"Rat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... remember—three or four years ago. It really never came to a public trial. He settled her infamous claim out of court. Her lawyers hounded him as if he were a rat." ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... know how to get rid of rats in poultry-houses. One man says that he firmly believes that there are more rats than chickens in his poultry-house, and although he has tried half a dozen different kinds of rat-traps he rarely ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... down and fish in the river. Herons are called cranes, and heronies are craneries. A determined sportsman, who used to eat every heron he could shoot in revenge for their ravages among the trout, at last became suspicious, and examining one, found in it the remains of a rat and of a toad, after which he did not eat any more. Another sportsman found a heron in the very act of gulping down a good-sized trout, which stuck in the gullet. He shot the heron and got the trout, which was not at all injured, only marked on each ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... that there was a rat in the nursery, and thus he forgot to tell her the wonderful news. It did not much matter, for Judy was only three and she would not have understood. But Punch was five; and he knew that going to England would be much nicer than ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... who, sleek and fat, Shiver at a Norway rat. Rough and hardy, bold and free, Be the cat that's made for me; He whose nervous paw can take My lady's lapdog by the neck, With furious hiss attack the hen, And snatch a chicken ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... they walked around the old house and gazed through several of the broken-out windows. Inside all was dirt and cobwebs, with a few pieces of broken-down furniture scattered about. As he looked in one window Tom saw a big rat scurry ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... do? Where can I turn? What hope have I, except, as Swift's phrase has it, to "die like a poisoned rat in a hole"? I could wish that you would think over that phrase a little while, cultivated ladies and gentlemen. It is not pleasant—to die like a poisoned rat ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... limp, and dead. A solemn pause: this was more than any of us had bargained for. I turned the little fellow over, and saw he was quite dead; the mastiff had taken him by the small of the back like a rat, and broken it. ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... is rather larger than a good-sized rat, and rather like that animal in general appearance. Its colour is a red-brown, speckled with grey and black hairs above, but whitish-grey below. The tip of its tail is tufted with black hair, which is rather ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... wanted courage, have ended in unbelief; in "faint possible Theism," which I like considerably worse than Atheism. Such, I could not but feel, deserve the fate they find here; the bat fate: to be killed among the rats as a bird, among the birds as a rat.... Nay, who knows but it is doubts of the like kind in your own mind that keep you for a time inactive even now? For the rest, that you have liberty to choose by your own will merely, is a great blessing: too rare ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... again he examined them in fascinated contemplation. He had already charged them, and he amused himself by thinking of the mischief he could do, by a single touch upon the trigger, to a poor little wood-rat, that once or twice ran along a decaying log some five steps from his feet. But his object being secrecy, the rat brushed his whiskers in safety. Still he amused himself by aiming at this and other objects, until suddenly reminded of the very important ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... known to eat 'bakolo,' as human flesh is termed, and there are a few men who have refrained from cannibalism through superstition. Every Fijian has his special god, who is supposed to have his residence in some animal. One god, for example, lives in a rat, another in a shark, and so on. The worshiper of that god never eats the animal in which his divinity resides, and as some gods are supposed to reside in human beings, their worshipers never eat the flesh ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... black rat-like eyes this way and that, the chief of our wild allies, who held a naked kris from which drops of blood were falling, stood beside Roger. Blodgett was at the wheel, nervously fingering the spokes; Neddie Benson stood behind him, obviously ill at ease, and Davie Paine, who had got ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... father, I heard him shout with joy as he trampled upon Brother John, and had you seen him tossing the subprior as a dog shakes a rat you would perchance have felt even ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the strange sonority of his own name, ran to hid himself under a bookcase in an orifice so small that a rat could not have squeezed himself ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... at little Vivian!' cried Muscula. 'He has the eyes of an angry rat. What vexes him? Is it because he saw Basil touch ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... looks drinking tea," Kate had whispered; "like a thirsty rat dipping its whiskers ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... her!—she began to rout about, and presently she began to dig with her claws in a corner under the ruined window. I was so lost in thought that I stood and watched her in an absent kind of way: but presently I heard her bark and saw her tearing away like mad, as if she had found a rat or a rabbit. I went up to where she was clawing and saw—what do ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... casu, it is equivalent to a Paction. This Mark is given to them, as is alledg'd, by a Nip in any part of the Body, and it is blew. Delrio calls it Stigma, or Character, and alledges that it is sometimes like the impression of a Hare's foot, or the Foot of a Rat or Spider.'[283] ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... crow found a piece of meat on the ground. He picked it up and flew to the top of a tree. While he was sitting there eating his meat, a kasaykasay (a small bird) passed by. She was carrying a dead rat, and was flying very fast. The crow called to her, and said, "Kasaykasay, where did you get that dead rat that you have?" But the small bird did not answer: she flew on her way. When the crow saw that she ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... cunning, and may have lost in wariness and suspicion, yet they have progressed in certain moral qualities, such as in affection, trust- worthiness, temper, and probably in general intelligence. The common rat has conquered and beaten several other species throughout Europe, in parts of North America, New Zealand, and recently in Formosa, as well as on the mainland of China. Mr. Swinhoe (36. 'Proceedings Zoological Society,' 1864, p. 186.), who describes ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... was nothing else left, one pull'd up a wooden Image of the Virgin Mary, rotten, and rat-eaten, and embracing it in his Arms, try'd to swim ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... whisper of the truth coming to his lips. He heard the scurrying flight of a starved wood-rat, a flutter of loose papers, and then the silence of death fell about him. The door of Nada's little room was open and he entered through it. The bed was naked and there remained only the skeleton of things ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... squirrel!" said a man watching the antics of the white rats and mice among Mr. Capper's buns. If this man had only known it, squirrels and rats belong to the same family, that called "rodents," only a squirrel has a much larger tail than a rat ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... Sherring (JRAS. V. 376) says decidedly that Bh[a]rs, or Bh[a]rats, and Ch[i]rus cannot be Aryans. This article is one full of interesting details in regard to the high cultivation of the Bh[a]rat tribe. They built large stone forts, immense subterranean caverns, and made enormous bricks for tanks and fortifications (19 X 11 X 2-1/2 inches), the former being built regularly to east and west (surajbedi). One of their chief cities lay five miles west of Mirz[a]pur, and ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... food, or taking care of its young, or associating with others of its kind, and so on! This is exactly what ought to be and can be. Be it only a bird, I can look at it for some time with a feeling of pleasure; nay, a water-rat or a frog, and with still greater pleasure a hedgehog, a weazel, a roe, or a deer. The contemplation of animals delights us so much, principally because we see in them our ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... only in memory. That part of the county seat is a ghost town. Timbermen and loggers gather no more for revelry at the riverfront saloon. And should you ask the reason, the old river rat will answer with a slow-breaking smile, "See off yonder—locks and dams! Can't run the ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... by the constrainin' atmosphere of a onwelcome and onlawful attachment. And it took all the principle I had by me to git up even a emotion of pity for the one-eyed watcher, whose only recreation seemin'ly durin' that long, long day wuz to watch our party as clost as any cat ever watched a rat hole, and to kinder hang round us. Faith kep' pretty clost to me all day and seemed to take a good deal of comfort watchin' the entrancin' scenery ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... household. It was only through Dom Manuel's happening to arise very early one morning, at the call of nature, that he chanced to be passing through the hall when, at the moment of sunrise, the night-porter turned into an orange-colored rat, and crept into the wainscoting: and Manuel of course said nothing about this to anybody, because it was none of ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... for it all came, when the immeasurable second's length was past, and he was thrown down against the wall, and torn, and shaken like a rat; it all came just as he had felt that it was coming, and it lasted long, a long, long time, while he tried to howl, and the blood only gurgled in his throat. And then, just as many strong hands dragged away the thing of terror, and the light of a lantern ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... rat," muttered the old sailor. "Like as not they've dropped anchor here to see if there are any likely-looking lads waiting to be picked up after dark. Why, there's a good dozen that would be worth anything to a skipper, and I could put the press-gang on to their trail as easy ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... angry, and envious, and dejected, and frantic, and disregard all present things, as becomes a madman to do. I am infinitely pleased, though it is a gloomy joy, with the application of Dr. Swift's complaint, that he is forced to die in a rage, like a rat in a poisoned hole." Let the lover of solitude muse on its picture throughout the year, in this stanza, by the same amiable but ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... very American, that, you know, that picking of holes in excellent material, furbishing up your consciences, running after your motives as if you were ferrets in a rat-hole. If all you have to say against it is that it's too perfect, too happy,—why, then I keep to my own conviction. She'll be peacefully married and back ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... been suspected. I sent her a letter of thanks by her brother, and a little present for her and one for the child. The brother was to give them to her as if from himself, so that the husband should not smell a rat, but of course to make her understand who they ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... the Vicar and the murderer had been very dear friends. It was certainly believed at Turnover that the Vicar and Sam Brattle had for years past spent the best part of their Sundays fishing together. There were tales of rat-killing matches in which they had been engaged,—originating in the undeniable fact of a certain campaign against rats at the mill, in which the Vicar had taken an ardent part. Undoubtedly the destruction of vermin, and, in regard to one species, its preservation for the sake ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... dispersion of, a consequence of superior cunning; supplantation of the native in New Zealand, by the European rat; common, said to be polygamous; numerical proportion ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... wished and wished, and cursed himself for a fool, and wished again.... At last he could bear it no longer, so he went to a water-rat who was so old that he was said to be wise, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... kitchin winder! They put him wery nigh the top. They was obliged to stamp upon it to git it in. I could unkiver it for you with my broom if the gate was open. That's why they locks it, I s'pose," giving it a shake. "It's always locked. Look at the rat!" cries Jo, excited. "Hi! Look! There he goes! Ho! Into ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the fresh-water and sea otter; the musk-rat, and a species of long lizard, with sharp teeth, very like the cayman as regards the head and tail, but with a very short body. It is a very fierce animal, killing whatever it attacks, dwelling in damp, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... to quit," he muttered. "I'd be a blooming jackass to waste any more time here. I'll have to work it naturally, though, or Lynch will smell a rat." ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... he understood and Foster, moving forward quietly, stopped again for a moment at the mouth of the adit. Pete had vanished, but could be trusted to watch the mine as a terrier watches a rat-hole, and Foster knew that if he were attacked and overcome his assailant would not escape. A gray sky hung over the black tops of the firs and the wet snow threw up a curious livid light. It was an unpleasant raw morning, ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... of yours I must repay.— Thou art not yet the man to hold the devil fast!— With fairest shapes your spells around him cast, And plunge him in a sea of dreams! But that this charm be rent, the threshold passed, Tooth of rat the way must clear. I need not conjure long it seems, One rustles hitherward, and soon my voice will hear. The master of the rats and mice, Of flies and frogs, of bugs and lice, Commands thy presence; without fear Come forth and gnaw ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... decked out, she got up into her coach; but her godmother, above all things, commanded her not to stay till after midnight, telling her, at the same time, that if she stayed one moment longer, the coach would be a pumpkin again, her horses mice, her coachman a rat, her footmen lizards, and her clothes become just as ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... said Gordon. "I'd sooner run a mile than fight, any time. I'm like a rat if I'm cornered, but it takes a man with a stockwhip to corner me. I never start fighting till I'm done running. But we needn't get into a row. I vote we ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... reproof, so I turned round and felled him like an ox. He up and at me. We closed just as an awful sea made for the ship. All hands saw it coming and took to the rigging, but I had him by the throat, and went on shaking him like a rat, the men above us yelling, "Look out! look out!" Then a crash as if the sky had fallen on my head. They say that for over ten minutes hardly anything was to be seen of the ship—just the three masts and a bit of the forecastle head and ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... of the Azores are limited to the rabbit, weasel, ferret, rat (brown and black), mouse and bat, in addition to domestic animals. The game includes the woodcock, red partridge (introduced in the 16th century), quail and snipe. Owing to the damage inflicted on the crops by the multitude of blackbirds, bullfinches, chaffinches and green canaries, a reward ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... muddying the water, and away she went in a rage. The guardian of the well was enraged, so he wished her three evil wishes, as a punishment for her wickedness. He wished that she should become three times as ugly as she was, that a dead rat should fall from her mouth whenever she laughed, and that the fox-tail grass might spring up in the footsteps wherever she trod. So it was. From that day the wicked girl was called Maiden Foxtail, and very much talk was there among the folk ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... hall. She glanced at the clock, wondering if it could possibly be the postman already, found it was only ten minutes past four, and dismissed the supposition with a sigh. "I don't—think—I want—" she was beginning slowly, when, of a sudden, there came a tremendous rat-tat-tat on the schoolroom door; the handle was not turned, but burst open; a blast of chilly air blew into the room, and in the doorway stood a tall, handsome youth, with square shoulders, a gracefully poised head, and Peggy Saville's eave-like ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... rat,' said Smyth, who had in his mouth an unlit cigarette, which had fastened itself to his lip and bobbed up and down with his speech, like a miniature baton. 'When a man says a woman's voice is sweet, it means that she has bored him; that what she has to say interests him so little that he turns ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... and merry laugh. The ornaments on the wall of the general's quarters gave Stuart many a topic of badinage. Affecting to believe that they were of General Jackson's selection, he pointed now to the portrait of some famous race-horse, and now to the print of some celebrated rat-terrier, as queer revelations of his private tastes, indicating a great decline in his moral character, which would be a grief and disappointment to the pious old ladies of the South. Jackson, with a quiet smile, replied ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... of the city had quieted. Except for an occasional street car or passing automobile a silence brooded over the downtown district. Stray cats appeared to rummage in battered cans and a huge rat darted between ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... should do her a mischief, cried out; and a voice was heard from behind the hangings: 'Help, help, the queen!' which Hamlet hearing, and verily thinking that it was the king himself there concealed, he drew his sword and stabbed at the place where the voice came from, as he would have stabbed a rat that ran there, till the voice ceasing, he concluded the person to be dead. But when he dragged for the body, it was not the king, but Polonius, the old officious counsellor, that had planted himself as a spy behind ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... title of his majesty. God, who had not punished him, cannot, will not punish me, who have done nothing." A strange sound attracted the young man's attention. He looked round him, and saw on the mantel-shelf, just below an enormous crucifix, coarsely painted in fresco on the wall, a rat of enormous size engaged in nibbling a piece of dry bread, but fixing all the time, an intelligent and inquiring look upon the new occupant of the cell. The king could not resist a sudden impulse of fear and disgust: he moved back towards the door, uttering a loud cry; and as if he ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... get back to the room right away," Tommy suggested, "and have peroxide applied to the wounds. I've known of people dying of blood poison occasioned by rat bites." ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... often seen in cultivation, and seemingly a favorite with many. It belongs to a poisonous family and is a dangerous poison. A decoction of its leaves forms a wash, employed in the south of Europe to destroy vermin; and its powdered wood and bark constitute the basis of an efficacious rat-poison. Children have died from eating the flowers. A party of soldiers in Spain, having meat to roast in camp, procured spits and skewers of the tree, which there attains a large size. The wood having been stripped of its bark, and ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... two of them—so far," Ramos hissed. "Maybe here's our chance, Frank, to really smear that rat!" Ramos' eyes had a battlelight. "All right, Tiflin—approach. These guns are lined ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... his fellow-labourer were soon bathed in sweat, while Douglas's hands, unaccustomed to such toil, grew red and raw and blistered under the friction; for the files, as is quite usual in engineering departments, were unprovided with wooden handles over the rat-tail shank. Moreover, the task threatened to be long and difficult, in consequence of the awkwardness of the conditions. Jim's spell of work came to an end after a quarter of an hour, however, and another couple of men took their places at the chain. But they had not been working ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... women. Fash. Thou sayest true. But now for my reception. Lord Fop. [To TAILOR.] Death and eternal tortures! Sir—I say the coat is too wide here by a foot. Tai. My lord, if it had been tighter, 'twould neither have hooked nor buttoned. Lord Fop. Rat the hooks and buttons, sir! Can any thing be worse than this? As Gad shall jedge me, it hangs on my shoulders like a chairman's surtout. Tai. 'Tis not for me to dispute your lordship's fancy. Lory. There, sir, observe ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... belly with a spotted, ash-gray back and was carried along by the currents like a huge, wide-open shawl. Other rays passed by so quickly I couldn't tell if they deserved that name "eagle ray" coined by the ancient Greeks, or those designations of "rat ray," "bat ray," and "toad ray" that modern fishermen have inflicted on them. Dogfish known as topes, twelve feet long and especially feared by divers, were racing with each other. Looking like big bluish ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... presence, remained, which mingled strangely with the odours of the clover in the neuk, and the sour night-smell of the byre. Again there was a perfect silence. Without, a corncrake ground monotonously. A rat scurried along the rafter. Ebie in the silence and the darkness had almost persuaded himself that he had been dreaming, when his foot clattered against something which fell over on the cobble-stones that paved the byre. He ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... the rat meaning Ratcliffe, the cat Catesby, and the hog King Richard, whose cognisance was a boar. Robert Catesby, the descendant of the "cat," was said to be one of the greatest bigots that ever lived; he was the friend of Garnet, the Jesuit, and had been concerned in many plots against ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... stays all to pieces in saving it from being squeezed out of shape, and now this old brute has made a brandy-bottle of it."—"Oh! oh! my young Miss in disguise," replied the farmer, "I thought I smelt a rat when the Captain left the coach, under pretence of walking up the hill—what, I suppose vou are bound for Gretna, both of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Along by the fences, behind the stack, And one by one, through a hole in the wall, In under the dusty barn they crawl, Dressed in their Sunday garments all; And a very astonishing sight was that, When each in his cobwebbed coat and hat Came up through the floor like an ancient rat. And there they hid; And Reuben slid The fastenings back, and the door undid. "Keep dark!" said he, "While I squint an' see what ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... their sticks; and behind them rode Lenox, muffled to the eyes in poshteen and Balaklava cap, his league of leg barely two feet off the ground; his keen little pony—long since christened 'The Rat'—almost as trustworthy on dangerous ground as the donkey himself. And wherever he led, all self-respecting Kashmiri ponies would ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... as nervous as a rat; and, come to think of it, she was the first one to see 'em after they was picked up. It happened right below lawyer Varnum's, down at the bend of the Corbury road, just round about the time that Ruth got engaged to Ned Hale. The young folks was all friends, and I guess she just can't bear to ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... subjects. Biquet tells the story of a rat he has seen: "He was cheeky and comical, you know. I'd taken off my trotter-cases, and that rat, he chewed all the edge of the uppers into embroidery. Of ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... that there bird was like this," he began. "It were about half after four in the morning, summer before last, an' I was just having what I may call my beauty sleep, when all of a sudding there came a most thundering rat-a-tat-tat at ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... finally assented, and at once exchanged the hair-cloth rocker for the sea chair, which she found a great improvement. When Tim came from school he was told of the addition to the furniture in the parlor by his mother, who added, "I smelt a rat at once, and thought it a pity to spoil the young men's fun. Mrs. Amy don't know nothin' about them chairs, no more than the man in the moon, and if Miss Smith had much worldly sense she'd know they never came from Mrs. Amy. But she hain't. She's nothin' but a child, and don't dream that both them ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... insult our men. But they can fight, Madre de Dios! I like see General Castro take your little Commodore Sloat by the neck. He look like a little gray rat." ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... longer the fashion to regard the British as a degenerate race. Still it is good to know that one of our rat clubs has killed no fewer than three hundred of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... large and park-like area, out of which, within brick walls, the vegetable garden had been carved. Old Jolyon avoided this, which did not suit his mood, and made down the hill towards the pond. Balthasar, who knew a water-rat or two, gambolled in front, at the gait which marks an oldish dog who takes the same walk every day. Arrived at the edge, old Jolyon stood, noting another water-lily opened since yesterday; he would show it to Holly to-morrow, when 'his little sweet' had got over the upset which had followed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sofa, licked Daphne's face, put a foot in Berry's eye, barked, hurled himself across the room to where Jonah was playing Patience, upset the card-table, dashed three times round the room, pretended to unearth a rat from the depths of Jill's chair, and finally flung himself exhausted at ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... of the long line of boxes the Ambler was awaiting his toilette, a dark-brown horse, about sixteen hands, with well-placed shoulders, straight hocks, a small head, and what is known as a rat-tail. But of all his features, the most remarkable was his eye. In the depths of that full, soft eye was an almost uncanny gleam, and when he turned it, half-circled by a moon of white, and gave bystanders that look of strange ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... think of. The tide is right out, and there are mysterious green pools under the pier, full of feathery red sea-weed and little darting fishes. Of course, Sam falls into one in his clothes, and comes out looking like a drowned rat. Akela wrings him out and sends him home to get into dry clothes, for the sun is ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... give my name, ma'am. My false friend, the rat, got me into a sad scrape once; and Rowley insists upon it that a duck destroyed me, which ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... at teetotal meetings, to say nothing of the teas to the poor school children and things of that sort. In short, he had been quite an active politician, in the Tory sense of the word, for months past and the poor Liberals had not smelt a rat until the election was ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... a rat in a trap, I had no alternative but to comply with this man's outrageous demands. Despairingly I plied that abominable instrument of torture, the national bucksaw of America. This is the only American institution ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... you're a wise old desert rat, an' I'm a young fool," he said with a twinkle in his gray eyes. "If Bob Long happens this way give him my regards an' tell him they got the reward notices over in California all right, for I saw 'em stuck ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... Brookes, giving him a defiant look: "why, I know it's that there Leather as is skulking about like a rat, and snatching a sheep ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... a millepede, a milleantenna, he knows too well that as a discerner, one who has lost his self-respect no longer commands, no longer LEADS, unless he should aspire to become a great play-actor, a philosophical Cagliostro and spiritual rat-catcher—in short, a misleader. This is in the last instance a question of taste, if it has not really been a question of conscience. To double once more the philosopher's difficulties, there is also the fact that he demands from himself a verdict, a Yea or Nay, not concerning science, but concerning ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... you said no word outright of wipin' out the officers an' takin' control of the ship. You sneaked up to me in the dark; you felt me out before you said a word; you were like a cat watchin' a rathole. Am I a rat? Am I a sneak? Do I have to be whispered to? No, I'm Harrigan, an' anyone who wants to talk to me has got to ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... I think we might and ought to consider a little more fully, and that is, what guarantees have we that Freistner really has the people at the back of him, that he'll be able to cleanse that rat pit at Berlin of the Hohenzollern and his clan of junkers—the most accursed type of politician who ever breathed? We ought to be very sure about this. Fenn's our man. What ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... little further, and she met a rat. So she said: "Rat! rat! gnaw rope; rope won't hang butcher; butcher won't kill ox; ox won't drink water; water won't quench fire; fire won't burn stick; stick won't beat dog; dog won't bite pig; piggy won't get over the stile; and I shan't get home ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... suppressed. Flore sent her master, as the children say, into disgrace. No more tender glances, no more of the caressing little words in various tones with which she decked her conversation,—"my kitten," "my old darling," "my bibi," "my rat," etc. A "you," cold and sharp and ironically respectful, cut like the blade of a knife through the heart of the miserable old bachelor. The "you" was a declaration of war. Instead of helping the poor man with his toilet, handing him what he wanted, forestalling his wishes, looking ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Colonel had been silent also—for what could he say?—but suddenly all four started in their saddles, and Sadie gave a sharp cry of dismay. In the hush of the night there had come from behind them the petulant crack of a rifle, then another, then several together, with a brisk rat-tat-tat, and then after an interval, ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bloodless cheeks, straight as silk. Temple Grace looked as if he were blighted by lightning; and his deep blue eyes gleamed like a hyaena's. The Baron was least changed. Tom Cogit, who smelt that the crisis was at hand, was as quiet as a bribed rat. ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... And thus fanatic saints, though neither in Doctrine nor discipline our brethren, Are brother Protestants and Christians, As much as Hebrews and Philistines: But in no other sense, than nature Has made a rat our fellow-creature. Lice from your body suck their food; But is a louse your flesh and blood? Though born of human filth and sweat, it As well may say man did beget it. And maggots in your nose and chin As well may claim you for their kin. Yet critics may object, why not? Since lice are brethren ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... World's Fair in New York in 1853 President Pierce might have been seen watching a young man exhibiting a patent rat trap. He was attracted by the enthusiasm and diligence of the young man, but never dreamed that he would become one of the richest men in the world. It seemed like small business for Jay Gould to be exhibiting a rat trap, but ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... arrival a prisoner gave me a young rat which became the solace of an otherwise miserable existence. Nothing could he cleaner in its habits or more affectionate in disposition than this pet member of a despised race of rodents. It passed all its leisure time in preening its fur, and after eating always most ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... sides, and fill it with unnecessary doors that can't be shut, and will not open, and abut on pitchy darkness! I wonder why it is not enough that these distrustful genii stand agape at one's dreams all night, but there must also be round open portholes, high in the wall, suggestive, when a mouse or rat is heard behind the wainscot, of a somebody scraping the wall with his toes, in his endeavours to reach one of these portholes and look in! I wonder why the faggots are so constructed, as to know of no effect ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... one of the worst rat holes in the port. Like as not that youngster would have had his brains kicked out in a brawl, or been fried to a crisp when some drunk got wild with a blaster, before the year was out. He'd done him a real ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... could make nothing of the name they gave it, but wrote it down as best he could—Araughcoune. Another new kind of creature was of the size of a rabbit, grayish white, with black ears and a tail like a rat. It would hang by its tail from a tree, until knocked off with a stick, and then curl up with shut eyes and pretend to be dead. It was excellent eating when roasted with wild yams,—rather like a very ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... be, ''The Cat and the Mouse" as in the headings of the Mac. Edit. and "What befel the Cat with the Mouse," as a punishment for tyranny. But all three Edits. read as in the text and I have not cared to change it. In our European adaptations the mouse becomes a rat. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... little children who had been thrown out on the ash heap were being well taken care of. A large rat, of the kind called Bandicote, had heard them crying and had taken pity on them. She drew them down into her hole, which was close by and where they would be safe. She then called twenty of her friends ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... golf to grandchildren. That is what makes dogs the most sympathetic listeners in the world. Could they speak, I fear me they would only tell us about their puppies, or of their new bone, or of the rat they worried to death the last time they scampered through the wood. Cats are far more egotistical, and consequently far more human. They can't talk, it is true; neither can they listen. By their manner we know exactly what interests them at the moment, and if they appear to sympathise with ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... red fire woke in the heart of the town, And a fox from the glen ran away with the hen, And a cat to the cream, and a rat to the cheese; And the stock-dove coo'd, till a kite dropt down, And a salt wind burnt the blossoming trees; O grief for the promise of May, of May, O grief for the promise ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... once said to Miss Burney of her brother Charles:—'I should be glad to see him if he were not your brother; but were he a dog, a cat, a rat, a frog, and belonged to you, I must needs be glad to see him.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 233. On Nov. 25 she called on him. 'He let me in, though very ill. He told me he was going to try what sleeping out of town might do for him. "I remember," said he, "that my wife, when she ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... certain savages, who leave their children to shift for themselves as soon as they are "tall enough to look into the pot"; or, until, as Reclus declares of Apache babies, "they can pluck certain fruit by themselves, and have caught a rat by their own unaided efforts. After this exploit they go and come ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... who came forward to receive them, was a tall, bony woman of very swarthy complexion, with beady eyes and teeth prominent as a rat's. But if ill-favoured, she seemed, at least, well-intentioned, in addition to which the tricolour scarf of office round La Boulaye's waist was a thing that commanded respect and servility, however much it might be the insignia of a Government of ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... of Rose in cap and apron with a big white fichu at her throat, with one red cheek and the corner of the most kissable mouth on the avenue maddeningly visible, soon drove all memory of the Gladwin mansion and the suspicious antics of the "rat-faced little heathen" out of his mind. His one thought was that Rose would have to cross over the way at the fall of dusk and trundle her millionaire infant charge home for its prophylactic pap. There would be a bare chance for about seven or ten words with Rose. But ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... terrible feeling of hopelessness assailed him. His only chance was to reach the valley where he had little fear of capture; but wounded, as he was, that seemed out of the question, and he saw himself caught like a rat in a trap. In an access of rage at the situation in which he was placed he made another effort to raise himself up on his elbow and peer through the window at the Sierras. The noise that he made, slight though it was, awoke the ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... ostler, "I shall manage that easily enough. I shall bolt the doors and fasten them in, and nothing except a rat could get out then." ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... honey," said Uncle Remus, in a soothing tone, "I'll des snatch down yo' pa buggy umbrell' fum up dar in de cornder, des lak I bin a-doin', en I'll take'n take you und' my arm en set you down on Miss Sally h'a'th des ez dry en ez wom ez a rat'-nes' ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... the King caused Douglas' face to darken and his eyes to blaze. He sprang quickly forward, and seized the wretch by the collar just as Nell forced his grip from her arm. He shook him as a terrier would shake a rat and left him at length sprawling in the middle of the road, his clothes all ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... lean-to was a chaotic place, filled to overflowing with pick-axes, spades, elk-horns, musk-rat traps, mining tools, samples of coal, and curiously-colored pieces of rock. Some skins, stretched on boards, were drying on the wall; some rude fishing-rods stood in one corner. The little room was strangely like the Emperor's ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... long over his pet; but from this experience he acquired a great control over animals and always had a supply in hand to train. He carried snakes and bugs and mice and lizards in his pockets and at one time had a white rat that came very near to filling the place of the lost May. If the boys captured an old squirrel, they generally let it go; but sometimes it was retained ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... rats which, amid squeals from the rats and curses from her, she kills amongst the china collection. Then she comes to me, triumphant, expecting congratulations, and accompanied by mosquitoes, and purrs and kneads upon my chest until she hears another rat. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the morning, hung a small colored print of the Madonna. No wonder the people of this land spent so much time crossing themselves and calling upon her for protection—they certainly had cause to. The room, in his opinion, was a veritable rat-hole; the place little better than what one might expect to find in a ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... their own ancient legend of King Lear. Nennius calls it Cair Lerion; and that unblushing romancer, Geoffrey of Monmouth, makes it at once into Cair Leir, the city of Leir. More probably the name is a mixture of Legionis and Ratae, Leg-rat ceaster, the camp of the Legion at Ratae. This, again, grew into Legra ceaster, Leg ceaster, and Lei ceaster, while the word, though written Leicester, is now shortened by south midland voices to Lester. The third Legionis Castra remained always Welsh, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Cairn resumed. "A water rat rose within a foot of me and a kingfisher was busy on a twig almost at my elbow. Twilight was just creeping along, and I could hear nothing but faint creakings of sculls from the river and sometimes the drip of a punt-pole. I thought ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... my prize into port. Had I been followed by the curse of some revengeful old witch I could scarcely have been compelled to encounter more difficulties and mishaps; such a witch as Shakespeare describes as sailing in a sieve, and like a rat without a tail ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... request you to introduce Mr. Peter Bell to the respectable family of the Fudges. Although he may fall short of those very considerable personages in the more active properties which characterize the Rat and the Apostate, I suspect that even you, their historian, will confess that he surpasses them in the more peculiarly legitimate ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... one day, the boy discovered that this wonderfully wise one could neither read nor write. Everybody that the boy knew, in the grown up world, could read and write. The boy himself could even read "cat" and "rat" and "dog." Vaguely the boy wondered, even then, if the old black saint's lack of those commonplace accomplishments accounted, in any way, for his marvelous knowledge ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... questioned the beadle who was coming out of the presbytery. The old Church rat replied:—"Oh, those here are not bad; they are not Prussians, according to what I hear. They come from farther off, I don't know exactly where; and they have all left wives and children at home; they are not so fond of war, I assure you; I am positive that over there they ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... last volume (16) of your interesting miscellany, I was much amused with a humorous legend at page 108, called the Rat's Tower, and according to your reference, having turned to page 68, of vol. xii. was equally entertained with the same laughable and well told story versified. This humorous production is extracted from a work entitled, if I mistake not, "The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... overnight. Some few, in the earlier days of frenzied fiction, had played the market, others the ponies, still others had gone West and developed abandoned gold-mines or obscure water- powers. A number also had grown disgustingly rich from patenting rat-traps or shoe-buttons. One young man had discovered a way to keep worms out of railroad-ties and had promptly bludgeoned the railroad companies out of ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... apologised for the stupidity with which he had fallen aside, thanked his recapturers as for a service, and rejoined the caravan with all his usual gallantry and cheerfulness of mien and bearing. But it is certain he had smelled a rat; for from thenceforth he and Secundra spoke only in each other's ear, and Harris listened and shivered by the tent in vain. The same night it was announced they were to leave the boats and proceed by foot, a circumstance which (as it put an end to the confusion of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at Batavia the comfortless "dos-a-dos," colloquially known as the sado, a vehicle resembling an elementary Irish car, and drawn by a rat-like Timor pony transports us to the fashionable suburb of Weltevreden, away from the steamy port and fever-haunted commercial capital. The march of modern improvement scarcely affects old-world Java, where jolting sado and ponderous milord remain unchanged ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... they made it one of those creatures that sing and croak in the sides of ponds and marshes.14 When Rosalind finds the verses with which her enamored Orlando had hung the trees, she exclaimed, "I was never so berhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat, which I can hardly remember." One of the earliest popular introductions of this Oriental figment to the English public was by Addison, whose Will Honeycomb tells an amusing story of his friend, Jack Freelove, how that, finding his mistress's pet monkey alone one day, he wrote an autobiography ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... been cooler I should have tried to fence a little, since my only resource—I being caught like a rat in a trap that way—was to try to gain time; but I was all in a quiver, just as I suppose he was, with the excitement of the situation and with the excitement of the thunderous night, and his short sharp question jostled ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... cruet stands (with nothing in the bottles), bundles of toothpicks, last week's bread, bright green pickles (that had been dropped into some kind of pungent, commercial acid which would have made excellent rat poison); paper napkins with Corot landscapes printed on them; and plenty of gingersnaps and lady fingers, pretty thoroughly flyblown; the whole supplemented with sheaves of wild flowers cut in the fields with ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... perhaps in a few days she will be mine, yet here I live in this rat-hole!" he said to himself this evening, as he went down the narrow passage into the little yard behind the shop. This evening bundles of boiled herbs were spread out along the wall, the apprentice was scouring ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... just now with the species which is most difficult to catch. They were giants with long gray fur; but if I am not mistaken, there exist black and red kangaroos, rock kangaroos, and rat kangaroos, which are more easy to get hold of. It is reckoned that there are about a ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... southern bank with no sand on the north to confine it or break its force. We made fourteen miles, and halted on the north, after which we had a violent gust about seven o'clock. One of the hunters saw in a pond to the north which we passed yesterday a number of young swans. We saw a large rat, and killed a wolf. Another of our men had a stroke of the sun; he was bled, and took a preparation of nitre ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... impetuous Cow with crumpled horn, Whereon the exacerbating hound was torn, Who bayed the feline slaughter-beast that slew The Rat predaceous, whose keen fangs ran through The textile fibers that involved the grain That lay ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... seeks the etymology of this word in the traditions of the Malays and in books written by themselves. Thus, in a work which has the greatest authority among them, and which is entitled Sul[-a]lates-sal[-a]tin, or Sej[-a]rat mal[-a]yu, ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... was younger and looked less like a drowned rat, remained in the bow, staring back in apprehension at the Indian. The moment he could do ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... and put a few drops of rhodium inside; they are fond of it. Cats are, however, the most reliable rat-traps. There is no difficulty in poisoning rats, but they often die in the walls, and create a dreadful odor, hard to get rid of. When poisoning is attempted, remove or cover all water vessels, even ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... horned figure with a torque occurs on an altar from Reims. He presses a bag, from which grain escapes, and on it an ox and stag are feeding. A rat is represented on the pediment above, and on either side stand Apollo and Mercury.[90] On the altar of Saintes is a squatting but headless god with torque and purse. Beside him is a goddess with a cornucopia, ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... month's due of wages, already trebled in virtue of a service involving risk, should be substantially increased.... But Trudi only snorted and shook her head, and Lady Hannah found herself confronting not only a rat determined upon abandoning a sinking ship, but malignantly inclined to hasten the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... for cooking the latter animal and preferring it to hotchiwitchu barbecued, or ragout of boror. 'You are but half Rommany, brother,' they would say, 'and you feed gorgiko-nes (LIKE A GENTILE), even as you talk. Tchachipen (IN TRUTH), if we did not know you to be of the Mecralliskoe rat (ROYAL BLOOD) of Pharaoh, we should be justified in driving you forth as a juggel-mush (DOG MAN), one more fitted to keep company with wild beasts and ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... tried to push the grating aside. It refused to budge, and he grew frantic, for his breath was fast leaving him. It looked as if he would be drowned like a rat in ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... to Grumpy. "I must stop and settle with her. She has gone too far." And leaving Grumpy to find the rat hole without her help, Mrs. Hen fluttered across the henyard with her head thrust forward, to give her meddlesome neighbor a number of hard pecks and so teach her to mind ...
— The Tale of Grumpy Weasel - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... get out of the ship, you rat," Pyotr Stepanovitch was thinking as he went out into the street. "Well, if that 'imperial intellect' inquires so confidently of the day and the hour and thanks me so respectfully for the information I have given, we mustn't doubt of ourselves. [He grinned.] H'm! But he really isn't stupid... and ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the gunwale to the keel, Rat riddled, bilge bestank, Slime-slobbered, horrible, I saw her reel And drag her oozy flank, And sprawl among the deft young waves, that laughed And leapt, and turned in many a sportive wheel As she thumped ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... gap ban cap an bad bag can map as mad gag fan nap at pad hag pan rap ax sad lag ran hap rat gad tag tan jam sat ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... cook for them. I remebers that me and some other lil gals had a play house, but when they came nigh I got skeered. I just ducked through a hole in the fence and ran out in the field. One of the soldiers seed me and he hollers 'look at that rat run'." ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... face; she is tricked out in a net cap attached to a false front set on awry, and shuffles into the room in her slipshod fashion. She is an oldish woman, with a bloated countenance, and a nose like a parrot's beak set in the middle of it; her fat little hands (she is as sleek as a church rat) and her shapeless, slouching figure are in keeping with the room that reeks of misfortune, where hope is reduced to speculate for the meanest stakes. Mme. Vauquer alone can breathe that tainted air without ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... seven fellos an two hundred rats. I never used to take much stock in those rat stories but I certinly take off my hat to them now. Thats about all you can take off unless you want to get eaten. These fellos will eat anything from the hobnails out of your shoes to a bag of Bull. They make a goat look like a dispeptik. You dont notice them while ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter |
