"Rummage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Morley's theatrical property box, apportioned strictly by lot, did not go far among fifty-six girls. Miss Rodgers allowed two of the prefects, with a teacher, to make an expedition into Fossato and rummage the shops for some yards of cheap, gay materials, imitation lace, and bright ribbons, which they were commissioned to buy on behalf of certain of their schoolfellows, but most of the dancers had to contrive their costumes out of just ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... your wish to have me at Rosamond's Bower, even though I was unlucky enough not to profit by that wish—some other time, however, you must, for my sake, try again; and I shall then be most ready for a rummage of your Irish treasures. Already, indeed, I have been drawing a little upon your 'Researches in the South of Ireland;' and should be very glad to have more books ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... some move towards acquaintance with her. A point comes when she must stand upon her dignity, for it is great. If you would hear her wonderful tales, or see her marvellous treasures, you must not trifle with her; you must not talk as if you could rummage her drawers and cahinets as you pleased. You must believe in her; you must reverence her; else, although she is everywhere about the house, you may not meet her from the beginning of one year to the ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... heaps of old papers, this gentleman, when he comes into the property, naturally begins to rummage, don't you see?" said ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... "What rummage be you talking, woman? Do you think you can sloke me off with this stuff? Westaway's my friend through thick and thin. Be you mad, ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... to an end. He had soon withdrawn his eyes from Stephen's agitated face, then partially averted his own face, then left his seat, and advanced to a side table, where he began to rummage among some papers, with his ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... A rummage sale of toys added quite a large sum to the general fund. There was a 5-cent table, a 10-cent table ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... exclaimed advancing with kindly outstretched hands—"what is the meaning of this?"—She looked at the miscellaneous turn-out of cupboards and chests of drawers, at the display of garments not usually submitted to the public gaze. "Are you preparing a rummage sale or are you—but no, surely not!—are you packing? I cannot describe how anxious I am to hear what has occurred. My sister, Mrs. Cowden, was extremely adverse to my facing the bad weather; but, I felt your note could only ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... yaffil laughed loud."—See Peacock at Home. Smellfox, anemone. Dead men's fingers, orchis. Granny's night-cap, water avens. Jacob's ladder, Solomon's seal. Lady's slipper, Prunella vulgaris. Poppy, foxglove. To routle, to rummage (like a pig in straw). To terrify, to worry or disturb. "Poor old man, the children did terrify him so, he is gone into the Union." Wind-list, white streak of faint cloud across a blue sky, showing the ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... have been rash to have termed it a man— turning its eye upwards to the place from whence the voice came, answered with a dreadful grin and shaking of its fist, yet presently began to undo a parcel, and rummage in the pockets of a sort of jerkin and pantaloons which it wore, seeking, it appeared, a bunch of keys, which at length it produced, while it took from the pocket a loaf of bread. Heating the stone of the wall, it affixed the torch to it by a piece of wax, and then cautiously ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... had thrown aside his oilskins, he began to rummage through a big chest and finally threw out a lot of old togs for the inspection of ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... extent an autobiographical figure, and many of whose experiences are Kuprin's own—"came upon the brothel" and gathered his material unconsciously, "without any ulterior thoughts of writing," we do not know, nor need we rummage in his dirty linen, as he puts it. Suffice it to say here—to cite but two instances—that almost anyone acquainted with Russia will tell you the full name of the rich, gay, southern port city of ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... out of date but ven I'd shake and rummage'em He gets his back up like a shot. He's jealous of Young Brummagem! I'll set up on my own account; and I've a new half dozen Of nice decoys vich I am sure ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various
... Bertrand; "as soon as a shell's burst they sprint and rummage for the fuse is the hole, for the position of the fuse gives the direction of its battery, you see, by the way it's dug itself in; and as for the distance, you've only got to read it—it's shown on the range-figures cut on the time-fuse which is ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... suggested Green, "I vote that as we're pretty safe, and have yet that piece of plunder, we set to work and cook it, for I'm devilish hungry, and so I think we must all be, seeing as how we hain't had a regular meal the whole day, besides if we rummage the place, we may chance to light upon somethin' else. I see the varmint have carried off the nice row of venison hams that used to hang up round the chimney, but there may be ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... punishment? Many laws as certainly make men bad, as bad men make many laws; yet under thy regimen they take us from the bosom of the nurse, turn the meat about upon the platter, pull the bed-clothes off, make us sleep when we would wake, and wake when we would sleep, and never cease to rummage and twitch us, until they see us safe landed at the grave. We can do nothing (but be poisoned) with impunity. What is worst of all, we must marry certain relatives and connexions, be they distorted, blear-eyed, toothless, carbuncled, with hair (if any) eclipsing the reddest ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... sailors. Count me in, girls, and you'll find me at the Liberty Shop early and late, where I promise to sell anything from an old hoopskirt to a decayed piano at the highest market price. We've had some 'rummage sales' in Washington, you know, but nothing to compare with this thorough and businesslike undertaking of yours. But I won't wear your uniform; I can't afford to allow the glorious red-white-and-blue to look dowdy, as it ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... shall robe myself in the oldest garments I possess, and will rummage those dusty archives until I find the letters of him who was Archbishop ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... did not soften Captain Candage. He did not understand exactly from what source this general rancor of his flowed. At the same time he was conscious of the chief reason why he did not want to allow these visitors to rummage aboard the schooner. They would meet his daughter, and he was afraid, and he was bitterly ashamed of himself because he was afraid. Dimly he was aware that this everlasting fear on her account constituted an insult to her. The finer impulse to protect her privacy was not actuating him; he knew that, ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... dust-bin! Inexhaustible treasury, receptacle of windfalls, the jewel of the house! You shall have your share of it, an exquisite and surreptitious share; but it does not do to seem to know where it is. You are strictly forbidden to rummage in it. Man in this way prohibits many pleasant things, and life would be dull indeed and your days empty if you had to obey all the orders of the pantry, the cellar and the dining-room. Luckily, he is absent-minded ...
— Our Friend the Dog • Maurice Maeterlinck
... you. Without saying anything, go and rummage through my basket, and then through the Paphlagonian's, and see what is in them; that's ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... at Beaumanoir was speedily known to all the servants of the Chateau. She did not often visit them, but when she did there was a hurried recital of an Ave or two to avert any harm, followed by a patronizing welcome and a rummage for small coins to cross her hand withal in return for her solutions of the grave questions of love, jealousy, money, and marriage, which fermented secretly or openly in the bosoms of all of them. They were but human beings, food for imposture, and ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... have been unlike him not to have remembered that he had seen children at her house. "Hammy and Berta made great friends with me the other day.... Tell them I haven't forgotten the promise to rummage up some odd native toys I picked up in Rhodesia—made of mud and feathers and bits of fur and queerly-shaped seed-pods—the most enchanting collection of birds and beasts that ever came out of the Ark. And ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... big bunch of wall-flowers in her hand. She told, with some laughter, how she had waylaid Rosalie on her return from market to peep into her basket of provisions. To rummage in this basket was a ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... oughtn't to leave them stuck in your box, as if to invite all the servants to come and have a rummage, when you go out ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... in a rough Spanish voice. "Hunt them out! Don't let one of them escape your bayonets!" And then several Mexican soldiers entered the room and began to rummage among ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... frail and treacherous; and we think many excellent things, which for want of making a deep impression, we can never recover afterwards. In vain we hunt for the stragling Idea, and rummage all the Solitudes and Retirements of our Soul, for a lost Thought, which has left no Track or Foot-steps behind it: The swift Off-spring of the Mind is gone; 'tis dead as soon as born; nay, often proves abortive in the moment it was ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... prowling. There were no books in the rear room; of this he was presently assured. He came back into the front shop and began to rummage. A few trade catalogues rewarded him and he solemnly laid them on ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... Sylvester, caved, with a bullet through his head, I got mad, and pitched in, licketty cut. Our part of the fight didn't last long; so a lot of us larked round Fredericksburg, and give some of them houses a pretty consid'able of a rummage, till we was ordered out of the mess. Some of our fellows cut like time; but I warn't a-goin' to run for nobody; and, fust thing I knew, a shell bust, right in front of us, and I keeled over, feelin' as if I was blowed higher'n a kite. I sung out, and the boys come back for me, double ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... small, Who take and never give the wall. By ignorance is pride increased; They who assume most, know the least. Yet coxcombs do not, all alike, Our ridicule and laughter strike. For some are lovers, some are bores, Some rummage in the useless stores Of folios ranged upon the shelf, Another only loves himself. Such coxcombs are of private station: Ambition soars to rule the nation. They flattery swallow: do not fear,— No nonsense will offend ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... spot indicated, and proceeded to rummage among the heterogeneous articles that had been recovered from the scene of the previous night's fight, and soon routed out the instrument of which he was in search, with which he went to the opening of the tent, from which the launch was by this time visible. Applying ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... unpacked our trunks, and had everything on the floor where we could see it, after the fashion with men. Captain Febiger's baby boy came in to help us rummage in the heaps of canvas clothes, ammunition, and what not besides, finally selecting for his amusement a loaded Colt's revolver and a freshly honed razor. We were terrorized by the possibilities of the combination. Our trying to take them away from the youngster only made him yell like a cavern ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... has read the first 120 pages of Moore's 'Life of Byron'; and he says they are charming, and not a syllable de trop. He is now busy at a grand rummage among his papers, and has already found one of Lord Byron's letters which shall be at Mr. Moore's service forthwith. He expects to find more of them. This is curious, as being the first of ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... when the vicar gave out the hymn, he used often to shout out, "Here, hold on! I don't like that one; let's have hymn Number 25," or some such effort of psalmody. This request, or command, used to upset the organ arrangement, and the poor old clerk had to rummage among his barrels to get a suitable tune, and the operation, even if successful, took at least ten minutes, during which time a large amount of squeaking and the sounds of the writhing of woodwork and snapping of sundry ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... of my stay I felt a desire, one I had never known before, to rummage in the old Louis XV bookcase that stood near my bed. There among the volumes in their century-old bindings, where the worms, never disturbed, slowly bored their galleries, I found a book made of thick rough old-fashioned paper, ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... paws, he sallied forth to a warren where rabbits abounded. Placing some bran and lettuce in the pouch, he stretched himself out and lay as if dead. His plan was to wait until some young rabbit, unlearned in worldly wisdom, should come and rummage in the pouch for the eatables which ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... came. The number of my inquisitors, 'in domo', was thus reduced to six. They behaved with great rudeness, and executed their mission with a rigour and severity exceedingly painful to my family. They carried their search so far as to rummage the pockets of my old clothes, and even to unrip the linings. All this was done in the hope of finding something that would commit me in the eyes of the new master of France. But I was not to be caught in that way, and ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... in that same suit, and I was so mortified at the funeral I couldn't think of nothin' else. No, I'll go after them papers and the diary while they're fresh in my mind. And besides, do you s'pose I'd let Sarah Ann Atwood rummage through ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... standing alone, immersed in rummage sales, parish concerts, mothers' meetings, school teas, and other feminine functions, be rude to Fifteen women at once? Between you and me, I have tried it, in my desperation, in individual cases, and it has no effect. I have discovered you can't please a woman better ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... he surprised his father to the point of making him refrain from any further communication, by adding, "And then you'll have plenty of time to rummage among those old Turanian verbs ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... this journal last New Year's—wrote two entries in it and then forgot all about it. I came across it today in a rummage—Sara insists on my cleaning things out thoroughly every once in so long—and I'm going to keep it up. I feel the need of a confidant of some kind, even if it is only an inanimate journal. I have no other. And I cannot talk my thoughts over ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... life, and echoed with the sound of calling, or screaming, voices. The inhabitants were surely all of them in a flurry of furious activity. Children were playing before and upon the door-step, which was flanked by an open shop, whose interior revealed with a blatant sincerity a rummage of mysterious edibles—fruit, vegetables, strings of strange objects that looked poisonous, fungi, and other delights. Above, from several windows, women leaned out, talking violently to one another. Two were holding babies, who testified their new-born sense of life by screaming shrilly. ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... he said. "That sham stroke of apoplexy was your doing, lynx eyes!... Two words from me, and your throat would be cut in less than a week, but I forgive you, I am a Christian. You did not sell me either. But who did?——Aha! you may rummage upstairs," he shouted, hearing the police officers opening his cupboards and taking possession of his effects. "The nest is empty, the birds flew away yesterday, and you will be none the wiser. My ledgers are here," he said tapping his forehead. "Now I know who sold me! It could only be ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... to the committee. He turned the office and its force over to them; gave them the freedom of the account books and the safe. Let them rummage the warehouse and its system. Explained his engineering mistakes to them. Went over and over the details of the flood, of the weathering abutments, of the concrete that did not come up to specifications, ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... of alum be just covered with water, and dissolved by boiling; rummage the whole well together, and pour in the alum, and the whole will be ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... Rennie swung up saddle, blanket, and the meager possessions which he had brought out of Virginia two weeks ago, to the platform in a crooked tree overhanging the brook. He settled beside them on the well-seasoned timbers of the old tree house to rummage through his saddlebags. ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... much of my party clothes, anyhow," she declared, scrambling down with the box in her arms. Then followed a fruitless search for the silk stockings that matched them. They were not in the box with the shoes, where they had always been kept, and a rummage through the drawers ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of it? I'm not afraid of you, and don't you go thinking I am! Look, here's what I've got in the bag," said the man, and began to rummage in it and to show me the contents: three pairs of new mittens, some sort of thick cloth for garments, a bag of barley, a side of bacon, sixteen rolls of tobacco, and a few large lumps of sugar candy. In the bottom of the bag was perhaps half ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... any longer the sharp pangs of hunger, Janina began to look around her room for something which she might sell. She began feverishly to rummage in her trunks. She had only ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... my dear fellow, he wrote, or rather, indited me an epistle, or, I should say, indictment, in his most Roman manner which—but egad! I'll read it to you, I have it here somewhere." And the Viscount began to rummage among the bedclothes, to feel and fumble under pillow and bolster, and eventually dragged forth a woefully crumpled document which he smoothed out upon his knees, and from which he began to read ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... don't understand is why they should make you take oath to a thing and then rummage through your trunks as though they didn't ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... went down to the strand again, where she stopped to rummage in her bag. Finally she fished out a little wooden shoe, which she placed on a stone where it could be plainly seen. Then she ran to little ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... day, he found out that Nikolai Petrovitch had in his possession rather interesting letters, written by Madame Odintsov's mother to his wife, and he gave him no rest till he got hold of the letters, for which Nikolai Petrovitch had to rummage in twenty drawers and boxes. Having gained possession of these half-crumbling papers, Arkady felt, as it were, soothed, just as though he had caught a glimpse of the goal towards which he ought now to go. 'I mean that for both of you,' he was constantly whispering—she had added that ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... hungry young men sat down to their morning meal with a hearty goodwill. The host began to rummage among his correspondence, and finally extracted an unstamped note, which he opened. His face brightened as he read, and he laid it down with a broad smile and helped himself ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... loading them into a cart, would set a negro to work hitching up a horse or mule to it, then putting him on the load to drive, leave a soldier with him to see things well done. After this was done, some few of them would go back to the houses and rummage them from bottom to top, ransacking every nook and corner for all kinds of precious things. Trunks, boxes, beds and such, never escaped notice, their contents being thrown out on the floor and scattered to ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... the cause he served, wouldn't have hesitated an instant probably, to be torn by Hindoo lions,—devoured by South Sea cannibals,—fallen upon by a chapel spire,—trampled to death even at a church rummage sale,—saw no conceivable reason at the moment for being eaten by dogs at a ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... brink of a superb adventure. To rummage about in the lumber-room of a bygone period: to wipe away the dust from long-neglected annals: to burnish up old facts and fancies: to piece together the life-story of some loved hero long dead: that is a work of reverent thought to be undertaken in peace and seclusion. But to plunge ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... on the bed and walked to the table. She had experienced her share of battle for the day. "No children to rummage," passed through her brain. It was the final week of hot, dry August weather, while a point had been made of calling her attention to the extra cover when the room had been shown her. She might have said these ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... family they daunt; They flirt, they sing, they laugh, they tattle, Rummage his mother, pinch his aunt, And up-stairs in a ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... West over, rocking, lumbering, wide vehicles far gone in the odor of romance, coaches that Vasquez has held up, from whose high seats express messengers have shot or been shot as their luck held. This is to comfort you when the driver stops to rummage for wire to mend a failing bolt. There is enough of this sort of thing to quite prepare you to believe what the driver insists, namely, that all that country and Jimville ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... sulky, which was not a state of mind to be encouraged. She rushed upstairs to her grandmother's room, which was over the little room where Tozer sat, and from which she could already hear sounds of conversation rapidly rising in tone, and the noise of opening and shutting drawers, and a general rummage. Phoebe never knew what she said to the kind old woman, who kissed and wept over her, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... his spectacles, and once more started to rummage in the cupboard, and to smother his guest with dust as he untied successive packages of papers—so much so that his victim burst out sneezing. Finally he extracted a much-scribbled document in which the names of the deceased peasants lay as close-packed ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... a passport. Of course, it was forged. He had a trolley transfer from Wyndham, Ohio, 'bout a hundred miles west of Cleveland, and, let's see, a hotel bill of the Hotel Bishop in Cleveland. He has a suite there, I guess. I'd like to rummage through his trunk. I tripped him up two or three times, enough to find that he's got a lot of information about army places. Seems to have more of it in his head than he had in ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... escort. In the evening a public reception was given at the Washington College of Law. From 1916 the association assisted the National Association at its new headquarters, 1626 Rhode Island Avenue, by serving tea afternoons and raising money through bazaars, rummage sales, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... I rummage the town in search of adventure; climb one hundred and fifty steep steps, and find the highlands at the top, green, pastoral and reposeful. Pleasant homes are scattered about; a few animals feed leisurely in the grassy streets. One diminutive Episcopal chapel ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... dummies of the Bowery have a very ghastly look at night. They suggest a procession of the ghosts of Bluebeard's wives, who, true to their instincts while in life, nightly revisit the "ladies' furnishing establishments" here, to rummage among scarfs and ribbons, and don for the brief hour before cock-crow the valuable stuffs and stuffings that are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... to be food in the cupboard," said Breton, beginning to rummage. "They've generally had a good stock of tinned things. Here we are, Spargo—these are tongues and sardines. Make some hot coffee while I open one of ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... the ship drive as it would. In this great hazard of our lives we were the beginning of the third night, when God in mercy ceased the storm of a sudden, and there was a great calm, which made us exceeding joyful; but when those beasts, for they were scarce men, that manned the vessel, began to rummage the bark, they could not find their compass anywhere, for the loss of which they began again such horrible lamentations as were as dismal to us as the ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... poem of romances once enjoying a European celebrity but now consigned to oblivion, will impress the reader with the transitory nature of merely mediocre literary reputation. One has now to search for the very names of most of the popular authors of Pushkin's day and rummage biographical dictionaries for the dates of their births and deaths. Yet the poet's prime was but fifty years ago, and had he lived to a ripe old age he would have been amongst us still. He was four years younger than the late Mr. Thomas Carlyle. The decadence of ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... the engravings locked up, all the drawers and closets locked. Why, if I want to take a fellow into the library, in the first place it smells like a vault, and I have to unbarricade windows, and unlock and rummage for half an hour before I can get at anything; and I know Aunt Zeruah is standing tiptoe at the door, ready to whip everything back and lock up again. A fellow can't be social, or take any comfort in showing his books and pictures ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... days between!" objected Mrs. Patterson. "Indeed, it will not hurt me, Sarah. Why, I feel better already. And you'll help me. If you'll get out your work-basket, I'll rummage in this ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... saying, 'Thou must assuredly come,' do thou reply, 'By Allah, I will not go, unless the Chief also go with me.' Then, as soon as thou comest to the house, begin by searching the terrace-roofs; then rummage the closets and cabinets; and if thou find naught, humble thyself before the Kazi and be abject and feign thyself subjected, and after stand at the door and look as if thou soughtest a place wherein to make water,[FN35] because there ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... this Japanese country, seems to be a perpetual hunt after curios. We sit down on the mattings, in the antique-sellers' little booths, take a cup of tea with the salesmen, and rummage with our own hands in the cupboards and chests, where many a fantastic piece of old rubbish is huddled away. The bargaining, much discussed, is laughingly carried on for several days, as though we were trying to play off some excellent little ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... sing'lar," said Uncle Billy confidently. "And I've been thinking about it, and kinder seeing myself thar all day. It's mighty queer!" He got up and began to rummage among some torn and coverless books ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... is wrong, as every reader knows, To rummage people's drawers, and wear their clothes; But Topsy is a negro child, you see, Who never learned to read ...
— Pictures and Stories from Uncle Tom's Cabin • Unknown
... unopened; and, intact, a beautiful little inlaid chest, such as ladies have for their combs, brushes, ointment-pots and similar toilet articles. From their condition I conjectured that the bandits had just commenced to rummage the coach when the unexpected approach of the mounted constables, whose small numbers they most likely did not realize, had ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... without delay and the bailiffs meddle no more of the same Goods upon Pain of Imprisonment and pay the Party grieved quatreple Damages." As is well known, it is the United States custom to insist upon the oath of the importer, and notwithstanding that, rummage open his trunks. Or are we to infer that people were more ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... in the darkness of the earth's interior; only when they fell sick were they taken up to see the sunlight and to roll about in green pastures. There was one of them called "Dago Charlie," who had learned to chew tobacco, and to rummage in the pockets of the miners and their "buddies." Not knowing how to spit out the juice, he would make himself ill, and then he would swear off from indulgence. But the drivers and the pit-boys knew his failing, and would tempt "Dago Charlie" ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... about seventy miles from Capetown, and was known as the 'Garden Farm,' from the rare fact of its possessing a well-stocked garden and a large orchard of peach and apricot trees, all fenced in with a stout wooden railing to keep off the pigs and cattle that were allowed to root and rummage around the other homesteads at their own sweet will. The owner of this farm was an Englishman, named John Colton: but he was a naturalised burgher and married to a Dutch wife, so that every one—perhaps even Colton himself—had long forgotten ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... needles and thread," said Silver Ears. "I mean to rummage in these trunks and get a whole lot of stuff for dresses and bonnets and patchwork. And our shopping bag—we must ...
— The Graymouse Family • Nellie M. Leonard
... matches used as tapers for a minute when something had to be found, drawers or boxes half-turned out and left unfinished; in short, all the confusion and vacancies resulting from plans for order never carried out. The lawyer's private room, especially disordered by this incessant rummage, bore witness to his unresting pace, the hurry of a man overwhelmed with business, hunted by contradictory necessities. The bookcase looked as if it had been sacked; there were books scattered over everything, some piled up open, one ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... paying four-and-sixpence for a new novel that happened to be literature than they would dream of paying four-and-sixpence for a cigar, sent down to the offices of the English Review for complete sets of back numbers at half a crown a number, so that they could rummage without a moment's delay among the earlier chapters in search of tit-bits according to their singular appetite. Such was the London which calls itself literary and political! A spectacle to encourage cynicism! Rumour had a wonderful ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... Aun' Sheba. Here, Sam, make the kitchen fire before you do anything else. Now we must rummage and see what ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... lengthened rummage in a voluminous pocket, and the production of several articles irrelevant to the occasion—a thimble, a bit of ginger, and part of a tract—Mrs Gray brought to light a piece of paper, on which was written the ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... hard with Mr O'Gallagher. My rage was greater than my agony. I stood when I had been landed, my chest heaving, my teeth set fast, and my apparel still in disorder. The school was dismissed, and I was left alone with the savage pedagogue, who immediately took up my basket, and began to rummage the contents. ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... lap was stuffed with a cold tongue, part of a buttock of beef, half a turkey, and a swinging lump of butter, and the matter of ten mould kandles, that had scarce ever been lit. The cuck brazened it out, and said it was her rite to rummage the pantry; and she was ready for to go before the mare: that he had been her potticary many years, and would never think of hurting a poor sarvant, for giving away the scraps of the kitchen. I went another way ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... an edifice which you were building for yourself. What niches it had for what saints and deities, I couldn't hope to know. I might have been scornfully thrust in among the cobwebs with other promiscuous rummage of outgrown days. I might have been hardly more important than the dolls that preceded me in your affections by only a couple of years. How could I tell?" He paused and questioned her with direct eyes. "No, I meant to come back into your life not ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... grate, rummaging in the cinders with the end of his walking stick, very much to the detriment of Friar Ange, who coughed fit to give up the ghost, swallowing the ashes and coal-dust thrown into his soup plate. And the man in black still continued to rummage in the fire, shouting, "A Salamander! I see a Salamander!" while the stirred-up flames made the shadow of his bodily form tremble on the ceiling like a large ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... secured his ax, and sent Brissac to the pantry to rummage for other weapons. "A rush is the next thing in order," he suggested; and they prepared as they could to ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... rabbit-hole, and with your two hands—or at least with one—pushed the said weasel into your burrow. Which thing he could never have done without your help, and if you had resisted but ever so little he would never have effected his purpose. If his weasel was allowed to rummage in your burrow, that is not his fault, and ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... Bill, Portsmouth tenders from Portland Bill to Beachy Head, and Folkestone and Dover tenders from Beachy Head to the North Foreland, thus completing the encircling chain. Nor was Ireland forgotten in the general sea-rummage. As a converging point for the great overseas trade-routes it was of prime importance, and tenders hailing from Belfast, Dublin, Waterford, Cork and Limerick, or making those places their chief ports of call, exercised unceasing vigilance ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... scrubby paper to write on—excuse it. I am certain that I sent some more notes on Spain and Portugal, particularly one on the latter. Pray rummage, and don't mind my politics. I believe I leave town next week. Are you ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Browning's poems, and several other sizable articles from the table close to Stanton's elbow. Nothing but the dictionary seemed too big to throw. Finally with a grin that could not be disguised even from the dog, Stanton began to rummage with eye and hand through the intricate ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... of the loan, he is at that moment in possession of a document, which he is prepared to deposit with the lender—a document calculated, he cannot doubt, to remove any feeling of anxiety which the most prudent person could experience in the circumstances. After a rummage in his pockets, which develops miscellaneous and varied, but as yet by no means valuable possessions, he at last comes to the object of his search, a crumpled bit of paper, and spreads it out—a fifty-pound bank-note! ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... entered the barabbara to look after their rifles, and began to rummage among the piles of klipsies which they found thrown back under the eaves, they unearthed a broken cast-iron frying-pan and, what caused them even greater delight, a little, dirty sack, which contained perhaps three or four pounds of salt. They sat on the ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... quite rusty. We found them in a sack in an old barrel. It was in the scrap heap. We're very good friends with the Averys, very good, indeed," she continued hastily. "They allow us to rummage around at will—in ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... to rummage in my box, interfering with my things; he put them all along the kitchen table; he did it because I told you, miss, that he was carrying on with the kitchenmaid. He goes with her every evening into the wood ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... "We'll have a tag day and a rummage sale and I'll get up a dicker party and some ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... cradles" (such an amusing game), her own packs of Patience cards, some photograph frames, post-cards of Arles, and—most singular—a kettle-holder. At the head of each bed she would sit down and rummage in the bag, speaking in her slow but quite good French, to explain the use of the acidulated drops, or to give a lesson in cat's cradles. And the poilus would listen with their polite, ironic patience, and ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... merrily; "it is perfectly fresh, and I like the shape. Just wait till you see it trimmed, Miss Bean. May I rummage a little among your drawers? I will not ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... much in the great field of astronomy that is discouraging to the savant who hasn't the time nor means to rummage around through the heavens. At times I am almost hopeless, and feel like saying to the great yearnful, hungry world: "Grope on forever. Do not ask me for another scientific fact. Find it out yourself. Hunt up your own new-laid planets, and let me ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... I've been having a solitary rummage among old things. It is my last night here. We're leaving for the country to-morrow, ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... scrubbing-brush, and very little with a broom. A rickety old chest of drawers stood in one corner, presumably filled with hospital necessaries, from the very strong smell of drugs emanating from it, and from the fact that the nurses would bustle in and rummage for some desired article, giving glimpses of the confusion inside. On the top of the drawers were arranged a multitude of medicine-bottles, half full and half empty, cracked and whole. The broken old washstand had been of valuable service during the night, as with it I barricaded the ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... off to you—and remember you asked for—the rummage, Rose Mary," answered Everett in a tone as light as hers. Then suddenly he rose and stood tall and straight in front of her, looking down into her upraised eyes in the dusk. "You don't know, do you, you rose woman you, what a ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... certificate had gone to New-York and sent Mr Olmstead who, with Mr. Cowen's consent (for it must have been by his consent that he acted as a substitute) sat in convention, and voted for Mr. Young. Thus ingeniously does the citizen rummage the chain of cause and effect, to eke ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... us," he said, "one ought to watch the work of these women for an hour. Here they scrub, wash, and brush a house as if it were a person. A house is not cleaned; it has its toilette made. The girls blow between the bricks, they rummage in the corners with their nails and with pins, and clean so minutely that they tire their eyes no less than their arms. Really it is a national passion. These girls, who are generally so phlegmatic, change their character on cleaning day and become frantic. That day we are no longer masters ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... time, and rummage sales had not yet found their way into East Greenfield; so it was not very wonderful that by noon Gerry really had enough things promised her to furnish the barn with a comfort that would seem luxury to the ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... therefore observe, that as the mind is endowed with a power of exciting any idea it pleases; whenever it dispatches the spirits into that region of the brain, in which the idea is placed; these spirits always excite the idea, when they run precisely into the proper traces, and rummage that cell, which belongs to the idea. But as their motion is seldom direct, and naturally turns a little to the one side or the other; for this reason the animal spirits, falling into the contiguous traces, present other related ideas in lieu of that, ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... hammock, and an umbrella, and some shoes, and a box of prunes, and a sack of potatoes, and half a ham. When water got in at the sides of the tent and wet all these objects, and the bedclothing hung over the floor and got into them, it was trying to the temper to have to rummage there. ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... Schmidt and Rosenthal shall rummage the German quarter and even go through Williamsburgh and Hoboken. The end justifies any amount of labor that can be spent upon ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... "Secret service—rummage baggage?" repeated Burke, himself now in perplexity. "That is news to me. We have rummaged no trunks or bags, least of all Nordheim's. In fact, we have never been able to find them ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... that he was talking about M. de Gery, the Nabob's young secretary, who often comes to the Territoriale, where he does nothing but rummage among the books. Very polite certainly, but a very proud youngster who does not know how to make the most of himself. There was nothing but a chorus of maledictions against him around the table. Even M. Louis delivered himself on that subject, with ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... garret. The night was even worse. As soon as the lights were out, these untiring nibblers set to work. And everywhere, in the ceilings, in the floors, in the cupboards, at the doors, there was a chase and a rummage, and so furious a noise of gimlets, pincers, and saws, that a deaf man could not have rested ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... gradually strengthened her, and she began to form in her mind the first words of the letter she meant to write to Harney. She wanted to write it at once, and with feverish hands she began to rummage in her drawer for a sheet of letter paper. But there was none left; she must go downstairs to get it. She had a superstitious feeling that the letter must be written on the instant, that setting down her secret in words would bring her reassurance ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... travel; but God knows why theologians should go forth. They can become mad enough at home! They come into Catholic countries, and then there is an end of them! Wherefore should book-worms go forth? They shut themselves up in the diligence and in their chambers, rummage a little in the libraries, but not so much as a pinch of snuff do they do us any good when they return! Those who cost the most generally are of the least use, and bring the country the least honor! I, thank God! paid for my journey myself, ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... there trembling like a beast of chase until the enemy (as I deemed him) had passed and I could venture out again to seek for food. Providentially for me, my banishment from Lucca had taken place in the summer; I suffered nothing from exposure, and had no real lack of sustenance. I used to rummage the streets of villages at night to get broken meat; as I have said, I did not scruple to rob henroosts, or to suck the teats of cows and goats in the byres. During this time I neither prayed to God nor thought of Virginia in her horrid peril. All my efforts of mind and sense ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... said grandmother. "It is luncheon time now. I am glad you came to-day, my daughter, for Nancy, the housemaid, has gone home for a week's rest, and there is a meeting of the women of the church this afternoon to arrange about a rummage sale, and a loan exhibition, and they are rather depending upon me to contribute to both; but as Nancy is away, I cannot well leave for I am a little overtired with more duties than usual. So I have made a list of things that I will lend, and give. I should like ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... out and rearranging, for the dust flies up as I rummage among the papers and letters that are a blending of past, present, and future. All my pet pens are rusty, and must be replaced from the box of stubs, for a stub pen assists one to straightforward, truthful expression, while a fine ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... head, muttering lurid threats of what he would do if the coachman drove on. The dismounted man was half inside the coach where two women shrank from him, and thence his blusterous voice proceeded, "Now, my blowens, hand over, or I'll rummage you. A skinny purse? Come, now, you've more than that. What's under your legs, fatty? Stand up, I say. Ay, hand out the jewel-box. Now, my tackle, what ha' you got aboard? What's under that pretty tucker?" He threw the ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... I had wanted; and if I could, I would not. I was ashamed to be so much moved about a native, ashamed of the marriage too, and the certificate she had treasured in her kilt; and I turned aside and made believe to rummage among my cases. The first thing I lighted on was a case of gin, the only one that I had brought; and, partly for the girl's sake, and partly for horror of the recollections of old Randall, took a sudden resolve. I prised the lid off. One ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "The rummage sale," Mr. Pennycoop pointed out to her, "occurs only once a year, and at that time your own temper, ...
— The Cost of Kindness - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... with instant death unless she fetched out all her jewels and valuables on the spot. The poor woman accordingly had to open her great linen chest, in the bottom of which her little store of silver was hidden, and in this the ruffian began to rummage. Just when he had almost emptied it, and was stooping to reach the last articles from the bottom, a happy thought came into the brave woman's mind. She seized the robber unexpectedly by the legs and tipped him head first into the mighty chest; ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... both books on the lion skin and began to rummage through her pockets. "Look what else I brought you," and Maezli laid down a tiny ivory whistle. "Kurt gave it to me once and now I give it to you. If you have a headache and Mr. Trius is far away, ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... work! The very thing! It was quite big enough to hold him—it was one of those enormous trunks beloved of women!... To hide in it would be an excellent trick—a real joke! Let me burrow in there, and see the stupefaction of these estimable characters when they open it to rummage about among Elizabeth's belongings and find themselves face to face with me! They will see besides my sympathetic countenance the stern mouth of my revolver!... Let us see whether it is a ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... of fuse, but it happened that I had never seen any in my life. I remember I thought it must be white and soft like the string of a firecracker. So I began to rummage through all the drawers and boxes for fuse. One of the first things I came across was a coil of black, stiff, tarry string, but I threw it to one side and went on looking for fuse. After I had hunted half an hour and found none, I gave up. As I stood there thinking, a good deal discouraged, my eye ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth
... of the house comes in, accompanied by LORD BROCKLEHURST. The EARL OF LOAM is a widower, a philanthropist, and a peer of advanced ideas. As a widower he is at least able to interfere in the domestic concerns of his house—to rummage in the drawers, so to speak, for which he has felt an itching all his blameless life; his philanthropy has opened quite a number of other drawers to him; and his advanced ideas have blown out his figure. ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... the dimensions of the paper; the inside ones are the key, and the dotted ones, the section that is made of the whole for the purpose of keeping it secret, should any GRACELESS COWAN ever get possession of the sacred ark, and attempt to rummage its contents. The other part of the key x is made on the back of the same piece of paper, so that on putting them together, it shows equally plain. It is said that these characters were used by Aaron Burr, in carrying on his treasonable ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... that they got lots of money from kind-hearted people, and food at hospitable doors, and here and there clothing and oddments which, if they did not wear, they knew how to dispose of advantageously. What extremes of ways and means such people must be acquainted with! no ditch was too low to rummage in, no rat-hole too hidden to be ravaged; a gate represented something to be climbed over: an open door was an invitation, a locked one a challenge. They could dodge under the fences of the law and climb ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... cried Allan, 'we're going crab fishing. Come along and let's rummage out the lines, Reggie. We must be sure and get enough for all. Tricksy, you might ask Duncan to put some provisions in a basket for us, as we shan't be home for tea or supper. Let's hurry up or we'll lose the best of ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... depths. Satisfied that it was impassable, they consulted for a few minutes, and then, apparently coming to the conclusion that the place was untenanted, they returned to the middle cave, and began to rummage and toss about the ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... the desert lay all around—the great sands, the great masses of granite that look as if patiently waiting to be fashioned into obelisks, and sarcophagi, and statues. But away there across the bend of the river, dominating the ugly rummage of this intrusive beehive of human bees, sheer grace overcoming strength both of nature and human nature, rose the fabled "Pharaoh's Bed"; gracious, tender, from Shellal most delicately perfect, and glowing with pale gold against the grim background of the hills ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... the chief commanders of the fleet on board, desiring them to send their carpenters to assist in searching for the leak, and some of each of their companies to aid our men in pumping. Some were set to rummage the hold in search of the leak, and others to stick our sprit-sail full of oakum, with which we made several trials under the ship's bilge, but could not find the leak. We at length found, by divers trials within board, that the leak ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... in the smallest of these places that I keep my wine; a gloomy hole close to the foot of the cellar stairs; and beyond which, I have seldom proceeded. Indeed, save for the rummage 'round, already mentioned, I doubt whether I had ever, before, been right through ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... guess that those light steps were a woman's. Edoardo turned towards a table, as if to look for some papers, saying to himself: 'I am lost.' And Sophia knelt down by the trunk that contained her clothes, pretending to rummage for something in it, while she wiped away her tears, and suppressed ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... told you I was poor?" she demanded. "Did I ever come a-begging to you? Did I ever walk into your house to pry and rummage, and tell you that your things were no use? When I do you'll have a right to come here and behave as you have, but not a minute before. Use! They are of use. They remind me of my family,—of the time I was young, ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... stop'd. I told a Friend how strange with me it was, She, an experienc'd Bawd, soon grop'd the Cause, Saying, for this Disease, take what you can, You'll ne'er be well, till you have taken Man. Therefore, before with Maiden-heads I'll be Thus plagu'd, and live in daily Misery, Some Spark shall rummage all my Wem about, To find this ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses From Women • Various
... presently, the only known writings of his which belong to this period are sermons, and these—a mere "scratch" collection of pulpit discourses, which, as soon as he had gained the public ear, he hastened in characteristic fashion to rummage from his desk and carry to the book-market—throw no light upon the problem before us. There are sermons of Sterne which alike in manner and matter disclose the author of Tristram Shandy; but they are not ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... swiftly to gather a ball of worsted, and when it was secured began to rummage in her work-basket for something that seemed from her intentness to be vitally necessary to her ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan |
