"Rat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... your honor showed fight briskly enough yester evening, but then it seemed little less than fight or die, and even a rat, if you corner him, will snap for dear life. Moreover, you were well ambushed, and there was a gentle lady present who would not see a rat ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... unusual, my King," crackled the Pole's voice thinly. "During three whole days I have done naught but think, and that would incommode an elephant, leave alone a rat like me." ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... permanganate of potash some roach and rat poisons) { in doses of 4 or 5 grains well { diluted, and frequently repeated; { then Epsom salts or magnesia to { open bowels, but no milk or oil of { ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... cormorants, gulls, penguins, etc., are aquatic; while the bulk of the Passerine birds are aerial and arboreal. The same general facts can be detected in all other classes of animals. In the mammalia, for example, we have in the common rat a fish-eater and flesh-eater as well as a grain-eater, which has no doubt helped to give it the power of spreading over the world and driving away the native rats of other countries. Throughout the Rodent tribe we find everywhere aquatic, terrestrial, and arboreal forms. In the weasel and cat ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... still stood and talked when he was interrupted by shrill cries. "Catch him, catch him!" shrieked those who had come from the kitchen; and all the young men raced after the boy, who glided away faster than a rat. They tried to intercept him at the gate, but it was not so easy to get a hold on such a little creature, so, luckily, he got out ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... The National Rat Campaign this year, we are told, was a great success. On the other hand we gather that several rats have threatened to issue ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... replied Freddy, musing; "you wouldn't like a very little pony, with only one eye and a rat-tail, I suppose—it might look absurd with your long legs, I'm afraid—or else Mrs. Meek, the undertaker's widow, has got a very quiet one that poor Meek used to ride—a child could manage it:—there's the butcher's fat mare, but ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... to have a little fun with her afore ye git her," he said. "I love to see her damn face go white and red, and her teeth shut tight like a rat-trap. She won't do none of them things when you git done ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... periods, during which the attempt is made to hold the mind to the contemplation of a single image or idea, bringing the attention back whenever it wanders, killing each irrelevant thought as it arises, as one might kill a rat coming out of a hole. This turning of the mind back on itself is difficult, but I know of nothing that "pays" so well, and I have never found any one who conscientiously practised it who did not confirm this view. The point is, that if a man acquires the ability ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... there, you live so shut up, that you know and hear nothing, or you would have learned that even that fiercest of all the robbers, Fra Moreale, has at length yielded to the Tribune, and fled from his castle, like a rat from ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the rat meaning Ratcliffe, the cat Catesby, and the hog King Richard, whose cognisance was a boar. Robert Catesby, the descendant of the "cat," was said to be one of the greatest bigots that ever lived; he was the friend of Garnet, the Jesuit, and ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... to get a picture of war as she is waged by an obscure unit in the thick of the dirtiest, dampest and most depressing part, read PATRICK MACGILL'S The Red Horizon (JENKINS). Here we meet the author of The Children of the Dead End and The Rat Pit as Rifleman 3008 of the London Irish, involved in the grim routine of the firing line—reliefs, diggings and repairs, sentry-go's, stand-to's, reserves, working and covering parties, billets; and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... its purpose; and while in parts of the body, the bones lay bare and exposed; in others, corruption in its most loathsome form prevailed. Here the meaner reptiles—active and prolific—might be seen busily at work, battening on human decay. Sir Henry stepped over a dead body, and started, as a rat, scared from its prey, rustled through a wreath of withered flowers, and hid itself amid a mouldering heap of bones. But there were some forms lovely still! In them the pulse of life had that day ceased to beat. The rigidity of Death—his impressive stillness was there—but ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... hadn't planned it. My one idea was to get away from Mr. Snider. He looked as if he would murder me,—or, at any rate, half-murder me, and I did not wish to be murdered, nor even half- murdered. I had rushed into the house without thinking what I was doing, and now here I was, caught like a rat in a trap, in this hot, dark, and ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... if you have ever seen one of the rat-hunts. It is a curious sight, especially in a fodder-loft. The man and dog climbing up ladders and running along beams with marvellous assurance and agility, the dog sniffing every hole in the wall, playing the cat, crouching down and lying in ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... wild, care-free people—like half-grown children, romping their way through life! There was really nothing too crazy for them to do, if the whim struck them. Once a visiting cousin had ventured the remark that she saw no reason why people should not eat rats; a barn-rat was clean in its person, and far choicer in its food than a pig. Thereupon "Miss Margaret" had secretly ordered the yard-man to secure a barn-rat; she had had it broiled, and served in a dish of squirrels, and had sat by and watched the young lady enjoy it! And this, mind you, was Mrs. ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... must be it," Norah said. "Jim's away over near the timber with a little rat of a pony, and Bob is shepherding another fifty yards behind him, while Wally is quite near here with that big pony of the blacksmith's that has won ever so many races. She'll have a lot of ground to make up. But why must ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... George turned upon him with so shrill a curse that it even frightened from his leafy perch in the oak above the tame turtle-dove, intensely preoccupied as he was in cooing to a new-found mate. He did more than curse; he fought like a cornered rat, and with as much chance as the rat with a trained fox-terrier. In a few seconds his head was as snugly tucked away in the chancery of his cousin's arm as ever any property was in the court of that name, and, to speak truth, it seemed ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... of a lane there was an old sober-looking servant in livery waiting for them; he was accompanied by a superannuated pointer and by the redoubtable Bantam, a little old rat of a pony with a shaggy mane and long rusty tail, who stood dozing quietly by the roadside, little dreaming of the ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... work him 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 ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... forward and with his sinewy fingers gripped his enemy's throat. "Ha!" he cried with savage exultation, holding off his foe at arm's length. "Now! Now! Now!" As he uttered each word between his clenched teeth he shook the gasping, choking wretch as a dog shakes a rat. In vain his victim struggled to get free, now striking wild and futile blows, now clutching and clawing at those terrible gripping fingers. His face grew purple; his tongue protruded; his breath came in rasping gasps; his hands fell to his side. "Keep your hands so," hissed Barney, ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... beaten that horse, giving him two pounds; how he had been beaten by that, but only on a mile course; the Leger distance was just the thing for Prime Minister; how by a lucky chance that marvellous quick rat of a thing that had won the Derby had not been entered for the autumn race; how Coalheaver was known to have had bad feet. "He's a stout 'orse, no doubt,—is the 'Eaver," said Mr. Pook, "and that's why the betting-men have stuck to him. But he'll be nowhere on Wednesday. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... Ebearhard," he said, "that I boasted prematurely in thinking good luck would attend me now that I lead what appears to be an obedient following. Here we are in a trap, and unless we can escape through rat-holes, I admit that I fail to see for the moment how we are ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... my dear, what signifies your reproaches? I wish I may never be more guilty than I am this day. I laid out a part of your money in a made-up mantua and a petticoat of Rat de St. Maur, and for the hat,'twas the exact copy of the lovely Gunning's—Maria Coventry. And though I won't flatter you, child, by saying your bloom equals hers (for I can't tell what hers may be under the white lead she lays on so thick), yet I will say that ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... Kent rat and sparrow clubs are offering one shilling a dozen for rats' tails. The price is small, but, as the President of a leading club points out, the vendor is permitted to retain the balance of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... grim, so like a beggar, ne'er had trod that path before. His shirt was torn, his hat was gone, bare and begrimed his knees, Face with blood and dirt disfigured, elbows peeped from out his sleeves. Rat-tat-tat, upon the entrance, brought Aunt Hannah to the door; Parched lips humbly plead for water, as she scanned his misery o'er; Wrathful came the dame's quick answer; made him cower, shame, and start Out of sight, despairing, saddened, hurt and angry to the heart. "Drink! ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... pelicans are also birds of passage, and occasionally visit these unknown lands. The natives are clever in trapping these animals. This they do either by means of pitfalls or by large traps, made after the fashion of ordinary rat-traps. ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... this place was a large and solid stone building, which the missionaries used as a store: here, in an upstairs apartment, the bishop arranged his library. Passing among "bales of blankets, iron pots, rusty rat-traps and saws," he loved to enter his retreat, in which there was nothing "colonial," but where he could feast his eyes on "ancient folios of Commentators, Councils, and Annals of the Church,"—St. Augustine "standing up like a tower," and St. Irenaeus "with the largest margin ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... as a civil engineer gave him a certain aptitude for his formidable undertaking and he set about it with rat-like patience. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... (Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, vol. ii. p. 131), no less than 250 species of naturalized plants, more than 100 of which spread widely over the country and often displace the native vegetation. Among animals, the European rat, goat and pig are naturalized in New Zealand, where they multiply to such an extent as to injure and probably exterminate many native productions. In none of these cases is there any indication that acclimatization was necessary ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Heavens had said, Let there be an Incarnation, not divine, of the venatory Attorney-spirit which keeps its eye on the bond only;—and lo, this was it; and they have attorneyed it in its turn. Vanish, then, thou rat-eyed Incarnation of Attorneyism; who at bottom wert but as other Attorneys, and too hungry Sons of Adam! Juryman Vilate had striven hard for life, and published, from his Prison, an ingenious Book, not unknown to us; but it ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... a cupboard, but they ate their way into it. Not a cheese but they gnawed it hollow, not a sugar puncheon but they cleared out. Why the very mead and beer in the barrels was not safe from them. They'd gnaw a hole in the top of the tun, and down would go one master rat's tail, and when he brought it up round would crowd all the friends and cousins, and each would have ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... his father. "But I don't see how he's going to get hold of it unless we move the woodpile. And I don't believe we'll quit work to help the old dog catch a chipmunk—or maybe a rat." ...
— The Tale of Old Dog Spot • Arthur Scott Bailey
... who was younger and looked less like a drowned rat, remained in the bow, staring back in apprehension at the Indian. The moment he could do ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... you," gritted Barney, "or I'll blow your damned guts out! No—go ahead and try to hit me. I'd like nothing better than to kill you, you rat, and have ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... winter's broken, mother dear!" said Gilbert, as a terrific blast shook the blinds as a terrier would a rat. "Don't listen to that wind; it 's only a March bluff! Osh Popham says snow is the poor man's manure; he says it's going to be an early season and a grand hay crop. We'll get fifty dollars ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a good tinker, and worship god Pan, or I might grind scissors as sharp as the noses of bakers. But, as a matter of fact, I'm a piper, not a rat-catcher, you understand, but just a simple singer of sad songs, and a mad singer of ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... will sound! I'd rather the bawn were sunk under ground. But, madam, I guess'd there would never come good, When I saw him so often with Darby and Wood.[7] And now my dream's out; for I was a-dream'd That I saw a huge rat—O dear, how I scream'd! And after, methought, I had lost my new shoes; And Molly, she said, I should hear some ill news. "Dear Madam, had you but the spirit to tease, You might have a barrack whenever you please: ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... minded that you were talking to her yesterday in the lab'rat'ry, before the telegram came about ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fluffy whiteness," cried Kate delightedly, as Helen sat down at the table. "Helen," she went on, mischievously, "as a man hunter you are just too dreadful. Poor Big Brother Bill, why, he hasn't the chance of a rat in a corner. He surely is as good as engaged, married, ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... machine gun "rat-tat-tat-tated" close to us, and three rockets, like a flight of startled birds, rose suddenly together ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... discovered this retreat and had at times used it as a shelter when caught over night in its vicinity. During subsequent visits he found an overhang in the rock behind the original fill that made a second smaller chamber and in this he had as a boy cached his mink and rat traps and the ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... of the case is not a sanguine one is proved by his beating Chapeau d'Espagne, the second for the Oaks, for the Ascot Derby, and within an hour afterwards bowling over Velure, the third in that race, for William the Fourth's Plate. On the Cup Day he likewise beat the Derby favourite, Rat-Trap, over the Old Mile. At Stockbridge, in a sweepstakes of 100 sovs. each, with thirteen subscribers, he frightened all the field away with the exception of Wisdom, whom he beat cleverly, and then ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... the cold, damp steps. Something he was about to say froze on his lips. He did not look at Mary Ann for some days; by which time Beethoven had conquered his distrust of her, though she was still distrustful of Beethoven, drawing her skirts tightly about her as if he were a rat. What forced Mary Ann again upon Lancelot's morose consciousness was a glint of winter sunshine that settled on her light brown hair. He said, "By the way, Susan, tell your ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... deep bosoms, and fill the promenades with their brilliant costumes; the Valentians carpet its halls and quench its thirst with orgeat of chufas; in every street you shall see the red bonnet and sandalled feet of the Catalan; in every cafe, the shaven face and rat-tail chignon of the Majo of Andalusia. If it have no character of its own, it is a mirror where all the faces of the Peninsula may sometimes be seen. It is like the mockingbird of the West, that has no song of its own, and yet makes the woods ring with every note ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... and even the comparatively useless dog and cat, as well as several species of poultry, are voluntarily transferred by every emigrant colony, and they soon multiply to numbers far exceeding those of the wild genera most nearly corresponding to them. [Footnote: The rat and the mouse, though not voluntarily transported, are passengers by every ship that sails for a foreign port, and several species of these quadrupeds have, consequently, much extended their range and increased their numbers in modern times. From a story of Heliogabalus related by Lampridius, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... have put on the other candlestick. [He goes to mantel and takes it. A rat-tat-tat at street-door.] Who can that be? [Running to KATHLEEN'S door, holding candlestick forgetfully low.] Kathleen! There's ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... coon was finally brought down with a gun, he fought the dog, which was a large, powerful animal, with great fury, returning bite for bite for some moments; and after a quarter of an hour had elapsed and his unequal antagonist had shaken him as a terrier does a rat, making his teeth meet through the small of his back, the ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... from all the country. And on the further side was my Lord Shrewsbury for the King, with the Duke and his men. Master Aske had all he could do to keep his men back from being at them. Some of the young sparks were as terriers at a rat-hole. There was a parley held on the bridge, for Norfolk knew well that he must gain time; and Aske sent his demands to his Grace, and ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... Repulsing Serpents," and the 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 a ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... always," exclaimed Maitre Valandier. "Unless ... unless Citizen Broquet, who no doubt smelt a rat, succeeded in ferreting them out. But this is an unlikely supposition, for Citizen Broquet died ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... mentioned a little saweiety sheet, published in New York, under the title of Town Topics, because it afforded me a kind of languid pleasure to kick the feculent sewer-rat back into the foul cloaca from which it had crawled to beslime the ICONOCLAST. I must beg the patient reader's pardon for again soiling my sandal-shoon with what should only be touched with a shovel. I have been receiving through the mails for some time past, both from disgusted Northerners ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... news troubled John. He did not believe that Akers cared a penny piece for a membership, and pooh-pooh it as he would, this trifling affair would not let him alone. It gnawed under the great sorrow of Jane's absence, like a rat gnawing under his ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the character of the building, and however difficult it may be for strangers to get to it, those living in the neighbourhood know its whereabouts, many having derived improvement from it, and if more went to it, pigeon-flying, gambling, Sunday rat hunting, tossing, drinking, and paganism generally—things which have long flourished in its locality—would be nearer ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... when he took a thing the right way, as any man could be, and as clever, and could talk as well as any member of Parliament,—and good-natured, and kind-hearted, where he would take a fancy—but then, maybe, it would be to a dog (he was remarkable fond of dogs), or a cat, or a rat even, that he would take a fancy, and think more of 'em than he would of a Christian. But, Poor gentleman, there's great allowance,' said she, 'to be made for him, that lost his son and heir—that would have been heir to all, and a fine youth that he doted upon. But,' continued the old woman, in ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... 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')
... afternoon, and Sara, consequently, at home by three o'clock, when she stood, armed with a pattern and some formidable- looking shears, about to attack a light gray pair of these, when there came a quick little "rat-tat-tat" at the door. ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... of this retired joy Paul hears a step at the bottom of the lumber-room stairs, and knows it for his mother's. She is coming here, and there is no hiding-place for anything bigger than a rat. The motherly temper is sharp, and the motherly hand is heavy. He has been called and has not answered—a crime deserving punishment, and sure to earn it. The step grows nearer and trouble more assured. Suddenly a ray of hope darts through him, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... strange it seemed that my father could sit there and calmly talk about being a Democrat, or a Republican, or a Baptist, or a Methodist, or about some one's discovering the north pole, or about the President's message when the dog had a rat cornered under the corn-crib and was barking like mad. But, then, parents can't see things in their right relations and proportions. And there sat mother, too, darning stockings, and the dog just stark crazy about that rat. 'Tis enough to make a boy lose faith in parents forevermore. ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... allusion to it. The dog, the horse, the cow, the sheep, the hog, the lion, the bear, the wolf, the fox, the monkey, the pole-cat, the civet-cat, the pelican, the owl, the crow, the chough, the wren, the fly, the butterfly, the rat, the mouse, the frog, the tadpole, the wall-newt, the water-newt, the worm—I am sure I cannot have completed the list, and some of them are mentioned again and again. Often, of course, and especially in the talk of Edgar as the Bedlam, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... colour and appearance can easily be detected in widely separated localities, but they do not amount to anything very noticeable to the ordinary observer. The smaller kinds, the wallaby and kangaroo rat, are common everywhere on the continent. In birds, however, the difference is great, the seeds and fruit on which some birds exist being only found in either the coastal scrubs or lowland country, whilst many ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... its stories of dry-rot Were filled with gruesome visitants in wax, Inhuman, hushed, ghastly with Painted Eyes), I wandered; and no living soul Was nearer than the pay-box; and I stared Upon them staring—staring. Till at last, Three sets of rafters from the streets, I strayed upon a mildewed, rat-run room, With the two Dancers, horrible and obscene, Guarding the door: and there, in a bedroom-set, Behind a fence of faded crimson cords, With an aspect of frills And dimities and dishonoured ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... preserver in English, a language with which I was well acquainted. "We'll have you aboard the 'Seagull' in a jiff, and to-morrow you'll be as fit as a buck rat." ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... wrote the journey, and very prettily; what have you done with it? It is a pity to lose so pretty a piece of writing.... We left New Orleans to go to the Attakapas in the month of May, 1795, and in an old barge ["vieux chalant qui sente le rat mord a plien nez"]. We were Francoise and I Suzanne, pearl of the family, and Papa, who went to buy lands; and one Joseph Charpentier and his dear and pretty little wife Alix [whom] I love so much; 3 Irish, father mother and son [fice]; lastly Mario, ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... ones that are religious figure (maybe because there's no way for them to get hanged) that they're damned eternally—but that doesn't stop them doing good work. I ask you now, is any little thing like being damned eternally a satisfactory excuse for behaving like a complete rat?" ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... know what I think?" said Twaddles wisely. "I think some rat found it and ate it. I've seen rats up here in the loft, lots ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm • Mabel C. Hawley
... not go back to Gloucester College tonight," spoke Fitzjames eagerly. "They shall not take you there, like a rat in a trap. Come to your old lodging for the night. It may be we shall have thought out a plan by the morning. We will not let you go without a struggle, Anthony. Come with me as of old, and we will watch ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... into a fit of laughter at the awkward fix the Overseer was in. That gentleman also said nothing, but looked as if he would like to find vent through a rat-hole or a window-pane. Jim, however, who stood at the back of my chair, gave his eloquent thoughts utterance, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "Nothing happened exactly," she said. "But I had the most awful feeling, ma'am. And yes—well, something did happen! I heard a kind of rustling in the room. It would leave off for a time, and, then begin again. I tried to put it down to a mouse or a rat—or something of ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... spot which would be invisible with the bed in place, she waited till Churn was inclined to walk. Then she began delicately to dig at the plaster with her extemporized tools. Whenever Churn stopped, she stopped also, lest the rat-like noise should reach alert ears in the next room. For a long time she toiled, cautiously, slowly, gathering up bits of paper and plaster that fell, and collecting them in her lap. It was a tedious task, but not difficult. In less than an hour she had made—practically without ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... while he was thus engaged that a faint rustle aroused his attention, and looking towards the corner of the room whence it proceeded, he saw a large rat crouching by the skirting-board watching him with malevolent eyes. Colwyn looked round for a weapon with which to hit it. The creature seemed to divine his intentions, for it scuttled squeaking across the room, ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... door against the wooden casement, which would swell and press always tighter against the rock, and that boring would be closed for ever. And if any man should be inside the tunnel when the sea broke through, there he must stop, drowned like a rat in its hole, unless by a miracle he could make his way along the ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... in answering mama awhile since," said he, "and for your sneaking way of getting behind curtains, and for the look you had in your eyes two minutes since, you rat!" ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... and good-fellowship Mr Saltzburg's chord intruded jarringly. There was a general movement, and chairs and benches were dragged to the piano. Mr Saltzburg causing a momentary delay by opening a large brown music-bag and digging in it like a terrier at a rat-hole, conversation broke ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 with ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... they are as useless as they are harmless. The usual ornament of an animal's hind quarters is denied them; and were it not for this fact, and also for their difference in colour, the Shaksperean locution, "a rat without a tail," would designate them ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... effective squirrel control 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 ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... But the Rat-trap caught him at last; he heard the spring snap, and found his heart in a wire cage regarding a piece of cheese whose other name was Alice von ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... sneered. "Looking for some way out? Well, there isn't any besides this door. Line up across it, boys, and trip him if he tries to bolt before I get through with him. The rat's cornered at last, and now he's got to fight. Peel off that coat, Mister! Move quick. I don't want ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... His small rat eyes rested musingly upon the river; he sucked thoughtfully at his cigar, hooked one soiled thumb into the armhole of his fancy vest ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... scared rat before the anger of Cavalcanti, scuttled down the room to a small door in the wall that held the fire-place. He tore it open and sprang ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... forgotten—the rats! I used to have a horror of rats, but here I soon became used to them. The first night I slept on board I smelt something very disgusting as I got into my bunk; and at last I discovered that it arose from a dead rat in the wainscot of the ship. My nose being somewhat fastidious as yet, I moved to the other side of the cabin. But four kegs of strong-smelling butter sent me quickly out of that. I then tried a bunk next ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... of the vehicle, their bonnets fell onto their backs, their noses on their shoulders, and the white horse went on stretching out his head, and holding out his tail quite straight, a little, hairless rat's tail, with which he whisked his buttocks from time ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... cried. 'If ever I have you at my sword's point, I will teach you to maltreat one of my lads. You will find, you bloodthirsty beast, that my Emperor has long arms, and though you lie here like a rat in its hole, the time will come when he will tear you out of it, and you and ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... all the day You have time e-nough to play; Though at night, in barn and house, You must watch for rat or mouse. ...
— The Infant's Delight: Poetry • Anonymous
... back, slashing at Finn's fore-arm with his sharp white fangs, and snarling ferociously. In the same instant almost, the fox was on his feet, but before he could leap away, Finn's jaws descended on the back of his neck, gripping him like a vice, and shaking him almost as a terrier shakes a rat. With a desperate squirm the fox wriggled earthward from this terrible grip, and, as Finn drew breath, stabbing at the fox with one fore-paw, as he would have stabbed at a still living rabbit, to hold it, Reynard's ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... home. "She would have me the villain to disinherit my firstborn for her miserable brood! She shall find my other will, and think she's safe! Then the thunderbolt—and Dick master! My lady's dower won't be much for Percy the cad and Arthur the proper, not to mention Dorothy the cow, and Vixen the rat!" ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... them a morsel of meat. I was begged for bread, when I was hungry for the want of it. All the rats were eaten that could be caught in traps ingeniously contrived. When prejudice is overcome by gnawing hunger, a fat rat makes good eating, as I know from actual ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... V. 376) says decidedly that Bh[a]rs, or Bh[a]rats, and Ch[i]rus cannot be Aryans. This article is one full of interesting details in regard to the high cultivation of the Bh[a]rat tribe. They built large stone forts, immense subterranean caverns, and made enormous bricks for tanks and fortifications (19 X 11 X 2-1/2 inches), the former being built regularly to east and west (surajbedi). One of their chief cities lay five miles west ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... the dog, the rat and the mouse and their small parasites are responsible for some diseases. The deadly Anopheles only brings malaria, even the Stegonyia has but one fever in his gift, albeit a yellow one; but Musca ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... may attain to it as its richest outcome and its profoundest intuition; but before, that time, it is as bizarre as a madman's fancies and as useless. What would be thought, we might be asked by writers of this school, of a rat which developed upon its side the hand of a man, with all its mechanism of bone, muscle, tactile sensibility, and power of delicate manipulation, if the remainder of the creature were true to the pattern of a rat? Would not the rest of the rat tribe be justified ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... thought, seeing how precious food was to me. But, alas! it mattered not where they lay; they were as secure here as if they were snugly hidden in the bottom of the hold. It was the white realm of death; if ever a rat had crawled in this ship, it was, in its hiding-place, as stiff and idle as the frozen vessel. So I let the lump of brandy, the ice, ham, and so forth, rest where they were, and went to the cabin I had chosen, ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... Indeed, I know not any one who can give us further trouble, except it be old Pope, who says the road will ruin his villa, and be the death of any of his bulls that get upon the line; but as we know that he is as poor as a church rat, and will never show face in the committee, we mind him not, and, in truth, I have no doubt the committee will ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... fools I eber see'd. How does you s'pects I's gwine to light on toder side. Ef one of you'll take me on your back, I won't mind lettin' you try to carry me over; but I tells you I ain't agwine to try it. So you can shut up yer rat-traps." ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... the barricades are admirably made as to workmanship, but there is not one of them that could not be taken by troops approaching from streets at angles with the points at which those obstructions are placed. The Place Vendome is "a rat-trap," and the Insurgent chiefs take good care not to make it their own Head-Quarters. The gallant gentleman to whom I refer believes that if the troops once got inside the enceinte, the insurrection would utterly collapse; but if the military confine ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... lashed to the pump wheels. We were bruised and battered and sore. I never thought we'd get out of it. And, steadily, while lyin' almost without enough wind to fill our one small sail, we were pitched and tossed and shaken as a terrier shakes a rat. How the timbers of the ship ever held together, I don't know. We sprung another leak and while, before, we had been able to have ten minutes' spell in every hour, now we not only had to keep pumping steadily, but we had to keep those handles going at a swingin' pace. Cookie came and gave us ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... least four centuries too late. It is, perhaps, to this voyage of Uni that the inscription of the Vth year of Metesouphis I. refers, given by Blackden-Frazer in A Collection of Hieratic Graffiti from the Alabaster Quarry of Rat-nub, pl. xv. 2. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... two weeks his life was like that of a rat in a cellar. Silence, monotony, darkness, loneliness. Already the snowfall was as great as that of most winters. He could guess that by this time the fences about Wanda's home were hidden under a smooth covering that ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... you can think of. The tide is right out, and there are mysterious green pools under the pier, full of feathery red sea-weed and little darting fishes. Of course, Sam falls into one in his clothes, and comes out looking like a drowned rat. Akela wrings him out and sends him home to get into dry clothes, for the sun ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... the story of the fire in the tenement of six months ago in which it was supposed that Larry the Bat had perished—they differed only in the virulence, a mere choice of words, with which they now demanded that this Larry the Bat, alias the Gray Seal, should be dug out like a rat from his hole, and the city be freed once and for all, and with no loophole for misadventure this time, of this "ogre of hell," as one paper put it, that was gorging itself ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... middle exalted, and the circumference dug more deeply. Then let him fill it with saltpetre, all save a little space in the midst, where the boss of the wood is. Upon that boss (and it will be the better if a splinter of timber rise upward) he sticks the end of his candle of tallow, or "rat's tail," as we called it, kindled and burning smoothly. Anon, as he reads by that light his lesson, lifting his eyes now and then it may be, the fire of candle lays hold of the petre with a spluttering noise and a leaping. Then should the ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... frightened by the strange sonority of his own name, ran to hid himself under a bookcase in an orifice so small that a rat could not have squeezed himself ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... my dear! Don't go all to pieces over it. Aren't we doing all we can? Do you want Daly to smell a rat and toss his stolen property into the sea? Dacie says to give him rope enough and in time he will hang himself, and I am inclined to think the advice wise. Still, that does not prevent me from wishing I could lay hands on Daly. I'd like nothing better than to ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... second added the word 'master,' and the third announced the arrival of a 'grandmaster of the huntsmen.' So the Count came forward very cordially to receive the strange gentleman who had come to see him, and—he found no one but. old Tibaeul the rat-catcher." ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... now. Nervy little rat! It's a wonder I remember anything that happened that night. We were pretty well ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... Sevres dinner-set was had out, which that traveler Timothy had brought from Paris among other things, and the best cut glass and rat-tailed silver. Old William, assisted by Hester and Priscilla, had been busy polishing most of the day—while the cook and the "young person from the village" were contriving wonders in the vast ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... strove towards the big sky again, and he screamed so viciously that a rat that had just come out of the ditch fastened his eyes on him. That creature looked bad to the young cuckoo. Rain plopped on the leaves. Thunder crashed. A bolt struck the tree, and the part above the opening ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... money for it and continued his journey with the cat and the otter. Presently he saw a crowd of men and he went up to them and asked what they were doing: and they told him that they were hunting a rat which was always gnawing the Raja's pens and papers and the Raja had offered a reward for it, and they had driven it out of the palace, but it had taken refuge in a hole and they were going to dig it out Then Lita offered to buy it from them as he had bought the other ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas |
