"Raff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... depraved and corrupted till you would not know it. A varlet, then, is just short and sharp for a scoundrel who is ready for anything; and the worse the thing is the more ready he is for it. There are riff-raff and refuse always about who are ready to volunteer for any filibustering expedition; and that full as much for the sheer devilry of the enterprise as for any real profit it is to be to themselves. Wherever mischief ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... ye bleezed away as muckle pouther as wad hae shot a' the wild-fowl that we'll want atween and Candlemas—and then ganging majoring to the piper's Howff wi' a' the idle loons in the country, and sitting there birling, at your poor uncle's cost, nae doubt, wi' a' the scaff and raff o' the water-side, till sun-down, and then coming hame and crying for ale, as if ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... said Elizabeth; 'and then to see Kate looking as if she thought it must be so delectable. Really, Kate is quite spoiled between Harriet and the Abbeychurch riff-raff, and I can do nothing ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... went to Paris and entered the Conservatoire, where he studied theory under Savard, and the piano under Marmontel. He went to Wiesbaden to study with Ehlert in 1879, and then to Frankfort, where Carl Heyman taught him piano and Joachim Raff composition. The influence of Raff is of the utmost importance in MacDowell's music, and I have been told that the great romancist made a protege of him, and would lock him in a room for hours till he had ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... impudence! And you too! Don't care! Go at least and put some more clothes on. Sitting there like this before this sailor riff-raff." ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Tom and me, while on Top Notch, that he really had no personal objections to having the stones mined from Rainbow Cliffs, but all unsightly machinery and the riff-raff of miners that would be necessary in such work, must be kept out of sight of the house. He explained that most of the working ends of the project could be stationed back of the cliffs down in the Devil's Causeway, and the road that would have to run to Bear Forks trail for the conveyance ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... and Rord Narf, he hire four bad-rooking men with brasters, and Sonig hire four more that are his countrymen, and they bring these men back and now they are hiding in the woods. And they awrso bring back movie cameras with terescope renses. And Rord Narf raff and say he wirr marry Princess Ryra today before your dead body ...
— —And Devious the Line of Duty • Tom Godwin
... raking, good-looking, shore-going, company-hunting, gallivanting, riff-raff set of reckless youths, who, having got rid of the entanglement of parents and guardians, and having no great restraint of principle or anything else to check them, seem to hold that his Majesty's service is merely a convenience for their ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... came forward and said, "Know that I am a Bedouin, who use to lie in wait, by the way, to steal children and virgin girls and sell them to merchants; and this I did for many a year until these latter days, when Satan incited me to join these two gallows-birds in gathering together all the riff-raff of the Arabs and other peoples, that we might waylay merchants and plunder caravans." Said the two Kings, "Tell us the rarest of the adventures that have befallen thee in kidnapping children and girls." "O ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... lavished his good-byes upon the landlord and the "riff-raff" who gathered to welcome the coming or speed the parting guest at the door of the country tavern. He drove a pair of beautiful, spirited horses, and had the satisfaction of knowing that he excited the envy of every beholder, as he took the ribbons ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... Montgomery, a mysterious personage behind many musical comedy enterprises. He is jewelled all over like a first-class Hindoo idol, and is treated as a god in fashionable restaurants, where he entertains riff-raff at sumptuous banquets. I had some slight acquaintance with the fellow, but he greeted me as though I were a long lost intimate—his heavy sensual face swagged in smiles—and invited me to a supper party. I declined with courtesy and walked away in fury. He would not have ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... arranged details of his attire to please a taste fastidious and exacting in such matters—"Oah, my dear fallow, surely you appreciate danger of venturing into nateeve quarters in European dress? As regular-out-and-out sahib, I am meaning, of course. It is permeesible for riff-raff, sailors and Tommies from the Fort, and soa on, to indulge in debauchery among nateeves, but first-class sahib—Oah, noah! You would be mobbed in no-time-at-all, where ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... that girl's jib," Mrs. Purchase announced after a pause. "She's good-looking, and she has pluck. But I don't take back what I said, that it's a wrong you're doing to Clem and Myra, putting them to school with all the riff-raff of the parish." ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in the face—still they came. Doors slammed in their faces, dogs set upon their heels, and ignorant babblers hooting at them—still they came; and the worst of it is they are reducing our own "riff-raff" to their level. The novelist has written about them; the preacher has preached against them; the drunkards have garbled them over in their mouths, and yelped out "Gipsy," and stuttered "scamp" in disgust; ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... to fight in the King's battles. After drafting a number of well-to-do farmers, whom he knows will pay him snug sums of money rather than to serve under him, he pockets their money and proceeds to fill his company from the riff-raff of the country through ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... Colin Clout, much learning has made thee mad. A good old fishwives' ballad jingle is worth all your sapphics and trimeters, and 'riff-raff thurlery bouncing.' Hey? have I you there, old lad? Do you mind that ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Spanish politician. The Spanish middle class is a warren of rogues and villains. I feel an enormous repugnance to brushing against it. That is why I came here now and then to talk to these people; not because these are good, no; the first and the last of them are riff-raff, but at least they say what they mean and ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... Stuttgart to justify her expectations, was at a loss how best to solve the problem of her son's immediate future. Having heard much of the ability of Carl Heymann, the pianist, as an instructor, Mrs. MacDowell thought of the Frankfort Conservatory, of which Joachim Raff was the head, and where Heymann would be ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... de little Will'm, I 'pose. I reck'n dat 'ere lad hab gone to de bott'm ob de sea long afore dis, or else he get off on de big raff. I know he no go 'long wi' de cappen, 'case I see de little chap close by de caboose after de gig row 'way. If he hab go by de raff dem ruffins sure eat him up,—dat be if dey get hungry. Dey sure do dat! Hark! what's dat I heer? Sure's my name be Snowball, I hear some 'un 'peak ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... that Washington County was at this time as large as the average Atlantic Coast State. It had become a sink for the riff-raff driven out of Texas by the Rangers, for all that wild and adventurous element which flocks to a new country before the law has established itself. The coming of the big cattle herds had brought money into the country, and in its wake followed the gambler and the outlaw. ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... beyond its natural bounds. Whether it be merely a suggestive title, as in the case of some of the compositions of Beethoven, Schumann, and Mendelssohn, or an extended commentary, as in the symphonic poems of Liszt and the symphonies of Berlioz and Raff, the programme has a distinct value to the composer as well as the hearer. It can make the perceptive sense more impressible to the influence of the music; it can quicken the fancy, and fire the imagination; it can prevent a gross misconception ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Cramer, Clementi, Heller; the mazurkas, nocturnes, and preludes of Chopin; and miscellaneous pieces by modern writers,—Grieg, Rubinstein, Tschaikowsky (and other Russians), Sgambati, Saint-Saens, Moszkowski, Raff, Reinecke, Scharwenka, Schuette, MacDowell,—or any other compositions, vocal or instrumental, in which the student may be interested, or which he ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... street fills. One day is so like another that to see one is to have seen all. The length of the Corso there saunters listlessly an idle, cloak-wrapt, hands-in-pocket-wearing, cigar-smoking, shivering crowd, composed of French soldiers and the rif-raff of Rome, the proportion being one of the former to every two or three of the latter. The balconies, which grow like mushrooms on the fronts of every house, in all out-of-the-way places and positions, are every now and then adorned with red hangings. ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... to give to every individual a share in the throne or to adopt certain revolutionary ideas, which are mere Punch and Judy shows for the public, manipulated by a band of self-styled patriots, riff-raff, always ready to sell their conscience for a million francs, for an honest woman, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... The riff-raff of the world was moving there, and when not apathetic they took their pleasures with drawn brows and eyes alert for a fight; but the only types Magdalena recognised were the drunken sailors and the occasional ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... masters of their own day, Schumann and Mendelssohn, a group of minor poets, like Raff and Goetz, appeared, and at last Brahms, the latest great builder of the symphony, all following and crowning ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... supper, not in the English way but the French, same as they do at the Catsare[2] in Paris. This pleased them all very much, and I could see that the most part of them were not real ladies and gentlemen at all, but riff-raff Bohemian stuff out for a spree, and determined to have one. The supper itself was the most amusing affair you ever saw; for what must they do but flop down on the floor just where they stood, not minding the ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... the social scale, enduring the hardships and discomfort of a sordid life unillumined by lofty ideals or strength of will, a life that under cold northern skies would have been intolerable; the freedman and the slave, with all the riff-raff that support a parasitic existence on the vices of the upper classes; the noise and bustle of Rome, its sleepless nights, its cheerless tenements, its noisy streets, loud with the sound of traffic or of revelry; the shows in the theatre, the races in the circus, the interchange of presents ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... signs, as the son of a fool hath been disputing here about had I wist.[55] Out of doubt, the poet is bribed of some that have a mess of cream to eat, before my lord go to bed yet, to hold him half the night with raff-raff of the rumming of Elinor.[56] If I can tell what it means, pray God I may never get breakfast more, when I am hungry. Troth, I am of opinion he is one of those hieroglyphical writers, that by the figures of beasts, plants, and of stones, express the mind, as we do in A B C; or one that writes ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... my dear—a herd of riff-raff, who, for the miserable sum of sixty thousand francs, of which they pretend I have despoiled them, have carried a complaint against me for an abuse of confidence, and forced me to ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... theatrical cosmos; all that strange melange of the happy-go-lucky, the eccentric, the ill-balanced, the blackguardly, the unprincipled, the hapless, the shiftless, the unclassed, the sensual and the besotted that shoulder and hustle one another in the world of the theatre; all the riff-raff recruited from the greater world without by the fascinating ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... Theatre was packed from pit to loft by the greatest variety audience I had ever seen; lords, ladies, lawyers, doctors, merchants, mechanics, soldiers, sailors, and street riff-raff—all assembled to see and hear how the Jew, Shylock, was to be roasted by the greatest ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... in conjunction with his disreputable associates, strangers, the 'riff-raff of Europe' as your charming aunt or great-aunt says—men like ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... their humdrum existence. The arrangements on their behalf were made in a few hours, and our poor fellow-countrymen were soon off for England in the steerage of a huge cotton-loaded freight-steamer, having a new experience in the companionship of Bengalese, Maltese, Arabs, English navvies and riff-raff of all tongues and complexions. In fact, the Overland route, at that time especially, afforded about the most curious aggregation of nationalities and costumes that the world has ever seen since ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... Ser Jorg, the worthe Loumle, a knyghte of great renowen, Ser Raff, the ryche Rugbe, with dyntes ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... he lifted his head and looked into the room. Half a score of the riff-raff of the dale were seated amid clouds of smoke. On the wooden mantel-shelf above the wide ingle a large book stood open, and the leaves fluttered with the wind that came through ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... white flag was abused, but in what large community would you not find a few miscreants?' General Lyttelton said: 'The Boers are brave men, and I do not think that the atrocities which have been reported are the acts of the regular Dutch burghers, but of the riff-raff who get ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... over here that signifies nothing; might just as well be Jones or Smith or Brown. We call him Parrot & Co., but the riff-raff have another name for him. The Man Who Never Talked of Home. For two or three seasons he's been going up and down the river. Ragged at times, prosperous at others. Lately it's been rags. He's always carrying ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... office, appears and hails Biquet: "Hey, riff-raff! A letter! Been chasing you an hour. You're never to be ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... ondoubtedly it is. And now, you see, that's jist the reason why the old chief has turned such a vagabond; for the tribe is rifled at him, because of his bringing such a devil on them, and they won't follow him to battle no more, except some sich riff-raff, vagabond rascals as them we picked up for this here rascality, no how. And so, you see, it has a sort of set the old feller mad: he thinks of nothing but the Jibbenainosay,—(that is, when he's sober, though, cuss him, I believe it's all one when he's drunk, too.)—of hunting him up and killing ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... Marse Greer's barn. Day lef' de house an' didn' bother de fam'ly 'cause dey called deyse'fs company. De good Lord knows Marse Greer didn' 'vite 'em! But de Cap'ns bein' dere kep' de rip-rap[FN: riff-raff] sojers frum ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... they earn ain't a reason why others should." He grinned. "Maybe you and Davy ought to have less, but Victor Dorn and his riff-raff oughtn't to be pampered.... Do you want me to ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... Khl or Khr of the old Egyptians, meaning a "mixed multitude," were originally Phoenicians and domiciled from earliest ages about Lake Menzlah. So the "mixed multitude," or mingled people, which followed Israel from Egypt would be a riff-raff of strangers. D'Herbelot says (sub voce Midian): "Quoyque les Madianites soient reputez pour Arabes, neanmoins ils ne sont pas du nombre des Tribus qui partageoient l'Arabie, et dont les Auteurs nous ont rendu un ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... his lordship. "And now, if you please, we shall approach this business with a little more parteecularity. I hear that at the hanging of Duncan Jopp - and, man! ye had a fine client there - in the middle of all the riff-raff of the ceety, ye thought fit to cry out, 'This is a damned murder, and my gorge rises at the man ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... family of these Verdurins. But he had entirely severed his connection with what he called "young Verdurin," taking a general view of him as one who had fallen—though without losing hold of his millions—among the riff-raff of Bohemia. One day he received a letter from Swann asking whether my grandfather could put him in touch with the Verdurins. "On guard! on guard!" he exclaimed as he read it, "I am not at all surprised; Swann was bound to finish up like this. A nice lot of people! ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... came the oral substitutes for kitchenware. "Ye can apollygise to riff-raff of the streets for settin' yer unhandy feet on the tails of their frocks, but ye'd walk on the neck of yer wife the length of a clothes-line without so much as a 'Kiss me fut,' and I'm sure it's that long from rubberin' out the windy for ye and the victuals ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... hours, but that formerly he was to be seen at any time for five francs. 'For five francs!' I cried with amazement; 'does he then show himself for money?' 'No, but he is shown for money, and it happens in this way: There is a society of claqueurs, marchands de contremarques, and such riff-raff, who offered every foreigner to show him the king for five francs: if he would give ten francs, he might see the king raise his eyes to heaven, and lay his hand protestingly on his heart; if he would give twenty francs, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... up. He wrenched himself free of the man's grasp, and plunged into the little crowd of riff-raff, striking heavy blows to right and left. Rosher did the same; and the enemy, who were nothing but a pack of barking curs, went down like ninepins, falling over one another in their efforts ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... were always crowded, and you might re-visit them at midday and find the same occupants still out of bed, drinking, smoking, and gambling, yet as quiet and orderly in their demeanour as a company of Quakers. For, notwithstanding its large percentage of the riff-raff element, crime is very rare in Nome. I frequently visited the gambling saloons, where gum-booted, mud-stained prospectors elbowed women in dainty Parisian gowns and men in the conventional swallowtail, but I never once saw a shot fired, nor even a dispute, although champagne flowed like water. ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... were the sole people in the streets, although from some of the closed windows of the drinking-shops in the Greek quarter came sounds of singing and noise, for every one was earning high wages, and the place was full of Maltese, Alexandrians, Smyrniotes, and, indeed, the riff-raff of all the Mediterranean cities, who had flocked to the scene of action to make money as petty traders, ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... reached the drawing-room, Marion was seated at the piano, playing a rhapsody of Raff's, and Mrs. Armour and Lali were seated side by side. Frank thrilled at seeing his wife's hand in his mother's. Marion nodded over the piano at the men, and presently played a snatch of Carmen, then wandered off into the barbaric strength ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... tells him that Big Jem and the pack o' blackguard riff-raff come and 'sulted yer and said what you wouldn't tell me. The captain wouldn't want you to put up with that. I know the captain 'most as well as you do. 'Hullo!' he says; 'what ha' you been doing—how did you get in that condition?' ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... to rust, you consave. The beef and mutton must follow; and in future I'm resolved to have my tay breakfast. There are geese, and turkeys, and pullets enough about the yard, and I am bent on accomplishing myself in the art of carving them. I'm not the man now to be placed among the other riff-raff' of the family over a basket of potatoes, wid a black clerical coat upon me, and a noggin of milk under my arm! I tell you the system must be changed: the schoolmaster is abroad, and I'll tolerate such vulgarity no longer. Now saddle the horse till I ride across the bog ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... major's not in it, I'll not be staying here—for here's only riff-raff triangle and gridiron boys, and a black-a-moor, and that I never could stand; so I'll back into the room. Show the major up, do you mind, father, as soon ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... or even), to make out his chances of being killed. He did not stop, but went through with it. When he reached the barricade he found Christophe, perched on a wheel of the overturned omnibus, amusing himself by firing pistol-shots into the air. Round the barricade the riff-raff of Paris, spewed up from the gutters, had swollen up like the dirty water from a sewer after heavy rain. The original combatants were drowned by it. Manousse shouted to Christophe, whose back was turned to him. Christophe did not hear him. Manousse climbed ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... you could have been with us on Easter Monday, when we passed the day at Greenwich, and were at the renowned Greenwich Fair, which lasts for three days. The scene of revelry takes place in the Park, a royal one, and really a noble one. Here all the riff-raff and bobtail of London repair in their finery, and have a time. You can form no notion of the affair; it cannot be described. The upper part of the Park, towards the Royal Observatory, is very steep, and down this boys and girls, men and women, have a roll. ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... commanders of regiments are bribed with heavy sums by the villagers to encamp outside their walls. Troops are not the only source of anxiety to the poor fellaheen. Princes and Government officials also travel with an enormous following, mainly composed of hangers-on and riff-raff, who plunder and devastate as ruthlessly as a band of Kurd or Turkoman robbers. They are even worse than the soldiery, for the latter usually leave the women alone. Occasionally a whole village migrates to the mountains on the approach of the unwelcome guests, ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... responsibility of disposing of the United States bond issue?" Nevins inquires with a semblance of interest. "What would that Republic do if it were not for its public spirited men of wealth? Republics are all right when they are curbed by the conservative elements, but when the riff-raff gets the reins in hand, then ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... upon all kinds of Romany matters. I remember how warm he waxed upon his pet aversion, “Smith of Coalville,” as he called him, who, he said, for the purposes of a professional philanthropist, had done infinite mischief to the gipsies by confounding them with all the wandering cockney raff from the slums of London. On my repeating to him what, among other things, the Romany chi before mentioned said to me during the ascent of Snowdon from Capel Curig, that “to make kairengroes (house-dwellers) ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... efficient, neglected; but the mental process of which the classification was the result was not so deliberate as may be supposed. Sometimes, when an important client would get into trouble, the affair took me into the police court, where I saw the riff-raff of the city penned up, waiting to have justice doled out to them: weary women who had spent the night in cells, indifferent now as to the front they presented to the world, the finery rued that they had tended so carefully to catch the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... shifting nervously from group to group of huddling spectators, their shoulders hunched up to their ears—the riff-raff of the garrison—the few desperate, dangerous characters from the surrounding camps, an uncouth, uncanny lot at any time, but looking its worst in the drip of the floating fog-wreaths and the gloom and despond of the dying day. The boom ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... the unseen, the world of thought and being. And when she mentioned work he always replied as if she meant an undefined something called doing good. He never doubted the failure of that foolish concert of ladies and gentlemen given to the riff-raff of London, had taught her that whether man be equal in the sight of God or not, any attempt on the part of their natural superiors to treat them as such ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... for an instant. 'Oh, my head! Why does one's mind affect one's body like this? It shall not—it is humiliating! "Miss Leyburn has been jilted and cannot see visitors,"—that is the kind of thing. Catherine, when you have finished that document, will you kindly come and hear me practise my last Raff—I am going. Good-bye.' ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... feeding? The queen knows a mighty sight better, and wouldn't ax any body to her table as had done nothing but write books or paint picters. No; old Pits is the boy for patronizing them there fellers; but mark ye, Snipe, he takes the wrong chaps. If a man is to demean himself by axing a riff-raff of authors to his house, let it be the big 'uns; I should not care to give a bit of dinner to Dickens or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... preferred to spend the night in the notorious section of the city. Maria Mondmilch allowed every possible kind of riff-raff, to speak to her, but she ran away from most of the men. She was not yet fifteen years old when she permitted a peddlar, ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... Raff, Beethoven. Y'u ce'tainly have the music here; I wonder if y'u have the musician." He looked her over with a bold, unscrupulous gaze. "It's an old trick to have classical music on the rack and ragtime in your soul. Can y'u ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... composed of cattlemen, sheep men, cow punchers and herders, with a sprinkling of gamblers and other riff-raff. Rough, uncouth, full-blooded men, they were, for the most part; hard working; decisive in their likes and dislikes; fearing neither God nor man, they met Life as they found it and faced Death with a laugh. They were the last of a fast disappearing type, picturesque, ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... during the Jubilee of 1887, if he was driving any of the Imperial and Royal guests then quartered at Buckingham Palace, replied, with calm self-respect, "No, sir; I am the Queen's Coachman. I don't drive the riff-raff." I take this to be a sublime instance of the Art of Putting Things. Lingering for a moment on these back stairs of History, let me tell the tragic tale of Mr. and Mrs. M——. Mr. M—— was one of ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... England stock, but they sometimes show strong points of resemblance to that "white trash" which has come to be a recognizable strain of the English race; and one cannot help suspecting that while the New England colonies made every effort to keep out such riff raff, it may nevertheless have now and then crept in. However this may be, it cannot be said that this element ever formed a noticeable feature in the life of colonial New England. As regards their social derivation, the settlers of New England were homogeneous in character to a remarkable degree, ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... of those flowers from which they could obtain the largest amount of honey with the least possible trouble. Thus it would finally result that the ordinary unspecialized flowers, which depended upon small insect riff-raff, would be mostly left yellow or white; those which appealed to rather higher insects would become pink or red; and those which laid themselves out for bees or butterflies, the aristocrats of the arthropodous world, would grow for the most part to be ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Jim's cheek. "So," he said, facing her quickly, "for the sake of a lot of riff-raff and scum that's drifted here around us—jest for the sake of cuttin' a swell before them—you'll go out among the hounds ez allowed your mother was a Spanish nigger or a kanaka, ez called your father a pirate and landgrabber, ez much as allowed ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... maist forgotten't," said the hardy Borderer but I think this morning, now that I am fresh and sober, if you and I were at the Withershin's Latch, wi' ilka ane a gude oak souple in his hand, we wadna turn back, no for half a dizzen o' yon scaff-raff." [*Rabble.] ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... remarked Reedy on the way, "your uncle is very generous to want to help these fellows across the line that are broke. But they are riff-raff. He will lose every dollar of it. I know them. Good Lord! haven't I befriended them, and helped them fifty ways? And do they appreciate it? Well, I should ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... and looked out. A couple o' policemen was standing by the gate and arf the riff-raff of Wapping ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... whom he regarded as promising, or who were personally attractive to himself. About 1850 the American, Dr. William Mason, was there, and for two years following. The class at this time contained the well known names of Rubinstein, Carl Klindworth, Pruckner, Tausig, Joachim Raff, and Hans von Buelow. From this time on there is scarcely a concert pianist in the world who did not spend a few months or longer with Liszt at Weimar. Nor did his influence stop here. He produced a constant succession of important works, and conducted ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... ants, and we have to pick every piece over because of weevils. Existence at night is an unequal fight with rats and cockroaches, and at meals with the stewards for time to eat. The stewards outnumber the passengers, and are the veriest riff-raff I have seen on board ship. At meals, when the captain is not below, their sole object is to hurry us from the table in order that they may sit down to a protracted meal; they are insulting and disobliging, and since illness has been on board, have shown a want of common humanity ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... affairs should they have in the Solomons, and what business on Berande? The elder one, Morgan, was a huge man, bronzed and moustached, with a deep bass voice and an almost guttural speech, and the other, Raff, was slight and effeminate, with nervous hands and watery, washed-out gray eyes, who spoke with a faint indefinable accent that was hauntingly reminiscent of the Cockney, and that was yet not Cockney of any brand she had ever encountered. Whatever they were, they were self-made ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... The lover of fair play, the grateful, the true, honest, worth-while people will flock to your standard; the riff-raff will skulk behind bushes and throw rocks and mud, but their acts will prove to the great mass of the people that your purposes, practices and ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... Brittany the number of seigniorial courts is immense, the pleaders being obliged to pass through four or five jurisdictions before reaching the Parliament. "Where is justice rendered? In the cabaret, in the tavern, where, amidst drunkards and riff-raff, the judge sells justice to whoever ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... determined to witness it. Accordingly, at noon, the appointed hour, I repaired to an open spot of building-land on the Carondelet side of the city. Here I found assembled a motley assemblage of citizens, negroes, steamboat-hands, and the general riff-raff of the place. Although the crowd was not so great, the meeting strongly reminded me of those scenes of infamy and disgrace in England—public executions; the conduct of the assembled throng on this occasion being the more ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... sir, that Denmark Hill thinks that the higher you go in the social scale, the less sincerity is allowed; and that only tramps and riff-raff are quite sincere. Thats a mistake. Tramps are often shameless; but theyre never sincere. Swells—if I may use that convenient name for the upper classes—play much more with their cards on the table. If you tell the young lady ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... see you, captain," the insurgent chief ran on quickly. "This riff-raff of mine can't hit a hillside. Hammer the artillery into ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... one of their meetings, held at the sign of the Tappet Hen and the Tankard, there was a prime fight of five rounds between Tammy Bowsie, the snab, and auld Thrashem, the dominie, about their drawing cuts which was to get Dalkeith Palace, and which Newbottle Abbey! Oh, sic riff-raff! ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... in two thousand of the riff-raff and putting them at work on roads, piers, and prisons, applied himself with special energy to the suppression of Marti, the most daring, yet the slyest and most cautious of all the robbers in the country. He and his band thought no more of splitting the weasand of a soldier than tossing ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... uniforms begrimed and tattered, disorganized, swearing at each other, casting frightened glances backward with no other thought or desire save to escape the pursuing terror behind. They were the riff-raff of the battle, the skulkers, the cowards, the slightly wounded, making pin pricks an excuse for escape. Wagons toiled along in the midst of them, the gaunt mules urged on by whip and voice, while occasionally an ambulance forced its way through. Here and there some worn-out straggler ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... said Mr. Billings, with the voice of experience. "The crews on those old tramps are the riff-raff of a hundred ports. Bad men ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... discussing its mounted police, naively remarked that what most struck him about them was the look of intelligence on the faces of the horses. Judgments of this kind are too sweeping. It should be remembered that Germany is surrounded by countries of which the riff-raff is at all times seeking refuge in it or passing through it, that polyglot swindlers of every kind, the most refined as well as the most commonplace, abound, and that Anarchists are not yet an extinct species. For the ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... returned, repentant, to be forgiven by her; who acted always on her instinct and never on her reason; who cared nothing for legal principles; who openly used her feminine influence with the Trinity; who filled heaven with riff-raff; and who had never on any pretext driven a soul out of heaven. Christine made peace with this jealous and divine creature. She felt unmistakably that she was forgiven for her infidelity due to the Infant in the darkness beyond the opposite aisle. The face of the Lady of VII Dolours ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... small, vehement gesture of disgust. "Oh, we won't talk of him. He is an oaf. I dare say he doesn't know any better, but he'll never have a chance of doing it again. I don't mix with the riff-raff." ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... you, David, that I do not know how to speak," began his mother. "You—always until now a refined, gentlemanly boy,—you to turn yourself into a head hospital nurse, and Poor Society agent! travelling in company with the lowest riff-raff! I don't know what to make of you. Really, I am ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... and with treating the noble and rich children with too much respect. His ridiculous and evil passions cause him to be detested by all. Luckily, he will soon be nominated inspector, and then he will say good-bye to all this riff-raff. In the meantime, Varvara writes a letter, filled with the most alluring promises, to which she signs the princess's name, and has it mailed from St. Petersburg. Peredonov is at the height of joy; but, being a prudent ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... city of Charleston, South Carolina, on the twelfth of September, 1864. Coming Street on the morning of that day was crowded with people of every variety of calling, from the priest and sister of charity, out on their merciful errands, to the riff-raff and sans-culottes out on no errand at all but to help the excitement. ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... books, that makes you the laziest man that a poor woman ever had tinder one roof wid her? ay, an' that sent you out of our dacent shop an' house, in the heart of the town below, an' banished us here, Jer Mulcahy, to sell drams o' whisky an' pots o' beer to all the riff-raff o' the counthry-side, instead o' the nate boots an' shoes you served ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... with a loss that has partially paralysed his power. All along the right bank of the Upper Niger his bands of hirelings and mercenaries, whom we call Sofas, are constantly raiding for slaves. Indeed Samory's troops are the fiercest and most merciless in this country. They are the riff-raff of the West Soudan and are a terror to friend and foe, a bar to the peaceful settlement of all lands within the ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... await trial. The Chinese assessor insisted, not without reason, that she ought to be kept in a native jail. No attention being given to his protest, though supported by the taotai or local governor, a mob of riff-raff from beyond the limits burst into the settlement, put the foreign police to flight, and began to burn and pillage. Happily a body of marines with gatling guns and fire-engines succeeded in quelling the flames and ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... auld boy, whilst in his cups, is bettin' she can beat anythin' on four legs, even jack rabbits an' antelope. The precious gamblin' riff-raff are fillin' him ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... throwing out of the Bill so much to heart, Brooke; you've got all the riff-raff of the country on ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Arden by Thomas Hennage of the Cardinal's household. To this Hennage, Arden grants the wardship of his son Peter; and, if he should die, the wardship of Raffe; failing whom, the wardship of John, his third son, 1533. His wife was Margery. Sir Raff Ellerker married Jane, daughter of John Arden, Esq. (Visitation, Yorks, 1563). There is also noted the Inquis. P. M., of Peter Arden, of York, 22 Henry VIII.,[542] and William Arden's lease of Yaresthorpe, Yorks. The priory of nuns at Arden, founded ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... have we dragged into our company this peach off the street? We must needs tie up with all sorts of riff-raff? The devil knows what he is—perhaps he's even a dinny? Who can vouch for him? And you're always like ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... crook, croon, cross-grained, cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to cuff (to strike), cleft, din, earnest money, egg on, greenhorn, jack-of-all-trades, loophole, settled, ornate, to quail, ragamuffin, riff-raff, rigmarole, scant, seedy, out of sorts, stale, tardy, trash. How Halliwell ever came to class these words as archaic I cannot imagine; but I submit that any one who sets forth to write about the English of England ought to have sufficient acquaintance ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... fear of a raid at Haase's. Why the place had escaped so long, with all that riff-raff assembled there nightly, I couldn't imagine. It was one of those defects in German organization which puzzle the best of us at times. In the meantime, I was powerless to escape. The first thing Haase had done was to take away my papers—to ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... and then; and, unless ye knows just how much talent he's got, and can whitewash him yaller, it's plaguy ticklish. When the brutes have larnin', and can write a little, they won't stay sold when ye sell 'em-that is, I mean, white riff-raff stuff; they ain't a bit like niggers and Ingins. And there's just as much difference a'tween the human natur of a white nigger and a poverty-bloated white as there is a'twixt ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... there concealed his runaway slaves; by remaining I think that I have put a stop to this, as he did not like to pillage while I was in company: Mpamari also turned round towards peace, though he called all the riff-raff to muster, and caracoled among them like an old broken-winded horse. One man became so excited with yelling, that the others had to disarm him, and he then fell down as if in a fit; water poured on his head brought him to calmness. We go on ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... star in his forehead) Green Cloak. Liberal has not appeared. The numbers of the starters, with the names of the jockeys, are now being hoisted. He makes a pencil-mark opposite the name of each starter on his racing-card, and jots down the name of the jockey. Raff, he sees, is riding Green Cloak. That is ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... pool at the billiard-houses, and may be seen engaged at cards and dominoes of forenoons. His signature is to be seen on countless bills of exchange: it belonged to an honourable family once, very likely; for the English Raff most probably began by being a gentleman, and has a father over the water who is ashamed to hear his name. He has cheated the old 'governor' repeatedly in better days, and swindled his sisters of their portions, and robbed his younger brothers. Now he is living ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sound of hoofs—the men from Gloucester! Windybank noted with some degree of satisfaction that they ware well armed and well mounted. In the darkness he counted nearly a score of men. A few were "riff-raff;" some, like himself, were perhaps forced; but the majority seemed to be of some substance and courage. Prospects were looking brighter. Master Andrew ventured to ask Basil a question. "What of the ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... not sailors—the riff-raff of many ports they were; and now with them it was every man for himself. This feeling without proper knowledge worked their undoing. The ropes were released, one before the other, and the loaded boat bumped down the side of the vessel, one end dropping before the other, spilling ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... Sir George, the worthy Loumle, a knyghte of great renown, Sir Raff, the ryche Rugbe, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... found that Jarvey was trying to pick up some other "fare," not thinking myself and my servant a sufficient cargo to pay well. I tried to find a railway official; but I might almost as well have looked for a flea in a flower-garden—no badges, no distinctive marks, the station full of all the riff-raff of the town;—it was hopeless. At last, by a lucky accident, I saw a man step into a small office, so I bolted after him, like a terrier after a badger, but I could not draw him; he knew nothing about ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... eat anything with all that riff-raff?" exclaimed Pao-yue; "we've really had it over there; in fact, I now come after having had mine with dowager ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... can, therefore, imagine my feelings on passing her one evening in the Folkestone High Street with a Panama hat upon her head (my Panama hat), and a soldier's arm round her waist. She was one of a mob, composed of all the unoccupied riff-raff of Folkestone, who were following the band of the Third Berkshire Infantry, then in camp at Sandgate. There was an ecstatic, far-away look in her eyes. She was dancing rather than walking, and with her left hand she beat ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... he could not occupy a higher plane in defense of the saloon. He made up what he called an "ominum gatherum," of "bigots," "hay-seed politicians," "fake philosophers," "cranks," "scamps," "professional sharps," "mad caps of destruction," "preachers who would sell corner lots in heaven," "a riff-raff of moral idiots ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... you," said his friend, "I wouldn't hang my picture in this little bit of a hole, nor let my boy waste his time with all the riff-raff in the room. There's Smith's girl and Robinson's niece, both of them worth a cool hundred thousand; and you leave him to flourish about all over the place with a chit in a white frock, and another in a black one. I call that waste, not luxury, for ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... make—I speak literally—a football of his head, to throw his heart to the dogs. And no doubt it had fallen in with the Vidame's grim humour that the bearer of Pavannes' first love letter should enter his mistress's presence, bleeding and plaistered with mud. And that the riff-raff about our own gates should ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... ancient procession of foreign tourists—it has not changed in sixty; for it is still small, straggling, and shabby. It had a desperate reputation, morally, in the old keel-boating and early steamboating times—plenty of drinking, carousing, fisticuffing, and killing there, among the riff-raff of the river, in those days. But Natchez-on-top-of-the-hill is attractive; has always been attractive. Even Mrs. Trollope (1827) had ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to Jedburgh to circuit, where found my old friend and schoolfellow, D. Monypenny.[510] Nothing to-day but a pack of riff-raff cases of petty larceny and trash. Dined as usual with the Judge, and slept at ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... having some instruction from his mother, who was a good musician, he received lessons for a while from Teresa Carreno. In 1877 he went to Paris and became a pupil of Marmontel and Savard. Later on he went to Frankfort-on-the-Main, where he studied composition with the late Joachim Raff and piano playing with Carl Heymann. In this manner five years of European student-life passed, and in 1888 he was made piano teacher at the Darmstadt Conservatory; he remained there only one year, in 1882 going to Weisbaden, where his ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... men kept theirs glued to Leonie who was riding straight and apparently making no effort to check the Devil, and policemen, forgetful of their dignity, their status, and their red turbans, hung over the rails near the grand-stand entrance with a riff-raff of taxi chauffeurs, ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... convinced, however, that the instruction given there was of no use to him, and after having studied under Lebert and Louis Ehlert and having been refused a hearing by Hans von Buellow, he left Stuttgart and entered the Frankfort Conservatorium, where his teachers were Raff, the Principal, for composition, and Carl Heymann for pianoforte playing. Raff was kind and encouraging to the young American, and once said to him, "Your music will be played when mine is forgotten." The influence of Raff's teaching is evident in a number of MacDowell's early compositions, ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... the clear pale types of Aldus and Elzevir: in the next, you might see the Penny Horrific Register; the Halfpenny Annals of Crime and History of the most celebrated murderers of all countries, The Raff's Magazine, The Larky Swell, and other publications of the penny press; whilst at the next window, portraits of ill-favoured individuals, with fac-similes of the venerated signatures of the Reverend Grimes Wapshot, the Reverend Elias Howle, and the works written and the ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... misfortune. On the same day he went with Father Bartolome Besco and the Sangley Raimundo to the place where the fugitives were encamped. On the way he encountered some companies of seamen from the champans and other riff-raff, who were ignorant of the agreement for the submission of their fellows; and these would not allow the fathers to pass. But when this was known at their camp two of their leading men went down to the father and told him that they all would follow his advice; ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... papers, ransacked his shop and brought a great heap of old posters and picture papers to her. Captain Morton brought a beloved picture of his army Colonel to adorn the room, and deaf John Kollander, who had a low opinion of the ignorant foreigners and the riff-raff and scum of society, which Laura was trying to help, wished none the less to help her, and came down one day with a flag for the schoolroom and insisted upon making a speech to the tots about patriotism. He made nothing ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Farewell, riff-raff Of Customs' clerks who laugh And shout: "Farewell!" We'll quaff One bout To thee, young lass, with kisses sweet! Farewell, my dear—the ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... the waist of the ship and on to the promenade-deck of the third-class passengers, where a huddle of stores, coiled ropes, and riff-raff prevented these poor from taking any pleasurable exercise. I stood at the taffrail and peered down at the welter of white water, the foam of the buffets of the whirling screws, and then at the wide wake, which in imagination went on ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... idle. He knows the importance of following up his recent advantages, and making the utmost use of his veteran troops now in the field, because his new levies, if indeed the draft be submitted to, will not be fit for use this year, probably, if ever, for they will consist of the riff-raff of the Northern population. On the other hand, he suspects we will soon have larger armies in the field than ever before, and our accessions will consist of our bravest men, who will make efficient soldiers ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... when the thing was over, and the escort was pacing back to Hyde Park barracks, could not console Cecil for fog, wind, mud, oyster-vendors, bad odors, and the uproar and riff-raff of the streets; specially when his throat was as dry as a lime-kiln, and his longing for the sight of a cheroot approaching desperation. Unlimited sodas, three pipes smoked silently over Delphine Demirep's last novel, a bath well dashed with eau de cologne, and some glasses of Anisette after ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... situation and ask what others would have felt, placed as we were—four willing men upon a bit of craggy rock rising sheer out of a thousand fathom sea, and commanded to hold the gate for our lives and for another life more precious against all the riff-raff that Ken's Island could send against us. Out on the shimmering sea I counted twelve boats with my own eyes, and knew that every one of them was full of cut-throats. In the half of an hour or sooner that devil's crew would knock at our gate and demand to come in. Whatever way we answered them, ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton |
