"Fag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cloth puttees with white stripes, commandeered from a pair of civilian trousers that was hanging goodness knows where at the beginning of the war. As for Marthereau's puttees, they are not both of the same hue, for he failed to find two fag-ends of greatcoat equally worn and equally dirty, to ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... mace, or mack; Or moskeneer, or flash the drag; Dead-lurk a crib, or do a crack; Pad with a slang, or chuck a fag; Bonnet, or tout, or mump and gag; Rattle the tats, or mark the spot; You cannot bag a single stag; Booze and ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... together that he was happy himself and made others happy; and then it would rather be from some special piece of drollery that the joy of the moment would come, than from the discussion of ordinary topics. After so many years his old friends remember the fag-ends of the doggerel lines which used to drop from him without any effort on all occasions of jollity. And though he could be very sad,—laden with melancholy, as I think must have been the case with him always,—the feeling of fun would quickly come to him, and the queer rhymes would ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... Moral Philosopher lately published. Is it looked into? I should hope not, merely for the sake of the taste, the sense, and learning of the present age.... I hope nobody will be so indiscreet as to take notice publicly of the book, though it be only in the fag end of an objection.—It is that indiscreet conduct in our defenders of religion that conveys so many worthless books from hand to hand.'—Letter to Mr. Birch in 1737. In Nichols' Literary Illustrations of the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... accumulated capital, or its multiplication of railways. Above all—and this was to some of our Party the unkindest cut—he asserted for Religion the chief place among the elements of national well-being. We were just then living at the fag-end of an anti-religious time. The critical, negative, and utilitarian spirit which had seized on Oxford after the apparent defeat and collapse of Newman's movement had profoundly affected the Liberal Party. It was an essential characteristic of the political Liberals to pour scorn on that "retrograding ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... about forty-five whose striding gait caused a hooped and pleated skirt of green silk, surmounted by a bustle, to sway like a lime-tree in a breeze, wore a bodice open in front, with short sleeves, the fag end of some other fashion, but the long draggled-tailed feather boa belonged to the eighties, as did the Marie Stuart bonnet. Her blackened eyebrows and a thickly painted face attracted Dick's attention from afar, and when she approached nearer he was struck by the dark, brilliant, ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... resigned. On the 21st April, Lenthall, the old Speaker, with as many members of the Long Parliament as could be brought together, met in the House, and opened their session. The Parliament thus formed, as being the fag-end of the old Long Parliament, obtained the name of the Rump Parliament. Lambert's hopes and aims were raised by his success against Sir George Booth in the August following, and jealousies soon arose between his party in the army and the Rump. The ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... Toby, but it is true. And when I was at Harrow, his eldest brother, who is one of the best, was my fag. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... 'below-par-ness,' which lead to all kinds of fanciful fears, such as having Brain Fag, Neurasthenia, and other conditions ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... he had mastered the difficult business of walking, and with long hours spent in the open in the lively companionship of his brothers he grew up in vigorous and healthy boyhood. He had an enquiring mind, and never seemed to look upon lessons as a "fag." He was always "wanting to know," and there was almost as much eagerness on the little chap's part to be able to decline mensa and conjugate amo as he evinced in competing with his brothers in their sports and games. Such was his gentle, placid nature ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... this time that Lord William came to stay with us. He was introduced to me as a schoolfellow of my father's; at Eton he had been Sir John's fag, and indeed was his junior by only a few years. For some reason, unexplained to me, it was said he had been obliged to leave England, and my father offered him the suite of rooms left vacant by my grandfather. Lord William appeared to be rich; ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... is where your golden noon hour is spent, standing, running, waiting, serving in the ill-smelling restaurant I shall name later; and not your dinner hour alone, but the long day's fag end! ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... to do. If you'll excuse my saying so. Alone! As you say; body fag is no cure for brain fag. Who told you to? No wonder; walking! And the sun on your head, heat, fag, solitude, all the day long, and then, I suppose, you go to bed and ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... human stamina if we neglect other co-operatives—namely the obedience to the laws of abstinence, and those of ordinary gratification. We rise with a headache, and we set about puzzling ourselves to know the cause. We then recollect that we had a hard day's fag, or that we feasted over-bounteously, or that we stayed up very late: at all events we incline to find out the fault, and then we call ourselves fools for falling into it. Now, this is an occurrence happening almost every day; and these are the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... conscience he says, "Honesty is a very good thing, perhaps, but it is by no means the best policy,—it is simply no policy at all,—it is sheer stupidity. What can be more politic than for me to pocket this windfall and turn the corner quick?"—So preacheth his crooked fag-end of a conscience, that very, very small still voice, in very husky tones; but he knows that a policeman, walking behind him, saw him pick up the purse, which alters the case,—which, in fact, completely sets aside his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... 'em all at my old 33 years desk yester morning; and deuce take me if I had not yearnings at leaving all my old pen and ink fellows, merry sociable lads, at leaving them in the Lurch, fag, fag, fag. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... hard for a minute, because it would be grand if I could say when Brian came back, "I have sold your cathedral for you." But I might have saved myself brain fag. Madame Mounet had settled everything in her head, and was merely playing me, like a ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... my inclination that I fag for the booksellers; but what can I do? My poverty and not my will consents. The income of my office is only reversionary, and my private fortune much limited. My poetical success fairly destroyed my prospects of professional success, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... N. remainder, residue; remains, remanent, remnant, rest, relic; leavings, heeltap^, odds and ends, cheesepairings^, candle ends, orts^; residuum; dregs &c (dirt) 653; refuse &c (useless) 645; stubble, result, educt^; fag-end; ruins, wreck, skeleton., stump; alluvium. surplus, overplus^, excess; balance, complement; superplus^, surplusage^; superfluity &c (redundancy) 641; survival, survivance^. V. remain; be left &c adj.; exceed, survive; leave. Adj. remaining, left; left behind left over; residual, residuary; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... in a semicircle about two or three leagues from shore make the attempt to land a very dangerous piece of business. And another thing, I know. Let the natives boast as they will about their splendid climate, they are visited by the most frightful hurricanes. They get the fag-end of the storms that rage over the Antilles; and the fag-end of a storm is like the tail of a whale; it's just the strongest bit of it. I don't think you'll find a sailor listening much to your poets — your Moores, and ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... even before I had made an end of my bagful of pebbles, I had gotten great plenty of nuts; and as soon as my companions had in like manner gotten as many nuts as they could carry, we returned to the city, where we arrived at the fag-end of day. Then I went in to the kindly man who had brought me in company with the nut- gatherers and gave him all I had gotten, thanking him for his kindness; but he would not accept them, saying, "Sell ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... contemptible than many suppose); all expenses were to be defrayed by the Mayor of Tiverton and kindly Mr. Oliver Peard. After a year under Hudson, young Cosway entered Shipley's Academy, already mentioned. Probably he was a somewhat puny, insignificant-looking lad, and was therefore made the butt and fag of the robuster students, compelled to attend upon them and obey their behests, even to performing menial offices, just as younger boys do in other academies—for might is right in the world of school—and thus Mr. Smith's errand-boy story ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... Postoffice. Must answer. Fag today. Send her a postal order two shillings, half a crown. Accept my little present. Stationer's just here too. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... not want, and so they pass it over to the boys. Doctors are always turning pauper patients over to the youngsters, and so in successful law-offices there is more or less of this semi-charitable work to do. Business houses also have fag-end work that they give to beginners, as kind folks give bones to Fido. Wendell Phillips' law-work was exactly of this contingent kind—big business and big fees only go to big ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... of my lateness with me, Mr. Narkom," said Cleek as he tossed aside his hat and threw the fag-end of his cigarette through the open window. "You merely said 'tea-time,' not any particular hour; and I improved the opportunity to take another spin up the river and to talk like a Dutch uncle ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... as our experience has gone, in no other way. He is generous enough to hate all oppression in every form, and therefore to hate the oppression exercised by a noble as heartily as oppression exercised by a king. He is a big boy ready to fight anyone who bullies his fag; but with no doubts as to the merits of fagging. But then he never chooses to look at the awkward consequences of his opinion. When talking of politics, an aristocracy full of virtue and talent, ruling on generous principles a people sufficiently educated ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... "Sios agus sios liom," their "Michael Hoy," and "Gallant Tipperary." The Irish jigs and planxties are not only the best dancing tunes, but the finest quick marches in the world. Some of them would cure a paralytic and make the marble-legged prince in the Arabian Nights charge like a Fag-an-Bealach boy. The hunter joins in every leap and yelp of the "Fox Chase"; the historian hears the moan of the penal days in "Drimindhu," and sees the embarkation of the Wild Geese in "Limerick's Lamentation"; and ask the lover ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... was faster than that—and he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards start, and then pass her under way; but always at the fag end of the race she'd get excited and desperate like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side among the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust and ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... a feller" for a false quantity, "that, by Jove! you couldn't sit down for a fortnight without squeaking;" and of the jolly mills they used to have with the town cads, who would lie in wait for you, and half kill you if they caught you alone; and of the fun it was to make a junior form fag for you, and do all your dirty work; - that Master Verdant's hair would almost stand on end at such horrors, and he would gasp for very dread lest such should ever be ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... next moment she seemed to repent the nod, for she flared up and snapped: "Oh, shut up, for Christ's sake, cancher? Give any one the fair pip, you do. Ain't I answered enough damsilly questions from ev'body without you? Oo's got a fag?" ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... Others conceived it not impossible that the Army of the Valley might be on its way to Tennessee to take Memphis, or even to Vicksburg, to sweep the foe from Mississippi. The men lounged beneath the trees, or watched the weary Virginia Central bringing in the fag end of things. Fredericksburg was now the road's terminus; beyond, the line had been destroyed by a ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... and the corporal had been accoutred both some time, when my father and mother enter'd, and the clock striking eleven, were that moment in motion to sally forth—but the account of this is worth more than to be wove into the fag end of the eighth (Alluding to the first edition.) volume of such a work as this.—My father had no time but to put the letter of instructions into my uncle Toby's coat-pocket—and join with my mother ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... Peter, still in a tone of remonstrance. Toffy had been his fag at Eton, and Peter had got into the habit of taking care of him. He knew his friend's constitution better than most people did, and he expended much affection upon him, and endeavoured without any success to make him take care ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... wrathful scorn for the English boy who makes another boy his fag, and you express a sneering pity for the boy who consents to fag. You have read Dr. Birch and His Young Friends, and you would like to break the head of Master Hewlett, who shies his shoe at the poor shivering, craven Nightingale, and you justly remark that close observation of John Bull seems ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... borrowed my only decanter, in return, and, hang them, cracked it!—Curse me, say I, if this life is worth having! It's all the very vanity of vanities—as it's said somewhere in the Bible—and no mistake! Fag, fag, fag, all one's days, and—what for? Thirty-five pounds a-year, and 'no advance!' (Here occurred a pause and revery, from which he was roused by the clangor of the church-bells.) Bah, bells! ring away till you're all cracked!—Now do you think I'm going to be mewed ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... ceased to charm: politics alone remains to gratify the pugnacity and cruelty that civilisation has robbed of their due objects. How we brighten up again at a bye-election, when duels which passed unregarded in the big battle, when towns scarcely noted at the fag-end of the great campaign, become the cynosure of every eye. Through Slocum or Eatonswill the hub of the universe temporarily passes: to its population of four thousand, mostly fools, are entrusted the destinies of the Empire; it is theirs to make or mar. The duel is watched by ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... commander of a grand army; and then, scraping a match—my match—upon the wall, he would begin attending to his 'military duties' by lighting a cigar—my cigar—and strolling up the avenue, on exhibition, preparatory to going home to dine, while the fag remained driving the pen madly, kindly assisted sometimes by Quartermaster-Sergeant Oates, until long after the dinner hour of the non-commissioned staff. I think the company commanders must sometimes have doubted (unless they carefully refrained from reading orders, as I have sometimes ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... possessed at once of the attributes of modesty and assurance. From an early age he will have been noted for the qualities which in after-life render him humbly celebrated in subordinate positions. At school he will have had the good fortune to be attached as fag to a big boy who occupied an important place as an athlete, and whose condescending smiles were naturally an object of greater ambition to the small fry than the approval of the school authorities. For him he performed with much assiduity the various ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... It was the fag end of the week in the Dingy City. A heavy weight of dusty grey cloud lay oppressively inert, vaguely resting on the house and tree tops, and underneath the cloud the air seemed stagnantly confined; in its lowest strata people had been breathing it all day—all the week, in fact—in and out ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... blackguardism, and Billingsgate abuse of secret organizations, dark lanterns, and Protestant clergymen, will be the order of the day. In this congenial work, all the conglomeration of ignorant men, foreign paupers, and fag-ends and factions, styling ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... of troops of juveniles who followed the Tumblers or the Monkey, and came up, all on one side, a little too late for everything that was attractive, from Monday morning until Saturday night. Wherever childhood congregated to play, there was little Moloch making Johnny fag and toil. Wherever Johnny desired to stay, little Moloch became fractious, and would not remain. Whenever Johnny wanted to go out, Moloch was asleep, and must be watched. Whenever Johnny wanted to stay at home, Moloch was awake, and must be taken out. Yet Johnny was verily ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... Lord Inglewold would be inclined to resume the fag-end. In such case, as the lease has been a long one, and land has risen much, he would doubtless pay a part of the difference. Then there's the stock, worth a good deal, I should think. I'll see what can be done. And then there's the stray bit ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... which he knew not one of his troop could live through the swarms of the Arabs around them. That I saw with my own eyes. I and my Spahis just reached him in time. Then who is it that saved the day, I pray you?—I, who just ran a race for fun and came in at the fag-end of the thing, or this man who lived the whole day through in the carnage, and never let go of the guidon, but only thought how to die greatly? I tell you, the Cross is his, and not mine. Take it back, and give ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... I suppose it was deeply laden with pirates coming to slit our throats from ear to ear. I have forgotten that part, but I remember the tiny spot of courtplaster just above your painted lips. . . . Such are the jumbled pictures. They are bred of brain-fag, no doubt; yet, whatever be their lineage," said Charteris, happily, "they render glum discussion and platitudinous moralizing quite out of the question. So, let's pretend, Pauline, that we are not a bit ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... was to be made by scheming and bribery, she was there to make it. At play she always cheated, and if found out stormed and raged; but pocketed what she had won. People looked upon her as they would have looked upon a fish-fag, and did not like to commit themselves by quarrelling with her. At the end of every game she used to say that she gave whatever might have been unfairly gained to those who had gained it, and hoped that others would do likewise. For she ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of the Mission labours most of all with his own hands at the work which is sometimes described as menial work; and it is contrary to the fundamental principle of the Mission that anyone should connect with the idea of white man the right to fag a black boy. ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... feels, and chides me for tarrying so long.—I will therefore fly till him on the wings of love and guid news;—for I am sure the poor lad is pining with the pip of expectation and anxious jeopardy. And so, guid folks, I will leave you with the fag end of an auld North-Country wish:—'May mutual love and guid humour be the guests of your hearts, the theme of your tongues, and the blithsome subjects of aw your tricksey dreams through the rugged road of this deceitful world; ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... of the wheels before them and behind them, as the soldier and Constance joined the desultory fag-end of the procession. On either side of the road waved the mournful cypress, draped by the hoary tillandsia, and from the somber depths of foliage came the chirp of the tree-crickets and the note of the swamp owl. Faint music, in measured rhythm, a foil to disconnected wood-sound, was wafted ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... of Tom Draw, I was I must confess, taken altogether aback when I, for the first time, set eyes upon him. I had heard Harry Archer talk of him fifty times as a crack shot; as a top sawyer at a long day's fag; as the man of all others he would choose as his mate, if he were to shoot a match, two against two—what then was my astonishment at beholding this worthy, as he reared himself slowly from his recumbent position? It is true, I had heard his sobriquet, "Fat Tom," but, Heaven and Earth! such a mass ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... board yesterday. He looks thin. The fag in a brig is very great; and I see no prospect of his either making prize-money, or being made post, at present: but, I shall omit ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... a hard-fought game of football. In fact, he hardly knew what physical fatigue was; and only once, when he was suffering from a chill, and had to sit for his senior scholarship examination, do I recollect his exhibiting any sign of mental fag. He found rest in change of employment. Athletic exercises were a natural antidote to his strenuous intellectual work; and music lifted him into the region of pure emotion and soothed his soul with the ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... couldn't very well imagine it, although I tried. But I was extremely noisy, and I heard two or three of the bridesmaids, to say nothing of the maid of honor and the bridegroom's mamma, tapping their gentle hammers, at my expense, at the breakfast. It was a year afterward that I began to fag ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... get up for a squint at Fritz with a fag on! 'E's got every sandbag along this parapet numbered, same as we've got 'is. 'Is snipers is a-layin' fer us same as ours is a-layin' fer 'im." Then, turning to the rest of us, "Now, we ain't arskin' to 'ave no burial parties. But if any of you blokes wants to be ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... tired if you do go. The change will do you heaps of good, and it will not be a fag. I will pack ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... the Provinces enjoyed their land revenue—when there was any—their pastoral rents, a dog tax, and such fag-ends of customs revenue as the central Government could spare them. Their condition was quite unequal. Canterbury, with plenty of high-priced land, could more than dispense with aid from the centre. Other Provinces, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... a beautifull ermin trimming for my cloak. AC stands for Abigail Church. PF for Polly Frazior. I have presented one piece of ribbin to my aunt as you directed. She gives her love to you, & thanks you for it. I intend to send Nancy Mackky a pair of lace mittens, & the fag end of Harry's watch string. I hope Carolus (as papa us'd to call him) will think his daughter very smart with them. I am glad Hon^d madam, that you think my writing is better than it us'd to be—you see it is mended just here. I dont know what you mean by terrible ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... type and rudiment— And he, the fag-end of creation, Meaningless sculpture of journeymen, Doomed to the curse of extinction. Curious, also, that I, An islander from far-off Britain Should meet them, Or, the rude scrolls of them. Both together in these wilds, Round about the region of the Black ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... thing must be sacrificed to the more important. One needs to cultivate a mature judgment, or his strength will be frizzled away in the less important details, and the greater thing go undone, or be done poorly with the fag-ends of strength. If we would become skilled intercessors, and know how to pray simply enough, we must take quiet time daily ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... faint-hearted swore that an autograph invitation from Venus herself to the heathen Olympus, with nectar and ambrosia for tea and bread-and-butter, could not tempt them from the Christian enjoyment of a feather-bed after the fag of such a day; but the preux chevaliers—those who did deserve to win a fair lady—shook off sloth and their morning trousers, and taking to tights and activity, hurried to the party of ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... to destroy in him,' said the Pussum. 'He's so thin already, there's only a fag-end ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... expectation of an orator. Altogether, his conduct at Harrow indicated a clever, but not an extraordinary boy. He formed a few friendships there, in which his attachment appears to have been, in some instances, remarkable. The late Duke of Dorset was his fag, and he was not considered a very hard taskmaster. He certainly did not carry with him from Harrow any anticipation of that splendid career he was destined to ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... Vanbraam at last, "I have managed to pick up the fag ends of a good many languages during my life, and I ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... young Evandale (I suppose because he is a lord, and has interest with the privy-council) a request which he refused to so old a servant of the king as I am. But so long as the poor young fellow's life is saved, I can comfort myself with the fag-end of a ditty as old as myself." And therewithal, he hummed ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... on not being able to roll a cigarette. If he were forced, at the point of the bayonet, to roll a fag, ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... neurasthenia is reached there is noticed "brain fag," and brain fag is nature's warning signal calling upon you to take notice and change your ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... more gloomy sky or a more forbidding scene. Gray clouds, gray sea, brown bare fields; the village of white or gray-shingled houses set, for the most part, along the winding main street; the elms and silver-leaf poplars waving bare branches in the cutting wind; a picture of the fag end of loneliness and desolation, so it looked to her. She remembered Mr. Graves's opinion of the place, as jokingly reported by Sylvester, and she sympathized ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Government, however, held it in suspicion, inasmuch as the so-called "Turner" (gymnasts) cherished political ambitions. In time, however, the exercise of the muscles cured the revolutionary brain-fag, and the Government was enabled to assume a sort of protectorship over gymnastics. Though enthusiastically carried on to this very day in Germany, the movement no longer ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... at first, though now so great— For at Altorf, in student's gown he played By your leave, the part of a roaring blade, And rattled away at a queerish rate. His fag he had well nigh killed by a blow, And their Nur'mburg worships swore he should go To jail for his pains—if he liked it or no. 'Twas a new-built nest to be christened by him Who first should be lodged. Well, what was his whim? Why, he sent his dog forward to lead the way, And they call the jail ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a King's Scholar, the hardships and cruelties he suffered, as a junior boy, from his fag-master, were such as at one time very nearly forced us to remove him from the school. He was taken home for a short period, to recover from his bruises, and restore his eye. His first act, on becoming Captain himself, was to endeavour to ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... kind o' guess you've made, any way, old stranger," laughed his tormentor, clapping his foot against the companion, and taking the pull of a giant on the reef-tackle as he spoke. "If you ever know'd where to look for the fag-ind of a north-easter at this time o' year, it's more nor you ever larn'd me to do, and that I do say wasn't doin' your honest duty by me. I'd lay a pistreen this breeze would last the Washy, to the south'ard o' the Tortugas, and ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... at the fag end of the summer, when all his well-laid plans had one by one gone agley, chance brought to Green an adventure—sheer chance and a real adventure. The circumstance of a deranged automobile was largely responsible—that and the added incident ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... possis si non quocunque modo," said Somers, the head of the school, whose fag Walter was, and who, passing by at the moment, caught the last sentence; "what is the ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... suppose that you can boss us in every single particular. If I want to make one of these greenies 'fag' for me, ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... still to say, and we found it hard to part from our charming friends; realising, too, that this was the end of our holiday, and that before us lay merely the toil and bustle of a return to commonplace, everyday life. At last, though, the final fag-end of a cheroot was thrown away, the last hand-grips given, and ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... by such a whack as you got on your brain-box—to say nothing of your fancy for trying to cure it hydropathically by taking it into the sea with you when you were for crossing the Atlantic Ocean on the fag-end of a mast. It's much indeed that you have to learn, I am thinking, both about surgery and about taking care of yourself. But in the former you'll now do well, being in the competent hands of a graduate of Dublin University; and in regard to your incompetence in the latter ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... even the life of a settler may be filled with "sweet dreams, and health and quiet." But the great majority seem to have taken to the scrap heap of Federal politics with such ardour that they clutch but the fag ends of the poetry ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... his satisfied smile to assurance of a sale; the chap evidently had confidence in his musical patter. Martin felt almost sorry as he declined the greatest offer of the century. His brain was already overburdened, he kindly explained, and he dare not risk brain fag by delving into the matchless Compendium. Of course, some other day, ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... dropping heavy stuff on the station, and he was getting some casualties out of a Red Cross train. A shell burst just down the embankment, and his two orderlies ducked for it under the carriage, but old Drennan never turned a hair. 'Better have a fag,' he said to the Scottie he was helping. 'It's no use letting Fritz put one ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... other money-making industry. A Gipsy will make four harvests in one year; first he goes 'up the country,' as he calls going into Middlesex, for 'peas-hacking.' That over, he goes into Sussex (Chichester—'wheat-fagging' or tying), and on that being done, returns toward Hampshire—North Hants—to 'fag' or tie, and that being done he enters Surrey for hop-picking (previously securing a 'bin' in one of the gardens). Some idea of his gross earnings may be obtained from the following fact:—Two able-bodied men, an old woman of about 75 years of age, and two women, earned on a farm in ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... feels, "It isn't to please myself that I slave at my lessons; mother would be vexed if I didn't; and it's very hard that I should be both hindered in them and made to do other things as well,—it's quite bad enough in term-time to have to fag at lessons." But just consider, for a moment, this "fagging at lessons:" you feel that in so doing you are making a concession to your mother, for which she ought to show unbounded gratitude by all manner of sweetmeats in the holidays. But who profits by these ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... linen apron, and her head protected by a mob-cap, she would proceed to dust and wash her cherished china. From much loneliness she had formed a habit of talking quietly to herself during these operations; but no one could have understood her, for she only uttered the fag-ends of her thoughts aloud. ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... its own, make everybody merry, and banish all discomforts due to frost and cold for ever. Thus the men thought, though most of our fellows are teetotallers. We get rum now, few (p. 035) drink it; we are sated with cigarettes, and smoke them as if in duty bound; the stolen delight of the last "fag-end" is a dream of the past. Parades are endless, we have never worked so hard since we joined the army; the minor offences of the cathedral city are full-grown crimes under long artillery range; a dirty rifle was only a matter for words of censure a month ago, ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... which ensued between the two houses, prevented the passing of every bill projected during the present session. One Dr. Shirley, being cast in a lawsuit before chancery against Sir John Fag, a member of the house of commons, preferred a petition of appeal to the house of peers. The lords received it, and summoned Fag to appear before them. He complained to the lower house, who espoused his cause. They not only maintained, that no member of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... smoke. On this walking trip I made it a rule to be off by seven o'clock, stop twice for a quarter of an hour up to tiffin (my men stopped oftener), when our rest was often for an hour, so that we were all refreshed and ready to push on for the fag-end of the stage. We generally were done by four or five o'clock. And I should be the last in the world to deny that by this time I had had ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... oratory, who could give such weighty and brilliant expression to the feelings of his hearers and the doctrines of his party, had less originating power, whether of intellect or of will, than any other man of equal eminence that ever lived. He adhered to the fag end of the old party, until it was absorbed, unavoidably, with scarcely an effort of its own, in Adams and Clay. From 1815 to 1825 he was in opposition, and in opposition to old Federalism revived; and, consequently, we believe that posterity will decide that his speeches of this period are ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... thing gladdens the eye. The birds that fly over the land carry their provisions with them. Only the crow and the raven tarry with us. Our city lies in the midst of a desert of the purest, most unadulterated and uncompromising sand, in which infernal soil nothing but that fag-end of vegetable creation, "sage- brush," ventures to grow.... I said we are situated in a flat, sandy desert—true. And surrounded on all sides by such prodigious mountains that when you look disdainfully down (from them) upon the insignificant village of Carson, in ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and recalled the time, barely five years ago, when the same man—Jonah the hunchback—had astonished Botany Road with his flaring signs in red and white. True, his shop was still on the Road, for Regent Street is but the fag end of a long, dusty road where it saunters into town, snobbishly conscious of larger buildings and higher rents. Since then his progress had been marked by removals, and each step had carried him nearer to the great city. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... before or since have we tasted anything of its kind so good as a buttered roll toasted. It was a French roll buttered all over outside, and then skillfully grilled until the outside was a rich crisp brown. This was brought by the fag to his master "hot and hot," and, being cut open, eaten with butter. The rooms were warmed by immense open fireplaces, there being no limit to the expenditure of coal, which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... said Freddie, "I was saying just before you came in that I had half a mind to pop over. Only it's rather a bally fag, starting. Getting your luggage packed and all that sort ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... longer objected when he was called "Carrots" the boys dropped that name, and the shortest one survived. The boys started to call him "Tims" and in a few months he had won their affection from the lowest fag to the ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... can't lie to you. I have only a broken heart. Beyond friendship and gratitude, I have nothing to offer you. I can't even promise that I will ever stop loving—him. But—" her words came with the flatness of unending soul-fag—"I suppose I can give you the lesser things; fidelity, respect; all the petty allegiance that can go on ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... no other alternative." He walked to the fireplace and warmed himself, humming the fag end of a tune in a rich convivial bass voice. "What does your side say?" he went on; "now pray tell me—what ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... honoured with the dignity of clerk to the parish, he was deemed by his neighbours a person of no small accomplishment, and no insignificant distinction. He was a little, dry, thin man, of a turn rather sentimental than jocose; a memory well stored with fag-ends of psalms, and hymns which, being less familiar than the psalms to the ears of the villagers, were more than suspected to be his own composition; often gave a poetic and semi-religious colouring to his conversation, which accorded rather with his dignity ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... replied the Neck, "thou shalt part easily with thy little fag-end of life. I can play upon my harp a strain of such surpassing sadness that no human heart that hears it but must break. And yet the pain of that heartbreak shall be such that thou wilt not know it from rapture. Moreover, when the sun sets below the water, my spirit ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... ant-traps as elephant-snares. There fell into my hands recently certain valuable documents in the meanest of contemporary swindles, which reveal the connection of the National City Bank, certain of its officers and other important financial interests, with a plot to fleece the fag ends of the public. The details of the Munroe & Munroe-Montreal & Boston conspiracy have been widely published, and the world is well acquainted now with the two Munroes, graduates of a "gents' furnishing-goods" shop in ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... again and so carried no side—came on the scene strolling about with the Head, the school divided right and left in admiring silence. And when one laid hands on Flint, even upon the Head of the Games crying, "Good Heavens! What do you mean by growing in this way? You were a beastly little fag when I left," visible haloes encircled Flint. They would walk to and fro in the corridor with the little red school-sergeant, telling news of old regiments; they would burst into form-rooms sniffing the well-remembered smells of ink and whitewash; they would find nephews ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... mother's garden and the talking oaks and the nightingales. She wrote briefly to her father, giving him, as he had requested, an account of things; and he wrote back that since she was so contented—she didn't recognise having told him that—she had better not return to town at all. The fag-end of the London season would be unimportant to her, and he was getting on very well. He mentioned that Godfrey had passed his tests, but, as she knew, there would be a tiresome wait before news of results. The poor chap was going abroad for a month ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... I hear that you have been preaching at Chaldicotes," said the archdeacon, still rather loudly. "I saw Sowerby the other day, and he told me that you gave them the fag end of ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... Peel were at Harrow together, a tyrant, some few years older, whose name was ——, claimed a right to fag little Peel, which claim (whether rightly or wrongly I know not) Peel resisted. His resistance, however, was in vain:— —— not only subdued him, but determined also to punish the refractory slave; and proceeded forthwith to put this determination in practice, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... again with the other three, who were tolerably discreet, and found the debate on the White gentility had been resumed. Ivinghoe was philosophically declaring 'that in these days one must take up with everybody, so it did not matter if one was a little more of a cad than another; he himself was fag at Eton to a fellow whose father was an oilman, and who wasn't ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is pretty well lubricated in the well-compensated adrenal type. Brain fag is closely associated with, if not dependent upon, adrenal fag, particularly of the cortex. Brain tissue and adrenal cortex tissue are near relatives, and a normal human brain never develops without a normal adrenal cortex. The adrenal type ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... in King Charles the Second's; but I have heard that its most comely parts had been swallowed up by an Earthquake, and, when I remember it, the Main thoroughfare was like nothing half so much as the Fag End of Kent Street in the Borough, where the Broom-men live. As for public scavengers—humane at least—there were none; for that salutary practice of putting rebellious Blacks into chain-gangs, and making them sweep the streets,—which might be well done in London with Pickpockets and the like ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... of light upon the condition of Rome at the time. Our hair is made to stand on end when we remember that men had to pick their steps in such a State as this, and to live if it were possible, and, if not, then to be ready to die. We come in upon the fag-end of the proscription, and see, not the bloody wreath of Sulla as he triumphed on his Marian foes, not the cruel persecution of the ruler determined to establish his order of things by slaughtering every foe, but the necessary accompaniments of such ruthless ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... opportunity of making a philological remark to pass, "D'ye know, Mishter Lashness, that Frinch an' the rale ould Oirish is as loike as two pays? Now, there's garsan is as Oirish a worrud for a young bhoy as ye'll find in Connaught. But juty is juty, moy dare sorr, so, as they say in the arrmy, 'Fag a bealach,' lave the way." The sergeant's next discovery was the doctor, borne in the arms of the lawyer and the dismounted parson. He had sprained his ancle in the rapid descent to which his zeal had impelled him, and had thus been compelled ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... perhaps, a man whose heart was weighted by a great woe. You have seen the eye darken, the soul fag, and the spirit congeal under the breath of an icy disaster. At ten-thirty of this particular evening Cowperwood, sitting alone in the library of his Michigan Avenue house, was brought face to face with the fact that he had lost. He had built so much on the cast of this single die. It ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... said in quite a new tone, "you were saying something the other day about your mother's very kind offer to have Mary for some weeks after the May drawing-room. I think it would be a good thing. You don't want the fag and expense of going up to town so soon after you've come home. Let her stay with her grandmother for a bit and go out—see that she has proper clothes—they will enjoy having the child, and she will see something of the world. Let her have her fling—don't ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... if you don't want me to take you to the Haighs' I'll cry off myself; it's a fearful fag playing a tournament in this weather. Good-bye; I'm off,' he added, as he rose ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... she had seemed to need. With touching simplicity she determined to follow the course recommended by the Head. Though by the time she had corrected some seventy manuscripts in marble-backed covers, and prepared her lesson for the next day, she had nothing but the fag-end of her brain to give to the healers and regenerators; as for rising, Miss Quincey felt much more like going to bed, and it was as much as she could do to drag her poor little body there. Still Miss Quincey was nothing if not heroic; ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... fifty guineas! Dost thou think I'll sell myself? And at a playhouse price too? Whenever I go, I go all together: No cutting from the whole piece; he who has me shall have the fag-end with the rest, I warrant him. Be satisfied, thy sheers shall never enter into my cloth. But, look to thyself, thou impudent belswagger: I will ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... showered upon Dam from all sides. He was counselled to live on meat, to be a vegetarian, to rise at 4 a.m. and swim, to avoid all brain-fag, to run twenty miles a day, to rest until the fight, to get up in the night and swing heavy dumb-bells, to eat no pudding, to drink no tea, to give up sugar, avoid ices, and deny himself all "tuck" and everything else that makes ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... man but hopes sincerely that this one will say No; and when I am informed that he promised our bootboy a rapid and inevitable descent to a state of infamy and destitution upon discovering no more than the fag end of a cigarette behind his ear, then I am tempted to recall an incident of fifteen years back, lest it be forgotten that Thompson is a man like ourselves who has known, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... thought was, that she deserved a slap; but Terry spared the Countess a blush and me the brain fag of a repartee conciliatory alike to ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... head, was ever on the look-out for some petty jobs among architects, outside his studies at the School of Arts. As for Claude, thanks to his thousand francs a year, he had his full liberty; but the latter days of each month were terrible enough, especially if he had to share the fag-end of his allowance. Luckily he was beginning to sell a little; disposing of tiny canvases, at the rate of ten and twelve francs a-piece, to Papa Malgras, a wary picture dealer. After all, he preferred starvation to turning his art into mere commerce by manufacturing ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... into the town for the purpose of executing commissions; but this was not easy, as all the regular outlets were closed at an early hour. In such a dilemma, any route, that was barely practicable at whatever risk, must be traversed by the loyal fag; and it so happened that none of any kind remained open or accessible, except one; and this one communication happened to have escaped suspicion, simply because it lay through a succession of temples and sewers sacred to the goddesses Cloacina and Scavengerina. That of itself was not so extraordinary ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... and I, contemplating a farm-labourer the other day, who was drinking his mug of beer on a settle at a roadside ale- house door, we fell to humming the fag-end of an old ditty, of which the poor man and his beer, and the sin of parting them, form the doleful burden. Philosewers then mentioned to me that a friend of his in an agricultural county—say a Hertfordshire ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... in great anger at her obstinacy, and Frank and Die together sought the den of the Justice, to which they were guided by a high voice chanting the fag-end of ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... he attracted no particular notice at school; but this is not true. At Eton his resentment of tyrannical authority displayed itself not only against the masters, but against the privileges of young patricians. He refused to be "fag"; and on one occasion he so braved the youthful public-opinion, that, on being dared to the act by the surrounding boys, he pinned a companion's hand to the table with a fork. According to my recollection, the immediate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... air. Picked up. Can't stand. Something broken. Doctor will say what. Anyhow, clothes torn, bruised, disheartened. Dare not catch the eye of pretty girl. Carried home. Shall give up bicycle riding. Awful fag, ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... the engine-thieves passed Ringgold, where they began to fag. They were out of wood, water, and oil. Their rapid running and inattention to the engine had melted all the brass from the journals. They had no time to repair or refit, for an iron-horse of more bottom ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... things which did not appear in the bills, under a system of cricket, foot-ball, and paper-chases, from four to five days a week, which provided for three lawful cuts of a ground-ash if any boy absented himself from these entertainments. He became a rumple-collared, dusty-hatted fag of the Lower Third, and a light half-back at Little Side foot-ball; was pushed and prodded through the slack backwaters of the Lower Fourth, where the raffle of a school generally accumulates; won his "second-fifteen" ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... Peterkin, in a low tone. "I feel as if we had got to the fag-end of the world, as if we were ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... fag and constant companion, who was mostly a pair of huge pyjamas, was also admitted to the friendship of Maharaj. But there was one man that the elephant disliked, and that was the mahout's nephew, one Piroo, who was a young elephant-driver seeking a situation—a ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... event, though it might be surprising to many people, would not be incredible, nor without many parallel cases. He was poor, a miserable fag, under the control of that mean wretch up there at the school, who looked as if he had sour buttermilk in his veins instead of blood. He was in love with a girl above his station, rich, and of old family, but strange in all her ways, and it was conceivable that he should ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the deck of his yacht, and then, after a spin westward to the Needles or eastward to the Nab or Warner Lightship, soothed by the lapping of the waters, and refreshed by the pure sea air, returns on the Monday to face again the terrors of London heat and "fag." ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... Chile than in any other South American country. A portion of the city of Valparaiso seems to be given over almost entirely to the liquor dealers and the people who throng that district are hard-looking folks. The fag ends of civilization seem to have gathered here. This is the only city in South America where I was accosted by both men and women and they almost try to hold one up in the streets in ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... school is divided into six forms, of which the sixth ranks the highest. This, and the fifth form, comprise about half the number of boys, for whom the lower half fag. An upper boy may fag a lower one to Windsor, ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... crawled under the seats. In spite of the fact that the pocket-mirror was to be the prize, only Jack and Hamond appeared at the starting-point when it came to this last item on Rosher's programme, their companions voting it too much fag, and preferring to sit on the obstacles and ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... for him to go. I often wondered there were no people smart enough to dig up the coffin and to see what is in it, at night they could do that. No one knows in what soil Robert Emmet was buried, but he was made an end of sure enough. Parnell went through Gort one day, and he called it the fag-end of Ireland, just as Lady Morgan called the North ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory
... with an automatic cigar-lighter. I think it would be only poetical justice if in the concluding scene, when Old Bill comes into his own, the authors were for once to allow Alf to succeed in lighting his "fag." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... and entered a sort of ante-room, hung round with old maps, architectural elevations, and genealogical trees. A pair of folding-doors opened from this into Mr. Inglewood's sitting apartment, from which was heard the fag-end of an old ditty, chanted by a voice which had been in its day fit for ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... than ever for people who can keep at their tasks without long enforced rests; people who can think deeply and continuously without brain-fag; people who can concentrate all their powers on the work in hand without wasting time or energy on unnecessary aches and pains; people whose bodies are kept up to the top notch of vitality by well-digested food, well-slept ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... Peter cleaned plates for him in his study, and Ferris watched him. Ferris was kind and talked about many things out of his great wisdom, and then he asked Peter whether he would always like to be his fag, and Peter, delighted, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... omnipotence. Gibraltar may be strong, but ideas are impregnable, and bestow on the hero their invincibility. "It was a great instruction," said a saint in Cromwell's war, "that the best courages are but beams of the Almighty." Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone. Let us not lie and steal. No god will help. We shall find all their teams going the other way,—Charles's Wain, Great Bear, Orion, Leo, Hercules:—every god will leave us. Work rather for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various |
