"Clout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... earthen pot is an enamelled urn, The clout hung out to dry a noble banner, The hay-rick by thy favour boasts a golden cape, And the rick's little sister, the thatched hive, Wears, by thy grace, a ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... blinking at the scene—no doubt belonging to our corps of runners, scouts, and guides, for all were shaved, oiled, and painted for war, and, under their loosened blankets, I could see their lean and supple bodies, stark naked, except for clout and ankle moccasin. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... Whether it be as possible for God to be a humble bee or a gourd, as a man? Whether he can produce respect without a foundation or term, make a whore a virgin? fetch Trajan's soul from hell, and how? with a rabble of questions about hell-fire: whether it be a greater sin to kill a man, or to clout shoes upon a Sunday? whether God can make another God like unto himself? Such, saith Kemnisius, are most of your schoolmen, (mere alchemists) 200 commentators on Peter Lambard; (Pitsius catal. scriptorum Anglic. reckons up 180 English ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... an old gnarled Tree, who gave the Little Oak a clout on the head with one of his lowest boughs. "Hold your tongue," he said, "and don't talk till you have something to talk about. You need none of you believe a word of the Bear's nonsense. I am much taller than you, and I can see far out over the wood. But so far as ever I can ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... dress was in great part borrowed from his Indian foes. He wore a fur cap or felt hat, moccasins, and either loose, thin trousers, or else simply leggings of buckskin or elk-hide, and the Indian breech-clout. He was always clad in the fringed hunting-shirt, of homespun or buckskin, the most picturesque and distinctively national dress ever worn in America. It was a loose smock or tunic, reaching nearly to the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Orestes was cast out I was a child.... If I did weave some clout Of raiment, would he keep the vesture now He wore in childhood? Should my weaving grow As his limbs grew?... 'Tis lost long since. No more! O, either 'twas some stranger passed, and shore His locks for very ruth before that tomb: Or, if he found perchance, to seek his home, ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... was devilish cold. His wretched body was beginning to cry out with discomfort. A loop of his hat was broken and the loose flap was a conduit for the rain down his back. His old ridingcoat was like a dish-clout, and he felt icy about the middle. Separate streams of water entered the tops of his ridingboots—they were a borrowed pair and too big for him—and his feet were in puddles. It was only by degrees that he realised this misery. Then in the boggy track his horse began to stumble. The fourth ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... the Assizes, about some case, I think. Oh, I remember—the 'Stowmarket Mystery'—and he stayed at the hotel where Flossie was engaged. How she ever came to take notice of him, I can't imagine. She was a queer sort of girl—used to wear bloomers, and get off her bike to clout the small boys ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... was about eleven o'clock at the time, I thought I had better hurry in case there was another Flushing-bound train. So I scuttled towards the door only to receive another heavy clout from the sentry's rifle. What the interpreter really said was "Ah! No, you can't go!" As I rubbed my bruised head I treated that interpreter to a candid opinion of his English speaking qualifications, but he did not understand half what ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... sair obleeged to ye for giein' that vratch, Jamie Ogg, a guid doonsettin'. He's a coorse crater; but the warst maun hae meat, an' sae I didna like to refeese him when he cam for wark. But its a greater kin'ness to clout him nor to cleed him. They say ye made an awfu' munsie o' him. But it's to be houpit he'll live to thank ye. There's some fowk 'at can respeck no airgument but frae steekit neives; an' it's fell cruel to haud it frae them, gin ye hae't to gie them. I hae had eneuch ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... 1841.—Clout nailmaking goes on here rather considerably, and is a very neat and pretty operation to observe. I love a smith's shop and anything relating to smithery. My father was ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... go to Bursley Station, that is," said Amy, observing that Constance was descending King Street instead of crossing it into Wedgwood Street. And she caught Spot 'a fair clout on the head,' to indicate to him that she had him alone ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... Your lato, azoch, zernich, chibrit, heutarit, And then your red man, and your white woman, With all your broths, your menstrues, and materials, Of lye and egg-shells, women's terms, man's blood, Hair o' the head, burnt clout, chalk, merds, and clay, Powder of bones, scalings of iron, glass, And moulds of other strange ingredients, Would burst ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... trouble occurred. This particular policeman was passing through the train shed and he saw the blow delivered. He ran up and, to be on the safe side, put both men under technical arrest. The sweeper, who had been bowled over by the clout he had got, made a charge of unprovoked assault against the stranger; the latter expressed a blasphemous regret that he had not succeeded in cracking the sweeper's skull. He appeared to be in a highly nervous, highly irritable state. At any ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... her draw back from him. In truth she hated the boy. The very look of him made her sick, she said. It was only a certain respect for the parson, and a certain fear of her husband, who, seldom angry, was yet capable of fury, that had prevented her from driving the child, "with his dish-clout face," off the premises, whenever she saw him from door or window. It was no wonder the farmer should he at his wits' end to know what, as churchwarden, guardian of the poor, and friend of the late vicar—as friendly ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... their full regulation uniform. They had been furnished a regular cavalry uniform and on this parade some of them had their heavy overcoats on, others their large black hats, with all the brass accoutrements attached; some of them were minus pantaloons and only wore a breech-clout. Others wore regulation pantaloons but no shirts, and were bareheaded; others again had the seat of their pantaloons cut out, leaving only leggings; some of them wore brass spurs, though without boots or moccasins; but for all this ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... presently left alone. Now he looks aside, and sees something bright-hued lying under a big stone where the last rays of the sun just caught some corner of it. So he goes thither, deeming that mayhappen one of the company had dropped something, pouch or clout, or what not, in his haste and hurry. He got off his horse to pick it up, and when he had laid hand on it found it to be a hands-breadth of fine green cloth embroidered with flowers. He held it in his hand a while wondering where ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... his can of beer, The host turned pale as a clout; The ruby nose of the toping squires Grew white at the wild men's shout. Then into their cups they flung their crusts, And shewed their teeth with a frown; They flashed their swords as they gave the toast, ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... bad worse.-But look here, now, here's a cloak! Mon Dieu! why it looks like a dish-clout! Of all the unluckiness that ever I met, this is the worst! for, do you know, I bought it but the day before I left Paris!-Besides, into the bargain, my cap's quite gone: where the villain twitched it, I don't know; but I never see no more of it from that time to this. ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... 2d line from the bottom. Change breech-clout. It's a word that you love and I abominate. I would take that and "offal" out of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Indians around the waggon appeared to number near two hundred men. They must have constituted the full band: for it is rare that a war-party is larger. Those seen appeared to be all warriors, naked from the breech-clout upward, their skins glaring with pigments. Neither woman nor child could I see among them. Had the other waggons been captured, there would not have been so many of the captors clustered around this particular one. In all likelihood, the vehicle had been ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... craning neck, was daubed with vermilion, the high crest of hair bristling across the shaven crowns. Grimly impassive they came nearer, not speaking nor moving their eyes from the three whites. One of them, a young man, naked save for a breech clout and moccasins, was in the lead. As he approached David saw that his eyelids were painted scarlet and that a spot of silver on his breast was a medal hanging ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... thing for a man to be out a' day, and frighted—na, I winna say that neither but mistrysted wi' bogles in the hame-coming, an' then to hae to flyte wi' a wheen women that hae been doing naething a' the live-lang day, but whirling a bit stick, wi' a thread trailing at it, or boring at a clout." ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... was very simple and scant, before being initiated into the use of a more ample and complete style of covering while living at the reservations. The ordinary full complement of dress for a man (Nung'-ah) was simply a breech-clout, or short hip-skirt made of skins; that for a woman (O'-hoh) was a skirt reaching from the waist to the knees, made of dressed deerskin finished at the bottom with a slit fringe, and sometimes decorated with ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... feet, with his lips set and his eye abstracted. If his face hadn't been burned black by weather it would have been pale as a dish-clout. A man like him doesn't make up his mind for death and then be given his life again without being wrenched out of his bearings. I thought he didn't understand what had happened, so I beat ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... in the clout! you have hit the very white," said the damsel, suppressing a great ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... no hesitation then on Hawkeye's part. Toddles, equipped for another excursion through the train with a stack of magazines and books that almost hid him, received a sudden and vicious clout on ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... which their ancestors were subjected, render it very probable that it may have occurred as narrated. When Gipsies were hung and transported merely for being Gipsies, it is not unlikely that a persecution to death may have originated in even such a trifle as the alleged theft of a dish-clout. ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... his chief poetic works being "Why come ye not to Courte," a satire against Wolsey; the "Book of Colin Clout," against the corruption of the Church; and the "Book of Phyllyp Sparrow," the grief of a nun for the death of her sparrow; Erasmus calls him "the glory and light of English ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to the English. This soldier happened to know Latin and other useless things, and now, as he fired at his man in the grey advancing mass—300 yards away—he uttered the pious vegetarian motto. He went on firing to the end, and at last Bill on his right had to clout him cheerfully over the head to make him stop, pointing out as he did so that the King's ammunition cost money and was not lightly to be wasted in drilling funny ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... back, and his salutation commonly some blunt curse.] He thinks nothing to be vices, but pride and ill-husbandry, from which he will gravely dissuade the youth, and has some thrifty hob-nail proverbs to clout his discourse. He is a niggard all the week, except only market-day, where, if his corn sell well, he thinks he may be drunk with a good conscience. His feet never stink so unbecomingly as when he trots after a lawyer ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... Walt laid hold of his "clout," as he called it, and replaced it, turban fashion, ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... the Chauffeur gloated, while she performed that dreadful, menial task. 'A trifle balky at times, Professor, a trifle balky; but a clout alongside the jaw makes her as meek ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... journal contain many beautiful and touching allusions. Amid references to the tints of the Jungfrau, the blue rifts of the glaciers, and the noble Niesen towering over the Lake of Thun, we come upon the charming little scrap which I have elsewhere quoted: 'Clout-nail making goes on here rather considerably, and is a very neat and pretty operation to observe. I love a smith's shop and anything relating to smithery. My father was a smith.' This is from his journal; but he is unconsciously speaking to ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... socially, aesthetically, to be as much as he might be. "As much as he might be," is far too ironically mild. The average citizen of our great state to-day is, I would respectfully submit, scarcely more than a dirty clout about his own ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... the palace, On a white and downy bed; And some are in the garret, With a clout beneath their head; And some are on the cold, hard earth, Whose mothers ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... to agree as to the correct manner in which the various articles should be worn. As they lined up for dress parade, some of them wore heavy overcoats, others discarded even pantaloons, content with a breech-clout. Some wore large black hats, with brass accouterments, others were bareheaded. Many wore the pantaloons, but declined the shirts, while a few of the more original cut the seats from the pantaloons, leaving only leggings. Half of them were without boots or moccasins, but wore ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... by, has taken a liking to me, a fine jolly dame, as plump as a partridge. She has a well-furnished house, a brisk trade, and a good deal of the ready. I may have her for the asking. She told a friend of mine, a brother footman, that she would take me out of a stinking clout. But I refused to give my final answer, till I knew your opinion of the matter." I congratulated Monsieur d'Estrapes upon his conquest, and approved of the scheme, provided he could be assured of those circumstances of her fortune; ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... but of a person so Christian-named no record has yet been found, though the surname Dyneley or Dinley occurs in the Whalley registers and elsewhere. In the Eclogue of the Shepheardes Calendar, to which this note is appended, Colin Clout—so the poet designates himself—complains to Hobbinol—that is, Harvey—of the ill success of his passion. Harvey, we may suppose, is paying him a visit in the North; or perhaps the pastoral is merely a versifying of what passed between them in letters. However ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... neither wind nor running water—confused, increasing, nearing! Then a shriek broke within the fort palisades,—"The enemy! the Iroquois!" and the courtyard was in an uproar indescribable. Painted redskins, naked but for the breech clout, were dashing across the cornfields to scale the palisades or force the hastily slammed gates. Father Daniel rushed from church to wigwams rallying the Huron warriors, while the women and children, the aged and the feeble, ran a terrified rabble to ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... his breeches and leggins; And the brown, curling locks of his hair downward droop to his bare, brawny shoulders, And his face wears a smile debonair, as he tightens his red sash around him; But stripped to the moccasins bare, save the belt and the breech-clout of buckskin, Stands the haughty Tamdka aware that the eyes of the warriors admire him; For his arms are the arms of a bear and his legs are the legs ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... gone quite off his head. I don't know what I am about That I don't give the Jew a clout: 430 Would you ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... gode undirstondynge, saf that thei worschipen an ox for here god. And also everyche of hem berethe an ox of gold or of sylver in his forhed, in tokene that thei loven wel here god. And thei gon alle naked, saf a litylle clout, that thei coveren with here knees and hire membres. Thei ben grete folk and wel fyghtynge; and thei han a gret targe, that coverethe alle the body, and a spere in here hond to fighte with. And zif thei taken ony man in bataylle, anon thei eten him. The kyng of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... woman, look, look look!—do ye see wha it is! Confound me, if it isna the very chield that I gied the clout in the lug to in your mother's the other night for his good behaviour. Weel, as sure as death, I gie him credit for what he has done—he's ta'en the measure o' their feet, onyway! A knight!—he's nae mair a knight ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... the old advice Which we so oft despise, "Cast not a clout Till May goes out." May ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... lane. He wore a wide-eaved hat and his smock was new-washed and speckless; but that which drew and held my eyes, that which brought me to a sudden stand, was the bundle he bore wrapped in a fair, white clout. So, with my gaze on this I stood leaning on my knotted, untrimmed staff, waiting him. Suddenly, chancing to turn his head, he espied me, halted in his stride, then eyeing me askance, advanced again. A small man he was, with rosy ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... long and each 200 reis; others describe them as fine linen each piece worth 7s. 6d. to 8s. The bank-note was the "Indian piece or Mulech, a young black about twenty years of age, worth 20 Mil Keys (dollars) each." (Carli.) In the Barbots' day each "coin-clout") was equivalent to 2d.; some were unmarked, whilst others bore the Portuguese arms single or double. The wilder Kru-men still keep up their "buyapart" ( 25 cents), a cloth 4 inches square and thickly sewn ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... knew The valor of the gen'ral and his troops; And seeing this affair must end in blood, I brought a clout, to ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer |
