"Draggle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one thing, however, he could not see in patience—an amateur who had borrowed his whip with the proud intention of "helping to drive" letting the end of four yards of lash draggle over the dewy karoo, thereby making it limp and reducing its power to clack in the ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... the copse Carlos dismounted; and having led his horse into the darkest shadow of the trees, there left him. He did not tie him to anything, but merely rested the bridle over the pommel of the saddle, so that it might not draggle upon the ground. He had long ago trained the noble animal to remain where he was placed without other ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... husband, though he is become a blackguard jail-bird, must be allowed to be a handsome fellow still.'—On the other hand, he will frequently desire me to take notice of his rib, as she chances to pass.—'Mind that draggle-tailed drunken drab,' he will say; 'what an antidote it is—yet, for all that, Felton, she was a fine woman when I married her—Poor Bess, I have been the ruin of her, that is certain, and deserve to be d—ned for bringing ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... remarked: What a worthy messenger! What a worthy messenger!" The preacher, instead of vexing the ears of drowsy farmers on their day of rest at the end of the week—for Sunday is the fit conclusion of an ill-spent week, and not the fresh and brave beginning of a new one—with this one other draggle-tail of a sermon, should shout with thundering voice, "Pause! Avast! Why so seeming fast, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... has not, and between one who has been trained in gymnastic exercises and one who has not been. For as he who is perfectly skilled in the Pancratium or boxing or wrestling, is not unable to fight from his left side, and does not limp and draggle in confusion when his opponent makes him change his position, so in heavy-armed fighting, and in all other things, if I am not mistaken, the like holds—he who has these double powers of attack and defence ought not in any case to leave them ...
— Laws • Plato
... where a sobbing woman was putting a pillow beneath the head of her insensible lover. Poor Pretty Lizzie, spite of it all, she married him; and ten years later I saw her again, the weary looking, draggle-tailed landlady of a wayside shanty, with half a dozen small children hanging on to her skirts and a drunken husband lolling in the bar. Poor Pretty Lizzie, she was ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... to draggle that mazarin blue poplinette in sloppy snow! Once let it get any snow stains on, and it will look quite shabby on bright ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... much moved; "that and more. Often—in my country I have seen that wretched change you have spoken of, from the fresh handsome country lass to the poor draggle-tailed country woman." ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... but at last plucked up her courage and went to the door. She saw close to the wall some few yards away a somewhat draggle-tail figure in cloak and hood. Within the hood was Lavinia's face, though one would hardly recognise it as hers, so white, ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... from the country or yellowish-white from anaemia and strong tea; see how your young breasts hardly fill out your clinging bodices, all askew, and how your hips are not yet grown to support your skirts properly—draggle-tails! I see you taking the morning's milk from the hearty milkman, or going an errand in your apron and a coat too small for you, or in your mistress's or mother's cast-off jacket, out at the seams, puffy-sleeved, ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... speak even when they are dumb. Indoors, every member of the family began to wear rags, and this is what every family must come to that can only look nice in new clothes. Such people, unless they are able to sit before the mirror all day long, look draggle-tailed and sluttish, even if the clothes that hang about them are not very old, and so betray their poverty to the world. The girls were obliged to get out and do up their last year's dresses. Carnival time came round ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... own sole pleasure if you chose, as the King of Bavaria listened to Wagner's operas. You could devote your life to the highest art—nay, is it not a duty you owe to the world? Would it not be a crime against the future to draggle your wings with sordid cares, to sink to lower aims by refusing this ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... chances are that the inn itself becomes at such times a slough, so that Bunyan's expression is then applicable in a real as well as in a figurative sense. There is a constant coming in and going out of peasants with dripping sabots, of dogs with wet paws, and draggle-tailed hens with miry feet; geese, and even pigs, not unfrequently venture inside, and have a good walk round before their presence is noticed and they are treated to quotations from Rabelais, enforced with the broomstick. Then the rain beats in at the open door, which nobody ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... exercise of my will I could make my patient perform actions the most abhorrent to her. For instance—the ladies will appreciate this power—at a time when crinolines were extensive, I made that poor creature draggle about in a costume conspicuous by the absence of crinoline, and making her look like some of the ladies out of ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies |
