"Fag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... being able to roll a cigarette. If he were forced, at the point of the bayonet, to roll a fag, ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... a woman. 'For 'tis best to get your family over and done with, as soon as you can, so as to be all the earlier out of the fag o't.' ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... School in winter is quite tiring enough, but school all the year round would about wear me out. Store work is just play compared with the fag of simple equations ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... with fear, and his terror was so manifest that the bully, who was threatening him with all manner of evils, began to enjoy himself. Chalkeye, returning from watering the horses, got back in time to hear the intemperate fag-end of the scolding. He glanced at Hughie, whose hands were trembling in spite of him, and then darkly at the brute who was attacking him. But he said not ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... shack, inside and out, and now you'd never know our poor little Joseph-coat home. I told Dinky-Dunk if we'd ever put a chameleon on that shack-wall he'd have died of brain-fag trying to make good on the color-schemes. So Dinky-Dunk made Olie take a day off and ply the brush. But the smell of paint made me think of Channel passages, so off I went with Dinky-Dunk, a la team ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... myself from the beautifully chased silver casket I had taken from the mantelpiece. I eyed the thing and concluded it was made of the very cheapest tobacco, and was what the street urchin calls a "fag." I learned afterwards that I was right. She purchased them at the rate of six for a penny, and smoked them in enormous quantities. For politeness' sake I continued to puff at the unclean thing until I nearly made myself sick. Then, simulating absentmindedness, I ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... or a more forbidding scene. Gray clouds, gray sea, brown bare fields; the village of white or gray-shingled houses set, for the most part, along the winding main street; the elms and silver-leaf poplars waving bare branches in the cutting wind; a picture of the fag end of loneliness and desolation, so it looked to her. She remembered Mr. Graves's opinion of the place, as jokingly reported by Sylvester, and she sympathized ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... is what you see: To mix, and sympathise, and to be free, Is the true sociality. These meet, like marbles mingled in a bag, And the net outcome, friend, is friction, fag, Boredom, and sheer banality. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... Vanbraam at last, "I have managed to pick up the fag ends of a good many languages during my life, and I can jabber ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... of their wonderful properties as nerve and brain foods. The proprietors of these concoctions seemingly flourish like green bay trees and spend many thousands of pounds per annum in advertising. From which it may be deduced that sufferers from nervous exhaustion and brain fag number millions. And surely only a sufferer from brain fag would suffer himself to be led blindly into wasting his money, and still further injuring his health, by buying and swallowing drugs about whose properties and effects he knows absolutely nothing. How much simpler, cheaper, and more enjoyable ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel
... works. He had a transitory idea of jumping into the tram and slamming the doors, and then he resolved to go for the police station. In another moment he had passed the door of the "Jolly Cricketers," and was in the blistering fag end of the street, with human beings about him. The tram driver and his helper—arrested by the sight of his furious haste—stood staring with the tram horses unhitched. Further on the astonished features of navvies appeared above the ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... grave eyes Are peeping o'er my shoulder as I work, The heads shake still—"It's art's decline, my son! You're not of the true painters, great and old; Brother Angelico's the man, you'll find; Brother Lorenzo stands his single peer: Fag on at flesh, you'll never make the third!" <Flower o' the pine, You keep your mistr . . . manners, and I'll stick to mine!> I'm not the third, then: bless us, they must know! 240 Don't you think they're the likeliest to know, ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... a man whose heart was weighted by a great woe. You have seen the eye darken, the soul fag, and the spirit congeal under the breath of an icy disaster. At ten-thirty of this particular evening Cowperwood, sitting alone in the library of his Michigan Avenue house, was brought face to face with the fact that he had ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... like it well enough! Always at me to slave for him with stupid architectural drawings and stuff, as if I was only a sort of clerk or fag! And boring me to read great dull books, and preaching to me about them, expecting to know what ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... something still to say, and we found it hard to part from our charming friends; realising, too, that this was the end of our holiday, and that before us lay merely the toil and bustle of a return to commonplace, everyday life. At last, though, the final fag-end of a cheroot was thrown away, the last hand-grips given, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... of their cable paid out. Time was precious; it would never do to buoy the end and wait for a fresh supply, and the present poor cable would not bear the strain of picking up. But there was a clever man on board. He cut the cable a few fathoms from the ship, carried its fag-end to St. Mary's, and attached it to an old Morse instrument. Outwardly, things looked all right; there was the cable attached at Land's End, and here was its other end at Scilly. The difficulty was how to get messages through ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... Peel were at Harrow together," says Moore, "a tyrant some few years older, whose name was N——, claimed a right to fag little Peel, which claim Peel resisted. His resistance was vain, and N—— not only subdued him, but determined also to punish the refractory slave by inflicting a bastinado on the inner fleshy side of the boy's right arm. While the stripes were succeeding each other, and ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... first as fag and afterwards as House-prefect, finally as School-prefect, did exactly what ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... Elijah Impey. We know little about their school days. But, we think, we may safely venture to guess that, whenever Hastings wished to play any trick more than usually naughty, he hired Impey with a tart or a ball to act as fag in the worst part ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... She hasn't said a word to me about it—she never would to anyone—but I happen to know it for a fact: she is hard up. She is in a chronic state of hard-up-ishness always, and that we all are; but this is an acute attack—she has her back against the wall. It is the fag-end of Martin's debts that bother her; these blood-sucking tradesmen are dunning her, and she hasn't the pluck to tell them go hang, though they know well enough she isn't responsible for a farthing. She has got it into her head that ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... that vessel, strong and bold, On her banner proudly streaming, California for gold! See a crowd around her gather, Eager all to push from land! They will have all sorts o' weather Ere they reach the golden strand. Rouse to action, Fag and faction; Ho, for mines of wealth untold! Rally! Rally! All for Cali- Fornia in search of gold! Away, amid the rush and racket, Ho for ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... manufacturing of engines, iron puddling, rolling, etc.; a delegate to a national convention, thoughts of the death of a near relative; add to this a security debt to meet during a money panic. By this time the mind begins to fag below the ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... out; it did seem, as I told Tirzah Ann one day in confidence, "that I never knew the meanin' of the word 'fag' before." ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... own vessel, ordering the ports up, and the guns run out. But by this time the cable of the San Dominick had been cut; and the fag-end, in lashing out, whipped away the canvas shroud about the beak, suddenly revealing, as the bleached hull swung round towards the open ocean, death for the figure-head, in a human skeleton; chalky comment on the chalked words ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... only very often caned, but he was fag to a tyrannical private pupil, who made him suffer severely. The private pupils upheld the sacred institution of fagging, which gave them a pleasant sense of authority, and as they sat like gods above us, they were not in danger of retaliation. Brokenribs ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... sail for Valparaiso, the usual place of rendezvous for the English squadron in the Pacific; and doubtless, Wilson meant to put us on board, and send us thither to be delivered up. Should our conjecture prove correct, all we had to expect, according to our most experienced shipmates, was the fag end of a cruise in one of her majesty's ships, and a discharge before ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... the fag of one Loman, and as the story unfolds we begin to see life through the eyes of the older boy. There is an interesting moment when Steevie refuses to do the work of fag to Loman, and is soundly beaten up for ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... attempt is being made by some of the big boys to introduce a system of fagging into the school, bind ourselves to resist such a proceeding by every means in our power, and under no consideration to obey any boy who may order any of us to fag for him." ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... most assured confidence in the blinking credulity of his Galatian converts. His argument in this place is drawn from the use of the word "seed" in the singular number, in the passage of Genesis, from whence he quotes. And because the word seed is in the singular number, fag tells the "foolish Galatians," as he justly calls them, that this "seed" must mean one individual (and not many,) "which," says he, "is Christ." Now, let us look at the xv. ch. of Gen., from whence he quotes, and we shall see the force of ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... blame of my lateness with me, Mr. Narkom," said Cleek as he tossed aside his hat and threw the fag-end of his cigarette through the open window. "You merely said 'tea-time,' not any particular hour; and I improved the opportunity to take another spin up the river and to talk like a Dutch uncle to a certain ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... engagements to come." Betty's eyes sparkled and she lifted her head with a motion peculiar to her when reminded that she was the favoured of the gods. "I suppose there is a good deal of fag about this sort of life to you, but it has all the charm of the undiscovered country ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... glimpse of the celebrated Yosemite Falls and the surrounding scenery, just as the sun broke through the clouds; and there was revealed a picture of such rare beauty and marvelous picturesqueness that every particle of fatigue, brain-fag, and muscle weariness departed in an instant. My whole soul thrilled with a winged sense of sublimity, grandeur, and beauty, which I had never experienced before, and which I never can forget. I felt a spiritual uplift which brought tears of joy ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... son! Never get up for a squint at Fritz with a fag on! 'E's got every sandbag along this parapet numbered, same as we've got 'is. 'Is snipers is a-layin' fer us same as ours is a-layin' fer 'im." Then, turning to the rest of us, "Now, we ain't arskin' to 'ave no burial parties. But if any of you blokes wants to be the stiff, ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... his pouch the fag of a cigarette, lit it, and puffed meditatively. "I did a reckonissince mysel' this morning. I was up at the Hoose afore it was light, and tried the door o' the coal-hole. I doot they've gotten on our tracks, for it was lockit—aye, and wedged from ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... indeed my library, and whenever it was opened to me, I entered bliss. Intellectually imperfect as I was, I could read little; there were few bound and printed volumes that did not weary me—whose perusal did not fag and blind—but his tomes of thought were collyrium to the spirit's eyes; over their contents, inward sight grew clear and strong. I used to think what a delight it would be for one who loved him better than he loved himself, to gather and store up those handfuls of gold-dust, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... it would throw too much work on you; you're such a conscientious beggar! but of course you wouldn't do for us all the odd jobs you do for poor Bernard. Seems to me," Jack ruminated, "the best plan would be for you to have a car. One gets about quicker like that and it wouldn't be such a fag. There's that little green Napier roadster, she'd come in handy if we stabled her at Nicholson's." He added simply, to obviate any possible misunderstanding, "Garage bills ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... life of a settler may be filled with "sweet dreams, and health and quiet." But the great majority seem to have taken to the scrap heap of Federal politics with such ardour that they clutch but the fag ends of ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... the people below, who on the next Sunday borrowed my only decanter, in return, and, hang them, cracked it!—Curse me, say I, if this life is worth having! It's all the very vanity of vanities—as it's said somewhere in the Bible—and no mistake! Fag, fag, fag, all one's days, and—what for? Thirty-five pounds a-year, and 'no advance!' (Here occurred a pause and revery, from which he was roused by the clangor of the church-bells.) Bah, bells! ring away till you're all cracked!—Now do you think I'm going to be mewed up in church on ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... luck, young sir. I am eighty-three now, and sair failed; but I was once twenty-three, and young and lusty as you be. But life is at the fag end with me now. God save us all!" Then, with a meaning look at the two pretty girls watching him, he went slowly off, droning out to a monotonous accompaniment, an ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Aunt Etta's year; it really is rather a fag to think we shall have her for three weeks. Ethel, it's your turn to take her in tow; I had her ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... and threading the well- known locality, through Bedford Place and across Theobald's Road, soon found himself at the door of his generous patron. Oh! how he hated the house; how he hated the blear-eyed, cross-grained, dirty, impudent fish-fag of an old woman who opened the door for him; how he hated Mr. Jabesh M'Ruen, to whom he now came a supplicant for assistance, and how, above all, he hated ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... otherwise, and, indeed, took a real pleasure in some classical authors—Homer and Horace, for example—as any lad who has turned sixteen who has brains, and is not absolutely idle, is likely to do. He was strong, active, popular; he had passed from the purgatorial state of fag to the elysium of fagger. But still his blood seemed turned to champagne, and his muscles to watch-springs, when the cab, which carried him and his portmanteau, passed through the gate into the drive which curved up to the door ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... procedure, however, are after all small matters. It is the real hardships of the game that most need to be tackled. Why should one player be born into the sport with a prescriptive right to fill some easy place in the field, while another has to fag on from morning to night in the most uninteresting and fatiguing position? Why should pate de foie gras and champagne-cup in the tent be so unequally distributed? Why should those who have made fewest runs and done ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... lovely were there, and some of them are quite, quite old—much older than you—and all trimmed up! Aren't you astonished? And one has a grown-up son and daughter, and she danced all the time with Dolly Tenterdown, who was her son's fag at Eton, Lord Doraine told me. Isn't it odd? And another was the lady that Sir Charles Helmsford was with on the promenade at Nice, when you would not let me bow to him, do you remember? And she is as old as ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... "but, as Nora says, it's far too great a fag. I got ten quotations from Shakespeare, and six from Tennyson. I'll give them to ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... corporal had been accoutred both some time, when my father and mother enter'd, and the clock striking eleven, were that moment in motion to sally forth—but the account of this is worth more than to be wove into the fag end of the eighth (Alluding to the first edition.) volume of such a work as this.—My father had no time but to put the letter of instructions into my uncle Toby's coat-pocket—and join with my mother ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... as our experience has gone, in no other way. He is generous enough to hate all oppression in every form, and therefore to hate the oppression exercised by a noble as heartily as oppression exercised by a king. He is a big boy ready to fight anyone who bullies his fag; but with no doubts as to the merits of fagging. But then he never chooses to look at the awkward consequences of his opinion. When talking of politics, an aristocracy full of virtue and talent, ruling on generous principles a people sufficiently educated ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... he feels that he has done his duty—with the help of Havana tobacco—in that state of life wherein it has pleased a merciful providence to place him; and St. Peter would never be so churlish as to close the golden gates in the face of an ancient canon who sauntered to them jauntily, with the fag end of a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Let us cultivate our cabbages in the best of all possible worlds; and afterwards—Dieu pardonnera; ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... fortune for the sake of violent exercise. He was too indolent for violence, too inherently fastidious for degeneracy. And deep down somewhere in a nature that had had no incentive to develop, there was the fag end of that family shrewdness which had made the early Palgraves envied and maligned. Tall and well built, with a handsome Anglo-Saxon type of face, small, soft, fair mustache, large, rather bovine gray eyes, and a deep cleft in his chin, he gave at first sight ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... unquestioned king of the school, ruled over his subjects, and bullied them, with splendid superiority. This one blacked his shoes: that toasted his bread, others would fag out, and give him balls at cricket during whole summer afternoons. "Figs" was the fellow whom he despised most, and with whom, though always abusing him, and sneering at him, he scarcely ever condescended to ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to be hurt when the boys called him "Carrots." In fact he laughed. And as he no longer objected when he was called "Carrots" the boys dropped that name, and the shortest one survived. The boys started to call him "Tims" and in a few months he had won their affection from the lowest fag to the ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... talking of going to live by herself—in lodgings—she swore to herself, like a goodly Christian woman, as she was, that such a thing must not be. Eccleston Square in July and August is not pleasant, unless it be to an inhabitant who is interested in the fag-end of the parliamentary session. Lady Milborough had no interest in politics,—had not much interest even in seeing the social season out to its dregs. She ordinarily remained in London till the beginning or middle of July, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... telegram, saying that she would arrive at five o'clock. The telegraph-operator told her that the company could not guarantee delivery, as traffic over the wires was very heavy. Marie Louise sighed and rose, worn out with telephone-fag. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... of going out nightly into the town for the purpose of executing commissions; but this was not easy, as all the regular outlets were closed at an early hour. In such a dilemma, any route, that was barely practicable at whatever risk, must be traversed by the loyal fag; and it so happened that none of any kind remained open or accessible, except one; and this one communication happened to have escaped suspicion, simply because it lay through a succession of temples and sewers sacred to the ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... must take the average in such cases) because he is a fool. Secondly, like the rest of the well-to-do world, he has suffered the summer, wherein warmth and sunshine are really to be had, to slip by, and has only the fag end of it in which to take holiday. It is now or never—or at all events now or next year—with him. All his friends, too, are out of town, flattening their noses against window panes; his club is under ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... — N. remainder, residue; remains, remanent, remnant, rest, relic; leavings, heeltap[obs3], odds and ends, cheesepairings[obs3], candle ends, orts[obs3]; residuum; dregs &c. (dirt) 653; refuse &c. (useless) 645; stubble, result, educt[obs3]; fag-end; ruins, wreck, skeleton., stump; alluvium. surplus, overplus[obs3], excess; balance, complement; superplus[obs3], surplusage[obs3]; superfluity &c.(redundancy) 641; survival, survivance[obs3]. V. remain; be left ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... for theaters—and girls, Howland," he exclaimed banteringly, repeating Howland's words of a few minutes before. "A pretty face affects you a little differently up here, eh? Well, after you've been in this fag-end of the universe for a month ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... ye Gods! with what delight!—the splendour of Clapham for the rough, plentiful fare of the place, blacking his master's shoes with perfect readiness, till he rose in the school, and the time came when he should have a fag of his own: tibbing out and receiving the penalty therefore: bartering a black eye, per bearer, against a bloody nose drawn at sight, with a schoolfellow, and shaking hands the next day; playing at cricket, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you cherish wrathful scorn for the English boy who makes another boy his fag, and you express a sneering pity for the boy who consents to fag. You have read Dr. Birch and His Young Friends, and you would like to break the head of Master Hewlett, who shies his shoe at the poor shivering, craven Nightingale, ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... about it is absurd, from the spurious waterfall pinned to the back of their heads down to the train that sweeps the muddy pavement. Their hair is infested with beads, bits of lace and of ribbons, or mock jewelry. A bonnet is an epitome of fag-ends. The poor crazy creatures in the asylum, who pick up any rag, or wisp of straw, or scrap of tin, they may find, and wear it proudly upon their frocks, are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... at once, faintly heard, the fag-end of the "British Grenadiers," whistled very much out of tune, came floating ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... took the direction for Temple-bar. The whistling, the hooting, the hallooing, and the running of the drovers in pursuit—men, women, and children, scampering to get out of the way of the infuriated beast—the noise and rattling of carriages, the lamentations of the poor fish-fag, and the vociferations of the donkey-driver to recover his neddy—together with a combination of undistinguishable sounds from a variety of voices, crying their articles for sale, or announcing their several occupations—formed a contrast of characters, situations, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... endeavoring to enlighten my credulity, on such points of popular belief. It is like breaking up the shrine of the pilgrim; it is robbing a poor traveller of half the reward of his toils; for, strip travelling of its historical illusions, and what a mere fag you make ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... something like that before," said my friend, "and I understand. The simple truth of the matter is that this is the fag-end of the season, and you have run low in your subjects. Now take my advice and don't write about spring; it will make everybody hate you, and will do no good. Write about advertising." He tapped the book under his arm significantly. "Here is a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... salaries. And, in the third and last place, she would infallibly secure that, some twenty years hence at furthest, every theological professor of the Free Church should be a pluralist, and able to give to his lectures merely those fag-ends of his time which he could snatch from the duties of the pulpit and the care of his flock. And such, in doubling the Cape Horn of the College question, is all that unanimity of voting could secure to the Church; unless, indeed, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... men, who were gradually pushing against the foremost cattle on the left so as to turn them to the right. When once the leaders were turned the rest blindly followed and thus, by constantly turning them to the right, the leaders were finally swung clear around, and overtook the fag end of ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... 'and neither will you find in Grubbers like myself, under Proprietors like this, pleasant qualities. I've been a Grubber from a boy. What has my life been? Fag and grind, fag and grind, turn the wheel, turn the wheel! I haven't been agreeable to myself, and I haven't been likely to be agreeable to anybody else. If I was a shilling a week less useful in ten years' time, this impostor would give me a shilling a week less; if as useful a man could be ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... plates for him in his study, and Ferris watched him. Ferris was kind and talked about many things out of his great wisdom, and then he asked Peter whether he would always like to be his fag, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... to follow the course recommended by the Head. Though by the time she had corrected some seventy manuscripts in marble-backed covers, and prepared her lesson for the next day, she had nothing but the fag-end of her brain to give to the healers and regenerators; as for rising, Miss Quincey felt much more like going to bed, and it was as much as she could do to drag her poor little body there. Still Miss Quincey was nothing if not heroic; night after ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... football. In fact, he hardly knew what physical fatigue was; and only once, when he was suffering from a chill, and had to sit for his senior scholarship examination, do I recollect his exhibiting any sign of mental fag. He found rest in change of employment. Athletic exercises were a natural antidote to his strenuous intellectual work; and music lifted him into the region of pure emotion and soothed his soul with the concord of ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... up. In his private conscience he says, "Honesty is a very good thing, perhaps, but it is by no means the best policy,—it is simply no policy at all,—it is sheer stupidity. What can be more politic than for me to pocket this windfall and turn the corner quick?"—So preacheth his crooked fag-end of a conscience, that very, very small still voice, in very husky tones; but he knows that a policeman, walking behind him, saw him pick up the purse, which alters the case,—which, in fact, completely sets aside his fag-end of a husky-voiced conscience, and makes virtue ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... willing to take in washing, and do it well too, but Gladys had no higher rank for that. She was herself rather a pathetic little soul, dingily pretty, using the patois of her kind, and always at the fag end of her classes. Her education, so far, seemed to meet with no practical results in the child herself. Her brain merely filtered learning like a sieve; but she thought Maria Edgham was a wonder, and it was really ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the examinations, during which time I scarcely closed my eyes in sleep, devoting every moment to cramming and reviewing. And when I turned in my last examination paper I was in full possession of a splendid case of brain-fag. I didn't want to see a book. I didn't want to think or to lay eyes on anybody who was liable ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... than ever for people who can keep at their tasks without long enforced rests; people who can think deeply and continuously without brain-fag; people who can concentrate all their powers on the work in hand without wasting time or energy on unnecessary aches and pains; people whose bodies are kept up to the top notch of vitality by well-digested food, well-slept sleep, well-forgotten fatigue, and well-used reserve energy. That ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... kind that all fledglings get—the kind that big lawyers do not want, and so they pass it over to the boys. Doctors are always turning pauper patients over to the youngsters, and so in successful law-offices there is more or less of this semi-charitable work to do. Business houses also have fag-end work that they give to beginners, as kind folks give bones to Fido. Wendell Phillips' law-work was exactly of this contingent kind—big business and big fees only go to big men ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... Westminster. He readily helped Oliver in his exercises, but he made him pay most severely for this assistance, by the most tyrannical usage; and, in all his tyranny, he thought himself fully justifiable, because little Oliver, beside his other misfortunes, had the misfortune to be a fag. ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... down on God's scrap-pile, up on the fag-end of earth; O'er me a menace of mountains, a river that grits at my feet; Face to face with my soul-self, weighing my life at its worth; Wondering what I was made for, ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... necessity for buying cheap food results in the purchasing of foodstuffs which are deficient in nutrient properties. The main articles of diet are indifferent bread and butter, the fag ends of coarse meat, the outside leaves of green vegetables, and tea, and an occasional pennyworth of fried fish and potatoes. Children who are supplied with milk at school, or who are given breakfast and dinner, respond at once to the better ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... run down south with the fag-end of the north-east monsoon, economising her coals as much as possible, as all the men-of- war have to do nowadays, worse luck—sometimes when it's a question between saving a few pounds or sacrificing a ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Toby, but it is true. And when I was at Harrow, his eldest brother, who is one of the best, was my fag. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... inclination that I fag for the booksellers; but what can I do? My poverty and not my will consents. The income of my office is only reversionary, and my private fortune much limited. My poetical success fairly destroyed my prospects of professional success, and obliged me ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... alarmed. She had heard long ago and in strict confidence about Split's lofty parentage. She had even accepted drafts upon her future, rendering services which were unusual in a Madigan fag, with the understanding that when the Princess Split should come into her own, she would richly repay. But she had never before heard her speak so positively or set a time when ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... I have no other alternative." He walked to the fireplace and warmed himself, humming the fag end of a tune in a rich convivial bass voice. "What does your side say?" he went on; "now pray tell ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... horribly by machine-gun fire! He paused, saluted smartly, grinned, Then passed away like a puff of wind, Leaving us blank astonishment. The song broke, up we started, leant Out of the window—nothing there, Not the least shadow of Corporal Stare, Only a quiver of smoke that showed A fag-end dropped on the ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... Afterward he had lived up to the mark and had profited by his beliefs, and the fact that a simple relaxation of his mental machinery had so disturbed him last night amused him now. The solution was easy. It was his mind struggling to equilibrium after four years of brain-fag. And he felt better. His brain was clearer. He listened to the watch and found its ticking natural. He braced himself to another effort and whistled as he prepared ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... brain-fag is one of the commonest nervous symptoms; and almost always it is supposed to be the result of intellectual overwork. Some people who easily accept the idea that physical work cannot cause nervous breakdown can scarcely give up the deep-rooted ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... their type and rudiment— And he, the fag-end of creation, Meaningless sculpture of journeymen, Doomed to the curse of extinction. Curious, also, that I, An islander from far-off Britain Should meet them, Or, the rude scrolls of them. Both together in these wilds, Round ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Mervin leant out of the window to read their names, but was never successful. Cigarettes were smoked, the carriage was full of tobacco fumes and the floor littered with "fag-ends." Rifles were lying on the racks, four in each side, and caps, papers and equipment piled on top of them. The Jersey youth made ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... render homage to the angelic heroine of his dreams. He had, he said, cast aside his life of ease and luxury; he would devote his days and nights to the service of that gentle lady; he would perform the most menial offices, he would 'fag' for her, he would be her footman— and feel requited by a single smile. A single smile, indeed, he had, but it was of an unexpected kind. Miss Nightingale at first refused to see him, and then, when she consented, believing that ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards' start, and then pass her under way; but always at the fag-end of the race she'd get excited and desperate-like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side amongst the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... the aspect of their mountains; but this may have been partly owing to our own hideous habitation, and low spirits. The same objects may have appeared charming in the eyes of a Scotch family, just arrived from the fag-end of ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... expression on a bachelor's face is not so often the result of brain-fag from an overworked mind as of heart-fag from ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... answer. Fag today. Send her a postal order two shillings, half a crown. Accept my little present. Stationer's just here too. Wait. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... about without stint is foreign to Irish ideas. A pleasant and characteristic feature of Jesuit schools is the habit of telling off some boy to act as companion and cicerone to a newcomer for his first week or fortnight; and the ridiculous English fashion which prescribes that the smallest fag should be described as a "man" is unknown. Christian names, not surnames, are used generally. The unpopularity of boarding schools in Ireland is due to the great value set upon home life; and an Irish boarding school is far less distinct from home ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... relative of personal friends on the borders of my own land. Finding that Mr Pringle was absent from home, we turned aside to visit a cousin of Hobson's, a Mr John Edwards, who dwelt in what appeared to me the fag-end of the world,—a lonely farmhouse, at the head of the ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... "it has been very pleasant to be regarded as a boy, and therefore to act as a sort of general fag to you. I hope you will continue to regard me as so. I have always considered it a privilege to be able to make myself useful to you, and I should be very sorry ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... o' guess you've made, any way, old stranger," laughed his tormentor, clapping his foot against the companion, and taking the pull of a giant on the reef-tackle as he spoke. "If you ever know'd where to look for the fag-ind of a north-easter at this time o' year, it's more nor you ever larn'd me to do, and that I do say wasn't doin' your honest duty by me. I'd lay a pistreen this breeze would last the Washy, to the south'ard o' the Tortugas, and well you ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... Plan of Campaign, and for criminal conspiracy. He had also taken a leading part in the cattle-driving agitation (to which I shall refer later) and had announced that his policy was "to enable the Board to get land at fag-end prices." He was therefore appointed by Mr. Birrell to be a member of the Board, as being a suitable person to decide what compensation should be paid for land taken compulsorily. He publicly stated that his object was to carry out the great work of Michael ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... and Violet tells her a story. They are almost to the end when the gentlemen come, but Cecil is exigeant, and the professor politely insists. He is fond of even the fag-end of a story, so that it turns out well; and then he will entertain the little miss. Violet finishes with blushes that make her more charming every moment; and Grandon finds a strange stirring in his soul as he watches this pretty girl. He is glad she is his. Some time, when the ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... territory. "Come aboard, sir," occurred to him for a moment as a happy phrase, but he discarded it. To make the situation more awkward, Mr Kay did not observe him at first, being occupied in assailing a riotous fag at the other end of the table, that youth having succeeded, by a dexterous drive in the ribs, in making a friend of his spill half a cup of coffee. Kennedy did not know whether to sit down without a word or to remain standing until Mr Kay had time to ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... equipped with new clothes, the pair set out together. The boy was now ten, and looked forward hopefully to the future; but the scholar quickly showed himself in his true colours. He treated Butzbach as a fag, made him trudge behind carrying the larger share of their bundles, and when they came to an inn feasted royally himself off the money given to him for the boy, leaving him to the charity of the innkeepers. At the end of two months the money was spent, and they had found no ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... to the fag of burying the swag?" said Tommy once they were safe within the shelter of The Cedars gates. "Let's take it to one of your bedrooms. Besides," he added; as if this were quite an afterthought, as indeed it ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... the Valley might be on its way to Tennessee to take Memphis, or even to Vicksburg, to sweep the foe from Mississippi. The men lounged beneath the trees, or watched the weary Virginia Central bringing in the fag end of things. Fredericksburg was now the road's terminus; beyond, the line had been destroyed by a ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... coming to look forward to that last hour of the school week, very often to schoolgirls a wasted hour at the fag end of things. ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... officer, Mr. Sparks, who, when not otherwise occupied, usually employed his time in committing to paper his thoughts upon men, manners, and things at sea in general; though, sooth to say, his was not an idle life. Being voted by unanimous consent "a junior," he was condemned to offices that the veriest fag in Eton or Harrow had rebelled against. In the morning, under the pseudonym of Mrs. Sparks, he presided at breakfast, having previously made tea, coffee, and chocolate for the whole cabin, besides boiling about twenty eggs at various degrees of hardness; he ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the persuasion firmly established in my own bosom that it is impossible to revive the past, so we must march with the age. And let me add, all but every one of the bills happily discharged, to please you. Pray, fag at your German. If (as I myself confess to) you have enjoyment of old ways, habits, customs, and ceremonies, look to Court life. It is only in Courts that a man may now air a leg; and there the women are works of Art. If you are ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... It may have been handsome enough in the Spaniard's Reign, or in King Charles the Second's; but I have heard that its most comely parts had been swallowed up by an Earthquake, and, when I remember it, the Main thoroughfare was like nothing half so much as the Fag End of Kent Street in the Borough, where the Broom-men live. As for public scavengers—humane at least—there were none; for that salutary practice of putting rebellious Blacks into chain-gangs, and making them sweep the streets,—which might be well done in London with Pickpockets ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... have unusual physical endurance are able to do even a small amount of steady, fine-grained work in the city. The rest are as effectually debarred from it as factory children are debarred from learning the violin well at the fag end of their days of toil. In her autobiography Miss Jane Addams speaks some luminous words about the state of society which forces finely organized artistic talent into the wearing struggle for mere existence. She refers ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... estat en greu preyzo Per vostra guerra e n'ai a vostro pro Fag maynt assaut et ars maynta maiso Et a Messina vos cobri del blizo; En la batalha vos vinc en tal sazo Que.us ferion pel pietz e pel mento Dartz e cairels, sagetas ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... little subdivision of the grand Utilitarian Armament come to light even in insulated England? A living nucleus, that will attract and grow, does at length appear there also; and under curious phasis; properly as the inconsiderable fag-end, and so far in the rear of the others as to fancy itself the van. Our European Mechanisers are a sect of boundless diffusion, activity, and co-operative spirit: has not Utilitarianism flourished in ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... up a woman; "for 'tis best to get your family over and done with as soon as you can, so as to be all the earlier out of the fag o't." ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... were very shining qualities in Bert's eyes, and they fascinated him so, that if "fagging" had been permitted at Dr. Johnston's, Bert would have deemed it not a hardship, but an honour, to have been Teter's "fag." ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... long time after Lonegan left he plunged into his work, but there was no sleep for him afterward. He lay very still, breathing easily, as the fag-end of the night crawled by. At dawn he arose, dressed noiselessly, and went ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... was on board yesterday. He looks thin. The fag in a brig is very great; and I see no prospect of his either making prize-money, or being made post, at present: but, ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... the Duke. 'I remember; I was his fag at Eton. He was a handsome dog; but I doubt whether he deserves such ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... fortnight without squeaking;" and of the jolly mills they used to have with the town cads, who would lie in wait for you, and half kill you if they caught you alone; and of the fun it was to make a junior form fag for you, and do all your dirty work; - that Master Verdant's hair would almost stand on end at such horrors, and he would gasp for very dread lest such should ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... lateness with me, Mr. Narkom," said Cleek, as he tossed aside his hat and threw the fag-end of the cigarette he was smoking out through the open window. "You said in your note that there was no immediate necessity for haste, so I improved the shining hour by another spin down the river. It isn't often that duty-calls bring me to a little ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... are very often the fag ends of literature. I shall never forget the following. A person was invited to name a rule without exception, if he could: he answered "A man must be present when he is shaved." A lady—what right have ladies to decide ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... Mission labours most of all with his own hands at the work which is sometimes described as menial work; and it is contrary to the fundamental principle of the Mission that anyone should connect with the idea of white man the right to fag ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... legally dissolved, and to set aside the Protector, who soon afterwards resigned. On the 21st April, Lenthall, the old Speaker, with as many members of the Long Parliament as could be brought together, met in the House, and opened their session. The Parliament thus formed, as being the fag-end of the old Long Parliament, obtained the name of the Rump Parliament. Lambert's hopes and aims were raised by his success against Sir George Booth in the August following, and jealousies soon arose between his party in the army and the Rump. The Parliament would have dismissed him, ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... on which boys stood or sat to keep them steady while the racers crawled under the seats. In spite of the fact that the pocket-mirror was to be the prize, only Jack and Hamond appeared at the starting-point when it came to this last item on Rosher's programme, their companions voting it too much fag, and preferring to sit on the obstacles ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... whether Lord Inglewold would be inclined to resume the fag-end. In such case, as the lease has been a long one, and land has risen much, he would doubtless pay a part of the difference. Then there's the stock, worth a good deal, I should think. I'll see what can be done. And then there's the ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... dear little Dot, who was rather of the dumpling's shape—"but I don't myself object to that"—and good, lumbering John Peerybingle, her husband, often so near to something or another very clever, according to his own account, and Boxer, the carrier's dog, "with that preposterous nothing of a fag-end of a tail of his, describing circles of barks round the horse, making savage rushes at his mistress, and facetiously bringing himself to sudden stops,"—all bear upon them ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... 'em all at my old 33 years desk yester morning; and deuce take me if I had not yearnings at leaving all my old pen and ink fellows, merry sociable lads, at leaving them in the Lurch, fag, fag, fag. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb |
