"Rat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but thou mayst deck the pate Of that famed Doctor Ad-mth-te, (The reverend rat, whom we saw stand On his hind-legs in Westmoreland,) Who changed so quick from blue to yellow, And would from yellow back to blue, And back again, convenient fellow, If 'twere his interest ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... set a trap," Mr. Bobbsey went on. "That rat has probably been taking the things to eat that Dinah missed—the corn-cakes and ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope
... rat in the stables," said McGaw, his face reddening with anger. "What kin ye do whin ye're a-buckin' ag'in' a lot uv divils loike him?"—speaking through the window to Babcock. "Come out uv thet," he called to Cully, "or I'll bu'st yer jaw, ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... markedly that it looked as if Walley Johnson or Jimmy Brackett had admonished her on the subject. She continued, indeed, to cast at him eyes of pleading reproach, but always from a distance, and such appeals rolled off McWha's crude perception like water off a musk rat's fur. He had nothing "agin her," as he would have put it, if only she would keep out of his way. But Rosy-Lilly, true to her sex, was not vanquished by any means, or even discouraged. She was only biding her time. ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... "It's a rat," says Volpatte. "The stiffs are old ones, but the rats talk to 'em. You see some rats laid out—poisoned, p'raps—near every body or under it. Tiens, this poor old chap shall show us his." He lifts ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... . . While the simile of a panther at bay, anxious to escape, but ready with tooth and claw, might be applied to Sir Rufus Isaacs, something more like "a rat in a corner" might be suggested by the restless, snapping, furious little figure which succeeded. Let us compromise by saying that Mr. Lloyd George was singularly like a spitting, angry cat, which had got, perhaps, out of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... translated by Gerard de Nerval, and they include: (1) Chants de la fete de Paques; (2) Paysans sous les tilleuls; (3) Concert des Sylphes; (4 and 5) Taverne d'Auerbach, with the two songs of the Rat and the Flea; (6) Chanson du roi de Thule; (7) Romance de Marguerite, "D'amour, l'ardente flamme," and Choeur de soldats; (8) Serenade de Mephistopheles—that is to say, the most celebrated and characteristic pages of the Damnation (see M. ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... with a horse, blind with one eye, and not much bigger than a jackass, in return for the present Yusuf made to him. In fact, this potentate is now as poor as a rat, and has nothing to give away. When he has anything, he soon parts with it, being generous to prodigality. The title Sarkee is used for men of inferior rank, and is something ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... no moral highwaymen, no sentimental thieves and rat-catchers, no interesting villains, no amiable adulteresses. The Bible even goes farther than this, and is faithful to the foibles and imperfections of its favorite characters, and describes a rebellious Moses, a perjured David, a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... help, the queen!' which Hamlet hearing, and verily thinking that it was the king himself there concealed, he drew his sword and stabbed at the place where the voice came from, as he would have stabbed a rat that ran there, till the voice ceasing, he concluded the person to be dead. But when he dragged for the body, it was not the king, but Polonius, the old officious counsellor, that had planted himself as a spy behind the hangings. 'Oh me!' exclaimed the queen, 'what a ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of wild pig and, on occasions, village pig, a small form of cassowary, kangaroo, a small kind of wallaby, kangaroo rat, "iguana," an animal called gaivale (I could not find out what this is), various wild birds, fish, eels, mice, a large species of ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... good child," said the faery, "here you have a coach and horses, much handsomer than your sisters', to say the least of them; but as we have neither a postilion nor a coachman to take care of them, run quickly to the stable, where the rat-trap is placed, ...
— Cinderella • Henry W. Hewet
... room where no foe comes Unlesse it be a Weezle or a Rat (And those besiege your Larder or your Pantry), Whom the arm'd Foe ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... us rat-eaters and dog-eaters," they cried; "so long as ye hear a dog bark or a cat mew within the walls ye may know that the city holds out; when the last hour has come, we will with our own hands set fire to the houses and perish in the flames rather than suffer our homes to ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... children in their beds? So he turned round, and struck his sword upon the floor, and asked me whether I was one of them—'Who are you then?' and I—all my courage went away, and I answered, I was a poor rat-catcher. 'A rat-catcher, are you? Well then, Mr Rat-catcher, when you are killing rats, if you find a nest of young ones, don't you kill them too? Or do you leave them to grow, and become mischievous, eh?'—'I kill the young ones, of course,' replied I. 'Well, so do we Malignants whenever we ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... medic or engineer who stood there at bay those three invincible days, Bolsheozerki means deep snow, bitter cold, cheerless tents, whiz-bangs, high explosive, shrap, rat-tat-tat interminable, roar and crash, and zipp and pop of explosive bullet, with catch-as-catch-can at eats, arms lugged off with cases of ammunition, constant tension, that all ended up with luck to ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... I don't give my name, ma'am. My false friend, the rat, got me into a sad scrape once; and Rowley insists upon it that a duck destroyed me, which is all gammon, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... was a thing of nerves and passion now, all energy and muscle and concentrated purpose. He shook the man off like a rat, and the next moment burst ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... die. We have rifles. You know the narrow trails where men must creep, one by one. I, alone, Koolau, who was once a cowboy on Niihau, can hold the trail against a thousand men. Here is Kapalei, who was once a judge over men and a man with honour, but who is now a hunted rat, like you and me. Hear him. He ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... few cheap Oriental rugs carpeted the unpolished boards. The place was abominably dusty: the striped yellow curtains had lost half their rings and drooped askew from their soiled vallances. Across one of the wall-panels ran an ugly scar. A smell of rat pervaded the air. The present occupiers had no use for a room so obviously unsuitable to games of chance, as they understood chance: and I doubt if a servant entered it once a month. Gervase had ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... not amiss, ere ye're giv'n o'er. To try one desp'rate med'cine more; For where your case can be no worse, The desp'rat'st is the wisest course. Hudibras ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... 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 ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... up the broad-mouthed flue that opened above the range. This was the ominous 'signal' we had heard in answer to the footsteps. The dust was thick over everything, and the only signs of life were the rat-tracks on the floor. We stood still for a few moments, overwhelmed at this solution of the occult 'influence' that had so subtly acted on Annie's nerves, and filled me with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... each little Gradgrind having at five years old dissected the Great Bear, and driven Charles's Wain like a locomotive engine-driver. No little Gradgrind had ever associated a cow in a field with that famous cow with a crumpled horn who tossed the dog, who worried the cat, who killed the rat, who ate the malt, or with that more famous cow who swallowed Tom Thumb. It had never heard of those celebrities, and had only been introduced to a cow as a graminivorous, ruminating ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... but some day a bone will choke him;—his soul may creep under the mangy skin of a Pariah dog, and be kicked out of compounds by scullions; he may be condemned to the abominable offices of a crow at the burning ghauts, a jackal by the wells of Thuggee, or a rat in sewers; but he can never again be such a nuisance, such a sore offence to the minds and hearts of men, as when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... It was empty, but there was the sound of a scuffle outside; they ran to the window, but their interference was too late. Turk had shifted his hold, and, grasping the man by the throat, was shaking him as a terrier would a rat; and when, in obedience to Frank's voice, he loosened his hold, life was extinct. Not only was there a terrible wound in the throat of the robber, but his neck ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... man in the moon, Coming back too soon From the famous town of Norwich, Caught up the dish, Said, "It's just what I wish To hold my cold plum-porridge!" Gave the cow a rat-tat, Flung water on the cat, And sent him away like a rocket. Said, "O Moon there you are!" Got into her car, And went off with the spoon in ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... once. But he was only a rudimentary human being, and his brain power had slept so far. I showed him Caldecott's wonderful "House that Jack Built," and he gloated over that delightful villain of a dog; the cat and the rat he understood, but he knew nothing of the cow. I let him stare at the dog as long as he chose, and he chuckled like a magpie all the time. He proposed to remove the picture-book, and it was only with difficulty that I persuaded him to let me ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... their songs with the rommelpot, a musical instrument well known from Hals's pictures, and consisting of an earthenware pot, covered with parchment or bladder, through which a stick was moved up and down (plates 24 and 25). Rembrandt's etchings reproducing tramps and street-types, like his rat-killer, are no doubt so familiar to our readers that we need not recall them by means ...
— Rembrandt's Amsterdam • Frits Lugt
... wet as a rat! Tell me," he asked, looking at Dicksie, "about your trouble up at the bend. I know something about it. Are the men there to-night? Given up, have they? Too bad! Do open your jackets and try to dry yourselves, both of you, and I'll take a look at ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... competitor. They joined again, but Armstrong, having his doubts, resorted to foul play—kicking or "legging," as the localism stands. Indignantly, Lincoln drew him up again and shook him in mid-air as a terrier does a rat. The rowdies, seeing their champion bested, shouted for him to make a fight of it, and probably they would have "mixed in" and made a "fight for all" in another minute. But Jack had his doubts set at rest as to the prospect of overcoming a man who could hold him out and off at arm's length; ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... rising and falling. They are very brilliant, going up for a few seconds and then dying down. Sometimes a dozen are in the air at one time. There are the dull thuds of explosions and an occasional rat-tat-tat. I have seen nothing like it, but the nearest comparison would be an enormous ten-mile railway station in full swing at night, with signals winking, lamps waving, engines hissing and carriages bumping. It is a terrible place down yonder, ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to hunt, and never killed a rat, And isn't much on tricks or looks or birth—well, what of that? That might be said of lots of folks whom men call great and wise, As well as of that yellow dog that ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... it in the most determined manner, as if everything was settled. I felt like a rat in a trap, and Carter, watching from a corner, looked exactly like a cat. If he had taken his hand in its white glove and washed his face with it, I ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... determined onrush of the broad-built, implacable figure, were terrible to withstand. What was to be done against a man who didn't skate, but tore, who fell upon a ball as a terrier plunges, eyeless and intent, into a rat-hole? The personal safety of himself or others never occurred to Winn. He remembered nothing but the rules of the game. These he held in the back of his mind, with the ball in front ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... can dine at the London Tavern upon rat pate or jugged cat. But it would be impertinence to invite a satrap like yourself who has a whole dog in his larder—a dish of 50 francs—a dish for a king. Adieu, my dear Frederic. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wall, she sat down on the floor, Turk fashion. Choosing a 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. ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the brain of a Marsupial is extremely different from that of a Bird, Reptile, or Fish. A step higher in the scale, among the placental Mammals, the structure of the brain acquires a vast modification—not that it appears much altered externally, in a Rat or in a Rabbit, from what it is in a Marsupial—nor that the proportions of its parts are much changed, but an apparently new structure is found between the cerebral hemispheres, connecting them together, ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... your correspondence in the library," went on Saunders. "Most of it I've seen to. There are a few private letters I haven't opened. There's also a box with a rat, or something, inside it that came by the evening post. Very likely it's the six-toed albino. I didn't look, because I didn't want to mess up my things but I should gather from the way it's jumping ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... understands. I'll send for you in a day or two; then it will be all right." They shook hands. He was glad Farron showed him out through the corridor and not through the study, where, he knew, Mrs. Farron was still waiting like a fine, sleek cat at a rat-hole. ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... an oracle. As Dionysius, when he could no longer exercise his tyranny among men, turned schoolmaster, that he might exercise it among boys. Allow me but these orders, and your grandees, so well skilled in the baits and palates of men, shall turn rat-catchers. ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... maverick, with the Ramblin' Kid swaying uncertainly on her back, had appeared on the track for the two-mile run, the tout, his eyes like those of a harried rat, sneaked out of the crowd in front of the book-makers' booths and hurried toward the Santa Fe railroad yards. An hour later he slipped into an empty freight car—part of a train headed for the West—and Eagle Butte ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... following, in one year and in two campaigns, he brings us within sight of Vienna; we had made a clean sweep of them. We had gobbled down three armies one after another, and taken the conceit out of four Austrian generals; one of them, an old man who had white hair, had been roasted like a rat in the straw before Mantua. The kings were suing for mercy on their knees. Peace had been won. Could a mere mortal have done that? No. God helped him, that is certain. He distributed himself about like the ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... Old Buff, proud and dignified, sat like a king before the kitchen fire, while at his feet lay the body of the huge rat he had killed. It was the rat that had eaten the stockings, had gnawed the door, and had carried off the soap, afterward found in the walls. Old Buff was ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... think not, Ellen—would you? I'd rather err on the safe side, seems to me. Do let's be polite, at least! Yes, I'll knock," and a timid rat-tat-tat, made by a small kid-covered knuckle, announced the first visit of the present owner ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... Ye have entranc'd him fairly with your numbers! This minstrelsy of yours I must repay,— Thou art not yet the man to hold the devil fast!— With fairest shapes your spells around him cast, And plunge him in a sea of dreams! But that this charm be rent, the threshold passed, Tooth of rat the way must clear. I need not conjure long it seems, One rustles hitherward, and soon my voice will hear. The master of the rats and mice, Of flies and frogs, of bugs and lice, Commands thy presence; without fear Come forth and gnaw ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... you get by the lodge, Joe?" inquired Drysdale. Joe, be it known, had been forbidden the college for importing a sack of rats into the inner quadrangle, upon the turf of which a match at rat-killing had come off between the terriers of two gentlemen-commoners. This little event might have passed unnoticed, but that Drysdale had bought from Joe a dozen of the slaughtered rats, and nailed them on the doors of the four college tutors, three to ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... aspect was not improved by this shower. It had caused his hairy coat to cling to his form, producing a drowned-rat aspect which was not becoming; but a short run and some vigorous shakes ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... Home-growth, 'tis true, but rank as turpentine,— What would we with such skittle-plays at death % Say, must we watch these brawlers' brandished lathe, Or to their reeking wit our ears incline, Because all Castaly flowed crystalline In gentle Shakspeare's modulated breath! What! must our drama with the rat-pit vie, Nor the scene close while one is left to kill! Shall this be poetry % And thou—thou—man Of blood, thou cannibalic Caliban, What shall be said to thee?—a poet?—Fie! "An honourable murderer, ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... you, you don't wag that beautiful bushy tail which serves you for ornament. This reminds me that you are not like the dogs I used to know—the dogs that talked with their tails, caressed with their tongues, and were never over-clean or well-behaved. Where are they now—collies, rat-worrying terriers, hounds, spaniels, pointers, retrievers—dogs rough and dogs smooth; big brute boarhounds, St. Bernard's, mastiffs, nearly or quite as big as you are, but not so slender, silky-haired, and sharp-nosed, and without your refined expression of keenness without cunning. And after these ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... the frying-pan? Of course, I might. But it was all fire to me. To be caught at the end is at least no worse than to be caught at the beginning. Anyhow, it was my one chance, and I took it as unhesitatingly as a rat takes a leap into a trap to escape a terrier. Only—only, it was my luck that the trap wasn't set! The room was empty. I pushed open a glass door, and fell over an open trunk that ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... how you imagine un gnie rat,' said Phillips. 'Your conception is clear enough; why don't you write ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... homage; and at this time writing over to Bolingbroke, from Ireland, he says, "It is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, and not to die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Cats are generally considered rat and mouse destroyers. I dare say they are, though the two I once kept (I drowned them in the cistern) were more notorious as crockery destroyers than anything else. I thought, on the whole, that they exterminated more raw beef than rats and mice, so ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... now, we'll drop it right there," said his father, in a disgusted tone. "When you come to finding something to like in that rat, ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... side rose the ruins of a proud, dead past: a past beginning with the ruts of chariot-wheels graven on the rock-paved street. I thought, as I looked at the sordid little village of to-day, which had crawled into the very midst of the fortress, of some words I'd read last night: "a rat in the heart of ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... last hour come. But I was not going to die like a rat in a trap. I would rush out the door into the public corridor, and, if necessary, slay the guard and make one bold dash for safety. I drew my sword from its scabbard to have it in readiness in my hand for whatever might befall, pulled back the curtain, and came near running ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... must have lived there; a fact attested by the quantity of their dung, which, as in the case of the living hyaena, is of nearly the same composition as bone, and almost as durable. In the cave were found the remains of the ox, young elephant, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, horse, bear, wolf, hare, water-rat, and several birds. All the bones have the appearance of having been broken and gnawed by the teeth of the hyaenas; and they occur confusedly mixed in loam or mud, or dispersed through a crust of stalagmite ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... that saves these birds from instant condemnation is the delightful amount of rats, mice, moles, gophers and noxious insects that they annually consume. In view of the awful destructiveness of the accursed bubonic-plague-carrying rat, we are impelled to think long before placing in our killing list even the great horned owl, who really does levy a heavy tax on our upland game birds. As to the butcher bird, we feel that we ought to kill him, but in view of his record on ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... perfectly articulated, and gleamed through the crystalline amber as though its bony surfaces were encrusted with diamond dust. The bones were apparently those of a creature that in life had been half dwarf-ape and half giant rat. ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... who invaded Albania, and besieged the fortress of Belgrade. Their defeat might amuse with a triumph the vanity of Constantinople; but the more sagacious Michael, despairing of his arms, depended on the effects of a conspiracy; on the secret workings of a rat, who gnawed the bowstring ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... blackmen, like ourselves, should catch them and roast 'em and eat 'em."[FN88] "Thou sayest sooth," said the two others, "but by Allah, however that may be, none amongst us is weaker of wits than thou." "If ye do not believe me," said Bukhayt, "let us enter the tomb and I will rouse the rat for you; for I doubt not but that, when he saw the light and us making for the place, he ran up the date tree and hid there for fear of us." When Ghanim heard this, he said in himself, "O curstest of slaves! ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... leopardess, the liver of a forest rat, the tongue of a Baroto bird—these must I have to mix with thy blood to be drunk by thy man ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... to get a great punkin, and it turned into a gold hack, and she went off into the back shed and got the rat-trap, and it turned into two footmens,—and the ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... woodpecker flew to a maple limb, And drummed a tattoo that was fun for him, "No breakfast here! It's too hard for that." He said, as down on his tail he sat, "Just listen to this: rrrr rat-rat-tat." ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... whisky house in Loueyville, 'n' he holds the job down steady fur twenty years. The only time he quits pen-pushin' is when they race at Churchill Downs. From the first minute the meetin' opens till get-away day comes he's bright eyes at the rat hole. He don't add up no figgers fur nobody then. He just putters around the track. He's doped out as sort-a harmless ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... there was a rat in the nursery, and thus he forgot to tell her the wonderful news. It did not much matter, for Judy was only three and she would not have understood. But Punch was five; and he knew that going to England would be much nicer ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... "Rat-a-tat!" came a knock on the door of the hollow stump bungalow, where Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, lived in the woods with Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... companions. Mongan said it was on the banks of the Lame in Ulster, near his own palace; Forgoll said it was at Dubtar in Leinster. Forgoll, enraged at being contradicted by a mere layman, threatened to pronounce awful incantations against Mongan, which might put rat-hood on him, or anything. The end of it was that Mongan was given three days to prove his statement; if he should not have done so by that time, he and all his possessions were to become the property of ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... rat-tarriers, and chicken cocks, and tom-cats, and all them kind of things, till you couldn't rest, and you couldn't fetch nothing for him to bet on but he'd match you. He ketched a frog one day, and took him home, and said he cal'klated to edercate him; and so he never done nothing for ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... London between Piccadilly and West Kensington, and indeed the museum and library movement throughout the world, sprang from the elegant leisure of the gentlemen of taste. Theirs were the first libraries, the first houses of culture; by my rat-like raids into the Bladesover saloon I became, as it were, the last dwindled representative of such a man of letters as Swift. But now these things have escaped out of the Great House altogether, and taken on a strange independent ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... as you please, Miss Wartliz," she exclaimed. "But I am not going to tramp these streets all night. I don't want to end up in a nice little rat-ridden police cell. We don't have ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... strangers!" announced the mullah, as a man might say, "I smell a rat!" But he did not look at anybody in particular; he blinked ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... a small iron-cage, patterned something like a rat-trap. It contained a Rajputana parrakeet, not much larger than a robin, but possessor of a soul as fierce as that of Palladia, minus, however, the smoothing influence of chivalry. He had been born under the eaves of the scarlet palace in Jaipur (so his history ran); but the ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... providing good surface drainage, an excellent filtered water supply from the river in place of her old mosquito-breeding cisterns, and modern sewers in place of cesspools. She killed rats by the hundreds of thousands, rat-proofed her buildings, and thus, at one stroke, eliminated all fear of bubonic plague. She began to take interest in the public schools, and soon trebled their advantages. She concerned herself with the revision of repressive tax laws. She secured one of the best street railway systems ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... 'and there is another like that that the collier-boats can't stand. If you call out to a collier, "There's a rat in your chains" he'd drive his schooner ashore to ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... stones, dry as a board, his innocent heart long quiet, and all warm with sunshine. His long hind legs were stiff, his tiny forepaws clutched upon his breast, as if to leap; his poor life cut short upon that mountain by some unknown accident. But the kangaroo rat, it proved, was no such unknown animal; and my discovery ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Arriving at the mines, they found Morgan and Haight awaiting them, who were duly introduced to the party, the English expert looking at Haight with much the same expression with which a mastiff might regard a rat terrier. ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... the morning Holt found himself entering the village at a point opposite to that at which he had left it. He soon arrived at the house of his brother, who hardly knew him. He was wild-eyed, haggard, and gray as a rat. Almost incoherently, he related ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... on the pulpit stair. But his feelings would have been stranger still had he seen who sat immediately in the pew behind him, watching him like a cat watching a mouse, or rather like a half grown kitten watching a rat, for she was a little frightened at him, even while resolved to have him. But how could she doubt her final success, when her plans were already affording her so much more than she had expected? Who ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... 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
... such large animals as the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, horse, tiger, bear, urus (Bos primi-genius) an unknown animal of the size of a wolf, and three species of deer. The smaller animals included the rabbit, water-rat, mouse, raven, pigeon, lark and a small type of duck. Everything was broken into small pieces so that no single skull was found entire and it was, of course, impossible to obtain anything like a complete skeleton. From the fact ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... I ever lived at all? My life is a very good life, Sir. I am insured at the Pelican, Sir. I am threescore years and six,—six; mark me, Sir: but I can play Polonius, which, I believe, few of your corre—correspondents can do, Sir. I suspect tricks, Sir; I smell a rat: I do, I do. You would cog the die upon us: you would, you would, Sir. But I will forestall you, Sir. You would be deriving me from William the Conqueror, with a murrain to you. It is no such thing, Sir. The town shall know better, Sir. They ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was hissed by all present when it brought into the world a mere mouse. The people in the pit were not philosophers. Those who hissed should have admired. It was as fine for the mountain to give birth to a mouse, as for the mouse to give birth to a mountain. A rock which produces a rat is a very prodigious thing; and never has the world seen anything approaching this miracle. All the globes of the universe could not call a fly into existence. Where the vulgar laugh, the philosopher admires; and he laughs where the vulgar open their ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... lighted there, whispering, with very spread wings, their message, and presently would fly off again. By some sort of muscular contraction he could wiggle these ears at will, and would do so for a penny or a whistle, and upon one occasion for his brother Rudolph's dead rat, so devised as to dangle from string and window before the unhappy passer-by. They were quivering now, these ears, but because the entire little face was twitching back ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... rate after passing the Welsh Harp. Overhaul the fellow we could not, until on the outskirts of St. Albans, when he deliberately slowed up, as though to allow us to pass. Mr. Furneaux flew at him like a terrier grappling a rat, but the man made no resistance. He is undoubtedly a Chinaman, though attired in a chauffeur's livery, and he could handle a car in first-rate style, too. His pidgin English was difficult to understand, ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... and she was a rat, And down in one hole they did dwell; And both were as black as a witch's cat, And they loved ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... he had been, the deviltry of him, the lust of life he had had, the greatness of his possessions and how he had foregone all this beauty to be hammered into the defilement of the trenches like a rat, cornered in a sewer. ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... the dead, which they call Panoi. Only a few years ago a woman was living who professed to have been down there. Her object had been to visit her brother, who had recently died. To do this she perfumed herself with water in which a dead rat had been steeped, so as to give herself a death-like smell. She then pulled up a bird's nest and descended through the hole thus made. Her brother, whom of course she found, cautioned her to eat nothing, and by taking his advice ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... suspected. I sent her a letter of thanks by her brother, and a little present for her and one for the child. The brother was to give them to her as if from himself, so that the husband should not smell a rat, but of course to make her understand who they ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... Drive, it struck me that Hawkins was hurrying, but the balmy air, the sunshine, and the beautiful sweep of the river filled my mind with infinite peace, and it was not until we had descended to the little dock that I smelled anything suggestive of rat. ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... frightened," said the witch to the policeman. "We'll soon get you out, and the water's so shallow you can't sink. Talking of sinking, Richard, there's a question that puzzles me rather. If a rat got on to a submarine, how would it behave? A submarine, you see, is a sinking ship, and rats pride themselves so on knowing ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... had always loathed one another. I think when I hit him I wanted to kill him. I am not, in any way, sorry, except that suddenly I do not want to die. You are the only person in the world for whom I care; you will understand. I have not disgraced the name; it was killing a rat. I think that you had better not come to see me. I face it better alone. We have gone along well together, you and I. I send ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... nest he had found in the lightning-shattered top of the redwood, and she discovered a wood-rat's nest which he had not seen before. Next they took the old wood-road and came out on the dozen acres of clearing where the wine grapes grew in the wine-colored volcanic soil. Then they followed the cow-path through more woods and thickets and scattered glades, and dropped ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... you could reach them if you did, Chicken Little. See, you'd have to go clear out on the ends of the branches. Perhaps if we'd go up on the hill above—it's pretty steep here—we could reach some. It will be hard to get through—there's a perfect rat's nest ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... gentle rat-tat-tat on the door. It was so gentle that Luther thought his ears were deceiving him, for while he stopped reading, he made no motion to rise, but sat listening. Again they came, three polite taps, seeming to say, "I should like to get in, ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... convulsion of the entire fabric of the big dirigible—as if a giant hand from without were shaking her like a puppy shakes a rat. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... don't recommend you to do that, for when I'm misinformed I'm as dangerous as a poisoned rat. I don't mean to ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... added Napoleon. "But before leaving Paris I will give you some wholesome advice; bridle both your tongue and your pen a little better than you have done of late. I know that you will not shrink from any treachery, and that you are the first rat that will desert the sinking ship; but consider what you are doing. The ship is not yet in danger, and, spreading her sails, she will move proudly ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... Toffy, you know, and no flies, CHARLIE; swim with the Swells, and all that, But I'm blowed if this bunkum don't make me inclined to turn Radical rat. "Riparian Rights," too! Oh Scissors! They'd block the Backwaters and Broads, Because me and my pals likes a lark! Serve 'em right if old BURNS ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... rebuke Michael, when "rat-tat" went the iron ring that hung at the door. Some one was knocking. They looked out of the window; a man had come on horseback, and was fastening his horse. They opened the door, and the servant who had been with ...
— What Men Live By and Other Tales • Leo Tolstoy
... Mousehunt is a little animal of the species of weasel; it has a very slender body, about the length of a rat, with a long hairy tail, bushy at the end; the back is of a reddish-brown colour, the hair long and smooth; the belly is white, as are also its feet; it runs very swiftly, swaying its body as it moves ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... 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 |
