"Rag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... your pardon, Elizabeth," said Haynerd meekly. "I really am trying to be decent, you know. But when I think of Ames it's like a red rag to a bull!" ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... square, solid brick mansion, built while all acknowledged the King of Britain here, and in whose threshold General Washington had stood more than once. His father admitted him directly into a prim, wainscoted room with a square-angled stairway in the corner leading above; a thick rag carpet was on the floor; the furniture was mahogany and hair-cloth; on the wall were portraits of the Whaleys or Whalleys, back to that regicide who fled from the vengeance of King Charles's sons, and, escaping many perils in New England, lived ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... the little space that remained they had to subsist as well as they could. There was generally only one entrance to the hold, and provision for only the smallest amount of air through the gratings on the sides. The clothing of a captive, if there was any at all, consisted of only a rag about the loins. The food was half-rotten rice, yams, beans, or soup, and sometimes bread and meat; the cooking was not good, nor was any care taken to see that all were fed. Water was always limited, a pint a day being a generous ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... will. Not eat nor drink? And wherefore wail for one, Who put your beauty to this flout and scorn By dressing it in rags? Amazed am I, Beholding how ye butt against my wish, That I forbear you thus: cross me no more. At least put off to please me this poor gown, This silken rag, this beggar-woman's weed: I love that beauty should go beautifully: For see ye not my gentlewomen here, How gay, how suited to the house of one Who loves that beauty should go beautifully? Rise therefore; robe yourself in ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... lath; around him were bare, dirty-white walls, that seemed to grow out of the gray light of a wet morning as the natural deposit from such a solution. Two slender poles, meant to support curtains, but without a rag of drapery upon them, rose at his feet, like the masts of a Charon's boat. Was he indeed in the workhouse he had pre—ferred to Cairncarque? It could hardly be, for there was the plaster fallen in great patches from the walls as well as the ceiling, and ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... up and shake out the reefs, sir," he said coolly to his mate, for it was a standing rule of the captain's to seem calmest when he was in the greatest rage. "Turn them up, sir, and show every rag that will draw, from the truck to the lower studding-sail boom, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... is, in my opinion, a most barbarous one, and likely to operate unfavourably on the national morals; the arena is sometimes drenched in the blood of bulls, horses, and even of the unfortunate picadores and matadores, whose sole defence is the red rag with which they irritate ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... perhaps hungry. The craving of the stomach disorders everything. Since the previous evening all kinds of incidents had assailed him. The emotions which had tormented had sustained him. Without the storm a sail would be a rag. But his was the excessive feebleness of the rag, which the wind inflates till it tears it. He felt himself sinking. Was he about to fall without consciousness on the pavement? To faint is the resource of a woman, and the humiliation of a man. He hardened himself, but he trembled. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... the Devil contentedly; 'if you had taken a piece of rag, or what not, you might yourself... Hulloa!...' He looked down and saw the hole still gaping, and he felt a furious draught coming up again. He wondered a little, and then muttered: 'It's a pity I have on my best things. I never dare crease them, and I have nothing ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... going to bed at night. A good oil is made by simmering: Sweet oil, one pint; Venice turpentine, three ounces; lard, half a pound; beeswax, three ounces. Simmer till the wax is melted. Rub on, or apply with a rag. ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... made no reply. He was not wholly in his chief's confidence. He merely knew that the name of Lou Chada to Kerry was like a red rag to a bull. The handsome, cultured young Eurasian, fresh from a distinguished university career and pampered by a certain section of smart society, did not conform to Detective Sergeant Durham's idea of a suspect. He knew that Lou was the son of Zani Chada, and he knew that Zani Chada ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... their manes and tails? A scrubby, pickety ridge along the neck, and a bare stump projecting behind, were all that remained of the flowing honors with which they had come gallivanting down to "bear away the bell" at Hickory Creek, or, in the emphatic language of the country, "to take the rag ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... Boyne." As Skeet passed me, she wiped a paw on a paint rag and offered it to me without another word. I got a grip and a look that told me there was no hang-over with her from that scene yesterday in her mother's sick-room. Vandeman was commenting on his ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... passed since Rebecca Gibbons had traded her corn crop for a beaver skin. That piece of fur had become a much-beloved treasure to Becky. It covered her rag dolls in the daytime and served her as a blanket many a ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... of all she-things, you gorge yourselves at your feasts, And you smoke and drink in a way we think would lower the standard of beasts; For a ring, a roof and a rag, you are bought by your males, to have and to hold, And you mate and you breed without nature's need, while your hearts and ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... affection, then her father and brother would refuse their consent," and fight to get her back. "The unfortunate female, thus placed between two contending parties, would soon be divested of every rag of clothing, and would then be seized by her head, hair, or limbs," her "cries and shrieks would be unheeded by her savage friends. In this way the poor creature was often nearly torn to pieces. These savage contests sometimes ended ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... king's chapel, in which an organ was erected, and some pictures and statues displayed, was proposed as a model to the rest of the nation. But music was grating to the prejudiced ears of the Scottish; clergy; sculpture and painting appeared instruments of idolatry the surplice was a rag of Popery; and every motion or gesture prescribed by the liturgy, was a step towards that spiritual Babylon, so much the object of their horror and aversion. Every thing was deemed impious but their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... followers were poor wretches—so poor that sometimes, after investing in pistols, they had not a six-pence left for ammunition. One, a distraught Fenian, pointed at her a broken, harmless weapon, charged with a scrap of red rag. Another, a humpbacked lad, named Bean, loaded his with paper and a few bits of an old clay pipe. Bean escaped for a time, and it is said that for several days there were "hard lines" for all the poor humpbacks of London. Scores of them were arrested. ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... going to rag you." And with the ghost of a smile he passed into the Ambler's stall. The groom had just finished putting him to rights; the horse stood ready to be led from the field of his defeat. The groom moved out, and George went to the Ambler's head. There is no place, no corner, on a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... it is true News. When you, not being discharg'd from the Government of your Parents, can't dispose of, or sell so much as a Rag, or an Inch of Ground, what Right can you pretend to for disposing of yourself into the ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... he awakes) with fresh 'white man's boxes' (query, ammunition?) and professing to be quite ignorant of where they come from; marches of bodies of men across the island; concealment of ditto in the bush; the coming on and off of different chiefs; and such a mass of ravelment and rag-tag as the devil himself ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... appear at their best and liveliest when taking a limb from the hillside to the house in the pond. A young beaver will catch a limb by one end in his teeth, and, throwing it over his shoulder in the attitude of a puppy racing with a rope or a rag, make off to the pond. Once in the water, he throws up his head and swims to the house or the dam with the limb held ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... little farmhouse (where Ham had kept two rooms); banished along with the superintendent the stiff plush furniture, the yellow-red carpets, the easels and the melodeon, and decked it out in bright chintzes, with wall-papers to match, dainty muslin curtains, and rag-carpet rugs on the hardwood floors. The pseudo-classic porch over the doorway, which had suggested a cemetery, was removed, and a wide piazza added, furnished with wicker lounging chairs and tables, and shaded with ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... wither'd hags, Tell how wi' you, on rag weed nags, They skim the muirs an' dizzy crags Wi' wicked speed; And in kirk-yards renew their leagues ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... been a pretty big sorter woman when she young. A ridin' boss went to whoopin' her once and she tore every rag clothes he had on offen him. I heard em say he went home strip start naked. I think they said he got ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... call it nothing to abuse an elegant garment like that?" demanded Mrs. Caldwell. "To throw it upon the floor, and tumble it about as if it were an old rag?" ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... looking down into an attic, which was also a lumber-room. It had boxes and broken chairs, old fenders and picture-frames, and rag-bags hanging from nails. ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... hand in his pocket, as well as he was able, and drew out a flint and steel. He struck a spark out of it, and lit a burnt rag he had in his pocket. He blew it until it made a flame, and he looked round him. The church was very ancient, and part of the wall was broken down. The windows were blown in or cracked, and the timber of the seats were rotten. There were six or seven old iron candlesticks left there still, and ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... to say that children are happier with mud pies and rag dolls than with these elaborate delights. There may be something in this theory, but when their amusements are carried to such a point of luxurious and imaginative perfection it certainly gives them great and even unlimited enjoyment at the time. Whether ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... mean; for a step-father he seems to prove to merry England. But do you really believe that an old man down in Italy can make a bit of rag conquer by saying a few prayers at it? If I am to believe in a magic flag, give me Harold Hardraade's Landcyda, at least, with Harold and his Norsemen ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... had said that you couldn't read and write, I could have told you what would happen. But, don't be cast down, Ned. Little more than three years ago, I couldn't read nor write, and hadn't shoes to my feet, and scarce a rag on my back. I was a poor outcast boy, without father or mother—no shelter for my head, and often no food to eat. I picked up a living as I could, holding horses, running errands, when anybody would trust me. I didn't steal, but I was often ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... my dear; I only wanted to ask you if you have engaged Miss Willy Whitlow for the entire week or if you could let me have her for Friday and Saturday? Jinny hasn't a rag to wear to Abby Goode's lawn party and I don't know anybody who does quite so well for her as poor Miss Willy. Oh, that's so sweet of you! I can't thank you enough! And you'll tell her without my sending all the way over ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... shadow. There was a great deal of substance about it—substance made up of many people, many banners, and numerous bands. He did not have the best people. Indeed, among his cohorts there were a good many of the pronounced rag-tag and bobtail. But he had noise and numbers. In such cases, nothing more is needed. The success of Asbury's side of the affair did everything to confirm his friends in their good opinion ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... must have had it in his breech-cloth," remarked the corporal seriously, for not a rag besides had he about him. "No, no it couldn't be him, ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... becoming rather anxious, as you can imagine, to know what was going on in the world and what England was thinking about it all. I ran alongside a fishing-boat, therefore, and ordered them to give up their papers. Unfortunately they had none, except a rag of an evening paper, which was full of nothing but betting news. In a second attempt I came alongside a small yachting party from Eastbourne, who were frightened to death at our sudden appearance out of the depths. From them we were lucky enough to get ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... studdingsail-booms and to set the royal and topgallant studdingsails on their way down; and finally the topmast and lower studdingsails were set, and the Zenobia went rolling and wallowing away to the westward under every rag that could be ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... husband up, limp as a rag, and laid him tenderly on the sofa. TEDDY and the minister withdrew, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various
... small turnips, and eight tomatas, also cut up; add a head of celery cut small. Put in a very small head of cabbage, cut into little pieces. If you have any objection to cabbage, substitute a larger proportion of the other vegetables. Put in also a bunch of sweet marjoram, tied up in a thin muslin rag to prevent its ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... Australian bird is called the bower-bird, because when a bower-bird wishes to go courting he builds in the Bush a little pavilion, and adorns it with all the gay, bright objects he can—bits of rag or metal, feathers from other birds, coloured stones and flowers. In this he sets himself to dancing until some lady bower-bird is attracted, and they set up housekeeping together. The bower-bird is credited ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... every morning, took away our bread; and also how he himself had been suborned to maintain the milkman in coals. In two or three days more, I was informed by the authorities of his having led to the discovery of sirloins of beef among the kitchen-stuff, and sheets in the rag-bag. A little while afterwards, he broke out in an entirely new direction, and confessed to a knowledge of burglarious intentions as to our premises, on the part of the pot-boy, who was immediately taken up. I got to be so ashamed of being such a victim, that I would have given him any ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... illuminated the room with poverty-stricken inadequacy; high up on the wall, bordering the ceiling, the moonlight, as though contemptuous of its artificial competitor, streamed in through a small, square window, and laid a white, flickering path to the door across a filthy and disreputable rag of carpet; also, through a rent in the roller shade, which was drawn over a sort of antiquated French window that opened on a level with the floor and in line with the top-light, the moonlight disclosed a narrow and squalid ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... little incident, but the whole world seemed suddenly given over to the dreariest commonplace. He had walked out this evening, slowly revolving in his mind the various odds and ends which came upon demand of his rag-picking memory, and yet nothing of value had turned up. He was tired, and determined to take a horse-car for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... rolled up, but later rectangular pages were cut and bound together book fashion; though age has rendered the soft white pages brown and brittle, much ancient literature is still preserved on papyrus; the use of papyrus was superseded by that of parchment and rag-made paper. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... that Nellie was preparing to go to the city, Betty had lessons in sewing. Nellie would bring down an old garment, so faded and worn that it would seem only fit for the rag-bag. She would rip and wash, dye with a mysterious little package of stuff, press, and behold, there would come forth pretty breadths of cloth, blue or brown or green, or whatever color was desired. It seemed like magic. And then a box of paper-patterns would be brought out, and the ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... been by him publicly accused, so perhaps they were quits. But, poor girl (if she was a girl), she must be feeling up a tree now. She seemed a nice enough person, too; a bit of a fool, of course, but then any one who'd write for the British Bolshevist, that pestilential rag, would need to be either a fool or a knave, ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... "The rag pedler that comes by every fall lets me look in his bags, 'cause sometimes there are paper books in them, and he gave me this for nothing, 'cause it was only ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... do, Snapper,' said Private 'Enery Irving some days after, as the battalion tramped along the road towards 'reserve billets.' 'An' I 'aven't enjoyed myself so much for months. Didn't it rag 'em beautiful, an' won't we fair stagger the 'ouse at the next ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... scope to what one feels are autobiographical histories of their own wanderings through the pseudo-Latin quarters of London and Paris. They flood their pages with struggling artists, emancipated seamstresses, demi-mondaine actresses, social reformers, and all the rag-tag and bob-tail of suburban semi-culture; whereas in some mysterious way—probably by reason of their not possessing imaginations strong enough to sweep them out of the circle of their own experiences—the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... the song, strummed a while, sang a popular rag-time, strummed again and, so Starr explained his silence, went to bed. Estan began again to talk, now and then lifting his voice, speaking earnestly, as though he was arguing or protesting, or perhaps expounding a theory of some sort. Starr could not catch the words, ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... the old Irish. It was very natural that the Gipsies, observing that the sun and moon were always apparently wandering, should have identified their own nomadic life with that of these luminaries. It may be objected by those to whom the term 'solar myth' is as a red rag that this story, to prove anything, must first be proved itself. This will probably not be far to seek. If it can be found among any of the wanderers in India, it may well be accepted, until something better turns up, as the possible origin of the greatly disputed Zingan. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... for that," replied the trapper, "mebbe he do be afther thinkin' discretion was the better part av valor. Ye say, he had one av his hands wrapped up in a rag, and I suspect he ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... bore the inscription in Latin Hoc propter verba tua; naught beyond that and another circumstance, which went to show that the knight had been slain by an eastern enemy. The dog, as he re-entered the castle, called attention to some pieces of blood-stained rag, which, from their appearance, had dropped from his mouth; one of these, the innermost, was in texture and pattern evidently part ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... too wonderful a superintendent to be quite true," said Peggy when Peter had finished. "But do give us a 'rag.'" ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... surprise and bully rag the most astute police detective of whom he had any knowledge; he found himself surprised and ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... 'pessimist,' which certainly has a threatening appearance. They don't know its meaning, and in their mouths it merely signifies that what a man says snakes them feel personally uncomfortable. The word has become a dusty rag of slang. The arrested burglar very likely calls the policeman a pessimist; and, speaking reverently and with no intention to shock you, the scribes and Pharisees would undoubtedly have called ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... kettle of fish'; he thought they ought to be sending the sailors—they were the chaps, they did a lot of good in the Crimea. Soames shifted the ground of consolation. Winifred had heard from Val that there had been a 'rag' and a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Day at Oxford, and that he had escaped detection ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Sunday is not a Christian Scientist. The Christian Scientist does not cut into the grape; specialize on the elevated spheroid; devote his energies to bridge whist; cultivate the scandal microbe; join the anvil chorus, nor shake the red rag of wordy warfare. He is diligent in business, fervent in spirit, and accepts what comes without ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... handful of kitchen matches. Johnny produced a glass fish casting rod with a small wad of cloth tied to the weighted hook. Leading Peterson back across the yard about fifty feet, Johnny handed the rag ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... her fingers so as to make her hop. She did not cry; for she remembered her promise. Patience wet a cloth with cold water, and put it on the burn; then she remembered that common brown soap was the best thing for a burn, so she spread some soap on a cotton rag and put that on. Soon the pain was gone, and Ellen ran and told ...
— The Nursery, November 1877, Vol. XXII. No. 5 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... to be drawn? any men or women worth drawing, or only worth caricaturing? What are the aesthetic laws respecting iron cylinders; and would Titian have liked them rusty, or fresh cleaned with oil and rag, to fill the place once lightened by St. George's armor? How can we begin the smallest practical business, unless we get first some whisper of answer to such questions? We may tell a boy to draw a straight line ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... scarred with the records of old wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all over it; one eye out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop Leighton's father's; the remaining eye had the power of two; and above it, and in constant communication with it, was a tattered rag of an ear, which was forever unfurling itself, like an old flag; and then that bud of a tail, about one inch long, if it could in any sense be said to be long, being as broad as long—the mobility, ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... with rag rugs on the painted floor and crisp, worn curtains. The table and chairs were cream-color, and the table wore an embroidered flour-sack cover. Grandpa pottered with a loose door-latch until Grandma wrung the suds from her ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... quietly, the terribly diminished crew lay down as they stood by the guns, in readiness to repel another attack, should it be attempted. The next morning one of the French eighty gun ships got under way, and, with merely a rag of canvas shown, and her boats rowing ahead and sounding to find a channel through the reefs, gradually made ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... tried to comfort her, she said "Go away, ma. Don't touch me!" Finally I went to her, and she caught my hand in hers and pressed it, and after I had got her to her feet—the poor ragged waif, as limpsey as a rag, and wearing the patched remnants of the calico dress I had bought for her on the way into Iowa the spring before—she broke down and cried on my shoulder. She sobbed out that I was the only man she had ever known. She wished to God she were a man like me. The only ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... If I whistle, he dances; he is only the decoy, I am the bird-catcher." Here Hippus tried to whistle a tune, and to execute a few steps. Again the cold sweat rained from his brow, and, taking out his handkerchief, he dried his face, and carefully replaced the rag in his pocket. "He does not return," he suddenly cried; "he leaves me here, and they will find me." Then running to the door and violently shaking it, "The villain has locked me in—a Jew has locked me in!" shrieked the miserable creature, wringing his hands. "I am to ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... glove compartment. I had to open the gas tank and let out pressure to get any gas on the rags, and it wasn't easy, standing on my head in the cockpit. What I really needed was a Coke bottle. I could have made a Molotov cocktail by filling it with gas and using the rag for a fuse. Well, I made another run inshore and watched for the boys with rifles. They didn't show up. I got as close as I could without grounding, touched a match to my bomb, and heaved it into the marsh grass. My ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... looking him up and down; 'well, you do look ill. You've been washed and wrung out till you're limp as a rag. White in the face, black under the eyes! What have you been doing with yourself, I'd like to know. You were all right when ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... Mash, mash, mash! An endless routine of heavy hammers. Mash, mash, mash! upon the sufferer's limbs. See the stone trough! says Goblin. For the water torture! Gurgle, swill, bloat, burst, for the Redeemer's honour! Suck the bloody rag, deep down into your unbelieving body, Heretic, at every breath you draw! And when the executioner plucks it out, reeking with the smaller mysteries of God's own Image, know us for His chosen servants, true believers in the Sermon ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... mother counted; my father did not. She was the daughter of a Scottish earl who had ruined himself again and again. He had been an inventor, a projector, and my mother had been a poor beauty, brought up on the farm we still lived on—the last rag of land that had remained to her father. Then she had married a good man in his way; a good enough catch; moderately well off, very amiable, easily influenced, a dilettante, and a bit of a dreamer, too. He had taken her into the swim of the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... insolvency, was a sight to see. Such threadbare coats and trousers, such fusty gowns and shawls, such squashed hats and bonnets, such boots and shoes, such umbrellas and walking-sticks, never were seen in Rag Fair. All of them wore the cast-off clothes of other men and women, were made up of patches and pieces of other people's individuality, and had no sartorial existence of their own proper. Their walk was the walk of a race apart. They had a ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... devout lover of rag-time and turkey-trotting, but they too are manifestations. In those queer exasperated rhythms I find greater promise of a popular art than in revivals of folk-song and morris-dancing. At least they ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... upward of 20 lbs. of meal. As we had now only a small remnant of our stock, we were obliged to withstand their importunity, and then many of their women, with true maternal feelings, held up their little naked babies, entreating us to sell only a little rag for them. The fire, they say, is their only clothing by night, and the little ones derive heat by sticking closely to their parents. Instead of a skin or cloth to carry their babies in, the women plait a belt about ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... of a moon revealed one horn above a rag bundle of clouds low in the distance. A rim of blackness settled around our little world, relieved only by a few leering stars in the zenith, and, where the Laconia's lights had shown, there remained only the dim outlines of a blacker hulk standing out above the water like a ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... definitely now he was merely the more perplexed. By the fireplace lay a chair, overturned. There had been some sort of hurried movement here, perhaps a struggle. The table had been pushed to one side, one leg catching in the rag rug and rumpling it. He struck a match, lighted the lamp and sought for some explanation. When had this struggle, if struggle there had been, occurred? It must have been after he and Miss Waverly had set out on the trail to Smith's, he told himself positively. Then there had been two people here ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... and Terrain Oxfordien of D'Orbigny), consisting of dark-coloured laminated clays, sometimes reaching a thickness of 700 feet, and in places having its lower portion developed into a hard calcareous sandstone ("Kelloway Rock"); b, The Coral-Rag (Terrain Corallien of D'Orbigny, "Nerinean Limestone" of the Jura, "Diceras Limestone" of the Alps), consisting, when typically developed, of a central mass of oolitic limestone, underlaid and surmounted ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... religion.[15] In the churches that use these hymns the child is frequently not in the Sunday services; he is in the children's service or the school, while in the majority of churches a weak-minded endeavor for amusement has substituted meaningless rag-time trivialities for rich and dignified hymns. Perhaps the custom of encouraging congregations to jig, dance, cavort, or drone through the frivolities of "popular" gospel songs is only a passing craze, but it is a most unfortunate one; ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... at that, and Fleda's cheeks growing crimson, Mrs. Plumfield stepped forward to ask after the old lady's health; and while she talked and listened Fleda's eyes noted the spotless condition of the room—the white table, the nice rag-carpet, the bright many-coloured patch-work counterpane on the bed, the brilliant cleanliness of the floor where the small carpet left the boards bare, the tidy look of the two women; and she made ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... Mr. Dare-not-lie, It is true, they neither have the pilgrim's need, nor the pilgrim's courage; they go not uprightly, but all awry with their feet; one shoe goes inward, another outward, and their hosen out behind; there a rag, and there a rent, to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... her beak, for she too wanted the eel's head. "Only use your legs," she said. "See that you can bustle about, and bend your necks before the old Duck yonder. She's the grandest of all here; she's of Spanish blood—that's why she's so fat; and do you see? she has a red rag around her leg; that's something very, very fine, and the greatest mark of honor a duck can have: it means that one does not want to lose her, and that she's known by the animals and by men too. Hurry! hurry!—don't turn in your toes, a well brought-up duck ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... butt (Lucky my head's not a hazel nut); The horse they raced, and scudded and swore; There were Leicestershire gantlemen, seventy score; Up came the "Lobsters," covered with steel— Down we went with a stagger and reel; Smash at the flag, I tore it to rag. And carried it ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... "Then you ain't as much of a tenderfoot as you look to be. Shake!" and he held out a hand as huge as a bear's paw. Following the hand-grip he grew confidential. "'Long in the afternoon I stuck my head in at the door and saw you chewin' the rag with a thin-faced old nester that couldn't set still in his chair ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... the royal self consult Louise. Those who think that royalty shapes its language in accordance with the plural of the personal pronoun, sometimes used in state papers, will be shocked at the "neglige talk" of one royal highness and the "rag-time" expressions of others. Louise, herself, assures us over and over again that she "feels like a dog," a statement no self-respecting publisher's reader would allow to pass, yet I was told by a friend of King Frederick ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... Aristippus, every complexion of life, every station and circumstance sat gracefully upon him, aspiring in general to greater things, yet equal to the present: on the other hand, I shall be much surprised, if a contrary way of life should become [this cynic], whom obstinacy clothes with a double rag. The one will not wait for his purple robe; but dressed in any thing, will go through the most frequented places, and without awkwardness support either character: the other will shun the cloak wrought at Miletus with greater aversion ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... bright green leaves, are not at all lovely to climb into. Connie knew that by experience. Belonging to a family that wore its clothes as long as they possessed any wearing virtue, she found nothing in her immediate wardrobe fitted for the venture. But from a rag-bag in the closet at the head of the stairs, she resurrected some remains of last summer's apparel. First she put on a blue calico, but the skirt was so badly torn in places that it proved insufficiently protecting. Further search brought to light another skirt, pink, in a still worse state ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... Friend, my Friend,—You behold before you a remorseful man! It is well-nigh a year now since I despatched some hurried rag of paper to you out of Scotland, indicating doubtless that I would speedily follow it with a longer letter; and here, when gray Autumn is at hand again, I have still written nothing to you, heard nothing from ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Not yellow eyes in the room at night, Staring out from a surface of cobweb gray! And not the flap of a condor wing When the roar of life in your ears begins As a sound heard never before! But on a sunny afternoon, By a country road, Where purple rag-weeds bloom along a straggling fence And the field is gleaned, and the air is still To see against the sun-light something black Like a blot with an iris rim— That is the sign to eyes of second sight. . . And ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... which might probably have terminated in death—we mean the principle of the new Reformation. There was, still, a third class—which consisted of a set of thorough Irish wags, who looked upon the whole thing as an excellent joke—and who, while they had not a rag to their backs, nor a morsel for their mouths, enjoyed the whole ceremony of reading their recantation, renouncing Popery, and all that, as a capital spree while it lasted, and a thing that ought by all means to be encouraged, until ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... even more than the car was the fur coat, and the haughty and fastidious manner in which Miss Ingram accepted it from the chauffeur, and the disdainful, accustomed way in which she wore it—as though it were a cheap rag—when once it was on her back. In her gestures he glimpsed a new world. He had been secretly scorning the affairs of the luncheon and all that it implied, and he had been secretly scorning himself for his pitiful lack of brilliancy at the luncheon. These two ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... for a scone or a silver bit or a draught of water: so shall we profit by this, I and thou too." "There's no harm in that," replied the dyer and laid down his head and slept, whilst the barber took his gear and water-tasse[FN192] and throwing over his shoulder a rag, to serve as napkin (because he was poor), passed among the passengers. Quoth one of them, "Ho, master, come and shave me." So he shaved him, and the man gave him a half-dirham;[FN193] whereupon quoth Abu Sir, "O my brother, I have no use for this bit; hadst thou given me ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... afraid. I think if he would have let me just look at things quietly, and see that there was nothing to hurt me, it would have been all right, and I should have got used to them. One day an old gentleman was riding with him, and a large piece of white paper or rag blew across just on one side of me. I shied and started forward. My master as usual whipped me smartly, but the old man cried out, 'You're wrong! you're wrong! You should never whip a horse for shying; he shies because he is frightened, and you only frighten him more and make the habit ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... by a gendarme armed with a loaded rifle, we learned that he was a convict from the local jail! I did not like to ask the nature of his crime, but he looked like a murderer. When he unwrapped an ancient pair of clippers from an unspeakably soiled and oily rag, I wished I was in a position to decline to place myself under his ministrations. The sub-prefect, however, had been so kind and was so apologetic as to the inconveniences of the "barber-shop" that there was nothing for it but to go bravely forward. Although ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... over the floor with a rag," ordered the little burnisher, when the last of these articles had been brought out. "Wipe up all that nasty muck! Look there by your knee to your left! Scrub that big spot there with your brush—looks like grease. That's the style—scrub it hard!" His wife joined ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... uglier, and, according to the feeble ideas common among women, in every particular less pleasing, he has not only seized the complete command of all her thought and action, but has imposed on her in public a humiliating part. I do not here refer to the complete sacrifice of every rag of her reputation; for to many women these extremities are in themselves attractive. But there is about the court a certain lady of a dishevelled reputation, a Countess von Rosen, wife or widow of a cloudy count, no longer in her second ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... head. "Only use your legs," she said. "See that you bustle about, and bow your heads before the old Duck yonder. She's the grandest of all here; she's of Spanish blood—that's why she's so fat; and do you see, she has a red rag round her leg; that's something particularly fine, and the greatest distinction a duck can enjoy; it signifies that one does not want to lose her, and that she's to be recognized by man and beast. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... in this very room,—it was our kitchen then,—an' he says,' If your man don't git well, ye'll be broke.' An' I says to him, 'Dan McGaw, if I live twelve months, Tom Grogan'll be a richer man than he is now.' I was a-sittin' right here when I said it, wid a rag carpet on this floor, an' hardly any furniture in the room. He said more things, an' tried to make love to me, and I let drive and threw him out of me kitchen. Then all me trouble wid him began; he's done everything to beat me since, and now maybe, after all, he'll ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Turnus is, and no AEnean thrall Hath aught to do to break his word or plighted troth recall: I will go meet him: Father, bring the Gods, the peace-troth plight; Then either I this Dardan thing will send adown to night,— This rag of Asia,—Latin men a-looking on the play, And all alone the people's guilt my sword shall wipe away; Or let him take us beaten ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... "cursed spite!" Isabel Boylston—"Is-a-bel," as she pronounced it,—roomed together and squabbled incessantly. At least, Rosalie did the squabbling, Is-a-bel affected the superior, self-righteous air which acted upon Rosalie's peppery temper as a red rag upon a bull. It was Miss Sturgis, of course, who had advised placing them together. Isabel was a great favorite of Miss Sturgis, and ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... that the daughter of an old peddler had a dowry of five hundred rubles, exactly the amount he needed. After careful planning of the undertaking he hired a horse and drove to the lonely cottage of the rag peddler to whom he explained as clearly as he could, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... then she looked in the hand for bits of glass, and there were fortunately no bits of glass there. And then she said to two chubby-legged princes, who were sturdy though small, 'Bring me in the royal rag-bag: I must snip and stitch and cut and contrive.' So these two young princes tugged at the royal rag-bag, and lugged it in; and the Princess Alicia sat down on the floor, with a large pair of scissors and a needle and thread, and snipped and stitched and cut and contrived, ...
— Holiday Romance • Charles Dickens
... galling, or by hot and burning land) are to be cut out to the quick, the scars emplastred with tar mingled with oyl, and over that, a thin spreading of loam; or else with clay and horse-dung; but best with hogs-dung alone, bound to it in a rag; or by laying wood-ashes, nettles, or fern to the roots, &c. You will know if the cure be effected, by the colour of the wounds growing fresh and green, and not reddish: But if the gangreen be within, it must be cured ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... your life and treat everyone as an old pal, seemed to be the order of the day, and in that atmosphere it was impossible to feel anything but quite at home. Before tea was over we new arrivals were infected with the same spirit of joviality, and were ready for the first 'rag.' ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... boy's from infancy, l'Encuerado having brought him up "by hand" for his young master. Gringalet was an orphan from the time of his birth, and had found in the Indian a most attentive foster-parent. Three times a day he gave his adopted child milk through a piece of rag tied over the neck of a bottle. The dog had grown up by the side of his young master; many a time, doubtless, he had snatched from his hands the half-eaten cake, but such casualties were only a temporary check upon their mutual ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... more easy than for them to get a fire! There are a thousand ways of doing that! Two pebbles! A little dry moss! A little burnt rag,"—and how do you burn the rag? "The blade of a knife would do for a steel, or two bits of wood rubbed briskly together ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... could tell? perhaps by reason of her dirty habits: she smoked dragoon cigars! All day she was emitting tobacco-smoke; it was notorious, Clotilde had not to learn it from her father; but now she saw the filthy rag that standard of female independence was—that petticoated Unfeminine, fouler than masculine! Alvan preferred the lichen-draped tree to the sunny flower, it was evident, for never a letter from Alvan had come to her. She thought in wrath, nothing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and felt in every corner of the room, took up the rag-carpet rugs and shook them, moved every chair and the big chest of drawers and the wash-stand, pulled the covers and the pillows and the mattress off the bed and threw them on the floor. When she had finished the room looked as if the big north-west ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... replied Scott. "You told me the names of all the places, but I did not understand a word you said. I say, my lad, when did you escape from the rag-bag?" ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... "What—this old rag?" said Scrap, glancing down at it as if to see which one she had got on. "I've had it a hundred years." And she concentrated on ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... FLAG, n. A colored rag borne above troops and hoisted on forts and ships. It appears to serve the same purpose as certain signs that one sees and vacant lots in ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... great agitation, and in the midst of them stood the lank messenger who had brought the first message from Black Tom, delivering another from the same source. Black Tom was coming, coming surer and unless that flag, that "Rebel rag," were hauled down under twenty-four hours, Black Tom would come over and pull it down, and to that same poplar hang "Captain Mayhall an' his whole damn army." Black Tom might do it ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... Phineas was taken to Newgate, and was there confined, almost with the glory and attendance of a State prisoner. This was no common murder, and no common murderer. Nor were they who interested themselves in the matter the ordinary rag, tag, and bobtail of the people,—the mere wives and children, or perhaps fathers and mothers, or brothers and sisters of the slayer or the slain. Dukes and Earls, Duchesses and Countesses, Members of the Cabinet, great statesmen, Judges, ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... one of the young men had a rag tied round his thumb, I asked him if he had hurt his hand. He replied that when he dived for the turtle it caught him by the thumb, and if his friends hadn't gone to his aid he might have drowned. He told it as though it would have been a great joke on him. We were all pretty well acquainted by this ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... entrailes, and a headlong chaos Murmurs within me, which I must digest, And not drowne her in my confusions, 165 That was my lives joy, being best inform'd. Sweet, you must needs forgive me, that my love (Like to a fire disdaining his suppression) Rag'd being discouraged; my whole heart is wounded When any least thought in you is but touch't, 170 And shall be till I know your former merits, Your name and memory, altogether crave In just oblivion their eternall grave; And then, you must heare from me, there's no meane ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... sniping kept up, and then from the walls of the stockade appeared that for which MacNair had been waiting—a white flag fluttering from the end of a sapling. Raising his head, MacNair imitated the call of the loon, and the firing ceased in the timber. Having no white rag, MacNair waved a spruce bough and stepped boldly out ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx |
