"Rat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... motion of his arm through the wind and rain, summoned a kind of little, white, wooden sarcophagus which was skipping near us on the waves, sculled by two yellow boys stark naked in the rain. The craft approached us, I jumped into it, then through a little trap-door shaped like a rat-trap that one of the scullers threw open for me, I slipped in and stretched myself at full length on a mat in what is called the ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... was in the middle of the night. I've seen as much myself when I waked up in the middle of the night. I took a rat for a tiger once." ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... impossible; she should be obliged to tell Bessie; but she did not oppose the young man whose manner was so masterful, and whom she led to the great, cheerless room with its smoky chimney down which the winter wind was roaring with a dismal sound, while across the hearth a huge rat ran ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... the few steps that led to the front door, and knocked; but as she could only just reach the high knocker, she was not likely to alarm anybody with the noise she made. After a great many little faint raps, which, if anybody heard them, might easily have been mistaken for the attacks of some rat's teeth upon the wainscot, Ellen grew weary of her fruitless toil, and of standing on tiptoe, and resolved, though doubtfully, to go round the house and see if there was any other way of getting ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Her body was thick and long, yet she looked like a dwarf, for she scarcely had any legs, only enormous knees and feet; and her garments were old ragged horse-rugs tied round her body with thongs of hide. She stared at me out of a pair of small black rat eyes, then, setting down her bundle, asked me what I wanted. I told her I was a tired traveller, and wanted food and shelter. 'Shelter you can have: food there is none,' she said; then, taking up her sticks, she ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... is no member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals anywhere near," Kelson exclaimed, eyeing Hamar resentfully. "Wouldn't a mouse or a rat ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... what do you want?" inquired Nebuchadnezzar, with the kind of lisp that turns a rat ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... draw a badger? I am badgered by him, and will blame him, ay, ban him, for he is my curse, my bane; why should I not curse him as Noah cursed that foul whelp Canaan? Beshrew him for a block-head, a little black-browed beetle, a blot of ink, a shifting shadow, a roving rat, a mouse, yes, sir, a very mouse, that creeps in and out of its hole when the old cat is away. Away, Mr. Notary, away; go, good Monsieur Veuillot. There are more conceptions in man than he has yet expressed either in statutes or in testaments. Go; you are a deed-drawer; I'll be a deed doer: ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... length. Out of the seventy million acres of land, forty million are deemed worthy of cultivation. The soil being light and easily worked favors the agriculturist, and New Zealand is free from all noxious animals and venomous reptiles. It is stated that no animal larger than a rat was found here by the discoverers. The remote situation of the country, surrounded by the greatest extent of ocean on the globe, has kept it in a measure unknown to the rest of the world, even in these days of rapid communication with all parts of the earth. Wellington, the capital, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... is no big game to put your courage and your pulse to the test there is always a troop of smaller animals that make game of you and prove your force of resistance. A rat bites your heel whilst you are asleep; the leeches suck your blood; all sorts of insects sting you. These little annoying incidents irritate flesh and spirit and may be the cause of feverishness, but a dose of quinine and a compress over the ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... seventeenth-century Virginia. The Great Plague of London (1665) carried away 69,000 persons, and other cities of Europe had even more disastrous epidemics. During the two years before the first settlers arrived at Jamestown, over 2000 victims were buried in London. The accounts of the ocean voyage indicate rat-infested ships. Ships of the London Company reported plague and death aboard. Virginians took pains to describe their illnesses, and there would have been little difficulty in recognizing this well-known ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... the aid of regulars. But they were not the same sort of men as those who had besieged Louisbourg thirteen years before. The best had volunteered then. The worst had been enlisted now. Of course, there were a few good men with some turn for soldiering. But most were of the wastrel and wharf-rat kind. Wolfe expressed his opinion of them in very vigorous terms: 'About 500 Rangers are come, which, to appearance, are little better than la canaille. These Americans are in general the dirtiest, most contemptible, cowardly dogs that you can conceive. There is no depending upon 'em in ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... the cranes. According to some historians, the Pygmies used to go to the battle, mounted on the backs of goats and rams; but such animals as these must have been far too big for Pygmies to ride upon; so that, I rather suppose, they rode on squirrel-back, or rabbit-back, or rat-back, or perhaps got upon hedgehogs, whose prickly quills would be very terrible to the enemy. However this might be, and whatever creatures the Pygmies rode upon, I do not doubt that they made a formidable appearance, armed with sword and spear, and bow and arrow, blowing their tiny ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... which the air had entered and moaned up the broad-mouthed flue that opened above the range. This was the ominous 'signal' we had heard in answer to the footsteps. The dust was thick over everything, and the only signs of life were the rat-tracks on the floor. We stood still for a few moments, overwhelmed at this solution of the occult 'influence' that had so subtly acted on Annie's nerves, and filled me ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... the Children, at her House, whither her Brother had Removed them. And that sometimes, the Children (only) would see things like Mice, run about the House; and one of them suddenly snap'd one with the Tongs, and threw it into the Fire, where it screeched out like a Rat. At another time, a thing like a Bee, flew at the Face of the younger Child; the Child fell into a Fit; and at last Vomited up a Two-penny Nail, with a Broad Head; affirming, That the Bee brought this Nail, ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... many people thought and did forty years ago. I have no doubt, from my recollection of my Aunt Melissa, Sophronia's mother, that she read all her children's letters. I know she searched my pockets once, thinking I had stolen sugar; I hadn't, that time, and my white rat was in my pocket, and bit her, and I ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... this enterprize of Deacon Henzy's, he had got up a great invention, a new rat trap, that wuz peculier and ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... had at times used it as a shelter when caught over night in its vicinity. During subsequent visits he found an overhang in the rock behind the original fill that made a second smaller chamber and in this he had as a boy cached his mink and rat traps and the discard of his ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... he can't," cried Farmer Tallington, "he'll die like a rat in a corner, biting, so look out. He's got that long gun of his loaded and ready for the first man who goes up to yon hut, ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... disgorged its bowels—riveted plates and dishes, halves of china bowls, cracked tumblers, broken wineglasses, phials of forgotten physic, papers of unknown powders, seeds and dried herbs, tops of teapots, and stoppers of departed decanters—from the rag hole in the garret, to the rat hole in the cellar, no place escapes unrummaged. It would seem as if the day of general doom had come, and the utensils of the house were dragged ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... from a few yards to nearly a mile in thickness, of fine or coarse grained, dark-green hornblendic slate; this again often passing into chloritic schist. These passages seem chiefly due to changes in the mica, and its replacement by other minerals. At Rat Island I examined a mass of chloritic schist, only a few yards square, irregularly surrounded on all sides by the gneiss, and intricately penetrated by many curvilinear veins of quartz, which gradually BLEND ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... still, as when he opened it an hour before; the leaves were motionless, and the light of the stars showed the placid fields on both sides of the brook quite empty of visible life. Adam walked round the house, and still saw nothing except a rat which darted into the woodshed as he passed. He went in again, wondering; the sound was so peculiar that the moment he heard it it called up the image of the willow wand striking the door. He could ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... not, Ellen—would you? I'd rather err on the safe side, seems to me. Do let's be polite, at least! Yes, I'll knock," and a timid rat-tat-tat, made by a small kid-covered knuckle, announced the first visit of the present owner ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... I was wet as a drowned rat, and had a black mark across my nose. I would have made ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... aprons bags which they filled with sugar from the casks; or they took with them bladders for stealing the rum. Some waded about in the mud at low tide to catch anything that was thrown to them from the ships. Some obtained admission to the ship as rat-catchers, and in that capacity were able to carry away plunder previously concealed by their friends; some, called scuffle-hunters, stood on the quays as porters, carrying bags under their long white aprons in which to ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... but food is at once placed around it, and ashes are liberally strewn over and around the corpse, to enable the relatives to discover, by the tracks, into what kind of animal the dead has changed. At night some fox or coyote, polecat or rat, is sure to be attracted by the smell of the food; but the people believe that it was the departed who returned in the form of the animal to get his food. A shaman, without even looking at the tracks, may be able to tell what animal shape ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... get overtaken," he owned. "I was awful discouraged, the night I struck here. I didn't care whether school kept or not. But 'twas Lew Parker's whiskey," he added, twinkling at her. "That whiskey'd poison a rat." ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... 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' inside a fodder-stack." ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... generally considered rat and mouse destroyers. I dare say they are, though the two I once kept (I drowned them in the cistern) were more notorious as crockery destroyers than anything else. I thought, on the whole, that they exterminated more raw beef than rats and mice, so I consigned ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... wasn't trained to hunt, and never killed a rat, And isn't much on tricks or looks or birth—well, what of that? That might be said of lots of folks whom men call great and wise, As well as of that yellow dog that ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... or Canada pouched rat, is a very remarkable burrower, as it will dig under-ground passages extending in lateral galleries in all directions. It is difficult to capture, as it keeps open a means of escape on every side. The mischief ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... day. He does so every year. Out of hearing of all the clamour, the rural Pan may be found stretched on Ranmore Common, loitering under Abinger pines, or prone by the secluded stream of the sinuous Mole, abounding in friendly greetings for his foster-brothers the dab-chick and water-rat. ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... had not 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 for those that could use it so well; nay, often it is difficult ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... you wish to remember me in your prayers, je suis le Comte Blowfly, du Rat Mort, Clacton-on-Sea. Telegraphic address, Muckheap. And there's ten francs ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... bird known as the loon, to whom he appealed for aid in the task of restoring the world. The loon dived in search of a little mud, as material for reconstruction, but could not reach the bottom. A musk-rat made the same attempt, but soon reappeared floating on his back, and apparently dead. Manabozho, however, on searching his paws, discovered in one of them a particle of the desired mud, and of this, together with the body ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... beautiful. Her skin was like a trout pool—clear and yet brown. I never saw any eyes like her eyes, though our neighbour's—the Water Rat—at times recalls them. Her hair was the colour of ripe blackberries in a hot hedge—very ripe ones, with the bloom on. She moved like a snake. I have seen my father chase a snake more than once, and I have seen ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... naked desolation. This, however, Scott told me, was an ancient hereditary property called Lauckend, about as valuable as the patrimonial estate of Don Quixote, and which, in like manner, conferred an hereditary dignity upon its proprietor, who was a laird, and, though poor as a rat, prided himself upon his ancient blood, and the standing of his house. He was accordingly called Lauckend, according to the Scottish custom of naming a man after his family estate, but he was more generally known through the country round by the name of Lauckie Long Legs, from the length ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... a chaperon visit us. I feared it would become known, and we would receive a reprimand. She was decidedly giddy, and she sat on the arm of the easy-chair there and giggled and said it must be so nice to be a boy and go to Yale. After a while I began to smell a rat. I got up and took a closer look at her. Say, she was gotten up in great shape! It was that little ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... that yellow Satan," he said. "I would sacrifice a year of my life to see his rat's body on the ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... your evidence, Mullins, but if we go into this case it's no use letting the police smell the competitive rat too soon. Inquests are not in my line, and they'd have wondered what the devil I was doing there, especially as you refrained from saying you were ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... fight, won't he! He thinks I will die like a rat in a trap with all my life before me. I will not. I offered him a fair chance of revenging himself—I would have fired into the air—and if he won't take it is his own look-out, damn him! He can shoot me at sight if he ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... the rich,—not tasking their ingenuity to devise new laws, but faithfully enforcing those which were already made, rather bending their attention to prevent evil than to punish it; ever recollecting that civil magistrates should consider themselves more as guardians of public morals than rat-catchers employed to entrap public delinquents. Finally, he exhorted them, one and all, high and low, rich and poor, to conduct themselves as well as they could, assuring them that if they faithfully and conscientiously complied with this golden rule, there was no danger but that they would ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 more than five minutes ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... talking about the little chap, and screeching that 'folks like him oughtn't to be admitted in a place that's SUPPOSED to be for ladies and gentlemen,' and 'Paul, will you kindly call the manager, so I can report this dirty rat?' and—Oof! Maybe I wasn't glad when I could sneak inside and ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... sights and sounds which were most prominent among the illusions of my childhood. Sights and sounds were equally distinct and lifelike. I have run up-stairs obedient to a spectral call. Every successive night for a fortnight, my childish breath was stilled by the proceedings of a spectral rat, audible, never visible. It nightly, at the same hour, burst open a cupboard door, scampered across the floor, and shook the chair by my bedside. Wide awake and alone in the broad daylight, I have heard ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... loft. This character he assumed, and no doubt it fitted him better than either the English cobbler or the German doctor; besides, as he said, sham court costume is always the easiest to contrive: but Cherry was by no means prepared to find the Rat-like poet the secret admirer of a daughter of the Serene Highness who ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with their varied complaints. A child whose arm has been badly scalded months before, and who has received no treatment during that period but an application of rat oil and charred matting, is in a revolting condition, a pitiful sight indeed. A young woman who has lost her eyesight attributes her affliction to a fit of violent temper, when for a whole day she worked herself into a frenzy, and cried until the power of sight was gone. The ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... to find auguries in things they witnessed. For example, if they left their house and met on the way a serpent or rat, or a bird called Tigmamanuguin which was singing in the tree, or if they chanced upon anyone who sneezed, they returned at once to their house, considering the incident as an augury that some evil might befall them if they should continue their journey—especially ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... the water butt where the maids come to draw water for the scrubbing at 5 A.M.? And the boiler room gets in its best bumps for nineteen, and the patent ventilators work just next door, and there's a pet rat that makes his headquarters in the wall between eighteen and nineteen, and the housekeeper whose room is across the hail is afflicted with a bronchial cough, nights. I'm wise to the brand of welcome that you fellows hand out to us women on the ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... dangerous rat!" thought the innkeeper, frowning. "He has the look of a priest, but he wears a dark coat. He has left gold and jewels with me to the value of a talent, and he neither eats meat nor drinks wine. He must be a great prophet or a very ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... Froghole, Foxhole). What an exhibit for London! Did he realise his own value, he would soon come forth. I joke, but the existence of this antique person is firmly believed in. Sparrows are called 'spadgers.' The cat wandering about got caught in the rat-clams—i.e. a gin. Another cat was the miller's favourite at the windmill, a well-fed, happy, purring pussy, fond of the floury miller—he as white as snow, she as black as a coal. One day pussy was ingeniously ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... of your refractory lads, you were to shut him in the cellar. A storm comes on during the night, the gutter gets choked up, the cellar fills with water, and next morning you find the little cherub drowned like a rat in his hole?" ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... Rat, Omisalj, Ploce, Pula, Rijeka, Sibenik, Split, Vukovar (inland waterway port on ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... 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, and ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Dereham is more like a little white rat than a man, and swears more than he converses—which would be very shocking if it were not for his lisp, which makes it very funny—needless to say, my diary dear, your Molly is not in love with ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... health, and thence, after a short stay, to Ireland, leaving behind him a letter which, says Pope, "affected me so much that it made me like a girl." It was a gloomy parting, and the last. The stern Dean retired to die "like a poisoned rat in a hole," after long years of bitterness, and finally of slow intellectual decay. He always retained perfect confidence in his friend's affection. Poor Pope, as he says in the verses on ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... most sadly flurried; And, coming back, thrust out her head, Which, sticking there, she said, "This is the hole, there can't be blunder: What makes it now so small, I wonder, Where, but the other day, I pass'd with ease?" A rat her trouble sees, And cries, "But with an emptier belly; You enter'd ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... of trade; and they have noble granaries for depositing it. Apparently there is a great conflux of people, and much business stirring. I quickly perceived, in the midst of this ever-moving throng, my old friend the vender of rat-destroying powders—busied in the exercise of his calling, and covered with his usual vestment of white, spotted or painted with black rats. He found plenty of hearers and plenty of purchasers. All was animation and bustle. In the midst of it, a man came forward to the edge of a bank—below ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the shepherd say if I brought home one of his hated enemies no bigger than a rat? The young rabbit made waiting still more painful, being far enough from the hedge to get a clear view into the recess if anything attracted his notice. Why the shepherd hated rabbits was because the sheep would not feed where they had worn their runs in the grass. Not the least movement was ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... trial began Judge Post sent for a noted gunfighter named Danny Miller. And during all those weary three months of the trial he could be seen trotting around after Post, his mustache turned up, a la William of Germany, like a rat terrier following a mastiff, to the infinite amusement of the small boy and utter disgust of sensible men. Gibson, the noted San Francisco detective, was here, assisted by other detectives and a dozen or more local head hunters, who were after a share of the big reward. ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... than Thracian growth. Now Wolf is all to her: Wolf enters in At midnight; I am a cypher in her eyes; The poor Megarian, nowhere in the race. All would go right, if I could once unlove: But now, you wot, the rat hath tasted tar. And what may cure a swain at his wit's end I know not: Simus, (true,) a mate of mine, Loved Epichalcus' daughter, and took ship And came home cured. I too will sail the seas. Worse men, it may be better, are afloat, I shall ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... foremen what wages these men and women received. He told me. It seemed impossible that human life could be maintained upon such a pittance. I then asked whether they ever ate meat. "No," he said, "except when they had a rat or mouse" "A rat or mouse!" I exclaimed. "Oh yes," he replied, "the rats and mice were important articles of diet,—just as they had been for centuries in China. The little children, not yet able to work, fished for them in the sewers, ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... donkey-cart, broken a gate, and finally, on arriving at the place of her birth, had, according to the farmer, "fired the divil's pelt of a kick into her own mother's stomach". Moreover, she "hadn't as much sound skin on her as would bait a rat-trap"—I here quote Mr. Trinder—and she had fever in all ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... determined to save at least this last relic as a trophy of his prowess, the young Inca gave orders for the head to be hauled inboard; but upon the first attempt to do this, one of the monsters made a savage rush and seized the head in its great jaws, worrying it as a dog worries a rat, giving utterance as it did so to a succession of horrid grunting kind of growls that caused most of the hearers to break into a cold perspiration. So tenaciously did the brute retain its grip that for a few minutes the onlookers were ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... to see poor wild animals persecuted and murdered, lose my appetite for dinner at hearing the screams of a hare pursued by greyhounds, and am silly enough to feel disgust and horror at the squeals of a rat in the fangs of a terrier, which one of the sporting tribe once told me were the sweetest ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... 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 so, this man ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... be there always," exclaimed Maitre Valandier. "Unless ... unless Citizen Broquet, who no doubt smelt a rat, succeeded in ferreting them out. But this is an unlikely supposition, for Citizen Broquet ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... him something like an education—Keredec's phrase is 'restore mind to his soul'! What must have been quite as vital was to get him out of his horrible wife's clutches. And they did it, for she could not find him. But she picked up that rat in the garden out yonder—he'd been some sort of stable-manager for Harman once—and set him on the track. He ran the poor boy down, and yesterday she followed him. Now it amounts to a species ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... may be two species of water-rats. Ray says, and Linnaeus after him, that the water-rat is web-footed behind. Now I have discovered a rat on the banks of our little stream that is not web-footed, and yet is an excellent swimmer and diver: it answers exactly to the mus amphibius of Linnaeus (see Syst. Nat.), which he says 'natat in fossis et urinator.' I should ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... Dogs in their habits and instincts. It is a physiological peculiarity which leads the Greyhound to chase its prey by sight—that enables the Beagle to track it by the scent—that impels the Terrier to its rat-hunting propensity—and that leads the Retriever to its habit of retrieving. These habits and instincts are all the results of physiological differences and peculiarities, which have been developed from a common stock, at least ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... their dog's name, or, indeed, to wonder about anything at all, Snap made another frantic leap, and seizing hold of the old gentleman's white beard, dragged it off his chin, and darted off round the table with it in his mouth, shaking it as if it were a rabbit or a rat! ...
— The Gap in the Fence • Frederica J. Turle
... did you get by the lodge, Joe?" inquired Drysdale. Joe, be it known, had been forbidden the college for importing a sack of rats into the inner quadrangle, upon the turf of which a match at rat-killing had come off between the terriers of two gentlemen-commoners. This little event might have passed unnoticed, but that Drysdale had bought from Joe a dozen of the slaughtered rats, and nailed them on the doors of the four ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... "Astonishing," said She, "I can't find the top of him!" Then She took one of his spines between two fingers and carried him home that way—I dancing behind her—and put him in her work basket. After a while the horrid beast unrolled himself, stuck out a pig-like nose, opened two shiny rat's eyes and raised himself, holding fast by his little paws, which were exactly like a mole's. "How pretty he is," She cried, "a real little black pig." I stood near the table groaning with covetousness, but She didn't pluck him for me, not then, ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... crippled in money matters. They played the deal out, and nearly all were broke. At the end of the deal I said, "Boys, I will have to quit you, as it is too much of a seesaw game;" and then they commenced to smell a rat, and you would have given $100 to have heard them cursing for not watching me shuffle that deal. The game closed with nearly all the money won; some of them I had to loan money, to pay ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... man in the moon, Coming back too soon From the famous town of Norwich, Caught up the dish, Said, "It's just what I wish To hold my cold plum-porridge!" Gave the cow a rat-tat, Flung water on the cat, And sent him away like a rocket. Said, "O Moon there you are!" Got into her car, And went off with ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... necessarily proportioned to the quantity of light which that transaction affords, as to the way in which good or evil may hereafter be produced. The poisoning of an emperor is in one sense a far more serious matter than the poisoning of a rat. But the poisoning of a rat may be an era in chemistry; and an emperor may be poisoned by such ordinary means, and with such ordinary symptoms, that no scientific journal would notice the occurrence. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of divers mates of East Indiamen, smoked his smuggled cigars under the very nose of the Custom House, and made appointments on 'Change with men in glazed hats and round jackets pretty well every day. On the Surrey side of the river was a small rat-infested dreary yard called 'Quilp's Wharf,' in which were a little wooden counting-house burrowing all awry in the dust as if it had fallen from the clouds and ploughed into the ground; a few fragments ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... stop at the little stalls on the stairs, and they have bought there each a candle. The old man has a plain taper, but the little lad must have one with his emblem on it. Each day has its own sign, a tiger for Monday, and so on, and the lad buys a candle like a little rat, for his birthday is Friday, and the father and son go on to the platform. There they kneel down side by side, the old man and the little chubby lad, and they, too, say that all is misery and delusion. ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... if you write rejoinders they have a contributor working for them for nothing, and one whose writing will be much more acceptable to their readers than any that comes from their own anonymous scribes. It is very disagreeable to be worried like a rat by a dog; but why should you go into the kennel and unnecessarily put yourself in the way of it?" The Doctor had said this more than once to clerical friends who were burning with indignation at something that had been written ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... out of the heap. A fang pierced his eye. Even then no cry came from Wapi, the Walrus. He heaved upward with his giant body. He found another throat, and it was then that he rose above the pack, shaking the life from his victim as a terrier would have shaken a rat. For the first time the Eskimos saw him, and out of their superstitious souls strange cries found utterance as they sprang back and shrieked out to Rydal that it was a devil and not a beast that had waited for them in the trail. Rydal threw up his rifle. ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... hands; Nor evil counsellors to bring To justice that seduce the King; 770 Nor for the worship of us men, Though we have done as much for them. Th' AEgyptians worshipp'd dogs, and for Their faith made internecine war. Others ador'd a rat, and some 775 For that church suffer'd martyrdom. The Indians fought for the truth Of th' elephant and monkey's tooth, And many, to defend that faith, Fought it out mordicus to death. 780 But no beast ever was so slight, For man, as for his God, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... before me, moving backwards and keeping his eyes fixed upon mine, as I have seen a rat do when a snake is about to swallow it. Now we were upon the edge of the crater, and looking over I saw an awful sight. For there, some thirty feet beneath us, the red-hot lava glowing sullenly beneath a shifting pall of smoke, rolled and spouted ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... kind of cry, and whipped up-stairs into the cabinet. It was but for one minute that I saw him, but the hair stood upon my head like quills. Sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask upon his face? If it was my master, why did he cry out like a rat, and run from me? I have served him long enough. And then..." The man paused and passed his ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... Eloise 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 ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... hut is Mameena?" asked Saduko sternly, while I, smelling a rat, began to chuckle ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... he cried. 'This is some of your work. Now we are all undone. And my mistresses? SACRE! if I had that gun I would shoot you like a rat.' ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... ill-tempered boys who used to make me anxious. Those were definite faults and brought definite punishment; it was the hard-hearted, virtuous, ambitious, sensible boys, who were good-humoured and respectable and selfish, who bothered me; one wanted to shake them as a terrier shakes a rat—but there was nothing to get hold of. They were a credit to themselves and to their parents and to the school; and yet they ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... inch from the bottom of one slot to another. Take the compass and divide to seven-thirty-seconds of an inch and press one point at G, D, A, E, allowing a fair margin at both sides of the ebony, not above, say one-eighth of an inch good. Then use either of the rat tail files, 27, and carefully file to depths required, which must be so as to allow a playing card to slip comfortably under the E string when taut, a little more space for the other three being necessary, especially the G. Rub a ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... cavalry unexpectedly ran into a heavy force of Germans, and before we realized what was happening we were in a very warm corner indeed. Bullets were kicking up little spurts of dust about us; bullets were tang-tanging through the trees and clipping off twigs, which fell down upon our heads; the rat-tat-tat of the German musketry was answered by the angry snarl of the Belgian machine-guns; in a field near by the bodies of two recently killed cuirassiers lay sprawled grotesquely. The Belgian troopers were stretched flat upon the ground, a veteran English correspondent was giving ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... one of the Bugis settlements which have large pineapple plantations. Such delicious pineapples as those in northern Borneo, with an unusual abundance of juice and very slightly acid, I had never before tasted. A gigantic white rat, about the size of a rabbit, which had been caught working havoc with the pineapples, was offered me for sale alive. I afterward regretted that, owing to the great difficulty of transportation, I declined, as no doubt it was a rare, if ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... board, his innocent heart long quiet, and all warm with sunshine. His long hind legs were stiff, his tiny forepaws clutched upon his breast, as if to leap; his poor life cut short upon that mountain by some unknown accident. But the Kangaroo rat, it proved, was no such unknown animal; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... poor people's cottage, and teach them how to make the beds, and how to make plum pudding out of turnip-tops, and venison cutlets out of rusty bacon. He showed the fencing-master how to fence, and the professional cricketer how to bowl, and instructed the rat-catcher in breeding terriers. He set sums to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and assured the Astronomer Royal that the sun does not go round the earth—which, for my part, I believe it does. The young ladies of the court disliked ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... for an instant swept across me. He gave a shriek and flung away both the candle and the pan of rice, bolting for the door. I called to him to stop. For answer he slammed the door—and locked it. Nor did my calls stay the slap of his retreating feet. I was caught fast as a rat in ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... out the other way and alarm the 'ouse?' And that raised the siege, Bunny. In comes the old woman, as plucky as he was, and shoves the necklace into my left hand. I longed to refuse it. I didn't dare. And the old beast took her and shook her like a rat, until I covered him again, and swore in German that if he showed himself on the balcony for the next two minutes he'd be ein toter Englander! That was the other bit I'd got off pat; it was meant to mean 'a dead Englishman.' And I left the fine old girl clinging ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... the common people, and the verse is in the old Saxon manner, with accent and alliteration. The scene is a council of rats and mice (common people) called to consider how best to deal with the cat (court), and it satirizes the popular agitators who declaim against the government. The speaker is a rat, "a raton of renon, most renable ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... they were, I sat still. Occasionally I heard them laugh, but under their breath as it were; and persuaded by this that they were bent on a frolic, I might have persisted in my silence until midnight, which was not more than two hours off, had not a slight sound, as of a rat gnawing behind the wainscot, drawn my attention to the door. Raising my candle and shading my eyes I espied something small and bright protruding beneath it, and sprang up, thinking they were about to prise ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... out for that, sir," replied the captain. "He and his chum were looking for this fellow this morning, and found out where he lay, from the shore. I think he will be able to locate him from the water, and if he does I'll have the rat out of his hole in a brace of shakes, provided you ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... nest he had found in the lightning-shattered top of the redwood, and she discovered a wood-rat's nest which he had not seen before. Next they took the old wood-road and came out on the dozen acres of clearing where the wine grapes grew in the wine-colored volcanic soil. Then they followed the cow-path through more woods and thickets and scattered glades, and dropped ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... turned to so good account as what is employed upon their furrieries. The animals therefore which supply these come next to be considered; and these are, the common fox, the stoat, or ermine, the zibeline, or sable, the isatis, or arctic fox, the varying hare, the mountain rat, or earless marmot, the weasel, the glutton, or wolverene, the argali, or wild sheep, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... the door, and Chrysantheme starts back uttering a fearful cry. I should have thought the robbers were there, had I not seen a little grey creature, rapid and noiseless, rush by her and disappear; a young rat that had been eating rice on the top of a shelf, and, in its alarm, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... made a sudden investigation of the palace at four o'clock in the morning; when a scene of the most whimsical confusion ensued. Hosts of supernumerary inhabitants were found foisted into the huge edifice; every rat-hole had its occupant; and places which had been considered as tenanted only by spiders were found crowded with a surreptitious population. It is added that many ludicrous accidents occurred; great scampering and slamming of doors, and whisking away in nightgowns and slippers; and several ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... animals which have been observed within the limits of the ancient Media are the lion, the tiger, the leopard, the bear, the beaver, the jackal, the wolf, the wild ass, the ibex or wild goat, the wild sheep, the stag, the antelope, the wild boar, the fox, the hare, the rabbit, the ferret, the rat, the jerboa, the porcupine, the mole, and the marmot. The lion and tiger are exceedingly rare; they seem to be found only in Azerbijan, and we may perhaps best account for their presence there by considering that ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... recent editorial. Van Buren was always cartooned as a fox or a rat. Horace Greeley told me once that he had not had a sound sleep for fifteen years, and he was finally put to death by American politics. The cartoons of Mr. Blaine and Mr. Cleveland during their election battle, as compared to those of fifty years before, were seraphic as the themes ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... I can get him to stay will you stay too, Jombateeste? I don't like to see a rat leaving a ship; the ship's sure to sink, if he does. How do you suppose I'm going to run Lion's Head without you to throw down hay to the horses? It will be ruin to me, sure, Jombateeste. All the guests know how you play on the pitchfork out there, and they'll leave in a body if they hear you've ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Lady Clifford who spoke. There was a brittle, intensely Gallic intonation about the query with its upward inflection, reminding one somehow of a postman's knock, a sort of rat-tat-tat. ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... reader would hand over his correspondence to his parents; and perhaps there is no greater test of a man's regularity and easiness of conscience, than his readiness to face the postman. Blessed is he who is made happy by the sound of the rat-tat! The good are eager for it: but the naughty tremble at the sound thereof. So it was very kind of Mrs. Pendennis doubly to spare Pen the trouble of hearing or ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Three little taps—rat, tat, tat! Surprised, Gombauld turned his eyes towards the door. Nobody ever disturbed him while he was at work; it was one of the unwritten laws. "Come in!" he called. The door, which was ajar, swung ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... no answer. He felt more strongly than ever that he needed good eyes and firm nerves. To be killed like a rat in a trap! His blood ran too warm in his veins to submit tamely to this. When the struggle should come yonder it mattered little whether it was by Edmonson's shot or another's, for if he fell in the heat of the conflict it ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... wondrous fat; Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister Than a too-long-opened oyster, Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous For a plate of turtle green and glutinous.) "Only a scraping of shoes on the mat? Anything like the sound of a rat ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... 'A water-rat from off the bank Plunged in the stream. With idle care, Downlooking through the sedges rank, I ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney |
