"Tail end" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... never stays still, and when it flops in my face it tickles me. Please you carry the tail end, Freddie." ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope
... but lord, it was no great things. He looked as humble as the leaning tower at Pisa. It is the most you could say of it. Indeed, it was such a thundering poor success that it raised wondering scowls all along the line, and a gorgeous flunkey at the tail end of it raised his whip; but I jumped in time and was under it when it fell; and under cover of the volley of coarse laughter which followed, I spoke up sharply and warned the king to take no notice. He mastered himself for the moment, but ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sides brown, with longer black hairs; sides of the belly and feet bright rufous; lips and chin whitish; under fur lead colour; tail end blackish-brown, slightly pencilled. Body and head, 4; tail, 2 inches. Inhabits ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... were all representatives of the great leather interest, started this paper for a special object. That object has been attained. The 'Echo de la Bievre' has therefore become an effect without a cause. In such a case, stockholders who don't like the tail end of matters, and are not eager after small profits, very naturally prefer ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... plunged his bill into the ground. He plunged it in for the whole length. Then he pulled it out and Peter caught a glimpse of the tail end of a worm disappearing down Longbill's throat. Where that long bill had gone into the ground was a neat little round hole. For the first time Peter noticed that there were many such little round holes all about. "Did you make all those little round ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... was instructed to watch for two hours the girl I was to relieve at 1.30. Her hours were from 6 in the morning to 1.30, which meant she got the brunt of the hard work—all of the breakfast and most of the lunch rush. To me fell the tail end of the lunch rush—up to about 2.15, and supper or dinner, which only occasionally could be spoken of as "rush" at all. I discovered later that we both got the same pay, although she had to work very much harder, and ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... remain concealed behind the door and when Keeper wanted to come in, she would spring at him, and scratch his nose, but Keeper did not like such fun as this, and so he fell quite vexed, and bit a piece of her tail end, which so frightened poor Puss that she durst not come near him for a ...
— The Life and Adventures of Poor Puss • Lucy Gray
... varied; spot on each side of nose, on upper and lower lips and front of chin, white; tail end pale brown like back, varies; throat more ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... of Lords! The thing must be eight years old if it's a day, but the boys are as pleased as Punch with their bargain. The oldest of them (Tom) thinks he has learned to manage the poor old lady; and on the strength of his knowledge and cheek they have hitched themselves to us as the tail end of our procession. They announce their intention of going also to the Hudson River country, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New England with us later, when we make those trips according to plan. My heart bleeds for the poor lambs, but Jack says they're perfectly happy, ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... tail end of the telegram which Godfrey Staunton dispatched within a few hours of his disappearance. There are at least six words of the message which have escaped us; but what remains—'Stand by us for God's sake!'—proves that this young man saw a formidable danger which approached ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... thing I heard was a heavy crash of glass, and I woke up just in time to catch the tail end of a combing wave, that dashed in through one of the stern ports, washing the cabin fore and aft. The ship had evidently been pooped by a heavy following sea, that travelled through the water faster than she did before the stiff northward breeze, although we were carrying on, ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Drumsheugh," said MacLure, who understood perfectly, "a've dune a' thae years withoot a break, an' a'm laith (unwilling) tae be takin' holidays at the tail end. ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... twenty-four buck shots in John Carson. That was the last of the Ku Klux at Dyersburg. The Negroes all left Dyersburg. They kept leaving. The 'Feds' was meaner to them than the owners. In 1886, three weeks before Christmas, one hundred head of Negroes got off the train here at Brinkley. The Ku Klux was the tail end of the war, whooping around. It was a fight between the 'Feds' and the old owners—both sides telling the Negroes what to do. The best way was stay at home and work to keep out ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... war dances were over, and we came in time to see only the tail end (some two hours) of the food presentation. In Mataafa's house three chairs were set for us covered with fine mats. Of course, a native house without the blinds down is like a verandah. All the green in front was surrounded with sheds, some of flapping canvas, ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... through it. We actually began boring, but gave it up when we had penetrated half a mile without getting through. We then determined to set fire to the forest, our object being the death of the whale, which would remove all difficulties. We started burning from the tail end; but for a whole week he made no sign; on the eighth and ninth days it was apparent that he was unwell; his jaws opened only languidly, and each time closed again very soon. On the tenth and eleventh days mortification had set in, evidenced by a horrible stench; ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... ask the Khedive's intervention—Ismail dared not go against Selamlik in this. Whatever was done must be done between Selamlik Pasha, the tigerish libertine, and Richard Donovan, the little man who, at the tail end of Ismail's reign, was helping him hold things together against the black day of reckoning, "prepared for the devil and all his angels," as Dicky had said to Ismail on this very momentous morning, when ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... they'd all be angels if they had their way about it. Now, let's get back to facts, dear. I've told Mr. Bingle that the play can be finished in a month or six weeks. He is for putting it on at once, but I don't believe it's good business to risk trying it out at the tail end of a very bad season. Things are bound to be better in the fall. My idea is to begin rehearsals late in the summer, play a couple of weeks in the tank towns to whip the thing into shape, and then go into New York some time in September. I'll begin getting a cast together this spring—none but the ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... Toward the tail end, however, I spied two men coming, followed by a small bronze figure in "native" dress of some sort. One of the two was tall and tanned, and thirty-five or so. The other—I had a bet with myself that he was my Dragon. ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... rear guard of our outfit returned and reported the tail end of the herd some twenty miles behind when they left them. During the day not over a thousand head reached the lakes, and towards evening we put these under herd and easily held them during the night. All four of the men who constituted ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... St. Nivel, taking a glass of Chartreuse from the attentive waiter who was on the look out for a parting tip; "a fortnight makes all the difference in that part of the world; we shall just get there for the tail end of the summer, which they say is glorious. A bit of a change, I am thinking," he added, with a glance out of the window, "to this kind of diluted pea-soup weather we ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... to be a difficulty here—that is, to some of our travellers. To the monkeys themselves there was none. They knew well enough what they were about, and they would have got over the apparent difficulty in the following manner:—The one at the tail end of the bridge would simply have let go his hold, and the whole string would then have swung over and hung from the tree on the opposite bank, into which they could have climbed at their leisure. I say they would have done so had nothing ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... tail end of a year of illness, when his head had ached for weeks together, and not even the brass wire twisted lightly about his skull ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... faces that you do not recall ever having seen before, but who are now at hand with claims, real or imaginary, on your purse. Inasmuch as you have a deadly fear of being remembered afterward in this hotel as a piker, you continue to dip down and to fork over, and so by the time you reach the tail end of the procession your ten per cent has grown to twelve or fifteen ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... up in one of the swinging hammocks. When the boys had buckled themselves down to their seats, John gave Tom the word, and he began to rise slowly. At close to two thousand feet he brought the Sky-Bird quickly and smoothly upward until she stood almost on her tail end. ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... croton leaf in his nose, and is still under the same restriction as to food, which is cooked in the same way and by the same persons as before. On finding the snake, he secures it alive, removes the croton leaf from the hole in his nose, and inserts into it the tail end of the living snake; then, holding the head of the snake in one of his hands, and the tail in the other, he draws the snake slowly through the hole, until its head is close to the hole. He then lets the head drop from his hand, and with a quick movement ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... a smile. "Sure enough. They figure he's the tail end of our party. Well, I'll bet Thomas gives 'em a good run for their money. He's right careless sometimes, but he's no foolhardy idiot and he don't aim to argue with birds like these even though he's a rip-snorter when he gets goin' good ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... when George the Third was King, it was not very uncommon for malefactors to be flogged through the streets, tied to the tail end of a cart. In 1786 several persons, who had been sentenced at the Assizes, were brought back here and so whipped through the town; and in one instance, where a young man had been caught filching from the Mint, the culprit ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... tilt! They will be over at the turn!" shrieked Bobolink, who, being near the tail end of the double line could observe what was ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... small peg through the protruding end, as shown by F, G (Fig. 197, lower diagram). The thin, springy end of your latch is now forced down by a peg or nail in the door at H (Fig. 197) and the tail end of it forced up by a peg or nail at K. When this is done properly it will give considerable spring to the latch and impart a decided tendency to force the latch into the wooden catch, a tendency which can only be overcome by lifting the spool up in the slot and thus lifting ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... the previous stroke, producing in this way a continuous fleece of combed cotton. In short, in this most striking operation, the fiber during the combing is completely detached from the ribbon lap, carried over, and pieced to the tail end of the combed fleece, for a moment having no connection with either. Since the expiry of the patent, Messrs. Bobson and Barlow, of Bolton, have constructed a great many of these machines, and have found that, as compared with the original make, it was possible to greatly increase ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... a-workin' things right," said Douglass; "he aint a- workin' things right; he's takin' hold o' everything by the tail end. He aint studied the business; he doesn't know when things is right, and he doesn't know when things is wrong; and if they're wrong, he don't know how to set 'em right. He's got a feller there that aint no more fit to be there, than I am to be Vice-President of the United States; ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... said it, Charles," said she. "It has gone too far—I give you my word, dear, that I never suspected it until it was past all mending. I may be to blame—no doubt I am; but it was all so sudden. The tail end of the season and a week at Lord Donnythorne's. That was all. But oh! Charlie, she loves him so, and she is our only one! How ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wagon, set the brake, and stopped her team. Then he was out by the tail end, running back ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... they hit the Burnsville road, coming into the tail end of the command of men from a dozen or more shattered regiments, companies, and divisions, who had consolidated in some order about Forrest and his escort. These were all veterans, men tough enough to fight their way out of the city and lucky enough to ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... boss," he said, looking up at Hervey as the latter came over to his side. "Say, that's about the slickest scrapper round these parts. Gee-whizz, 'e went fur me like the tail end o' a cyclone when I took your plug to the barn. It was they curs that kind o' distracted his attention. Mebbe thar's more wolf nor dog in ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... railroad trains, stretching over a dozen miles of single track. The column was so long that some of my companions and I, when we climbed a high hill near the front end of the column at Bachimba, found it impossible to discern the tail end through our field-glasses. All the hungry people that were being carried on all those twenty railroad trains had to be fed, of course, so that none of us were surprised to read in the Mexican newspapers that the Chihuahua ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... that the customary 10 per cent. reinforcement was not being taken with it by the Division although it was to operate at so great a distance from its base." If K. gets into a bad temper over the opening of my cable, its tail end should lift him out again. For the enemy's extremely tenacious right has been shifted at last. Under cover of a hooroosh by the Manchesters, the Gurkhas have rushed a bluff 600 yards ahead of our line and are sticking to ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... fryin' your supper, you'd have got as well acquainted with the next world in just about three quarters of an hour. Well, we've all got to foot it now; but it ain't far. I'm powerful anxious to know what's goin' on over to Sanchez'! Mebbe two tribes met and them's the victors offerin' up the tail end of that there valiant army. Golly Moroo, but ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... strangled him. "Jeffersonian simplicity!" How I despise it! Thomas Jefferson, I believe, was the first Populist. We had had gentlemen for Presidents before him, but he was the first one who rooted for votes with the common herd by catering to the gutter instead of to the skyline, and the tail end of his policy is to be seen in the mortifying appearance of our highest officials and ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... immense space given to baseball, pugilism, races, and all species of crime, by our leading journals, is disgraceful. "If the tail were large enough," said Dundreary, "the tail would waggle the dog!" certainly the tail end of society wags ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... even Rustum Khan, who did not pretend to like him, saluted the old warrior who could announce his purpose so magnificently. Maga Jhaere stood up, and sought Will's eyes from across the room. Fred, almost too sleepy to know what he was doing (for the tail end of the fever is a yearning for early bed) undid the catch of his beloved instrument, and made the rafters ring. In a minute we four were singing "For he's a jolly good fellow," and Kagig stood up, looking like Robinson Crusoe in his goat-skins, ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... carried to the royal chapel in Westminster, "with great solemnity, but with greater lamentation." Old Baker, who says of himself that he was the unworthiest of the knights made at Theobald's, condescends to mention William Shakespeare at the tail end of the men of note of Elizabeth's time. The ocean is not more boundless, he affirms, than the number of men of note of her time; and after he has finished with the statesmen ("an exquisite statesman for his own ends was Robert Earl of Leicester, and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... here commence, But you might think it stale; So we'll suppose that we have reached The tail end ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... right," said Douglass,—"he ain't a workin' things right; he's takin' hold o' everything by the tail end. He ain't studied the business; he doesn't know when things is right, and he doesn't know when things is wrong;—and if they're wrong he don't know how to set 'em right. He's got a feller there that ain't no more fit to be there than I am to be Vice President of ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... tank should be kept as far away from the engine as possible. There is no reason why it cannot be placed toward the tail end of the machine, a place of safety for two reasons: First, it is out of the reach of any possible danger from fire; and, second, the accidents in the past show that the tail frame is the least likely to ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... a bleeding forefinger, from which the tail end of the fluff with which the dart was winged ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... But I used to get kep' in at recess for bein' so dumb. I was most always at the tail end of the class. My brother, he'd be ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... placed according to their rank and position: all the gros bonnets were in their right places, you may be quite sure. I was such a little bonnet among all those great people that I was practically nowhere, and at the tail end of everything except the members of the Household and the ladyless gentlemen, who, of course, were ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... for laughter then. We ran for water and restoratives, and brought him to, white and weak. The horse by that time had been lifted to his feet and stood trembling in every limb, ready to drop. It was a sobered driver that climbed out of the pit at the tail end of the procession which bore young Pettit home. I spent a miserable hour hanging around the door of the house waiting for news of him. In the end his father came out to comfort me with the assurance that ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... "Gipsy" seems to have a magic thread running through it, beginning at the tip end of "G" and ending with the tail end of "y." Geese have tried to gobble it, ducks swallow it, hens scratched after it, peacocks pecked it, dandy cocks crowed over it, foxes have hid it, dogs have fought for it, cats have sworn and spit over it, pigs have tried to gulp it as the daintiest ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... old age: they will live nine or ten years—sometimes more, but an eight-year-old sheep would be what is called a broken-mouthed creature; that is to say, it would have lost some of its teeth from old age, and would generally be found to crawl along at the tail end of the mob; so that of the 2582 sheep returned to me, 500 would be very old, 200 would be seven years old, 200 six years old. All these would pass as old sheep, and not fetch very much; one might get about 15s. a head for the ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... uneasy feeling that troubled him, he crept out from the tail end of the waggon and stood looking about the enclosure, where all was still save the heavy breathing of one of the ponies ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... thorax there is a pair of black, whiplash-like filaments, and on the eighth joint there is a similar shorter pair. When this caterpillar gets ready to transform to chrysalis, it hangs itself up by its tail end, the skin splits and gradually draws back, and the chrysalis itself is revealed—pale pea-green in color with golden spots. Anyone by hunting over a patch of milkweed anywhere in the United States during the summer is ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... were commonly current when I first came into the Dopfontein district. It was not much of a tale as a general thing, except that, if you happened to have a strain of hot blood in you, it discovered a quality of very picturesque pathos. However, as you shall see, only the tail end of the story was generally known, and it was the Vrouw Grobelaar, the transmitter of chronicles, who divulged it to Katje and myself one evening in its ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... girls and boys who had been sitting sipping soda and laughing at the man, and there was a mad scramble to get out but Billy was too quick for them. He wheeled round and butted the tail end of one fellow's coat so hard that it sent him flying clear through the open door and out into the road where he landed in ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... result,—that he had counted noses, and had the most comfortable assurances from all the great leaders of the day,—and in short, between ourselves, that grass would be growing on the London Exchange within two years. The petition came up on the day appointed, and was allowed to drop out of the tail end of the cart, almost without a remark. But so far was he from being disheartened, that he lost no time in preparing for a trip across the Atlantic, which he had long had in contemplation, but was hindered from taking by the hopes he had been persuaded to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... parsonage and his church just yet. Better to wait until he was sure, he said, and Dr. Parker agreed. "I'd be willing to bet that you are all right," declared the latter, "but I know Trumet, and if I SHOULD let you go and you did develop even the tail end of a case of varioloid—well, 'twould be the everlasting climax for you and ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... fisherman's friend. It was a heavy lead with a cup on the bottom filled fresh each time with sticky grease. When used, the depth was always called out by the watch, and the kind of sand, mud, or rock which stuck to the grease shown to the skipper. "Fifteen fathoms and coffee grounds—must be on the tail end of the Dogger. Put her a bit more to the westward, boy," he would remark, and think no more about it, though he might have been three or four days looking for his fleet, and not spoken to a soul since he left land. I remember one skipper ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell |
