"Fag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... New England (I am told they don't read much in other parts of the country), the sin of sins? Have you any right to read, especially novels, until you have exhausted the best part of the day in some employment that is called practical? Have you any right to enjoy yourself at all until the fag-end of the day, when you are tired and incapable of enjoying yourself? I am aware that this is the practice, if not the theory, of our society,—to postpone the delights of social intercourse until ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the old grave eyes Are peeping o'er my shoulder as I work, The heads shake still—"It's art's decline, my son! You're not of the true painters, great and old; Brother Angelico's the man, you'll find; Brother Lorenzo stands his single peer: Fag on at flesh, you'll never make the third!" <Flower o' the pine, You keep your mistr . . . manners, and I'll stick to mine!> I'm not the third, then: bless us, they must know! 240 Don't you think they're the likeliest to know, They with their Latin? So, I swallow my rage, ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... 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.
... hands;—these were very shining qualities in Bert's eyes, and they fascinated him so, that if "fagging" had been permitted at Dr. Johnston's, Bert would have deemed it not a hardship, but an honour, to have been Teter's "fag." ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... would be great, if only I could feel as I should so much like, that the Christian socialism to which you have consecrated the whole prime of your life, and the Marxian socialism, to which I have consecrated all of the little that remains of mine, the fag-end, are not utter incompatibilities, so much so that it is absolutely impossible that they can co-exist and co-operate ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... with fear, and his terror was so manifest that the bully, who was threatening him with all manner of evils, began to enjoy himself. Chalkeye, returning from watering the horses, got back in time to hear the intemperate fag-end of the scolding. He glanced at Hughie, whose hands were trembling in spite of him, and then darkly at the brute who was attacking him. But he ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... 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
... are no new thing belonging to the fag-end of this century. Young Adams wrote letters over the "nom de plume" of Pro Bono Publico, and then replied to them over the signature of Rex Americus. He did not adopt as his motto, "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth," for he wrote with both hands and each ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 an ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... had ever encountered, Mrs. Hastings began to fear that in his zeal to obey instructions, the agent had exceeded them, and in packing the first three coaches with first-comers, had left this one to catch up the fag end of travel. If the first impression, gained from sight, had made her shrink a little, what was her dismay when, at the end of ten minutes, one of her fellow-travelers—the only American of the three—produced a bottle of ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... the ford. These outbreaks had the kind of morbid interest for the Pocket Hunter that a house of unsavory reputation has in a respectable neighborhood, but I always found the accounts he brought me more interesting than his explanations, which were compounded of fag ends of miner's talk and superstition. He was a perfect gossip of the woods, this Pocket Hunter, and when I could get him away from "leads" and "strikes" and "contacts," full of fascinating small talk about the ebb and flood of creeks, the pinon crop on Black Mountain, ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... 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 regularly ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... And then, 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
... 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 ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... organized for the rough treatment man uses towards man, especially in the season of youth, and too resolute in carrying out his own sense of good and justice, not to become a victim. To a devoted attachment to those he loved he added a determined resistance to oppression. Refusing to fag at Eton, he was treated with revolting cruelty by masters and boys: this roused instead of taming his spirit, and he rejected the duty of obedience when it was enforced by menaces and punishment. To aversion to the society of his fellow-creatures, such as he found them ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... profited by his beliefs, and the fact that a simple relaxation of his mental machinery had so disturbed him last night amused him now. The solution was easy. It was his mind struggling to equilibrium after four years of brain-fag. And he felt better. His brain was clearer. He listened to the watch and found its ticking natural. He braced himself to another effort and whistled as ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... 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
... hedge shall blaze, And scarlet briony burning. When winter reigns and sheets of snow, The flowers and grass lie under; The sparkling hoar frost yet shall show, A world of fairy wonder. To me more dear such scenes appear, Than this eternal racket, No longer will I fret and fag! Hey! call a cab, bring down my bag, And help me quick to pack it. For here one must go where every one goes, And meet shoals of people whom one never knows, Till it makes a poor fellow dyspeptic; And the world wags along with its sorrows and shows, And will do just the ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... nightly, dinners, luncheons, garden-parties; and yet there was a sense of waning in the glory of the world—everybody felt that the fag-end of the season was approaching. All the really great entertainments were over—the Cabinet dinners, the Reception at the Foreign Office, the last of the State balls and concerts. Some of the best people had already left town; and senators were beginning to complain that they saw no prospect ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... my boy to be a man, And yet, in distant years, I pray that he'll have eyes that can Not quite keep back the tears When, coming from some foreign shore And alien scenes that fag, Borne on its native breeze, once more He sees ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... last charge in 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 it ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... that Mr. Townsend's horses aren't worth the fag of riding," observed Flossie Taylor, ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... 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
... say: "When I want a thing to be done quickly, I always go to a busy man: the unoccupied man never has any time." He, himself, did not know how to be idle; yet he was painfully conscious of overwork and brain-fag. He told his friend Castelli that he was tormented by sleeplessness, but still more by certain ideas which assailed him at night, and which he could not get rid of. He got up and walked about the room, but all was useless; "I am no longer master of my head." When Parliament was ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... to destroy in him,' said the Pussum. 'He's so thin already, there's only a fag-end ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... is a fine Gothic stoup into which bucolic rustics now knock the fag-ends of their pipes. The staircase newel is a fine piece of Gothic carving with an embattled moulding, a poppy-head and heraldic lion. Pillared fire-places and other tokens of departed greatness testify to the former ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... 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 to leave the Squire ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... ban cap an bad bag can map as mad gag fan nap at pad hag pan rap ax sad lag ran hap rat gad tag tan jam sat sap fag van ham ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... lower condition. Everything about it is absurd, from the spurious waterfall pinned to the back of their heads down to the train that sweeps the muddy pavement. Their hair is infested with beads, bits of lace and of ribbons, or mock jewelry. A bonnet is an epitome of fag-ends. The poor crazy creatures in the asylum, who pick up any rag, or wisp of straw, or scrap of tin, they may find, and wear it proudly upon their frocks, are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... from his pouch the fag of a cigarette, lit it, and puffed meditatively. "I did a reckonissince mysel' this morning. I was up at the Hoose afore it was light, and tried the door o' the coal-hole. I doot they've gotten on our tracks, for it was lockit—aye, ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... o'clock the rooms were filled. For the fag end of the season, people seemed unusually brilliant. The evening itself was not so hot as common, and there was an extra array of distinguished guests. Marion was nervous all the evening, though she showed little of it, being most prettily employed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... would rather forego any old social thing than interfere with his work, she never made him go anywhere with her without first asking if his work permitted it. To relieve him of the burthen of such social attentions she even made a fag or so. The making of fags out of manifestly stricken men, the keeping of tamed and hopeless admirers, seemed to her to be the most natural and reasonable of feminine privileges. They did their useful little services ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... was coming to look forward to that last hour of the school week, very often to schoolgirls a wasted hour at the fag end of things. ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... in such cases) because he is a fool. Secondly, like the rest of the well-to-do world, he has suffered the summer, wherein warmth and sunshine are really to be had, to slip by, and has only the fag end of it in which to take holiday. It is now or never—or at all events now or next year—with him. All his friends, too, are out of town, flattening their noses against window panes; his club is under repair, ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... feel and thankfully acknowledge so great an indebtedness for ennobling impulses,—none whom so many cannot abide. What does he mean? ask these last. Where is his system? What is the use of it all? What the deuse have we to do with Brahma? Well, we do not propose to write an essay on Emerson at the fag-end of a February "Atlantic," with Secession longing for somebody to hold it, and Chaos come again in the South Carolina teapot. We will only say that we have found grandeur and consolation in a starlit night without caring to ask what it ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... seen, 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. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... harder than moving furniture and tacking up pictures," proclaimed Jennie. "Brain-fag is the trouble ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... There! I composed those lines this morning during the process of shaving. I don't think they are very bad. I put them at the beginning of my letter so as to make sure that you will read them, a process of which I might reasonably be doubtful had I left them for the fag end of my communication. Learn, sir, that you have a son ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... 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
... telephoned a telegram, saying that she would arrive at five o'clock. The telegraph-operator told her that the company could not guarantee delivery, as traffic over the wires was very heavy. Marie Louise sighed and rose, worn out with telephone-fag. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... performance, on the same night, by a Mrs. Stanley, at the Coburg Theatre, of the parts of Lady Anne, Tressell, and Richmond, in "Richard III." A Mr. W. Rede once accomplished the difficult feat of appearing as Sir Lucius O'Trigger, Fag, and Mrs. Malaprop in a representation of "The Rivals," the lady's entrance in the last scene having been preceded by the abrupt exit of Sir Lucius and the omission of the concluding passages of his part. The characters of King Henry, Buckingham, and Richmond, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... I have ever heard since from the 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... enlivening air. The melody was not so popular as it has since become, or perhaps Mr. Dodge had doubts of his ability to render it with accuracy, but, as if to inform all whom it might concern what it was that he was executing, he hummed aloud the fag-end of the tune, keeping time with his fist upon his knee, "Pop goes the ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... 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
... the fire, by the unexpected application of his moist nose to her countenance; now exhibiting an obtrusive interest in the baby; now going round and round upon the hearth, and lying down as if he had established himself for the night; now getting up again, and taking that nothing of a fag-end of a tail of his out into the weather, as if he had just remembered an appointment, and was off at a round trot, ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... it two years ago in Washington, when we heard of her the second time. Now she's followed him over here, or got here first, tried the same game probably, met with a refusal, and this anonymous note is her revenge. The man she married was a crack-brained weakling who got into the army the fag end of the war, fell in love with her pretty face, married her, then they quarrelled, and he drank himself into a muddle-head. She ran him into debt; then he gambled away government funds, bolted, was caught, ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... you right with a reserve and a sort of sighing patience which one is often moved to admire. And again, the abstract butler never stoops to familiarity. But the coloured gentleman will pass you a wink at a time; he is familiar like an upper form boy to a fag; he unbends to you like Prince Hal with Poins and Falstaff. He makes himself at home and welcome. Indeed, I may say, this waiter behaved himself to me throughout that supper much as, with us, a young, free, and not very self-respecting master might behave to a good-looking chambermaid. ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tyranny of brain force, which, among civilized men, is allowed to do what muscular force does among schoolboys and savages. The schoolboy proposition is: 'I am stronger than you, therefore you shall fag for me.' Its grown up form is: 'I am cleverer than you, therefore you shall fag for me.' The state of things we produce by submitting to this, bad enough even at first, becomes intolerable when the mediocre or foolish descendants of the clever fellows claim to have ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... sometimes the halting to drink whiskey, put a stop to "the hurly-burly of the flight" and reminded the fugitives that by this time they were in sufficient force to rally; and then they would return "to explore the plundered country and to bury the unfortunate scalped heads in the fag-end of the retreat"; whereas if there had been an appointed rendezvous where all could rally it would have prevented such a flight from what might possibly have been a body of Indians far inferior in numbers to the armed men of the settlements ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... with the utmost speed, but the people soon began to fag, and the lady of the Fellata chief, who rode not far from Clapperton, began to complain of fatigue. In the evening they halted at the wells of Kamoon, all extremely fatigued, and on the following morning, they discovered that all their camels had strayed away in quest ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... 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 was very devout by profession, and thought ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... the second evening of our voyage, I walked on deck. It was the "fag-end" of a gale, and the rain was pouring down upon the slippery planks. Brightly a skyrocket whizzed upwards from a distant ship, and burst in a shower of flame, followed by two others, signalling our old acquaintance the Canada, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... was still dark. It was at the fag-end of the night; the time which, as military commanders know, most ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... Berwick-upon-Tweed, and about three miles, a furlong, and few odd yards from that oft-recorded good town, a dry stone wall, some thirty inches in height, runs from the lofty and perpendicular sea-banks, over a portion of what may be termed the fag-end of Lammermoor, and now forming a separation between the laws of Scotland and the jurisdiction of the said good town; and on crossing to the northern side of this humble but important stone wall, you ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... these is 'appy days! An' 'ow they've flown— Flown like the smoke of some inchanted fag; Since dear Doreen, the sweetest tart I've known, Passed me the jolt that made me sky the rag. An' ev'ry golding day floats o'er a chap Like a glad dream ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis
... and see all my philosophy refuted, all my prim little opinions lying prone like dolls with the sawdust knocked out of them. All these years I have been judging Judith with an ignorance as cruel as it has been complacent. Verily I have been the fag end of wisdom. So I forbear to ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... 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, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... smallest of all, with the smallest front, the smallest back, and the smallest garden. The whole thing was almost impossibly small, a peculiarity properly reflected in the rent which Mr Gainsborough paid to the firm of Sloyd, Sloyd, and Gurney for the fag-end of a long lease. He did some professional work for Sloyds from time to time, and that member of the firm who had let Merrion Lodge to Mina Zabriska was on friendly terms with him; so that perhaps the rent was a ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... his eyes visibly brightened when he spotted Acton's table, for there was more than a little style about Acton's catering, and Worcester had a weakness for the square meal. Acton's fag, Grim, was busy with the kettle, and there was as reinforcement in Dick's special honour, young Poulett, St. Amory's champion egg-poacher, sustaining his big reputation in a large saucepan. Worcester sank into his chair with a sigh of satisfaction at sight of little ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... and Mr. 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, by inflicting ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... printing-office, dairy, kitchen, farm. The senior clergyman 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 ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... diet-sheet, and talks of "proteids", notices a slight cloudiness in his urine, and underlines "The Uric-Acid Diathesis" in one of his pamphlets. Then his heart bumps, he diagnoses anew, and so goes on, usually ending by taking phosphorus for his "brain fag". Then he finds he has a disease unknown to the faculty, which discovery interests him as intensely as it ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... I consider I've performed a very meritorious act in so doing;—there was the punch, all the other fellows were gone away, somebody must have drunk it, or that young reprobate Shrimp would have got hold of it; and I promised the venerable fish-fag his mother to take especial care of his what do ye call 'ums—morals, isn't it? and instil ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... positively looks younger than he did when he was a Cabinet Minister. There is colour where there used to be nothing but deadly pallor—freshness where the long and terrible drudgery of official life had left a permanent look of fag and weariness. Sir Charles Dilke has taken up the broken thread of his life just as if nothing had occurred in that long period of exile and suffering. He is never out of his place: attends every sitting as conscientiously as if he were in office and responsible for everything that is going ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... seniors, they were under the necessity of going out nightly 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. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... will be the worse loss. You simple Ethel, you don't think that Charles Cheviot will let her be the dear family fag we have ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the captain, he evidently comprehended my dangerous position, and came to my aid, shouting as he ran along, "Hold on; halt, if you can." But I could not halt, and it took me all my time to hold on. The animal was about at the fag end, and allowed the captain to take the bridle. When Captain Lloyd told me to dismount, I can truly say that I obeyed his injunction more readily than I did the one to mount. I thanked my stars that I had come off as fortunately as I did. The captain took my place in the saddle. He had ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... be hurt when the boys called him "Carrots." In fact he laughed. And as he no 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 highest lad in ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... to have a particular fag to attend to him and his wishes, and no cadet could demand service of another fellow's fag without ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... "fag" that is turned down, Though that often proves a rasper Upon the larynx; here the noun Denotes the human, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • 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 ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... buying cheap food results in the purchasing of foodstuffs which are deficient in nutrient properties. The main articles of diet are indifferent bread and butter, the fag ends of coarse meat, the outside leaves of green vegetables, and tea, and an occasional pennyworth of fried fish and potatoes. Children who are supplied with milk at school, or who are given breakfast and dinner, ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... the caller's right drooped from its socket in a dead fag, but after comprehensive manipulation on the part of the young man, and equal complaint on its own, it was constrained to permit a dim tinkle remotely. Somewhere in the interior a woman's voice, not young, sang a repeated fragment of ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... 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. ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... what a fearful fate it is, O what a frightful fag, To have to walk about like this All ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... was, as Ned had said, the reverse of lively. It was a pretty country place, with a sort of fag-end by way of a little fishing village, huddled on a wind-swept bit of beach, locally known as the "Cove." Aunt Eleanor was one of those delightful people, so few and far between in this world, who have perfectly mastered the art of minding their own business exclusively. She left ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... [fag] Desfallecer desmayarse de cansancio; trabajar demasiado por otro. Mapat, mapagal; ...
— Dictionary English-Spanish-Tagalog • Sofronio G. Calderon
... 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 with young Sherard—he ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... footsteps of George Sand and of Balzac. He belongs to the school of "Impressionists," and, although he has a liking for exceptional situations, wherefrom humanity does not always issue without serious blotches, he yet is free from pessimism. He has no nervous disorder, no "brain fag," he is no pagan, not even a nonbeliever, and has happily preserved his wholesomeness of thought; he is averse to exotic ideas, extravagant depiction, and inflammatory language. His novels and tales contain the essential qualities which attract and retain the reader. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... subject. Moreover, my Pegasus was visited with a very abrupt pull-up from other causes; it has been my fatality more than once or twice, as you will ere long see, to drop upon other people's topics—for who can find any thing new under the sun?—and I had already been mentally delivered of divers fag-ends of speeches, stinging dialogues, and choice tit-bits of scenes, (all of which I will mercifully spare you,) when a chance peep into Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets' showed me mine own fine subject as the work of some long-forgotten ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Ffolliot 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 ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... feature of Jesuit schools is the habit of telling off some boy to act as companion and cicerone to a newcomer for his first week or fortnight; and the ridiculous English fashion which prescribes that the smallest fag should be described as a "man" is unknown. Christian names, not surnames, are used generally. The unpopularity of boarding schools in Ireland is due to the great value set upon home life; and an Irish boarding school is far less ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... Mr. Norham with a secretary and a valet, much preoccupied, and chewing the fag-end of certain Cabinet deliberations in the morning; Flaxman's charming sister, Lady Helen Varley, and her husband; his elder brother, Lord Wanless, unmarried, an expert on armour, slightly eccentric, but still, ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... from the car window, and even then they were so interesting. I mean the fish were. Or—or the things where they fixed them. And, beg pardon, Mrs. Stark, even if you looked at that water all day long you couldn't make it into a 'sea.' It's only a Basin, the fag end of Annapolis Basin. Yonder, where there are so many sails and steamers, is the Bay of Fundy, and to get to the really truly sea you must go beyond that. The reason I'm so wise, if you want to know, is that ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... 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 ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... Some folks and some fields never alter. But the People of the Hills didn't work any changeling tricks. They'd tiptoe in and whisper and weave round the cradle-babe in the chimney-corner—a fag-end of a charm here, or half a spell there—like kettles singing; but when the babe's mind came to bud out afterwards, it would act differently from other people in its station. That's no advantage to man or maid. So I wouldn't ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... tale. I should have credit for this arrangement—a far wiser one than that of La Fontaine and others, who reserve the impression to be conveyed until the last moment, and thus sneak it in at the fag end of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 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
... beaches and in the silent bush, where time is not regulated by formalities or shackled by conventions, there delicious lapses—fag-ends of the day to be utilised in a dreamy mood which observes and accepts the happenings of Nature without disturbing the shyest of her manifestations or permitting 'the-mind to dwell on any but ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... herded together, will smell," answered his dragoman. "You cannot avoid it. What with old clothes, patchouli, petrol, fried fish and the fag, those five essentials of human life, the atmosphere of Turner ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... contrary, I am worse and worse, weaker and weaker every day; for which reason I shall leave this place next Monday, and set out for Bath a few days afterward. I should not take all this trouble merely to prolong the fag end of a life, from which I can expect no pleasure, and others no utility; but the cure, or at least the mitigation, of those physical ills which make that life a load while it does last, is worth ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... anomalies against nature in honor of their mistresses, belonged decidedly to a period of time anterior to that of Shakspeare, and went quite out with the age of chivalry, of which Shakspeare saw scarcely even the fag end. Your lover of Shakspeare's time was quite another animal. He had begun to take beer. He had become much more subtle and self-satisfied. He did sometimes pen sonnets to his mistress's eye-brow, and sing soft nothings to the gentle sighing of his "Lewte." He sometimes ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various
... came to grief. As it chanced, several days passed before any demand was made upon him for service to the heads of the squirehood, but when that demand was made, the bachelors were very quick to see that the boy who was bold enough to speak up to Sir James Lee was not likely to be a willing fag for them. ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... 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 sleep, well-forgotten ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... 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
... or sat to keep them steady while the racers 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 ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... exercises, but he made him pay most severely for this assistance, by the most tyrannical usage; and, in all his tyranny, he thought himself fully justifiable, because little Oliver, beside his other misfortunes, had the misfortune to be a fag. ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... to the fag of burying the swag?" said Tommy once they were safe within the shelter of The Cedars gates. "Let's take it to one of your bedrooms. Besides," he added; as if this were quite an afterthought, as indeed it was, "I don't want to spoil the things, and burying ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... 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
... 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 ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... 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 ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 raising m-o-r-e racket ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... 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
... off his train or motor-car on to 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
... describes with great force the misery caused by gin— 'liquid poison' he calls it—'which in the fag-end and outskirts of the town is sold in some part or other of almost every house, frequently in cellars, and sometimes in the garret.' He continues:—'The short-sighted vulgar in the chain of causes seldom can ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... Bolton was on 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 ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... at once, faintly heard, the fag-end of the "British Grenadiers," whistled very much out of tune, came floating in at ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... page chance to fall under your eye, for my sake read, fag, subdue, and take up into your proper mind this chapter ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... progression, brought To contact nearer, The Doctor, consequently, heard him clearer,— And then the fag-end of this sentence caught: ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger |
