"Bobtail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... back again To that tag-rag-and-bobtail? What's the use Of a man's working to keep a decent home, When his own mother tries to drag ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... Indians and Berkeley's forces, braved the King's anger, faced death on the gallows were called in contempt "the bases of the people," "the rabble," the "scum of the people," "idle and poor people," "rag, tag, and bobtail." The Council reported that there were "hardly two amongst them" who owned estates, or were persons of reputation. Berkeley complained that his was a miserable task to govern a people "where six parts of seven at least are poor, indebted, ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... and being permitted to leave the city in comparative peace and privacy; but the hope proves a vain one, for only the respectable portion of the crowd disperses, leaving me, solitary and alone, among a howling mob of the rag, tag, and bobtail of Adrianople, who follow noisily along, vociferously yelling for me to "bin! bin!" (mount, mount), and "chu! chu!" (ride, ride) along the really unridable streets. This is the worst crowd I have encountered on the entire journey across two continents, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... to-morrow. . . . Have a drink with you? Now, hadn't you better leave that kind of talk to your funny man? Can't you tell whether a man's guying you or whether you're being offered the biggest scoop your dull dishrag of a paper ever had? . . . Well, that's so; it's a bobtail scoop—but you can hardly expect me to 'phone in my name and address . . . Why? Oh, because I heard you make a specialty of solving mysterious crimes that stump the police. . . No, that's not all. I want to tell you that your rotten, lying, ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... as an interesting, although not an agreeable item, that in the days of the French Revolution there was a notorious brood of Mother Carey's chickens in Paris. They were the female rag-tag-and-bobtail of the city, whose appearance in the streets was understood to forebode a fresh political tumult. What an insult to our feathered friends to bestow their honoured ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... other camps of the interior, preparations were made far and wide for migrating thither upon the opening of Yukon navigation, and the early summer of 1910 saw a wild stampede to the Iditarod. Saloon-keepers, store-keepers, traders of all kinds, and the rag-tag and bobtail that always flock to a new camp were on the move so soon as the ice went out. From Dawson, from the Fortymile, from Circle, from Fairbanks, from the Koyukuk, and as soon as Bering Sea permitted, from Nome, all sorts of craft bore all sorts of people to the new Eldorado, ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... background, had enabled them to win every hard-fought battle in spite of the often superior numbers of the Opposition. That Jefferson was able in the face of this victorious and discouraging army to form a great party out of the rag-tag and bobtail element, animating his policy of decentralization into a virile and indelible Americanism, proved him to be a man of genius. History shows us few men so contemptible in character, so low in tone; and no man has given his biographers so difficult a task. But those who despise him most who oppose ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... snow. They were a mixed team, four of them unmistakable huskies, one with collie characteristics, one having Newfoundland blood (through many crosses), and one, the leader, having the look of something midway between a big powerful Airedale and an old English sheep-dog, including the bobtail. This leader, Bill, as he was called, had the air of a master-worker, and was the only member of the pack (except the wheeler) who did not snarl as Jan was ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson |
