"Scratch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with the conviction that she had slept long and soundly. The voices were hushed under the shed. Madame Antoine's step was no longer to be heard in the adjoining room. Even the chickens had gone elsewhere to scratch and cluck. The mosquito bar was drawn over her; the old woman had come in while she slept and let down the bar. Edna arose quietly from the bed, and looking between the curtains of the window, she saw by the slanting ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... least I am glad that in their death-pain they were able to scratch her—she still tugs and mauls. I walk on. We reach the meadow. Well, at least to-day we are in time. It has the silence and solitude of the dawn of Creation's first still day, broken only by the sheep that ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... tell, Captain Drake had never once contemplated any attack on San Joseph; he valued the place at less than a scratch on an Englishman's skin. His stay in the harbour was dictated solely by a desire to glean information concerning the Orinoco and the land of gold that he sought. The delta of the great river lay, the nearest land, to the south ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... are all their motions! There! one has reared herself half way out of the water; another stretches forth a delicate web foot to scratch her ear, as handily as a dog on dry land; and now the drake reflects his purple neck to preen his ruffled wing, and now—bad luck to you, Peacock, why did you snort and stamp?—they are off like a bullet, and out of ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... lines, To elegies in mournful tone, Or prologues sent from hand unknown; Then, rising with Aurora's light, The Muse invoked, sit down to write; Blot out, correct, insert, refine, Enlarge, diminish, interline; Be mindful, when invention fails, To scratch your head, and ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... for breakfast lumps of boiled beef with peppered holcus-scones. We were kindly looked upon by one Sultan, a sick and decrepid Eunuch, who having served five Amirs, was allowed to remain in the palace. To appearance he was mad: he wore upon his poll a motley scratch wig, half white and half black, like Day and Night in masquerades. But his conduct was sane. At dawn he sent us bad plantains, wheaten crusts, and cups of unpalatable coffee-tea [40], and, assisted by a crone more decrepid ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... the world could manage it. Let me look again. Hem, hem—the first phrase to alter is this: 'I know her enough to feel deep solicitude and anxiety for your happiness if centred in a nature so imperious and vain'—scratch out 'your,' and put 'my.' All the rest good, good—till we come to 'affections which you ascribe to her, and suppose devoted to yourself'—for 'yourself' write 'myself'—the rest will do. Now, then, the date—we must change it to the ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Worley, striker of the Amaranth! My mother lives in St. Louis. Tell her a lie for a poor devil's sake, please. Say I was killed in an instant and never knew what hurt me—though God knows I've neither scratch nor bruise this moment! It's hard to burn up in a coop like this with the whole wide world so near. Good-bye boys—we've all got to come to it ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... we had a conversation upon cunning. M'Leod said that he was not afraid of cunning people; but would let them play their tricks about him like monkeys. 'But,' said I, 'they scratch'; and Mr M'Queen added, 'they'll invent new tricks, as soon as you find out what they do.' JOHNSON. 'Cunning has effect from the credulity of others, rather than from the abilities of those who are cunning. It requires no extraordinary ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... Europe, over Australia, Canada, India, and New Zealand. During my ministry I have published about 3,200 of these articles. Many of them have been gathered into books, many of them translated into Swedish, Spanish, Dutch, and other foreign tongues. They have made the scratch of a very humble pen audible to Christendom. The consecrated pen may be more powerful than the consecrated tongue. I devoutly thank God for having condescended to use my humble pen to the spread of his Gospel; and I purpose ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... with their own understanding. You might teach him the mad dance, set to the mad howl. Madge Owlet would be nothing to him. "My, how he capers!" (In the margin is written "One of the children speaks this.") ... What I scratch out is a German quotation, from Lessing, on the bite of rabid animals; but I remember you don't read German. But Mrs. P. may, so I wish I had let it stand. The meaning in English is: "Avoid to approach an animal suspected of madness, ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... that meant more to him than all the earth beside. It was the fierce, mother-look of changeless affection, the companion to that savage cry. She held him in a pinching grip, and made sure that he was unhurt, save for that scratch ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... scrape or other. He was old enough, certainly, to know better, and pleasant enough, in other respects, to be liked very much by all who knew him. He was full of fun, perfectly fearless, and bore an accidental scratch or tumble like a man. But, dear me! what a heedless, careless little scamp! That very morning, before school began, his mother had sent him into the garden to gather vegetables. He cut the carrots ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... hardly read my note over a second time before Cousin Amelia bounced into the room without knocking. I should have locked the door had I known she was coming; as it was, I had only time to pop the note into my dress (the seal made a great scratch just below my neck) before she was upon me, and throwing herself into my arms with a most unusual excess of ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... free from moss, as they always said; the rude scratch, as of a sharp-pointed instrument. Did it mean anything? He dropped beside it for a minute, and studied the stone; then rose and went his way again, still wandering on and on, he ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... a piece of luck, Bertie," Harry said when they had reached their room in the hotel. "In the first place, because neither of us got a scratch, and in the second, because it will bind Dias more closely to us. Before, he was willing to assist us for Barnett's sake, now it will be for our own also, and we may be quite sure that he will do his ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... and then back at him again with eyes at once quizzical and cunning. Then his face broke into a grin that might hardly be called of drollery. "Accident!" quoth he. "By the blood! d'ye see 'tis a strange accident, indeed, that lays two men by the heels and lets the third go without a scratch!" Delivering himself thus, he came forward into the room, and, taking the last victim of Jonathan's adventure by the arm, with as little compunction as he would have handled a sack of grain he dragged the limp and helpless figure from where it lay to the floor beside the first victim. ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... "standing room" problem is still removed from us by such uncounted generations that we need give no thought to it. The physical resources of the globe are as yet only tapped, and not exhausted. We have done little more than scratch the surface. Because we are crowded here and there in the ant-hills of our cities, we dream that the world is full. Because, under our present system, we do not raise enough food for all, we fear that the food ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... hardened steel armor, curving smoothly upward to a needle prow. Countless hundred of fine vertical scratches marred every inch of her surface, and here and there the stubborn metal was grooved and scored to a depth of inches—each scratch and score the record of an attempt of some wandering cosmic body to argue the right-of-way with the stupendous mass of that man-made ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... fire filled our rude tent; to which were added the fresh, sick smells from the great newly-butchered carcass of the walrus. The boys were sound asleep, breathing heavily. Guard roused up at our feet to scratch himself, then snuggled down again. The wind howled dismally, throwing down gusts of rain. It dripped and pattered off the skin-covering on to the boat and on to the rocks. Now and then a faint scream from high aloft declared the passage of some lonely seabird; and the ceaseless ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... his body to perceive what injuries he had sustained, but not a sprain nor a scratch could he discover. "Where are you, ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... times have changed since then. The social whirlpool has engulfed the boys; Robb'd of their simple, hardy, rowdy joys, They start from scratch as men. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... she closed the door and leaned against it, "I know what we will do. We will wear our cotton stockings underneath these horrors! They won't scratch us then, will they? And our holidays won't be spoilt, and Aunt Pike won't know, and—don't you think it's a perfectly ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... rattled him. He shifted from foot to foot, twirling his hat on his fingers. He half expected, half hoped, and half waited for another opening. None came. Through the muffled roar of the stamps he was conscious of the sharp scratch of the superintendent's pen. Then came the boom of the big whistle. It was change of shift. The jar of the office door closing behind him was not heard. At the ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... old planetary flames. To destroy is still the strongest instinct of our nature. Nature is still 'red in tooth and claw,' though she has begun to make fine flourishes with tooth-brush and nail-scissors. Even the mild dog on my hearth-rug has been known to behave like a wolf to his own species. Scratch his master and you will find the caveman. But the scratch must be a sharp one: I am thickly veneered. Outwardly, I am as gentle as you, gentle reader. And one reason for our delight in fire is that there ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... you!' says I (for I had never a want of wit); and so we fell to work at the gooseberry-bush, laughing and talking as happy as might be. In the course of our diversion Nora managed to scratch her arm, and it bled, and she screamed, and it was mighty round and white, and I tied it up, and I believe was permitted to kiss her hand; and though it was as big and clumsy a hand as ever you saw, yet I thought the favour the most ravishing one that was ever conferred upon me, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... some information," and suddenly stooping, he seized one of the seeming dead men by the neck and jerked him to his feet. "Answer the Knight, rogue," he said. "Raynor Royk has seen too many dead bodies to be fooled by one that has not a scratch upon it." ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... all round, the only difference that I found between old and young women is that the older ones are less selfish, and more complaisant, and less inclined to resent one's being unable to attain to the height of their desire, for from time to time I have been unable to "come up to the scratch" after a heavy night's labor, or when I was afraid of being caught in the act of coition, a fear which, in my experience, acts as a stimulus to desire in women, unlike its action in men. Of all the women with whom I ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... my heart turned sick within me. On the boy's cheek was a faint red scratch, just as might have been caused by a slight, very slight ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... "I should scratch him out of the pedigree, if I were you. But pray, have you not discovered the proper chamber of that great Sir William about whom my father is ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... putting the three circuits together, I had contrived to spell out the letter C—as in a telegraph office the operator would write a letter, though probably not the same one, with a long, a short, and a long scratch upon the paper slip. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... better than nothing, and, like your lovely wreaths and pious devices, they made one feel as if the old black wood were bursting into life and leaf again for very Christmas joy; and, if only one knelt carefully, they did not scratch his nose. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... scratch. I hardly feel it. It isn't anything. It can't be anything. There's nothing ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... stories,—one way you work with your foot, and the other way you work with your fingers, but I rather guess there's more headache in the stories than there is in the stitches, because you don't have to think quite so hard while your foot's going as you do when your fingers is at work, scratch, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... perhaps his stronger enemies. It is a noble composition, with archaic writing, and a stately figure of the king climbing the mountains and slaying his enemies; it shows an art that might well have developed into the best that Greece has produced. But De Morgan has only begun to scratch the surface of the mounds of Elam, and a multitude of scholars believe that out of Elam came the first civilization of Chaldea. We shall find out yet; for the record is in the earth, and only waits the man who will dig it out, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... rubbing her cheek. There was a deep scratch there, still red and swollen. "Then how do you explain—it? According to your theory the inhabitants must have died in their skins, fried like yams. But who fired on us? Somebody detected us, made ...
— The Gun • Philip K. Dick
... with the thumb on one side and the fingers and palm on the other, in the same manner as we do. They can thus also lift rather large objects, such as the neck of a bottle, to their mouths. Baboons turn over stones, and scratch up roots with their hands. They seize nuts, insects, or other small objects with the thumb in opposition to the fingers, and no doubt they thus extract eggs and young from the nests of birds. American monkeys beat the wild oranges on the branches until the ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... that Desgenais has a heart, since he lives. In what respect does he differ from you? He is a man who believes in nothing, fears nothing, who knows no care or ennui, perhaps, and yet it is clear that a scratch on the finger would fill him with terror, for if his body abandons him, what becomes of him? He lives only in the body. What sort of creature is that who treats his soul as the flagellants treat their bodies? Can ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... of that vast apartment was disturbed by the sounds of Monsieur de Tressan's slumbers, the scratch and splutter of the secretary's pen, and the occasional hiss and crackle of the logs that burned in the great, cavern-like fireplace. Suddenly to these another sound was added. With a rasp and rattle the heavy curtains of blue velvet flecked with silver fleurs-de-lys ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... were I but otherwise fitted (As I am ingeniously wilted) For pulling things out of the flame, Would stand but a pitiful game." "'Tis done," replied Ratto, all prompt to obey; And thrust out his paw in a delicate way. First giving the ashes a scratch, He open'd the coveted batch; Then lightly and quickly impinging, He drew out, in spite of the singeing, One after another, the chestnuts at last— While Bertrand contrived to devour them as fast. A servant girl enters. ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... rather see any image than their own.' These are not my observations, but were made by Sir Everard Starkeye, who likewise did remark to Monsieur Dubois, that 'cats, if you hold them up to the looking-glass, will scratch you terribly; and that the same fierce animal, as if proud of its cleanly coat and velvety paw, doth carefully put aside what other animals of more estimation take no ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... we landed and looked bery fierce, and de Frenchmen thought we had come to eat dem; so dey say, no use fighting; and so, after firing a great many shot at us; but doing no harm, dey say when we land, 'We give in, we no fight more.' So we take de island, and no one hurt except one man scratch anoder's nose wid his bagonet, and make blood come. When de generals and de admirals see we done so well, dey say we go and take anoder island; so we all sets sail for to take Guadeloupe. Some of de ships got in one day, some anoder, and anchored in Grozier Bay. Ah, de enemy thought ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... absorbing parental love, she has very serious deficiencies,—deficiencies occasioned by the same lack of modification which I have before mentioned. Devoted to her little ones, she will scratch vigorously and untiringly to provide them food, yet fails to remember that they do not stand before her in a straight line out of harm's way, but are hovering around her on all sides in a dangerous proximity. Like the poet, she looks not forward nor behind. If they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... choked up with dust, and for a while I couldn't make no sound. Finally I called, "Lu! Lu! here, Sir!" and if ever you heerd a dumb creature laugh, he barked a real laugh, and come springin' along over towards me. I called ag'in, and he begun to scratch and tear and pull,—at boards, I guessed, for it sounded like that; but it wa'n't no use, he couldn't get at me, and he give up at length and set down right over my head and give another howl, so long and so dismal I thought I'd as lieves hear ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... scratch, scratch, scratch, all day long in the clerks' office. Messengers were coming and going. Samples were brought in. Draymen came for orders. Apple-women and pie-men dropped in about noon, and there were plenty of cheap apples and cheap jokes ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... have one scratch my head i' the sun When the alarum were struck, than idly sit To hear ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... later how many. But the last six didn't get off without a scratch, I assure you. They must have had a sentinel watching. We saw no one, but as we were hoping to surprise the bordj these six men, who looked from a distance like Touaregs, rushed out, mounted horses and camels and dashed away, ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... swear to that, Katherine. To be called an ugly name may have the same effect as a pin-scratch in the lung. And that hateful name—I can't get quit of it. It is sticking here in the pit of my stomach, eating into me like a corrosive acid. And ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... for all that not even a scratch! Ah, but what is the matter with your hand, d'Artagnan? It ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... morning walk, and her ever-regardful father, having an hour's leisure, offered to walk with her. The breeze was fresh and quite steady, filtering itself through the denuded mass of twigs without swaying them, but making the point of each ivy-leaf on the trunks scratch its underlying neighbor restlessly. Grace's lips sucked in this native air of hers like milk. They soon reached a place where the wood ran down into a corner, and went outside it towards comparatively ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... all-cotton clothing should touch the baby's skin, unless he is sick, when a very light part-wool band may be needed. In general, neither wool nor starch should be allowed in the baby's clothing in summer. Wool is too hot and irritating and starched garments scratch ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... as though everyone besides ourselves is hurt or lost or dead or kidnapped? I have been thinking what I would do if anyone kidnapped me. I would try so hard to leave some sort of a message. I think if I had my diamond ring on, I would try to scratch something ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... for during the ceremonies their veils must not touch their faces. We were warned that we must not quarrel or use bad language; that we must not kill game or cause animals to fly from us; that we were not to shave, or cut or oil our hair, or scratch, save with the open palm; and that we must not cover our heads. Any breach of these and numerous other rules would have to be atoned for by the sacrifice ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... cries and lamentations. After a few minutes she rises and approaches his wife and seats herself on the ground in front of her; the two now encircle one another with their left arms, resting their heads on each other's shoulders, whilst they scratch their faces with their right hands and cry and wail in a tone which excites in the minds of all who hear them sensations of deep grief; indeed I know of no sound (not even excepting the Irish howl) which so fully expresses the passion of deep sorrow as this lament of the ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... away, madame," said an agent, in a low voice, to the stupefied woman thus assailed. He laughed at her discomfiture. "It is waste kindness and waste time. You can't do anything with that sort of riffraff. It's only a stray cat fed to scratch you. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... you how she acted," said Harry, with a laugh, "and old Scratch isn't half bad 'nough. Say! She wanted to have a wedding for her best doll the other day, and she cut a lace curtain off a yard from the floor to make ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... rather than pleasure, come to this mor- 212:9 tal sense? Because the memory of pain is more vivid than the memory of pleasure. I have seen an unwitting attempt to scratch the end of a finger which had been cut 212:12 off for months. When the nerve is gone, which we say was the occasion of pain, and the pain still remains, it proves sensation to be in the mortal mind, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... Channel fleet, when to our great joy, after tacking and half-tacking for six weeks, we were ordered with some more ships of the line under Admiral Collingwood to proceed off Cadiz to watch the motions of the Spanish and French fleets, after the scratch they had with our fleet under Sir R. F. Calder. We occasionally ran into Gibraltar for refreshments and stores. On one of these occasions the Port-Admiral took it into his head to hoist his flag on board of one of the active ships, and ordered ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... but he will afterwards find to his sorrow that he exchanged them for something far more tenacious in these microscopic Harvest-mites. If he has obtained a good supply of them, he will in a few hours begin to suffer from severe itching, and for the next two or three days will be likely to scratch until his limbs ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... had faced about all the famous ones of first force. His agility was amazing; his wrist like steel; his anticipation masterly. For every time I touched him, he touched me twice; though none, on either side, would have been more than a scratch. Then, in the midst of a fierce rally, I forced a pretty opening and I thrust. No guard seemed possible—it was a sure coeur. The next instant, there came a wrench, that almost tore off my fingers, ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... they let measure out justice. Justice!" He laughed sardonically. "Poor old lady, she couldn't stop within forty miles of Perkins' Committee if she had forty bandages over her eyes, and both ears plugged with cotton! You wait till their farce of a trial is over. You may get off, by a scratch—I hope so. But ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... of hard fighting. But he never writes much of that. He's much more interested in a run he had with a queer scratch pack near their billets. I can't quite gather how it was organized, but it comprised two beagles and a greyhound and a fox-terrier and a pug. He said they ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... will but felt the fleshy screen? We ride and I see her bosom heave. There's many a crown for who can reach. Ten lines, a statesman's life in each! The flag stuck on a heap of bones, A soldier's doing! what atones? They scratch his name on the Abbey-stones. My riding is better, by ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... There's to be a match on Saturday, and I'll ask Miss Latimer to let you be in it. It's a scratch team from the Lower School against prefects and monitresses. I've no doubt we shall be badly beaten, but it really doesn't matter. It's only ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... you back, you know, awfully—because you won't come. And the more he wants you the less he'll say so. That's the pride of the cobbler's dog. If he's uncomfortable, he'll scratch until he's comfortable again. And he says, "If you can't get the best take the next best"; and runs about with Mrs. Wilmot at his heels, and is bored all the time. That's Nevile all over." His eyes grew rounder. "You'll have to go, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... was very ill-treated by his companions; they used to scratch and bite him, and jump on him till they were tired, while he never offered to resist, but cried in the most heart-rending manner. One young squirrel, however, was his secret friend, and whenever an opportunity offered of doing it without ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... you?" she asked with real concern. It ran into her mind that the conventional hero of romance makes his wound a scratch before his lady. If she expected that from Bertram Chester, ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... and pointed a revolver at the reporters. I regret to say that I gave no better account of myself then, and for a man who was so hot to go to war I own it is a bad showing. Perhaps it was as well I didn't go, even on that account. I might have run the wrong way when it came to the scratch. ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... the scratch of the match in Frank's hand. He held it up first in order to see what was going on; and then with a burst of laughter began to apply the flickering flame to the wick of the ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... a corner and saw him. 2nd Lieut. Brooke at once left the trench and took shelter as quickly as possible in a shell hole outside. A perfect shower of bombs and rifle grenades were thrown after him, but he was untouched, and regained our lines without a scratch. ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... bite and scratch This funny looking thing; But now they thought it might have hid A ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous
... study hard; to be what is denominated a grub, or hard student. "The primary sense," says Dr. Webster, "is probably to rub, to rake, scrape, or scratch, as wild animals dig ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... were traversing strange latitudes. And in autumn airy spheres of thistledown floated into the same street, lodged upon the shop fronts, blew into drains, and innumerable tawny and yellow leaves skimmed along the pavement, and stole through people's doorways into their passages with a hesitating scratch on the floor, like the skirts of ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... individuality and tosses him towards a perhaps better range of sentiment than his private one. Again, if I rose carelessly and confidently, with an expectation of going through the business entirely at my ease, I often found that I had little or nothing to say; whereas, if I came to the scratch in perfect despair, and at a crisis when failure would have been horrible, it once or twice happened that the frightful emergency concentrated my poor faculties, and enabled me to give definite and vigorous expression to sentiments which an instant before ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... count me," he said, a trace of recklessness in the answer. "I have n't even a scratch so far as I know. ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... destructive effect; one of our guns being dismounted, the foremast struck in two places within a foot of each other, and the wheel smashed to pieces. Singularly enough the helmsman escaped without a scratch, but one poor fellow fell forward ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... dairymaid at a farmer's near this place, was infected with the cow-pox from her master's cows in May, 1796. She received the infection on a part of her hand which had been previously in a slight degree injured by a scratch from a thorn. A large pustulous sore and the usual symptoms accompanying the disease were produced in consequence. The pustule was so expressive of the true character of the cow-pox, as it commonly appears upon the hand, that I ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... a scratch under 'last', to show where the joke lies, I beg that you will prevail on Miss Milbanke to have inserted on the tomb ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... that the dead man may take revenge on his murderer, as every death is considered to have been caused by some enemy. These bones are naturally full of the poisons of the corpse, and may cause tetanus at the slightest scratch. On the arrows they are extremely sharp and only slightly attached to the wood, so that they stick in the flesh and increase the inflammation. Besides, they are often dipped in ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... for a moment, and then began to scratch his head furiously, as he was in the habit of doing whenever his memory failed him and he wished to recall it to duty. "I'm not sure whether the number is eighteen or forty-six," he said, at ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... and refused to budge an inch. The Elder got mad. He first coaxed and patted, and soft sawdered him, and then whipt and spurred, and thrashed him like any thing. Pony got mad too, for hosses has tempers as well as Elders; so he turned to, and kicked right straight up on eend, like Old Scratch, and kept on without stoppin' till he sent the Elder right slap over his head slantendicularly, on the broad of his back into the river, and he floated down thro' the bridge and scrambled out at ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... extreme rapidity of my pace, and also probably because, their numbers being so great, each thought that I could not avoid his comrades farther on; so that I escaped them all, and reached the 14th regiment without either myself or my excellent mare having received the slightest scratch. ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... but he made the most of them. Pelle was not only hideous: he was formidable. The big square head and ravaged face were set on a strong throat. Chest and shoulders were immense, the arms too long, the slightly bowed legs too short. Up went a sledgehammer hand, coated with red hair, to scratch the heavy jowl contemplatively, and Max ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... tour should carry some sort of first-aid equipment. It need not be elaborate, but should include bandages, a clean dressing (a first field dressing is the best and most compact), iodine and adhesive plaster, and some vaseline or boracic ointment. Even a scratch will go on bleeding on a cold day and be very tiresome. Accidents are miraculously few and far between in Ski-ing, considering the falls and the large number of people who ski. But they happen occasionally, and it is ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... obviously useful to have adhesive fruits and seeds: for when sheep or other animals get them caught in their coats, they carry them away to other bushy spots, and there, to get rid of the annoyance caused by the foreign body, scratch them off at once against some holly-bush or blackthorn. You may often find seeds of this type sticking on thorns as the nucleus of a little matted mass of wool, so left by the sheep in the very spots best adapted for the free ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... little more attentively than ordinary, since I watch if I can purloin anything that may adorn or support my own? I have not at all studied to make a book; but I have in some sort studied because I had made it; if it be studying to scratch and pinch now one author, and then another, either by the head or foot, not with any design to form opinions from them, but to assist, second, and fortify those I already have embraced. But whom shall we believe in the report he makes of himself in so corrupt an age? considering ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... will do that. I was wondering if it has ever struck you how prettily and kindly your little hands behave to each other. Right hand is the cleverest and quickest, of course, but left hand is always willing and ready too. They take care not to hurt or scratch each other, and if by chance one is ever hurt, the other is as tender as possible not to rub or touch the ...
— The Thirteen Little Black Pigs - and Other Stories • Mrs. (Mary Louisa) Molesworth
... bureau. "Try a nail-file. See if you can't scratch off the lettering. How's this?" He read what he had written for the wire. "'Culver Covington, and so forth. Come quick. First train. Native Son making love to Jean.—Wally.' Ten words, and it tells the whole story. I can hardly explain why ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... of mutual menace, which, from the wild shouts and flourishing of scimitars, seemed as if it could only end in a general lopping off of heads, somewhat to the astonishment of the sailor, tranquillity became restored without any one receiving scratch or cut. ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... he strove to reassure her. "It isn't anything; only a little scratch—from a Yank—that tried to get me. But he didn't, though," the soldier added with a smile. ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... bright with the promise of a glorious day, but with no mind to lift the pall from the water, it looked ill for a ready passage. We had four turns of a foul hawse to clear (the track of a week's calms), and our windlass was of a very ancient type, but our scratch crew worked well and handy, and we were ready for the road when the screw tug Escort laid alongside and lashed herself up to our quarter. They tow that way on the Pacific Coast—the wily ones know the advantage of having a ship's length in front of ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... the dew-bedabbled wretch Turn, and return, indenting with the way; Each envious brier his weary legs doth scratch, Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay: For misery is trodden on by many, And being low never relieved ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... There was a scratch and a splutter, and the match flared bravely. Its yellow rays illumined a cellar very much like any other cellar. It was walled with stonework, well cemented, and there were two or three small windows at the sides. But these, which at first filled Roy with a ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... sizes and characters. There were some that adopted all the army methods and had infantry, artillery, staffs, and the comforts of life. Others consisted solely of Cossack cavalry. There were also small scratch groups of foot and horse, and groups of peasants and landowners that remained unknown. A sacristan commanded one party which captured several hundred prisoners in the course of a month; and there was Vasilisa, the wife of a village elder, who slew hundreds ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Lizzie: 'But one waits At home alone for me: So without further parleying, If you will not sell me any Of your fruits though much and many, Give me back my silver penny I tossed you for a fee.'— They began to scratch their pates, 390 No longer wagging, purring, But visibly demurring, Grunting and snarling. One called her proud, Cross-grained, uncivil; Their tones waxed loud, Their looks were evil. Lashing their tails They trod and hustled her, Elbowed and jostled her, 400 Clawed ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... reach, and rearing up, succeeded in getting a slight hold of my right foot. I clung to the tree with the desperation of despair, and the moccasin giving way, I soon drew myself above his reach, with no other injury than a severe scratch. In a few seconds I was safely ensconced among the branches, about thirty feet from the ground, while my baffled antagonist was walking round and round it, uttering growls of rage, and stripping the bark from the ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... I have a new writing-table with a fine surface of red leather. I am prepared to swear, and so is Bannister, that it was smooth and unstained. Now I found a clean cut in it about three inches long—not a mere scratch, but a positive cut. Not only this, but on the table I found a small ball of black dough or clay, with specks of something which looks like sawdust in it. I am convinced that these marks were left by the man who rifled the papers. There ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lend himself to the business on any terms, and bolts on principle; while the rider of the black horse remains in stationary meditation.) Go on—that black horse—go on! (The chestnut is at length brought up to the scratch snorting, but again flinches, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... Eileen, "I am afraid they scratched the car." She got out hastily, and caught her lips between her teeth as she saw the long jagged scratch on the door where Betty's sharp heel ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... public do not long delay, But give it, (I don't mean to be ironical,) A prominent position in the CHRONICLE. My wife and children cry to me for corn With feeble earnestness and chirp forlorn, My eye is dim, my heart within me pines, My claws so numb I scarce can scratch two lines, My head—no more will I your feelings harrow, But sign me, Truly yours, Till death, All ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... muttered Sam half apologetically. "I couldn't see it that way myself, as you say, but o' course it's your fun'ral! Ef you kin scratch up enough grub bein' a tree, why that's your own lookout. Moss is good 'nough fer me ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... inside. "You'll scratch my eyes out. I shan't see— anything!" His mouth apparently was full of earth. They watched the retreating soles of his heavy shooting-boots. Slowly the feet were dragged in after him. They disappeared from sight. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... him vigorously. "Shut up," he said, roughly, partly to hide his own feelings, "Charley's comin' back without a scratch. The good Lord, I reckon, don't make lads as true and white as he to be killed off by a pack of jail vermin. Come to the wall as he told us to. Maybe we'll get a shot at those murderers before the day is done. Come along an' stop that blubberin'," and he grabbed the soft-hearted ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... said, "he will come to within time, and come up to the scratch again. He has not got half ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... she prepared to lie down, she wondered how he could have borne such suffering without one murmur. Hatty had a perfect horror of pain. Her skin was thin and delicate, and even the grasp of a rough hand on her arm was sure to leave a bruise. Her usually pleasant face was clouded over by a scratch or a pin-prick, and her tears often fell fast for a wound that many children would have met with a smile. Hatty was naturally very sensitive to pain, and that was not her fault; but she had never yet begun to try to bear it patiently, as a part of her christian duty. As she lay down that night, ...
— Hatty and Marcus - or, First Steps in the Better Path • Aunt Friendly
... bleach him bare; here, within walls, he rages, shows his teeth, blasphemes, or sinks into sloth. You will find him heaped against the walls like ordure, hear him howl for blood in the bull-ring, appraise women, as if they were dainties, in the alamedas, loaf, scratch, pry where none should pry, go begging with his sores, trade his own soul for his mother's. His pride becomes insolence, his tragedy hideous revolt, his impassivity swinish, his rock of sufficiency ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... have been anything but pleasant. Two people in the sleeper were killed outright, and three were injured, while the engineer and fireman of the freight were badly hurt by jumping. I didn't get a scratch. ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... been worse. You were struck down with a mace, but the leech says that the wound on your head is of no great consequence, and that you fainted rather from loss of blood from other gashes than from the blow on the head. I have got off with a scratch on the shoulder. Hal Carter, who fought like a tiger over your body, has come off worst, having fully half a dozen wounds, but it was not before he had killed at least twice as many of his assailants with that ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... want to be all helpmate, practical comrade; she had fed herself with this delusion during the years of loneliness. She had adopted the veneer, convinced herself that it was true, but she knew now that it was false. It had taken a Gorgeous Girl to scratch beneath the veneer in true feminine fashion. Mary did wish to be dependent, helpless—to have Gorgeous Girl propensities. The cheap phrases of the shopwomen kept interrupting her attempts to think of practical detail. ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... Majesty's visits to the Crystal Palace. Among the American manufactures were some fine soaps, and among these a small head, done in white Castile, and so exactly like marble that the Queen doubted the soap story, and in her impulsive, investigating way was about to test it with a scratch of her shawl-pin, when the Yankee exhibitor stayed her hand, and drew forth a courteous apology by the loyal remonstrance—"Pardon, your Majesty,—it is ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... I don't care much for society—especially when it breaks into our bungalow and begins to scratch my furniture with its high-heeled shoes. But just to please Peaches I promised to go in the parlor and not be ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... been six years of such far-flung internal preparedness in our history. And this has been done without any dictator's power to command, without conscription of labor or confiscation of capital, without concentration camps and without a scratch on freedom of speech, freedom of the press or the rest of the Bill ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... package, the older children would, of their own accord, put away the paper and twine neatly, instead of throwing them in the fire, or tearing them to pieces. If the little ones wanted a piece of twine to play scratch-cradle, or spin a top, there it was, in readiness; and when they threw it upon the floor, the older children had no need to be told to put it ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... pretty soon, or the bugs'll have the 'taters," declared her cousin. "Say! you'd ought to have somethin' besides your fingers ter scratch around them plants." ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... we harbored, We'd a hundred Jews to larboard, Unwashed, uncombed, unbarbered— Jews black, and brown, and gray; With terror it would seize ye, And make your souls uneasy, To see those Rabbis greasy, Who did naught but scratch and pray: Their dirty children puking— Their dirty saucepans cooking— Their dirty fingers hooking Their swarming ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... things. The water-tanks of three locomotives which were borne from the roundhouse at Conemaugh, two miles away, are conspicuous. Amid the general wreck, beneath one of these heavy iron tanks, a looking glass, two feet by one foot in dimensions, was discovered intact, without even a scratch on the quicksilver. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... with long ears, a snout, and hair that itches. 'This is exactly like a fairy tale of my youth,' he dreams. And indeed, it is a dream! The mountain opens, the captive princess comes forth and leads him in, and he rests his head in her lap all strewn with blossoms. The lovely trolls come and scratch his head and music sounds from the rocks. It is characteristic of Shakespeare that the lovers do not dream fairy tales of their childhood. Higher culture has given them deeper passions, more intense personal relations; in dreams they but continue ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... was excessively difficult for Mrs. Eddy. She found it grinding hard work to dig out anything to say. She realized, at the above stage in her life, that with all her trouble she had not been able to scratch together even material enough for a child's Autobiography, and also that what she had secured was in the main not valuable, not important, considering the age and the fame of the person she was writing about; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... subterfuge," Sommers answered hotly, "fit only for clergymen and beggars for charities. I am not sure, anyway, that I want 'to do for' people. I think no fine theories about social service and all that settlement stuff. I want to be a man, and have a man's right to start with the crowd at the scratch, not given a handicap. There are too many handicaps in the crowd I ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... did it," said Harry; "they had an hour to do Themistocles on the hearth of Admetus, and there he beat them all to shivers. 'Twas all done smack, smooth, without a scratch, in Alcaics, and Cheviot heard Wilmot saving, 'twas no mere task, but had poetry, and all that sort of thing in it. But I don't know whether that would have done, if he had not come out so strong in the recitation; ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Plaster for.—"Antiphlogistine is fine for bronchitis, where there is any inflammation, pleurisy, any kind of a scratch, especially rusty nails; pneumonia, Set can in water long enough to heat, but not hot, spread on with case knife as thick as a silver dollar, spread cotton batting over it, keep on twenty-four hours, before changing. This is a very useful remedy to keep on hand." Antiphlogistine ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... in all such matters went on increasing till about the seventh decade of the century. After that time a number of remonstrances and protests may be found against the brown coats, the plaid or white waistcoats, the white stockings, the leathern breeches, the scratch wigs, and so forth, in which clerical fops on the one hand, and clerical slovens on the other, were often wont to appear. A writer at the very end of the century pointed his remarks on the subject by calling the attention of his brother clergy to the distinctly anti-Christian purpose which ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... the day, he thought, for to accompany the stranger they had lighted a lamp; he had heard the scratch of the match, and through the brass fretwork had seen the lines ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... see me without bruise or scratch. Only Yorick and I got tangled up with a herd of buffaloes on the Kajiar Road. In his fright, the little fool slipped half over the khud, and if a knight-errant had not fallen from heaven, in the nick of time, we should both be lying somewhere in the valley by now, 'spoiling ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... time. To break the spirit of his men will not do—it would unfit them for service—so what he seeks to do is merely to bend their minds so as to match his own. Gradually they grow to both love and fear him. In time of actual fight he transforms cowards into heroes. He holds his men up to the scratch. In battle there are often certain officers marked for death—they are to be shot by their own men. It is a time of getting even—and in the hurly-burly and excitement there are no witnesses. The sergeant is ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... destruction. Gilbert's dissertation on the occupations and amusements of the ghosts came very opportunely to my aid, and immediately I put into execution what now appeared my only hope of its safety. Just as a corner of the paper was entering the flame I gave a pretty loud scratch, at the same time anxiously observing the effect it might produce. I was overjoyed to find the enemy intimidated at least by the first fire. Another volley, and another succeeded, until even the sceptical ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... over the big man eyed the surveyor. "Humph! This is not a scratch beside what that greaser did to you with his knife in Arizona. You didn't even stop work for that. Your ride to San Felipe and back ordinarily would call for about twelve hours sleep and that's all. Come, lad, what's ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... was told by the children that she lived with niggers till she came to Crompton Place, and they guessed her mother was one, and nobody knew anything about her anyway. There was a fierce fight in which Dora came off victorious, with a scratch or two on her face and a torn dress. That afternoon the Colonel was confronted by what seemed a little maniac, demanding to know if her mother was black, and if she had lived only with negroes until ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... he delayed finding a place, would not be able to keep her. But certain reasonable ideas, certain necessary things, never reached his heart, and reached his head very late, and when they did Don Rocco would either give himself a knock on the forehead, or a scratch behind, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... here, he knocked me there, knocked me into the hedge, and knocked me out again. I was at my last shifts, and my poor wife saw it. Now my poor wife, though she is as gentle as a pigeon, has yet a spirit of her own, and though she wasn't bred upon the roads, can scratch a little; so when she saw me at my last shifts, she flew at the villain—she couldn't bear to see her partner murdered—and scratched the villain's face. Lord bless you, young man, she had better have been quiet: Grey Moll no sooner saw what she was about, than, springing out of the cart, where ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... we have described him, was enthroned as a monarch, in an elbow-chair, placed, on the dining-table, his scratch wig on one side, his head crowned with a bottle-slider, his eye leering with an expression betwixt fun and the effects of wine, while his court around him resounded with such crambo scraps ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... produced his "makings" while the other stood gazing straight before him, the dead cigar still gripped in the corner of his mouth. The scratch of the match roused him and quick as a flash he reached beneath the bar and the next instant had Purdy covered with a six-shooter. With his finger on the trigger Cinnabar Joe hesitated, and in that instant he learned ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... expanded in "Farley Heath" near Albury. At Charterhouse there was a great slope or semi-mound which had in old times been utilised as a wholesale grave for the victims of plague and other epidemics. It strikes me now as most perilous, but we boys used to dig and scratch among bones and other debris for on occasional coin or lead token, whereof I found several; it is only a wonder that we did not unearth pestilence, but mould is fortunately very antiseptic. Another playground peculiarity was that after the hoop season, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... a game. Two-Paws play at the same thing for hours and hours. I've often tried to scratch paper gently, as He does, but the pleasure doesn't last long. I prefer newspapers torn into shreds that rustle and fly ... There is a little pot of dark-violet, muddy water on his table. I never sniff it without horror, since the day a rather foolish curiosity ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... "Not a scratch, though our plane was hit a lot," said Jack. "But we ran out of gas, and had to come down here. Glad we did, too, or we'd have missed seeing you. Cousin Emile is in the same boat as ourselves. Here he comes! He'll be ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... compared with those of remote ages, because nobody thinks it worth while to preserve them. It is almost as easy to get a personal memento of Priam or Nimrod as it is to get a harpsichord, a spinning-wheel, a tinder-box, or a scratch-back. An Egyptian wig is attainable, a wig of the Georgian era is hardly so, much less a tie of the Regency. So it is with the scenes of common life a century or two ago. They are being lost, because they were familiar. Here are two of them, however, which have limned ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... returned Ben, with a benignant smile. "Young chaps like you are always, accordin' to your own showin', worse than the devil himself when your blood's roused by indignation at cruelty or injustice, but you sing a good deal softer when you come to the scratch with your enemy in ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... thy wedding stopped at the ringing, from what I can learn. That is no wedding at all. Doubt not this knight of thine will never return; they never do return, my lassie. Neither doubt but that Falve will wed thee faster than any ring can do. And as for thy scratch and crying heart, my child, trust Falve again to stanch the one and still the other. For that is a man's way. And now get into bed, child; ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... surrounded the band, but Manuelito always escaped. Many shots were fired at him, but he was never hit; and once, when he was cut off from his men and surrounded, he broke through the line, and though fifty bullets whistled around him he did not receive a scratch. ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... and there was a most ferocious leopard growling at me. I tried to bite, and to scratch his eyes out, but the pain in the small of my back made me quite giddy. The spotted scoundrel seized my left arm—how it aches!—and gave me a crunch or two. I hear, I feel the teeth against my bones as I write. My whole body is full ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... I can't do it, eh?" He had misinterpreted my expression. "Well, let me tell you I did just a year ago and got over without a scratch. To get across no-man's-land you have to play dead, as you Yankees put it; you lie flat on the ground and pull yourself forward a foot at a time and keep your eye on the search-lights so that when they come your way you can drop on your face ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... heresy. Moreover, they agreed that the conquests made by each country during the preceding eight years should be restored. Thus all the gains of Francis I. and Henry II. of France were given up, and Philibert Emmanuel of Savoy was transposed by a scratch of the pen from the condition of a landless mercenary into that of a sovereign prince. Would that he had been free to rule as his own disposition and that of his evangelical consort, Margaret of Navarre, would have prompted! But the provisions of the treaty ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... Paddy, attempting to seize it; when at that instant it struck out with its hinder claws, one of which tore a large rent in the Irishman's trousers, giving him at the same time a severe scratch, which, had he not sprung back, might have been serious. In a moment his knife was in his hand, and before the kangaroo could repeat the blow he had plunged it ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... the junior hundred yards. I say, Cusack, your gov—your father's just in time for the final heat. In the first I had a dead heat with Watkins, you know," continues he, addressing the captain. "Watkins was scratch, and I had five yards, and the ruck got ten. It was a beastly shame giving Filbert ten, though—wasn't it, Telson?— after his running second to me in the March gallops; they ought to have stuck ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... fortunes, shaved him in the face of the whole camp.[9] I very soon found that this exhibition of my abilities and profession might be productive of the greatest advantage to my future prospects. Every fellow who had a head to scratch immediately found out that he wanted shaving, and my reputation soon reached the ears of the chief, who called me to him, and ordered me to operate upon him without loss of time. I soon went to work upon a large head that exhibited ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... He was still panting. That glimpse full into the boy's face had almost undone him. He was hungry for food, and hungry for human companionship. He wanted to go to the car, to rear up on the side to scratch at the curtains. But yonder, a hundred feet away, back and forth before a fire they had built, moved the men. And against the box they had taken from the car ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... night of the lawn, his sombre questioning, for the house. The candles had been extinguished in the drawing room. A square, glass lamp hung at the foot of the stairs; and there he encountered a man in a scratch wig, with a long nose flattened at the end. He bowed obsequiously—a posturing figure in shirtsleeves with a green cloth waistcoat and black legs. The Italian servant, Howat concluded. He passed ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... it, it will be the last bear you ever scratch; look at those paws! did you ever see such nails? didn't you hear them rattle against the logs when ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... he'll put you on leather pads and things, and tap you soft like, and show you how to bow, s'loot, and cut capers like a Frenchman, and when he's done with you I could cut you up into mincemeat without you being able to give me a scratch." ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... questions, ask'd More easily than answer'd,—that he had tried His best to obey in what he had been task'd; But there seem'd something that he wish'd to hide, Which hesitation more betray'd than mask'd; He scratch'd his ear, the infallible resource To which embarrass'd people ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... middle with such scrupulous exactitude as to imply that you suspect the umpire's eyesight, take one of the bails and scratch a block deep enough to plant something in. Then beckon to the square-leg umpire to come and replace the bail. In this you will be strictly within the law, and nobody can suspect you of the surreptitious use ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... was not to look about her. She kept her head bowed and was forbidden to see the world and the sun. Some tribes covered her with a blanket. Many of the customs in this connection resembled those of the North Pacific Coast most strongly, such as the prohibition to the girl to touch or scratch her head with her hand, a special implement being furnished her for the purpose. Sometimes she could eat only when fed and in ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the Ramper came up and hailed the Gentleman. "Here you old swine! Are you sober enough to scratch off a letter?" ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... up the blaze-faced horse and pointed to the right stirrup. "Spurs would scratch like that if you jerk your foot, maybe. You're a good rider, Mr. Hunter, you can tell. That's a right stirrup, ain't it? Fred Thurman, he's got his left foot twist around, all broke from jerking in his stirrup. Left foot in right stirrup——" He pushed back his hat and ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... Persimmon Bill ever comes across Wild Bill, his goose is cooked! Mark that. There is not a surer shot, or a deadlier foe on earth then Persimmon Bill. He has defied the whole border for the past three years—ridden right into a military post and shot men down, and got away without a scratch. They say he has been adopted by the Sioux, and if he has, with such backing he'll do more mischief ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline
... Gallowes, and be hang'd ye Rogue: Is this a place to roare in? Fetch me a dozen Crab-tree staues, and strong ones; these are but switches to 'em: Ile scratch your heads; you must be seeing Christenings? Do you looke for Ale, and Cakes heere, you rude Raskalls? Man. Pray Sir be patient; 'tis as much impossible, Vnlesse wee sweepe 'em from the dore with ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... at 'an intimation which threw him so far from his expectations; the truth being, that he calculated upon receiving the money the moment he read his recantation. He looked at Mr. Lucre again as significantly as he could—gave his head a scratch of remonstrance—shrugged himself as before—rubbed his elbow—turned round his hat slowly, examined its shape, and gave it a smarter set, after which he gave a dry hem ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... house on a street that means Asses street, and our front room is a saloon but not a drinking one, and it runs right through the up-stairs to the skylight. You have to pay for that. Think of charging for daylight! We went to a bird show and I saw a cockatoo sitting on a pole asleep. 'Scratch its back with your parasol, Gladys,' said mother, so I did, and it opened one eye when I stopped, and said, 'Encore,' I was put out to think even the birds didn't talk American, but when I said so, mother laughed ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... horns and hoofs and stings, all the misfortunes of life seemed to come upon him at once. Bankruptcy, bereavement, scandalization, and eruptive disease so irritating that he had to re-enforce his ten finger-nails with pieces of earthenware to scratch himself withal. His wife took the diagnosis of his complaints and prescribed profanity. She thought he would feel better if between the paroxysms of grief and pain he would swear a little. For each boil ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... praised! I have custom enough to keep me busy from morning till night. There are three of us in the shop, and what with shaving and combing and hair-cutting, not one of the three has the time to stop and scratch his head, and I least of all. Many of my customers are so kind as to prefer my services to those of my two young men; perhaps because I amuse them with my little jokes. And, what with lathering and shaving this face and that, and combing the ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... description of glass manufacture," said Preston. "What wouldn't scratch something else, makes a confounded fracture in your feelings. I'll try and remember what brittle ware ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... you will, as in duty bound, be civil to them. If you are not, ugly capacities will flash out fast enough, and too fast. If any one says of the Negro, as of the Russian, 'He is but a savage polished over: you have only to scratch him, and the barbarian shows underneath:' the only answer to be made is—Then do not scratch him. It will be better for you, and ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... barefooted. Some wore rags roun dere heads an some wore bonnets. Marster lived in de great house. He did not do any work but drank a lot of whiskey, went dressed up all de time an had niggers to wash his feet an comb his hair. He made me scratch his head when he lay down so he could go to sleep. When he got to sleep I would slip out. If he waked up when I started to leave I would have to go back an' scratch his head till he went to sleep agin. Sometimes I had to fan de flies way from ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... and took off his hat to scratch his head perplexedly. Then his face lightened as he ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn |
