"Scratch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to carry it to the mill, Sing ivy, sing ivy; The miller he swore he would have her paw, And the cat she swore she would scratch his face, Sing ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... needed a veterinary instead of a doctor," Dave smiled. "I guess I've got some horse blood in me. See!" Montrosa had thrust her head under his arm and was waiting for him to scratch her ears. ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... an awful voice, and Demi cried, "that's the Kitty-mouse! she must have every one, quick, or she will scratch us." ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... sentries were thrown out in a circle round the village. At midnight, the troops got a scratch meal under the protection of the huts. Many guns were captured, some Sniders, many cakes of powder, and much food which was cooking over the fires when the troops entered the village. Some of the rifles that had belonged to the men who had fallen in the ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... method; then as Jung employing the constructive method; and finally explaining the dream, as I would myself prefer, by the use of what I may call the reconstitutive method. The dream itself, for reasons, that will be obvious, I call the "Scratch-Reflex Dream." ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... 'A scratch. I almost wish our lots had been the reverse. Come, Scrope, help me on with my coat. Yesterday I lost my heart, last night I lost my money, and perhaps to-morrow I shall lose my arm. It seems we are ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... while haunting their nesting- places, and are not to be scared with a gun, and are often beaten down with poles and cudgels as they stoop to go under the eaves. Swifts are much infested with those pests to the genus called hippoboscoe hirundinis; and often wriggle and scratch themselves in their flight to get ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... will no doubt make her appearance soon. Let her come and go as she pleases without hindrance. It is not safe to thwart her, for her temper is none of the sweetest, and she is apt to scratch." ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... ailerons, Harry, they're gone. Very tenuous. They're gone. I can't see anything. The screens are black. No more shaking. No more noise. It's quiet and I hear myself breathing, Harry. Harry, the wrist straps on the suits are too tight. And the helmet, when you want to scratch your face, you can go mad. ...
— What Need of Man? • Harold Calin
... you will do that. I was wondering if it has ever struck you how prettily and kindly your little hands behave to each other. Right hand is the cleverest and quickest, of course, but left hand is always willing and ready too. They take care not to hurt or scratch each other, and if by chance one is ever hurt, the other is as tender as possible not to rub or touch the ...
— The Thirteen Little Black Pigs - and Other Stories • Mrs. (Mary Louisa) Molesworth
... twenty-four hours unless your wife drives you to work, but how much rest do you give me? Once in ten years, and then your cattle trample upon me. So I am to be content with being harrowed? Just try giving no hay or litter to your cows, only scratch them and see whether they will give you milk. They will get ill, the slaughterer will have to be sent for, and even the Jew will give ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... saw a pen scrape and scratch its way so viciously, or plough through another man's verbs and adjectives so relentlessly. While he was in the midst of his work, somebody shot at him through the open window, and marred ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain
... get on. Her mouth was stopped either by a little rapture about Edgar, or a little velvet-pawed scratch to herself, whenever she tried in earnest to set the matter before Alice; and when, being a determined person, she at last talked on through all that Alice tried to thrust in, and delivered her mind of the remonstrance she had ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that cleaveth to men that profess, if they cast it not away, but countenance it, will all prove nettles and briars to them; and I will assure thee, yea, thou knowest, that nettles and thorns will sting and scratch but ill-favoredly. "I went," saith Solomon, "by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; and lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... under him for some time, at last espied me as I lay on the ground. He considered awhile, with the caution of one who endeavors to lay hold on a small dangerous animal in such a manner that it shall not be able either to scratch or bite him, as I myself have sometimes done with a weasel in England. At length he ventured to take me behind, by the middle, between his forefinger and thumb, and brought me within three yards of his eyes, that he might behold my shape more perfectly. ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... deadeight there was. For each dead man Dravot pours a little milk on the ground and waves his arms like a whirligig and, Thats all right, says he. Then he and Carnehan takes the big boss of each village by the arm and walks them down into the valley, and shows them how to scratch a line with a spear right down the valley, and gives each a sod of turf from both sides o the line. Then all the people comes down and shouts like the devil and all, and Dravot says,Go and dig the land, and be fruitful and multiply, which they did, though they didnt understand. Then ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... noise of starting. Alarmed at length, he quitted cover, and drew near the tent. Mahmud sat out before it in the sunshine, cross-legged, and staring gravely at his mules, which were browsing the coarse grass. From time to time he pushed his turban back to scratch his head ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... the liberty of making use of another hand; for whether it be owing to age, or writing formerly whole nights by candle-light, or to both those causes, my sight is so far impaired, that I am not able, without much pain, to scratch out a letter. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... Grafton heard not another sound. But it was the slightly hurt—the men shot in the leg or arm—who made the most noise. He had seen three men brought into the hospital from San Juan. The surgeon took the one who was groaning. He had a mere scratch on one leg. Another was dressed, and while the third sat silently on a stool, still another was attended, and another, before the surgeon turned to the man who was so patiently ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... said he, "or I may hurt you. I had to let him, my good fellow, or we'd have been dropping each other like bullocks. As it is, not a scratch between us, though I found young Bowen in a pretty bad way. Our friend had stuck up Jumping Creek barracks in the small hours, put a bullet through Bowen's leg, and come away in his uniform. Pretty tall, that, ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... Old Man of the Dee, Who was sadly annoyed by a Flea; When he said, "I will scratch it!" they gave him a hatchet, Which grieved that Old Man ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... him a lip-curling glance. "Cigars? Well, twopenny clerks do keep up a pretty scratch and no mistake. In ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... as the truth was, it shone forth before him with all the light of a blinding certainty: Florence also was alive! Humanly and physically speaking, the thing was not possible; but the resurrection of Don Luis was likewise an impossibility; and yet Don Luis was alive, with not a scratch on his face, with not a speck of dust on ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... Henry Worley, striker of the Amaranth! My mother lives in St. Louis. Tell her a lie for a poor devil's sake, please. Say I was killed in an instant and never knew what hurt me—though God knows I've neither scratch nor bruise this moment! It's hard to burn up in a coop like this with the whole wide world so near. Good-bye boys—we've all got to come to ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... He was then going to climb up to him, but received another Check, and was then ordered to get into the Coach, or behind it, for that he wanted no Instructors; but be sure you Dog you, says he, don't you bilk me. The Fellow thereupon surrender'd his Whip, scratch'd his Head, and crept into the Coach. Having my self occasion to go into the Strand about the same Time, we started both together; but the Street being very full of Coaches, and he not so able a Coachman as perhaps he imagined himself, I had soon got a little Way before him; often, however, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... assistant. It became the habit of one or another of the boys to ask the cook the way to the distant Concho, usually after the evening meal, when they were loafing by the camp-fire. Wingle would thereupon scratch his head and assume an air of intense concentration. "Well," he would invariably remark, "you take the trail along Sundown's shadder there, and keep a-fannin' it smart for about three hours. When you come ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... they found pieces of an ermine skin, and a quarter mile farther, the rest of it, then, at another place, fragments of a muskrat's skin. Those made it look like the work of the trapper's enemy, the wolverine, which, though rare, was surely found in these hills. Yes! there was a wolverine scratch mark, and here another piece of the rat skin. It was very clear ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... kingdom were represented. Here were the white hands of fair women, and the red paws of obese shop-keepers, and the yellow, bird-like claws of old withered gamesters, all stretched out, side by side, in strange contrast, to place the stakes or scratch in the winnings; and often the winners put their palms or paws on their heap of gold, just as a dog does on a bone when other ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... onerous and dangerous in the extreme. He was constantly carrying orders from one part of the field to the other, amid such a shower of shot and shell that it seemed marvelous that anyone could exist within it. To his great grief Wildfire was killed under him, but he himself escaped without a scratch. When he came afterward to try to describe the battle to those at home, he could ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... droll! There is something grotesque in it. The chair and table merchant never engaged to pay my landlord my rent. Why should my landlord quarrel with HIM? If I have a pimple on my nose which is disagreeable to my landlord's peculiar ideas of beauty, my landlord has no business to scratch my chair and table merchant's nose, which has no pimple on it. His ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... mason bee's fortress, powerless as a fluff of down against a rock. On this point there is no doubt: the future wet nurse of the Anthrax has not been paralyzed as are the live provisions collected by the Hunting Wasps; she has received no bite nor scratch nor contusion of any sort; she has experienced nothing out of the common: in short, she is in her normal state. The billeted nursling arrives, we shall presently see how; he arrives, scarcely visible, almost defying the scrutiny of the lens; and, having made his preparations, he installs himself, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... It next will be right To describe each particular batch: Distinguishing those that have feathers, and bite, From those that have whiskers, and scratch. ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll
... vote for us. Instead, we discovered that the percentage of votes for woman suffrage was about the same in every party, and that whenever the voter had cast a straight vote, without independence enough to "scratch" his ticket, that vote was usually against us. On the other hand, when the ticket was "scratched" the vote was usually in our favor, whatever political party the ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... Sixteenth, Eighteen Hundred Thirty-two, near the little village of Stockbridge, New York. He died at Chicago, January Sixth, Nineteen Hundred One. The farm owned by his father was right on the line between Madison and Oneida Counties. The boys used to make a scratch in the road and dare the boys from Madison to come across into Oneida. The Armour farm adjoined the land of the famous Oneida Community, where was worked out one of the most famous social experiments ever attempted in the history of civilization. However, the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... these prosperous Germans were deprived of the money that he has won here, given back the rags and wooden shoes in which he landed and told that he was on his way to Germany, no wild animal in all the mountains and swamps of the United States would scratch and bite and kick and squawk more vigorously than he would. These German-Americans do not want to be sent back to their Kaiser ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... little gun-file in the pocket the match came from," he said. "I had it mending a trapchain. You can scratch the ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... a scratch breakfast and Fred and Will helped me up-street, past where the Jew stood blinking in the morning sun on the steps of the D.O.A.G. He seemed to be saying prayers, but ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... Don't scratch, and twist, and turn about, And try to get away; But, Pussy, please to try and learn: This is ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous
... began to scratch his head. "Yeh see, jedge," he said at last, "my ol' 'ooman she cain't ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... guinea-fowl and pigeons making up the list—but, on the other hand, poultry seems to swarm everywhere. I never saw such long-necked and long-legged cocks and hens in my life as I see here; but these feathered giraffes appear to thrive remarkably well, and scratch and cackle around every Malabar hut. I have not seen a sheep or a goat since I arrived, nor a cow or bullock grazing. The milch cows are all stall-fed. The bullocks go straight from shipboard to the butcher, and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... of a white roundness, like a shiny taproot, going down into the dune. Then the thing contracted, pulling itself lower into the sand. At the same instant something thin and sharp lashed out through a fold in the skin, striking at Brion's boot and withdrawing. There was a scratch on the hard plastic, beaded with drops of ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... breakfast of what I had given them for supper, all except Crazy Jane, who had finished eating and was trying to get out of the barn, maybe thinking that she could make a nest in a snowbank, or could scratch for angleworms. ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth
... things, a few embroidered cushions; but no new books, or comfy sofas, or look of cosy anywhere. The bathrooms to each room are superb; miles beyond one's ideas of them in general at home. Tom says he can't sleep because the embroidered monograms on the pillows and things scratch his cheek, and the lace frills tickle his nose, while he catches his toes in the Venetian insertion in the sheets. The linen itself is the finest you ever saw, Mamma, and would be too exquisite plain. Now one knows where all those marvellously over-worked things in ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... him, but could not. A doctor who was called pronounced that he was suffering from some sort of poisoning. He was taken to St. George's Hospital in an ambulance, but he never recovered. The post-mortem investigation showed a small scratch on the palm of the hand. That scratch had been produced by a pin or a needle which had been infected by one of the newly discovered poisons which, administered secretly, give a post-mortem appearance of death from ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... bound he reached the rear window, and swung himself upon the fire escape. There was no one in sight. The gray surface of the ironwork showed not the slightest scratch, save those made by his own heels earlier in the day. The steps of the ladder leading up to the next floor were glistening, immaculate. Those of the one to the floor below were equally so. He re-entered the room, and going to the opposite window, threw it wide open. The ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... his wife if he has her on board, sending a boat every day, for his convenience, and so on, and then, when the ship's stores are rushed on board at the last moment, and you put to sea, the stuff turns out to be bad or short. The flour is damp and won't rise, the potatoes are a scratch lot, the meat poor and the fruit rotten. And the Old Man says nothing, the steward says nothing, because they've been squared, and after all it's only the crew who really suffer, because the captain has his own private stock, which Mister steward ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... or in Sydney, or in Melbourne, or, perhaps, in all three cities. It will be but poor consolation to learn that the rest of them may, perhaps, be discovered among the sands of the desert—that is to say, if they scratch about long enough looking for them. Personally, if I get the chance, I shall immediately go about purloining other people's physical perfections, so that, when at last I am ready for the next move onward, ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... dressed my wound as soon as we got on board. It was not much more than a scratch, though it made my neck so stiff for a couple of days that I could hardly turn it. I had it bound up, and just as the boat was approaching the shoal place, Cornwood asked me what ailed my neck. It was clear enough that he did not know what had ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... and palpable. He recognized by its shape, by its size, by the worn gilding of its facets, recognized beyond any possible doubt the crystal stopper which he had seen before. He even remarked a tiny, hardly noticeable little scratch on the ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... crashing in through our bows with most destructive effect; one of our guns being dismounted, the foremast struck in two places within a foot of each other, and the wheel smashed to pieces. Singularly enough the helmsman escaped without a scratch, but one poor fellow fell forward upon ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... scratch of houses and the slant of home lights she watched the darkness lift against the sky. The city had dwindled into a huddle of streets. Noise had become silence. The great crowds were packed away in little rooms. Sitting before the window, unconscious ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... for.—"Antiphlogistine is fine for bronchitis, where there is any inflammation, pleurisy, any kind of a scratch, especially rusty nails; pneumonia, Set can in water long enough to heat, but not hot, spread on with case knife as thick as a silver dollar, spread cotton batting over it, keep on twenty-four hours, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... of his own in mind when he said this. As all the birds began to look about for places to jump into deeper places, and the Duck tried to see how long he could hold his head under water, the Rooster called to the Hen. He instructed the Hen to scratch, and when she had made a deep hole, he hid ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... paralysing shock from a powerful battery, and down I fell in a state of absolute collapse, unable to stir a finger to save myself, although I knew I was rapidly drowning. Fortunately the blacks who were with me came and pulled me ashore, where I slowly recovered. There was only a slight scratch on my ankle, but for a long time my whole body was racked with pain, and when the natives got to know of the symptoms they told me that I had been attacked by a "sting-rae." The spike or sting measures from two to six inches in ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... probability is one which no man of age and experience will lack instance for making a fact. Without seeking to become profound in the matter I will say this: it is but lightly as compared with a man that one need scratch a woman to come ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... "I'm not afraid. Let me dig," and fell on her knees and began to scratch like a dog does when he has suddenly remembered where it was ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... gun to frighten them, and were soon able to leave them far behind, without having received any other injury than the alarm, and a sufficient notice of the danger to be encountered in disturbing the repose of their dead. On emerging from the wood, some drops of blood caused me to remark a slight scratch on the forefinger of my right hand; I attributed this to the hurry of my flight, and did not trouble myself much about it, as was my practice with trifles, but continued my march towards ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... you to leave Lady Claudia alone. If you come to that—but there, I was just going to scratch back like a school-girl. Let us remember ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... instead of finding his dearest Rapunzel, he found the enchantress, who gazed at him with wicked and venomous looks. 'Aha!' she cried mockingly, 'you would fetch your dearest, but the beautiful bird sits no longer singing in the nest; the cat has got it, and will scratch out your eyes as well. Rapunzel is lost to you; you will never see her again.' The king's son was beside himself with pain, and in his despair he leapt down from the tower. He escaped with his life, but the thorns into which he fell pierced his eyes. Then he wandered quite blind about the ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... one of a small breed of dogs, named from their propensity to scratch the ground or earth in ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... by putting the three circuits together, I had contrived to spell out the letter C—as in a telegraph office the operator would write a letter, though probably not the same one, with a long, a short, and a long scratch upon ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... "'The' ain't a scratch ner a pimple on him,' says the feller, kind o' resentin' my looks. 'He's sound an' kind, an' 'll stand without hitchin', an' a lady c'n drive him 's ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... weren't a-goin' to fight, so I waited for the food, and did with my 'owl as the wolves and lions and tigers does. But, lor' love yer 'art, now that the old 'ooman has stuck a chunk of her tea-cake in me, an' rinsed me out with her bloomin' old teapot, and I've lit hup, you may scratch my ears for all you're worth, and won't even get a growl out of me. Drive along with your questions. I know what yer a-comin' at, that 'ere ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... they be, but he's come back here to spend his declinin' days—that's what Joe Macomber says he called 'em, his declinin' days—in Bayport, 'cause he loves the old place, 'count of Lobelia, his wife, lovin' it so, and he can maybe scratch along here on ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... a mile of warm sea-scented beach; Three fields to cross till a farm appears; A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch And blue spurt of a lighted match, And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears, Than the two ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... why quiver'st thou at this decree? Honour thyself to rid me of this shame; For if I die, my honour lives in thee; But if I live, thou livest in my defame: Since thou couldst not defend thy loyal dame, And wast afear'd to scratch her wicked foe, Kill both thyself and ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... to have scratch paper handy and make outlines for your answers to long questions. It is a good plan, also, when dealing with long questions, to watch the time carefully, for there is danger that you will spend too much time upon some question to ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... hand, nor impressed by its price by the yard, if she did not think it would look right on the stage. As Katherine she wanted me to wear steely silver and bronzy gold, but all the brocades had such insignificant designs. If they had a silver design on them it looked under the lights like a scratch in white cotton! At last Mrs. Carr found a black satin which on the right side was timorously and feebly patterned with a meandering rose and thistle. On the wrong side of it was a sheet of silver—just the right steely silver because it was the wrong side! Mrs. Carr then started ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... and in the two days' fighting had lost thirty-eight killed and 109 wounded. Among the former were two officers, while several others were wounded. The Scudamores had, fortunately, both escaped without a scratch. The inhumanity of the Spaniards was now more markedly shown than ever. Although both in Cuesta's army, and in the town of Talavera provisions were abundant, yet the inhabitants carefully concealed them, while both the wounded and fighting men of the British army were ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... night, as ever you seed. The chap was big enough to eat him, but he didn't have no kind of show. The young un just hit him where he liked, and in five minutes that chap's face was a thing to see, and the lad never got so much as a scratch. I wouldn't have thought as a man could have used his hands like that if I hadn't been thar. I shall be ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... bite me," he thought. "Perhaps it will scratch me with its sharp claws. But I will be brave. I will not cry out. I will choke it with my strong arms. Then I will drag it out of the bushes and call mamma ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... you," Betty pointed out. "Just a little scratch will make the whole place look like ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... thinnest, all-cotton clothing should touch the baby's skin, unless he is sick, when a very light part-wool band may be needed. In general, neither wool nor starch should be allowed in the baby's clothing in summer. Wool is too hot and irritating and starched garments scratch the baby's flesh. ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... scratch. I was busy with a lady, who was worrying me about a train to Montclair. She was five minutes making up her mind whether to take the Jersey tunnel ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... bothered with babies," sneered Christopher in reply. "You'd fall down, most likely, and scratch your knees on the briers, and then you'd run straight home ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... vigorously. "Shut up," he said, roughly, partly to hide his own feelings, "Charley's comin' back without a scratch. The good Lord, I reckon, don't make lads as true and white as he to be killed off by a pack of jail vermin. Come to the wall as he told us to. Maybe we'll get a shot at those murderers before the day is done. Come along an' stop that blubberin'," and he grabbed the soft-hearted ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... who set him to quarrel with me, I cannot think. Spencer (who acted as second for me, for matters actually have gone this length;—don't be frightened; it is all over, and nobody is a scratch the worse) thinks some one set Will on me, but who, I say? His conduct has been most singular; his behaviour quite unbearable. We have met pretty frequently lately at the house of good Mr. Van den Bosch, whose pretty ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... birds of real melody, and will afford one more delight perhaps than any other class. The robin is the most familiar example. Their manners, flight, and form are the same in each species. See the robin hop along upon the ground, strike an attitude, scratch for a worm, fix his eye upon something before him or upon the beholder, flip his wings suspiciously, fly straight to his perch, or sit at sundown on some high branch caroling his sweet and honest strain, and you have seen what is characteristic of all the thrushes. Their carriage is preeminently ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... name. "They call you Comfort Paine," she said, "and you are a comfort to everybody else's pain. Yet you ain't out of pain a minute scurcely, yourself. I never see anything like it. If 'twan't wicked I'd say that name was give you by the Old Scratch himself, as a sort of divilish joke. But anybody can see that the Old Scratch never had anything in common with you, even ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... facilitate things. In the present crisis he will feel that he is personally responsible for the expenditure of five million dollars. He will examine and investigate, and probe and pry, and will want to worry through every pen-scratch which has been made ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... when all the caitiffs had departed, and the black, chill night received me into itself. At first my mind was benumbed, like my body; but the pain of my face, smarting with switch and scratch of the boughs through which I had fallen, awoke me to thought and fear. I turned over to lie on my back, and look up for any light of hope in the sky, but nothing fell on me from heaven save a cold rain, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... a stick about five feet long and held it in an inclined position. The old man then took two sticks and hit them together, and stood right by the door singing. He told me to whistle; then he walked toward the point where he had held the sticks. He then lay down by the stick and began to scratch on the ground as though he were caught in a trap. Then he said: 'You are going to catch one now.' By this time it was pretty late in the night. We gave a signal to the other boys and girls to come out and we all ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... a scratch-pad, copied the telegram and cautiously "slipped" it to Mr. Hennage, who as cautiously "slipped" her the ten- dollar bill. He was rewarded for his ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... "bug-a-boo." It should be clearly understood that botulism is one of the very rare maladies. The chances for getting it by eating canned goods, say the experts, is rather less than the chances from dying of lockjaw every time you scratch your finger. To regard every can as a source of botulism is worse than regarding every dog as a source of hydrophobia. Moreover, for the very timid, there is the comforting certainty that the exceedingly slight danger is completely eliminated by re-cooking ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... course, gentlemen, if you prefer Charette, so be it! He, doubtless will be better able to assist your endeavours than I should; but you might have spared me the mortification of putting my name on your list of officers, merely to scratch it off again." ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... dress should be so free and loose that they may use their little limbs, their neck and their bodies, as much as they please; and in every desired direction. The practices of confining their arms while they lie down, for fear they should scratch themselves with their nails, and of pinning the clothes round their feet, are therefore highly reprehensible. Better that they should even occasionally scratch themselves with their nails, than that they should be made the victims of injurious restraint. Who would think of ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... specially made for the occasion, and they deck the corpse with valuable cloths. A cock, u'iar krad lynti (literally the cock that scratches the way), is sacrificed, the idea being that a cock will scratch a path for the spirit to the next world. A sacrifice of a bull, or of a cow in case the deceased is a woman, (u or ka masi pynsum,) follows. Portions of the left leg of the fowl and the lower part of the jaw of ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... it, eh?" He had misinterpreted my expression. "Well, let me tell you I did just a year ago and got over without a scratch. To get across no-man's-land you have to play dead, as you Yankees put it; you lie flat on the ground and pull yourself forward a foot at a time and keep your eye on the search-lights so that when they come your way you can drop on your ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... handkerchief of hers as if her hand was a bird's claw. I can't get a blue jay or a canary out of my head when I see her. Did you ever see a bird scratch its eye ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... eyes; yet his action caused nobody any loss. Now there is a paradox, and it seems quite puzzling, doesn't it? It looks quite impossible, you may say. But the explanation is very simple. What the man held in his hand was his own check on the bank. He had made a slight scratch on it which did not affect its value, only its neatness, and he preferred to tear it to pieces and ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... the open, downward-rolling land disappeared, and he was hard put to it to find the trail. He lost it repeatedly and made slow progress. Finally he climbed into a region of all rock benches, rough here, smooth there, with only an occasional scratch of iron horseshoe to guide him. Many times he had to go ahead and then work to right or left till he found his way again. It was slow work; it took all day; and night found him half-way up the mountain. He halted ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... you. When you meet him, scratch the tip end of your nose with the nail of your second finger on the right hand; in this manner," continued ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... W. "I'm making a statement! He's not only a liar—he's a thief! He robbed me, the dastard; he got two thousand dollars of my money without giving me the scratch of a pen. ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... Nada the Lily sat in the dark of the cave, saying to herself, "Presently he will come, my husband, he will surely come; the Slayers are slain—he does not but tarry to bind his wounds; a scratch, perchance, here and there. Yes, he will come, and it is well, for I am weary of my loneliness, and this place ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... as modern pens, though of many sorts and kinds, are to be classified under two general heads, those which scratch and those which use ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... particular—plenty of hard fighting. But he never writes much of that. He's much more interested in a run he had with a queer scratch pack near their billets. I can't quite gather how it was organized, but it comprised two beagles and a greyhound and a fox-terrier and a pug. He said they ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... a witch, Olive. You are not. If Ann says so I will pinch her and scratch her. I will! yes, I will—I will scratch her till the blood runs. You are not a witch. I was the one that got them into jail. I stuck pins into my doll, but I have made up for it now. They'll be let out. ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... local or general, no indications of injuries either old or recent, no departures of any kind from the normal or usual; and the dismemberment had been effected with such care that there was not a single scratch on any of the separated surfaces. Of adipocere (the peculiar waxy or soapy substance that is commonly found in bodies that have slowly decayed in damp situations) there was not a trace; and the only remnant of the soft structures was a faint indication, ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... weak to stand. The grand jurors were much absorbed in conclusions drawn from the blood-stains found on the floor of the basement of the Clark Estate office, and when it was shown that Coleman bore no sign of scratch or scar they promptly discharged him. Coleman left Cooperstown a free man, and chatted amicably with Dougherty as they rode together on the train to New York. On reaching the city they parted company at the Christopher Street elevated station, and Coleman rode on up ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... on his sword and prepared to go in the launch with Mr Gilham, who was directed to command her, Larkyns, having to play second fiddle in the boat on this occasion. "Those blessed Chinamen won't come up to the scratch as soon as they ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... now, Josh," said Raffles, affecting to scratch his head and wrinkle his brows upward as if he were nonplussed. "I'm very fond of you; by Jove, I am! There's nothing I like better than plaguing you—you're so like your mother, and I must do without it. But the brandy ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... has a heart, since he lives. In what respect does he differ from you? He is a man who believes in nothing, fears nothing, who knows no care or ennui, perhaps, and yet it is clear that a scratch on the finger would fill him with terror, for if his body abandons him, what becomes of him? He lives only in the body. What sort of creature is that who treats his soul as the flagellants treat their bodies? Can one live without ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... the lagoon. Ploughing his way in with a huge splashing, he disappeared beneath the water. A minute later he returned to the surface and swam rapidly towards the jungle on the opposite shore, probably intending to find some projecting stump of a dead limb on which he could scratch the torment from under his ruff. At the edge of the jungle he was joined by another monster, like himself, but smaller—probably one of his mates—and together they disappeared, with heavy crashings, in the rank tangle of ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... sunny fields and woods we shall find many of the land-birds, and first comes a family whose habits are so like those of chickens that they are called "scratchers." These birds depend for food upon seeds and bugs or worms they scratch out of the ground. Up in the Sierra sugar-pines and fir-woods lives the largest of these "scratchers," the brown grouse. He is a shy creature, rising out of his feeding-ground with a great whirring of wings and out of sight before ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... as sensible of a scratch from a pin's point, as others from a push of a sword: and who can say any thing for the sensibility of such fellows? Metcalfe would resent for his sister, when his sister resented not for herself. Had she demanded her brother's protection and resentment, that would ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... matinee at the Hyperion Theatre, our wittiest students paced on all fours up and down behind this grill and roared for raw beef. E—— was the wag of the building and he could climb up to a high place and scratch himself like a monkey—an entertainment of more humor than elegance. Elated with success, he and a companion later chartered a street-organ—a doleful one-legged affair—and as man and monkey they gathered pennies ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... sweet enchantment of autumn, but Nature is too strong for us. Why is it that all these strikes occur just at this time of year? The old hibernating instinct again, perhaps. The workman has a subconscious yearning to scratch together a nice soft heap of manila envelopes and lie down on that couch for a six months' ear-pounding. There are all sorts of excuses that one can make to one's self for waving farewell to toil. Only last Sunday we saw this ad in ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... Ch'ah of Toddington, and that superb Sultanic creature, King Rudolph of Ruritania, and Champion Howbury Ming, and Su Eh of Newnham, and King Beetle of Minden, and Champion Hu Hi, and Mo Sho, and that rich red dog, Buddha of Burford. And having chosen these I might just as well scratch out their names and write others, for every male face in this ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... [6131]"but in a rage ran upon a yellow-haired wench," with whom she suspected her husband to be naught, "cut off her hair, did beat her black and blue, and so dragged her about." It is an ordinary thing for women in such cases to scratch the faces, slit the noses of such as they suspect; as Henry the Second's importune Juno did by Rosamond at Woodstock; for she complains in a ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... transmitted to the owner of the weapon, also, that the dead man may take revenge on his murderer, as every death is considered to have been caused by some enemy. These bones are naturally full of the poisons of the corpse, and may cause tetanus at the slightest scratch. On the arrows they are extremely sharp and only slightly attached to the wood, so that they stick in the flesh and increase the inflammation. Besides, they are often dipped in some ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... appearance from the rear, and gave out that he had just had a horse shot in two under him, and asked for two men to go and remove his saddle and holsters. I was one of them; we examined the horse very carefully, and found him to be without hurt or scratch; and he had plain enough died from mere heat, which killed several horses and a number of men during the day. The story has got wind—some laugh, but others shake their heads about it. Jim Maris heard General Washington say ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... cried. "It is a scratch—it is nothing. Pardieu, it takes more than that to put a St. Quentin out of the reckoning. To-day is no time for ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... and went downstairs to the kitchen. There was hot water in the kettle. He fetched it back, bathed her feet, drew out from cut and scratch the flakes of granite-grit and brier-points that ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... he won't come to the scratch. Perhaps as well for him that he does not," said the ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... scarf : skarpo. scarlet : skarlato. scene : vidajxo, sceno. scenery : pejzajxo. scent : odoro, parfumo; flari. scissors : tondilo. scold : riprocxi, mallauxdi. scorpion : skorpio. scoundrel : kanajlo. scour : frotlavi; scourge : skurgxi. scrape : skrapi, raspi. scratch : grati. screen : sxirm'i, -ilo. screw : sxrauxbo. scrupulous : konscienca, skrupula. sculpture : skulpti. scum : sxauxmo. scurvy : skorbuto. seal : sigel'i, -o, (animal) foko. seaside : marbordo. season : sezono; ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... going to come up to the scratch," said Ned M'Gill to the other honourable gent—as they passed the Clydesdale Cricket Ground a few minutes to four o'clock on that memorable morning. Ned, however, was wrong. Through the grey dawn a muffled figure was observed crossing ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... not gone with the men. How horrid! And what a nuisance that he should find her here! Well, she was not going to put herself out for him. She lowered her pen softly, and began to scratch the paper, over which she bent absorbedly. He turned round. "Oh, ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... put himself beyond the reach of the law. There was no tourniquet that would confine the poison now in the scratch across his face. Back of those lack-lustre eyes he heard and knew, but could not move or speak. His voice was gone, his limbs, his face, his chest, and, last, his eyes. I wondered if it were possible ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... was in the Army there was a fellow who used to come to the orderly-room and talk funerals to me until I was sick of the sight of him. After some months of it I made him give me a written list of all his surviving relations, and then as he killed them off I used to scratch them out. I caught him at last ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... of the children who are the victims of the medical mania!" she returned. "Think how they are brought up under the tyranny of fear! Fear of this and of that; fear that if they scratch a finger blood poisoning will deprive them of life; fear that eating a bit of this will cause death; or sitting in a breeze will result in wasting sickness! Isn't it criminal? As for diphtheria antitoxin, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Tour d'Azyr. "A scratch." But his lip writhed, and the torn sleeve of his fine cambric ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... utterance. 'You recoil from this arrangement. Do you expect me to convince you? You know very well that I have never held the Mormon view of women. Absorbed in the most arduous studies, I have left the slatterns whom they call my wives to scratch and quarrel among themselves; of me, they have had nothing but my purse; such was not the union I desired, even if I had the leisure to pursue it. No: you need not, madam, and my old friend'—and here the doctor rose ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... refitted, with many necessary provisions, and repaired the keel, which we found, upon hauling out, had been damaged by the encounter with the whale at Frio. An iron shoe was now added for the benefit of all marine monsters wishing to scratch their ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... both. The snow-field, like the glacier, is hardened by pressure into a consistence resembling that of ice. A curious thing it is to topple a huge stone down from a neighbouring precipice on one of these snow-fields, and see how it hits the snow without sinking in it, and bounds along, leaving no scratch on the hardened surface. A stream issues from the field we are now alluding to, formed like the glacier streams from the ceaseless melting of the snow. It passes forth beneath a diminutive arch, such as the source of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... if occasion required, to lead the troops into action and always manifesting the most perfect indifference to the shot and shell or the whizzing minie balls that fell around her. She seemed entirely devoid of fear, and though so constantly exposed to the enemy's fire never received even a scratch. ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... softly gray across the white silent fields. The air was crisper; the snow began to crackle under foot; the twigs creaked and rattled as I brushed along; a brown beech leaf wavered down and skated with a thin scratch over the crust; and pure as the snow-wrapped crystal world, and sweet as the soft gray twilight, came ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... was old and cranky, much of it haywired together, much of it invented from scratch. But Rakkan the Martian, for all his lack of formal education, was unbelievably clever where it came to making apparatus and making it behave, and Friedrichs was a top-flight designer. The lab had what it ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... "This isn't a bit of business ye can do in a hurry ef ye expect to git any profit out of the transaction. I can see only one of the pigs, but the one I can see is not over-burdened with fat, and it's agin reason to expect that he will be long in gittin' out when he starts, or wait for ye to scratch him when ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... make him all right!" said Turly. "Ponies and men don't make a row over a scratch as ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... glare at Rick. He inquired acidly, "Do I perhaps bore you? Or have you a serious itch? If so, scratch it, for heaven's sake. You are squirming so, I can see only a blur through ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... like a rock, and let Fate seam or bleach him bare; here, within walls, he rages, shows his teeth, blasphemes, or sinks into sloth. You will find him heaped against the walls like ordure, hear him howl for blood in the bull-ring, appraise women, as if they were dainties, in the alamedas, loaf, scratch, pry where none should pry, go begging with his sores, trade his own soul for his mother's. His pride becomes insolence, his tragedy hideous revolt, his impassivity swinish, his rock of sufficiency a rook of offence. ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... Sparrowes, and for Doues I am fitted twixt my Loues, But Lalus I take no delight In Sparowes, for they'll scratch and bite And though ioynd, they are euer wooing Alwayes billing, if not doeing, 190 Twixt Venus breasts if they haue lyen I much feare they'll infect myne; Cleon your Doues are very dainty, Tame Pidgeons else you know are plenty, These may ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... would keep the observations up to scratch if the chaps knew they were going to be used. Who else do ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... brought home from Arizona. He mounted with Caesar under his left arm. The dog had never learned to climb a perpendicular ladder, and never did he feel so much his master's greatness and his own dependence upon him, as when he crept under his arm for this perilous ascent. Up there was even gravel to scratch in, and a dog could do whatever he liked, so long as he did not bark. It was a kind of Heaven, which no one was strong enough to reach but ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... sich times since old Scratch died," replied Slimy, shaking his head. "No chance for ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... now," interrupted the physician. "We'll get that scratch bound up, and then, young man, you'll go ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... but a little time before, he could not have refrained from greeting with a kiss as it flitted across the face of his mistress, but which now exasperated him. "Yet I'm not really angry," he assured himself, "when I see how she longs to run away and scratch from maggots in that dunghill of cacophony. I'm disappointed; not for myself, but for her; disappointed to find that, after living for more than six months in daily contact with myself, she has not been capable ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... best of monarchs, viz., his father Santanu. And, O king, passing through many forests, rivers, hills, and woods abounding with trees, he arrived (at the capital) in no time. Of immeasurable prowess in battle, the son of the ocean-going Ganga, having slain numberless foes in battle without a scratch on his own person, brought the daughters of the king of Kasi unto the Kurus as tenderly if they were his daughters-in-law, or younger sisters, or daughters. And Bhishma of mighty arms, impelled by the desire of benefiting his brother, having by his prowess brought them thus, then ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... that you are a thoroughgoing anarchist. They too think that all is done if one man is killed. But if they kill me, hang me, break me on the wheel, there will come another purer than I. Where there's an itch, there is always somebody to scratch it! Yes, sister! If not I, then someone else, and (clenching his fist) it will fare ill with ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... wind fell, and with the lull master and dog started together to their feet: was it indeed a cry they had heard, or but a moan between wind and mountain? The dog flew to the door with a whine, and began to sniff and scratch at the crack of the threshold; Steenie, thinking it was still dark, went to get a lantern Kirsty had provided him with, but which he had never yet had occasion to use. The dog ran back to him, and began jumping ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... crotchet. Wind, breeze, gust, blast, flaw, gale, squall, flurry. Wind, coil, twist, twine, wreathe. Winding, tortuous, serpentine, sinuous, meandering. Wonderful, marvelous, phenomenal, miraculous. Workman, laborer, artisan, artificer, mechanic, craftsman. Write, inscribe, scribble, scrawl, scratch. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... swabber, the boatswain, and I, The gunner, and his mate, 45 Loved Mall, Meg, and Marian, and Margery, But none of us cared for Kate; For she had a tongue with a tang, Would cry to a sailor, Go hang! She loved not the savour of tar nor of pitch; 50 Yet a tailor might scratch her where'er she did itch. Then, to sea, boys, and ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... we cant get our man up to the scratch. Cecil has locked himself in his room and wont see or speak to any one. I went up to his room and banged at the door. I told him I should look through the keyhole if he didnt answer. I looked through the keyhole. He was sitting on his bed, reading a book. [Reginald ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... years; then I shall take to some solid employment, perhaps write a volume of letters or chatty journal and say sharp things about my neighbors, wear a high cap and spectacles, and keep a cat who will scratch every guest. There, is it not ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... about putting up his guard before either of these spirited youngsters of the Central Grammar School. After sputtering a little Ben skated away by himself. Hen got up, after dabbing his upper lip with his handkerchief and finding that the scratch amounted to nothing. No further effort was made to ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... by an almost monstrous shortness of legs, so that they move by jumping rather than by walking; they are said not to scratch up the ground. I have examined a Burmese variety, which had a skull of ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... toward the corner of the ring. "Take him away," he says to the Master, "over there, and keep him away"; and he turns and looks most solemn at the six beautiful bull-terriers. I don't know how I crawled to that corner. I wanted to scratch under the sawdust and dig myself a grave. The kennel-men they slapped the rail with their hands and laughed at the Master like they would fall over. They pointed at me in the corner, and their sides just shaked. ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... throughout the village. And there's a reason for all things too, though the wise physician need not blab 'em all. Imprimis, or firstly, the mere sport of it, which lasted ten days, drew 'em most markedly out of their melancholy. I'd defy sorrowful job himself to lament or scratch while he's routing rats from a rick. Secundo, or secondly, the vehement act and operation of this chase or war opened their skins to generous transpiration—more vulgarly, sweated 'em handsomely; and ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... lightning rapidity from one world of things to another and another as the papers rustle between the fingers. John Ploughman used to say that, even if the fowls got nothing by it, it did them good to scratch. I am not a poultry expert, as I am frequently reminded, but I dare say that there is a wealth of wisdom in the observation. At any rate, I know that, in my own case, the success or failure of my search expeditions ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... and axles being a scratch lot, none in any of the batteries were interchangeable, which caused many times later in the campaign when wheels began to give out, much anxiety. Several times we only had guns ready for action or trekking by the "skin of one's teeth," and it must be borne in mind that any new wheels wired-for ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... cause of his distraction. On the stairs sits another, crazed by love, (evident from the picture of his beloved object round his neck, and the words "charming Betty Careless" upon the bannisters, which he is supposed to scratch upon every wall and every wainscot,) and wrapt up so close in melancholy pensiveness, as not even to observe the dog that is flying at him. Behind him, and in the inner room, are two persons maddened with ambition. These men, though under the influence of the same ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... who had been strangely silent all day, speaking only when directly addressed. "I can assure you that in my way I'm as much cut up as you are. I wish now that I had made an attempt from the rear to head off this distracted woman, even if I had been obliged to scratch my hands to pieces tearing ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... ready for his work. His father, who worked down the Gulch, had already gone before the children had finished their breakfast. So now Jim filled his brand-new pipe very leisurely; and with as much calm unconcern as if he had been smoking for forty years, he stopped to scratch a match on the door as he ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... perceiving that his patron was irretrievably landed and considering that his own "expert" dignity had been sufficiently saved, relaxed into enthusiasm and small talk. Only in the later Italian rooms did his critical claws again allow themselves to scratch. A small Leonardo, the treasure of the house, which had been examined and written about by every European student of Milanese art for half a century, was ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rows of spines do the slightest damage to the delicate mould. The long-toothed saw leaves the delicate sheath unbroken, although a puff of the breath is enough to tear it; the ferocious spurs slip out of it without leaving so much as a scratch. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... friends. These he placed in the hands of a fellow officer with instructions that they be mailed in the event of his death. The poem was discovered in the lieutenant's personal effects, written on a piece of scratch paper. It had been stuffed in a breast pocket of his uniform. The writing was scraggly, due to the vibration of the motors. ...
— The Secret of Dreams • Yacki Raizizun
... pretended these two guides could help us to find Tereus,(1) the Epops, who is a bird, without being born of one. He has indeed sold us this jay, a true son of Tharelides,(2) for an obolus, and this crow for three, but what can they do? Why, nothing whatever but bite and scratch!—What's the matter with you then, that you keep opening your beak? Do you want us to fling ourselves headlong down these rocks? There is no ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... the old man seemed to try and start; then he nodded, and held out the note he had written. Bob Pillin received it together with the impression of a murmur which sounded like: "Scratch a poll, Poll!" and passing the fine figure of a woman in a fur coat, who seemed to warm the air as she went by, he was in the hall again before he perceived that he had left ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Scandinavian and northern nations. Before their communication with the Latin missionaries, wood appears to have been the material upon which their runes were chiefly written: and the verb "write," which is derived from a Teutonic root, signifying to scratch or tear, is one of the testimonies of the usage. Their poems were graven upon small staves or rods, one line upon each face of the rod; and the Old English word "stave," as applied to a stanza, is probably a relic of the ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... hundred steps—nothing; he entered the field and went right up to the little hole where he had buried his sovereigns—and nothing. He then became very thoughtful and, forgetting the rules of society and good manners, he took his hands out of his pocket and gave his head a long scratch. ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... a fable, but history records This defeat of the "Fowl of Great Boasting Words." How the "Prussian Black Eagle" that thought he could scratch, Found in "Old Baldy" far ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian
... North. It is almost altogether underground, in the solid calcareous, and what could any fellow want better than that? The cannon-balls and bombs would have to plow up about an acre of pretty solid rock, and plow it deep, too, before they would begin to scratch the roof of the real strongholds of this fort. At least, that's the ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... beginning, I want you to scratch out a good two-thirds of these names. The others will go all right. The men I have cross marked are not all Webb men to-day, but they will throw their influence on Webb's ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... er de fireplace," she said, "cookin' me some meat, w'en all of a sudden I year sumpin at de do'—scratch, scratch. I tuck'n tu'n de meat over, en make out I ain't year it. Bimeby it come dar 'gin—scratch, scratch. I up en open de do', I did, en, bless de Lord! dar wuz little Dan, en it look like ter me dat his ribs done grow terge'er. I gin 'im some bread, en den, w'en he start out, I ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... me without bruise or scratch. Only Yorick and I got tangled up with a herd of buffaloes on the Kajiar Road. In his fright, the little fool slipped half over the khud, and if a knight-errant had not fallen from heaven, in the nick of time, we should both be lying somewhere in the valley by now, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... two, Genevra, and then he laughed—yes, laughed in my face, although it was such a long way off. People can do what they like over the telephone, my dear. I asked him if he was ill, or had been hurt. He said he never felt better in his life and hadn't a scratch. He laughed—I suppose to show me that he was all right. Then he said he was much obliged to me for calling him up. He'd quite forgotten to go to bed. He asked me to thank you for bringing a warship. You saved his ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon |
