined the caravan with all his usual gallantry and cheerfulness of mien and bearing. But it is certain he had smelled a rat; for from thenceforth he and Secundra spoke only in each other's ear, and Harris listened and shivered by the tent in vain. The same night it was announced they were to leave the boats and proceed by foot, a circumstance which (as it put an end to the confusion of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at Batavia the comfortless "dos-a-dos," colloquially known as the sado, a vehicle resembling an elementary Irish car, and drawn by a rat-like Timor pony transports us to the fashionable suburb of Weltevreden, away from the steamy port and fever-haunted commercial capital. The march of modern improvement scarcely affects old-world Java, where jolting sado and ponderous milord remain unchanged ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... they made it one of those creatures that sing and croak in the sides of ponds and marshes.14 When Rosalind finds the verses with which her enamored Orlando had hung the trees, she exclaimed, "I was never so berhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat, which I can hardly remember." One of the earliest popular introductions of this Oriental figment to the English public was by Addison, whose Will Honeycomb tells an amusing story of his friend, Jack Freelove, how that, finding his mistress's pet monkey alone one day, he wrote an autobiography ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... been cooler I should have tried to fence a little, since my only resource—I being caught like a rat in a trap that way—was to try to gain time; but I was all in a quiver, just as I suppose he was, with the excitement of the situation and with the excitement of the thunderous night, and his short sharp question jostled ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... cruet stands (with nothing in the bottles), bundles of toothpicks, last week's bread, bright green pickles (that had been dropped into some kind of pungent, commercial acid which would have made excellent rat poison); paper napkins with Corot landscapes printed on them; and plenty of gingersnaps and lady fingers, pretty thoroughly flyblown; the whole supplemented with sheaves of wild flowers cut in the fields with ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... perhaps in a few days she will be mine, yet here I live in this rat-hole!" he said to himself this evening, as he went down the narrow passage into the little yard behind the shop. This evening bundles of boiled herbs were spread out along the wall, the apprentice was scouring ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... just now with the species which is most difficult to catch. They were giants with long gray fur; but if I am not mistaken, there exist black and red kangaroos, rock kangaroos, and rat kangaroos, which are more easy to get hold of. It is reckoned that there are about a ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... southern bank with no sand on the north to confine it or break its force. We made fourteen miles, and halted on the north, after which we had a violent gust about seven o'clock. One of the hunters saw in a pond to the north which we passed yesterday a number of young swans. We saw a large rat, and killed a wolf. Another of our men had a stroke of the sun; he was bled, and took a preparation of nitre ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... impetuous Cow with crumpled horn, Whereon the exacerbating hound was torn, Who bayed the feline slaughter-beast that slew The Rat predaceous, whose keen fangs ran through The textile fibers that involved the grain That lay ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... seeks the etymology of this word in the traditions of the Malays and in books written by themselves. Thus, in a work which has the greatest authority among them, and which is entitled Sul[-a]lates-sal[-a]tin, or Sej[-a]rat mal[-a]yu, ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... was younger and looked less like a drowned rat, remained in the bow, staring back in apprehension at the Indian. The moment he could do ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... and put a few drops of rhodium inside; they are fond of it. Cats are, however, the most reliable rat-traps. There is no difficulty in poisoning rats, but they often die in the walls, and create a dreadful odor, hard to get rid of. When poisoning is attempted, remove or cover all water vessels, even ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... horned figure with a torque occurs on an altar from Reims. He presses a bag, from which grain escapes, and on it an ox and stag are feeding. A rat is represented on the pediment above, and on either side stand Apollo and Mercury.[90] On the altar of Saintes is a squatting but headless god with torque and purse. Beside him is a goddess with a cornucopia, ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... month's due of wages, already trebled in virtue of a service involving risk, should be substantially increased.... But Trudi only snorted and shook her head, and Lady Hannah found herself confronting not only a rat determined upon abandoning a sinking ship, but malignantly inclined to hasten the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... for cooking the latter animal and preferring it to hotchiwitchu barbecued, or ragout of boror. 'You are but half Rommany, brother,' they would say, 'and you feed gorgiko-nes (LIKE A GENTILE), even as you talk. Tchachipen (IN TRUTH), if we did not know you to be of the Mecralliskoe rat (ROYAL BLOOD) of Pharaoh, we should be justified in driving you forth as a juggel-mush (DOG MAN), one more fitted to keep company with wild beasts and ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... tried to push the grating aside. It refused to budge, and he grew frantic, for his breath was fast leaving him. It looked as if he would be drowned like a rat in ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... to Grumpy. "I must stop and settle with her. She has gone too far." And leaving Grumpy to find the rat hole without her help, Mrs. Hen fluttered across the henyard with her head thrust forward, to give her meddlesome neighbor a number of hard pecks and so teach her to mind ...
— The Tale of Grumpy Weasel - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... get out of the ship, you rat," Pyotr Stepanovitch was thinking as he went out into the street. "Well, if that 'imperial intellect' inquires so confidently of the day and the hour and thanks me so respectfully for the information I have given, we mustn't doubt of ourselves. [He grinned.] H'm! But he really isn't stupid... and ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the gunwale to the keel, Rat riddled, bilge bestank, Slime-slobbered, horrible, I saw her reel And drag her oozy flank, And sprawl among the deft young waves, that laughed And leapt, and turned in many a sportive wheel As she thumped ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... gap ban cap an bad bag can map as mad gag fan nap at pad hag pan rap ax sad lag ran hap rat gad tag tan jam sat ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... cook for them. I remebers that me and some other lil gals had a play house, but when they came nigh I got skeered. I just ducked through a hole in the fence and ran out in the field. One of the soldiers seed me and he hollers 'look at that rat run'." ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... face; she is tricked out in a net cap attached to a false front set on awry, and shuffles into the room in her slipshod fashion. She is an oldish woman, with a bloated countenance, and a nose like a parrot's beak set in the middle of it; her fat little hands (she is as sleek as a church rat) and her shapeless, slouching figure are in keeping with the room that reeks of misfortune, where hope is reduced to speculate for the meanest stakes. Mme. Vauquer alone can breathe that tainted air without ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... seven fellos an two hundred rats. I never used to take much stock in those rat stories but I certinly take off my hat to them now. Thats about all you can take off unless you want to get eaten. These fellos will eat anything from the hobnails out of your shoes to a bag of Bull. They make a goat look like a dispeptik. You dont notice them while ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter
... motion of his arm through the wind and rain, summoned a kind of little, white, wooden sarcophagus which was skipping near us on the waves, sculled by two yellow boys stark naked in the rain. The craft approached us, I jumped into it, then through a little trap-door shaped like a rat-trap that one of the scullers threw open for me, I slipped in and stretched myself at full length on a mat in what is called the ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... was in the middle of the night. I've seen as much myself when I waked up in the middle of the night. I took a rat for a tiger once." ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... impossible; she should be obliged to tell Bessie; but she did not oppose the young man whose manner was so masterful, and whom she led to the great, cheerless room with its smoky chimney down which the winter wind was roaring with a dismal sound, while across the hearth a huge rat ran ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... the few steps that led to the front door, and knocked; but as she could only just reach the high knocker, she was not likely to alarm anybody with the noise she made. After a great many little faint raps, which, if anybody heard them, might easily have been mistaken for the attacks of some rat's teeth upon the wainscot, Ellen grew weary of her fruitless toil, and of standing on tiptoe, and resolved, though doubtfully, to go round the house and see if there was any other way of getting ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Her body was thick and long, yet she looked like a dwarf, for she scarcely had any legs, only enormous knees and feet; and her garments were old ragged horse-rugs tied round her body with thongs of hide. She stared at me out of a pair of small black rat eyes, then, setting down her bundle, asked me what I wanted. I told her I was a tired traveller, and wanted food and shelter. 'Shelter you can have: food there is none,' she said; then, taking up her sticks, she ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... is no member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals anywhere near," Kelson exclaimed, eyeing Hamar resentfully. "Wouldn't a mouse or a rat ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... what do you want?" inquired Nebuchadnezzar, with the kind of lisp that turns a rat ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... draw a badger? I am badgered by him, and will blame him, ay, ban him, for he is my curse, my bane; why should I not curse him as Noah cursed that foul whelp Canaan? Beshrew him for a block-head, a little black-browed beetle, a blot of ink, a shifting shadow, a roving rat, a mouse, yes, sir, a very mouse, that creeps in and out of its hole when the old cat is away. Away, Mr. Notary, away; go, good Monsieur Veuillot. There are more conceptions in man than he has yet expressed either in statutes or in testaments. Go; you are a deed-drawer; I'll be a deed doer: ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... length. Out of the seventy million acres of land, forty million are deemed worthy of cultivation. The soil being light and easily worked favors the agriculturist, and New Zealand is free from all noxious animals and venomous reptiles. It is stated that no animal larger than a rat was found here by the discoverers. The remote situation of the country, surrounded by the greatest extent of ocean on the globe, has kept it in a measure unknown to the rest of the world, even in these days of rapid communication with all parts of the earth. Wellington, the capital, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... is no big game to put your courage and your pulse to the test there is always a troop of smaller animals that make game of you and prove your force of resistance. A rat bites your heel whilst you are asleep; the leeches suck your blood; all sorts of insects sting you. These little annoying incidents irritate flesh and spirit and may be the cause of feverishness, but a dose of quinine and a compress over the ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... seventeenth-century Virginia. The Great Plague of London (1665) carried away 69,000 persons, and other cities of Europe had even more disastrous epidemics. During the two years before the first settlers arrived at Jamestown, over 2000 victims were buried in London. The accounts of the ocean voyage indicate rat-infested ships. Ships of the London Company reported plague and death aboard. Virginians took pains to describe their illnesses, and there would have been little difficulty in recognizing this well-known ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... the aid of regulars. But they were not the same sort of men as those who had besieged Louisbourg thirteen years before. The best had volunteered then. The worst had been enlisted now. Of course, there were a few good men with some turn for soldiering. But most were of the wastrel and wharf-rat kind. Wolfe expressed his opinion of them in very vigorous terms: 'About 500 Rangers are come, which, to appearance, are little better than la canaille. These Americans are in general the dirtiest, most contemptible, cowardly dogs that you can conceive. There is no depending upon 'em in ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... the cranes. According to some historians, the Pygmies used to go to the battle, mounted on the backs of goats and rams; but such animals as these must have been far too big for Pygmies to ride upon; so that, I rather suppose, they rode on squirrel-back, or rabbit-back, or rat-back, or perhaps got upon hedgehogs, whose prickly quills would be very terrible to the enemy. However this might be, and whatever creatures the Pygmies rode upon, I do not doubt that they made a formidable appearance, armed with sword and spear, and bow and arrow, blowing their tiny ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... which the air had entered and moaned up the broad-mouthed flue that opened above the range. This was the ominous 'signal' we had heard in answer to the footsteps. The dust was thick over everything, and the only signs of life were the rat-tracks on the floor. We stood still for a few moments, overwhelmed at this solution of the occult 'influence' that had so subtly acted on Annie's nerves, and filled me ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... the Children, at her House, whither her Brother had Removed them. And that sometimes, the Children (only) would see things like Mice, run about the House; and one of them suddenly snap'd one with the Tongs, and threw it into the Fire, where it screeched out like a Rat. At another time, a thing like a Bee, flew at the Face of the younger Child; the Child fell into a Fit; and at last Vomited up a Two-penny Nail, with a Broad Head; affirming, That the Bee brought this Nail, ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... many people thought and did forty years ago. I have no doubt, from my recollection of my Aunt Melissa, Sophronia's mother, that she read all her children's letters. I know she searched my pockets once, thinking I had stolen sugar; I hadn't, that time, and my white rat was in my pocket, and bit her, and I ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... this enterprize of Deacon Henzy's, he had got up a great invention, a new rat trap, that wuz peculier and ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... had at times used it as a shelter when caught over night in its vicinity. During subsequent visits he found an overhang in the rock behind the original fill that made a second smaller chamber and in this he had as a boy cached his mink and rat traps and the discard of his ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... he can't," cried Farmer Tallington, "he'll die like a rat in a corner, biting, so look out. He's got that long gun of his loaded and ready for the first man who goes up to yon hut, ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... disgorged its bowels—riveted plates and dishes, halves of china bowls, cracked tumblers, broken wineglasses, phials of forgotten physic, papers of unknown powders, seeds and dried herbs, tops of teapots, and stoppers of departed decanters—from the rag hole in the garret, to the rat hole in the cellar, no place escapes unrummaged. It would seem as if the day of general doom had come, and the utensils of the house were dragged ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... from a few yards to nearly a mile in thickness, of fine or coarse grained, dark-green hornblendic slate; this again often passing into chloritic schist. These passages seem chiefly due to changes in the mica, and its replacement by other minerals. At Rat Island I examined a mass of chloritic schist, only a few yards square, irregularly surrounded on all sides by the gneiss, and intricately penetrated by many curvilinear veins of quartz, which gradually BLEND ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... still, as when he opened it an hour before; the leaves were motionless, and the light of the stars showed the placid fields on both sides of the brook quite empty of visible life. Adam walked round the house, and still saw nothing except a rat which darted into the woodshed as he passed. He went in again, wondering; the sound was so peculiar that the moment he heard it it called up the image of the willow wand striking the door. He could ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... not, Ellen—would you? I'd rather err on the safe side, seems to me. Do let's be polite, at least! Yes, I'll knock," and a timid rat-tat-tat, made by a small kid-covered knuckle, announced the first visit of the present owner ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... I was wet as a drowned rat, and had a black mark across my nose. I would have made ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... aprons bags which they filled with sugar from the casks; or they took with them bladders for stealing the rum. Some waded about in the mud at low tide to catch anything that was thrown to them from the ships. Some obtained admission to the ship as rat-catchers, and in that capacity were able to carry away plunder previously concealed by their friends; some, called scuffle-hunters, stood on the quays as porters, carrying bags under their long white aprons in which to ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... but food is at once placed around it, and ashes are liberally strewn over and around the corpse, to enable the relatives to discover, by the tracks, into what kind of animal the dead has changed. At night some fox or coyote, polecat or rat, is sure to be attracted by the smell of the food; but the people believe that it was the departed who returned in the form of the animal to get his food. A shaman, without even looking at the tracks, may be able to tell what animal shape ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... get overtaken," he owned. "I was awful discouraged, the night I struck here. I didn't care whether school kept or not. But 'twas Lew Parker's whiskey," he added, twinkling at her. "That whiskey'd poison a rat." ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... generally considered rat and mouse destroyers. I dare say they are, though the two I once kept (I drowned them in the cistern) were more notorious as crockery destroyers than anything else. I thought, on the whole, that they exterminated more raw beef than rats and mice, so I consigned ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... wasn't trained to hunt, and never killed a rat, And isn't much on tricks or looks or birth—well, what of that? That might be said of lots of folks whom men call great and wise, As well as of that yellow dog that ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... or Canada pouched rat, is a very remarkable burrower, as it will dig under-ground passages extending in lateral galleries in all directions. It is difficult to capture, as it keeps open a means of escape on every side. The mischief ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... day. He does so every year. Out of hearing of all the clamour, the rural Pan may be found stretched on Ranmore Common, loitering under Abinger pines, or prone by the secluded stream of the sinuous Mole, abounding in friendly greetings for his foster-brothers the dab-chick and water-rat. ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... had not wanted courage, have ended in unbelief; in "faint possible Theism," which I like considerably worse than Atheism. Such, I could not but feel, deserve the fate they find here; the bat fate: to be killed among the rats as a bird, among the birds as a rat.... Nay, who knows but it is doubts of the like kind in your own mind that keep you for a time inactive even now? For the rest, that you have liberty to choose by your own will merely, is a great blessing: too rare for those that could use it so well; nay, often it is difficult ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... you wish to remember me in your prayers, je suis le Comte Blowfly, du Rat Mort, Clacton-on-Sea. Telegraphic address, Muckheap. And there's ten francs ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... bird known as the loon, to whom he appealed for aid in the task of restoring the world. The loon dived in search of a little mud, as material for reconstruction, but could not reach the bottom. A musk-rat made the same attempt, but soon reappeared floating on his back, and apparently dead. Manabozho, however, on searching his paws, discovered in one of them a particle of the desired mud, and of this, together with the body ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... beautiful. Her skin was like a trout pool—clear and yet brown. I never saw any eyes like her eyes, though our neighbour's—the Water Rat—at times recalls them. Her hair was the colour of ripe blackberries in a hot hedge—very ripe ones, with the bloom on. She moved like a snake. I have seen my father chase a snake more than once, and I have seen ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... naked desolation. This, however, Scott told me, was an ancient hereditary property called Lauckend, about as valuable as the patrimonial estate of Don Quixote, and which, in like manner, conferred an hereditary dignity upon its proprietor, who was a laird, and, though poor as a rat, prided himself upon his ancient blood, and the standing of his house. He was accordingly called Lauckend, according to the Scottish custom of naming a man after his family estate, but he was more generally known through the country round by the name of Lauckie Long Legs, from the length ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... a chaperon visit us. I feared it would become known, and we would receive a reprimand. She was decidedly giddy, and she sat on the arm of the easy-chair there and giggled and said it must be so nice to be a boy and go to Yale. After a while I began to smell a rat. I got up and took a closer look at her. Say, she was gotten up in great shape! It was that little ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... that yellow Satan," he said. "I would sacrifice a year of my life to see his rat's body on the ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... your evidence, Mullins, but if we go into this case it's no use letting the police smell the competitive rat too soon. Inquests are not in my line, and they'd have wondered what the devil I was doing there, especially as you refrained from saying you were ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... fight, won't he! He thinks I will die like a rat in a trap with all my life before me. I will not. I offered him a fair chance of revenging himself—I would have fired into the air—and if he won't take it is his own look-out, damn him! He can shoot me at sight if he ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... the rich,—not tasking their ingenuity to devise new laws, but faithfully enforcing those which were already made, rather bending their attention to prevent evil than to punish it; ever recollecting that civil magistrates should consider themselves more as guardians of public morals than rat-catchers employed to entrap public delinquents. Finally, he exhorted them, one and all, high and low, rich and poor, to conduct themselves as well as they could, assuring them that if they faithfully and conscientiously complied with this golden rule, there was no danger but that they would ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... were soon bathed in sweat, while Douglas's hands, unaccustomed to such toil, grew red and raw and blistered under the friction; for the files, as is quite usual in engineering departments, were unprovided with wooden handles over the rat-tail shank. Moreover, the task threatened to be long and difficult, in consequence of the awkwardness of the conditions. Jim's spell of work came to an end after a quarter of an hour, however, and another couple of men took their places at the chain. But they had not been working more than five minutes ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... talking about the little chap, and screeching that 'folks like him oughtn't to be admitted in a place that's SUPPOSED to be for ladies and gentlemen,' and 'Paul, will you kindly call the manager, so I can report this dirty rat?' and—Oof! Maybe I wasn't glad when I could sneak inside and ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... sights and sounds which were most prominent among the illusions of my childhood. Sights and sounds were equally distinct and lifelike. I have run up-stairs obedient to a spectral call. Every successive night for a fortnight, my childish breath was stilled by the proceedings of a spectral rat, audible, never visible. It nightly, at the same hour, burst open a cupboard door, scampered across the floor, and shook the chair by my bedside. Wide awake and alone in the broad daylight, I have heard ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... loft. This character he assumed, and no doubt it fitted him better than either the English cobbler or the German doctor; besides, as he said, sham court costume is always the easiest to contrive: but Cherry was by no means prepared to find the Rat-like poet the secret admirer of a daughter of the Serene Highness who ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with their varied complaints. A child whose arm has been badly scalded months before, and who has received no treatment during that period but an application of rat oil and charred matting, is in a revolting condition, a pitiful sight indeed. A young woman who has lost her eyesight attributes her affliction to a fit of violent temper, when for a whole day she worked herself into a frenzy, and cried until the power of sight was gone. The ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... to find auguries in things they witnessed. For example, if they left their house and met on the way a serpent or rat, or a bird called Tigmamanuguin which was singing in the tree, or if they chanced upon anyone who sneezed, they returned at once to their house, considering the incident as an augury that some evil might befall them if they should continue their journey—especially ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... the water butt where the maids come to draw water for the scrubbing at 5 A.M.? And the boiler room gets in its best bumps for nineteen, and the patent ventilators work just next door, and there's a pet rat that makes his headquarters in the wall between eighteen and nineteen, and the housekeeper whose room is across the hail is afflicted with a bronchial cough, nights. I'm wise to the brand of welcome that you fellows hand out to us women on the ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... dangerous rat!" thought the innkeeper, frowning. "He has the look of a priest, but he wears a dark coat. He has left gold and jewels with me to the value of a talent, and he neither eats meat nor drinks wine. He must be a great prophet or a very ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... Froghole, Foxhole). What an exhibit for London! Did he realise his own value, he would soon come forth. I joke, but the existence of this antique person is firmly believed in. Sparrows are called 'spadgers.' The cat wandering about got caught in the rat-clams—i.e. a gin. Another cat was the miller's favourite at the windmill, a well-fed, happy, purring pussy, fond of the floury miller—he as white as snow, she as black as a coal. One day pussy was ingeniously ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... of your refractory lads, you were to shut him in the cellar. A storm comes on during the night, the gutter gets choked up, the cellar fills with water, and next morning you find the little cherub drowned like a rat in his hole?" ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... Rat, Omisalj, Ploce, Pula, Rijeka, Sibenik, Split, Vukovar (inland waterway port on ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... and cursed himself for a fool, and wished again.... At last he could bear it no longer, so he went to a water-rat who was so old that he was said to be wise, and ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Dereham is more like a little white rat than a man, and swears more than he converses—which would be very shocking if it were not for his lisp, which makes it very funny—needless to say, my diary dear, your Molly is not in love with ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... health, and thence, after a short stay, to Ireland, leaving behind him a letter which, says Pope, "affected me so much that it made me like a girl." It was a gloomy parting, and the last. The stern Dean retired to die "like a poisoned rat in a hole," after long years of bitterness, and finally of slow intellectual decay. He always retained perfect confidence in his friend's affection. Poor Pope, as he says in the verses on ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... most sadly flurried; And, coming back, thrust out her head, Which, sticking there, she said, "This is the hole, there can't be blunder: What makes it now so small, I wonder, Where, but the other day, I pass'd with ease?" A rat her trouble sees, And cries, "But with an emptier belly; You enter'd ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... of trade; and they have noble granaries for depositing it. Apparently there is a great conflux of people, and much business stirring. I quickly perceived, in the midst of this ever-moving throng, my old friend the vender of rat-destroying powders—busied in the exercise of his calling, and covered with his usual vestment of white, spotted or painted with black rats. He found plenty of hearers and plenty of purchasers. All was animation and bustle. In the midst of it, a man came forward to the edge of a bank—below ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the shepherd say if I brought home one of his hated enemies no bigger than a rat? The young rabbit made waiting still more painful, being far enough from the hedge to get a clear view into the recess if anything attracted his notice. Why the shepherd hated rabbits was because the sheep would not feed where they had worn their runs in the grass. Not the least movement was ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... trial began Judge Post sent for a noted gunfighter named Danny Miller. And during all those weary three months of the trial he could be seen trotting around after Post, his mustache turned up, a la William of Germany, like a rat terrier following a mastiff, to the infinite amusement of the small boy and utter disgust of sensible men. Gibson, the noted San Francisco detective, was here, assisted by other detectives and a dozen or more local head hunters, who were after a share of the big reward. ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... than Thracian growth. Now Wolf is all to her: Wolf enters in At midnight; I am a cypher in her eyes; The poor Megarian, nowhere in the race. All would go right, if I could once unlove: But now, you wot, the rat hath tasted tar. And what may cure a swain at his wit's end I know not: Simus, (true,) a mate of mine, Loved Epichalcus' daughter, and took ship And came home cured. I too will sail the seas. Worse men, it may be better, are afloat, I shall ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... foremen what wages these men and women received. He told me. It seemed impossible that human life could be maintained upon such a pittance. I then asked whether they ever ate meat. "No," he said, "except when they had a rat or mouse" "A rat or mouse!" I exclaimed. "Oh yes," he replied, "the rats and mice were important articles of diet,—just as they had been for centuries in China. The little children, not yet able to work, fished for them in the sewers, ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... donkey-cart, broken a gate, and finally, on arriving at the place of her birth, had, according to the farmer, "fired the divil's pelt of a kick into her own mother's stomach". Moreover, she "hadn't as much sound skin on her as would bait a rat-trap"—I here quote Mr. Trinder—and she had fever in all ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... determined to save at least this last relic as a trophy of his prowess, the young Inca gave orders for the head to be hauled inboard; but upon the first attempt to do this, one of the monsters made a savage rush and seized the head in its great jaws, worrying it as a dog worries a rat, giving utterance as it did so to a succession of horrid grunting kind of growls that caused most of the hearers to break into a cold perspiration. So tenaciously did the brute retain its grip that for a few minutes the onlookers were ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... to see poor wild animals persecuted and murdered, lose my appetite for dinner at hearing the screams of a hare pursued by greyhounds, and am silly enough to feel disgust and horror at the squeals of a rat in the fangs of a terrier, which one of the sporting tribe once told me were the sweetest ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... be there always," exclaimed Maitre Valandier. "Unless ... unless Citizen Broquet, who no doubt smelt a rat, succeeded in ferreting them out. But this is an unlikely supposition, for Citizen Broquet ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... him something like an education—Keredec's phrase is 'restore mind to his soul'! What must have been quite as vital was to get him out of his horrible wife's clutches. And they did it, for she could not find him. But she picked up that rat in the garden out yonder—he'd been some sort of stable-manager for Harman once—and set him on the track. He ran the poor boy down, and yesterday she followed him. Now it amounts to a species ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... may be two species of water-rats. Ray says, and Linnaeus after him, that the water-rat is web-footed behind. Now I have discovered a rat on the banks of our little stream that is not web-footed, and yet is an excellent swimmer and diver: it answers exactly to the mus amphibius of Linnaeus (see Syst. Nat.), which he says 'natat in fossis et urinator.' I should ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... Dogs in their habits and instincts. It is a physiological peculiarity which leads the Greyhound to chase its prey by sight—that enables the Beagle to track it by the scent—that impels the Terrier to its rat-hunting propensity—and that leads the Retriever to its habit of retrieving. These habits and instincts are all the results of physiological differences and peculiarities, which have been developed from a common stock, at least ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... their dog's name, or, indeed, to wonder about anything at all, Snap made another frantic leap, and seizing hold of the old gentleman's white beard, dragged it off his chin, and darted off round the table with it in his mouth, shaking it as if it were a rabbit or a rat! ...
— The Gap in the Fence • Frederica J. Turle
... did you get by the lodge, Joe?" inquired Drysdale. Joe, be it known, had been forbidden the college for importing a sack of rats into the inner quadrangle, upon the turf of which a match at rat-killing had come off between the terriers of two gentlemen-commoners. This little event might have passed unnoticed, but that Drysdale had bought from Joe a dozen of the slaughtered rats, and nailed them on the doors of the four ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... "Astonishing," said She, "I can't find the top of him!" Then She took one of his spines between two fingers and carried him home that way—I dancing behind her—and put him in her work basket. After a while the horrid beast unrolled himself, stuck out a pig-like nose, opened two shiny rat's eyes and raised himself, holding fast by his little paws, which were exactly like a mole's. "How pretty he is," She cried, "a real little black pig." I stood near the table groaning with covetousness, but She didn't pluck him for me, not then, ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... crippled in money matters. They played the deal out, and nearly all were broke. At the end of the deal I said, "Boys, I will have to quit you, as it is too much of a seesaw game;" and then they commenced to smell a rat, and you would have given $100 to have heard them cursing for not watching me shuffle that deal. The game closed with nearly all the money won; some of them I had to loan money, to pay ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... man in the moon, Coming back too soon From the famous town of Norwich, Caught up the dish, Said, "It's just what I wish To hold my cold plum-porridge!" Gave the cow a rat-tat, Flung water on the cat, And sent him away like a rocket. Said, "O Moon there you are!" Got into her car, And went off with ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... necessarily proportioned to the quantity of light which that transaction affords, as to the way in which good or evil may hereafter be produced. The poisoning of an emperor is in one sense a far more serious matter than the poisoning of a rat. But the poisoning of a rat may be an era in chemistry; and an emperor may be poisoned by such ordinary means, and with such ordinary symptoms, that no scientific journal would notice the occurrence. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of divers mates of East Indiamen, smoked his smuggled cigars under the very nose of the Custom House, and made appointments on 'Change with men in glazed hats and round jackets pretty well every day. On the Surrey side of the river was a small rat-infested dreary yard called 'Quilp's Wharf,' in which were a little wooden counting-house burrowing all awry in the dust as if it had fallen from the clouds and ploughed into the ground; a few fragments ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... stop at the little stalls on the stairs, and they have bought there each a candle. The old man has a plain taper, but the little lad must have one with his emblem on it. Each day has its own sign, a tiger for Monday, and so on, and the lad buys a candle like a little rat, for his birthday is Friday, and the father and son go on to the platform. There they kneel down side by side, the old man and the little chubby lad, and they, too, say that all is misery and delusion. ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... if you write rejoinders they have a contributor working for them for nothing, and one whose writing will be much more acceptable to their readers than any that comes from their own anonymous scribes. It is very disagreeable to be worried like a rat by a dog; but why should you go into the kennel and unnecessarily put yourself in the way of it?" The Doctor had said this more than once to clerical friends who were burning with indignation at something that had been written ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... out of the heap. A fang pierced his eye. Even then no cry came from Wapi, the Walrus. He heaved upward with his giant body. He found another throat, and it was then that he rose above the pack, shaking the life from his victim as a terrier would have shaken a rat. For the first time the Eskimos saw him, and out of their superstitious souls strange cries found utterance as they sprang back and shrieked out to Rydal that it was a devil and not a beast that had waited for them in the trail. Rydal threw up his rifle. ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... hands; Nor evil counsellors to bring To justice that seduce the King; 770 Nor for the worship of us men, Though we have done as much for them. Th' AEgyptians worshipp'd dogs, and for Their faith made internecine war. Others ador'd a rat, and some 775 For that church suffer'd martyrdom. The Indians fought for the truth Of th' elephant and monkey's tooth, And many, to defend that faith, Fought it out mordicus to death. 780 But no beast ever was so slight, For man, as for his God, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... before me, moving backwards and keeping his eyes fixed upon mine, as I have seen a rat do when a snake is about to swallow it. Now we were upon the edge of the crater, and looking over I saw an awful sight. For there, some thirty feet beneath us, the red-hot lava glowing sullenly beneath a shifting pall of smoke, rolled and spouted ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... kind of cry, and whipped up-stairs into the cabinet. It was but for one minute that I saw him, but the hair stood upon my head like quills. Sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask upon his face? If it was my master, why did he cry out like a rat, and run from me? I have served him long enough. And then..." The man paused and passed his ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... Eloise finally assented, and at once exchanged the hair-cloth rocker for the sea chair, which she found a great improvement. When Tim came from school he was told of the addition to the furniture in the parlor by his mother, who added, "I smelt a rat at once, and thought it a pity to spoil the young men's fun. Mrs. Amy don't know nothin' about them chairs, no more than the man in the moon, and if Miss Smith had much worldly sense she'd know they never ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... hut is Mameena?" asked Saduko sternly, while I, smelling a rat, began to chuckle ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... he cried. 'This is some of your work. Now we are all undone. And my mistresses? SACRE! if I had that gun I would shoot you like a rat.' ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... ill-tempered boys who used to make me anxious. Those were definite faults and brought definite punishment; it was the hard-hearted, virtuous, ambitious, sensible boys, who were good-humoured and respectable and selfish, who bothered me; one wanted to shake them as a terrier shakes a rat—but there was nothing to get hold of. They were a credit to themselves and to their parents and to the school; and yet they ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... inch from the bottom of one slot to another. Take the compass and divide to seven-thirty-seconds of an inch and press one point at G, D, A, E, allowing a fair margin at both sides of the ebony, not above, say one-eighth of an inch good. Then use either of the rat tail files, 27, and carefully file to depths required, which must be so as to allow a playing card to slip comfortably under the E string when taut, a little more space for the other three being necessary, especially the G. Rub a ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... cavalry unexpectedly ran into a heavy force of Germans, and before we realized what was happening we were in a very warm corner indeed. Bullets were kicking up little spurts of dust about us; bullets were tang-tanging through the trees and clipping off twigs, which fell down upon our heads; the rat-tat-tat of the German musketry was answered by the angry snarl of the Belgian machine-guns; in a field near by the bodies of two recently killed cuirassiers lay sprawled grotesquely. The Belgian troopers were stretched flat upon the ground, a veteran English correspondent was giving ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... one of the Bugis settlements which have large pineapple plantations. Such delicious pineapples as those in northern Borneo, with an unusual abundance of juice and very slightly acid, I had never before tasted. A gigantic white rat, about the size of a rabbit, which had been caught working havoc with the pineapples, was offered me for sale alive. I afterward regretted that, owing to the great difficulty of transportation, I declined, as no doubt it was a rare, if ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... board, his innocent heart long quiet, and all warm with sunshine. His long hind legs were stiff, his tiny forepaws clutched upon his breast, as if to leap; his poor life cut short upon that mountain by some unknown accident. But the Kangaroo rat, it proved, was no such unknown animal; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... poor people's cottage, and teach them how to make the beds, and how to make plum pudding out of turnip-tops, and venison cutlets out of rusty bacon. He showed the fencing-master how to fence, and the professional cricketer how to bowl, and instructed the rat-catcher in breeding terriers. He set sums to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and assured the Astronomer Royal that the sun does not go round the earth—which, for my part, I believe it does. The young ladies of the court disliked ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... for an instant swept across me. He gave a shriek and flung away both the candle and the pan of rice, bolting for the door. I called to him to stop. For answer he slammed the door—and locked it. Nor did my calls stay the slap of his retreating feet. I was caught fast as a rat in ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... out the other way and alarm the 'ouse?' And that raised the siege, Bunny. In comes the old woman, as plucky as he was, and shoves the necklace into my left hand. I longed to refuse it. I didn't dare. And the old beast took her and shook her like a rat, until I covered him again, and swore in German that if he showed himself on the balcony for the next two minutes he'd be ein toter Englander! That was the other bit I'd got off pat; it was meant to mean 'a dead Englishman.' And I left the fine old girl clinging ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... the common people, and the verse is in the old Saxon manner, with accent and alliteration. The scene is a council of rats and mice (common people) called to consider how best to deal with the cat (court), and it satirizes the popular agitators who declaim against the government. The speaker is a rat, "a raton of renon, most renable ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... they were, I sat still. Occasionally I heard them laugh, but under their breath as it were; and persuaded by this that they were bent on a frolic, I might have persisted in my silence until midnight, which was not more than two hours off, had not a slight sound, as of a rat gnawing behind the wainscot, drawn my attention to the door. Raising my candle and shading my eyes I espied something small and bright protruding beneath it, and sprang up, thinking they were about to prise ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... out for that, sir," replied the captain. "He and his chum were looking for this fellow this morning, and found out where he lay, from the shore. I think he will be able to locate him from the water, and if he does I'll have the rat out of his hole in a brace of shakes, provided you ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... nest he had found in the lightning-shattered top of the redwood, and she discovered a wood-rat's nest which he had not seen before. Next they took the old wood-road and came out on the dozen acres of clearing where the wine grapes grew in the wine-colored volcanic soil. Then they followed the cow-path through more woods and thickets and scattered glades, and dropped ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... turned to so good account as what is employed upon their furrieries. The animals therefore which supply these come next to be considered; and these are, the common fox, the stoat, or ermine, the zibeline, or sable, the isatis, or arctic fox, the varying hare, the mountain rat, or earless marmot, the weasel, the glutton, or wolverene, the argali, or wild sheep, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... the door, and Chrysantheme starts back uttering a fearful cry. I should have thought the robbers were there, had I not seen a little grey creature, rapid and noiseless, rush by her and disappear; a young rat that had been eating rice on the top of a shelf, and, in its alarm, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... made a sudden investigation of the palace at four o'clock in the morning; when a scene of the most whimsical confusion ensued. Hosts of supernumerary inhabitants were found foisted into the huge edifice; every rat-hole had its occupant; and places which had been considered as tenanted only by spiders were found crowded with a surreptitious population. It is added that many ludicrous accidents occurred; great scampering and slamming of doors, and whisking away in nightgowns and slippers; and several ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... animals which have been observed within the limits of the ancient Media are the lion, the tiger, the leopard, the bear, the beaver, the jackal, the wolf, the wild ass, the ibex or wild goat, the wild sheep, the stag, the antelope, the wild boar, the fox, the hare, the rabbit, the ferret, the rat, the jerboa, the porcupine, the mole, and the marmot. The lion and tiger are exceedingly rare; they seem to be found only in Azerbijan, and we may perhaps best account for their presence there by considering that ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... recent editorial. Van Buren was always cartooned as a fox or a rat. Horace Greeley told me once that he had not had a sound sleep for fifteen years, and he was finally put to death by American politics. The cartoons of Mr. Blaine and Mr. Cleveland during their election battle, as compared to those of fifty years before, were seraphic as the themes ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... I can get him to stay will you stay too, Jombateeste? I don't like to see a rat leaving a ship; the ship's sure to sink, if he does. How do you suppose I'm going to run Lion's Head without you to throw down hay to the horses? It will be ruin to me, sure, Jombateeste. All the guests know how you play on the pitchfork out there, and they'll leave in a body if they hear you've ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Lady Clifford who spoke. There was a brittle, intensely Gallic intonation about the query with its upward inflection, reminding one somehow of a postman's knock, a sort of rat-tat-tat. ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... reader would hand over his correspondence to his parents; and perhaps there is no greater test of a man's regularity and easiness of conscience, than his readiness to face the postman. Blessed is he who is made happy by the sound of the rat-tat! The good are eager for it: but the naughty tremble at the sound thereof. So it was very kind of Mrs. Pendennis doubly to spare Pen the trouble of hearing or ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Three little taps—rat, tat, tat! Surprised, Gombauld turned his eyes towards the door. Nobody ever disturbed him while he was at work; it was one of the unwritten laws. "Come in!" he called. The door, which was ajar, swung ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... no answer. He felt more strongly than ever that he needed good eyes and firm nerves. To be killed like a rat in a trap! His blood ran too warm in his veins to submit tamely to this. When the struggle should come yonder it mattered little whether it was by Edmonson's shot or another's, for if he fell in the heat of the conflict it ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... wondrous fat; Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister Than a too-long-opened oyster, Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous For a plate of turtle green and glutinous.) "Only a scraping of shoes on the mat? Anything like the sound of a rat ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... 'A water-rat from off the bank Plunged in the stream. With idle care, Downlooking through the sedges rank, I ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... home-sick desires; always thither the wings of my hopeless fancy bore me first of all; it was, oh! to tread that sunlit grassy brink once more, and to watch the merry tadpoles swarm, and the green frog takes its header like a little man, and the water-rat swim to his hole among the roots of the willow, and the horse-leech thread his undulating way between the water-lily stems; and to dream fondly of the delightful, irrevocable past, on the very spot of all where I and mine ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... the wilderness Of palaces lifting their marbles of snow. I stood in my gondola. Up and all down I pushed through the surge of the salt-flood street Above me, below. . . Twas only the beat Of the sea's sad heart. . . Then I heard below The water-rat building, but nothing but that; Not even the sea bird screaming distress, As she lost her way ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... end to his endeavours by jumping upon the mop and pinning it to the floor very much as he would have stamped upon a wounded rat. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... left empty What that poor mouthful crams. His heart is builded For pride, for potency, infinity, All heights, all deeps, and all immensities, Arrased with purple like the house of kings,— To stall the grey-rat, and the carrion-worm Statelily lodge. Mother of mysteries! Sayer of dark sayings in a thousand tongues, Who bringest forth no saying yet so dark As we ourselves, thy darkest! We the young, In a little thought, in a little ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... will be there always," exclaimed Maitre Valandier. "Unless ... unless Citizen Broquet, who no doubt smelt a rat, succeeded in ferreting them out. But this is an unlikely supposition, for Citizen Broquet ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... responded to Ralston's signal like the loyal, honest little brute she was. The gravel flew behind them, and the rat-a-tat-tat of the horses' hoofs on the hard road was like the roll of a drum. They were running neck and neck, but Ralston had little fear of the result, unless ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... necessary, if uninteresting, pursuit was left entirely to her own discretion—for no one ever dreamed of ordering Norah to the piano—it is small wonder if it suffered beside the superior attractions of riding Bobs, rat trapping, "shinning up" trees, fishing in the lagoon and generally disporting herself as a maiden may whom conventional restrictions ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... quickly, 'lands on the coast of Queensland; he comes to Sydney—no work; to Melbourne—no work; he goes to Ball'rat—work there at a gold-mine. Braulard takes the name of Vandeloup and makes money; he comes to Melbourne, lives there a year, he is in want of money, he is in despair; at the theatre he overhears a plan which will give him money, but he needs capital— despair again, he will ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... an ugly dwarf on the top of his ladder, with a red-edged volume upon his bony knees, his head half-buried in a rough fur cap, small grey eyes, wide misshapen mouth, humps on back and shoulders, a most uninviting object, the familiar spirit—the rat, as Sperver would have it—of this last refuge of all the learning belonging to the princely ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... the board, again down one side, and then on a corner, but always on the edge. Nor was it a regular and monotonous rapping; it was curiously varied. One performance that I carefully noted down at the moment reminded me of the click of a telegraph instrument. It was "rat-tat-tat-t-t-t-t-rat-tat,"—the first three notes rather quick and sharp, the next four very rapid, and the last two quite slow. After tapping, the bird always seemed to listen. Often while I was watching one at his hammering, a signal of the ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... which told of a certain rat who, weary of the anxieties of this world, retired to a cheese, therein to live in peace. Profound solitude reigned around the hermit. He worked so hard with his feet and his teeth that in a few days he had a spacious dwelling and food in plenty. ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... lady was a person of unblemished reputation, and that she was placed in a false position through no fault of her own. In plain English, she was divorced. Ah, my dear (to speak in the vivid language of the people), do you smell a rat? ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... condemn. Think of daring the blue brine with a chart of the Eighty-Nine, and "a regular goldmine" in one huge black hulk! Whilst the lubbers stick to that, I shall flourish and grow fat like a shark or ocean-rat, though old NEP ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... and then shouts and calls broke the stillness, and faces would flush with excitement at the sound; but the shouts always died away again into silence, and at last there came a trooper into the hall to salute the company and report that there was no one hidden in any of the places without. Not a rat or a mouse could have failed to be turned out after the stringent search to which ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... glorious dragon-fly made a mist about him with his long wings. And over all, the sun hung in the sky, pouring down life; shining on the roots of the willows at the bottom of the stream; lighting up the black head of the water-rat as he hurried across to the opposite bank; glorifying the rich green lake of the grass; and giving to the whole an utterance of love and hope and joy, which was, to him who could read it, a more certain and ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... and adore them, which is absurd; for adoration is the homage due from a creature to its creator; now here man is the creator; so the statues ought to worship him, and would, if they had brains enough to justify a rat in worshipping them. But even this abuse, though childish enough to be modern, is ancient. The pagan vulgar in these parts made their images, then knelt before them, adorned them with flowers, offered incense to them, lighted tapers before them, carried them in procession, and made ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... advantages being equal, is the most "correct thing" in the University; none can compete with them, unless it be the gentlemen commoners of Magdalen. The Christchurch noblemen, or tufts, are considered the leaders of fashion, whether it be in mediaeval furniture, or rat hunting, boating, or steeple- chase riding, old ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... insects, an occasional rat, and a few unfortunate prisoners, there were no other inhabitants in this dark prison. A flock of jackdaws had built their nest beneath the eaves of the old castle, and as they received good treatment ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... The hair had slipped from its body, leaving the skin shiny and slate-blue. The ears and head were furred, and the legs; tufts of hair sprouted from the shoulders and along the spine, but flanks and sides were bare and the long tail was rat-like, its joints showing through the tight-stretched skin. The lips were drawn back and revealed the blue gums receding from loosened teeth. This was the result of poison that had ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... opportunity offered, he continued to use his clubbed weapon. Something smote him heavily, at last—whether a hoof or a gun-stock he could not tell- -and next he was on all-fours, trying to drag himself out of this rat-pit. But his limbs were queerly rebellious, and he was sick; he had never experienced anything quite like this and he thought he must be wounded. It greatly surprised him to find that he could struggle upward through the brambles, even though ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... indiscriminately call him Bob, Robert, and Wilson. Decide on one of the three and use that one invariably. If your character travels under an alias, being known as Montgomery in society, and Jimmy the Rat in the underworld, do not call him Montgomery in the society scenes and The Rat when he gets among his proper associates. Call him Montgomery straight through, and the first time he changes from Jekyll to Hyde tell ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... a cornered rat," replied Jack, aiming both revolvers at a huddled figure well in under the lower berth. "Come out, Gray! You won't be hurt unless ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... quick-firing gun. Without waiting to aim it, he tugged at the trigger. Nothing happened! He threw open the breech and gazed impotently at the base of the shell. It was untouched. The ship was ringing with cries of anger, of hate, with rat-like ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... discussion on opera prospects, during which Alston Lake succeeded in giving Crayford an impression that there might be some secret in connection with Claude Heath's opera. This set the impresario bristling. He was like a terrier at the opening of a rat-hole. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... America, presents us with another curious instance of vegetable irritability; its leaves are armed with spines on their upper edge, and are spread on the ground around the stem; when an insect creeps on any of them in its passage to the flower or seed, the leaf shuts up like a steel rat-trap, and destroys its enemy. See Botanic Garden, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... de all-firedest fools I eber see'd. How does you s'pects I's gwine to light on toder side. Ef one of you'll take me on your back, I won't mind lettin' you try to carry me over; but I tells you I ain't agwine to try it. So you can shut up yer rat-traps." ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... moor-hen, flapper, coot, water-rail, dab-chick, and sand-piper, to say nothing of rats in abundance, and an otter now and then. If you crept upon the islet very quietly, you could hear the rats before you saw them. Carefully listening to the sounds, you frequently discovered the rat himself, generally on the stump of some old tree, or on the bare part of the bank overhanging the water. There he would be, sitting upon his hind-legs, holding in his fore-feet the root of a bulrush, and champing away with his sharp teeth so as to be heard ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... sycamores, which did duty for an avenue, and were bounded, on the roadside, by a spruce white gate, and a sprucer lodge, so moderate in its dimensions, that it would scarcely have boiled a turnip: if a rat had got into it, he might have run away with it. The ground was dug in various places, as if for the purpose of further improvements, and here and there a sickly little tree was carefully hurdled round, and seemed pining its puny ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hare that hath escaped the hounds, The house prorogued, the chancellor rebounds. What frosts to fruits, what arsenic to the rat, What to fair Denham mortal chocolate,[130:1] What an account to Carteret, that and more, A parliament is ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... which steps had creaked the worst, but he wasn't too worried, if there were only two of them. Then his head projected above the top step, and he hesitated. Only the rat and the ape were standing near a heavy, closed door. But four others were lounging in the background. He lifted his foot to put it back down to a lower step, just as Sheila's muffled voice shrilled out a fog of profanity. He grinned, and then saw that he'd ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... remembering how he and I had walked over that very ground three years before, in the sunshine of life and summer. Brian too thought of the past, but not in bitterness. I hid my anguish from him, but it gnawed the heart of me with the teeth of a rat. I couldn't see what Brian had ever done to deserve such a fate as his, and I began to feel wicked, wicked. It seemed that destiny had built up a high prison wall in front of my brother and me, and I had a wild impulse to kick and claw at it, though ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... are, Renee. It's just a bit of nonsense—nothing that matters. I want him to lend me his bulldog for a rat-fight at my club to-morrow. I've made a bet that he'll kill a hundred in two minutes. And with that I must ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... maybe the character of the building, and however difficult it may be for strangers to get to it, those living in the neighbourhood know its whereabouts, many having derived improvement from it, and if more went to it, pigeon-flying, gambling, Sunday rat hunting, tossing, drinking, and paganism generally—things which have long flourished in its locality—would be ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... named Verandrye, who was born in Lower Canada, came up the great lakes to trade for furs of the beaver, mink, and musk-rat. When he reached the shore of Lake Superior, west of where Fort William now stands, an old Indian guide, gave him a birch bark map, which showed all the streams and water courses from Lake Superior to Lake of the Woods, ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... his cravat, and his hair hung down over his callous, bloodless cheeks, straight as silk. Temple Grace looked as if he were blighted by lightning; and his deep blue eyes gleamed like a hyaena's. The Baron was least changed. Tom Cogit, who smelt that the crisis was at hand, was as quiet as a bribed rat. ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... swampy place, coming along. Sanch saw something down there, and I went with him 'cause I thought may be it was a musk-rat and you'd like one if ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... suppose it took all your time since to perfect and complete it. You gave yourself away when you experimented on young Ladd. I was a track man myself in my college days and when I saw an account of his running, I smelt a rat, so I came back and watched him. As soon as I saw him crush and swallow a capsule just as the gun was fired, I was sure, and got hold of him. He was pretty stubborn, but he finally told me what name you were running under ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... has been with me this morning in great alarm: he now thinks he shall be thrown out. A Mr. Winsley, who has a great deal of interest there, and was a supporter of his, hangs back on account of the ——- question. This is unlucky, as Staunch is quite with us; and if he were to rat now it would be ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VII • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... in turn, is the classic Hermes or Orpheus, the counterpart of the Finnish Wainamoinen and the Sanskrit Gunadhya. His wonderful pipe is the horn of Oberon, the lyre of Apollo (who, like the piper, was a rat-killer), the harp stolen by Jack when he climbed the bean-stalk to the ogre's castle. [18] And the father, in Goethe's ballad, is no more than right when he assures his child that the siren voice which tempts him is but the rustle of the wind among the dried leaves; ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... a secret path, veined with clumsy roots, shadowed with the thick bush of many a clustering parasite, and echoing sometimes beneath from the hollowed shelter of coot or water-rat. Lilies floated in circles about the ponds, like the crowns of sunken queens, and sometimes a bird broke the silence ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... stretched its legs, and looked up at the two men, betraying no fear of them. Then it lifted its sharp nose into the air, sniffed, and pattered about the room, stopping to smell the legs of the dressing-table and a cap of Dermot's lying on the floor. It investigated several rat-holes at the bottom of the walls and approached the bed. Under it a pair of the soldier's slippers were lying. The mongoose, passing by them, turned to smell them. Suddenly it sprang back, leaping a couple of feet into the air. When it touched the floor it ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... as a schoolboy is expected to tackle his Horace, in a spirit of pertinacious and stolid straightforwardness, will probably find himself before long so nauseated by the incessant inhalation of spices and flowers, condiments and kisses, that if a musk-rat had run over the page it could hardly be less endurable to the physical than it is to the spiritual stomach. The fantastic and the brutal blemishes which deform and deface the loveliness of his incomparable genius are hardly so damaging to his fame as his general ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... bird, and the yeast, and look in the vinegar barrel to see that all was right, and be sure and scald the milk-pans, and turn them up in the sun for an hour, and keep the doors locked, and the silver up in the scuttle-hole; and if she heard the rat which baffled and tormented them so long, get some poison and kill it, but not on any account let it get in the cistern; and keep the door-steps clean, and the stoop, and once in a while sweep the low roof at the back of the house, and not sit up late nights, or sleep very long in the morning; ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... de sukus in New York, an' gif to you like he did dat monkey. Ef it ain't no rat, an' ain't a monkey, name o' Satan, what kin it be? 'Tain't a 'ooman, for all dem gret long sleeves: you know dat yo'se'f. An' 'tain't like no man as eber I seed. What dat hangin' on to its head? An' what motter wid its eyes, sot crank-sided right 'ginst its nose, kickin' up der heels, pintin' ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... a cloud passed over the moon; and before the light broke forth again, the hag had vanished. There was only seen in the dull pool, the water-rat swimming through the rank sedges; only in the forest, the grey wings of the owl, fluttering heavily across the glades; only in the grass, the red eyes of ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... she answered with a short laugh. "If I had been here, I should not be here. I ran away to Holland and returned yesterday to my house. But how shall I creep in?" She pointed over her shoulder to the pile of bricks. "I am not a cat or a rat." ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... was no evidence!" cried Ryman. "Every inch of the rat-burrow was searched. The Chinese gentleman who posed as the proprietor of what he claimed to be a respectable lodging-house, offered every facility to the police. What could ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... the midst of the melee the man lost his hold and tumbled into the top of a tree, where his pigtail caught on a branch, and he remained suspended. There the unfortunate man hung helpless, until a rat, which had its home in the rocks at the foot of the tree, took compassion upon him, and, climbing up, gnawed off the branch. As the man slowly and painfully wended his weary way homeward, he said: 'This teaches me that creatures to whom nature has given neither feathers ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... rockaway like Miss Ann's, with a pair of horses fat enough to eat and the bow-leggedest coachman in Kentucky, to say nothing of Miss Ann herself with her puffy red wig and hoop skirts as wide as a barn door, couldn't disappear in a rat hole. They must be somewhere and they must have gone along the road to get where they were going. Certainly they haven't passed this way or we'd have ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... meditation every day at stated periods, during which the attempt is made to hold the mind to the contemplation of a single image or idea, bringing the attention back whenever it wanders, killing each irrelevant thought as it arises, as one might kill a rat coming out of a hole. This turning of the mind back on itself is difficult, but I know of nothing that "pays" so well, and I have never found any one who conscientiously practised it who did not confirm this view. The point is, that ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... bitti chovihanis, about dui peeras boro. An' my pal was bengis hunnalo, an' sovahalled pal' lengis, "If I lelled you acai, you ratfolly juckos! if I nashered you, I'd chin tutes curros!" An' he jalled to tan ajaw an' pookered mandy saw dovo 'pre dovo rat. "Kun sus adovo?" Avali, rya; dovo was pash Kaulo ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... a terrier shakes a rat, and seemed to shake things off him—among others a revolver which described a circle in the air and fell heavily on the ground, where ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... however, anticipated and prepared for this event by the clever use of a saw just before leaving. When the robber-chief gained the middle of the bridge it snapped in two and let him down with a horrible rending of wood into the streamlet, whence he emerged like a half-drowned rat, amid the ill-suppressed laughter of his men. The damage he received was slight. It was only what Flinders would have called, "a pleasant little way of showing attintion to his inimy before bidding ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... one point in what Mr. Stenson has been saying which I think we might and ought to consider a little more fully, and that is, what guarantees have we that Freistner really has the people at the back of him, that he'll be able to cleanse that rat pit at Berlin of the Hohenzollern and his clan of junkers—the most accursed type of politician who ever breathed? We ought to be very sure about this. Fenn's our man. What about ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... wet as a drowned rat, Pink," struck in Clancy, "and if you don't go back to town Chip and I will worry ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... and children made dismal cries and grievous complaints. The infinite number of rats that all the voyage had been our plague, we now were glad to make our prey to feed on; and as they were insnared and taken a well grown rat was sold for sixteen shillings as a market rate. Nay, before the voyage did end (as I was credibly informed) a woman great with child offered twenty shillings for a rat, which the ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... answered. "All has been done according to order. The back entrance which was the water gate before the old canal was filled up, is surrounded, and the adjoining houses with which some communication may have been established are watched. Not a rat could have crawled out since we came, nor could one have gone in. To-day is the feast of a saint, and these people have their excuse not to open the house to visitors, for so it is with other show places. Look, it is written up, that until to-morrow there is no admission." As ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... deserved, as now I see—of our lubberly ways. She had vexed me with her teasing commendations—out of harmless mischief, poor child. I hated him more every time you looked at him, and when I had occasion to strike him I was glad of it. There was murder in my heart, and I felt as if I were putting a rat or a weasel out of the way when I threw him down that pit. God forgive me! Then, in my madness, I so acted that in a manner I was the death of that poor ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Ruenke sliding out into the road. Ruenke's bruised and bloody face was uppermost, a rather gruesome sight. Anderson glared down upon him, while men from the other cars crowded around. Ruenke's eyes resembled those of a cornered rat. Anderson's jaw bulged, his big ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... "You rat!" he yelled. "Double-cross me, will yeh?" He heard the sound of a body moving over loose stones and halted, weaving in his tracks and peering ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... Although he was showing me some of the contemptuous tenderness which he had always assumed towards my mother, yet I was his daughter, and I felt sure that he would want to leap out of bed that he might take my husband by the throat and shake him as a terrier shakes a rat. But what happened was ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... cried compassionately. "Can it really be that you have so little sense, after all? Oh, you poor little drowned rat, you." She bent over her, pulled the worn slippers from her feet, and ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... "rat-tat-tat-tated" close to us, and three rockets, like a flight of startled birds, rose suddenly together ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... to take her out with him at the time when he exercised the puppies. She and the puppies would run about together and by the same word be called to heel. She found that she could do most of the things that they did. Once, on a summer day when two of them had conscientiously frightened a water-rat out of its hole on the margin of the lake, Gabrielle, who was far ahead of her father and hot with running, plunged in after them. She got her mouth full of water, and thought she was drowning, and Jocelyn, frightened for her life, ran in after ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... have sprung up out of them? This much is certain, that the domestic animals of Europe have, since what may be called the discovery of the WORLD during the last hundred years, run up and down it. The English rat—not the pleasantest of our domestic creatures—has gone everywhere; to Australia, to New Zealand, to America: nothing but a complicated rat-miracle could ever root him out. Nor could a common force expel the horse from South America since the Spaniards took him thither; if ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... falcon kill a partridge, but would the falconer be able to lure back his hawk? That was what he wanted to see, and, curious and interested as a boy in his first rat hunt, he galloped forward until stopped by the falconer, who explained that the moment was always an anxious one, for were the hawk approached from behind, or approached suddenly, it "might carry"—that is to say, might bear away its prey for a hundred ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... dreadful business altogether," returned young Ashiel. "I don't know which part of it is the worst. There's my uncle dead, shot down like a rat by some cold-blooded scoundrel; and now my cousin David, poor chap, in jail, and under charge of murder. It seems impossible to believe it of him, and yet, what is one to believe? One can only suppose that he must have been off his head if he did it. But have you had lunch, Mr. ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... after a time got into that part of the town where Elma lived. By dint of asking half a dozen children and three or four policemen she at last reached Constantine Road, and presently found the right house. She ran up the steps and sounded a rattling rat-tat on the knocker. The moment she did so a girl with a mop of untidy red hair peeped up at her from the ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... left out one thing which the Queene confest, Which must approue thee honest. If Pasanio Haue (said she) giuen his Mistris that Confection Which I gaue him for Cordiall, she is seru'd, As I would serue a Rat ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... tell you what happens," replied my friend, evading a direct answer to my latter observation. "A wretched Jew comes into this village, or some other place—it does not matter, it is always the same story. He comes probably from Galicia as poor as a rat, he settles himself in the village, and sells slivovitz on credit to the foolish peasant, who, besotted with drink and debt, gets into his meshes; in the end, the Jew having sucked the blood of his victims, possesses himself of their little property, finds ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... must return to their source along the way of metempsychosis. All acts, words and thoughts find their exact reward in future births. If a man steals a cow he shall be reborn as a crocodile or lizard; if grain, as a rat; if fruit, as an ape. The murderer of a Brahman endures long-suffering in the several hells and is then born again in the meanest bodies to atone for his crime. According to Manu the soul might pass "through ten thousand millions" of births. The passageway to absorption is through Brahmanhood ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... kept still, and only held his musket the firmer. The boat rushed on, and the rat behind. Oh! how he gnashed his teeth, and called ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... my capacity to fulfil the duties; for I don't know what they are. They tell me that a considerable portion of my time will be unoccupied, the which I mean to employ in sketches of my new experience, under some such titles as follows: 'Scenes in Dock,' 'Voyages at Anchor,' 'Nibblings of a Wharf Rat,' 'Trials of a Tide-Waiter,' 'Romance of the Revenue Service,' together with an ethical work in two volumes, on the subject of Duties, the first volume to treat of moral and religious duties, and the second of duties imposed by the Revenue Laws, which ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... the dog, That worried the cat, That killed the rat, That ate the malt That lay in the house that ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... was so hungry this time that he could not resist the hot beef stew, an indulgence which cut short his stay by a considerable time. When he was again told to move on, he made his way to a "tough" place in the "Levee" district, where now and then he had gone with a certain rat-eyed Bohemian workingman of his acquaintance, seeking a woman. It was Jurgis's vain hope that here the proprietor would let him remain as a "sitter." In low-class places, in the dead of winter, saloon-keepers would often allow one ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... also at work. The vigor and vitality of the early builders gradually spends itself. The will to austerity and the sense of loyalty and social responsibility are diffused and diluted. Bureaucracy degenerates into a rat race. The paralysis of parasitism replaces the will to power. Physical gratification gains priority over the service of the gods. Consistently, through its entire written history, civilization has been built ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... she harangued with her son, who was as poor as a rat, for the purpose of persuading him to make a good match and thus enrich himself. Her son, who had no desire to marry, allowed her to talk on, and pretended to listen to her reasons: She was delighted—entered into a description of the wife she destined for him, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... ought to get back to the room right away," Tommy suggested, "and have peroxide applied to the wounds. I've known of people dying of blood poison occasioned by rat bites." ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... that is so," I agreed; "and if the lady should happen to pass this way and should see me at the window and recognize me, she would certainly smell a rat." ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... vessels enters. The spikes stand in such a position that, when the lobes close, they inter-lock like the teeth of a rat-trap. The midrib of the leaf, on the lower side, is ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... arms, wrists, and ankles caused me intolerable pain, yet my first feeling was rather of abject humiliation. To be caught thus easily, to be lying here like any rat in a gin! this was the agonising thought. Nor was this all. There on the chest lay the Golden Clasp united at last—the work completed which was begun with that unholy massacre on board the Belle Fortune. I had played straight into ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... reminding Larry of the scarecrow which he had put up in their garden the summer before. He was thin beyond anything the boys had ever seen. His face was worn and old and came to a peak at the nose, which gave him the appearance of a monster rat, a resemblance emphasised by the little blinking, red-rimmed eyes. His hair was closely cropped and ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... of the cold Friday. Here is our Lapland and Labrador; and for our Esquimaux and Knistenaux, Dog-ribbed Indians, Novazemblaites, and Spitzbergeners, are there not the ice-cutter and wood-chopper, the fox, musk-rat, and mink? ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... red with anger. He seized the assistant manager by the shoulder and shook him, over the counter, as a dog shakes a rat. ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... place now, and must have found out that the back door had been tampered with. Nearer came the steps—still nearer—and then the safe door swung open under Jimmie Dale's hand, and Jimmie Dale, that he might not be caught like a rat in a trap, darted from the office—but he had delayed ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... to be replaced by the raging features of Major Connel. "You murdering space rat!" he roared. "I've given you two minutes to surrender and, by the craters of Luna, you've only got ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... species of swallow having caused the decrease of another species. The recent increase of the missel-thrush in parts of Scotland has caused the decrease of the song-thrush. How frequently we hear of one species of rat taking the place of another species under the most different climates! In Russia the small Asiatic cockroach has everywhere driven before it its great congener. In Australia the imported hive-bee is rapidly exterminating the small, stingless native bee. One species of charlock ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... answer there was a ripping sound, and a piece of cloth came loose from his coat. The piece of cloth stayed in Splash's teeth and the children's dog at once began to shake and worry it, as he might a big rat he had caught. And as Splash shook the piece of cloth he ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... Matches, rat Pain in the stomach; Cause vomiting. poisons,etc. vomiting; purging; Strong soapsuds; general collapse. magnesia in water. Never ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... for that,' said Sir Terence. 'I got a hint from my little friend, Paddy Brady, who would not be paid for it either, though he's as poor as a rat. Well! as soon as I got the hint, I dropped the thing I had in my hand, which was the DUBLIN EVENING, and ran for the bare life—for there wasn't a coach—in my slippers, as I was, to get into the prior creditor's shoes, who ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... the north to confine it or break its force. We made fourteen miles, and halted on the north, after which we had a violent gust about seven o'clock. One of the hunters saw in a pond to the north which we passed yesterday a number of young swans. We saw a large rat, and killed a wolf. Another of our men had a stroke of the sun; he was bled, and took a preparation of ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... be called a poem. It would not be possible to write satire, epic, idyl, not even elegy, upon that "rat-hole philosophy," as Mr. Emerson once styled the new fetichism of the mahogany tables. It has not one element that asks the sense of beauty to incorporate it, or challenges the weapon of wit to transfix it. It is humiliating, but not pathetic, not even when yearning hearts are trying ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... chiefs was Pontiac, whose name is as prominent in the history of the past as the names of the Onondaga Garangula, the Huron Kondiaronk (Rat), the Mohawk Thayendenagea (Brant), and the Shawanoese Tecumseh. He was the son of an Ottawa chief and an Ojibway mother, and had a high reputation and large influence among the {271} tribes of the upper lakes. He showed in his ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... could get out, I should think he 'd carried it off; but not being a rat, he can't go through the bits of windows; so it was n't him," said Fanny, disconsolately, for she began to think this double loss a punishment for letting angry passions rise, "Let 's open the door and tell ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... those the same names. A Khatkan lion is furred, it is a hunter and a great fighter, but it is not the cat of Terra. However, it is in great demand as a tri-dee actor. So we summon it out of lurking by providing free meals. One shoots a poli, a water rat, or a landeer and drags the carcass behind a low-flying flitter. The lion springs upon the moving meat, which it can also scent, and the rope is cut, leaving ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... rain, summoned a kind of little, white, wooden sarcophagus which was skipping near us on the waves, sculled by two yellow boys stark naked in the rain. The craft approached us, I jumped into it, then through a little trap-door shaped like a rat-trap that one of the scullers threw open for me, I slipped in and stretched myself at full length on a mat in what is called the "cabin" ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... planting Stokeses under them when we heard the Lewises giving the recall signal. A good gunner gets so he can play a tune on a Lewis, and the device is frequently used for signals. This time he thumped out the old one—"All policemen have big feet." Rat-a-tat-tat—tat, tat. ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... a grandmother was there; all the rest had been sold, and their vacant places remained discoloured on the walls. There were two or three dismembered old chairs, the richly dight windows broken, the floor rat-eaten. The general stood and looked, and did not sigh, but absolutely groaned. They went to the shattered glass door, which looked out upon the terrace—that terrace which had cost thousands of pounds ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... raining for two or three days. The rain has soaked the plains, the cannon-wheels would sink into the ground, and the sortie has therefore had to be deferred. For two days Paris has been living on salt meat. A rat costs ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... not forget to record that we had rather a disturbed night on Saturday. First, there was heavy rain and it came through the ceiling close to where Ellen was sleeping; then the cat caught a rat under the table, and Rob went for her wishing to share the spoil. This is the first rat I have seen here, though I have heard them in the house. They are in shoals all over the mountains, and eat the fruit in the orchards. There have been no ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... Jimmy Brackett had admonished her on the subject. She continued, indeed, to cast at him eyes of pleading reproach, but always from a distance, and such appeals rolled off McWha's crude perception like water off a musk rat's fur. He had nothing "agin her," as he would have put it, if only she would keep out of his way. But Rosy-Lilly, true to her sex, was not vanquished by any means, or even discouraged. She was only biding ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... better cooks anywhere than the Chinks. Want to look out that he don't slip one over on you, though, if the victuals run short. Might serve up cat or rat or something of the kind an' call it pork or veal. An' he'd probably git away with ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... doings, Doctor.... Hi told Bough what you said. Hi did, faithful ... an' 'e swore if you wasn't the man to do what 'e wanted, 'e'd be damned but 'e'd find a woman as would! And she come next night—a little, shabby, white-faced, rat-nosed hold thing, shiverin' an' shakin'. Five pounds she 'ad of Bough, shakin' an' shiverin'. An' he wasn't to send no more to the haddress he knew, because she wouldn't be there. Always move hout ... she says, after a fresh job! Oh, my Gawd! An' Bough, he ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... fly, introduced from Europe more than one hundred years ago, causes during certain seasons a very great loss to the wheat crop. The Argentine ant has been brought to us from South America and is proving a most destructive pest. The Norway rat was brought to our country on sailing vessels and causes more loss than most of us realize. The English sparrow has spread over much of the country and is driving many of the native birds from their homes, because of its quarrelsome disposition. It makes ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... says Heiney, gettin' excited. "Ze poison for ze r-r-rat. I keep heem in one tin can, same as ze salt. I am what you call intoxicate. I make ze mistak'. Ah, diable! Deux, trois—t'ree hundred guests are zere. Zey eat ze soup. Zen come by me ze maitre d'hotel. He say ze soup ees spoil. Eet has ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... the key to Ladysmith—Platrand, whence now and again came the sharp rat-tat of the Metford, followed by the ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... and cries of "Boycott them!") He feared that boycotting a ferret would not do much good. (A squeak—"Why not try rattening?"—and laughter.) Arbitration seemed to him the most politic course under the circumstances. (Cheers.) They were accused of eating young moor-chicks. Well, was a Rat to starve? ("No, no!") Did not a Rat owe a duty to those dependent upon it? (Cheers, and cries of "Yes!") He appealed to the opinion of the civilised world to put a stop—At this point in the Chair-rat's address, an alarm of "Dogs!" was raised, and the meeting at once ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... mad or what, thus to arouse our passions by thy talk of women? Be silent, or we honest men here present will wring thy neck and take thy woman from thee. Dost thou understand?' He shook that jealous husband as a terrier would shake a rat. 'Be silent, hearest thou? Men wish ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... was down here you can bet he spotted that Injun if he came within a hundred yards of him," said Gilbert. "He can smell a red like a cat can smell a rat." ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... them and avoid them. Which was just exactly what was wrong with the computer's logic. In avoiding the traps, it also avoided the best way to hit the enemy. A weak point is weak, no matter how well it may be booby-trapped. In baiting a rat trap, you have to use real cheese ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... until they came to the last barn of all; while they paused there a moment they heard a rustling and movement in the dark, far corner. Joost started violently, then he said, "It is a rat, you must not be afraid; it will not run ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... and grandfathers play the fiddle for them for many an hour of a winter's evening, while the mothers sing nursery rhymes to the smaller children. And, as with the games, these jingles are more or less the same as our own. They have "This is the house that Jack built," with the malt, and the rat, and everything, only that they prefer the name Jacob to Jack. They have "Fly away, Peter, fly away, Paul"; and the baby on his mother's knee has the joy of being shaken about to "This is the ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... and form a circle. One is chosen "rat" and stands inside the circle. Another is the "cat" and takes her place outside. The "cat" tries to catch the "rat". The players favor the "rat" and allow him to run in and out of the circle, but try to prevent the "cat" from following him by raising and ...
— Games and Play for School Morale - A Course of Graded Games for School and Community Recreation • Various
... has a similar dread of a screech-owl, whom he compliments in the name of its mistress, Pallas Athene. If he finds a serpent in his house, he sets up an altar to it. If he pass at a four-cross-way an anointed stone, he pours oil on it, kneels down, and adores it. If a rat has nibbled one of his sacks he takes it for a fearful portent—a superstition which Cicero also mentions. He dare not sit on a tomb, because it would be assisting at his own funeral. He purifies endlessly his house, saying that Hecate—that is, the moon—has ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... me a small brown hawk, poised motionless, resting on the wind, with quivering wings, and he hung there, looking down for his prey—some luckless lizard or rat. He seemed suspended on wires. There, down like a brown flash he was gone, and surely that ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... yellow dressing gown, and her hair on her shoulders all wet, in rat tails. I'm not a cat, but she makes me feel like one and talk like one. I want to forget her. Do you ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... that morbid excitability of fancy which, whether in his art or in his deeds, had led him to strange delight in horror, now served but to haunt him with the images of death in those ghastliest shapes familiar to them who look only into the bottom of the charnel, and see but the rat and the worm and the loathsome agencies of corruption. It was not the despair of conscience that seized him, it was the abject clinging to life; not the remorse of the soul,—that still slept within him, too noble an agency for one so debased,—but ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bigotry he was no bigot. Puritan fanaticism, exasperated by the persecution it had endured under James and Charles, often went to the utmost extremes, even as "Hudibras"[1] said, to "killing of a cat on Monday for catching of a rat ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... his way to the house-door, Redlaw saw him trail himself upon the dust and crawl within the shelter of the smallest arch, as if he were a rat. He had no pity for the thing, but he was afraid of it; and when it looked out of its den at him, he hurried to ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... notice but one more of the early Boston editors, who seems to have been an odd fish—somewhat witty, but, to use a homely proverb, 'as rough as a rat-catcher's dog.' He first established the Boston Weekly Rehearsal, in 1731, and afterward the Boston Evening Post. His name was Thomas Fleet. Massachusetts was then a slaveholding country, and Fleet owned several negroes, two of whom he instructed in the art of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... oily sleekness by a slimy clinging mud, the thin ribs showing plainly, and the hinder part of the poor wretch's barrel a mere hand-grasp. His very tail, which had used to look like an irregular much-worn bottle-brush, was thin and sleek like a rat's, and he tucked it away as if he were ashamed of it. His feet were clotted with red earth, and he walked as if his head were a burden to him, he hung it so mournfully and carried ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... "If you are playing Jonah Vark you should ought to quit telling us to come on boys and give them hell because Jonah Vark wouldn't never use a word like that." So I said "I guess he would say a whole lot worse then that if he had a dirty rat like you in his command." So that ...
— Treat 'em Rough - Letters from Jack the Kaiser Killer • Ring W. Lardner
... story of the moon, the rat, and death. Caroline Islands story of the moon, death, and resurrection. Wotjobaluk story of the moon, death, and resurrection. Cham story of the moon, death, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... countenance, when I most thoroughly recanted my errors, and acknowledged myself wrong. If ever the look of a man conveyed a warning, his did; but there was more in it than even that,—there was a tone of sad and pitiful compassion, such as an old gray-bearded rat might be supposed to put on at seeing a young and inexperienced one opening the hinge of an iron trap, to try its efficacy upon his neck. Many a little occasion had presented itself, during my intimacy with the family, of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... allow me to suggest, for the sake of argument only, that he, the Quaker, should imagine himself putting off his Quaker dress, and assuming the costume of a prize-fighter, his hair cut so short that it would present the appearance of an aged rat; "then," said I, "divest yourself of your shirt and flannel—strip yourself, in fact, quite to the skin above your belt—and with only a pair of cotton drawers of a sky blue, or any other colour you might prefer, and, say, a bird's-eye ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... vague discomfort caused by her occasional absence. But that first journey was unforgetable. The maze of winding burrows, the myriad eyes peering at him through the darkness, the ceaseless patter of tiny feet, before, behind, and on all sides, the great brown rat sniffing dubiously as it passed, the jostling, the chattering, the squeaking. He had been a proud mouse when he had returned, and told his faint-hearted brothers what the great world outside was ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... vulgarized the whole thing. He's a parson—a weak little rat, but I was sorry for him. Then an aunt came on the scene—a most gentlemanly lady,"—he laughed a little at the recollection,—"and I promised not to go out of my way to see Her again. It was quite easy. The bloom was already brushed from the adventure. ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... we were compelled to exchange our perfectly good uniforms for some old rags that would disgrace a wharf rat!" was Ned's indignant response. "Then we simply took the privilege of putting on these garments. They are not what we would have chosen, ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Forth ran the O-ho-li (or albino antelope). The Wolf seized and threw him. The Jack Rabbit was let out. The Eagle poised himself for a moment, then swooped upon him. The Cotton Tail came forth. The Prey Mole waited in his hole and seized him; the Wood Rat, and the Falcon made him his prey; the Mouse, and the Ground Owl quickly ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... will come. I cannot work him immediate harm; but I will lead him to a height from which he will assuredly fall headlong. Thou must depart from this place; for it is perilous to thee, and if thou stayest here, ill will befall thee. I will send a rat to thy dungeon, which shall daily devour the provisions, so that the monks shall not know thou hast fled. In thirty and one years shall the abbot's doom be accomplished. Two years before that time thou mayst return. Then come alone to Pendle Hill on a Friday night, and beat the water ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... came the rat-tat-tat. We all gazed expectantly at the closed door. Glancing at Holmes I saw his face turn rigid, and he leaned forward in intense excitement. Then suddenly came a low gurgling, gargling sound and a brisk drumming upon woodwork. Holmes sprang frantically across the room and pushed at ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... with his hammock clothes. He turned pale, and tears came into his eyes,—whether from a feeling of injured friendship, or from disappointment, Salve could not quite make out. The expression of his face, with his restless small black eyes, resembled that of a disturbed rat. At last he fell on Salve's neck in his impetuous way, ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... on the box. He has a pen in his hand. A big rat is in the box. Can the dog catch ...
— McGuffey's First Eclectic Reader, Revised Edition • William Holmes McGuffey
... tumblers, broken wineglasses, phials of forgotten physic, papers of unknown powders, seeds and dried herbs, tops of teapots, and stoppers of departed decanters—from the rag hole in the garret, to the rat hole in the cellar, no place escapes unrummaged. It would seem as if the day of general doom had come, and the utensils of the house were dragged ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... heard of a frog in an opera hat, 'Tis a very old tale of a mouse and a rat, I could sing you another as pleasant, mayhap, Of a kitten that wore a high caul cap; But my muse on a far nobler subject shall drop, Of a bull who got into a china shop, With his right leg, left leg, upper leg, under leg, St. Patrick's ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... by skinning the twenty small mammals (one of which was a new rat) that our traps had yielded. We took a good many photographs and several rolls of "movie" film showing the efforts of the mafus to get the mules aboard. Some of them went in quietly enough but others absolutely refused to step into the boat. One of ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... hourly despatches for my paper; then I drove to Newcastle, a cold, dark journey of a couple of hours, and scribbled my latest bulletin at the Journal office. This done, I lay down on a pile of newspapers in the rat-haunted office, and snatched a few hours' sleep before returning to the post of duty. But some nights it was impossible to leave the mouth of the pit even for a moment, for none could tell when the captives might be reached; so I sat with the doctors, ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... building, and however difficult it may be for strangers to get to it, those living in the neighbourhood know its whereabouts, many having derived improvement from it, and if more went to it, pigeon-flying, gambling, Sunday rat hunting, tossing, drinking, and paganism generally—things which have long flourished in its ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... sure enough, right out of that grain bin overhead came a moaning and whimpering, and then a scratching against the door. My hair stood on end. Blended with the drip, drip of the rain, and the occasional scurrying of a rat overhead, that noise had a super-natural sound. I was really frightened; perhaps my nerves were a trifle unstrung from our recent tour in ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... for any girl against you," he was cut short again. "But I do know this girl. I won't say how. I know you're the dirt under her feet, and if I hadn't made sure every way that she was out of the house, I'd have set the police onto you as—as I wouldn't set terriers onto a rat." ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... the fires are lighted at the Rocher de Cancale; the horses are pawing the ground; my irons are getting hot. —Oh, I know your Madame Marneffe by heart!—Everything is ready. And there are some boluses in the rat-trap; I will tell you to-morrow morning if the mouse is poisoned. I believe she will ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Liberal fighter in Parliamentary warfare, who entered politics about the time Mr. Balfour did, told me this story the other day. "I've watched Balfour for about forty years as a cat watches a rat. I hate his party. I hated him till I learned better, for I hated that whole Salisbury crowd. They wanted to Cecil everything. But I'll tell you, Sir, apropos of his visit to your country, that in all those years he has ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... a present of a hundred kine with one bull. Having slain a dog or bear or camel, one should perform the same penance that is laid down for the slaughter of a Sudra. For slaying a cat, a chasa, a frog, a crow, a reptile, or a rat, it has been said, one incurs the sin of animal slaughter, O king! I shall now tell thee of other kinds of expiations in their order. For all minor sins one should repent or practise some vow for one year. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Run and hide!" called Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy, and all the rabbits ran and hid. The ferret, which was a long, slender animal, something like a white rat, had been put into the burrow by the hunter, who stood outside at the back door, hoping the rabbits would run out so he could shoot them. But they did not. Instead, they went into the darkest part of the underground house. ...
— Sammie and Susie Littletail • Howard R. Garis
... conscience! Remorse is the echo of a lost virtue, and virtue he never knew. Had he to live again, he would live the same. But more terrible than the death-bed of a believing and despairing sinner that blank gloom of apathy,—that contemplation of the worm and the rat of the charnel-house; that grim and loathsome NOTHINGNESS which, for his eye, falls like a pall over the universe of life. Still, staring into space, gnawing his livid lip, he looks upon the darkness, convinced that darkness is forever ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... county. Isn't that nice? I feel like a big somebody. I was just wondering if the mayor will call on me. I think he ought to, but I really couldn't see him. My time is all occupied. They have asked me to make a talk. They've got me down for a few minutes' harangue, and I don't know more than a rat what I'll say. We are going to try for a State appropriation in our section, meet the members of the Legislature, and do some wire- pulling and ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... could be written about all that had happened during that wonderful Christmas, how Hamlet the Dog caught a rat to his own immense surprise; how the Coles' Christmas dinner was followed by a play acted with complete success by the junior members of the family, and it was only Mr. Jellybrand the curate who disapproved; how Aunt Amy had a new dress in which, by general consent, she ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... saw Major (by misplaced courtesy) Wentworth Caswell. I knew him for a type the moment my eyes suffered from the sight of him. A rat has no geographical habitat. My old friend, A. Tennyson, said, as he ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... exactly," she said. "But I had the most awful feeling, ma'am. And yes—well, something did happen! I heard a kind of rustling in the room. It would leave off for a time, and, then begin again. I tried to put it down to a mouse or a rat—or something of ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... the phalanger, a marsupial which lives in thick, dark forests, where it feeds upon leaves and fruit; and the tarsier, a kind of jerboa, a very harmless, inoffensive little animal with reddish-coloured hair, about the size of a rat, but whose body bears some resemblance to that of an ape. Among the birds, the most remarkable were the parroquets and cockatoos, the birds of Paradise of which so many fabulous accounts were given, and which until then had been believed to be without legs, the king-fishers, and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... he is dry," Drusie said, inclined at first to be a little offended. But his laughter was infectious, and Jumbo did after all look so very much like a drowned rat that she could not help ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... through which the air had entered and moaned up the broad-mouthed flue that opened above the range. This was the ominous 'signal' we had heard in answer to the footsteps. The dust was thick over everything, and the only signs of life were the rat-tracks on the floor. We stood still for a few moments, overwhelmed at this solution of the occult 'influence' that had so subtly acted on Annie's nerves, and filled me with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... indigestible parts as Hawks do. Mr. Couch, in the 'Zoologist' for 1874, mentions having taken a Misseltoe Thrush from the throat of one; and I can quite believe it, supposing it found the Thrush dead or floating half drowned on the water. I have seen my tame ones catch and kill a nearly full-grown rat, and bolt it whole; and young ducks, I am sorry to say, disappear down their throats in no time, down and all. They are also great robbers of eggs, no sort of egg coming amiss to them; Guillemots' eggs, especially, they ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... facing the place where Suffa Culli and Jung Perchad stand to take up passengers, and looks out keenly for cats. That is Charley. He is all right when you know him, is Charley, and I have it on the best authority that there are no flies on him. A rat on the straggle has been known to turn up in this aviary and run the gauntlet of all the cages—till he reached Charley; nothing alive and eatable ever got past him. I have all the esteem and friendship for Charley that any eagle ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... skin crept and crawled till I was nearly frantic. Grunting, groaning, and snoring arose like the sounds emitted by some sea monster, and several times, afflicted by nightmare, one or another, by his shrieks and yells, aroused the lot of us. Toward morning I was awakened by a rat or some similar animal on my breast. In the quick transition from sleep to waking, before I was completely myself, I raised a shout to wake the dead. At any rate, I woke the living, and they cursed me roundly ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... waterfall dividing it into two distinct caves. Plemont is the spot where the cable comes in from England, crawls out of the ocean like a great dripping hoary old sea-serpent to trail through a cleft to the station on the cliff above. This is a rat-hole beside those caves." ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... apostatized and came to Ireland. He was sent to Athlone to superintend the erection of the bridge by Sir Henry Sidney; but, according to the legend, he was constantly pursued by a demon in the shape of a rat, which never left him for a single moment. On one occasion he attempted to preach, but the eyes of the animal glared on him with such fury that he could not continue. He then took a pistol and attempted to shoot it, but in an instant it had sprung on the weapon, giving him, at the ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... in Californy It makes the tourist mad, But folks that's got the crops to raise Is feelin' mighty glad; I stand out in the showers, Wet as a drownded rat, And watch the grain a-growin', ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... their sale. All skunk, marten, mink, fox, 'possum, otter, weasel, civet, lynx, fisher and muskrat have to be treated this way. Other animals should be cut open, such as the beaver, wolf, coyote, 'coon, badger, bear and wild cat. They cut off the tails only of such chaps as have a rat-like appearance—'possum and muskrat. In all other cases the tail is a part of the fur, and a valuable one, too, as I have found out to my cost. The bone is of course taken out, which can be done with only a ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... Wilhide's Celebrated Noiseless Self-setting Rat and Mouse Traps. Thoroughly introduced. Traps sold by all dealers. Address ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... a little proud of her collection of jewels, although she seldom wore anything but her pearls. She had left it when she went abroad, in the safe deposit vault, and she sent a quick terrified glance in the coffer's direction like that of a cornered rat. ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... He found a clutch of four eggs; not having leisure at the time to blow them, he placed them in a bowl on the drawing-room mantelshelf. On the evening of the following day he heard some squeaks, but, thinking that these sounds emanated from a musk-rat or one of the other numerous rent-free tenants of every Indian bungalow, paid little heed to them. When, however, the same sounds were heard some hours later and appeared to emanate from the mantelpiece, he ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... will be weighed, and angels will measure their blood, and the angels of God will see that the weight of the sins does not exceed the weight of the body and the blood. Do you understand? God will not condemn the wolf for devouring a sheep, but if a miserable rat should be guilty of the sheep's death, God will ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... like the "Black Hawk;" although anything is good enough for me when I can't get nothin' better, which is the true philosophy of life. If there is a good dish and a bad one set before me, I am something of a rat, I ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... "Woods rat, Foscar goes to his burial fire. And he shall take a slave with him to serve him beyond the sky—a slave to run at his voice, to shake when he thunders. Slave-dog, you shall run for Foscar beyond the sky, ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... not, you simple Humfrey, that, as I said methinks some time since, it is well sometimes to give a rogue rope enough and he will hang himself? Close the trap too soon, and you miss the biggest rat of all. So we waited until the prey seemed shy and about to escape. Babington had, it seems, suspected Maude or Langston, or whatever you call him, and had ridden out of town, hiding in St. John's Wood with some of his ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... called The German Pulpit, contains, along with a few sermons of more spiritual tone, many sermons by preachers of this school. See on this school Am. Saintes, ch. viii. Mr. Rose also has collected many facts in reference to this part of the subject; also Stauedlin in his Gesch. des Rat. und Supernat., and P. A. Stapfer (Arch. du Christianisme, 1824), quoted by Rose ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... I when I was over there. It was to our interest to know the real force of that nation of little men with rat-like eyes." ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... something in this world; anyway, for the poor craven souls. Riding is one thing; but crashing through timber and undergrowth, dodging overhanging branches, leaping fallen logs, and stumbling and plunging over crab-holed and rat-burrowed areas, to say nothing of charging bulls turning up at unexpected corners, is quite ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... feet on another chair, and drawing the candle closer to the paper. "It says, by the way, that the Duke of Dunderhead is certainly making up to Mrs. Thumps, the rich cheesemonger's widow;—a precious good hit that, isn't it? You know the Duke's as poor as a rat!" ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... frantic, and disregard all present things, as becomes a madman to do. I am infinitely pleased (though it is a gloomy joy) with the application of Dr. Swift's complaint, that he is forced to die in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole." Let the lover of solitude muse on its picture throughout the year, in the following stanza by ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... stared at me with insolent familiarity. I jerked my head in hurriedly, and, shutting the window, turned my attention to Little Lottie. It was not long before my tea-kettle was singing merrily. I was about to sit down to the first meal in my new abode, when an insinuating rat-tat sounded on the door. I opened it to find the ill-looking young fellow leaning languidly against the door-jamb, a cigarette between ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... like a rat in a trap. Yet somehow he did not feel as if it could be true that he was to be taken out at daybreak and shot. It must be some ridiculous joke Fate was playing on him. Something would turn ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... of the eggs, and broke one, out of which came a little carriage of polished steel ornamented with gold, drawn by six green mice. The coachman was a rose-coloured rat, the postilion a grey one, and the carriage was occupied by the tiniest and most charming figures, who could dance and do wonderful tricks. Fiordelisa clapped her hands and danced for joy when she saw this triumph of magic art, and as soon as ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... strangely, a most inexplicable contortion. His little rat eyes focused on the ranchero, and he drew back in a sort of fear. Convoy her whom people called Jacqueline through the lawless Huasteca, at the bidding of this man! "No, no, no!" he cried, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... insects, as we all know, live on plants, but it came upon botanists as a surprise when our countryman Ellis first discovered that some plants catch and devour insects. This he observed in a North American plant, Dionsea, the leaves of which are formed something like a rat-trap, with a hinge in the middle, and a formidable row of spines round the edge. On the surface are a few very sensitive hairs, and the moment any small insect alights on the leaf and touches one of these hairs the two halves of the leaf close ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... for him, when he was alone with her, but the moment that Mrs. O'Brien came into the house he would get as far away from her as he could, and then lie perfectly still and watch her, for all the world, as John said once, like a rat in a trap watching a cat. Ellen said that it was because he always remembered that it was Mrs. O'Brien who had dropped him once. To this John replied: "Then maybe he'ld be making you less trouble, Ellen, ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... silence of those untenanted rooms, and that never opened door on the left side of her hall, which she must pass whenever she went in or out of her house. There were those who said that she was never seen to look towards that door; and that whenever a noise, as of a rat in the wall, or a blind creaking in the wind, came from that side of the house, Mrs. Billy turned white, and shuddered. Well she might. It is a fearful thing to have lying on one's heart in this life the consciousness that one has been ever so ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... appearance from these. The mounds of the prairie-dogs have a hole in the top or on one side. These, you see, have not. The hole is in the ground beside them, and the hill is in front, made by the earth taken out of the burrow, just as you have seen it at the entrance of a rat's hole. They are marmots, I have no doubt, but of a different species from ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... black apparition, who Chia Jui readily concluded, in his mind, must be lady Feng; so that, unmindful of distinguishing black from white, he as soon as that person arrived in front of him, speedily clasped her in his embrace, like a ravenous tiger pouncing upon its prey, or a cat clawing a rat, and cried: "My darling sister, you have made me wait till I'm ready ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... maverick, with the Ramblin' Kid swaying uncertainly on her back, had appeared on the track for the two-mile run, the tout, his eyes like those of a harried rat, sneaked out of the crowd in front of the book-makers' booths and hurried toward the Santa Fe railroad yards. An hour later he slipped into an empty freight car—part of a train headed for the West—and Eagle Butte saw him ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... tried to make me believe I wasn't within seven miles of Dad Frazer's camp I got my suspicions up. The idea of that little town rat trying to mix me up on my range! Well, I was a little off on my estimate of where the wagons were, but that was because they'd been moved so many times while I was ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... last seems, from occasional peeps through the blinds, a most mysterious building. The chimneys, recesses, vats, and cisterns—to say nothing of certain galvanic communications, which, you are told, traverse the whole building in a way capable of killing a rat at an incredible remove from the bland professor—utterly fatigue your wonder! You humbly trust—though you have doubts upon the point—that you will have the capacity to grasp it all, when once you shall have arrived at the ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... said, "and I earned it myself and so I ain't poking it down any rat-hole without being condemned sure that I'll be able to pull it all back again with just as much more sticking to it. That wouldn't be sooavable—and from what you know ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... was doing no good" there, and his father thought it was "time he settled down to his medical study in Edinburgh," never heeding the fact that his son had already one passion in life, apart from "shooting, dogs, and rat-catching," which stood a very good chance of saving him from becoming the disgrace to the family that his good father feared. So that while Wallace was imbibing his first lessons in Socialism at 14 years of age, Darwin at ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... whispered, and Philo Gubb stepped into the room. Instantly the door slammed behind him, the key turned in the lock, and he heard a heavy iron bar clank as it fell into place outside. He was a prisoner, caught like a rat in a trap, and he knew it! He threw himself against the door, but it did not give. The electric light above his head went dark. He put out his hand, and the wall gave slightly. He drew the revolver ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... LEMMING RAT, a rodent, which "travelling in myriads seawards from the hills," as seen in Norway, "turns not to the right or the left, eats its way through whatever will eat, and climbs over whatever will not eat, and perishes before reaching the sea, its consistent rigidly straight journey, a journey nowhither." ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... landing. This unexpected landing had cut the French off from Louisburg. Retreating in panic, they abandoned their batteries and fifty dead. The English had lost one hundred and nine in the surf. It is said that Wolfe scrambled from the water like a drowned rat and led the rush with no other weapon in ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... mother, who in her youth, could perform every species of trick upon stilts, was discovered by her trained nurse mounted on stilts and perambulating the garden on them, in her eighty-sixth year, for the better instruction of her little great-grandson. Again, during a great rat-hunt we had organised, the nurse missed her ninety-year-old charge, to discover her later, in company with the stable-boy, behind a barn, both of them armed with sticks, intently watching a rat-hole into which the stable-boy had just ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... the pad of snow on the soles of his shoes, he made the doorway and softly tried the lock. It gave beneath his pressure, and he glided within the dark hallway, musty and dusty in its odor, forbidding, evil and dark. A mountain rat, already disturbed by the entrance of Rodaine, scampered across his feet, and Fairchild shrunk into a corner, hiding himself as best he could in case the noise should cause an investigation from above. But it did not. Now Fairchild could hear voices, and in a moment more they became louder, ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... walked to the village to see about horses and a lodging for the night. The latter was soon found—a flat-roofed mud hut about thirty feet square, devoid of chimney or furniture of any kind. The floor, cracked in several places, was crawling with vermin, and the walls undermined with rat-holes; but in Persia one must not be particular. Leaving our baggage in the care of one "Hassan," a bright-eyed, intelligent-looking lad, and instructing him to prepare a meal, we made for the bazaar, a hundred yards away, through a morass, knee deep ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... take up the floor for her, same as they did in Number Nine when the rat croaked. Big medicine—heap big medicine! Phew! Oh, Lord, I wish I could ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... most frequently seen in the woods where there is no longer any large game are the chipmunk, the red, the gray, and the black squirrel, the rabbit and hare, the fox, weasel, pine-marten, woodchuck, raccoon, opossum, and skunk, also the pack-rat (of the west), the white-footed and field mouse. In deeper and wilder forests there are deer and porcupine, though deer are found quite near habitations at times. In more remote places there are the moose and caribou; ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... wuz a sweet young girl, the only child of Adonirum Snow, who left Jonesville poor as a rat, went to Californy and died independent rich. She wuz jest out of school, had been to Paris for a few months to take special studies in music and languages; a relation on her ma's side, a kind of gardeen, travelin' with ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... would the wretch be at?— Shifted a letter of the cipher RAT, And said it was a god's name! Straight arose Fantastic priests and postulants (with shows, And mysteries, and mummeries, and hymns, And disputations dire that lamed their limbs) To serve his temple and maintain the fires, Expound the law, manipulate the wires. Amazed, the populace ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... of the notice of one who seemed to him a man, and an adept in all athletic games. It was a dangerous intimacy, and her heart sank as she found that the pleasures to which he had been introducing Gilbert, were not merely the free exercise, the rabbit-shooting and rat-hunting of the farm, nor even the village cricket-match, all of which, in other company, would have had her full sympathy. But there had been such low and cruel sports that she turned her head away sickened at the notion of any one dear ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that save for four maidservants, a page, two dogs, three gardeners, and the kitchen-clerk, Mrs Gater was alone in the Hall. During the late afternoon and early evening they had all been to assist at a rat-catching in the stables, and the burglar must have been aware of this. It passed Mrs Gater's comprehension how the criminal had got clear away out of the gardens and park, for to set up a hue and cry had ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... she had dragged out twenty years of her broken life. Here she remained for seven years, until, on the Tsar's death, an even worse fate befell her. She was then, by Catherine's orders, taken from the convent, and flung into the most loathsome, rat-infested dungeon of the fortress of Schlussenberg, where she remained for two years ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... uninteresting, pursuit was left entirely to her own discretion—for no one ever dreamed of ordering Norah to the piano—it is small wonder if it suffered beside the superior attractions of riding Bobs, rat trapping, "shinning up" trees, fishing in the lagoon and generally disporting herself as a maiden may whom ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... had responded to Ralston's signal like the loyal, honest little brute she was. The gravel flew behind them, and the rat-a-tat-tat of the horses' hoofs on the hard road was like the roll of a drum. They were running neck and neck, but Ralston had little fear of the result, unless the ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... merchant, entering with an open letter in his hand. "Here are advices received, by way of Curacoa, and the coast of Africa, that the good ship Musk-Rat met with foul winds off the Azores, which lengthened her passage home to seventeen weeks—this is too much precious time wasted between markets, Captain Cornelius Ludlow, and 'twill do discredit to the good character of the ship, which has hitherto ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... followed the trail over a mile. Now and then we saw that a wolf, a fox, and other animals had practised their trailing instincts on the elk's tracks. Here and there, he would show me where a snake, a rat, and a prairie dog had crossed the track. Nothing had followed or crossed the track that the quick eye of Daloria did not detect. He gave an account of the habits of all the animals that had left their footprints on the track, also of the state ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... and cares of maternity are too irksome, and so the women who might be the mothers of John Wesleys and Fenelons and Metchers and Inskips and Cookmans are petting poodle-dogs and rat-terriers. ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... has brought Lady Ailesbury from Minorca, but originally from Africa, a Jeribo. To be sure you know what that is; if you don't, I will tell you, and then I believe you will scarce know any better. It is a composition of a squirrel, a hare, a rat, and a monkey, which altogether looks very like a bird. In short, it is about the size of the first, with much Such a head, except that the tip of the nose seems shaved off, and the remains are like a human hare-lip; the ears and its timidity are like a real hare. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... stones lying on the roads were tossed in the air "like peas on a drum," But this was even less pronounced than the horizontal movement, the range of which was at least eight or nine inches, and during which people felt as if they were being shaken like a rat by a terrier. The period of these vibrations was estimated ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... together as they had been, should end by falling in love with each other was not a result to justify much surprise. Indeed, there was a special propriety in their doing so. The Shackfords had always been reputable people in the village,—down to Lemuel Shackford, who of course as an old musk-rat. The family attributes of amiability and honesty had skipped him, but they had reappeared in Richard. It was through his foresight and personal energy that the most lucrative branch of the trade had been established. His services ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Finn were placed in his old office at the Colonies instead of Lord Fawn, whose name had been suggested, and for whom,—as Barrington Erle declared,—no one cared a brass farthing. Mr. Gresham, when he heard this, thought that he began to smell a rat, and was determined to be on his guard. Why should the appointment of Mr. Phineas Finn make things go easier in regard to Mr. Bonteen? There must be some woman's fingers in the pie. Now Mr. Gresham was firmly ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... day there existed in Oregon in vast numbers a species of wood-rat, and our inspection of the graveyard showed that the canoes were thickly infested with them. They were a light gray animal, larger than the common gray squirrel, with beautiful bushy tails, which made them ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... that she dressed ill, and particularly that she covered her neck like a tradeswoman. "O, for that matter," replied the person she was speaking to (who was fond of a joke), "she has good reason, for I know she is marked with a great ugly rat on her bosom, so naturally, that it even appears to be running." Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous. Madam de Menthon resolved to make use of this discovery, and one day, while Madam de Warrens was at cards with this lady's ungrateful ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... I'll send for you in a day or two; then it will be all right." They shook hands. He was glad Farron showed him out through the corridor and not through the study, where, he knew, Mrs. Farron was still waiting like a fine, sleek cat at a rat-hole. ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... I started in delivering a Frances Murphy to him; I told him how he was ruining his health, fortune and reputation; I was really making quite a hit—with myself. Suddenly a rat scampered along the corridor by the door. The Fallen Star saw it, started, glanced sharply at me, then regained his composure. I was going ahead with my temperance lecture, when he glanced up at me a second time and ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... as you say; yet none so close as you might think nowadays. Time hath gnawed here like a rat on a cheese. But the foolishness appeared in setting the brave mansion between the winds and its own graveyard. Let the dead lie seawards, one had thought, and the church inland where we stand. So had the bell ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... "When a rat is in the corner it fights," said the detective significantly. "Basil may have been between the devil, represented by Miss Loach, and the deep sea, which we may call Hale. He ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... fop! that over-dressed minion! I know the fellow; with his smooth face and the silver quiver on his shoulder he believes he is Eros in person. Be off with you, you house-rat. The women and girls in here know how to protect themselves against the sort who parade the streets in rose-colored draperies. Take yourself off, or you will make acquaintance with the noble Paulina's slaves and clogs. Hi! gate-keeper, here! keep ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... air jes the man I'm always wantin' ter hear a word about. Jes perceed with yer rat-killin'. I'm with ye." And Luke Todd placed his elbows on his knees and leaned forward with an ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... if I can get him to stay will you stay too, Jombateeste? I don't like to see a rat leaving a ship; the ship's sure to sink, if he does. How do you suppose I'm going to run Lion's Head without you to throw down hay to the horses? It will be ruin to me, sure, Jombateeste. All the guests know how you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... trouble today. it seems as if there wasent any use in living. nothing but trouble all the time. mother said i coodent sleep in that room until the rat was taken out. well father he came into my room and sniffed once and said, whew, what a almity smell. then he held his nose and went out and came back with mister Staples the father of the feller that called me Polelegs. ...
— The Real Diary of a Real Boy • Henry A. Shute
... young lady without a chaperon visit us. I feared it would become known, and we would receive a reprimand. She was decidedly giddy, and she sat on the arm of the easy-chair there and giggled and said it must be so nice to be a boy and go to Yale. After a while I began to smell a rat. I got up and took a closer look at her. Say, she was gotten up in great shape! It was that ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... corner of my eye saw him go down again. I could waste no more time upon this single antagonist. The man had his hands at my throat now. I seized him about the waist and carried him to the gunwale. He clung to me as a rat might cling to a terrier, but I shook him off and ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... artificial gravity of the lifeboat it seemed perfectly stationary to its occupants. Only the weird gyrations of the pictures upon the lookout screens showed that the craft was being shaken and thrown about like a rat in the jaws of a terrier; only the gauges revealed that they were almost a mile below the surface of the ocean already, and were still going downward at an appalling rate. Finally Clio could ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... drawn by the draught past the hiding-place, from which there would doubtless be a secret passage to the chamber above, which extended from one side of the inn to the other. In a glass case there was at the time of our visit a cat and a rat—the rat standing on its hind legs and facing the cat—but both animals dried up and withered like leather, until they were almost flat, the ribs of the cat showing plainly on its skin. The landlord gave us their history, from which it appeared that it had become necessary to place a stove ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... scarce finished my breakfast the next morning when I heard a loud rat-tat-tat upon the street door-surely the footman of some person of consequence. And Scipio was in the act of announcing the names when, greatly to his disgust, the visitors themselves rushed into my bedroom and curtailed the ceremony. They were none other than Dr. Courtenay ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... moreover, informed," said the Cat, "but I know not how to believe it, that you have also the power to take on you the shape of the smallest animals; for example, to change yourself into a rat or a mouse; but I must own to you I ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... procure a little of the old world he might manage it. He selected the beaver from among the animals, and sent it to dive after some earth. When it came up it was dead. He sent the otter, but it died also. At length he tried the musk rat. The musk rat dived. When it came up it was dead. But in its claws was clenched a little earth. Nanaboozhoo carefully took this earth, rubbed it in his fingers till it was dry, then placed it in the palm of his ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... monarchy, the Turkish occupation, and the new principality. We entered the bazaars, which were rotting and ruinous, the air infected with the loathsome vapours of dung-hills, and their putrescent carcases, tanpits with green hides, horns, and offal: here and there a hideous old rat showed its head at some crevice in the boards, to complete the ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... Indian corn is regarded as the "king of grains." It constitutes the chief food of every animal, from man down to the marauding rat, while its dried blade furnishes seven-tenths of the long food for working animals. The large white is the variety most esteemed, and most generally cultivated, for the reasons that it yields more grain and fodder, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... mayst deck the pate Of that famed Doctor Ad-mth-te, (The reverend rat, whom we saw stand On his hind-legs in Westmoreland,) Who changed so quick from blue to yellow, And would from yellow back to blue, And back again, convenient fellow, If 'twere his interest so ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the forward control and observation turret of the Star-Streak, Molo and his sister Meka, Venza, Anita and myself. Unobtrusively squatting on the floor was a small, gray, rat-faced fellow, put there, weapon in hand, to watch us. He was a ruffian from the underworld of Grebhar, a member of ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... which, although they contain no furniture, are at least weatherproof and within reach of shops, the Practical Joke Department scores one point. Barracks condemned as unsafe and insanitary before the war, but now reckoned highly eligible, count three points; rat-ridden billets count five. But if you can manoeuvre your helpless pawns into Mudsplosh Camp, you receive ten whole points, with a bonus of two points thrown in if you can effect the move without ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... body, the bones lay bare and exposed; in others, corruption in its most loathsome form prevailed. Here the meaner reptiles—active and prolific—might be seen busily at work, battening on human decay. Sir Henry stepped over a dead body, and started, as a rat, scared from its prey, rustled through a wreath of withered flowers, and hid itself amid a mouldering heap of bones. But there were some forms lovely still! In them the pulse of life had that day ceased to beat. The rigidity of Death—his ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org
|
|
|
