"Rat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his fine clothes, for he was richly dressed as the fashion of the time went, with his high colouring, broad shoulders, and face full of health and vigour. Mentally I compared him with myself, as I was after my fever and loss of blood, a poor, white-faced rat of a lad, with stubbly brown hair on my head and only a little down on my chin, with arms like sticks, and a dirty blanket for raiment. How could I compare with him in any way? What chance had I against this opulent bully who hated me and all my race, and in whose hands, even if I were ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... keep the Marquis in Calais till tomorrow midday. I have turned over twenty schemes in my head. We cannot denounce him as a dynamiter; that is agreed. We cannot get him detained on some trivial charge, for we should have to appear; he knows us, and he would smell a rat. We cannot pretend to keep him on anarchist business; he might swallow much in that way, but not the notion of stopping in Calais while the Czar went safely through Paris. We might try to kidnap him, and lock him up ourselves; but he is a well-known man here. He has ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... allowed half an hour's daily promenade in the corridor (galetas) outside his cell—a dingy, rat-infested place, into which old rubbish was apt to drift. One day Casanova noticed a piece of black marble on the floor—polished, an inch thick and six inches long. He picked it up stealthily, and without any definite intention, managed to hide it ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... the bosom of a buxom flower-girl who, laughing boisterously, wound a pair of sturdy red arms round me. Then he stepped forward, and seizing Phineas by the scruff of the neck shook him as a dog shakes a rat. To what more violence he would have proceeded I do not know; for suddenly from above us, out of a window of the Cock and Pie, came a voice which sent a stir through ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... trained to hunt, and never killed a rat, And isn't much on tricks or looks or birth—well, what of that? That might be said of lots of folks whom men call great and wise, As well as of that yellow dog ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... thou knowest not of. There is little to do before I am the richest man in Christendom. Why, dull rogue, thou hast set me free!' He looked up exulting from his work at the man's throat to shout this word. 'But if it is not true, Bertran'—he shook him like a rat—'if it is not true, I return, O Bertran, and tear this false gullet out of its case, and with thy speckled heart feed the crows of Perigord.' Bertran had foam on his lips, but Richard showed him no mercy. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... the howitzers were lobbing 60-pound shells into the German Askaris, the Nigerians were advancing by sharp rushes and the rat-tat of the machine guns and the crackle of musketry broke very faintly. Airplanes sailed above us. A message came from the Nigerians, "We are going to take the enemy's trenches; please lift gunfire." The order was passed along, ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... but thou mayst deck the pate Of that famed Doctor Ad-mth-te, (The reverend rat, whom we saw stand On his hind-legs in Westmoreland,) Who changed so quick from blue to yellow, And would from yellow back to blue, And back again, convenient fellow, If 'twere his ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... torpedo boat on guard slept well. We steamed past its small light. Inside lay a dark silhouette. That must be a warship. We recognized the silhouette dead sure. That was the Russian cruiser Jemtchud. There it lay, there it slept like a rat, no watch to be seen. They made it easy for us. Because of the narrowness of the harbor we had to keep close; we fired the first torpedo at four ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... wider than Tavistock Street. We will seek them to-day, Asticot de mon coeur; I'll be Don Quixote and you'll be my Sancho, and we'll go again in quest of adventures." He laughed aloud, and shook me like a little rat. "Cela te tape dans l'oeil, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... kind of peeked, Wrenn. Old Goglefogle been lighting into you? Say, I ought to have told you first. I forgot it. The old rat, he's been planning to stick the knife into you all the while. 'Bout two weeks ago me and him had a couple of cocktails at Mouquin's. You know how chummy he always gets after a couple of smiles. ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... paths had crossed and re-crossed each other, that the dog had a hard task to retain any hold on the track he followed. But he kept on his way, though the cold pierced him to the bone, and the jagged ice cut his feet, and the hunger in his body gnawed like a rat's teeth. He kept on his way, a poor gaunt, shivering thing, and by long patience traced the steps he loved into the very heart of the burgh and up to the ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... answer like the squeaking of a rat among the hay, and I thought, "Bless me, the boy's smothered!" But then again I minded that in his times of distress, after a fight or when he had been in some ploy for which he dared not face his father, Alec had ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... watching were of the size of a rabbit, with hair like that of a rat, the colour being of a light red, resembling the squirrel. Their tails, however, instead of curling over, stood straight up over their backs and seemed formed for the express purpose of wagging, which they did to a prodigious ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... this west side the Confederate officers and soldiers were sheltered in the bomb-proof safe during bombardment. On the east side of the fort, facing Morris island, opposite Fort Wagner, there was another apartment called the "Rat-hole" in ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer
... pint, I rose my ole head, an looked straight afore me, an thar, clar ef I didn't fine myself shut in,—reglar prison,—mind I tell you,—an all round me a reglar cumferince ob water an rock, widout any way ob scape. Tell you what, if dar ebber was a ole rat in a trap, I ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... one day missing for several hours. His head—a peculiarly venerable and striking object—was at last discovered just above the grass at some distance from the house. On examination he was found comfortably seated in a disused drain, in company with a silver spoon and a dead rat. On being removed from this locality he howled dismally ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... the lady was a person of unblemished reputation, and that she was placed in a false position through no fault of her own. In plain English, she was divorced. Ah, my dear (to speak in the vivid language of the people), do you smell a rat? ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... file. And this coarse, ugly beast had held her in the spell of love. She had clung to him, kissed him in rapture and yielded herself to him soul and body. And he had gripped her delicate throat and choked her into insensibility, dropping her limp form from his hands like a strangled rat. She could remember the half-conscious moment that preceded the total darkness as she felt ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... surprising that Charles Darwin's energies were directed towards athletic amusements and sport, to such an extent, that even his kind and sagacious father could be exasperated into telling him that "he cared for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching." (I. p. 32.) It would be unfair to expect even the wisest of fathers to have foreseen that the shooting and the rat-catching, as training in the ways of quick observation and in physical endurance, ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of the suggestion nearly paralysed me. To this awful fate the creature within my power had condemned my Princess. I trembled in the ferocity of my rage. As a terrier shakes a rat I shook Issus, ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... performed this function in a kind of solitary rage. She banged the vessels, slammed the stove-eyes on and off, flung the stove-wood about, and kept up a snarling animadversion upon every topic that drifted through her kinky head. She called the kitchen a rat-hole, stated the Captain must be as mean as the devil to live as long as he did, complained that no one ever paid any attention to her, that she might as well be a stray cat, and ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... donkey-cart, broken a gate, and finally, on arriving at the place of her birth, had, according to the farmer, "fired the divil's pelt of a kick into her own mother's stomach". Moreover, she "hadn't as much sound skin on her as would bait a rat-trap"—I here quote Mr. Trinder—and she had ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... machine gun "rat-tat-tat-tated" close to us, and three rockets, like a flight of startled birds, rose suddenly together on ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... Ickleheimer an' Company to be erected in Washington. Another Vanderbilt weddin'. That sounds like goluf, but it ain't. Newport society livin' in Mrs. Potther Pammer's cellar. Green-goods men declare f'r honest money. Anson in foorth place some more. Pianny tuners f'r McKinley. Li Hung Chang smells a rat. Abner McKinley supports th' goold standard. Wait a minyit. Here it is: 'Goluf in gay attire.' Let me see. H'm. 'Foozled his aproach,'—nasty thing. 'Topped th' ball.' 'Three up an' two to play.' Ah, here's the scoor. 'Among those ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... Guibert was not trusted, so that all had to be done out of his sight; and on the first day Berenger was obliged to make the exploration alone, since Humfrey was forced to engross Guibert in some occupation out of sight, and Philip had refused to have anything to do with it, or be like a rat routing in ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... doctor; "as to the other mammalia, their temperature is a trifle higher than that of man. The horse is about the same, as well as the hare, the elephant, the porpoise, the tiger; but the cat, the squirrel, the rat, panther, sheep, ox, dog, monkey, goat, reach 103 degrees; and the warmest of all, the pig, goes ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... wa'n't more 'n six weeks old,—helpless little critter as ever you seen. Wall, all to oncet the mother heerd the baby cryin', but bein' busy with them clo'es she didn't mind much. The baby kep' cryin' 'nd cryin', 'nd at last the mother come back into the house, 'nd there she found a big rat gnawin' at one uv the baby's ears,—had e't it nearly off! There lay that helpless little innocent, cryin' 'nd writhin', 'nd there sat that rat with his long tail, nippin' 'nd chewin' at one uv them tiny coral ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... trap!" he jeered at himself. "Like a rat in a trap, Ned Trent! The fates are drawing around you close. You need just one little thing, and you cannot get it. Bribery is useless! Force is useless! Craft is useless! This afternoon I thought I saw another way. What I could get no other way I might get from ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... back, slashing at Finn's fore-arm with his sharp white fangs, and snarling ferociously. In the same instant almost, the fox was on his feet, but before he could leap away, Finn's jaws descended on the back of his neck, gripping him like a vice, and shaking him almost as a terrier shakes a rat. With a desperate squirm the fox wriggled earthward from this terrible grip, and, as Finn drew breath, stabbing at the fox with one fore-paw, as he would have stabbed at a still living rabbit, to hold it, Reynard's fangs cut deeply into the loose skin of his chest. ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... as a terrier shakes a rat, and seemed to shake things off him—among others a revolver which described a circle in the air and fell heavily on the ground, where ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... ha' mercy!" exclaimed Crevecoeur, "this is not only not being content with venturing into the lion's den, but thrusting his head into his very jaws.—Nothing less than the very bottom of the rat trap would ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... gluttonous adjutant-bird; but some day a bone will choke him;—his soul may creep under the mangy skin of a Pariah dog, and be kicked out of compounds by scullions; he may be condemned to the abominable offices of a crow at the burning ghauts, a jackal by the wells of Thuggee, or a rat in sewers; but he can never again be such a nuisance, such a sore offence to the minds and hearts of men, as when he was Asirvadam ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Wet is now caged like a rat, he's fairly in a box, Around him grouped are Clements, ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... keen face of Seymour Michael peered nervously, restlessly from side to side. He was distinctly suggestive of a rat in a trap. And beyond him, in the gloom of the old arras-hung hall, a third man, seemingly standing guard over Seymour Michael, for he was not looking into the room but watching every movement made by the General—tall man, dark, ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... their testicles, which he had preserved of this one, and gave my comrade, remarking that they were intended for some amateur or other, and he could do little with them. The muskrat is not larger than the common rat. It has gray hair, and the fleece is sometimes sold with other peltries, but it is not worth much, although it has some odor. It was about noon when we were set across the creek in a canoe. We proceeded thence ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... "Neither Madam; he was a Wine Merchant." "Aye, I knew he was in some such low way—He broke did not he?" "I beleive not Ma'am." "Did not he abscond?" "I never heard that he did." "At least he died insolvent?" "I was never told so before." "Why, was not your FATHER as poor as a Rat" "I fancy not." "Was not he in the Kings Bench once?" "I never saw him there." She gave me SUCH a look, and turned away in a great passion; while I was half delighted with myself for my impertinence, and half afraid of being thought too saucy. As Lady Greville was extremely angry with me, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... and you keep on with the first feller, and pretty soon he asks you to hold up a minute, he wants to go back and get a cigar; and he goes round the corner, and you hold up, and hold up, and in about a half an hour, or may be less time, you begin to smell a rat, and you go for a policeman, and the next morning you find your name in the papers, 'One more unfortunate!' You look out for 'em, young feller! Wish I had let that one go on till he done something so I could handed him ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... rutting leopardess, the liver of a forest rat, the tongue of a Baroto bird—these must I have to mix with thy blood to be drunk by thy man when the ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... up the steps, and my friend let the brass knocker drop just once, for only Americans give a rat-a-tat-tat, and the door was opened by a white-whiskered butler, who took our cards and ushered us into the library. My heart beat a trifle fast as I took inventory of the room; for I never before had called on a man who was believed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... know the worst, I pulled up the horse. I fetched Bose, unwilling, out by the ears. He was a good dog at anything from a rat to a man, but he slunk away that night into the hedge, and lay there, his head between his paws, whining and howling. I walked straight up to the figure, still standing by the horse's head. As I walked, the figure turned, and I saw Harriet's face as plainly ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... her husband's house, and his close intercourse with Miss Ashton; and you may tell her that all the country talks of a visit from the Marquis of A——, as it is supposed, to make up the match betwixt Ravenswood and her daughter. I should like to hear what she says to all this; for, rat me! if I have any idea of starting for the plate at all if Ravenswood is to win the race, and he has ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... from them; but if you write rejoinders they have a contributor working for them for nothing, and one whose writing will be much more acceptable to their readers than any that comes from their own anonymous scribes. It is very disagreeable to be worried like a rat by a dog; but why should you go into the kennel and unnecessarily put yourself in the way of it?" The Doctor had said this more than once to clerical friends who were burning with indignation at something ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... the bar to show that he was of the same breed. He was no longer the athlete, whom "prize fighting" had inculcated with principles of manliness and fair play as well as a strong body. All that, as I had seen often before, was a pitiful lie. He was rat-eyed and soft-handed. His skin had the pastiness that comes of more exposure to the glare of vile dance halls than the sunlight of day. His black hair was slicked down; he was faultlessly tailored and his shoes had those high, bulging toes which ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... and hide, for if they noted that you had me for a passenger they might smell a rat, but would think nothing of seeing you three, for ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... he said earnestly. "Promise me that you won't. I am going to die, and, like a poisoned rat, I wish to ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... a man walked into a shipping office on the East Side, and inquired for the Manager of the Line. He had kindly blue eyes, a stub nose, and a mouth that shut to like a rat-trap, and stayed shut. Under his chin hung a pair of half-moon whiskers which framed his weather-beaten face as a ...
— A List To Starboard - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... started for camp laden with their spoils, Tom stepped softly out of a nearby thicket, licking his chops and apparently thinking of the delicate lunch of fat tree-rat he ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... much effort, losing sanity and control and futilely trying to compensate for the loss by excess of physical endeavor. He knew only the blind desire to destroy, shook Joe in the clinches as a terrier might a rat, strained and struggled for freedom of body and arms, and all the while Joe calmly clutched and held on. The referee worked manfully and fairly to separate them. Perspiration ran down his face. It took all his ...
— The Game • Jack London
... refinements. She did not like to dwell upon anything that was painful or even sordid; and when memory persisted in dragging before her reluctant eyes the dead body of any particularly hateful scene in her past, as a cat will sometimes obstinately lay before its master a rat it has mangled, she was in the habit of dulling her sensibility by drinking a little absinthe in which some chlorodyne had ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... as he did the night Hancock was beat, and he had to have the doctor to give him something to quiet him (the time he wanted me to go right down town and buy a hundred rat traps, but the doctor said never mind, I needn't go). I took him home and Ma soaked his feet, and give him some ginger tea, and while I was gone after the doctor he asked Ma if she ever saw ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... bonds and mumbled something through the gag in his mouth, but Tom couldn't understand what he was trying to say. Mrs. Hill just looked at the planter with wide, frightened eyes. The cadet whirled around angrily. "Why, you dirty little space rat!" ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... It's just a bit of nonsense—nothing that matters. I want him to lend me his bulldog for a rat-fight at my club to-morrow. I've made a bet that he'll kill a hundred in two minutes. And with that I ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... yourselves. I don't care, however, whether you believe me or not. The fact remains that I have eaten one fried pyramid and countless stewed icicles, and the stewed icicles were finer than any diamond-back rat Confucius ever had served ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... Throne of state is seen She whom all Hearts own for their Queen. Three Pages are in waiting by; He with the umbrella is her Spy, To spy out rogueries in the dark, And smell a rat as you ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... made it very comfortable for herself in a hole in a tree. It was safe and dry, and stayed warm the greater part of the night because the sun shone on the entrance all day long. Once, early in the morning, she had heard a woodpecker rat-a-tat-tatting on the bark of the trunk, and had lost no time getting away. The drumming of a woodpecker is as terrifying to a little insect in the bark of a tree as the breaking open of our shutters by a burglar would be ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... only part of it and I suppose it took all your time since to perfect and complete it. You gave yourself away when you experimented on young Ladd. I was a track man myself in my college days and when I saw an account of his running, I smelt a rat, so I came back and watched him. As soon as I saw him crush and swallow a capsule just as the gun was fired, I was sure, and got hold of him. He was pretty stubborn, but he finally told me what name you were running under now, and the rest ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... who would never rat on him while their police records remained in Mike's safe and they could count on him ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long
... about the room; then two heavy objects fell. Beppo crept up. "Mary Virgin, he's killing birds," he said, in an awed whisper, and picked up two owls with wagging heads. The recesses of the chimney were still very lively. "Eh, there he is again," said the old sweep. "What now?" Down came a rat, squeaking for its life, then three in succession, very silent because their necks were wrung. "This is better than a cat any day of the seven," said Sor Beppo. "What a diamond of a poet! He should be crowned with laurel-twigs if I were ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... "you mustn't think worse of me than I deserve. I wouldn't have the heart to take an eye out of a rat itself; I got half a dozen of them from the butcher, and only used ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... must we watch these brawlers' brandished lathe, Or to their reeking wit our ears incline, Because all Castaly flowed crystalline In gentle Shakspeare's modulated breath! What! must our drama with the rat-pit vie, Nor the scene close while one is left to kill! Shall this be poetry % And thou—thou—man Of blood, thou cannibalic Caliban, What shall be said to thee?—a poet?—Fie! "An honourable murderer, if ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... a rat bites at any cheese, from Gloucester to Parmasan, and you can easily scrape up a bit of some sort. Talking of the House, do you see, by the paper, that the civic senator, Alderman W—, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that moment Gladwin made a quick, slight signal. Immediately from the passage with out came the sound of grounding arms, and the rat-tat of a drum. Pontiac stood rigid, as one turned to stone. Then after a moment's deathly silence he ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... Petite-Aurelie, to distinguish her from one of her rivals far less clever than herself, belongs to the highest class of those women whose social utility cannot be questioned by the prefect of the Seine, nor by those who are interested in the welfare of the city of Paris. Certainly the Rat, accused of demolishing fortunes which frequently never existed, might better be compared to a beaver. Without the Aspasias of the Notre-Dame de Lorette quarter, far fewer houses would be built in Paris. Pioneers in fresh stucco, they have gone, towed by ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... is," he said, "and I earned it myself and so I ain't poking it down any rat-hole without being condemned sure that I'll be able to pull it all back again with just as much more sticking to it. That wouldn't be sooavable—and from what you know of ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... bounding over the terrace to follow her as she stepped on to the towing path; and together they strolled by the river in the fresh morning air, Toni gazing half-absently towards the distant hills, Jock keeping one eye and ear anxiously cocked in anticipation of any unwary rat who should show himself upon ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... be praised!" he exclaimed as he recognized Guy. "I thought that you were drowned like a rat, Master Guy; and though Tom here told us that you could swim well, I never thought to see ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... gone?" he questioned Noemi. "The window is open; a rat might get in while I was asleep. Don't you see a rat about?" It is a constant delusion of typhus patients ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... "Say a rat, rather, George. Don't you know they are right? Would not I do the same if she were my girl, knowing you as ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... breed'—ho! yes, I should think so. Game cocks! Fighting cocks! Oh, you old rat! You'll be a dry nurse to a burro, and keep a hospital for infirm puppies, but you will fight game cocks. Oh, Lord! Why, Sarria, this is as good a grind as I ever heard. There's the Spanish ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... collocatur Piscina seu Lavacrum in quo manus lavantur.—Durandi Rat. de Ecclesia, &c. In ancient church contracts the term Lavatorie was sometimes used for the Piscina, as in that for Catterick Church. In the Roman Missal subsequent to the Tridentine council the word Sacrarium ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... home like a drowned rat, And told his old mother what he had been at. With butter-milk, bowl, and a terrible fall, O, if this be called love, may the ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... being interrupted by a thundering rat-tat-tat at the front door, followed by a pealing at the bell, which indicated that the visitor was manfully following the printed injunction to "Ring also." The door was opened and a man's voice was heard in the hall-a loud, confident voice, at the sound ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... the playing of his seemingly unbeatable hand and after the haunting and elusive odor of eau de rodent had become plainly perceptible all over the ship, he began, as the saying goes, to smell a rat himself, and straightway declined to make good his remaining losses, amounting to quite a tidy amount. Following this there were high words, meaning by that low ones, and accusations and recriminations, and at eventide when the sunset was a welter of purple and gold, ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... a secret path, veined with clumsy roots, shadowed with the thick bush of many a clustering parasite, and echoing sometimes beneath from the hollowed shelter of coot or water-rat. Lilies floated in circles about the ponds, like the crowns of sunken queens, and sometimes a bird broke the ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... know, and no flies, CHARLIE; swim with the Swells, and all that, But I'm blowed if this bunkum don't make me inclined to turn Radical rat. "Riparian Rights," too! Oh Scissors! They'd block the Backwaters and Broads, Because me and my pals likes a lark! Serve 'em right if old BURNS busts ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... Uncle Remus, in a soothing tone, "I'll des snatch down yo' pa buggy umbrell' fum up dar in de cornder, des lak I bin a-doin', en I'll take'n take you und' my arm en set you down on Miss Sally h'a'th des ez dry en ez wom ez a rat'-nes' inside ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... name Trappist is no rat-trap commoner. Always of the elect, and better known as Port-Salut or Port du Salut from the original home of the Trappist monks in their chief French abbey, it is also set apart from the ordinary Canadians under the name of Oka, from the Trappist ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... we fought in a single year—he brought us in sight of Vienna. It was just a clean sweep. We had eaten up three different armies in succession, and had wiped out four Austrian generals; one of them—a white-haired old chap—was burned alive at Mantua like a rat in a straw mattress. We had conquered peace, and kings were begging, on their knees, for mercy. Could a man have done all that alone? Never! He had the help of God; that's certain! He divided himself up like the five loaves of bread ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... object may be a trifle, but the condition of the subject is most important. Turn a man out with his digestion in perfect order, with the spring in the air and in his veins, and he will cheer anything, any Lewis, Lord Liverpool, dog, cat, or rat who may cross his path. Not that this is intended as a sufficient explanation of the Bourbon reception. Far from it; but it does mitigate it a trifle. At eleven o'clock in the forenoon two troops of the Oxford Blues drew up at Kilburn ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... I said, to carry them into the other room, where there was a little shelf with a curtain in front on purpose for them, as we only kept our nicest books in the drawing-room, when this rat-a-tat knock came ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... wet as a drowned rat!" went on the motherly woman. "What on earth started you out in ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... 'A water-rat from off the bank Plunged in the stream. With idle care, Downlooking through the sedges rank, I saw your ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... quietly re-loading his gun, when he heard a shout from one of his attendants, and, looking up, he saw the lion springing upon him. It caught him by the shoulder, and shook him as a dog shakes a rat. The shaking seemed to deprive him of his sense of feeling, and he felt neither pain nor alarm, though he knew quite well what was happening. The lion growled all the while, and placed his heavy foot upon the doctor's head. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... drunk; avoid him: th' argument Is fearful, when churchmen stagger in 't. Look you, six grey rats that have lost their tails Crawl upon the pillow; send for a rat-catcher: I 'll do a miracle, I 'll free the court From all ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... notice but one more of the early Boston editors, who seems to have been an odd fish—somewhat witty, but, to use a homely proverb, 'as rough as a rat-catcher's dog.' He first established the Boston Weekly Rehearsal, in 1731, and afterward the Boston Evening Post. His name was Thomas Fleet. Massachusetts was then a slaveholding country, and Fleet owned several negroes, two of whom he instructed in the art of printing. Their ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the farmer, "I cordially distaste that dirty rat; he is the worm that eats my bones; but, you never shall marry him; ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... of water-fowl; the fore feet supply the place of hands, like those of the squirrel. The Beaver has two kinds of hair, of a light brown color, one long and coarse, the other short and silky. The teeth resemble those of a rat or squirrel, but are longer, and admirably adapted for cutting timber or stripping ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... to me to quit," he muttered. "I'd be a blooming jackass to waste any more time here. I'll have to work it naturally, though, or Lynch will smell a rat." ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... copyists? . . . Whatsoever questions I may put to you in my letters, dearest, I pray you to answer them. I am sure that you need me, that I can be of use to you; and, since that is so, I must not allow myself to be distracted by any trifle. Even if I be likened to a rat, I do not care, provided that that particular rat be wanted by you, and be of use in the world, and be retained in its position, and receive its reward. But ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... he wore round his neck, and which glittered in the sun. This plate proved his death; for, according to Gun-Deck, he himself shot it through the middle, and the ball entered the wearer's heart. It was a rat-killing war, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... in a few words an unconvincing summary of a long and complicated story—one that I detest telling. However, I could not permit you to sit with me at the directors' table of this bank without knowing who I am, what I am, and why I have run that rat into his hole. Colonel Nelson spoke the truth when he said this was purely a personal matter between us. It is so purely personal that I was willing to spare humiliation to his father—leave Old Bell in control of his bank and end our fight—if ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... Henry was a great electioneerer, Burrowing for boroughs like a rat or rabbit. But county contests cost him rather dearer, Because the neighbouring Scotch Earl of Giftgabbit Had English influence, in the self-same sphere here; His son, the Honourable Dick Dicedrabbit, Was member for ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the next morning the whole Leon household was roused by a thunderous double rat-tat at the door. Addie was even heard to scream. A housemaid knocked at Raphael's door and pushed a telegram under it. Raphael jumped out of bed and read: "Third of column more matter ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... fellow to himself, "if I could find that red-apple barrel in the dark. But then I couldn't tell the red ones from the streakedy ones. But either of 'em would do. I guess I won't try, though, for I might put my hand on a rat. They run about when it's dark. I hope they won't come in this corner. But there's nothin' for 'em to eat in this corner but me, and they ain't lions. I wonder if they'll come down after more cider when that's all drunk up. If they do, I guess ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... control and observation turret of the Star-Streak, Molo and his sister Meka, Venza, Anita and myself. Unobtrusively squatting on the floor was a small, gray, rat-faced fellow, put there, weapon in hand, to watch us. He was a ruffian from the underworld of Grebhar, a member ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... snow, at the base of which they stood shoulder high in their mud cellars. Ten yards to the rear of them was what looked like a newly made grave reverently covered with pine boughs. Through these a rat-faced young man, with the receivers of a telephone clamped to his ears, ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... as silently as a snowy owl flies home in the twilight. A subtle something, the influence of a presence, remained, which mingled strangely with the odours of the clover in the neuk, and the sour night-smell of the byre. Again there was a perfect silence. Without, a corncrake ground monotonously. A rat scurried along the rafter. Ebie in the silence and the darkness had almost persuaded himself that he had been dreaming, when his foot clattered against something which fell over on the cobble-stones that ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... fallen, but the Pomeranian, which had leaped into the hold after him, yelping like a terrier at a rat hunt, ran between his legs and ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... dat holler tree, he did, like a man maulin' rails, twel bimeby, atter he done got de tree mos' cut thoo, he stop fer ter ketch his bref, en he seed Mr. Buzzard laughin' behime his back, he did, en right den en dar, widout gwine enny fudder, Brer Fox, he smelt a rat. But Mr. Buzzard, he keep ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... them. Which was just exactly what was wrong with the computer's logic. In avoiding the traps, it also avoided the best way to hit the enemy. A weak point is weak, no matter how well it may be booby-trapped. In baiting a rat trap, you have to use real cheese because an ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... bowing and smiling, a sneer is on his face. And when he speaks to the horse his voice is harsh and mean. He holds an unlighted cigar in his mouth as a terrier might hold a loathed rat; working the muscles of his lips at times viciously but saying nothing. The soft, black hat of his youthful days is replaced by a high, stiff, squarely sawed felt hat which he imagines gives him great dignity. His clothes have become so painfully scrupulous in their exact conformation ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... The trader was lean, rat-eyed, and of a vicious temper. Comparatively, the worst horse in his string was a gentleman. Horse-trading and whiskey go arm-in-arm, accompanied by their copartners, profanity and tobacco-chewing. In the right hand of the horse-trader is guile and in his left hand is trickery. ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... harrier, as it lay on a slab of flagstone. Hercus called her off as she put her nose too closely to the bird. But Selta was following her instincts; for, in turning the bird with her nose, she disturbed a small rat which was coolly making its meal there. I ran to examine the damage done to the hawk (for I was anxious to give the bird uninjured to Mr. Drever), while Willie followed the dog into the crevice where she had chased the rat. I found the harrier was not much damaged; a few ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... had reached an angle of the road where a few withered tree branches alone separated them from the others. They perceived the brown body of the carriage, half open like a huge rat-trap, and beside it the forbidding faces of their would-be captors. Trenck launched these words through the intervening screen ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... to me of a bunk-house on an Arizona range. The time was evening. A half-dozen cowboys were sprawled out on the beds smoking, and three more were playing poker with the Chinese cook. A misguided rat darted out from under one of the beds and made for the empty fireplace. He finished his journey in smoke. Then the four who had shot slipped their guns back into their holsters and resumed their cigarettes and ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... the country, the electric wires passed through a double wall. They were separated from each other and well covered with insulation, but they were not within an iron pipe, as is now required in many cities. The current was alternating. One night when the lights were out a rat in the wall gnawed through the insulation of the wire and also gnawed clear through one of the wires. Did he get a shock? The next morning, the woman of the house wanted to use the electric iron in the kitchen and it would not work. The kitchen had in ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... you get by the lodge, Joe?" inquired Drysdale. Joe, be it known, had been forbidden the college for importing a sack of rats into the inner quadrangle, upon the turf of which a match at rat-killing had come off between the terriers of two gentlemen-commoners. This little event might have passed unnoticed, but that Drysdale had bought from Joe a dozen of the slaughtered rats, and nailed ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... remember now. Nervy little rat! It's a wonder I remember anything that happened that night. We were pretty well pickled. Oh, ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... it," said the Ranees. Then the nurse took the hundred and one little innocent children—the hundred little boys and the one little girl—and threw them behind the palace on the dust-heap, close to some large rat-holes; and after that, she and the twelve Ranees placed a very large stone in each of the babies' cradles, and said to Guzra Bai, "Oh, you evil witch in disguise, do not hope any longer to impose by your arts on the Rajah's credulity. ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... you see, Doc, now you say so yourself, and at school you gave me the laugh. That fool Laskowski, so you thought, he'll never get beyond pounding sand in a rat-hole. Have I come up a bit in your eyes? How's that, old boy? Shake hands. Pretty damned long since we have met! (He extends his hand to PAUL, who does not seem ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... unwashed get an idea into their low brows, and you can't tell where it may lead them. Even a rat fights, in its last corner. These human rats of ours have been getting a bit nasty of late. True, they swallowed the Limited Franchise Bill, three years ago, with only a little futile protest, so that now we've got them politically hamstrung. True, there's ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... rat-faced man the path seemed but a wavering line in the wavering mist. His hand gripped the boy's shoulder, grateful for something solid to hang on to. And gripped it the harder when Carette skipped past them and disappeared along that ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... stopped, lifted a rat from his shoulder, placed it on his breast, like a man who arranged his necktie, clicked his tongue against his teeth, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the impetuous Cow with crumpled horn, Whereon the exacerbating hound was torn, Who bayed the feline slaughter-beast that slew The Rat predaceous, whose keen fangs ran through The textile fibers that involved the grain That lay in Hans' ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... lad, with the desperation of a cornered rat. "But I got a right to live. And I've lived worse'n a dorg on this bloody schooner. I'm fair striped an' bruised wi' boots an' knuckles an' ends o' rope. I'd 'ave chucked myself over long ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... (Euphorbia helioscopia), and wolfs-thistle (Carlina acaulis). The mouse has given us numerous names, such as mouse-ear (Hieracium pilosella), mouse-grass (Aira caryophyllea), mouse-ear scorpion-grass (Myosotis palustris), mouse-tail (Myosurus minimus), and mouse-pea. The term rat-tail has been applied to several plants having a tail-like inflorescence, such as the Plantago lanceolata ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... Mr. Noggin, with Mr. Chrome, who had a new flag, walked out upon the parade-ground. The musicians struck up Yankee-Doodle. How it stirred the hearts of everybody,—the sharp, shrill notes of the fife,—the roll, the rattle, and the rat-a-tat-tat of the drum, and the clanging of the bell, and the sight of that flag, its crimson folds and fadeless stars waving in the evening breeze! Never had it looked so beautiful. The little boys swung their caps and cheered, the women waved their handkerchiefs, and the ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... proved wholly satisfactory as a means of demonstrating its value. It has since been applied by means of mechanisms especially adapted to the structure and activities of the organisms, to the study of the behavior of the crow, pig, rat, and ringdove (Yerkes, 1914; Coburn and Yerkes, 1915; Yerkes and Coburn, 1915). The method has also been applied with most gratifying results to the study of the characteristics of ideational behavior in human defectives,—children, and adults,—and in subjects afflicted ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... he accepts it as hazard presents it to him. Among his finds there are little creatures, such as the Shrew-mouse; animals of medium size, such as the Field-mouse; and enormous beasts, such as the Mole, the Sewer-rat and the Snake, any of which exceeds the powers of excavation of a single grave-digger. In the majority of cases transportation is impossible, so disproportioned is the burden to the motive-power. A slight displacement, caused by the effort of the insects' ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... hung a small colored print of the Madonna. No wonder the people of this land spent so much time crossing themselves and calling upon her for protection—they certainly had cause to. The room, in his opinion, was a veritable rat-hole; the place little better than what one might expect to find in ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... tongs—she did the same, Leaving the ruffian, if he came, The poker and the shovel. Suppose the couple standing so, When rushing footsteps from below Made pulses fast and fervent; And first burst in the frantic cat, All steaming like a brewer's rat, And then—as white as my cravat— Poor ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... leaned to her master's ear. "You are blind; you are an earth-rat, Kano Indara. This is not the usual submission of a silly girl. Ume is thinking things we know nothing of. Did you not see that her face was as a bean-curd in its whiteness? She kept so still, only because she was shaking in ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... "Listen, you rat," he told the Ganymedan, who was rubbing his chin and groaning: "you do exactly as I say, if you know what's good for you." He ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... Without waiting to aim it, he tugged at the trigger. Nothing happened! He threw open the breech and gazed impotently at the base of the shell. It was untouched. The ship was ringing with cries of anger, of hate, with rat-like ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... I who speak to you have been hungry, I know that fifty cents will buy ten loaves of bread, or three pounds of the neck of pork, or six quarts of milk for the babies. Fifty cents will help pay the rent of the rat-holes where you live." Once more he was interrupted by angry shouts of approval. "And the labour unions, have they aided you? Why not? I will tell you why—because they are the servile instruments of the masters. The unions say that capital has rights, bargain with it, but for us there can be ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... triumph of love and hate, over conscience and common sense. His Rosa should not be poor; and he would cheat some of those contemptible creatures called men, who had done him nothing but injustice, and at last had sacrificed his life like a rat's. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... activity I see below me wagon loads of nails go by and wagon loads of hammers hard after, to get a crack at them. Then there will be a truck of saws, as though the planking of the world yearned toward amputation. Or maybe, at a guess, ten thousand rat-traps will move on down the street. It's sure they take us for Hamelin Town, and are eager to lay their ambushment. There is something rather stirring in such prodigious marshaling, but I hear you ask what this has ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... can't," cried Farmer Tallington, "he'll die like a rat in a corner, biting, so look out. He's got that long gun of his loaded and ready for the first man who goes up to yon hut, and ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... circumstance, some dream or accident. Some call them after the first strange animal or bird that appears to the new-born. Old Snow-storm most likely owed his name to a heavy fall of snow when he was a baby. I knew a chief named Musk-rat, and a pretty Indian girl who was named 'Badau'-bun,' or the 'Light of ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... him a glance at once of terror and of despair, but there was for him no possible escape. He was shut tight in the room with his dead victim, like a rat in a trap. Nothing remained for him but to obey the summons from without. Indeed, in the very extremity of his distraction, he possessed reason enough to perceive that the longer he delayed opening the door ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... "It's a rat, I shouldn't wonder," said Robert. "Father says they infest old places—and this must be pretty old if the sea was here ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... and finding himself thus beset, old Simon falls to his usual artifices, turning this way and that, like a rat in a pit, to find some hole for escape. First he feigns to misunderstand, then, clapping his hands in his pockets, he knows not where he can have laid them; after that fancies he must have given them to his man Peter, who is gone out of an errand, etc.; until ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... not go away; he came nearer and Julia drew further into the corner, ensconsing herself behind the chopping-block, and looking about as inviting of approach as a trapped rat. ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... Hombre! they swarmed down upon us but a day ago. They came out of the bush in millions, straight for the house. We fled. Caramba! had we remained, we should have been eaten alive. But they swept the house—Hombre! no human hands could have done so well. Every spider, every rat, beetle, flea, every plague, was instantly eaten, and within a half hour they had disappeared again, and we moved back into a thoroughly ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking |
