"Rat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... audience! "Wonderful things kindness will do with animals," said a member of one, a banker and a deacon. "Even human love can be taught to them by kindness. The cat and the rat have been enemies since the world began. Yet here, to-night, we have seen them doing highly trained feats together, and neither a cat committed one hostile or overt act against a rat, nor ever a rat showed it was afraid ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... 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 ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... by the Manchester Weekly Football Boot, stated that his decision, arrived at after a close and careful study of the work of both teams, was that Houndsditch Wednesday had rather less chance in the forthcoming tourney than a stuffed rat in the Battersea Dogs' Home. It was his carefully-considered opinion that in a contest with the second eleven of a village Church Lads' Brigade, Houndsditch Wednesday might, with an effort (conceding them that slice ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Robert Augustus, and carried his middle name until 1840, when he seems to have dropped it as a useless piece of furniture. There is a report that some of his political foes, playing upon his initials, saddled him with the sobriquet of "Rat." Having out-grown one nickname he ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... squeaked, and sometimes vi'lent, And when he squeaked he ne'er was silent: Though ne'er instructed by a cat, He knew a mouse was not a rat. ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... contains some mother-pearl of a reddish tinge, according to M. d'Argenville. The substance sold under the name of Indian weed, and used at the bottom of fish-lines, is probably a production of this kind; which however is scarcely to be distinguished by the eye from the tendons of a rat's tail, after they have been separated by putrefaction in water, and well cleaned and rubbed; a production, which I was once shewn as a great curiosity; it had the uppermost bone of the tail adhering to it, and was said to have ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... cooler I should have tried to fence a little, since my only resource—I being caught like a rat in a trap that way—was to try to gain time; but I was all in a quiver, just as I suppose he was, with the excitement of the situation and with the excitement of the thunderous night, and his short sharp question jostled out of my ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... merciful to him, poor little rat! He wants to be a wicked, hell-for-leather fellow, but he hasn't got the stomach for it! What did Cecily say when ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... fall back in time of need on a plank for their dinner, require a very different-sized cooking apparatus to that of the Carnivora. Thus the rat, the most perfect sample of the rodent order, possesses a digestive tube of a prodigious length, through which the scrapings of wood have plenty of time for travelling, while the minute nutritive particles they contain are being thoroughly disengaged; and as every part ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... make himself more 'general?' Not always be absorbed in her husband. Of course she understood that while Arbella's fate hung in the balance they had to study the case together and have long confabulations over poisons in the Lab'rat'ry...!" (This last detestable word was a great worry to Mrs. Rossiter. Sometimes she succeeded in suppressing as many vowels as possible; at others she felt impelled to give them fuller values and call it "laboratorry.") And so on, for an hour or so ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... themselves to wholesale business. They leave the small necessity of their next-door neighbor to the retailers, who are poorer in statistics and general facts, but richer in the every-day charities. Mr. Bernard felt, at first, as one does who sees a gray rat steal out of a drain and begin gnawing at the bark of some tree loaded with fruit or blossoms, which he will soon girdle, if he is let alone. The first impulse is to murder him with the nearest ragged stone. Then one remembers ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... great height. It could not be called a vessel at all; it was a machine,—and I have seen one of somewhat similar appearance employed in cleaning out the docks; or, for lack of a better similitude, it looked like a gigantic rat-trap. It was ugly, questionable, suspicious, evidently mischievous, —nay, I will allow myself to call it devilish; for this was the new war-fiend, destined, along with others of the same breed, to annihilate whole navies and batter down old supremacies. The wooden walls of Old England cease to ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a description would have made a botanist sneer and throw up his hands. There were enough smaller animals to keep the oxygen-carbon-dioxide cycle nicely balanced, but the animals had not evolved anything larger than a rat, for some reason. Of course, the sea had evolved some pretty huge monsters, but the camp of the expedition was located a long way from the sea, so there was no worry from ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett
... detail of poor Constant's end. The hours dragged slowly and wretchedly on towards the misty dawn. I was racked with suspense. Was I to be disappointed after all? At last the welcome sound came—the rat-tat-tat of murder. The echoes of that knock are yet in my ear. 'Come over and kill him!' I put my night-capped head out of the window and told her to wait for me. I dressed hurriedly, took my razor, and went ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... projections on each side of a central figure. The next following cut represents a turtle. The tail was not always added. The salamander closely resembles the turtle, but notice the difference in the body, and still different is the cut of the musk-rat (see later). Fishes are figured as a straight embankment of earth tapering ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... windows of the Tuileries, the police made a sudden investigation of the palace at four o'clock in the morning; when a scene of the most whimsical confusion ensued. Hosts of supernumerary inhabitants were found foisted into the huge edifice; every rat-hole had its occupant; and places which had been considered as tenanted only by spiders were found crowded with a surreptitious population. It is added that many ludicrous accidents occurred; great scampering and slamming ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... bowler; Polly Lindsay, slow as ever and as sure as when he held the half-back line with Graeme, and used to make my heart stand still with terror at his cool deliberation. But he was never known to fumble nor to funk, and somehow he always got us out safe enough. Then there was Rattray—'Rat' for short—who, from a swell, had developed into a cynic with a sneer, awfully clever and a good enough fellow at heart. Little 'Wig' Martin, the sharpest quarter ever seen, and big Barney Lundy, centre scrimmage, whose terrific roar ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... inserting the tube into my gullet, and thus deluging me with an ocean of Kirschenwaesser, which he poured in a continuous flood, from one of the long-necked bottles that stood him instead of an arm. My agony was at length insufferable, and I awoke just in time to perceive that a rat had run off with the lighted candle from the stand, but not in season to prevent his making his escape with it through the hole, Very soon a strong, suffocating odor assailed my nostrils; the house, I clearly perceived, was on fire. In a few minutes the blaze broke forth ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... that rose ceilingward in thin, shaking columns from two bowls of Tibetan soapstone. An obese Chinaman with a walnutlike countenance in which cunning and melancholy were equally commingled was speaking monotonously through long, rat-tailed mustaches, while the others listened with impassive decorum. It was a special meeting of the Hip Leong Tong, held in their private clubrooms at the Great Shanghai Tea Company, and conducted ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... 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 foul vermin. ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... also large black foxes, wild asses, and abundance of sables; those creatures I mean from the skins of which they make those precious robes that cost 1000 bezants each. There are also vairs in abundance; and vast multitudes of the Pharaoh's rat, on which the people live all the summer time. Indeed they have plenty of all sorts of wild creatures, for the country they inhabit is very wild and trackless. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... was free from those furred and scarlet-robed lackeys of death. This man looks as if he had had some such night adventure as Boccaccio's Maestro Simone, and had his bonnet and mantle pickled a little in the gutter; though he himself is as sleek as a miller's rat." ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... again, when I'd have backed myself to beat—cabmen? Ah! I've stood up, when I was a young 'un, and shut up a Cheap Jack at a fair. Circulation's the soul o' chaff. That's why I don't mind tackling cabmen—they sit all day, and all they've got to say is 'rat-tat,' and they've done. But I let the boys roar. I know what I was when a boy myself. I've got devil in me—never you fear—but it's all on the side of the law. Now, let's off, for the gentlemen are starin' at you, which won't hurt ye, ye know, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... un gnie rat,' said Phillips. 'Your conception is clear enough; why don't you ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... immediate harm; but I will lead him to a height from which he will assuredly fall headlong. Thou must depart from this place; for it is perilous to thee, and if thou stayest here, ill will befall thee. I will send a rat to thy dungeon, which shall daily devour the provisions, so that the monks shall not know thou hast fled. In thirty and one years shall the abbot's doom be accomplished. Two years before that time thou mayst return. Then come alone to Pendle Hill on a Friday night, and beat ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of a brook that runs into the river. It was all bordered with reeds and flags and tall flowering plants, quite different from those I had seen on the heath. As I was getting down the bank to reach one of them, I heard something plunge into the water near me. It was a large water-rat, and I saw it swim over to the other side, and go into its hole. There were a great many large dragon-flies all about the stream. I caught one of the finest, and have got him here in a leaf. But how I longed to catch a bird that I saw hovering over ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... was some hours before the moon would rise, and he was solacing himself with a piece of the bread-crust, which was terribly dry and exceedingly hard—"yuss, this is precious nice tackle for a fellow's teeth. Wants nibbling like a rat. Yuss, what I have telled the young governor sounds 'most as easy as cutting butter, only not quite. I can get the helephant up to the door here, and I don't see much hardship in mounting him and riding ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... counts for something in this world; anyway, for the poor craven souls. Riding is one thing; but crashing through timber and undergrowth, dodging overhanging branches, leaping fallen logs, and stumbling and plunging over crab-holed and rat-burrowed areas, to say nothing of charging bulls turning up at unexpected corners, is ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... influence saved them. He showed, too, that in an age of bigotry he was no bigot. Puritan fanaticism, exasperated by the persecution it had endured under James and Charles, often went to the utmost extremes, even as "Hudibras"[1] said, to "killing of a cat on Monday for catching of a rat on Sunday." ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... repulsive—but always intensely human. Reading human character with rare sympathy, he was profoundly touched by the poetry and the pathos of these miserable lives. Through all these studies runs a quaint vein of humor, relieving the pathos of the situations. The picturesque costume of the old Rat Killer tickles the sense of humor, and conveys somehow a delightful suggestion of his humbuggery which offsets the touching squalor of the grotesque little apprentice. And none but a humorist could have created the swaggering hostler's ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... there came wand'ring by at last, The same thing, pit-a-pat, I found as 'cross the room it past, The cat had got a rat. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... guarded watch on "J. Heeney's" plumbing establishment. He watched it like a hungry cat watching a rat hole. And it was three hours later that he had the satisfaction of seeing the plumber ascend to the street and walk hurriedly westward. Trotter could see that he carried a kit of tools under his arm. But to follow him in open daylight was too great a risk. Instead of that, he went down the ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... draw them from his bosom. Again and again he examined them in fascinated contemplation. He had already charged them, and he amused himself by thinking of the mischief he could do, by a single touch upon the trigger, to a poor little wood-rat, that once or twice ran along a decaying log some five steps from his feet. But his object being secrecy, the rat brushed his whiskers in safety. Still he amused himself by aiming at this and other objects, until suddenly reminded of the very important difference which he had promised ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... quiet, and all warm with sunshine. His long hind legs were stiff, his tiny forepaws clutched upon his breast, as if to leap; his poor life cut short upon that mountain by some unknown accident. But the Kangaroo rat, it proved, was no such unknown animal; and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... water-gruel as a dunce, would not my subsequent remorse make me want it myself as a madman? Were your fair hand spread out to me for correction, should I help applying my lips to it, instead of my rat-tan? If I ordered you to be called up, should I ever remember to have you sent back? And if I commanded you to stand in a corner, how should I forbear following you ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... foremen what wages these men and women received. He told me. It seemed impossible that human life could be maintained upon such a pittance. I then asked whether they ever ate meat. "No," he said, "except when they had a rat or mouse" "A rat or mouse!" I exclaimed. "Oh yes," he replied, "the rats and mice were important articles of diet,—just as they had been for centuries in China. The little children, not yet able to work, fished for them in the sewers, with hook and line, precisely as they had done a century ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... on his knees removing the loose board, and for two or three minutes after crouched at the opening like a famished yellow cat at a rat-hole, awaiting his opportunity. Meanwhile the fight under the school was being prosecuted with unabated fury. Dick and Jacker gripped like twin bull-terriers, rolling and tumbling about in the confined space, careless of everything but the important business in hand. Suddenly ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... wasn't 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
... suddenly all four started in their saddles, and Sadie gave a sharp cry of dismay. In the hush of the night there had come from behind them the petulant crack of a rifle, then another, then several together, with a brisk rat-tat-tat, and then after an interval, ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for a moment upon the lank figure rolling in the tub, the rat-like face, and the shifting eyes. Then she approached him, concealing in the bosom of her dress a long carving-knife which she had purchased for two francs. In answer to Marat's questioning look she told him that there was much excitement at Caen and ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... there was a ripping sound, and a piece of cloth came loose from his coat. The piece of cloth stayed in Splash's teeth and the children's dog at once began to shake and worry it, as he might a big rat he had caught. And as Splash shook the piece of cloth he growled ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... I said, seeking to reassure her. "There is nothing here more terrifying than a vacant house, doubtless long since deserted. We shall discover nothing more formidable within than a rat or two." ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... leave that to the judgment of your officer, my friend," replied Dennis in French. "But have the goodness not to shake me like a rat. I've got a splitting headache as ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... irritability; its leaves are armed with spines on their upper edge, and are spread on the ground around the stem; when an insect creeps on any of them in its passage to the flower or seed, the leaf shuts up like a steel rat-trap, and destroys its enemy. See Botanic Garden, Part II. note ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... to get out of the ship, you rat," Pyotr Stepanovitch was thinking as he went out into the street. "Well, if that 'imperial intellect' inquires so confidently of the day and the hour and thanks me so respectfully for the information I have given, we mustn't doubt of ourselves. [He grinned.] H'm! But he really ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... David, as his victoria swept through the gates of Linden House. "Sunday afternoon Dickey might ha' bin a dose of rat poison; now she's ready to swaller 'im as if 'e was a ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... rat," Vernay said softly, "you've had a lot of fun these last few days, eh? Big man around the yard, huh? Yeah! Well, it's going to stop." He massaged his right hand with the thumb and fingers of his left, then stretched out his ...
— Alarm Clock • Everett B. Cole
... before Good Friday, in the morning, his stillness was broken by a rat-tat-tat on the outer door of his studio, administered apparently by the knob of a walking-stick. His servant was out and he went to the door, wondering who his visitor could be at such a time, especially of the rather presuming class. The class was indicated by the visitor's failure ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... terrier were to lose his temper, he never would run a rat to earth. Now your Revolutionary Government has lost its temper with me, ever since I slipped through Chauvelin's fingers; they are blind with their own fury, whilst I am perfectly happy and cool as a cucumber. My life has ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... 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 which we negroes ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer
... we strike Columbus River—pass me two or throe skeins of thread to stand for the river; the sugar bowl will do for Hawkeye, and the rat trap for Stone's Landing-Napoleon, I mean—and you can see how much better Napoleon is located than Hawkeye. Now here you are with your railroad complete, and showing its continuation to Hallelujah and ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... fitly and firmly, with such a blending of just severity and moderation. "Cockneyism," Mr. Tuckerman says, "may seem not worthy of analysis, far less of refutation; but, as Sydney Smith remarked, 'In a country surrounded by dikes, a rat may inundate a province'; and it is the long-continued gnawing of the tooth of detraction, that, at a momentous crisis, let in the cold flood at last upon the nation's heart, and quenched its traditional love." The eighth chapter depicts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... what I say: scholars are pryed into of late, and are found to be busy fellows, disturbers of the peace. I'll say no more; guess at my meaning. I smell a rat. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... the open and die there, if need be! To live in this rat hole, breathing plague, is dying already! Caonabo is a fable! These people! Spaniards have but to lift voice ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... say: "Love me liddle," I say; "Love me long." I say: "Let dat liddle be 'doggone' strong! For, shore as dat rat runs 'cross de rafter, So shore you'se de gal, ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... 1867.—Remain on account of a threatened set-in rain. Bought a senze (Aulocaudatus Swindernianus), a rat-looking animal; but I was glad to get anything in ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... see some rat-holes that Skinner said would justify a trap—they certainly were enormous—and discovered that the room in which the Food of the Gods was mixed with meal and bran was in a quite disgraceful order. The Skinners were the sort of people who find a use for cracked saucers and old cans and pickle jars ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... criticism of Hamlet. "The tragedy of Hamlet is a gross and barbarous composition, which would not be supported by the lowest populace in France and Italy. Hamlet goes mad in the second act, Ophelia in the third; he takes the father of his mistress for a rat, and runs him through the body. In despair, the heroine drowns herself. Her grave is dug on the stage, while the grave-diggers enter into a conversation suitable (!) to such low wretches, and play, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... principality. We entered the bazaars, which were rotting and ruinous, the air infected with the loathsome vapours of dung-hills, and their putrescent carcases, tanpits with green hides, horns, and offal: here and there a hideous old rat showed its head at some crevice in the boards, to complete the picture ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... were deposited in pledge; and it was a part of the manager's duty to dash in his gig on Saturday evenings from one small retailer's to another, and to annex in each the bulk of the week's takings. His was thus an active life, and, to a man of the type of a rat, filled with recondite joys. An unexpected loss, a lawsuit, and the unintelligent commentary of the judge upon the bench, combined to disgust him of the business. I was so extraordinarily fortunate as to find, in an old newspaper, a report ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rat, gnaw grease! Grease will not grease rope. Rope will not hang ox. Ox will not drink water. Water will not quench fire. Fire will not burn hatchet. Hatchet will not hack staff. Staff will not beat kid. Kid will not go. ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie
... their own no hands; Nor evil counsellors to bring To justice that seduce the King; 770 Nor for the worship of us men, Though we have done as much for them. Th' AEgyptians worshipp'd dogs, and for Their faith made internecine war. Others ador'd a rat, and some 775 For that church suffer'd martyrdom. The Indians fought for the truth Of th' elephant and monkey's tooth, And many, to defend that faith, Fought it out mordicus to death. 780 But no beast ever was so slight, For man, as for his God, to fight. ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... 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
... exhibit for London! Did he realise his own value, he would soon come forth. I joke, but the existence of this antique person is firmly believed in. Sparrows are called 'spadgers.' The cat wandering about got caught in the rat-clams—i.e. a gin. Another cat was the miller's favourite at the windmill, a well-fed, happy, purring pussy, fond of the floury miller—he as white as snow, she as black as a coal. One day pussy was ingeniously examining the machinery, when the wind suddenly rose, the sails revolved, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... Leman I sat down and wept . . . Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long. But at my back in a cold blast I hear The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear. A rat crept softly through the vegetation Dragging its slimy belly on the bank While I was fishing in the dull canal On a winter evening round behind the gashouse 190 Musing upon the king my brother's wreck And on the king my father's death before him. White bodies naked on the low ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... numbers, is computed for you, to save trouble; such and such quantities you will please to buy in our presence, or to pay duty for, whether you buy them or not. Into all houses, at any hour of the day or of the night, these cellar-rats had liberty,—(on warrant from some higher rat of their own type, I know not how much higher; and no sure appeal for you, except to the King; tolerably sure there, if you be INNOCENT, but evidently perilous if you be only NOT-CONVICTED!)—had liberty, I ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... were the marvel of all. He was an enigma to the end. He was quite untamable, rejected all dainties with indignation, swung his heels into people's faces when they went near him, ran at them with his teeth, seized unwary passers-by by their kamar bands, and shook them as a dog shakes a rat, would let no one go near him but Mando, for whom he formed at first sight a most singular attachment, but kicked and struck with his forefeet, his eyes all the time dancing with fun, so that one could never decide whether his ceaseless pranks were play or vice. He was ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... "Hoop, hoop, Roll along, Faster bowl along, Hoop. Slow, to the turning, Now go!—Go! Quick! Here's the stick. Rat-a-tap-tap it, Pat it, flap it. Fly like a bird or a yellow-backed bee, See how soon you can reach that tree. Here is a path that is perfectly straight. Roll along, hoop, or we shall ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... Parlour on that fateful evening. An angry, disillusioned, nerve-racked man, sore and restive under the fancy, or, rather, the realization of deceit, saying bitter and contemptuous words; a desperate, defeated woman, cornered like a rat—and close to her hand the rapier, lying on the old chest where its purchaser had carelessly flung it. A maddened thing, man or woman, ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... the great ladder of animal life, beginning low down in molluscs and feeble sea creatures, then up rung by rung through reptiles and fishes, till at last we came to a kangaroo-rat, a creature which brought forth its young alive, the direct ancestor of all mammals, and presumably, therefore, of everyone in the audience. ("No, no," from a sceptical student in the back row.) If the young gentleman in the red tie who cried "No, no," and who presumably claimed to ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... my nail, A tuft of a mane, and a sprig of a tail; And by these the true colour one can no more know, Than by mouse-skins above stairs, the merkin below. Now such as the beast was, even such was the rider, With a head like a nutmeg, and legs like a spider; A voice like a cricket, a look like a rat, The brains of a goose, and the heart of a cat: Even such was my guide and his beast; let them pass, The one for a horse, and the other an ass. But now with our horses, what sound and what rotten, Down to the shore, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... to the rat! tat! tat! of heels. He bent above the table attentively. And to Gwendolyn was wafted down a ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... with paying of tithes. He had rather have the frame of the fall than the price of corn. If he chance to travel he curses his fortune that his place binds him to ride, and his faithful cloak-bag is sure to take care for his provision. His nights are as troublesome as his days; every rat awakes him out of his unquiet sleeps. If he have a daughter to marry, he wishes he were in Hungary, or might follow the custom of that country, that all her portion might be a wedding-gown. If he fall sick, he had rather die a thousand ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... taking care of its young, or associating with others of its kind, and so on! This is exactly what ought to be and can be. Be it only a bird, I can look at it for some time with a feeling of pleasure; nay, a water-rat or a frog, and with still greater pleasure a hedgehog, a weazel, a roe, or a deer. The contemplation of animals delights us so much, principally because we see in them our own existence very ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... of little, white, wooden sarcophagus which was skipping near us on the waves, sculled by two yellow boys stark naked in the rain. The craft approached us, I jumped into it, then through a little trap-door shaped like a rat-trap that one of the scullers threw open for me, I slipped in and stretched myself at full length on a mat in what is called the "cabin" ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 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 ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... Latham. But he didn't count. And they've bought up Thompson. What else they've done I can't tell yet. But one thing's certain, Doc; we'll win out in a canter. I'm too old a rat to be caught in a trap like this. I've got ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... flower of a series of exquisite moments. The rich, deep grass, with the buttercups and forget-me-nots, is behind her, but she has had enough of that, and is open to more spiritual pleasures. The kingfishers and water- wagtails flit about her. The water-rat jumps into the stream with a soft plash, and his black body scuttles along to the opposite bank. The green dragon-flies float hither and thither; the beautiful frail-winged water- flies float over trout too lazy to snatch ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... we find him safely and legally married to Catherine Gordon. Scotch, and heiress to twenty-five thousand pounds. On the occasion of the wedding, Jack informed a friend that the fact of the lady's being Scotch was forgiven in view of the dowry. Most of this fortune went into a rat-hole to help pay the debts of the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... points in the road and particularly at the entrance to The Wood. I wondered what had become of the audience at the concert. Various sounds, transit of shells, bursting of shells, crashing of near-by cannon, and rat-tat-tat-tat! of mitrailleuses played the treble to a roar formed of echoes and cadences—the roar of battle. The Wood of Death (Le Bois de ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... sufficient. Joseph Conrad, Nicholas Rimsky-Korsakov, and Patrick MacGill all were sailors for many years before they began to write. We owe "Youth" and the first section of Scheherazade to this accident. MacGill also had the privilege of digging potatoes; he writes about it in "The Rat-pit." Mrs. Patrick Campbell learned enough about how to move about and how to speak in the country houses she frequented before she began her professional career to enable her immediately to take a position of importance on the stage. It does not seem necessary, indeed, that the ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... Egyptians supposed that when a serpent attacked you on your way to heaven, you had only to recite this verse, and the serpent would be powerless to harm you: "Hail, thou serpent Rerek! advance not hither. Stand still now, and thou shalt eat the rat which is an abomination unto Ra (the Sun-God), and thou shalt crunch the bones of ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... who, sleek and fat, Shiver at a Norway rat. Rough and hardy, bold and free, Be the cat that's made for me; He whose nervous paw can take My lady's lapdog by the neck, With furious hiss attack the hen, And snatch a chicken from ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... was the fraternity—that goddamned rat house! That was what he had pledged allegiance to, was it? Those were his brothers, ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... that a considerable portion of my time will be unoccupied, the which I mean to employ in sketches of my new experience, under some such titles as follows: 'Scenes in Dock,' 'Voyages at Anchor,' 'Nibblings of a Wharf Rat,' 'Trials of a Tide-Waiter,' 'Romance of the Revenue Service,' together with an ethical work in two volumes, on the subject of Duties, the first volume to treat of moral and religious duties, and the second of duties imposed ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... "She'd smell a rat if you did," Gerald owned "about the motor-car, I mean, and the adopting lady. And what we're to say to Mademoiselle about you !" He ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... confined in the Custom-House. Last evening crowds surrounded the place. We did something dreadful, Ada Peirce, Miriam, and I. We went down to the confectionery; and unable to resist the temptation, made a detour by the Custom-House in hope of seeing one of our poor dear half-starved mule and rat fed defenders. The crowd had passed away then; but what was our horror when we emerged from the river side of the building and turned into Canal, to find the whole front of the pavement lined with Yankees! Our folly struck us so forcibly that we were almost paralyzed ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... playground after dinner, disinclined alike for work and play, when Dell accosted him. Bilk might have known Dell by this time, but his memory was short and his mind preoccupied, and he smelt no rat, as the Irish would ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... he could make nothing of the name they gave it, but wrote it down as best he could—Araughcoune. Another new kind of creature was of the size of a rabbit, grayish white, with black ears and a tail like a rat. It would hang by its tail from a tree, until knocked off with a stick, and then curl up with shut eyes and pretend to be dead. It was excellent eating when roasted with wild yams,—rather like a very ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... walk between Lady Farrington and Aunt Maria up and down the path in the sun till lunch at one o'clock; and after that we went for a drive in the barouche, with the fattest white horses you ever saw, and a coachman just like Cinderella's one that had been a rat. He seemed to have odd bits of fur on his face and under his chin, and Aunt Maria said that he suffered from a sore throat, that was why, which he caught at Aunt Mary's wedding; and so I counted up—and as Aunt Mary is your eldest sister, it must have been more than twenty years ago. I ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... Puranas, calculated to make the widow a voluntary, willing suicide. They would tell Bootea that owing to having been evil in former incarnations her sins had been visited upon her husband, had caused his death; that in a former life she had been a snake, or a rat. ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... has a wife and baby; together they ought to be worth $50,000 to any man. Secondly, he has an office in which there is a table worth $1.50 and three chairs worth, say, $1. Last of all, there is in one corner a large rat hole, which will bear looking ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... Chinese cigar-makers," cried Marcus, in a passion, brandishing his fist. "It's them as is ruining the cause of white labor. They are, they are for a FACT. Ah, the rat-eaters! Ah, the white-livered curs!" ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... beat the world," says he to me after a while—us standing there still talking though he was wet as a rat—"how things is run? Sometimes it seems like we can't help ourselfs, and we all get into the wrong places trying to get into the right ones. Now I'd like to thank that lady; but I can't. She's wonderfully beautiful, ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... understood and enjoyed the game as well as the man on his back, once he had distinguished the bullock they were riding down, needed no stimulant of whip, but would follow him of his own accord, twisting and doubling like a retriever after a wounded hare, or a terrier after a rat. Once the animal was cut out of the herd, the manager would uncoil his lasso, one end of which was made fast to the cinch-ring of his girths, and out flew the looped coil of rope with unerring straightness, catching the bullock round the horns. The ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... a time a fat, sleek Rat was caught in a shower of rain, and being far from shelter he set to work and soon dug a nice hole in the ground, in which he sat as dry as a bone while the raindrops splashed outside, making little puddles ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... him much as a dog might a rat, until the boy's teeth seemed to rattle together. But Tony was used to this sort of thing, no doubt; and he would not have protested, even though suffering ten times the amount of pain that may now ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... merry laugh. The ornaments on the wall of the general's quarters gave Stuart many a topic of badinage. Affecting to believe that they were of General Jackson's selection, he pointed now to the portrait of some famous race-horse, and now to the print of some celebrated rat-terrier, as queer revelations of his private tastes, indicating a great decline in his moral character, which would be a grief and disappointment to the pious old ladies of the South. Jackson, with a quiet smile, replied that perhaps he had had more to do with race-horses than his friends ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... the front door. Since nothing but silence followed, I supposed that the occupant of the place had returned, and had chosen to do so as silently as he had gone. Presently, however, there came from the doorstep a slight but peculiar call, as if a rat was squeaking. It was repeated three times, and then there was the sound of footsteps quietly retreating, and the gate re-closing. Between one and two the caller came again; there was a repetition of the same signal,—that ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... the building was a circular cage that looked like an old fashioned wire rat trap greatly enlarged. Into this cage the animals were introduced to go through ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... up again; for although the fellow had probably not understood a single word of what Jose had said, he had sense enough to know that the two ruffians before him had scuttled the ship, and that if locked up in his pantry again he would probably drown there, like a rat in a trap. His entreaties, how ever, were of course unavailing with two men who knew not the meaning of mercy; there was a Spanish oath or two, the sound of a scuffle, mingled with further cries of distress from the steward, ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... transference was made, not into the island, but into another vessel, containing apples, of which rats are known to be exceedingly fond. A hawser was secretly fastened to the latter, so as to form a communication betwixt the two vessels. On the following morning, it is said, not a rat was found in the one which originally contained them, the whole having gone over during the night to the other. So much for the efficacy of the stratagem. The reader will be at no loss to decide as to the morality of having recourse to it. Mr Bingley relates ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... under a few inches of water, so that the first rat coming forth and starting to climb the bank would set his hind feet ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... against us. I was going west the other morning when I heard a crier announcing a general war upon Stone Boy and his people. The crier was a Buffalo, going at full speed from west to east. Again, I heard the Beaver conversing with the Musk-rat, and both said that their services were already promised to overflow the lakes and rivers and cause a destructive flood. I heard, also, the little Swallow holding a secret council with all the birds of the air. He said that he had been appointed ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... "There's a rat there! I saw it quite plainly; its great big eyes were glaring at me!" she announced in a ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... laughed under his breath, and looking mysterious and very rat-like he led the way to his pantry. Esther watched them in strange trouble of soul. She had heard of racecourses as shameful places where men were led to their ruin, and betting she had always understood to be sinful, but in ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... Deer Black Bear Lynx Wild Cat Red Fox Gray Fox Beaver Raccoon Skunk Otter Fisher Cottontail Rabbit Martin Mink Black Squirrel Gray Squirrel Red Squirrel Fox Squirrel Flying Squirrel Chipmunk Musk Rat Opossum Varying Hare Porcupine ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... is the rifle or shotgun. Rat traps, using black walnuts as bait, are second choice and said to be effective. The banding of isolated trees with tin (one says cotton batting) will prevent squirrels from climbing. A good cat or several of them will be useful, say several reporters. One judicious ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various |
