"Rag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of each species is a massive cup, composed of twigs, thorns, grasses, feathers, and, usually, some pieces of rag; these last often hang down in a most untidy manner. The nest is, as a rule, placed in a babool or other thorny tree, close up against ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... ensconced herself in a chair near grandma's large one, with her wash-rag. Grandma took up her knitting, also, and the ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... will let him. He is like an ape, that loves to do whatsoever he sees others do, and is always as busy as a child at play. He is a great undertaker, and commonly as great an underperformer. His face is like a lawyer's buckram rag, that has always business in it, and as he trots about his head travels as fast as his feet. He covets his neighbour's business, and his own is to meddle, not do. He is very lavish of his advice, and gives it freely, because it is worth ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... Penrod's practice became less ardent; he needed the stimulus of an auditor. With the horn upon his lap he began to rub the greenish brass surface with a rag. He meant to make this good ole two-dollar horn of his LOOK ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... 'prentice should speak ill - He stole from the till all the gold, And ate the lump-sugar and treacle. In vain did his master exclaim, Dear George, don't engage with that dragon; She'll lead you to sorrow and shame, And leave you the devil a rag ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... Humanity, (how Knowles lingered on that word, with a tenderness curious in so uncouth a mass of flesh!)—as for Humanity, it was a study to see it stripped and flouted and thrown out of doors like a filthy rag by this poor old Howth, a man too child-hearted to kill a spider. It was pleasanter to hear him when he defended the great Past in which his ideal truth had been faintly shadowed. How he caught the salient tints of the feudal ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... will die for. The Nation is one. They will die for the land where their fathers sleep. They will fling fortune, hope, peace, family bliss, life itself, all into the gulf, to save its hearths from shame, its roof trees from dishonor. They will follow the tattered rag they have made the symbol of its right, through bursting shells and hissing hail of rifle shot, and serried ranks of gleaming bayonets, 'into the jaws of death, into the mouth of Hell,' when they are called. They will do this in thousands, the poorest better than the richest often, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... this boy-girl chap grinning above me. 'Slash away!' I roared. 'Here's one for yourself!' and I jabbed the staff in his mug. 'No,' says he, as jolly as you like, 'I don't fight with poultry!' And dam-my-soul!— if he don't sneak his hand under the rag and tweak my nose!—this nose!" the Parson squeaked, tapping it—"this nose upon this face! this nose I'm talking to you out o now! And he jumped that wallopin old white out the way he came. 'Come along, children,' says he. 'You've had quite enough for one ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... in January that chill one's heart. I awoke on this particular day with a vague feeling of anxiety. It had thawed during the night, and when I cast my eyes over the country from the threshold, it looked to me like an immense dirty grey rag, soiled with mud ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... top of oil poured in a tumbler half full of water. We breakfasted in our own rooms, and the breakfast napkins of the Grand Hotel, where we were stopping, were decidedly shabby and only about six inches square. On the morning of our leavetaking of Nice, St. Cecilia wanted a "rag" to tie over her bottle of oil, which she carried with her for her night-tapers, and cast her eyes about for one: she seized upon the raggedest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... to match. Then they tied a white tissue-paper wreath with long streamers around his neck. They tied a red one on the little white hen. They tried to decorate the turkey, too, but he was in no mood for it, and gobbled and pecked at them so savagely that Dona Teresa had to tie up his head in a rag! ...
— The Mexican Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... and trunks full of beautiful things I took away with me, Cornelia," she complained; "Well I have not a rag left. I have nothing left ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... them. Thus he cast away all the ambitions of a man and aspired to those of women; for his incontinent itching of palate stirred in him love of every kitchen-stench. Ever breathing of his debauch, and stripped of every rag of soberness, with his foul breath he belched the undigested filth in his belly. He was as infamous in wantonness as Frode was illustrious in war. So utterly had his spirit been enfeebled by the untimely seductions of ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... said, "Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment" (Luke 15:29); But alas! poor Publican thy guilt, as to these pleas, stops thy mouth, thou hast not one good thing to say of thyself, not one rag of righteousness; thy conversation tells thee so, thy conscience tells thee so; yea, and if thou shouldest now attempt to set a good face on it, and for thy credit say something after the Pharisee in way of thine own commendations, yet here is God on ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was a worn and torn rag carpet; an unswept floor; boards and walls that had not known the touch of water or soap in many, many months; a rusty little stove with no fire in it; and a poor old woman, who looked in all respects like her ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... composedly, "I am not in my saddle, because I have some regard for this old silken rag, which I have borne to honour in my time, and I will not willingly carry it where men are unwilling to follow and ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... to publish one's errors, yet there is no great danger that it pass into example and custom; for Ariston said, that the winds men most fear are those that lay them open. We must tuck up this ridiculous rag that hides our manners: they send their consciences to the stews, and keep a starched countenance: even traitors and assassins espouse the laws of ceremony, and there fix their duty. So that neither can injustice ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... of an impudent man, "He has as much shame as an egg has hair;" of a garrulous one, "He has no bone in his tongue" or "His tongue is always wet;" of a spendthrift, "Water does not stand on a hillside;" and of a noble family in reduced circumstances, "It is a decayed rag, but it is silk." All these metaphors are clear, vivid and forcible, and the list of such proverbs might be almost indefinitely extended. With all their vividness of imagery, however, Caucasian sayings are sometimes as mysterious and unintelligible as the darkest utterances of the Delphian ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... (Lucky my head's not a hazel nut); The horse they raced, and scudded and swore; There were Leicestershire gantlemen, seventy score; Up came the "Lobsters," covered with steel— Down we went with a stagger and reel; Smash at the flag, I tore it to rag. And carried it off ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... leave his post, what would become of the Queen? Des Huttes during the moment of this quick reflection, was brained from behind by a man in a red cap, and fell, pierced with countless pike-wounds. His eyes still moved when the rag-picker Gougeon ran in, and, placing his foot on the chest, chopped the head from the body with blows of an axe. In an instant it was stuck on the point of a pike ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... closed gently enough, and separated Mrs. Pratt from the whole moving mass of animate confusion that reigned in the streets outside. As she stopped, on her way through the narrow passage within, to straighten the rag mat at the door of the front room, she ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... his family, certain totemic characters, or, according to Schoolcraft, not the achievements of the dead, but of those warriors who assisted and danced at the interment. The northwest tribes and others frequently plant poles near the graves, suspending therefrom bite of rag, flags, horses' tails, &c. The custom among the present Indians does not exist to any extent. Beltrami[101] speaks of ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... been going about all morning with a dust rag in her hand, wiping the dust from the ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... maintained his silence, crushing his cap in his big hands and glowering at the rag-mat under his feet. Two kinds of love, several kinds of devils, pride, anger and despair were battling in ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... the momentous nature of the subject, and the dignity of the ministerial office; as if a preacher having chosen the Prophets for his theme should entertain his congregation by exhibiting a traditional shaving rag of Isaiah's with the Prophet's stubble hair on the dried soap-sud. And yet, on the other hand, there is an innocency in it, a security of faith, a fulness evinced in the play and plash of its overflowing, ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... Castellani, to see and touch the swords presented by Roman citizens to Napoleon III. and Victor Emmanuel, threw back Mrs Browning into all her former troubles of a delicate chest and left her "as weak as a rag." Tidings of the death of Lady Elgin seemed to tell only of a peaceful release from a period of imprisonment in the body, but the loss of Mrs Jameson was a painful blow. Rome at a time of grave political apprehensions was almost empty of foreigners; but among the few Americans who ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... "Mother, the Lord who gave each of us our talents will come home some day, and will demand from all an account. The teapot, the old stocking-foot, the linen rag, the willow-pattern tureen will yield up their barren deposit in many a house. Suffer your daughters, at least, to put their money to the exchangers, that they may be enabled at the Master's coming to pay Him His own ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... and stirs the pot. She tastes it like a practiced house-wife. Her apron is maid of all work. It is towel, dust-rag, ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... brass instruments were out of tune; the rag-tag crowd surged about, some jeering, some cheering,—everything in the environment was repellent, but in the midst shone that ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... the last, because Lady Monica told us it was to be done first," said Pilar sagely; so we wandered through the shabby aisles of Rag Fair, Pilar hoping against hope to unearth a treasure; because, did not a man once pick up, for a song, a Greco worth a fortune, and did not one always find something at least amusing in the Rag Fair of Madrid? ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a standing warning against spoiling one's patients. I wouldn't have them and their whole tag-rag and bobtail about my ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... minutes the hunters poured volley after volley of lead into the forest. Suddenly a white rag tied to a stick was thrust out ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... his engine, banked his fires, and came up on deck, wiping his anxious face with a fearfully filthy sweat rag. At the same time, Scraggs and Neils Halvorsen came crawling aft over the deckload and when they reached the clear space around the pilot house, Captain Scraggs threw his brown derby on the deck and leaped upon it until, his rage abating ultimately, ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... and Ham and Frank and Ford hurried back to the other beach to find that Mrs. Kinzer had taken complete possession of that baby. Every rag of his damp things was already stripped off, and now, while Miranda lighted the "heater" and made some milk hot in a minute, the good lady began to rub the little sufferer as only a ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... bounder," he muttered. "Why the blazes didn't I give my right name? I wonder what they'd say—how that girl would look—if I told them that I was the Lord Selbie this rag was cackling about? Shall I tell them? No. It would be awkward now. I shall be gone in a day or two, and they ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... As a cotton rag placed near fire becomes burnt, so the heart of Hira became ever more inflamed by the remarkable beauty of Debendra. Many a time Hira's virtue and good name would have been endangered by passion, but that Debendra's character for sensuality ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... his rag of a cap, and arranging his tattered regimentals the best he could, off he went stumping among the passengers in an adjoining part of the deck, saying with a jovial kind of air: "Sir, a shilling for Happy Tom, who fought at Buena Vista. Lady, something for General Scott's ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... upon the way, but he went through the thickest without a thought of it. He had not been out long before there came on a cold, light, drizzling rain, such a rain as gradually but surely makes its way into the innermost rag of a man's clothing, running up the inside of his waterproof coat, and penetrating by its perseverance the very folds of his necktie. Such cold, drizzling rain is the commonest phase of hard weather during Irish winters, and those who are out and about get used to it and treat it tenderly. ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... was in one of the police-courts this morning doing my work for the Evening Star. You know I report the police news for that rag, don't you? Well, I do. My column is called "The Doom of the Disorderly." Rather a good title that for a column of the kind! There didn't appear to be anything particular on, just a few ordinary drunks, until this fellow Doherty was brought in. I thought ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... for my taste your blouse is open too low she says to me the pan calling the kettle blackbottom and I had to tell her not to cock her legs up like that on show on the windowsill before all the people passing they all look at her like me when I was her age of course any old rag looks well on you then a great touchmenot too in her own way at the Only Way in the Theatre royal take your foot away out of that I hate people touching me afraid of her life Id crush her skirt with the pleats a lot of that touching must go on in ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... prettiest, and most interesting part of the garden, is that devoted to wax dolls. There are other beds for the commoner dolls—for the rag dolls, and the china dolls, and the rubber dolls, but of course wax dolls would look much handsomer growing. Wax dolls have to be planted quite early in the season; for they need a good start before the sun is very high. The seeds are the loveliest bits of microscopic dolls imaginable. ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... were carried off the battle-field; they had no food of any kind; they were crying all the time "bread, bread! water, water!" One boy without beard was stretched out dead, quite naked, a piece of blanket thrown over his emaciated form, a rag over his face, and his small, thin hands laid over his breast. Of the dead none knew their names, and it breaks my heart to think of the mothers waiting and watching for the sons laid in the lonely grave on ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... naked hands, rending it, and gripping afresh. Something white which neither noticed fluttered upon the ground between them. It must have actually passed through that frantic grip. It lay unheeded, while Bertrand beat out the last spark and ripped the last charred rag away from ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... in the street under her window began to play the tune of "Bon-bon Buddy, My Chocolate Drop." Laura stopped her humming and listened. There was something in this rag-time melody which at that moment particularly appealed to her. It was peculiarly suggestive of the low life, the criminality and prostitution that constitute the night excitement of that section of New York City known as "The ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... a stop to in London at the end of Oct. 1840, though it was not until 1854 that the prohibition became general. Prior to the passing of the Act in that year, dogs were utilised as draught animals to a very great extent in this neighbourhood by the rag-and-bone gatherers, pedlars, and little merchants, as many as 180 of the poor brutes once being counted in five hours as passing a certain spot on the Westbromwich Road. There have been one or two "homes" ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... box nursing a rag doll, in the sunlight that came in at the side door. She was crooning to herself a weird little song, and rocking back and forth upon the box. Mr. Drugg seemed to ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... passage. Entering, she saw that Mrs. Almayer had deserted the pile of mats serving her as bed in one corner of the room, and was now bending over the opened lid of her large wooden chest. Half a shell of cocoanut filled with oil, where a cotton rag floated for a wick, stood on the floor, surrounding her with a ruddy halo of light shining through the black and odorous smoke. Mrs. Almayer's back was bent, and her head and shoulders hidden in the deep box. Her hands rummaged ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... thereof surrounded me, seizing me, and saying: "This vagabond (iste solivagus), who pretends to be Scotch, is either a spy, or has Letters from the false Pope Alexander." And whilst they examined every stitch and rag of me, my leggings (caligas), breeches, and even the old shoes that I carried over my shoulder in the way of the Scotch,—I put my hand into the leather scrip I wore, wherein our Lord the Pope's Letter lay, close by a little jug (ciffus) I had for drinking out ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... tired—more than you've ever been in your life. You'll feel like a rag by to-morrow, and then I hope you'll take a good rest. But to-day, while you are still way up, I want to talk about your work. Do ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... cadaver, and when suddenly awakened the frenzied man had shrieked out his confession. But, as a rule, it was by imposing on his prisoner's better instincts, such as gang-loyalty or pity for a supposedly threatened "rag," that the point was won. In resources of this nature Blake became quite conscienceless, salving his soul with the altogether Jesuitic claim that illegal means were always justified by the ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... laughed. "We are no nearer, sir," he said, "to solving the problem of the thief: meanwhile the mystery of the theft deepens." He then produced something tied up in a rag, which when untied disclosed a bundle of currency notes. "This, Maharaja," said the Inspector, "is ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... free to all, particularly to us children. It was hard to tell sometimes which to choose, whether the kitchen, where the family were gathered round the cheerful logs blazing brightly in the big fire-place, or a stretch on the soft rag-carpet beside the box stove in grandmother's room. This room was also a sanctuary to which we often fled to escape punishment after doing some mischief. We were sure of an advocate there, if we ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... morning. She passes behind him, looks into the stiff leaf-scented parlour—at the framed Declaration of Independence on the walls, the fresh boughs in the fire-place, the Bible on its table, the rag-carpet before the hearth. She breathes the atmosphere of the house; its stern independence and simplicities; the scorns and the denials, the sturdy freedoms both of body and soul that it implies—conscience the only master—vice-master for God, in this His house of the ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I could be grieved, But that I'll not outlive you: choose your death; For, I have seen him in such various shapes, I care not which I take: I'm only troubled, The life I bear is worn to such a rag, 'Tis scarce worth giving. I could wish, indeed, We threw it from us with a better grace; That, like two lions taken in the toils, We might at last thrust out our paws, and wound The hunters ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... and once the pale moon gleamed through the storm wreath. The dawn broke cheerless and dreary, disclosing the great turmoil of endless slate-coloured waves and the solitary little barque, with her rag of canvas, like a broken-winged seabird, ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... expectation while the supper was being laid on the oak table. Mrs. Poyser had laid the cloth herself—a cloth made of homespun linen, with a shining checkered pattern on it, and of an agreeable whitey-brown hue, such as all sensible housewives like to see—none of your bleached "shop-rag" that would wear into holes in no time, but good homespun that would last for two generations. The cold veal, the fresh lettuces, and the stuffed chine might well look tempting to hungry men who had dined at half-past twelve o'clock. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... side. The plough went not out; the herds wandered through broken hedges from field to field and came up with staring bones and shrunken sides; a frenzied mob of weeds and thorns wrestled and throttled each other in a struggle for standing-room—rag-weed, smart-weed, sneeze-weed, bindweed, iron-weed—until the burning skies of midsummer checked their growth and crowned their unshorn tops with ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... neat and well kept. The first apartment, which opened from a tiny hall, served as sitting and dining room. Like most other French Canadian houses, Madame McAllister's was carpeted in all the rooms with a rag carpet of three colors—red, white and blue. This carpeting is extensively woven by the good nuns at Rimouski Convent, and is pretty and effective, besides having the ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... and bound her hands tight with the cords, while she screamed, and struggled, and yelled piteously for the Lady Prioress; then dragging her up, he exclaimed, "Since thou didst not heed me, now thou shalt come off naked as thou art; better the devil should not have a rag to ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... silken moustache. On examination, all his companions were found to have holes in their ears, as he also had, while on the upper part of their arms they wore bracelets of plaited hair; thus evincing a taste for ornament, although they had not a rag of any sort of clothing. The previous day the only gift they seemed to prize was a fish which was offered them. To-day they brought one in return. They were, however, excessively jealous and suspicious, and in consequence of one of the gentlemen ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... to sing a song of his composition, all about the Empire. Not the hall; the British. Glorifies the Flag, that blessed rag—a rhyme I suggested to him, and asked him to pay me for. It's a taking tune, and we shall have it everywhere, no doubt. He sang a verse—I wish you could have heard him. A ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... that rag!" He took the sopping handkerchief and flung it into a distant corner. "A wisp of this straw is much more useful—less ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... philippics fills nearly a whole folio volume of the British Museum Library Catalogue. He had what Wharton, more graphically than politely, describes as "the eternal itch of scribbling." The subject of Sabbath-breaking to which he attributed the fresh outbreak of the plague in 1636, was to him as a red rag to a bull. Encouraged by his example a whole mass of literature appeared on the observance of the Sabbath—not the modern Sunday which was decried as an invention of Rome, but of the old Jewish Sabbath, considered by the Puritans to have a far better ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... them slightly to emphasize his command. One hung on his hand, limp as a rag. The other showed fight, kicking our friend liberally about the shins, with hobnailed boots ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... kind of a rag," he bade her. "I'm goin' to clean up this old musket. You might's well hand me that oiler, too, off'n the sink shelf. I can't git about any ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... bury the nameless corpse. The clothes of the dead man are sufficient recompense for hasty interment in a shallow grave, and the jackals the next night probably discover, and make short work of, the corpse. I have seen the body of some such poor wanderer, with scarcely a rag upon it, slung upon a pole and carried like a dead dog by a couple of Mahars along the high-road to a ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... majority in '69 was 7,506—a little above the average majority. The canvass was fought largely upon the issue of the greenback payment of the debt. The Pendleton plan of indirect repudiation failed, and the rag infant was decently interred, ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... ancient, but strong as if designed for eternity; with its saints and virgins, and martyrs and relics, its gold and silver and precious stones, whose value would buy up all the spare lots in the New England village; the lpero with scarce a rag to cover him, kneeling on that marble pavement. Leave the enclosure of the church, observe the stone wall that bounds the road for more than a mile; the fruit trees overtopping it, high though it be, with their loaded branches. This is the convent orchard. And that great Gothic pile of building, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... does, what can this mean?" groaned the young engineer, sinking back to the rough blanket, weak as a rag under the revelation of ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... it is the right key." The door flies open—Le Prun rushes puffing among the bushes. Blassemare sees something drop glittering to the ground as the door opens—a button and a little rag of velvet; he says nothing, but pockets it, and joins ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... for hysteria—a little nerve tonic. A good sleep may put him all right by to-morrow morning. The chances are, however, that the O. C. will send him down for a few days' rest and change. If so, the chap will be as happy as a clam. The boys will rag him half to death down there, so that he will be keen to get back again, and the chances are may get his V. C. Oh, we all get scared stiff," laughed Gregg. "We are none of us proud about here. That hero stuff that you read about in the home papers, we ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... Nancy and Rosie dried them and Lizbeth packed them off to the cupboard, about the strange man. 'He laid powerful admiration on our little girls.' Levicy was wipin' off the oilcloth on the table with her soapy dish rag. 'He had them line up in a row to see which was tallest, whilst I set him a snack. "Shut your eyes," sez he, "and open your mouth." They did, and bless you, Captain Anderson, what did he do but put a sil'er dollar ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... night; Isabella and Arabella I found on the clothes-line all broken to pieces, and he said they were only dancing on a tight rope; he sent Rose and Lily,—the paper-dolls, you know,—up in the air tied to the tail of his kite; the rag-baby he took for a scarecrow over his garden; and surely, Aunt Faith, you have not forgotten how he made Jeff Davis on the apple-tree, out of my dear china Josephine, or how he blew up Julia Rubber with his cannon last Fourth ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... time to his female relations, confined so constantly to a farinaceous diet? It came over him with some force that his opinions would not yield interest, and the evaporation of this pleasing hypothesis made him feel like a man in an open boat, at sea, who should just have parted with his last rag of canvas. ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... wherefore wail for one, Who put your beauty to this flout and scorn By dressing it in rags? Amazed am I, Beholding how ye butt against my wish, That I forbear you thus: cross me no more. At least put off to please me this poor gown, This silken rag, this beggar-woman's weed: I love that beauty should go beautifully: For see ye not my gentlewomen here, How gay, how suited to the house of one Who loves that beauty should go beautifully? Rise therefore; robe yourself in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... be teased, Eric," she answered, nestling to his side. "It isn't the great play that you're going to write some day, when you've learned . . . and suffered; you still get your women out of rag-books and toy-shops; but it's very clever, it's a great success and it's made you happy. That's what matters. Who was the man in the box that ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... villas, through the open gates of which the golden oranges gleam, that you seem never to leave the city. The streets and quays swarm with the most vociferous, dirty, multitudinous life. It is a drive through Rag Fair. The tall, whitey-yellow houses fronting the water, six, seven, eight stories high, are full as beehives; people are at all the open windows; garments hang from the balconies and from poles thrust out; up every narrow, gloomy, ascending ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... well, indeed, very, very much, a deal, no end of, most, not a little; pretty, pretty well; enough, in a great measure, richly; to a large extent, to a great extent, to a gigantic extent; on a large scale; so; never so, ever so; ever so dole; scrap, shred, tag, splinter, rag, much; by wholesale; mighty, powerfully; with a witness, ultra[Lat], in the extreme, extremely, exceedingly, intensely, exquisitely, acutely, indefinitely, immeasurably; beyond compare, beyond comparison, beyond measure, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... Gazette, Mr. Spring, as gossiping a rag as ever was printed. I expect there will be a fine column in it if ever it gets its prying nose into this day's doings. However, we are mum and her ladyship is mum, and, my word! his lordship is mum, though he did, in ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hail-storm of metaphor and epigram constantly dissolving in impalpable mist of mere words has he assaulted The History of an Attraction (CHATTO AND WINDUS) that the poor thing, atomised, vaporised and analysed to the bone, lies limp and lifeless between the covers, with hardly a decent rag of incident or story to cover it. And there one might perhaps be content to let it rest, but for the fact that Anita, the lady of the "Attraction," is worthy of a better fate. The principal man of the book, who, after much ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... sympathy and pity than with condemnation. As the popular opinion against slavery strengthened and became intensified, both in this and other countries, they became sore and sensitive. First, they tucked a constitutional rag between the collar and the skin; and as that did not seem to relieve them, they lined it with leaves from human philosophy; and philosophy soon wearing out, they tore their Bibles into pieces for materials with ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... after all; the worst one risks is to sleep on straw in return for making them sleep on rosewood. But when their beauty is bought by the ounce at the perfumer's, and will not stand three drops of water on a rag; then their wit consists in a couplet of a farce, and their talent lies in the hand of the claqueur, it is hard indeed to understand how respectable men with good names, ordinary sense, and decent coats, can let themselves be carried ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... of an Oriental effect can have it in the pillow by sewing silks and satins hit and miss, as in making an old-time rag carpet, then having it woven with black ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... sought their apartments and the downy couches; the cook, on a shady bench under the trellis, nodded as she seeded the raisins for the frozen pudding of the six-o'clock dinner; the waiter had succumbed in clearing the lunch-table and made mesmeric passes with the dish-rag in a fantasy of washing the plates; the stable-boy slumbered in the hay, high in the loft, while the fat old coachman, with a chamois-skin in his hand, dozed as he sat on the step of the surrey, between the fenders; the old dog snored on the veranda floor, and Mrs. Keene's special attendant, ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... unpleasant matter as quickly as possible, and he ran desperately, as if pursued for a murder. His face was drawn hard and tight with the stress of his endeavor. His eyes were fixed in a lurid glare. And with his soiled and disordered dress, his red and inflamed features surmounted by the dingy rag with its spot of blood, his wildly swinging rifle and banging accouterments, he looked to be ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... fall. He had power enough to bend his knee, and to crouch beneath her grasp on to the loose crumbling soil of the margin of the rocks. He still held her by her cuff and it seemed for a moment as though she must go with him. But, on a sudden, she spurned him with her foot on the breast, the rag of cloth parted in his hand, and the poor wretch tumbled forth ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... the daughter of Erin firmly, "because I have already told ye wance. Linda's gone like a rag bag since the Lord knows when. She had a right to the dress, and she thought it was hers, and she took it. And if ye ever want any more respect or obedience or love from the kiddie, ye better never let her know that ye didn't intend it for her, for nothing was ever ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... when the wax will float on the surface. Put the wax into a mortar, and triturate it with a marble pestle, adding soft water to it until it forms a soft paste, which, laid neatly on furniture, or even on paintings, and carefully rubbed when dry with a woollen rag, gives a polish of great brilliancy, without the harshness of ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... Stella with a little wry smile of her own, "when I tell you what it was. It was a gramophone. I got Harry to set it going, whilst I lay in bed—to set it playing rag-time. While it was playing, I stopped thinking. For I had to keep time in my brain with the beat of the tune. And so, at last, since I couldn't think, or remember, I fell asleep. The gramophone saved me"; and again Joan was smitten by the incongruity of Stella with her life. She ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... tin spoons on the wood. A haggard woman, in a soiled blue gingham dress, was bringing a pot of coffee from the adjoining room; and in one corner, on a sofa from which the stuffing sagged in bunches, a man sat staring vacantly at a hole in the rag carpet. Tied in a high chair, which stood apart as if it were the pedestal of an idol, a baby, with the smooth unlined face not of an infant, but of a philosopher, was mutely surveying ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... your lives in trust for those who need your succor: A flash of fire by night, a loom of smoke by day, A rag to an oar shall be to you the symbol Of your faith, of your creed, of ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... parties, and they name the candidates, and trick you into voting for them—and they call it the law! They herd you into armies and send you to shoot your brothers—and they call it order! They take a piece of coloured rag and call it the flag and teach you to let yourself be shot—and they call it patriotism! First, last, and all the time, you do the work and they get the benefit—they, the ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... a dilemma, but fortunately I devised a plan. In the pocket of the coat I had on was a small piece of dirty rag that I had used some time before to clean a gun with. 'Put this in your mouth,' I whispered again, giving him the rag; 'and if I hear another sound you are a dead man.' I knew that that would stifle the clatter of his teeth. ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... someone great was seeking her.' 'I heard Someone,' said another, 'reckoning a debt of nine hundred pounds on such and such an estate.' 'I saw Someone yesterday,' said the beggar, 'with a mottled neckerchief, like a sailor, who had come with a grain vessel to the next port;' and so every rag and tag mauls me to suit his own evil purpose. Some call me 'Friend.' 'A friend told me,' saith one, 'that so and so does not intend leaving a single farthing to his wife, and that there is no love lost between them.' Others further disgrace ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... rag from his head, and from its folds produced a strip of fine parchment with writing on it impervious to water. "Behold, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... the railroad side, he was allowed to gaze through the window at the engines smoking and thundering by all day, and fixing each blazing red eye on him at night—an entrancing spectacle to the child. And when the still younger Pat was tucked up in bed sucking a moist rag, with sugar tied up in it, her world was all right, and ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... large dry-goods store. As I entered the door a sudden tremor seized me. I could not bear to take out that piece of red calico. If I had had any other kind of a rag about me—a pen-wiper or any thing of the sort—I think I would have asked them if they could ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... ceiling, with a hole in it, through which stuck skeleton ribs of lath; around him were bare, dirty-white walls, that seemed to grow out of the gray light of a wet morning as the natural deposit from such a solution. Two slender poles, meant to support curtains, but without a rag of drapery upon them, rose at his feet, like the masts of a Charon's boat. Was he indeed in the workhouse he had pre—ferred to Cairncarque? It could hardly be, for there was the plaster fallen in great patches from the walls ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... face between flashing earrings, a twisted rag of red and yellow silk round his throat, turned from the reaching yearning monkey to the pink and white biscuits spiked on the bronzed leafage. And upon them all fell the serious and workmanlike sun of an English ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... last fluttering rag vanished from sight, our lads, who had watched the latter part of this performance in silent wrath, turned to each other ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... the little rag-picker and ash girl who found Lily De Koven's broken doll in the ash-can that cold winter's morning? I have not forgotten my promise to tell you the ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... illusory. Dissensions appeared in the labor ranks. The old party leaders, particularly of Tammany Hall, the Democratic party organization in New York City, offered concessions to labor in return for votes. Newspapers unsparingly denounced "trade union politicians" as "demagogues," "levellers," and "rag, tag, and bobtail"; and some of them, deeming labor unrest the sour fruit of manhood suffrage, suggested disfranchisement as a remedy. Under the influence of concessions and attacks the political fever quickly died away, and the end of the decade left no remnant of the labor political parties. Labor ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... to the ranch house for food for his men, and the cooking was too much for the hungry outlaws, who had had nothing to eat. They put up a dirty white rag on a gun barrel and offered to give up. One by one, they came out and were disarmed. That night was spent at the Brazil ranch, the prisoners under guard and the body of Charlie Bowdre, rolled in its blankets, outside in the wagon. ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... five; but I can't remember the fifth. The Ammal gave me a box for my doll, and you gave me some sweets; and I found some nice rags in your waste-paper basket"—grubbing in rag-bags and waste-paper baskets is one of the joys of life; rags are so useful when you have a large family of dolls who are always wearing out their clothes—"and I have some cakes in my own box now. There are four blessings. ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... are German," explained Sam. "And my mother—can she cook! Well, I just don't seem able to get her potato pancakes out of my mind. And her roast beef tasted and looked like roast beef, and not like a wet red flannel rag." ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... the old art, and the old religion. Are such topics and such men to deal with them to be found to-day, or have all the great problems of humanity and its intellect been started, studied, and resolved? And are motor-cars, aeroplanes, dances, Dreadnoughts, millinery, rag-time reviews, auction bridge, the rise and fall of stocks, and the last extraordinary round of golf, all that is left for the present ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... those poor souls lying about like rag dolls," she explained. "The only thing that keeps me sane is the hope that we may ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... altogether outlived the unreasoning hatred with which it was regarded by ultra-Protestants outside the National Church. It was still in the earlier part of the century inveighed against by some of their writers as 'a Babylonish garment,'[1088] 'a rag of the whore of Babylon,'[1089] a 'habit of the priests of Isis.'[1090] In William III.'s time, its use in the pulpit was evidently quite exceptional. The writer of a letter in the Strype Correspondence—one ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... become insoluble; consequently if, on its removal from the printing frame, the proof be soaked in cold water, for, say, ten minutes, and, placing it on a glass plate or a smooth board, gently rubbed with a brush or a soft rag, the parts of the albumen or gum arabic preparation not acted on will dissolve, leaving behind the black image standing out on the white ground of the paper. This done, and when the unreduced bichromate is washed out in two changes of water, the operation ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... armed with clubs, forks, lances, shovels, torches, stakes, crooks, levers, sabres, and spits. They sang and howled alternately, counterfeiting with atrocious yells the cries of a cat, and carrying as a flag one of these animals suspended from a pole and wrapped in a red rag, thus representing the Cardinal, whose taste for cats was generally known. Public criers rushed about, red and breathless, throwing on the pavement and sticking up on the parapets, the posts, the walls of the houses, and even on the palace, long satires in short stanzas upon ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... off, pleased at Tom's confidence in her power. When the bleeding was partly stopped, he asked her to find him a bit of rag, and she scrambled under the dresser for a little piece she had hidden there the day before. Meanwhile, Johnny ceased crying, he was so interested in all the preparation for dressing his little wound, and so much pleased to find himself an object of so much attention and consequence. ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... with a message from knight or nobleman. So incongruous was his costume that I could never tell whether kilt or trousers was the original foundation upon which it had been constructed. To his tatters add the bits of old ribbon, list, and coloured rag which he attached to his pipes wherever there was room, and you will see that he looked all flags and pennons—a moving grove of raggery, out of which came the screaming chant and drone of his instrument. When he danced, he was like a whirlwind that had caught up the contents ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... time of heat; yes—even tho July 1st has come and gone—drafts to assuage our thirst; the divers stays and supports of our declining years—all these things come in bottles. From the time of its purchase to the moment of its consignment to the barrel in the cellar or the rapacious wagon of the rag-and-bone man the bottle plays a vital part in our lives. And as with most inconspicuous necessities, but little is known of its history. We assume vaguely that it is blown—ever since we saw the Bohemian Glass Blowers at the World's Fair we have known that ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... expected under such circumstances, the newspapers are, with few exceptions, of the "rag" variety. Conducted for the most part by clever young fellows fresh from Coimbra, they are violent in their views and incorrect in their news, especially with regard to foreign intelligence. They have some influence, no doubt, but not so much as the same type of newspaper in France. ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... place fixed up real sightly," she said. "I wonder—I don't suppose you'd have any sale for braided rag rugs, would you? I've got some awful pretty ones packed away in my chest, brand new, too. I've been sewing and winding all winter for Roxana, too, but I guess she plans to use them ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... strange noises proceeding therefrom. When I went over the folk made way for me. I entered, sat down, and found that they were crowded around a cheap gramophone which was hawking, spitting and screeching some awful rag-time music and nigger jigs. I could forgive the traders for bringing in the gramophone, but why, oh, why, did they not bring some of the simple world-wide human songs which could at least have had an educational effect? The Indian group listened to this ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... rest satisfied until it has endeavoured to clear up the mystery. Availing himself of this propensity, Dick did what both Indians and hunters are accustomed to do on these occasions—he put a piece of rag on the end of his ramrod, and keeping his person concealed and perfectly still, waved this miniature flag in the air. The antelope noticed it at once, and, pricking up its ears, began to advance, timidly and slowly, step by step, to see what remarkable ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... what she could from her husband in this particular, she did not trouble him much further. He delighted in the Rag, and there spent the most of his time; happily, she delighted in what she called the charms of society, and as society expanded itself before her, she was also, we must suppose, happy. She soon perceived that more in her immediate line was to be obtained from Undy ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... was beginning to recover, though his breath still came with a catch. His rag of a handkerchief was dabbing tears out of his eyes. O'Connor noticed how soft his hands and how ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... didn't drop on me right then that he was out to start a row. And, being full of what I saw up there, I spilled him the yarn. And I wish you could have had a look into that man's face! He's no albino to speak on, and yet when I got half-way through he looked it. His face was as white as a rag and his eyes bulged out like he was scared, and the sweat come out on his head and all over, I guess, and he kept looking over his shoulder all the time like the devil was after him. And when I showed him what I found on the ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... discussed, often and gravely, the relative merits of Evadne the violet-haired, Helen, Cleopatra, and a hundred others, just as, on the steps of White's, or in the smoking-room at the "Rag," men compare the points of the ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... more to come to La Sarthe Chase—Halcyone had never had one who could appreciate its beauties. Governesses to her were poor-spirited creatures afraid of rats, and the dark passages—and one and all resentful of the rag-stuffed panes in the long gallery. Surely with the new-found Cheiron to instruct her about those divine Greeks a fresh governess ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... indeed! Well, I've lived longer than sixteen and a half years and I've noticed that it's the up-to-the-minute dame that gets away with it and holds onto it every time, just the same. And any woman silly enough to work the rag-bag game when her husband can afford seven yards of taffeta and a Butterick ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... like him; ruffianly-looking, rag-bags of fellows, all armed, and looking like a gang ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... shaking his head in answer, when swift came one from the pariah. He searched in his bosom, under the tattered waist, drew out the rag-wound paper and handed ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... the stock of his rifle, and gave it a hard rub with his piece of rag to bring up the polish upon the ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... of the way, or to make his testimony incompetent for the will contest. So, when the ex-lunatic returned from Europe a year ago, our friend Honeywell here, in some way located him at the Caronia. He matured his little scheme. Through a letter broker who deals with the rag and refuse collectors, he got all the second-hand mail from the Caronia. Meantime, William Honeywell Robinson had moved away, and as chance would have it, William Hunter Robinson moved in, receiving the pinprick ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... first, be thoroughly washed, and not a particle of grit must be left. A little oil, a crooked needle, and a small piece of soft rag should be procured. The blunt end of the needle should he dipped into the oil, and run round the inside of the lid, first above and then below. The operator will next—his fingers being oiled—press upon the protruded eye gently, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... it does, but it kinder seems as if that little gal ought to have somethin'. Do you remember them little rag babies I used to make for you, Ann? I s'pose she'd be terrible tickled with one. Some of that blue thibet would be jest the thing to make it ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... entrap her affections, by reciting sonnets, and spouting bits of plays in the manner of the tragedy performers. These were the happy times, sir! The world was changed for me. Paddington canal seemed the river Pactolus, and Rag-Fair Elysium! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... and stripes can be cleaned by moistening a clean woolen rag with gasoline and rubbing the parts and then ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... hundred and twenty-nine different weeds have been found to contribute to the quail's bill of fare. Crops and stomachs have been found crowded with rag-weed seeds, to the number of one thousand, while others had eaten as many seeds of crab-grass. A bird shot at Pine Brook, N.J., in October, 1902, had eaten five thousand seeds of green fox-tail grass, and one killed on Christmas Day at Kinsale, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... and rail as it raced aft. The beauty of double-lashing the dories began to appear, and all hands might have been towing astern all night by the look of them. But the Johnnie Duncan was doing well and the opinion of the crew generally was that the skipper could slap every rag to her and she'd carry it—that is, if she had to. The skipper put her more westerly after we had passed the lightship and ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... rifle. With great care he poured the powder into the palm of his hand, measuring the quantity with his eye—for it was an evidence of a hunter's skill to be able to get the proper quantity for the ball. Then he put the charge into the barrel. Placing a little greased linsey rag, about half an inch square, over the muzzle, he laid a small lead bullet on it, and with the ramrod began to push the ball ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... standing in the lounge of the Hotel M—— at the Base. "I'll introduce you to young C—— of the Guards when he comes in," the Major was saying to me. "He is going up to the Front with me to-night by the troop train. You don't mind if I rag a bit, do you, old chap? You see he's only just gazetted from Sandhurst, a mere infant, in fact, and he's a bit in the blues, I fancy, at having to say good-bye to his mother. He's her only child, and she's a widow. The father was an old friend of mine. Hulloa, ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... plates on an old sock or a rag or a piece of newspaper and packed them into our haversacks together with our mugs and rations for the day—a chunk of bread and a dirty piece of cheese. I tied up my boots—the laces were covered with liquid clay—and put on my puttees which were hard ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... also of what had been her own before marriage. He was the owner of all her real estate and earnings. The wife could make no contract and no will, nor, without her husband's consent, dispose of the legal interest of her real estate.... She did not own a rag of her clothing. She had no personal rights and could hardly call her soul her own. Her husband could steal her children, rob her of her clothing, neglect to support the family: she had no legal redress. If a wife earned ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... like me—What? ye mean that old hag driftin' along the deck? Blast you for a red-headed shell-back, d'ye s'pose I'd take up wid wimmen av your choice? No, I never makes a superior officer jealous;' an' wid that he takes out his rag an' mops th' dent in th' top av his head where there's no hair nor nothin' but grease, an' he draws out his little pestiverous vial ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... lowered his voice. "Your friend's this w'y." He waved his fat red hand toward the door. "Them fools back there 'll think you're tryin' for a berth with Abercrombie, the ship-master. I 'opes you'll not tyke offense at the w'y I 'ad to rag you back ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... with tears in his eyes, and I beckoned the daughter to follow me. We passed into the parlor, drew the curtain over the doorway—and there was nothing but that rag between ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... an English ear—as that the chief merit of a cook is 'the ability to make good bread.' Alas! if that be so, how many inhabitants of London, England, possess a good cook? But Mrs. Harland is free from even a rag of national prejudice. She sternly, and with almost frightful boldness, denies the sacred PIE so much as a place in her book, and she ventures on the following utterance, which we purposely place in italics, and for ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... at that time, had told these gentlemen in the dug-out: "That dug-out is the best boat that can be built by man; the pattern of that came from on high, from the great God of storm and flood, and any man who says he can improve it by putting a stick in the middle of it and a rag on the stick, is an infidel, and shall be burned at the stake;" what, in your judgment—honor bright—would have been the effect upon the circumnavigation of the globe? Suppose the king, if there was one, and ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... said the consul, reoiling his cleaning rag. "No, the other one—that bamboo thing won't hold you. Why, they're cocoanuts—green cocoanuts. The shell of 'em is always a light green before ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... creeping insects, on the brae-side, in a dark night—it kythes bright to the ee, because all is dark around it; but when the morn comes on the mountains, it is, but a puir crawling kail-worm after a'. And sae it shows, wi' ony rag of human righteousness, or formal law-work, that we may pit round us to cover ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... pass, giving way to one of devout thankfulness. I know! I've been there. After all ... Wilhelmina Bennett ... what is she? A rag and a bone ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... washed last Friday, but they do look rather dirty, don't they? Suppose you take a rag and some scouring soap and ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... drawback to Allan's enjoyment was that he obviously wanted to take the records out of her unaccustomed fingers and adjust them himself. He knew how, it appeared, and Phyllis naturally didn't. However, she managed to follow his directions successfully. She had bought recklessly of rag-time discs, and provided a fair amount of opera selections. Allan seemed equally happy over both. After the thing had been playing for three-quarters of an hour, and most of the records were exhausted, Phyllis rang for tea. It was getting a little darker ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... girls had spent a good deal of time with me, but now they no longer knew I existed, so taken up with their father were they. He hung a swing for them between the two rowan trees in the field, taking care to pack plenty of rag under the rope so as not to ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... see a Tank come down the stalls, Lurching to rag-time tunes, or "Home, sweet Home,"— And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls To mock the riddled corpses ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... rallied, and one morning each of them appeared with a kindred posy and deposited her offering. Miss Mitchell turned quite pink at the sight of the eleven floral trophies. She was not absolutely sure how far it was meant for a 'rag.' ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... that he had been his wife's first lover. But a man has to get up pretty early to be that to any woman. The minxes begin to flirt with the milk-bottle, then with the doctor, and then to cherish a precocious passion for the first rag sailor-doll. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... cleverly as if I had never been aff them. But to see what a thing gude braid claith is! Had I been in ony o' your rotten French camlets now, or your drab-de-berries, it would hae screeded like an auld rag wi' sic a weight as mine. But fair fa' the weaver that wrought the weft o't—I swung and bobbit yonder as safe as a gabbart* that's moored by a three-ply cable at ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... become endeared by association with home to the children, and the mother should be slow to replace it. The window draperies may be home-made, such as of rough-finished silk or embroidered canvas, and the floor covered with a thick rag-carpet, preferably of a nondescript or "hit-and-miss" design. If the housekeeper thinks that this is "hominess" carried to excess, she may cover the floor with an ingrain carpet, or better, plain filling of a medium shade, on which a few rag rugs are laid, ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... moderately stiff tooth-brush, clean water and castile soap will keep the teeth white and in good condition. Tooth-powders are injurious. 5. Nickel-plating should not be exposed to dampness, and must be kept bright by wiping with a soft rag. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... God the Father and Maker of all men alone can create such wonders. No men who ever lived could, if they worked all through their lives, make one thing so marvellous as one of these boys. Will you, then, sell one of these miracles, one of your children, for a bit of red rag which any man can make in ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... clearer and the gale abated: there was still a high wind and the dark lake looked threatening, but the worst was over, at least for the time. One of the schooners had disappeared, but the other was coming in under a rag of a sail, plunging and almost unmanageable. As she neared the shore a tug ventured out, and succeeded in reaching her safely, but close to the end of the pier a furious gust broke the fastenings and threw the vessel up on the stone foundation of an old wharf at the western side of the entrance, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... she had availed herself of our pause to whisk homeward—we proceed on our way to Ragland. Welsh precisians, we perceive, call it Rhaglan—and probably attach a nobler meaning to the name than can be forced out of the Saxon Rag and Land; but as novelists and historians have agreed in calling it Ragland, we shall keep to the old spelling in spite of sennachie and bard. A short way beyond Llansaintfraed is the handsome gate and beautiful park of Clytha; the gate surmounted by a magnificent and highly ornamented Gothic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... brother's cradle. As Mam' Chloe was walking with him in the garden, it should have been empty. Whereas, Mary 'Liza was putting her doll-baby to sleep in it. We said "doll-baby" in those days. There was Musidora, my rag-baby, who was a beauty when she ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... carriages and collected in a crowd. They saw a man lying senseless on the footway, drenched in blood, and another man standing beside him with a blood-stained rag on a stick. ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... David to go to the helm. "And you other young master take my oar and pull with all your might, while I sets the sails," he added. A sprit-mainsail, much the worse for wear, and a little rag of a foresail were soon set. It was as much sail as the boat in the rising gale could carry, and away she flew seaward. The old man took the helm, and the boy, who had not spoken, laid in his oar, and facing forward, put his hand on the foresheet to be ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... swung clear and was descending the tree with a lithe agility that seemed quite out of keeping with his quiet and self-possessed manner. The boy, despite his youth, came down more clumsily. On reaching ground, he found his companion sedately polishing his tan boots with a tiny bit of rag he had taken from a box not much bigger than a twenty-five cent piece. Stuart's clothes were torn in half-a-dozen places, Cecil's tweeds ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... begins to boil, slacken the fire; and when it begins to turn red cover it close. As soon as it is of a fine bright red, take it off, as it turns of a blackish muddy colour in a moment if not carefully watched. A small bit of cochineal, tied up in a bit of rag and boiled with it, gives it a beautiful colour. Before you have finished boiling, add barberry juice, to your judgment, which ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... set around and hear all that was said. They sent us off to play in the play houses. We swept a clean place and marked it off and had our dolls down there. We put in anything we could get, mostly broken dishes. Yes maam, I had rag dolls and several of them. No wars real close but I could ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... that the Nantucket people are all healthy, or, if ailing, have no idea of being treated as they treat bluefish,—offered a red rag or a white bone, some taking sham to bite upon, and so be hauled in and die. As regards the salubrity of the climate, I think there can be no doubt. The faces of the inhabitants speak for themselves on that point. I heard an old lady, not very well preserved, who had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... some of the crew being put in irons and logged for having instigated rebellion on the high seas. "I'll teach you to impeach my authority," the stupid, arbitrary tyrant would say; "you shall be fed on the smell of an oil-rag in future, and have your wages forfeited at the end of the voyage into the bargain." Alas, this wicked threat was too often carried into effect so far as the forfeiture of wages and ill-treatment were concerned. Whereas the diplomatic, ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... him. Nah Alick wor a man ov his word, soa he decided net to goa hooam for fear o' forgettin, but he hadn't been sat long i'th' 'Tattered Rag Tap,' befoor he fell asleep' 'When he wakken'd it wor cloise on six o' clock, an' th' furst thowt 'at struck him wor 'at that wor th' time for th' meetin;—for he didn't think 'at it worn't wol the day after; soa swallowin daan another ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... the Piccaninnies didn't have a rag to their backs except a huia feather which they wore in their hair. They were the jolliest, tubbiest, brownest babies you ever saw with tiny nubbly knobs on their shoulders, as if they had started to grow wings and then changed their minds about it, and little furry pointed ears, ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... come to the table the candlelight fell upon a face that was grimy and scratched. His rosy lips were blackened with heat, the smoke of gun-powder. Dirt and rust tarnished the lustre of his short beard. His shirt collar and cuffs were crumpled; the blue silken tie hung down his breast like a rag; a greasy smudge crossed his white brow. He had not taken off his clothing nor used water, except to snatch a hasty drink greedily, for some forty hours. An awful restlessness had made him its own, had marked him with ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... network of treachery spreading through and through us, lying in wait for us, leading us on, buoying us up with false strength, sham elasticity—and then collapsing like a toy balloon, leaving nothing but a rag, a tatter of humanity. Oh, it is shameful! it is disgraceful! Look at me! what business ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards |
