"Rat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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 ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... 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
... rat." Nick spat contemptuously, and a puff of gray smoke spread rapidly over walls, ceiling and floor. "That will hold you," he jeered, and opened the door. Aping the Minister's important waddle, he walked over to ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt
... 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
... That 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 ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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 |
