"Cast-off" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to be a successful hangman than to be the banished, abused and heart-broken, cast-off husband of a great actress. Learn to take hold of some business and jerk it bald-headed. Learn to dress yourself first. This will give you self-assurance, so that you can go away from home and not be dependent ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... the entree of them all; which it was palpable to the most superficial observer he never could have had, except possibly when, armed with a dingy bag on his shoulder and an "Ol clo'" on his lips, he sought an investment in cast-off garments. He was taking cigars, which, from their quantity, were evidently for sale; and as the American Government is very liberal in allowing passengers to enter cigars, never—I believe—refusing any one the privilege of five hundred, he was beating up for ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... moment. Why had I asked him? Of course it was Leah. I could see her strange light-coloured eyes glancing up in my direction. What was she doing in London? I wondered. She was dressed well, evidently in her mistress's cast-off clothes, for she wore a handsome silk dress and mantle. Had they quarrelled and parted? I felt instinctively that it would be a good day for Gladwyn if Leah ever shook off its dust from her feet. Gladys regarded her as a spy ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and kissed, she was set down in the middle of the clean kitchen-floor, on her own rug, hedged in by soft white pillows. There she sat, serene and happy, surveying her playthings with quizzical eyes; while her mamma gathered up bath-tub, towel, and cast-off clothes, and went up stairs to put ...
— The Nursery, December 1877, Vol. XXII. No. 6 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... Winesburg. He did odd jobs, such as cutting wood for kitchen stoves and mowing the grass before houses. In late May and early June he picked strawberries in the fields. He had time to loaf and he enjoyed loafing. Banker White had given him a cast-off coat which was too large for him, but his grandmother cut it down, and he had also an overcoat, got at the same place, that was lined with fur. The fur was worn away in spots, but the coat was warm and in the winter Tom ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... middle age, who might have been an upper house servant in her day, but nothing more. On closer inspection, even the orange-tinted shawl was soiled and held around her person in a slovenly manner, as rich cast-off garments usually are by the ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... had recently been giving me trouble. The spokes that I made of green oak, having become dry and wobbly, I had been on the outlook for a cast-off wheel, that I might appropriate the spokes. Hence it was, that, after luncheon I took my rifle, and started out across the bottom, where, within a few rods of the river, and about a half a mile off ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... along the Mooki River, on the overlanders' camp, Where the serpents are in millions, all of the most deadly stamp, Wanders, daily, William Johnson, down among those poisonous hordes, Shooting every stray goanna, calls them 'black and yaller frauds'. And King Billy, of the Mooki, cadging for the cast-off coat, Somehow seems to dodge the subject of the ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... him in a little wood close by. The good man was overjoyed to be of use, and started at once for the nearest town, where he soon discovered a shop where the court lackeys were accustomed to sell their masters' cast-off clothes. The princess dressed herself at once in the disguise he had brought, which was of rich material and covered with precious stones; and, putting her own garments into a bag, which her servant hung over his shoulders, they both set ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... I do believe that the greatest terror poverty holds for me is the knowing that I must wear seedy hats and threadbare coats, and trousers a year behind. Maybe Grey will sometime send me a box of his cast-off clothes. ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... had souls, they would be pure ones, since they can bear such contamination and not be harmed,—nay, since even from such foul food as we give them they can evolve results so beautiful. We give them our cast-off and worn-out materials, and they return us the most beautiful flowers and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... a regimental mess, whose duty it is to skink, that is, to stir the fire, snuff the candles, and ring the bell. See SKINK.—To ride in any one's old boots; to marry or keep his cast-off mistress. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Anne Thorpe entered the elevator on the first floor of the building and went up together to the apartment of Simeon Dodge. Anne had lifted her veil,—a feature in her smart tribute to convention,—and her lovely features were revealed to the cast-off sister- in-law. For an instant they stared hard at each other. Then Anne, recovering from her surprise, bowed gravely ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... bringing the flash and heavy, dull report of the old, cast-off military muskets which the Malays were using; and as these weapons flashed, the defenders of the various buildings seized the opportunity to return the fire, guessing at the enemy's ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... not destined to carry out his own magnificent project. That was left for the general whom he most esteemed, and to whose personal prowess he had once owed his life; a man than whom history knows few greater, Ptolemy, the son of Lagus. He was an adventurer, the son of an adventurer, his mother a cast-off concubine of Philip of Macedon. There were those who said that he was in reality a son of Philip himself. However, he rose at court, became a private friend of young Alexander, and at last his Somatophylax, some sort of Colonel of the Life Guards. And from ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... they reached the top. Even in the half-light it could be seen that their clothes were ill-fitting, frayed, and torn. They wore cast-off hats. The tall man, whose face was clean-cut and made a pretence of being smooth-shaven, had a pliable one; the other was capped ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... became her! Dependency had dropped from her, like a cast-off cloak, and beside her fresh, melancholy charm, the airs and graces of a child of fashion and privilege like the little Duchess appeared almost cheap and trivial. Poor Julie! No doubt some social struggle was before ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... scattered homesteads? Could I not be happy dissevered eternally from billiard-room and kursaal, race-ground and dancing-rooms? Yes, completely and unreservedly happy—happy as a village curate with seventy pounds a year and a cast-off coat, supplied by the charity of a land too poor to pay its pastors the wage of a decent butler—happy as a struggling farmer, though the clay soil of my scanty acres were never so sour and stubborn, my landlord never so hard about his rent—happy as a pedlar, ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... romantic love could attach to the apron-strings of any woman. And in the matter of his cup he probably saw that this was what he would be obliged to do as the condition of domestic peace. The condition he rejected and, rejecting it, rejected and cast-off his wife and family and the legal and moral ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... I prefer the work of my own hands. I am quite a Canadian, of course, though I once was an Englishman. I array myself in strange raiment, thick and woollen, of many colours; my linen is coarse and sometimes superseded by flannel; I wear a cast-off fur cap on my head and moccasins on my feet. I have grown a beard and a fierce moustache. I have made no money and won no friends except the simple settlers around me here. And I shall grow old and grey in your service, my Muskoka. I shall be forty-one on my next birthday. Then will come ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... completes the disorder of her appearance. Over her rough peasant's clothes, some article of cast-off apparel cuts a strange and lamentable figure: a muslin morning-wrap, once white and covered with filmy lace; long, faded ribbons, which fasten a showy Watteau pleat to the back, with ravelled ends spreading over the thick red-cotton skirt; old pink-satin slippers, with pointed heels ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... occultism has found congenial fellowship in American spiritualism. Of late we hear less of spirit-rappings and far more of Theosophy. But this is only the same crude system with other names, and rendered more respectable by the cast-off garments of old Indian philosophy. There is a disposition in the more intellectual circles to assume a degree of disdain toward the crudeness of spiritualism and its vulgar familiarity with departed spirits, who must ever be disturbed by its beck and call; but it is confidently expected ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... fortune grand Is yours, by dint of merest chance, - To sport HIS brow at second-hand, To wear HIS cast-off countenance! ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... he noted particularly while his conductor stopped to converse with a friend. He was an old man, evidently a descendant of Ishmael, and clothed in what seemed to be a ragged cast-off suit that had belonged to Abraham or Isaac. He carried his shop on his arm in the shape of a basket, out of which he took a little bit of carpet, and spread it close to where they stood. On this he sat down and slowly extracted from his basket, and spread ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... which we well understand how, common, uninteresting, or even worthless in themselves, they have come to please us at last as things picturesque, being set in relief against the modes of our different age. Customs, stiff to us, stiff dresses, stiff furniture—types of cast-off fashions, left by accident, and which no one ever meant to preserve—we contemplate with more than good-nature, as having in them the veritable accent of a time, not altogether to be replaced by its more solemn and self-conscious deposits; like those tricks of individuality ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... to the child that he was to live among orphans or cast-off children, and would be himself as much cast off as if he had come from Timbuctoo ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... unhinged. I had been smoking too many cigarettes during these three weeks, and the vampire thought continued to flit obscenely between me and the pure seascape. I saw myself the inheritor of Trewlove's cast-off personality, his inelegancies of movement, his religious opinions, his bagginess at the knees, his mournful, ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... visible things, Above you all brood glorious wings Of your deep entities, set high, Like slow moons in a hidden sky. But you, their likenesses, are spent Upon another element. Truly ye are but seemings — The shadowy cast-off gleamings Of bright solidities. Ye seem Soft as water, vague as dream; Image, cast in ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... in every conceivable attitude, and, uncovering their feet, commenced pelting each other with the cast-off leathers. When the sport had lasted a few ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... from abroad, whose shoes he had had the honor of polishing. The only person in whose presence he restrained his braggadocio style was Phillis. Her utter contempt for nonsense was too evident. Bacchus was the same size as his master, and often fell heir to his cast-off clothes. A blue dress-coat and buff vest that he thus inherited, had a great effect upon him, bodily and spiritually. Not only did he swagger more when arrayed in them, but his prayers and singing were doubly effective. He ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... formidable person. People who have done things once and left them off make one feel very contemptible, as if one were using cast-off fashions. I hope you have not left off all follies, because ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... tell Norah plainly that I disapprove of the Cabin, the past can hatch no egg of discord in the shape of the Cast-Off Glove. ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... of the house plodded through the rain homeward. It was plain that agitations of one sort and another had so weakened Viviette's nerves as to lay her open to every impression. That the clothes he had borrowed were some cast-off garments of the late Sir Blount had occurred to St. Cleeve in taking them; but in the moment of returning to her side he had forgotten this, and the shape they gave to his figure had obviously been a reminder of too sudden a sort for her. Musing thus he walked along as if he were still, ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... ate for his breakfast what he had packed for his supper; and in doing so overhauled the remainder of his kit. Although everything he brought necessitated carriage at his own back, he had secreted among his tools a few of Elizabeth-Jane's cast-off belongings, in the shape of gloves, shoes, a scrap of her handwriting, and the like, and in his pocket he carried a curl of her hair. Having looked at these things he closed them up again, ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... a stupor. Could it be that he was dead! If he had been less of an object of her thoughts, less of a motive for her labours, she could sooner have realized it. As it was, she followed his poor, cast-off, worn-out body as if she were borne along by some oppressive dream. If he were really dead, how could she ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... of the field was a tiny hut, hardly big enough for a shepherd's shelter. It looked as if it had been built of discarded things, scraps and fragments of other buildings, put together with care and pains, by some one who had tried to make the most of cast-off material. ...
— The Mansion • Henry Van Dyke
... them. Mrs. Bellmont al- lowed them the privilege of talking with her in the kitchen. She did not fear but she should have ample opportunity of subduing her when they were away. Three months of schooling, summer and winter, she enjoyed for three years. Her winter over-dress was a cast-off overcoat, once worn by Jack, and a sun-bonnet. It was a source of great merriment to the scholars, but Nig's retorts were so mirthful, and their satisfac- tion so evident in attributing the selection to "Old ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... any one I knew there. I did not dare to go near our district lady who sent me to the Orphanage, for fear she should send me back. And I thought of old Sally Blackburn, who used to live next door to us in Westminster, and made a living with buying and selling cast-off clothing and she was good to us,—and when father came in very drunk, she would take us children into her little place to be out of the way. So I hunted her up; and then, Mother Agnes, I did a very wrong thing. She is old and stupid, and very poor, and I could not ...
— Daybreak - A Story for Girls • Florence A. Sitwell
... I have several times asked to be relieved and sent to the front." An officer of forceful executive ability might have procured for us lumber for benches, more coal or wood for the stoves, some straw or hay for bedding, blankets or cast-off clothing for the half naked; possibly a little food, certainly a supply of reading matter from the charitably disposed. Single instances of his compassion I have mentioned. I shall have occasion to speak of another. But the spectacle of the hopeless mass of misery ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... a peg in life, old sport, that's all," laughed Carrie. "In Italy wearing a hat is a sign of gentility. No work-girl ever has one on her head even on Sundays. I offered a cast-off of mine to the bonne at a hotel once, and she eyed it longingly, but said she daren't wear it if she took it, her friends would think it ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... the wayside fences and walls were broken down or dismantled; and beyond them fields of snow downtrodden and discolored, and strewn with fragments of leather, camp equipage, harness, and cast-off clothing, showed traces of the recent encampment and congregation of men. On some there were still standing the ruins of rudely constructed cabins, or the semblance of fortification equally rude and incomplete. A fox stealing along a half-filled ditch, a wolf slinking behind ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... he was the old gentleman's body-servant befo' the war. He used to wear his marster's cast-off ruffles an' high hat. A mighty likely nigger he was, too, till he got all bent up with ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... true that M. Fortunat's clerk did not appear to the best advantage on this occasion. In order to watch M. de Coralth, he had again arrayed himself in his cast-off clothes, and with his blouse and his worn-out shoes, his "knockers" and his glazed cap, he looked the vagabond to perfection. Still, strange as it may seem, Mademoiselle Marguerite did not once doubt the devotion of this strange auxiliary. Without an instant's hesitation ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... Encourage your servants now and then by a kind word, and see that they have good and wholesome food, clean and comfortable quarters. Once in a while give them a holiday, or an evening off, a cash remembrance at Christmas, and from time to time some part of your wardrobe or cast-off clothing. They are just like children, and must be treated with the rigor and mild discipline which a schoolmaster uses toward his pupils. In all their movements they should be noiseless and as automatic as possible in ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... enough-for a Dutchman," Claude said of her, "but I hate to see a woman go around looking as if her clothes would drop off if it rained on her. And on Sundays, when she dresses up, she looks like a boy rigged out in some girl's cast-off duds." ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... of nature, who snaps you with unphilosophical as the clergyman once frightened you with infidel, is still a recognized member of society, wants taming, and will get it. He wears the priest's cast-off {195} clothes, dyed to escape detection: the better sort of philosophers would gladly set him to ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... comedy, waited in the vicinity of the house inhabited by the unknown for the hour at which letters were distributed. In order to be able to spy at his ease and hang about the house, he had followed the example of those police officers who seek a good disguise, and bought up cast-off clothes of an Auvergnat, the appearance of whom he sought to imitate. When the postman, who went the round of the Rue Saint Lazare that morning, passed by, Laurent feigned to be a porter unable to remember the name of a person to whom he had to deliver a parcel, and consulted ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... super-construction? Why not missionaries sent here openly to convert us from our barbarous prohibitions and other taboos, and to prepare the way for a good trade in ultra-bibles and super-whiskeys; fortunes made in selling us cast-off super-fineries, which we'd take to like an African chief to someone's old silk hat from ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... guard, and that were destroyed as soon as read. Finally and lastly, there was the bottle broken into fragments and thrown to the dust heap; but, without doubt, the counterpart of the one found at Miss Wardour's bedside on the morning of the robbery; while, among some cast-off garments, had been found the half of a handkerchief, that matched precisely the one found over the face of the heiress. All these facts Mr. Belknap had laid before her with elaborate explanations, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... lumbering vehicles, laden with heavy merchandise, tear up the soil into ruts. No cab-drivers cast sarcastic remarks at you from their high perch. The only annoyance comes from the cast-off nail of a horse-shoe or the sharp splinter of a macadamised stone. The air is as fresh as on Creation's morn. Up hill and down again one can hurry on without ever touching the brake. For the first ten ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... sits by the way, by the wild wayside, In a rent stained raiment, the robe of a cast-off bride, In the dust, in the rainfall sitting, with soiled feet bare, With the night for a garment upon her, with torn wet hair? She is fairer of face than the daughters of men, and her eyes, Worn through with her tears, are deep as the depth ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... all these donations was sure to happen. Once Sary had watched the trunks hoisted up in the ranch wagon, and realized that there would be no more "pickin's" for her, she ran to her room and began sorting and gloating over the mass of cast-off clothing. And so mesmerized was she with pictures of herself adorned in the dresses that were made for the form half her girth that Mrs. Brewster found it impossible to coax her ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... an unusual display of foresight, had christened their first baby after the school. Ursula Murphy may not be a euphuistic combination, but the child was amply repaid for carrying such a name, by receiving the cast-off clothes of generations of St. Ursula girls. There was danger, for a time, that the poor little thing would be buried beneath a mountain of wearing apparel; but her parents providentially discovered a ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... principles of the human constitution; the body has dropped away from the man; he is excarnated, disembodied; six principles still remain as his constitution immediately after death, the seventh, or the dense body, being left as a cast-off garment. ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... and of further fanning passion already kindling into flame. Doubtless it served in its day, and in greater or less degree, the end designed by it. Having done that, it has sunk into the general mass of stale and loathed calumnies. It is the very cast-off slough of a polluted and shameless press. Incapable of further mischief, it lies in the sewer, lifeless and despised. It is not now, Sir, in the power of the honorable member to give it dignity or decency, by attempting to elevate ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... long as he had breath. Thus he wrought me up, in short, to a kind of hesitation in the matter; having the dangers on one side represented in lively figures, and indeed, heightened by my imagination of being turned out to the wide world a mere cast-off whore, for it was no less, and perhaps exposed as such, with little to provide for myself, with no friend, no acquaintance in the whole world, out of that town, and there I could not pretend to stay. All this terrified me to the last degree, and he took care upon all occasions to lay it home to ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... her bosom, where the breath seemed to struggle with such panting haste and fear— "Thou art welcome to the dead leaves sanctified by song, if thou thinkest them of value, but I would rather see the rosebud of love nestled in that pretty white breast of thine, than the cast-off ornaments of fame!" ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... accomplish all things, appeared to three of his disciples it was at eventide, at the common table of the humblest of inns; and then and there the Light broke forth, shattering Material Forms, illuminating the Spiritual Faculties, so that they saw him in his glory, and the earth lay at their feet like a cast-off sandal. ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... can often find dozens of the cast-off skins of the stone flies along the brook sides in ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... Ishmael, the screwtwar, as you call it, was among the old furnitur' sent down from the mansion-house here, to fit up this place when I first came into it; you see, the housekeeper up there sends the cast-off furniture to the overseer, same as she sends the cast-off finery to ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... men are utterly destitute of this godly jewel, this treasure, the fear of the Lord. Poor vagrants, when they come straggling to a lord's house, may perhaps obtain some scraps and fragments, they may also obtain old shoes, and some sorry cast-off rags, but they get not any of his jewels, they may not touch his choicest treasure; that is kept for the children, and those that shall be his heirs. We may say the same also of this blessed grace of fear, which is called here God's treasure. It is only ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... wondered where, in the name of morality, she had procured the garment. I learned later that it was the joy and pride of Antoinette's existence; for once, in the days long ago, when she was femme de chambre to a luminary of the cafes concerts, it had met around her waist. She had treasured the cast-off finery of this burned-out star—she beamed in the seventies—for all these years, and now its immortal devilry transfigured Carlotta. She was also washed specklessly clean. An aroma that no soap or artificial perfume could give disengaged itself from her as ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... the teachings of history or of philosophy never reach the ears of the multitude; they are drowned by the din of selfish rogues or of blind enthusiasts. Poor stupid humanity goes round and round like a mill-horse in a dreary ring of political follies. The cast-off sophisms and rhetorical rubbish of a past generation are patched up, scoured, and offered to the credulous present as something novel and excellent. People do not know how often the rotten stuff has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... addressed by the Pandava in that assembly of Rishis, the worshipful Markandeya of high ascetic merit replied, 'Agneya (Son of Agni), Skanda (Cast-off), Diptakirti (Of blazing fame), Anamaya (Always hale), Mayuraketu (Peacock-bannered), Dharmatman (The virtuous-souled), Bhutesa (The lord of all creatures), Mahishardana (The slayer of Mahisha), Kamajit (The ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the people, because in his revenge he did everything with blood and fire. The younger, who was by nature kind-hearted, resigned himself to his shameful fate along with his mother, and they lived on what the woods afforded, clothing themselves in the cast-off rags of travelers. She had lost her name, being known only as the convict, the prostitute, the scourged. He was known as the son of his mother only, because the gentleness of his disposition led every one to believe that he was not the ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Rose-Black, in a cast-off accent of jaded indifferentism, just touched with displeasure. "Yes," he added, dreamily, to Lydia, "it was divine, you know. You might say it needed training; but it had the naive sweetness we associate ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... of science, undoubtedly, evolution has won the day. Nevertheless, in religious circles, old time prejudices and slow conservatism, clinging to its creeds, as the hermit crab clings to the cast-off shell of oyster or clam, still resist it. The great body of the Christian laity looks askance on it. And even in progressive America, one of the largest and most liberal of American denominations has recently formally ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... parsonage stood on a steep incline, the upper side resting on the red gravelly earth, while the lower side was raised three or four feet from the ground. The vacant space underneath had been used by our several bachelor predecessors as a receptacle for cast-off clothing. Malone, Lockley, and Evans, had thus disposed of their discarded apparel, and Drury Bond and one or two other miners had also added to the treasures that caught the eye of the inquisitive Digger. It was a museum of sartorial curiosities—seedy ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... in a good humor. The sight of his darling of yesterday, dressed in such magnificence to celebrate the day on which her poor wretched cast-off lover was to blow his brains out, roused such a joy in his heart that it was impossible not to show it in his words. So ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... things since her father's imprisonment—had learned that a girl of fifteen couldn't run barefooted in the open with impunity. She had found a pair of Daddy's old cast-off boots, tied rags about her feet, and ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... Marseilles, in the Jewish quarter of the town, sold old clothes to the Piedmontese and sailors in port. Now it was his delight to behold the Parisians of the Boulevard or the clubs buy as sentimental rags the cast-off ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... extraordinary variety. I can hardly, I suppose, expect the reader to sympathize with the joy I felt the other night, in discovering among the latter an adventurous and universally applicable sign-board advertising This House and Lot for Sale, and, intertwined with the cast-off suspenders which long garlanded a coffee-mill pendent from the roof, a newly added second-hand india-rubber ear-trumpet. Here and there, however, I hope a finer soul will relish, as I do, the poetry of thus buying and offering for sale the very most recondite, as well as the commonest ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... farming men, and a cleared field, and a heavily laden cart; one man at the top of the great pile ready to catch the fragrant hay which the others threw up to him with their pitchforks; a little heap of cast-off clothes in a corner of the field (for the heat, even at seven o'clock, was insufferable), a few cans and baskets, and Rover lying by them panting, and keeping watch. Plenty of loud, hearty, cheerful ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Paul," said the lackey, hiding the cast-off clothing in the closet, "I am that glad to see you safe ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... as ragged and wild as if they belonged to nobody. His son Rip promised to inherit the habits, with the old clothes, of his father. He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother's heels, equipped in a pair of his father's cast-off breeches, which he had much ado to hold up with one hand, as a fine lady does her ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... 104; supererogation &c (redundancy) 641. vanitas vanitatum [Lat.], vanity, inanity, worthlessness, nugacity^; triviality &c (unimportance) 643. caput mortuum [Lat.], waste paper, dead letter; blunt tool. litter, rubbish, junk, lumber, odds and ends, cast-off clothes; button top; shoddy; rags, orts^, trash, refuse, sweepings, scourings, offscourings^, waste, rubble, debris, detritus; stubble, leavings; broken meat; dregs &c (dirt) 653; weeds, tares; rubbish heap, dust hole; rudera^, deads^. fruges consumere natus [Lat.] [Horace]. &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... unexceptionably genteel book ever written, being the principal favourite. It makes the young Jew ashamed of the young Jewess, it makes her ashamed of the young Jew. The young Jew marries an opera-dancer, or if the dancer will not have him, as is frequently the case, the cast-off Miss of the Honourable Spencer So-and-so. It makes the young Jewess accept the honourable offer of a cashiered lieutenant of the Bengal Native Infantry; or, if such a person does not come forward, the ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... I have to live in a wick-i-up three feet square, and wear your cast-off blankets," she answered, with some spirit. "I'm just about the right color for a squaw, though; that is, if I look as badly as ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... out of it, as out of a cast-off garment. This quick movement shook up the talking-machine, and at once voices issued from the great horn shrilly protesting into his ear—"Quack! Quack! Kommt, Fraulein!" "Une fille stupider!" "Gid-dap!" "Honk! Honk! Honk!"—and then, rippling ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... usually a little older, but ofttimes younger than themselves. They go to school with their little masters and mistresses, carry their books, and play with them. For this they receive the scantiest dole of food on which they can live, a few cast-off garments, and a stipend of a medio-peso (twenty-five cents cents U.S. currency) per annum, which their parents collect and spend. Parents and child are satisfied, because, little as they get, it is certain. Parents especially are satisfied, because thus do they ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... saved a large sum by an ingenious trick. He had twenty-eight thousand dollars on his person when the enemy entered the place, and immediately throwing off his citizen's garb, he attired himself in the cast-off gauntlets of a private soldier, entered the Magnolia House, employed as a hospital, and, throwing himself upon a bed, assumed to be exceedingly and helplessly sick, while the foe remained. As soon as the rebels had departed, he became suddenly and vigorously healthy, ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... to her own Eastern ideas, was in the position of a superior receiving an unfortunate inferior. She was the latest acquired—the darling, the reigning queen—confronted with the poor cast-off, old, unattractive first wife; and being of a nature equally noble as the type of her beauty, she felt it incumbent on her, in such a situation, to treat the unfortunate with every consideration, ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... the boot, displaying feet where the elastic sides wriggled like living vermin, and ankles covered with vermicelli dipped in ink; then the most impossibly threadbare and discoloured coats, made, as it seemed, of old billiard cloths, of tarpaulin worn to the canvas, of cast-off awnings; overcoats of cast iron, the surface worn off the back-seam and sleeves—glaucous waistcoats, sprigged with flowers and furnished with buttons of dry brawn-parings; and all this was as nothing; ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... center of the earth [Visita interiora terrae, etc.—Smaragdine tablet, 6, 8.] where the roots of all individuality meet, the spirit rises up again [Smaragdine tablet, 10.] released from the caput mortuum, which is blacked on the floor of the hermetic receptacle. The residuum is represented by the cast-off raiment of the novice. Laboriously now, he toils forward in the darkness; the heights draw him on; escaping hell he will attain to heaven. His ascent up the holy mountain is hindered by a violent storm; he is thrown into the depths ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... is the PICTURE GALLERY. It is said to receive the overflowings of the gallery of Munich—which, in turn, has been indebted to the well known gallery of Dusseldorf for its principal treasures. However, as a receiver of cast-off apparel, this collection must be necessarily inferior to the parent wardrobe, yet I would strongly recommend every English Antiquary—at all desirous of increasing his knowledge, and improving his taste, in early German art—to pay due attention to this singular collection ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... had a grievance to avenge. He was sprung from the Robertson clan, which did not easily forget or forgive. He still remembered his quarrel with Crooked-armed Macdonald on the Saskatchewan. In his mind was the goading thought that he was a cast-off servant of the North-West Company; and he yearned for the day when he might exact retribution for his injuries, some of them ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... sentiments attributed to me burned on my lips, but I extinguished the flame. I submitted to be looked upon as the humiliated, cast-off, and now pining confidante of the distinguished Miss Fanshawe: but, reader, it was a ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... new Indian is named Andrew. He can talk a little. He says the land portage from Fort McPherson to Fort LaPierre is lined with cast-off stuff that people have tried to carry and couldn't. It is a starving country and a starving march. So is this a starving journey by water. When we went ashore it was in a rousing gale of wind. Uncle Dick baked some bannocks in our old way, leaning the ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... His son Rip, an urchin begotten in his own likeness, promised to inherit the habits, with the old clothes of his father. He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother's heels, equipped in a pair of his father's cast-off galligaskins, which he had much ado to hold up with one hand, as a fine lady does her ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... call on him. I went to his office in a lemon grove on a hill at the edge of the town; and there I had a surprise. I expected to see one of the usual cinnamon-colored natives in congress gaiters and one of Pizzaro's cast-off hats. What I saw was an elegant gentleman of a slightly claybank complexion sitting in an upholstered leather chair, sipping a highball and reading Mrs. Humphry Ward. I had smuggled into my brain a few words of Spanish by the ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... big forty-five had a broken hammer, and the pistol, Keith thought, might have stunned a fly at close range. He pawed the things over with the cold chisel, and the last thing he came upon—buried under what looked like a cast-off sport shirt—was a pasteboard shoe box. He raised the cover. The box was full ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... to send the farmer's cast-off garments to the vessel, and Mr. Sherwood was soon introducing his friend to the ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... the Sieur de Gurdun was to come in; and Gurdun belonged to the Archbishop, and the Archbishop to the Duke. The bride also was reported unwilling, which added zest to the public appetite for her known beauty. Some knew for truth that she was the cast-off mistress of a very great man, driven into Gurdun's arms to dispose of scandal and of her. 'Eh, the minion!' said certain sniggering old women to whom this was told, 'she'll not find so soft a lap at Gurdun!' But others said, 'Gurdun is the Duke's, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... at the corner of Hastings and Granville offering matches for sale to the stony world. She was bareheaded, thinly clad, shivering. Her clothing was tattered and torn. Her shoes were several sizes too large, and were some person's cast-off ones. It was Christmas, and no one was seeking for matches. They were all in search of gold and silverware, furs and fancies, to give away to people who did ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... George's house, managed to pick up an acquaintance with his valet, learned that his master had cut his head the night before, and, finally, at the expense of six shillings, made all sure by buying a pair of his cast-off shoes. With these I journeyed down to Streatham and saw that they ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... carriage is entered and whirls rapidly away, followed by showers of rice and cast-off slippers, and the pretty ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... would have been infinitely happier dressed in rags and making mud-pies in a gutter, than in his splendid raiment and well-furnished nursery; an uninteresting nursery, where there were no cupboards full of broken wagons and head-less horses, flat-nosed dolls and armless grenadiers, the cast-off playthings of a flock of brothers and sisters—a very chaos of rapture for the fingers of infancy! Only a few expensive toys from a fashionable purveyor—things that went by machinery, darting forward a little way with convulsive jerks and unearthly choking noises, and then tumbling ignominiously ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... years, from 1853 to 1889. He was a rough, uneducated man, but with a certain amount of native talent which raised him above the level of the majority of his class. I can see him now in his place Sunday after Sunday, rigged out in a suit of my father's cast-off clerical garments—a kind of "set-off" to him at the lower end of the church. In his earlier days Wren had played a flute in the village instrumental choir, and to the last he might be heard whiling away spare moments on a Sunday in the church (for he brought his dinner early ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... sexual character, namely that the male element collects within one of the arms or tentacles, which is then cast off, and clinging by its sucking-discs to the female, lives for a time an independent life. So completely does the cast-off arm resemble a separate animal, that it was described by Cuvier as a parasitic worm under the name of Hectocotyle. But this marvellous structure may be classed as a primary rather than ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... of the goddess herself. Most of the garments are the chiton or tunic, flowing to the feet; the chitoniskos, a shorter and more ornamental garment worn over it; and the mantle, himation. Pieces of cloth or rags are also mentioned among the entries; these were probably the remnants of cast-off garments dedicated by their wearers. Some of the dresses are described as embroidered with ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... deaf and dumb child, dressed in a white frock, with a little silk mantilla over it, made from a cast-off garment belonging to one of the ladies of the circus. She wore a plain straw hat, ornamented with a morsel of narrow white ribbon, and tied under the chin with the same material. Her clear, delicate complexion was overspread by a slight rosy tinge—the tender ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... it?" he said; "there are tears enough in this world, and we need not deposit a few more in the heart of man. These," said he, showing the verses, "are the cast-off, useless feathers of my soul; it has moulted since then, and spread its bolder wings for eternity!" He then continued to burn and destroy, while I looked out of the broken ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... live with Mademoiselle Angelique. She is a lady, a beauty, who dresses to surpass any picture in the book of modes from Paris, which I often looked at on her dressing-table. She allowed me to imitate them, or wear her cast-off dresses, which were better than any other ladies' new ones. I have one of them on. Look, aunt!" Fanchon spread out very complacently the skirt of a pretty blue robe ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... pale and haggard; for he had passed through three judicial ordeals since the last sunset, besides being scourged with the flagellum horrible and exposed to the rude buffeting of the midnight guard. He had been clothed in the cast-off purple of the Roman procurator and wore a derisive crown of thorns. But, as he issued from the Hall of Judgment, such was his commanding presence that the multitude was hushed ...
— The Centurion's Story • David James Burrell
... William to his tender Jane indites; There you shall read, among "Distressing Scenes"— Instead of murders and burnt crinolines, The broken matches that the week's afforded; There under "goods for sale" you'll find what firms Will furnish cast-off rings on easy terms; There double, treble births will be recorded; No wedding, but our rallying rub-a-dub Shall drum to the performance all the club; No suit rejected, but we'll set it down, In letters large, with other news of weight Thus: "Amor-Moloch, we regret ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... menial occupations and toiled so long and terribly that he would probably have made just as much money at home, if he had had the courage. Be this as it may, there the money was, and, armed with it, the young man set sail literally for England, home and beauty, resuming his cast-off gentility with several extra layers of superciliousness. Pretty Jewesses, pranked in their prettiest clothes, hastened, metaphorically speaking, to the port to welcome the wanderer; for they knew it was from among them he would make his pick. There ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... precedence of its fellows in financial success as well as in time, having cleared a hundred and seventy-odd thousand pounds, and left the Kensington Museum as a memorial of that creditable feat, besides sending its cast-off but still serviceable induviae to Sydenham, where it enshrines another museum, chiefly of architectural reproductions in plaster, in a sempiternal coruscation of fountains, fireworks and fiddle-bows. The palace of industry has become the palace of the industrial—abundantly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... primitive simplicity amid the grewsome discarded portraits of Cook County's most illustrious citizens. Several of these roomers have since become artists of wide renown, and I refrain from disclosing their names. No doubt they will smile as they recall those nights amid their landlord's cast-off handiwork. ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... slower and his shoulders drooped lower until at last his soul, which had always been strong and beautiful, passed out of his worn old body into the life beyond, and the cast-off body was buried by some villagers who felt kindly towards the old man, but who never dreamed that he had ever done any real service for them or their children. And soon his very name was forgotten. But the tiny apple seeds took root and began to grow, and each summer ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... absolute economy required, every particle of food was saved, and when cast-off dresses were sent from the home of the Count it was a godsend for the mother and girls, who measured and patched and pieced, making garments for themselves, and for Frederic as well; so while their raiment was not gaudy nor ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... hiding-place Mary tucked it under her veil, wrapped her lily stems in wet leaves and started away. A moment later a stroke of the ax felled the bush that had housed the birds. Looking back Mary saw the mother bird fluttering wildly about over the cast-off pile of leaves. "Knowing not her little ones are safe she suffers pain," she ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... arrangements. He might as well have provided them for a squirrel or a magpie. The more drawers and closets there were, the more hiding-holes could Dinah make for the accommodation of old rags, hair-combs, old shoes, ribbons, cast-off artificial flowers, and other articles of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... firing—a little coal is made to go a long way in the labourer's cottage; and with regard to clothes—it is doubtful if anything new is bought, in many families, from year's end to year's end. At "rummage sales," for a few pence, the women are now able to pick up surprising bargains in cast-off garments, which they adapt as best they can for their own or their children's wear. Economies like this, however, still hardly suffice to explain how the scanty resources are really spread out. Apart from a few cases of palpable destitution, it is not obvious that any ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... happy man! O, cast-off quid! is he Who, like as thou, has comforted the poor; Happy his age who knows himself, like thee, Thou didst thy duty—man can ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... subject demands a careful and impartial consideration." (Berkeley, page 86.)) has particularly pleased me, for it has been generally neglected or disliked by my friends; yet I fully expect that it will some day be more successful. I believe I quite agree with you in the manner in which the cast-off atoms or so-called gemmules probably act (225/4. "Assuming the general truth of the theory that molecules endowed with certain attributes are cast off by the component cells of such infinitesimal minuteness as to be capable of circulating with the fluids, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... dirt, was worn slouchingly on his head, so as almost to hide his features, which were further concealed by a handkerchief tied under his chin, and a black patch over one of his eyes. A tattered cloak, the cast-off finery of a dandy of the palmy days of the old Knights of Malta, covered his shoulders, as did, in part, his legs, a pair of blue cloth trousers, through which his knees obtruded, and which were fringed with torn stripes at the feet. Such of his features as were visible were as ill-favoured as well ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... son Rip, an urchin begotten in his own likeness, promised to inherit the habits, with the old clothes of his father. He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother's heels, equipped in a pair of father's cast-off galligaskins, which he had much ado to hold up with, one hand, as a fine lady does her train in ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... drew nigh, Bailey junior, testifying great excitement, appeared in a complete suit of cast-off clothes several sizes too large for him, and in particular, mounted a clean shirt of such extraordinary magnitude, that one of the gentlemen (remarkable for his ready wit) called him 'collars' on the spot. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the uncourteous reader laud My works at home, but run them down abroad? I stoop not, I, to catch the rabble's votes By cheap refreshments or by cast-off coats, Nor haunt the benches where your pedants swarm, Prepared by turns to listen and perform. That's what this whimpering means. Suppose I say "Your theatres have ne'er been in my way, Nor I in theirs: large audiences require Some heavier metal than ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... from him an introduction, which he had neither the right nor the mind to give; and at last (so Bowie told Claude one night, and Claude told the whole party next morning) tried to bribe and flatter Valencia's maid into giving them a bit of ribbon, or a cast-off glove, which had belonged to the idol. Whereon that maiden, in virtuous indignation, told Mr. Bowie, and complained moreover (as maids are bound to do to valets for whom they have a penchant), of their having dared to compliment her on her own good looks: by which act ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... into Tode's head with that suit of new clothes with which he presently arrayed himself. Not particularly new, either. Tom Roberts was in college, and they were his cast-off attire, worn before he, too, in his way became a butterfly; and he would not have been seen in them—no, nor have had it enter into the mind of one of his college mates that he ever had been seen in them, for a considerable sum ...
— Three People • Pansy
... examples of this work are, very few show the subtle appreciation of design to be found in many of the older buildings which until the last year or two have been looked upon as merely the outgrown and cast-off work of an age much less ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 04, April 1895 - Byzantine-Romanesque Windows in Southern Italy • Various
... when us freed. Only some cast-off clothes. Long time after I rents de place on halves and farms most my life. Now I's too old to work and gits a ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... had slunk back into the stables, the station keeper and stage driver had reduced their conversation to impatient monosyllables, as if each thought the other responsible for the delay. A solitary Indian, wrapped in a commissary blanket and covered by a cast-off tall hat, crouched against the wall of the station looking stolidly at nothing. The station itself, a long, rambling building containing its entire accommodation for man and beast under one monotonous, shed-like ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... theatre, it was seen that Dickey and Mopsey had not been wasting their time, for there was such a collection of cast-off uniforms and weapons as would have furnished a much larger company than theirs with outfits. The two who had gathered this remarkable collection together were standing over it in conscious pride; but Mopsey did not give them much opportunity ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... I still hang back, like one in a dream, Who vainly strives to clothe himself aright, That in great presence he may seemly seem? Why call up feeling?—dress me in the faint, Worn, faded, cast-off nimbus of some saint? Why of old mood bring back a ghostly gleam— While there He waits, love's ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... spoke French fairly well, and seemed much inclined to come to an understanding with us and open up his country to trade and civilisation. He came to call on me in great state, dressed in the handsome uniform of a general of the French Republic, the cast-off garments of some performer at the Cirque Olympique. He had a tricolour plume in his hat, a gold laced coat with lapels turned back on the chest, white breeches, and top boots. He wore the decoration of the Legion of Honour, ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... in the second stage. Thus far, in the young Cirripede and larva, there has been no great change in the relative positions of the parts: the rudimentary eyes, however, of the former are developed posteriorly to (or above, as applied to a Cirripede,) the cast-off compound eyes of the larva; but the position of the mouth, of the antennae, and of the several coloured marks in the corium, prove to demonstration, the correspondence in both of part to part. The case is rather ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin |
