"Rag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... girl, and when the curtain went up on his first scene I was delighted with the setting. It was a veritable cottage interior—not an English cottage but an American working man's home. The worn chairs, the rag rugs, the sewing machine doing duty as a flowerstand, all were ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... pieces, a lowel[HW:?] underskirt and a lowel[HW:?] dress, bachelor brogans and sacks and rags wrapped around my legs for stockings. That was in winter. Summer I went barefooted and wore one piece. My sun hat was a rag tied on my head. ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... isn't Phoebe, junior," said Mrs. Tom audibly, in the middle of the hall, "making a show of herself; but, Lord bless us, for all their grandeur, how she do dress, to be sure. A bit of a rag of an old shawl, and a hat on! the same as she wears every day. I've got more respect for them as comes ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... is this! yonder Red-skins are no Pawnees! The feathers in their heads are from the wings and tails of owls.—Ah! as I am but a miserable, half-sighted, trapper, it is a band of the accursed Siouxes! To cover, lads, to cover. A single cast of an eye this-a-way, would strip us of every rag of clothes, as surely as the lightning scorches the bush, and it might be that our very lives would be ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... concerning his future. He had counted costs. In that May, Bewsher, who from school had gone to Sandhurst, came up on a visit with two or three other fledgling officers, and they had a dinner in Morton's rooms. It turned into rather a 'rag,' as those things do, and it was there, across a flower-strewn, wine-stained table, that Morton had his second revelation. He wasn't drunk—he never got drunk; the others were. The thing came in ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... MR. PETHERTON,—Miss Gore-Langley has written to me to say that she is getting up a Rag Auction on behalf of the Belgian Relief Fund, and not knowing you personally, and having probably heard that I am connected by ties of kinship with you, she asked me to approach you on the subject of any old clothes you may have to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... to a small room with white curtains at the windows and rag rugs upon the floor and a big silk crazy-quilt on an old four-poster bed. She hurried about and found soap and towels for him, and left him with the hope that he ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... could be heard from his cottage. Before his arrival, the little girls had spent a good deal of time with me, but now they no longer knew I existed, so taken up with their father were they. He hung a swing for them between the two rowan trees in the field, taking care to pack plenty of rag under the rope so as not to injure ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... Rock, and swung him off into space in the Chest of the Clanking Chains, he howled so that the Sovereign Pontiff made 'em saw off on it, and take him out—and he could hardly stand to receive the Grand and Awful Secret. Limp as a rag! But impressed? Well, he said it was the greatest piece of ritualistic work he ever saw, and he's seen most of 'em. Go to ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... opening, as shown by Fig. 303. If there is any difficulty in driving tacks through the tin roof, use a small wire nail and hammer to first punch the holes. Put the tacks close together. With your paint-brush thickly coat the mended parts with white lead, as shown by Fig. 304. Cut a strip of a rag to fit over the holes and tack it at its four corners, as shown by Fig. 305. Now, then, cover the rag with a thick coat (Fig. 306) of the white lead. Next tack the tin over the wounded spots, putting the tacks close together, as shown by Fig. 306. Afterward coat the tin with a covering of white ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... on the English Comic Writers, annotated copiously in MS. by a contemporary reader who was certainly not an admirer; and upon whom W.H.'s cockneyisms, Gallicisms, egotisms, and "ille-isms" generally, seem to have had the effect of a red rag upon an inveterately insular bull. "A very ingenious but pert, dogmatical, and Prejudiced Writer" is his uncomplimentary addition to the author's name. Then here is Cunningham's Goldsmith of 1854, vol. i., castigated with equal energy by that Alaric Alexander Watts,[2] of whose ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... the luckless Rosa. "That is the third time thou hast spilt the chocolate. Thy hands are of wood when they should be of air. A soft bit of linen to clean them, not that coarse rag. Dios de mi alma! ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... to in London at the end of Oct. 1840, though it was not until 1854 that the prohibition became general. Prior to the passing of the Act in that year, dogs were utilised as draught animals to a very great extent in this neighbourhood by the rag-and-bone gatherers, pedlars, and little merchants, as many as 180 of the poor brutes once being counted in five hours as passing a certain spot on the Westbromwich Road. There have been one or two "homes" for stray dogs opened, but it is best in ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... knew all that was to be known of the delightful art of the binder, but his most cherished specimen would always be one where a master had made some slip in tooling. For oddities and rarities in all the range of the collector's fever, from books and prints to pewter mugs and rag dolls, his mania was omnivorous and catholic. And strange as it may seem, with his mania was mingled a shrewd appreciation of the commercial side of it all. This is what Mr. Ralph means when he says Field was no ignoramus ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... notice things of no account," says the engineer. "A lout's red-spotted rag.... Come, let's go and sit in ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... were still, and shingles; but doors and windows had long since been removed—by man or Time,—and through the open spaces you could see here a cupboard door, and there a stairway, and there a bit of partition wall with its faded high-coloured paper. No remnant of furniture—no rag of old clothes or calico; but in the dooryard a few garden flowers still struggled to keep their place, among daisies, thistles and burdocks. The little field was bordered with woodland, and human voice or face there was none. The sunbeams which shone so bright on the tinted ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... go wrong, or he thinks they go wrong, he says things, says them with brutal frankness and considerable vigor. He may even use profanity and call names. He is especially impatient with and exasperated by excuses, since his passion is for results. An excuse to him is like a red rag flaunted in a bull's face. His irritation is relieved by speech. Afterward he passes on and probably forgets all about the incident. Certainly he does not hold it ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... unextinguished morning star, the liveliest taste for the earliest possible rambles and researches, in which they were so good as to allow me, when I was otherwise allowed, to participate: health-giving walks, of an extraordinarily matinal character, at the hour of the meticulous rag-pickers and exceptionally French polishers known to the Paris dawns of the Second Empire as at no time since; which made us all feel together, under the conduct of Honorine, bright child of the pavement herself, as if we, in our fresh curiosity and admiration, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... peace on low mounds and shallow dells, Yellow rag-wort and sea-reed grey, And thrumming and booming of village bells: Dirge the lives of ...
— Songs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems • Thomas Runciman
... risks, but what about hers? In an agony of haste he rushed to his ideals and principles for justification and comfort, tumbling them over, searching feverishly among them. They had forsaken him. They were so much lifeless rubbish. Nowhere in his mind could he find a rag of either comfort or justification with which to stop up his ears against the words of the two Englishmen and his eyes against the dreadful sight he felt sure awaited them on the quay at Dover—the sight of incensed authorities ready to pounce on him and drag him ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... tired and the enthusiasm generated by his unrecognized Bergonzi became fitful, while the relaxing crowd rapidly encroached upon the space set apart for the dancers. In the open lamps suspended here and there the oil was running low, and the rag wicks sputtered and ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... a bitter day for us, that day that Pere Fronte held the function under the tree and banished the fairies. We could not wear mourning that any could have noticed, it would not have been allowed; so we had to be content with some poor small rag of black tied upon our garments where it made no show; but in our hearts we wore mourning, big and noble and occupying all the room, for our hearts were ours; they could not get at them to ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... no devout lover of rag-time and turkey-trotting, but they too are manifestations. In those queer exasperated rhythms I find greater promise of a popular art than in revivals of folk-song and morris-dancing. At least they bear some relationship to the emotions of those who sing and dance them. ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... David to go to the helm. "And you other young master take my oar and pull with all your might, while I sets the sails," he added. A sprit-mainsail, much the worse for wear, and a little rag of a foresail were soon set. It was as much sail as the boat in the rising gale could carry, and away she flew seaward. The old man took the helm, and the boy, who had not spoken, laid in his oar, and facing ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... her undivided attention. However sturdily she might begin, in ten minutes' time her eyes were wandering about the room, she was scribbling on the margin of her book, or twisting her handkerchief into a new variety of rag doll. The well- meaning Kate, finding frowns and nudges losing their effect, resorted to more drastic measures, such as the prick of a pin, or a tug of the elf- like locks; but the victim's howls and protestations not only disturbed her companions, but took so long to pacify that the experiment ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Newport News, whither we next went, we saw a spectacle that affected us with far profounder emotion. It was the sight of the few sticks that are left of the frigate Congress, stranded near the shore,—and still more, the masts of the Cumberland rising midway out of the water, with a tattered rag of a pennant fluttering from one of them. The invisible hull of the latter ship seems to be careened over, so that the three masts stand slantwise; the rigging looks quite unimpaired, except that a few ropes dangle ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... surveyor; "that is what he does." I presume the denunciation was due to B. P. having at one time borrowed an instrument from the department, and returned it thus maltreated. But "practical," so misapplied—action without thought—was Chauvenet's red rag. ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... Mythology and Romance, must be well allowed for an imaginative creature. Men are ever lapsing into a beggarly habit, wherein everything that is not ciphering, that is, which does not serve the tyrannical animal, is hustled out of sight. Our orators and writers are of the same poverty, and, in this rag-fair, neither the Imagination, the great awakening power, nor the Morals, creative of genius and of men, are addressed. But though orator and poet are of this hunger party, the capacities remain. We must have symbols. The child asks you for a story, and is thankful for the poorest. It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... thus: "Slice up thinly three or four Apples without peeling them, and boil them in a very clean saucepan, with a quart of water and a little sugar until the slices of apple become soft; the apple water must then be strained through a piece of muslin, or clean rag, into a jug, and drank when cold." If desired, a small piece of the yellow rind of a lemon may be added, just enough to give it ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... than to say that since she was crazy about Chinese prints, she ought to be friendly with the Chinese laundryman in Chestnut Street. We regarded the nations of Europe as repositories of splendid traditions, magnificent even in their decay. Miss Fraenkel regarded them as rag-baskets from which the American Eagle was picking a heterogeneous mass of rubbish, rubbish that might possibly, after much screening, become ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... "Rag!" said the box-iron; and went proudly over the collar: for she fancied she was a steam-engine, that would go on the railroad and draw the ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... indicated him as a despatch-rider belonging to one of the batteries. It would have been hard to say whether machine or man was the more travel-stained. The cycle's front wheel was badly bent, evidently by some collision; the soldier's hand was bound with a dirty rag, and his face clotted with the blood of a congealed scratch, the result of having been pushed off the road by a motor-lorry in the dark and falling head-long down a stone embankment. Yet about both mount and man there was still ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... into molten glass To cool me, when I enter'd; so intense Rag'd the conflagrant mass. The sire belov'd, To comfort me, as he proceeded, still Of Beatrice talk'd. "Her eyes," saith he, "E'en now I seem to view." From the other side A voice, that sang, did guide us, and the voice Following, with heedful ear, we issued forth, There where the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... big man. "Then you ain't as much of a tenderfoot as you look to be. Shake!" and he held out a hand as huge as a bear's paw. Following the hand-grip he grew confidential. "'Long in the afternoon I stuck my head in at the door and saw you chewin' the rag with a thin-faced old nester that couldn't set still in his chair while he talked. ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... time lets you out, Mike, is that havin' jest had our feed we're happ'ly lethargic. Which if you'd let fly that crack about barbarians, an' us not fed none, some gent not otherwise employed 'd have seized upon you as a mop-rag wharwith to wipe ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... to a shoulder of mutton in Scotland after it has been served as a roast at dinner, and appears as a broiled bone at supper, or at the dinner next day. The late Earl of B., popularly known as "Old Rag," being indisposed at a hotel in London, one morning the landlord came to enumerate the good things in his larder, in order to prevail on his guest to eat something, when his lordship replied, "Landlord, I think I could eat ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... neighbour for his unseemly inquiry, "What, madam, pray, might be your fortune?" and had bade them refuse him the house; and how it was then that she had given directions that, after her decease, everything to the last rag should pass to Fedor Ivanitch. And, indeed, Lavretsky found all his aunt's household goods intact, not excepting the best cap with ribbons of salmon colour, and the yellow gown of tru-tru levantine. Of old papers and interesting documents, upon which Lavretsky had reckoned, ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... a rag an' some water, boys," he continued. "It looks worse than it is—only skin deep. And we've not a moment to lose. Those who have a mind may follow me. Them that wants to swing ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... bobbins, small boxes, and slight additions of wood, cardboard, and paper, aided by the color-box. Windmills, whirligigs, carts, engines, trains, dolls' house furniture, jigsaw puzzles, cardboard animals with movable limbs, black velveteen cats with bead eyes, beautifully dressed rag dolls, wool balls and rattles for babies, and dear little books of extracts, were some of the things set out in a tempting display. Fil, whose slim fingers excelled in dainty work, had contributed three charming booklets of poetry and ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... our joy now. I had an my men come on deck and line up for review. The fellows hadn't a rag on. Thus, in nature's garb, we gave three cheers for the German flag on the Choising. The men of the Choising told us afterward 'We couldn't make out what that meant, those stark-naked fellows all cheering.' The sea was too high, and we had to wait two days before we could board the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... soon enough," coughed an old woman in a kitchen apron and with a dish-rag in her hand. "Shame!" John, the poor devil, who had to put up with the worst at home, had tried to secure for himself a paltry half pound of butter for the coming time of scarcity, and, without remembering that he had concealed it in his pocket, neatly wrapped in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... hilariously. "That I had an errand on hand. A good joke, split me, Roxholm! Come with me; I go to see the picture of a beauty, stole by the painter, who is always drunk, and with his clothes in pawn, and lives in a garret in Rag Lane." ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... paper—he proceeded to say—that a most difficult political situation had been avoided by the birth of this child, as there was no possible heir at all, and immense complications would ensue upon the death of the present ruler—the scurrilous rag even gave a resume of this ruler's dissolute life, and a broad hint that the child could in no case be his; but, as they pithily remarked, this added to the little prince's welcome in Ministerial circles, where the lady was ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... Devil contentedly; 'if you had taken a piece of rag, or what not, you might yourself... Hulloa!...' He looked down and saw the hole still gaping, and he felt a furious draught coming up again. He wondered a little, and then muttered: 'It's a pity I have on my best things. I never dare crease them, and I have nothing in my pockets ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... tendency to "rag" in lectures, a tradition which is almost unknown at Oxford and Cambridge, but which persisted till quite recent times in the Scottish universities. Prohibitions of noise and disturbance in lecture-rooms abound in all statutes. At Vienna, students in Arts are exhorted to behave like young ladies ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... Ross pulled the rag free from the sapling and wreathed it in a tight bracelet about his grimed wrist for some unexplainable reason. Worn and tired, he tried to think ahead. There was no chance of again contacting Ulffa's tribe. Along with all the other woodland hunters they must have fled before the advance of the ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... to the anthropological service; they had never seen anything like him. However, they easily traced his past history. He was known at Courbevois, at Asnieres and at Levallois. He lived on alms and slept in one of those rag-picker's huts near the barrier de Ternes. He had disappeared from there ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... house left in Peronne. The sixteenth century church of St. Jean is but a relic. W. Beach Thomas wrote after the retreat that nothing was left that was valuable enough to be worth collection by a penny tinker or a rag-and-bone merchant. Foul what you ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... of his human countenance 'during composition.' But I am very grateful to the reviewer whoever he may be—very—and with need. See how the 'Sun' shines in response to 'Blackwood' (thank you for sending me that notice), when previously we had had but a wintry rag from the same quarter! No; if I am not spoilt by your kindness, I am not likely to be so by any of these exoteric praises, however beyond what I expected or deserved. And then I am like a bird with one wing broken. Throw it out of the window; and after the first feeling of pleasure in liberty, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... know," said Mr. Alexander evasively, "I'll see. Anyhow, don't say anything to my mother about it; a drunken man is like a red rag ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... back to-night. How wet you are, though! There's not a dry rag to your body, man. You must first return with me to the fire at the Red Lion, and ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... prepare a stone that would weigh about one pound, tie it up in a rag, and keep it in my pocket to strike poor old Stephen with, when he should open my cell door. But this I would not consent to do, without he ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... to the back-yards and back- doors, like someone casually passing, or simply a tramp. The women scent out his proximity and steal out to meet him. The bargain is hurriedly concluded. For a few copper half-pence a woman gives the 'eagle' not only every useless rag she has, but often even her husband's shirt and her own petticoat. Of late the women have thought it profitable to steal even from themselves, and to sell hemp in the same way—a great extension and improvement of the business for the ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... Mrs. Birtwell passed was narrow and had a rag carpet on the floor. But the carpet was clean and the atmosphere pure. Ascending the stairs, Mrs. Birtwell knocked at the door, and was answered by a faint "Come in" from a ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... Early this morning I crossed the road as usual with my thermometer, and found a strip of pink calico hanging from the brambles by the mouth of Scarlet's Well. I had seen the pattern before on a gown worn by one of the villager's wives, and knew the rag was a votive offering, hung there because her child, who has been ailing all the winter, is now strong enough to go out into the sunshine. As I bent the bramble carefully aside, before stooping over the water, Lizzie Polkinghorne came up the lane ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... were in was built and furnished in the same style as the kitchen, save that here the wood was painted slate-colour and a clean rag carpet covered the floor. The upper staircase, very steep and dark, opened off it at the further end. All the light from a square, small-paned window fell sideways upon the faces of the girls as they stretched their heads towards the ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... to be done with such a rag-bag, moralistic ass as this? In spite of all his philanderings, and the resultant qualms due to his fear of being found out, he prospered in business and rose to some eminence in his own community. As he had grown more lax he had become somewhat more genial and tolerant, more generally acceptable. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... When living in the forest I have frequently amused myself killing these birds in the following manner, while sitting at my camp fire at night. I procured two short sticks, at the end of one I attached a bit of red cloth or rag to be used as a lure. They are the most curious birds in existence, and this together with their thieving propensities is so powerful that when their desires for appropriation are excited they possess little or no fear. I would sit by the fire holding out the red rag, when ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... forward, took it down, and examined it. Holding it in his hands, he gazed about the floor. A rag which the ashes in the fireplace had not ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... rag,"—with a furtive glance at the worn-out face. A hungry face always, with her life unfed by its stingy few crumbs of good; but to-night it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... because he had got mixed up the night before in a fight outside a music-pavilion. The contempt and the ridicule that were heaped upon him in the conversation of the boys were immeasurable. When he came next morning with a black, extravasated eye, which he bathed at intervals with a rag, he was regarded by most of us as absolute scum. The German master, a tall, good-looking man, was treated as utterly incompetent because, when he asked a question in grammar or syntax, he walked up and down with the book in ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... it I should never forgive myself. The old shawl is good enough for tramps." Saying which she took a ragged old shawl from a peg, and began to fold it up. But even as she brushed and folded, she begrudged the faded rag. ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... should a chaste affection bless: Preferment seldom graceth bashfulness. Nor grac'd it Hymen yet; but many a dart, And many an amorous thought, enthrill'd his heart, Ere he obtain'd her; and he sick became, Forc'd to abstain her sight; and then the flame Rag'd in his bosom. O, what grief did fill him! Sight made him sick, and want of sight did kill him. The virgins wonder'd where Diaetia stay'd, For so did Hymen term himself, a maid. At length with sickly looks he greeted them: 'Tis strange to see 'gainst what an extreme stream A lover strives; ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... Roy's artificial feeding began. Peggy raised his head while Mammy opened his mouth by inserting a skilful finger where later the bit would rest, then slipped in the milk-sopped woolen rag. After a few minutes the small beastie which had never known fear, understood and sucked away vigorously, for he had not fed for hours and the poor inner- colt was grumbling sorely at the long fast. The bowlful of milk soon disappeared, and ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... stared curiously but made no reply. He was not wholly in his chief's confidence. He merely knew that the name of Lou Chada to Kerry was like a red rag to a bull. The handsome, cultured young Eurasian, fresh from a distinguished university career and pampered by a certain section of smart society, did not conform to Detective Sergeant Durham's idea of a suspect. He knew that Lou was the son of Zani Chada, and he knew ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... didn't I go sooner to that there castle? It is all luck, all luck in this world; but I never had no luck. Think of the luck of these childer, that have found a pot of gold, and such great, grand friends, and a slated house, and all: and here am I, with scarce a rag to cover me, and not a potato to put into my mouth!—I, that have been looking under ground all my days for treasure, not to have a halfpenny at the last, to buy ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... flowing cloak! Not yellow eyes in the room at night, Staring out from a surface of cobweb gray! And not the flap of a condor wing When the roar of life in your ears begins As a sound heard never before! But on a sunny afternoon, By a country road, Where purple rag-weeds bloom along a straggling fence And the field is gleaned, and the air is still To see against the sun-light something black Like a blot with an iris rim— That is the sign to eyes of second sight. . . ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... of these insolvent waiters upon insolvency, was a sight to see. Such threadbare coats and trousers, such fusty gowns and shawls, such squashed hats and bonnets, such boots and shoes, such umbrellas and walking-sticks, never were seen in Rag Fair. All of them wore the cast-off clothes of other men and women, were made up of patches and pieces of other people's individuality, and had no sartorial existence of their own proper. Their walk was the walk of a race apart. They had a peculiar way of doggedly slinking round the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... political parties, and they name the candidates, and trick you into voting for them—and they call it the law! They herd you into armies and send you to shoot your brothers—and they call it order! They take a piece of coloured rag and call it the flag and teach you to let yourself be shot—and they call it patriotism! First, last, and all the time, you do the work and they get the benefit—they, the masters ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... dipped a rag in the oil and began to rub a gun, and Foster went out, feeling satisfied. It was plain that he could rely upon the old fellow, who he thought was unflinchingly loyal to the Featherstones. After all, it was something to have the respect ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... Englishman in the party, who, Turner was convinced, had money concealed about his person. He compelled him to strip off everything, and stand shivering in the sharp cold, while he took up one filthy rag after another, felt over each carefully, and scrutinized each seam and fold. I was delighted to see that after all his nauseating work he did not find so much ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... of these people was very simple. Many of them had nothing more than a pair of short trousers on, with a dirty old turban, and even the place of this was sometimes supplied by a coloured rag, or a cast-off sailor's cap. The Malays wore long cloths wound round their bodies, with one end hanging over their shoulder. The Chinese preserved intact their usual costume and mode of life; and the coloured servants of the ship's officers were the only ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... is of the most simple description, a small strip of rag between the legs and another wisp for a head-covering sufficing for the men, though the women are decently covered from their shoulders to half-way between the thighs and knees. A Baiga may be known by his scanty clothing ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... by no committee. He has occurred, emerged from the mass of men; by virtue of some energy within him has made good his position in front of the instrument. He flogs the keys, and above the babel of talk sounds some rag-time melody, once popular, now forgotten or despised at home. Here or there a voice takes up the tune ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... more now in Congress The bills that should long have passed through; The Mills Bill's a thing of oblivion And its framer can follow it, too. Then we'll carefully fold up the rag, They flaunted so lusty and brave, And bury it with the old relics, 'Way down in Salt ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... Minerva touched him with her wand and covered him with wrinkles, took away all his yellow hair, and withered the flesh over his whole body; she bleared his eyes, which were naturally very fine ones; she changed his clothes and threw an old rag of a wrap about him, and a tunic, tattered, filthy, and begrimed with smoke; she also gave him an undressed deer skin as an outer garment, and furnished him with a staff and a wallet all in holes, with a twisted thong for him to sling it ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... course, during a skirmish or battle, armed men should never leave their ranks to attend a dead or wounded comrade—this should be seen to in advance by the colonel, who should designate his musicians or company cooks as hospital attendants, with a white rag on their arm to indicate their office. A wounded man should go himself (if able) to the surgeon near at hand, or, if he need help, he should receive it from one of the attendants and not a comrade. It is wonderful how soon the men accustom themselves to these simple rules. In great battles ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... 1830, who held their clan composed the loftier, super-human race, the only one that counted. Berlioz carried this folly of pride to its highest pitch. In his Memoirs, he declared that the public (of course excluding himself) were an infamous tag-rag-and-bob-tail. The people of Paris, he protested, were more stupid and a hundred times more ferocious, in their caperings and revolutionary grimaces, than the baboons and orang-outangs of Borneo. Balzac at times adopted and expressed similar opinions. Gozlan relates ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... error, under every circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging, in the brothel or on the scaffold, to some rag of honour, the poor jewel of their souls! They may seek to escape, and yet they cannot; it is not alone their privilege and glory, but their doom; they are condemned to some nobility; all their lives long, the desire of good is at their ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... brushes, combs, hand-glass, and pretty sachet, things seemed to brighten up a bit. She hung up a cobweb of a lace boudoir cap with its rose-colored ribbons over the bleary mirror, threw her kimono of flowered challis over the back of the rocker, arranged her soap and toothbrush, her own wash-rag and a towel brought from home on the wash-stand, and somehow felt better and more as if she belonged. Last she ranged her precious photographs of father and mother and the dear vine-covered church and manse across in front of the mirror. When her ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... stubble, was one of the unsuspicious. Charles Benton he had first met long ago in the Hotel de Russie in Rome while he was wintering there. Benton was merry, and, apparently, a gentleman. He talked of his days at Harrow, and afterwards at Cambridge, of being sent down because of a big "rag" in the Gladstonian days, and of his life since as a fairly well-off ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... her forehead. For all this, she was a picturesque little thing, even through whose childish timidity there was a certain self-sustained air which is apt to come upon children who are left much to themselves. She was holding under her arm a rag doll, apparently of her own workmanship, and nearly as large as herself,—a doll with a cylindrical head, and features roughly indicated with charcoal. A long shawl, evidently belonging to a grown person, dropped from her shoulders, ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... a king alone could have been the author of them. These lines, which were published in the official gazette, have been handed down to us by one of those indiscreet persons who suffer no follies of the past to be lost. Such persons are the rag-pickers of history. ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... confound b and d when they meet with them. They are at one point of general information—namely, they all know what you have just told them, and will none of them know it by next time. I call it the rag-tag and bob-tail class. John says they are like forced tulips. They won't blossom simultaneously. He can't get them all to ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... had to endure the bites of myriads of insects —gnats, mosquitoes, ants half an inch long, literally covered the ground; and, in less than two hours, Joe had not a rag remaining of the garments that had covered him, the insects having devoured them! It was a terrible night, that did not yield our exhausted traveller an hour of sleep. During all this time the wild-boars ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... fragrant in its clean freshness. She had never occupied such a room, with that peculiar, bracing atmosphere. The small mantel with its prim vases looked a veritable home shrine, and the center table with the sprigs of budding lilacs, seemed to the forlorn girl something to reverence. The rag rugs under her feet were so spotless, the curtains so white—it suddenly occurred to the girl these things could not exist in the smoke and grim of a mill town. It was the mill—always the mill found ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... and I mind her direction, Though it takes me o'er many a Faculty green; I'm pledged to the cause of her pussy's protection From ghouls of the Lab and the horrors they mean; I pose as the sire of a draggled rag dolly Who owns the astonishing title of Pearl;— And I have forgotten that all this is folly, So potent the charm of ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... as a madman by the people. His father locked him up in the house, but the tenderer compassion of his mother released him from his bonds, and he found refuge with the priest. When his father demanded his return, Francis tore off his clothes and, as he flung the last rag at the feet of his astounded parent, he exclaimed: "Peter Bernardone was my father; I have but one father, He that is in Heaven." The crowd was deeply moved, especially when they saw before them the hair shirt which Francis had secretly worn under his garments. Gathering ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... literature does not of necessity imply much laxity in practical morality. We seek in art what we do not find in ourselves, and it would be true to nature to represent an unfortunate woman delighting in reading of such purity as her own life daily insulted and contradicted; and the novel is the rag in which this leper age coquets before the mirror of its hypocrisy, rehearsing the deception it ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... danger, too? Ha! he is quite wet—every rag upon his body!" said Karl, approaching the shikarree, and laying hand upon his garments. "Why, so are you, Caspar,—dripping wet, I declare! How is this? You've been in the lake? Have you been ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... however contemptuously he tried to think of it, had left the bewilderment of a mysterious terror. Her face was streaming with water and tears; there was a wisp of hair on her forehead, another stuck to her cheek; her hat was on one side, undecorously tilted; her soaked veil resembled a sordid rag festooning her forehead. There was an utter unreserve in her aspect, an abandonment of safeguards, that ugliness of truth which can only be kept out of daily life by unremitting care for appearances. He did not know why, looking at her, he thought suddenly ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... are hung instead of the normal rag-strips to denote an honoured tomb. Lane (iii. 242) and many others are puzzled about the use of these articles. In many cases they are suspended to trees in order to transfer sickness from the body to the tree and whoever shall touch it. The Sawahili people term such articles ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... I was a naughty dog, And could not behave if I tried? I only chewed up Katrina's French doll, And shook her rag one ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... said, "you're tired—more than you've ever been in your life. You'll feel like a rag by to-morrow, and then I hope you'll take a good rest. But to-day, while you are still way up, I want to talk about your work. Do ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... In the morning you go outside to wash your face and then repair to the barroom to see your face in the only looking glass the tavern contains." Another traveler complains that at the best hotel in New York there was neither glass, mug, cup, nor carpet, and but one miserable rag dignified ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... you can imagine, to know what was going on in the world and what England was thinking about it all. I ran alongside a fishing-boat, therefore, and ordered them to give up their papers. Unfortunately they had none, except a rag of an evening paper, which was full of nothing but betting news. In a second attempt I came alongside a small yachting party from Eastbourne, who were frightened to death at our sudden appearance out of the depths. ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... got them. Intermediates gave him single words from sentences in Greek, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and other languages, and told him their places in the sentences. When at last everybody had furnished him a single rag from a foreign sentence or a figure from a problem, he went over the ground again, and got a second word and a second figure and was told their places in the sentences and the sums; and so on and so on. He went over the ground again and again until he had collected all the parts ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a kiss on his frowning forehead, Patty ran to the piano, and began to play "Silver Threads Among the Gold," to a rag-time improvisation ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... liveliest when taking a limb from the hillside to the house in the pond. A young beaver will catch a limb by one end in his teeth, and, throwing it over his shoulder in the attitude of a puppy racing with a rope or a rag, make off to the pond. Once in the water, he throws up his head and swims to the house or the dam with the limb held ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... down, due to the heads of the femurs slipping from the acetabula, but reduction was always easy. When eight years old he joined a company of acrobats and strolling performers, and was called by the euphonious title of "the Yankee dish-rag." His muscular system was well-developed, and, like Sandow, he could make muscles ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... revolvers with which all the banks are provided now. Mr. Macbean has been practising with ours, and purposely put a bullet through one of our back windows. The whole township has been chafing him about it, and the local rag has risen to a sarcastic paragraph, which is exactly what we wanted. The trap-door over the pit is now practically finished. It's too complicated to describe, but Stingaree has only to march into the bank and 'stick it up,' and the man ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... species is a massive cup, composed of twigs, thorns, grasses, feathers, and, usually, some pieces of rag; these last often hang down in a most untidy manner. The nest is, as a rule, placed in a babool or other thorny tree, ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... exclaimed the vrouw, flapping that awful rag in his face. "How much do you suppose that God cares what you in your folly swore to that stinkcat of a nephew of yours? Do you be careful, Henri Marais, that God does not make of your precious oath a stone to fall upon your head and ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... was rising just above the waves, and on the town which was still wrapped in darkness there glittered white and luminous specks:—the pole of a chariot, a dangling rag of linen, the corner of a wall, or a golden necklace on the bosom of a god. The glass balls on the roofs of the temples beamed like great diamonds here and there. But ill-defined ruins, piles of black earth, ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... small pocket in his uniform a little penknife; with this he made a slash at the stretched paper. Completing the rest of the operation with his fingers, he tore off a strip or rag of paper, yellow in colour and wholly irregular in outline. Then for the first time the great being addressed his ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... standing warning against spoiling one's patients. I wouldn't have them and their whole tag-rag and bobtail about ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... so extensive an area, that it much resembles the market place of a small town. The melodious sounds thence issuing, continually draw tears from the eyes of the Waisters; reminding them of their old paternal pig-pens and potato-patches. They are the tag-rag and bob-tail of the crew; and he who is good for nothing else is good ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... hurt you, Sue!" he called, but, even as he said that, Bunny did not know what he was going to do. "I wish I had a red rag," he thought, "I could wave it at the goat and maybe ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue • Laura Lee Hope
... arrange them on a leaf table which stood toward one end of the room. The furniture was wooden and plain; the woodwork of the windows was unpainted; the cups and plates were of the commonest kind; and the floor had no covering but two strips of rag carpeting; nevertheless the whole was tidy and very clean, showing constant care. Mrs. Mathieson had sunk into a chair, as one who had no spirit to do anything; and watched her little daughter setting the table with eyes which seemed not to see her. They ...
— The Carpenter's Daughter • Anna Bartlett Warner
... right, Humptious! (To AINSLIE.) You're a nice old sort for a rag-and-bone man: can't hold a bag open! (Taking out tools.) Here they was. Here are the bunchums, one and two; and jolly old keys was they. Here's the picklocks, crowbars, and here's Lord George's pet bull's-eye, his old and valued friend, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... feebly at his earnestness. "There is only one end," she whispered, and pointed to his picture. Clayton comprehended, and seizing a paint-rag would have ruined it, but ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... squandered the property in the dullest, stupidest, most commonplace fashion, in Strasbourg brasseries, in the company of ballet-girls of the Strasbourg theatres, and little Alsaciennes who had not a rag of a ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... barbarous one, and likely to operate unfavourably on the national morals; the arena is sometimes drenched in the blood of bulls, horses, and even of the unfortunate picadores and matadores, whose sole defence is the red rag with which they irritate ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... design. This will become endeared by association with home to the children, and the mother should be slow to replace it. The window draperies may be home-made, such as of rough-finished silk or embroidered canvas, and the floor covered with a thick rag-carpet, preferably of a nondescript or "hit-and-miss" design. If the housekeeper thinks that this is "hominess" carried to excess, she may cover the floor with an ingrain carpet, or better, plain filling of a medium shade, on which a few rag rugs are laid, light in ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... neither to train himself to them, nor to let others practise them. Thus he cast away all the ambitions of a man and aspired to those of women; for his incontinent itching of palate stirred in him love of every kitchen-stench. Ever breathing of his debauch, and stripped of every rag of soberness, with his foul breath he belched the undigested filth in his belly. He was as infamous in wantonness as Frode was illustrious in war. So utterly had his spirit been enfeebled by the untimely seductions ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... is," replied the Rapparee, pulling out a rag in which were the precise number of ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... on a window-sill. She had made it on a September day when she had been planning a picnic for Fern Mullins and Erik. Fern and she had been hysterical with nonsense, had invented mad parties for all the coming winter. She glanced across the alley at the room which Fern had occupied. A rag of a gray curtain masked ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... stay or run away. However, it presently came into my thoughts, that if there were white men among them, it would be much easier to make them understand what we meant as to peace or war, than we found it with others; so tying a piece of white rag to the end of a stick, we sent two negroes with it to the bank of the water, carrying the pole up as high as they could; it was presently understood, and two of their men and the white man came to the shore ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... well, and rub on the furniture with a piece of linen rag, and polish with a clean duster. Vinegar and oil, rubbed in with flannel, and the furniture rubbed with a clean duster, produce a ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... to see us at our home next morning and began to cry as soon as she had sat down in the library. The thing I had looked for had come to pass. Her grandfather had dropped Harry from his list, and warned him to keep off the rag-carpet. There was to be no more prancing around in the 'toot-coach' and the 'Harry-cart,' as he called them, for Marie. In his view it was the surest means of getting to perdition. Harry was an idler, and he had always found that an idle brain was the devil's ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... rollers astern, before the Long-boat rose a-top of one of them at the same time with us. At last, she was heaved up for a moment well in view, and there, sure enough, was the signal flying aboard of her—a strip of rag of some sort, rigged to an oar, and ...
— The Wreck of the Golden Mary • Charles Dickens
... the end of that search would be. The Selache was a little fore and aft schooner of some ninety-odd tons, wholly unprotected against ice-chafe or nip, and he knew that prudence dictated their driving her south under every rag of canvas now. There was, however, the possibility of finding some sheltered inlet where she could lie out the winter, frozen in, and he had, at least, blind confidence in his men. The white men were sealers who had already borne the ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... typical melodramatic tragedian observes, "'Tis now some twenty-five years ago" that FRED DEWAR strutted the first of his five hundred nights or so on the stage as Captain Crosstree, that PATTY OLIVER sang with trilling effect her "Pretty Seeusan," and that DANVERS, as Dame Hatly, danced like a rag-doll in a fantoccini-show. To quote the Poet CRABBE, and to go some way back ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... they brought Le Grand Diable to me. Knowing his covetous heart, I told him if he still had the woman and the child, I'd get him a big ransom. At that they all jangled a bit, the old squaw clouting me with her filthy rag as if she wanted to slap me to a peak. At length they let Le Grand Diable unfasten the bands. With my hands tied behind my back, I was taken to his lodge. Miriam and the boy were kept in a place behind the Sioux squaw's hut. Once when ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... you something much better than that cotton rag." And she tripped up the shop and came back presently, and as she passed the boy whispered something in his ear, and he nodded and got up and went out. The girl held up in her finger and thumb a red morocco bag, gaily embroidered, and said, "There, I have chosen one for you, and you ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... and was gone. "I never expected it of you," he told her coolly. "You would sooner die than admit it, simply because it would be infinitely easier for you to die. You will be false to yourself, false to Grange, false to me, rather than lower that miserable little rag of pride that made you jilt me at Simla. I didn't blame you so much then. You were only a child. You didn't understand. But that excuse won't serve you now. You are a woman, and you know what Love is. You don't call it by its name, but ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Redmayne's rooms in King's, and was very proud and proprietorial. It failed to stir Cambridge at all profoundly. Beyond a futile attempt to screw up Hatherleigh made by some inexpert duffers who used nails instead of screws and gimlets, there was no attempt to rag. Next day Chris Robinson went and spoke at Bennett Hall in Newnham College, and left Cambridge in the evening amidst the cheers of twenty men or so. Socialism was at such a low ebb politically in those days that it didn't even ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... BOY Naw, I don't want to play wringing no dish rag! We gointer play chick mah chick ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston
... found naked' and ashamed. All 'works of darkness,' laden with rich blossom or juicy fruit though they have seemed to be, will then be seen to be in tragic truth 'fruitless.' A life's spinning and weaving, and not a rag to cover the toiler after all! Is that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... know how the money goes if they don't want to look mean beside their companions. Anna's one of those who can spend all they get on clothes. She's willing enough to do without, but she never has a farthing, and hardly a rag to her body, for all that she's ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo |
