"Scratch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and his determination to get out after the robbers, and made it plain also that he would not expect salary for the time he spent in the chase. He ended by saying tersely, "My reputation and standing of company here at stake," and signed his name in a hasty scrawl that made the operator scratch his ear reflectively with his pencil when he had counted the words down to the signature. After that, Luck gave every ounce of his energy and every bit of his brain to the outfitting ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... ones, turned out well. I found the smuggler's life pleasanter than a soldier's: I could give presents to Carmen, I had money, and I had a mistress. I felt little or no remorse, for, as the gipsies say, 'The happy man never longs to scratch his itch.' We were made welcome everywhere, my comrades treated me well, and even showed me a certain respect. The reason of this was that I had killed my man, and that some of them had no exploit of that description on their conscience. But what I valued most in my ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... Men's intellects are at present so various that we cannot even realise the idea of equality, and here in England we have been taught to hate the word by the evil effects of those absurd attempts which have been made elsewhere to proclaim it as a fact accomplished by the scratch of a pen or by a chisel on a stone. We have been injured in that, because a good word signifying a grand idea has been driven out of the vocabulary of good men. Equality would be a heaven, if we could attain it. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... a scratch," Polly whimpered. "I can do my work; I got to." One more feeble effort and she succumbed, with a ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... will master get better from his sickness; only the sour heart that sour sickness breeds made him serve Babo so; cutting Babo with the razor, because, only by accident, Babo had given master one little scratch; and for the first time in so many a day, too. Ah, ah, ah," holding ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... consequence of a curious thickening of their already rich circumference. Her professions and explanations were mixed with eager challenges and sudden drops, in the midst of which Maisie recognised as a memory of other years the rattle of her trinkets and the scratch of her endearments, the odour of her clothes and the jumps of her conversation. She had all her old clever way—Mrs. Wix said it was "aristocratic"—of changing the subject as she might have slammed the door in your face. The principal thing that was different was ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... Scratcher—To avoid matches being scratched on the wall-paper almost as much as on the match-scratch, try the idea of removing the glass from a small oval or square picture frame and framing a piece of sandpaper just as one would a picture. Put a small screw-eye on top of the frame, thus allowing ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler
... 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 ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... however, two suspicious facts. The first is the puncture made in Monsieur Jacques Dollon's left leg: this puncture is aggravated by a scratch. According to the doctors, soporific, injected into the human body by the de Pravaz syringe, acts violently and efficaciously. It is beyond a doubt that Monsieur Jacques Dollon has been rendered unconscious ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... JOB" TOOL.—A most useful special tool, which combines in its make-up a level, plumb try-square, miter-square, bevel, scratch awl, depth gage, marking gage, miter gage, beam compass, and a one-foot rule. To the boy who wishes to economize in the purchase of tools this is an article ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... Babe a few days after he was going home after a scratch game of football. 'MacArthur,' said he, 'you pass Mr Dacre's House, do you not, on your way home? Then would you mind asking him from me to take preparation tonight? I find I shall be unable to be there.' It was the custom ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... man emptied the basket on the floor and went over its contents carefully. He found three communications from the unknown writer. Each of them was printed by hand on a sheet of cheap lined paper torn from a scratch pad. He smoothed them out and put them side by side on the table. This ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... rapidly in recent years and at the time of report, measured 1.15 and 1.02 meters. In 1874 they were under the care of the Royal Geographical Society of Italy. They were intelligent in their manner, but resented being lionized too much, and were prone to scratch ladies who ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... which he was immensely proud, as proving that he was not obliged to work for his bread. In Annam, in China and other countries, this singular and ridiculous fashion is common. A single finger is kept with a shorter nail, being the one used to scratch with, a very frequent occupation ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... scratch," came the reply. "Hardly drew blood. Think a splinter from the wood where a spent bullet zipped past must have hit me. It's all right, Frank! We ran the gantlet just fine. But all the same I guess it would be better for us to keep a little ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... one of our oldest and simplest marble games. It is played in this way: Make a ring eighteen inches or two feet in diameter; ten feet back draw or scratch a taw line to shoot from. If four boys are playing, each places a marble, as indicated, or if there are more players the marbles are placed at equal distances about the ring. The order of the play having been decided on, by shooting or rolling towards ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... shone brightly on the floor, sending its clear rays obliquely through the window. The sharp eyes which now covered every inch of the yellow-painted floor discovered something else. They discovered that this red thread curved slightly and had a continuation in a fine scratch in the paint of the floor. Muller followed up this scratch and it led him over towards the window and then back again in wide curves, then out again under the desk and finally, growing weaker and weaker, it came back ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... manner of 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
... "Not a scratch, my hearty, only it broke my pipe, one my brother gave me afore I sailed, an' one I wouldn't have taken a month's pay for," concluded ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... WITCHES: Come away! come along! The way is wide, the way is long, 170 But what is that for a Bedlam throng? Stick with the prong, and scratch with the broom. The child in the cradle lies strangled at home, And the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... ambition. It next will be right To describe each particular batch: Distinguishing those that have feathers, and bite, From those that have whiskers, and scratch. ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various
... called her "little;" but she got very few privileges on account of her youth and littleness. In those days, and especially in a family like Josiah Thayer's, where there were so many children that each had to scratch for itself at an early age or go without, six years was considered comparatively mature, and the child who had lived that long was ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... in the last sentence and her proud soul rebelled, but smoothly as ever she spoke: "I have searched and there is not the littlest scratch. But Ananda is weeping because the deer is dead, and his mother is angry. What ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... Its solution seemed to be for the handsome young leader of the union to marry the daughter of the capitalist; and Paret remarked, with his dry smile, "No doubt if the capitalists and their daughters are willing, the union-leaders will come to the scratch." Again, Darrell was telling about the ten years' struggle he had waged to waken the Church to the great issue of the time; and how at last he had given up in despair. Paret remarked, "For my part, I never try to talk economics with preachers. When you talk to a business-man, he understands ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... Richambeau as though to scratch his eyes out, but Ranulph held her back. "—And you are condemned, gunner," continued Richambeau dryly, "to marry the said maid before sundown, or be carried out to sea a prisoner of war." So saying, he laughed, and bade them begone ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... there was a third party which entered into the fray. The Tory party said they would run seven of the nine candidates; the Liberals claimed to run the whole nine; so this third party came up to the scratch and said they would run three candidates for the sole purpose of splitting the votes. The names of those who composed this little party were Joseph Fieldhouse, Bill Spink, "Little" Barnes, Adam Moore, James Leach, Dick Royston and myself. Our meetings ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... seems an age since I saw you. I want to catch our first post ... (this phrase I ought to get stereotyped—I need it so constantly). The day is fine ... you will profit by it, I trust. 'Flush, wag your tail and grow restless and scratch at the door!' ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... hand out of his breeches-pocket and stuck it in his back hair for a scratch, giving his hat a tilt over his nose, his one method of invoking wisdom. He stared at the ground with a ludicrously puzzled look, and presently looked up and met East's eyes. That young gentleman slapped ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... FIESCO. Then scratch this arm with thy dagger, till the blood flows. I will pretend that I have just now seized thee in fact. 'Tis well. (Hallooing violently). Murder! Murder! Guard the passages! Make fast the gates! (He drags the MOOR out ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... said the chaplain, not able to forego giving the girl a scratch of his claws. 'Mr Pendle's visits here must be ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... Walton was Leigh Hunt. Here, again, I fancy that partizan prejudice had something to do with the dislike. Hunt was a radical in politics and religion. Moreover there was a feline strain in his character, which made it necessary for him to scratch somebody now and then, as a relief to ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... curly-haired lad, with big brown eyes and a lamentably noticeable scratch on his nose—acquired in less stately but more profitable pursuits. (It seems that he had peeled his nose while sliding to second base in a certain American game that he was teaching the juvenile aristocracy how to play.) His wavy hair was brown and ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... their own genuine English dress, and treat the French modes with the same philosophical contempt, which was shewn by an honest gentleman, distinguished by the name of Wig-Middleton. That unshaken patriot still appears in the same kind of scratch perriwig, skimming-dish hat, and slit sleeve, which were worn five-and-twenty years ago, and has invariably persisted in this garb, in defiance of all the revolutions of the mode. I remember a student ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... 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 ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... found a small case which contained books, the latest astronomical data sheets, and a space computer and scratch board. These were obviously for Rip's personal use. He examined them. There were all the references he would need for computing orbit, speed, and just about anything else that might be required. He had to admire the thoroughness of whoever had written the order. The unknown Planeteer ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... of exploring a specimen of these chasms (as we often select for minute examination a single painting out of an entire picture gallery) we made the descent to the Colorado by means of a crooked scratch upon a mountain side, which one might fancy had been blazed by a zigzag flash of lightning. As it requires four hours to wriggle down this path, and an equal amount of time to wriggle up, I spent ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... approaching up the path were indeed those of Fisher, splashed with the mire of travel and carrying a scratch like that of a bramble across one side of his bald forehead, and of the great and gray-haired statesman who looked like a baby and was interested in Eastern swords and swordmanship. But beyond this bodily recognition, March could make neither head nor tail of their presence or demeanor, ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... three hundred such do I Raise every year, her sisters; Go, in the woods your fortune try, All day for one poor earth-worm pry, And scratch your toes to blisters!" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... there 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 ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... produced her pocket-book again. "I shall scratch out your mark," she said sternly, "if I hear any more talk ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... on the part of women to form a new party, nor to favor their own sex. They are more inclined than men to scratch the ticket and, as illustrated in the case of Judge Lindsey, they sometimes rally efficiently around an independent candidate, especially on a moral issue. On the whole, women vote with their husbands, just as sons vote with ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... this means that he lied as to the perfect observance of this commandment. Hence Origen says (Tract. viii super Matth.) that "it is written in the Gospel according to the Hebrews that when our Lord had said to him: 'Go, sell all thou hast,' the rich man began to scratch his head; and that our Lord said to him: How sayest thou: I have fulfilled the law and the prophets, seeing that it is written in the law: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself? Behold many of thy brethren, children of Abraham, are clothed in filth, and die of hunger, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... through the narrow streets and lanes below. How small men seem, how like a swarm of ants sweltering in endless confusion on their tiny hill! How petty seems the work on which they are hurrying and skurrying! How childishly they jostle against one another and turn to snarl and scratch! They jabber and screech and curse, but their puny voices do not reach up here. They fret, and fume, and rage, and pant, and die; "but I, mein Werther, sit above it all; I am alone with ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... temper; they object to the ballet-skirts supplied by the Management as skimpy, and one of them throws up her part, which almost reduces Lulli to tears. The other undertakes it at a moment's notice, whereupon the first lady tries to scratch her eyes out, and then has a fit of hysterics. Both ladies have hysterics. A bell rings and, suddenly remembering that a Royal Ante-room is rather a public place to dress in, they catch up the ballet-skirts and flee, Attendants remove the dressing-tables. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 25, 1892 • Various
... will," replied Kitty. "Isobel Carson rang up just now to ask if Nan would come over. It appears that, barring the injury to his back, he escaped without a scratch. He didn't even know he was hurt till he found he couldn't use his legs. Of course, he'll be in bed. Isobel says he seems almost his usual self, except that he won't let anyone sympathise with him over his injury. He's just savage ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... drab, Who there doth scratch herself with filthy nails, And crouches now, and now on ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... gesticulating complaint, who was literally soaked in blood. We had had our experience and so sending for an interpreter, we soused this fellow into a bathtub. Every dab came off and there was not a scratch under." ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... "I'm making a statement! He's not only a liar—he's a thief! He robbed me, the dastard; he got two thousand dollars of my money without giving me the scratch of a pen. Oh, ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... Feeling exceedingly hurt at such treatment, at a moment when I expected encouragement for having maintained the honour of my country while acting as a naval officer should have done, I wrote to him, 'You may scratch and be d——d.' This letter was, I think, very unfairly quoted against me some time afterwards in the House of Commons. However, my name was erased from the list of naval officers, and was not replaced there for several ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... from father to son, says, we bears (for it's their name) whilst we scraped the earth with our pawes, for to make the wheat grow for to maintaine our wives, not thinking that the deare shall leape over the lake to kill the Beare that slept; but they found that the beare could scratch the stagge, for his head and leggs are small to oppose. Such speeches have they commonly together, in such that they ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... for his college and for the redemption of Thor. Timorous and shrinking by nature, whenever his Alma Mater, or a friend, needed him the Human Encyclopedia fought down his painful timidity and came up to scratch nobly. ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... only the thinnest, 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 the ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... these Mussulman cemeteries with his unholy presence; but to-day they are unsurrounded by protecting fence or the moral restrictions of dominant Mussulmans, and the sheep, cows, and goats of the "infidel giaour" graze among them; and oh, shade of Mohammed! hogs also scratch their backs against the tombstones and root around, at their own sweet will, sometimes unearthing skulls and bones, which it is the Turkish custom not to bury at any great depth. The great number and extent of these cemeteries seem to appeal to the unaccustomed ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Early in February, a party of Dutch and Indians came to Montreal with news that peace had been signed in Europe; and, at the end of May, Major Peter Schuyler, accompanied by Dellius, the minister of Albany, arrived with copies of the treaty in French and Latin. The scratch of a pen at Byswick had ended the conflict in America, so far at least as concerned the civilized combatants. It was not till July that Frontenac received the official announcement from Versailles, coupled with an address from the king ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... the house, which he observed was situated at about an equal distance from three different railway stations and surrounded by a piazza with pillars. He walked around it, examining the vines until his eye caught a torn creeper and a white scratch on the paint. It had been an outside job after all, and two weeks had already been lost. Deduction was responsible for a mistake which would not have occurred had a little knowledge been acquired first. That is the ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... of those, Harry, who find it easy to be good-natured, and who are soft by nature, as cats are—not from their heart, but through instinctive propensity to softness. When it suits them, they scratch, even though they have been ever so soft before. Count Pateroff is a cat. You, Harry, I think are a dog." She perhaps expected that he would promise to her that he would be her dog—a dog in constancy ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... saffron in a battle; then he is the first to run away, shaking his plumes like a great yellow prancing cock,[378] while I am left to watch the nets.[379] Once back again in Athens, these brave fellows behave abominably; they write down these, they scratch through others, and this backwards and forwards two or three times at random. The departure is set for to-morrow, and some citizen has brought no provisions, because he didn't know he had to go; he stops in front of the statue ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... 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 present month, and ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... porly. When Massa Jim goes, 'pears like takin' de light right out her eyes. Dat ar' boy trains roun' arter his mudder like a cosset, he does. Lor', de house seems so still widout him!—can't a fly scratch his ear but it starts a body. Missy Marvyn she sent down, an' says, would you an' de Doctor an' Miss Mary please come to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... not think it would look right on the stage. As Katherine she wanted me to wear steely silver and bronzy gold, but all the brocades had such insignificant designs. If they had a silver design on them it looked under the lights like a scratch in white cotton! At last Mrs. Carr found a black satin which on the right side was timorously and feebly patterned with a meandering rose and thistle. On the wrong side of it was a sheet of silver—just ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... exert a constant inhibitive influence on the excitability of those below. The reflexes of an animal with its hemispheres wholly or in part removed become exaggerated. You all know that common reflex in dogs, whereby, if you scratch the animal's side, the corresponding hind leg will begin to make scratching movements, usually in the air. Now in dogs with mutilated hemispheres this scratching reflex is so incessant that, as Goltz first described them, the hair gets ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... could make me; whereupon the huge creature trod short, and, looking round about under him for some time, at last espied me as I lay on the ground. He considered awhile, with the caution of one who endeavors to lay hold on a small dangerous animal in such a manner that it may not be able either to scratch or to bite him, as I myself have sometimes done with a weasel ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... hand throbbed with unbearable agony. The room began to spin slowly on its axis. There was no mist now, or even a shadow, and every sense was abnormally acute. The objects in the whirling room were phenomenally clear; even a scratch on the front of ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... egotism helped him to forget himself. She never asked him how he was, she never expected impossibilities. She let him come and go and act as he pleased, never demanding reasons. Like the kitten, she was charming and graceful and easily amused; it was possible that, also like the kitten, she could scratch and be spiteful on occasion, but that did not weigh with him. He sometimes expressed a vague envy of the late Lord Astrupp; but, even had circumstances permitted, it is doubtful whether he would have chosen to be his ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... or believed in the existence of any, that we may take his good opinion as almost final and without appeal. One author, for whose opinion I have already exprest a very high respect, says that he was but a wild man of the woods to the last; polished over skin-deep with Roman civilization; 'Scratch him, and you found the barbarian underneath {101}.' It may be true. If it be true, it is a very high compliment. It was not from his Roman civilization, but from his 'barbarian' mother and father, that he drew the 'vive intelligence ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... I didn't I should have to watch Sarah every minute to see she didn't put something hot on it or scratch the mahogany top. I can't afford to have everything I've got spoiled. No knowin' when I'll git anything more—dependent as I am ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... if occasion required, to lead the troops into action and always manifesting the most perfect indifference to the shot and shell or the whizzing minie balls that fell around her. She seemed entirely devoid of fear, and though so constantly exposed to the enemy's fire never received even a scratch. ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... very trusty widow, who came to our house twice a week, and I remember finding her in tears, and asking what was the matter. "Ah! c'est Monsieur qui m'a grondee," she sobbed desperately. "But what has he said to put you in such a state?" "Oh! he did not say much; only, 'Lazarette, why will you scratch off the paint with the matches?' ... 'Mais quand Monsieur gronde,'" ... and ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... to twiddle my fingers, and scratch my head, and jump up and down every two minutes and a half," said Uncle Andy rather severely. "But, as I was going to say, they also got used to seeing me sitting on the bank, quiet and harmless, till they no longer felt so shy of ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... He is a thrifty dog; he thinks of the future. "You never know what may happen," he says; "suppose the Guv'nor dies, or goes mad, or bankrupt, I may be glad even of this biscuit; I'll put it under the door-mat—no, I won't, somebody will find it there. I'll scratch a hole in the tennis lawn, and bury it there. That's a good idea; perhaps it'll grow!" Once I caught him hiding it in my study, behind the shelf devoted to my own books. It offended me, his doing that; the argument was ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... "It only has four legs and a cunning little tail; and we know how to hold it so it can't scratch us, anyway; but it won't put out its head again until it thinks we've gone away, because this is an old one. See, the shell covers my hand all over. The littler ones are livelier and more willing to put out their heads. I don't believe we've had this one before, Ernest," added Faith, examining ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... neck he held the dog's head to the ground, so that Shiro began to scratch and dig in order to free himself from the horrid old ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... and rest with us." "Thank you," said 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, 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, Clawed with their nails, Barking, mewing, ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... climate, it was the most perfect on earth. It was never too hot, and never too cold, but always warm and sunny. The soil was so fertile that one had but to scratch it to produce the finest crops. Delicious fruits grew everywhere, and might be gathered all the year round. The meadows were made beautiful, and the air scented, with the loveliest of flowers. In fact Louisiana was painted ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... almost monstrous shortness of legs, so that they move by jumping rather than by walking; they are said not to scratch up the ground. I have examined a Burmese variety, which had a skull ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... with a great retinue, a whole village complete when they camped, and announced that he and his people had some fifty thousand dollars in sight to stake on the race; which, of course, was to be a scratch race for both. The soldiers, being very human, raised all they could—and much that they couldn't, really—to cover this handsome sum. Red Cloud then returned to ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... 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 sight in ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... Sheridan deprecate the attempt to confuse moderate Reform with reckless innovation. Burke illogically but effectively dragged in the French spectre, and Windham declared that the public mind here, as in other lands, was in such a state that the slightest scratch might produce a ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... people who had no sheep, the sight was a very fine one (so far at least as the weather permitted any sight at all); yet for us, with our flock beneath it, this great mount had but little charm. Watch began to scratch at once, and to howl along the sides of it; he knew that his charge was buried there, and his business taken from him. But we four men set to in earnest, digging with all our might and main, shovelling away at the great white pile, and fetching it into the meadow. Each man made ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... fluke," said Sidney lightly. "His real influence is only superficial. Scratch the Christian ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the man at the fire. He had removed his tin cup and was engaged in stirring its grimy contents with a small stick. "That's a charm; some kind of hoodoo business that one o' them priests gave him to keep him out o' trouble. I know them Cath'lics. That's how come Frenchy got permoted an never got a scratch sence he's been in the ranks. Hey, French! aint I right?" Edmond looked ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... he stopped, as on the previous night, being overcome by a sudden sense of silence. There was not the faintest sound of gnaw, or scratch, or squeak. The silence was as of the grave. He remembered the odd occurrence of the previous night, and instinctively he looked at the chair standing close by the fireside. And then a very ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... whole game to the district attorney. That would be fun, wouldn't it? The district attorney wouldn't waste much time on Arthur P. Hawkins if he could land Gottlieb & Quibble in jail for subornation of perjury, would he—eh? We've got to scratch ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... coarse enough to scratch her skin off; not a thing can she use here," said Adele, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Drunkard! Out of her house!...It was the people's fault, for supporting such an infidel. She'd eat him up! Let them make way for her!... And she struggled violently with her friends, fighting to free herself and scratch out the doctor's eyes. To her vindictive cries were joined the weak bleating of Visanteta, protesting with the breath that was left her between her groans of pain. It was a lie! Let that wicked man be gone! What a nasty mouth he had! ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the ship inside planetary atmosphere, and arranging the lift engines so that they could be swung into line with the drive engines. There was a lot of cybernetic and robotic equipment, and astrogational equipment, that had to be made from scratch. Conn picked a couple of helpers and ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... mother," said the spirited lad, as he wiped the blood away; "at least only the scratch of an arrow while I was on the roof. Father wishes you to send all the women who are strong enough to help to carry water from the river. The well is dry, and the men cannot be spared from the embankment. We expect another attack, ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... a smooth and decent scholar, and when he was dreamy he would shove his scratch back from his forehead and shut his eyes and recite Homer or Virgil by the page together, while Lancelot and I listened open-mouthed, and I wondered what pleasure he got out of all that rigmarole. The heroes of Homer and of Virgil seemed to me very bloodless, boneless creatures ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the beds, the Squire busy writing to yourself, as it chances, and just at this moment somewhat bitten by mosquitoes. He has just set fire to the insect powder, and will be all right in no time; but just now he contemplates large white blisters, and would like to scratch them, but knows better. The house is not bare; it has been inhabited by Kanakas, and - you know what children are! - the bare wood walls are pasted over with pages from the GRAPHIC, HARPER'S WEEKLY, etc. The floor is matted, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... family, particularly Lady St. G. who I am truly rejoiced to hear is so much better. Say everything that is kind from me to her, and my apology for not writing is that my right hand is very weak, as you may see from my writing, from an inflammation I have had in it occasioned entirely by a slight scratch on the knuckle of the fore finger; but it is now quite ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... for them now. One of the worst symptoms in the man is his curt refusal to permit anybody else to admire one bright particular star of womanhood. If the girl hears another girl gushing over the young man, she's ready to scratch her eyes out. By Jove! It'll be many a day before you forget your visit to Roxton Park this morning, or yesterday morning, or whenever ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... term always opened with a scratch game against a mixed team of masters and old boys, and the school usually won without any great exertion. On this occasion the match had been rather more even than the average, and the team had only just pulled the thing off by a couple of tries to a goal. Otway expressed ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... favourite should be particularly discreet in all that he says: and next, he should have known that the Gallic shrug over matters political is volcanic—it is the heaving of the mountain, and, like the proverbial Russ, leaps up Tartarly at a scratch. Our newspapers also had been flea-biting M. Livret and his countrymen of late; and, to conclude, over in old England you may fly out against what you will, and there is little beyond a motherly smile, a nurse's rebuke, or a fool's rudeness to answer you. In quick-blooded France you have whip ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... who appeared was little Miss Jane, the mother's pet, because she was the youngest. She came squalling in to tell her mother that Dick had scratched her, though she could not show the scratch; and there was no peace until she was set on a high chair by her mother, and supplied with ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... 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'," ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... council of war. What should we do—push on or go back? It seemed highly dangerous, but suddenly making up my mind, I cut short all deliberations and ordered an advance. To feel for the enemy, to get in touch with the enemy at all costs, and to scratch him if possible, is evidently the scout's duty, even when the scout is but a siege amateur, with broken trousers, a mud-stained shirt and a battered rifle. But we must make ourselves secure. We bolted the big gates behind us; we sweatily ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... rubbish. Fraulein von Vieradlers had attacked it before her astonished companion, also alighting, came to her aid. There was witchery in the creature, for her delicate, ungloved hands, covered with rings, tugged at the roughly hewn tree-trunks and misshapen blocks of stone without a scratch and, as her frame offered no suggestion of strength, the swiftness with which they were moved, confirmed the idea of the supernatural. As soon as he recovered from his amazement, he aided her energetically, and in an incredibly ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... let the monkey go, and rushed at the heavily-laden bushes. The monkey slipped away secretly, and climbed up a tree, where he could enjoy the discomfiture of his voracious friend. The crocodile began to cough, sneeze, and scratch his tongue. When he rushed to the river to cool his mouth, the monkey ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... That is not the sound of a scratch that you hear. It cannot be any insect nor any process of moving life in the stone or beneath it. Can you liken it to any thing but the equal motion of a rather ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... constant play told of full crops and no fear for the night, already softly gray across the white silent fields. The air was crisper; the snow began to crackle under foot; the twigs creaked and rattled as I brushed along; a brown beech leaf wavered down and skated with a thin scratch over the crust; and pure as the snow-wrapped crystal world, and sweet as the soft gray twilight, came ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... never been able to discover. As long as they are at play on their machines these whirr like the propeller of a Handley-Page. They get down millions of words a minute. But when they have got the job apparently done, they simmer away to nothing. They perform mysterious rites with ink-eraser. They scratch feebly with knives. They hold up to the light, they tittivate, they muse and they adorn. It is not the slightest use intimating that you do not care twopence whether there are typographic errors or not—the expert typist treats you with ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... Sir Claude Scratch was a very different person. He was proud of his high family, for his father was second cousin to Dick Whittington's Cat, and had seen a great deal of the world. Sir Claude was very proud of his ...
— A Apple Pie and Other Nursery Tales • Unknown
... object of our solicitude five hundred feet deep in its bosom. The sagacity of Mr. Bonflon relieved us from our dilemma. He hoisted out the small car or tender, and, letting it down with great care and precision, safely accomplished the object. In the space of half an hour, De Aery, without a scratch, and, like a gallant Gaul, rather proud of his adventure than frightened at it, was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... that in this regard we have discovered an essential characteristic of the Japanese nature. With reference to the reported savagery displayed by Japanese troops at Port Arthur, it has been said and repeated that you have only to scratch the Japanese skin to find the Tartar, as if the recent development of human feelings were superficial, and his real character were exhibited in his most cruel moments. To get a true view of the case let us look for a few moments at some other parts of the world, and ask ourselves ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... face of the paper and probably cause the ink to run. The less rubbing out the better the learner will progress, and the more satisfaction he will receive from the results. If it becomes necessary to scratch out it is best done with a penknife well sharpened, and not applied too forcibly to the paper but somewhat lightly, and moved in different and not all in one direction. After the penknife the rubber ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... incessant fighting among them," said the white-bearded peasant with the shining eyes. "The women will scratch each other's eyes out." ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... instead of finding his dearest Rapunzel, he found the enchantress, who gazed at him with wicked and venomous looks. 'Aha!' she cried mockingly, 'you would fetch your dearest, but the beautiful bird sits no longer singing in the nest; the cat has got it, and will scratch out your eyes as well. Rapunzel is lost to you; you will never see her again.' The king's son was beside himself with pain, and in his despair he leapt down from the tower. He escaped with his life, but the ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... one trying to bite at the delicious morsel. Selfishness reigns everywhere. When she has eaten her fill, she makes way for another, who in her turn becomes intolerant. One after the other, all the inmates of the menagerie come and refresh themselves. After cramming their crops, they scratch the soles of their feet a little with their mandibles, polish up their forehead and eyes with a leg moistened with spittle and then, hanging to the trellis-work or lying on the sand in a posture of contemplation, blissfully they digest and slumber most of the day, especially during the ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... again after his accident and the subsequent operation. To any one who knows the climate, the reason will be easily understood. In that heated air of Central Equatorial Africa, tainted with all manner of harmful germs, a scratch will take a month to heal, and any considerable flesh wound may well prove a death warrant. Captain Kettle nursed his patient with a woman's tenderness, and Clay himself struggled gamely against his fate; but the ills of the place ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... serious mood his face was strong and rugged. His beard, cropped close, reminded me of scraps of wire, some of them rusted; and when he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand I wondered that he did not scratch the ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... the grass to be mown, And call all her children to follow; And scratch up the seeds that were sown, Then, lie in their ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... rather too innocently on this occasion. Miss Farrar was not dull, and had suspected from the beginning who was at the bottom of the mischief; indeed, it was easy enough by this time to trace the noise to the right spot, for the kitten had begun to scratch, and lifted up its voice in a series of emphatic wails, evidently protesting ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... for the Communists," Cuthbert said, "not one spark. They would not pull a trigger or risk a scratch for the defence of Paris against the Germans, now they are fighting like wild-cats against their countrymen. Look there," he exclaimed, suddenly, "there is a fire broken out close to the Place de la Concorde, ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... to them that I wanted to show, during my inquiries, both sides of the question, and should be glad if they would point out to me the name of a Gipsy whom they could look up to and consider as a good pattern for them to follow. Here they began to scratch their heads, and said I had put them "a nightcap on." "Upon my soul," said one, "I should not know where to begin to look for one," and then related to me the following story:—"The Devil sent word to some of his agents for them to send him the worst man they could find upon the face of the ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... 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 a ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... scene immediately afterwards, and found them all lying unconscious as the result of the explosion, but they soon revived and took a stout part in rescuing the horses. The construction was completely wrecked, and the clothes they wore were stripped into ribbons, but only one of them had a scratch on him. ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... look danger in the face; face; meet, meet in front; brave, beard; defy &c 715. take courage, muster courage, summon up courage, pluck up courage; nerve oneself, take heart; take heart, pluck up heart of grace; hold up one's head, screw one's courage to the sticking place; come up to scratch; stick to one's guns, standfire^, stand against; bear up, bear up against; hold out &c (persevere) 604.1. put a bold face upon; show a bold front, present a bold front; show fight; face the music. bell the cat, take the bull by the horns, beard ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... are met (commonly fifteen or sixteen together), the old woman comes with a nutshell full of the matter of the best sort of smallpox, and asks what vein you please to have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer with a large needle (which gives you no more pain than a common scratch), and puts into the vein as much matter as can lie upon the head of her needle, and after that binds up the little wound with a hollow bit of shell; and in this manner opens four ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... a kind of right-whale; they get barnacles and a kind of marine lice on their backs, and come up and scratch them selves against a ship's keel, just like a ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... bridge. The son was the head of the family when I came in; and I found that he had it all arranged to leave thirty million dollars to one of his sons, and only ten million to my husband. I set to work to change that, I can tell you. I used to go around to see him, and scratch his back and tickle him and make him feel good. Of course the family went wild—my, how they hated me! They set old Ellis to work to keep me off—have ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... for pawnbrokers in England, when they take a watch, to scratch the number of the ticket with a pin-point upon the inside of the case. It is more handy than a label, as there is no risk of the number being lost or transposed. There are no less than four such numbers visible to my lens on the inside of this case. Inference,—that ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... covering the bath served him for writing-table; an empty wooden box at his side bore an inkstand, some pens, sheets of paper, and two or three copies of L'Ami do Peuple. There was no sound in the room but the scratch and splutter of his quill. He was writing diligently, revising and editing a proof of the forthcoming issue ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... infantrymen who entered and held Bagwana, and covered him and the gunners during the long and arduous struggle to extricate the guns from their lair in the deep and rugged watercourse. This was at length accomplished, scratch teams were improvised, and the guns, which were uninjured although the ammunition boxes had been emptied, were brought into the ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... heart) 'There's your wage; all you deserve and all you'll get:' and pointed to the sunshine. The elder brothers were dumfoundered when they heard that; but the lad, who happened to have his knife with him, said, 'We accept, King, the gift.' With his knife he made a scratch around the sunstreak on the floor, took the shine of it three times into the fold of his kirtle"—his pocket, we should say nowadays—"and went his way." Eventually he became king of Macedonia, and ancestor of ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... 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 Cannons, To scatter 'em, as 'tis to make 'em sleepe On May-day Morning, which will neuer ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... a smile of deep pleasure; and turning to me he added, "I really called to play this over with the master. Shall you mind if I scratch it through?" ...
— A Day with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy • George Sampson
... To Lydia, at this moment, it seemed as if every girl must be seeking what she sought. "And I call it very bold of her to come poking herself where she isn't wanted—running after a young man. I'd be ashamed." A longing to scratch Miss Lisle's face was mixed with a longing to have a good cry, for she was honestly suffering the pangs of unrequited love. It is true that it was not for the first time. The curl, the earrings, the songs, the Language of Flowers, had done duty more than once before. But wounds may be painful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... "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 ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... Lady Delahaye said, smiling. "I want to relieve you and your conscience at the same time of a very awkward incubus. Listen! This is what I propose. Let Isobel come to me for a year! I shall treat her as my own daughter. She will have plenty of amusement. There are the theatres, and no end of scratch entertainments where one can take a girl of her age who is too young for society. She will mix with young people of her own age, she will have every advantage which, to speak frankly, must be denied to her in her present position. At the end of that year I shall tell her her history. ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... quite used to making ten thousand dollar bargains in a few seconds of time and without the scratch of a pen. I had risked more money than that on the fact that Slater looked worried and Bawker was very cross when at his office, and it had won immensely. But here, what a prospect, what a far-reaching, all-encircling ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... thus: "This little maid Of love shall always speak and write;" "And I pronounce," the Satyr said, "The world shall feel her scratch and bite." ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... after a pause and then went on. "The little stone church of her uncle, the holy man of the family, might have been round the corner of the next spur of the nearest hill. I dismounted to bandage the shoulder of my trooper. It was only a nasty long scratch. While I was busy about it a bell began to ring in the distance. The sound fell deliciously on the ear, clear like the morning light. But it stopped all at once. You know how a distant bell stops suddenly. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... with a crown of black lace. At the same time some serious cases came to the main hospital; one man seemed to have been shot the whole length of his body, the bullet entering at the shoulder and emerging behind the hip. A small boy sat scratching. Jo said to him, "Why dost thou scratch?" He answered with a shout of fatuous content, "I have lice, I have lice," and scratched ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... Registrar, don't say that," exclaimed Matilda. "If you don't go on now, he'll never marry me; I'll never be able to bring 'im to the scratch again. Indeed, sir, 'e's not so drunk as he looks. 'Tis mostly the effect of the morning hair ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... barrowful of gravel, or line their box with sand-paper, and you may leave them naked as they were born! But, bless thy five wits! did you never hear the proverb,'Diamond cut diamond'? They're all of a sort, you see! I'd as soon shut up a thousand game-cocks in the same cellar. If they don't scratch each other, they may, or they might, or they could, or they would, or at any rate they should scratch each other. It was all very well so long as they lay in the wall of this your old diamond-mine. But now you'll be for ever playing with them! ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... to give the strength of the respective crews. James says the Americans had 580, all "picked men." They were just as much picked men as Barclay's were, and no more; that is, the ships had "scratch" crews. Lieutenant Emmons gives Perry 490 men; and Lossing says he "had upon his muster-roll 490 names." In vol. xiv, p. 566, of the American State Papers, is a list of the prize-monies owing to each man (or to the survivors of the killed), which gives a grand total of 532 men, including ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... lock of the jewel-case had been very deftly repaired by an expert locksmith, who in executing his task was so unfortunate as to scratch a finger on the broken metal, whereupon blood poisoning set in, and although his life was saved, he was dismissed from the hospital with his right arm gone and ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... is only a scratch through my own clumsiness," he answered, nodding his good-mornings to us. "This case of yours, Mr. Phelps, is certainly one of the darkest which ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... see where he invested," Link said. "Wasn't a scratch of a pen to show that he invested anything while he was in the bank. Guess that's where our ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... Mackerel Kit Is not like other cats a bit; She cannot mew or scratch or purr, She has no whiskers and no fur. Yet, like all cats, her dearest wish Is just to be filled up with fish; But (and this isn't so feline) She always takes them ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells
... a scratch, but yet nothing more serious than to cause a goodly show of blood, and Walter put on his coat again without a thought that any ...
— Neal, the Miller - A Son of Liberty • James Otis |
