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More "Rat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thou knowest not of. There is little to do before I am the richest man in Christendom. Why, dull rogue, thou hast set me free!' He looked up exulting from his work at the man's throat to shout this word. 'But if it is not true, Bertran'—he shook him like a rat—'if it is not true, I return, O Bertran, and tear this false gullet out of its case, and with thy speckled heart feed the crows of Perigord.' Bertran had foam on his lips, but Richard showed him no mercy. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... the howitzers were lobbing 60-pound shells into the German Askaris, the Nigerians were advancing by sharp rushes and the rat-tat of the machine guns and the crackle of musketry broke very faintly. Airplanes sailed above us. A message came from the Nigerians, "We are going to take the enemy's trenches; please lift gunfire." The order was passed along, ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... 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 ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... torpedo boat on guard slept well. We steamed past its small light. Inside lay a dark silhouette. That must be a warship. We recognized the silhouette dead sure. That was the Russian cruiser Jemtchud. There it lay, there it slept like a rat, no watch to be seen. They made it easy for us. Because of the narrowness of the harbor we had to keep close; we fired the first torpedo at four ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... wider than Tavistock Street. We will seek them to-day, Asticot de mon coeur; I'll be Don Quixote and you'll be my Sancho, and we'll go again in quest of adventures." He laughed aloud, and shook me like a little rat. "Cela te tape dans l'oeil, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... kind of peeked, Wrenn. Old Goglefogle been lighting into you? Say, I ought to have told you first. I forgot it. The old rat, he's been planning to stick the knife into you all the while. 'Bout two weeks ago me and him had a couple of cocktails at Mouquin's. You know how chummy he always gets after a couple of smiles. ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... paths had crossed and re-crossed each other, that the dog had a hard task to retain any hold on the track he followed. But he kept on his way, though the cold pierced him to the bone, and the jagged ice cut his feet, and the hunger in his body gnawed like a rat's teeth. He kept on his way, a poor gaunt, shivering thing, and by long patience traced the steps he loved into the very heart of the burgh and up to the ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... answer like the squeaking of a rat among the hay, and I thought, "Bless me, the boy's smothered!" But then again I minded that in his times of distress, after a fight or when he had been in some ploy for which he dared not face his father, Alec had ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... watching were of the size of a rabbit, with hair like that of a rat, the colour being of a light red, resembling the squirrel. Their tails, however, instead of curling over, stood straight up over their backs and seemed formed for the express purpose of wagging, which they did to a prodigious ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... this west side the Confederate officers and soldiers were sheltered in the bomb-proof safe during bombardment. On the east side of the fort, facing Morris island, opposite Fort Wagner, there was another apartment called the "Rat-hole" in ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer
... pint, I rose my ole head, an looked straight afore me, an thar, clar ef I didn't fine myself shut in,—reglar prison,—mind I tell you,—an all round me a reglar cumferince ob water an rock, widout any way ob scape. Tell you what, if dar ebber was a ole rat in a trap, I ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... one day missing for several hours. His head—a peculiarly venerable and striking object—was at last discovered just above the grass at some distance from the house. On examination he was found comfortably seated in a disused drain, in company with a silver spoon and a dead rat. On being removed from this locality he howled dismally ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... the lady was a person of unblemished reputation, and that she was placed in a false position through no fault of her own. In plain English, she was divorced. Ah, my dear (to speak in the vivid language of the people), do you smell a rat? ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... file. And this coarse, ugly beast had held her in the spell of love. She had clung to him, kissed him in rapture and yielded herself to him soul and body. And he had gripped her delicate throat and choked her into insensibility, dropping her limp form from his hands like a strangled rat. She could remember the half-conscious moment that preceded the total darkness as she felt ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... surprising that Charles Darwin's energies were directed towards athletic amusements and sport, to such an extent, that even his kind and sagacious father could be exasperated into telling him that "he cared for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching." (I. p. 32.) It would be unfair to expect even the wisest of fathers to have foreseen that the shooting and the rat-catching, as training in the ways of quick observation and in physical endurance, ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of the suggestion nearly paralysed me. To this awful fate the creature within my power had condemned my Princess. I trembled in the ferocity of my rage. As a terrier shakes a rat I shook Issus, ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... performed this function in a kind of solitary rage. She banged the vessels, slammed the stove-eyes on and off, flung the stove-wood about, and kept up a snarling animadversion upon every topic that drifted through her kinky head. She called the kitchen a rat-hole, stated the Captain must be as mean as the devil to live as long as he did, complained that no one ever paid any attention to her, that she might as well be a stray cat, and ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... donkey-cart, broken a gate, and finally, on arriving at the place of her birth, had, according to the farmer, "fired the divil's pelt of a kick into her own mother's stomach". Moreover, she "hadn't as much sound skin on her as would bait a rat-trap"—I here quote Mr. Trinder—and she had ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... machine gun "rat-tat-tat-tated" close to us, and three rockets, like a flight of startled birds, rose suddenly together on ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... Ickleheimer an' Company to be erected in Washington. Another Vanderbilt weddin'. That sounds like goluf, but it ain't. Newport society livin' in Mrs. Potther Pammer's cellar. Green-goods men declare f'r honest money. Anson in foorth place some more. Pianny tuners f'r McKinley. Li Hung Chang smells a rat. Abner McKinley supports th' goold standard. Wait a minyit. Here it is: 'Goluf in gay attire.' Let me see. H'm. 'Foozled his aproach,'—nasty thing. 'Topped th' ball.' 'Three up an' two to play.' Ah, here's the scoor. 'Among those ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... Guibert was not trusted, so that all had to be done out of his sight; and on the first day Berenger was obliged to make the exploration alone, since Humfrey was forced to engross Guibert in some occupation out of sight, and Philip had refused to have anything to do with it, or be like a rat routing in ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... doctor; "as to the other mammalia, their temperature is a trifle higher than that of man. The horse is about the same, as well as the hare, the elephant, the porpoise, the tiger; but the cat, the squirrel, the rat, panther, sheep, ox, dog, monkey, goat, reach 103 degrees; and the warmest of all, the pig, goes ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... wa'n't more 'n six weeks old,—helpless little critter as ever you seen. Wall, all to oncet the mother heerd the baby cryin', but bein' busy with them clo'es she didn't mind much. The baby kep' cryin' 'nd cryin', 'nd at last the mother come back into the house, 'nd there she found a big rat gnawin' at one uv the baby's ears,—had e't it nearly off! There lay that helpless little innocent, cryin' 'nd writhin', 'nd there sat that rat with his long tail, nippin' 'nd chewin' at one uv them tiny coral ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... trap!" he jeered at himself. "Like a rat in a trap, Ned Trent! The fates are drawing around you close. You need just one little thing, and you cannot get it. Bribery is useless! Force is useless! Craft is useless! This afternoon I thought I saw another way. What I could get no other way I might get from ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... 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 fangs cut deeply into the loose skin of his chest. ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... as a terrier shakes a rat, and seemed to shake things off him—among others a revolver which described a circle in the air and fell heavily on the ground, where ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... ha' mercy!" exclaimed Crevecoeur, "this is not only not being content with venturing into the lion's den, but thrusting his head into his very jaws.—Nothing less than the very bottom of the rat trap would ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... gluttonous adjutant-bird; 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 he was Asirvadam ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Wet is now caged like a rat, he's fairly in a box, Around him grouped are Clements, ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... keen face of Seymour Michael peered nervously, restlessly from side to side. He was distinctly suggestive of a rat in a trap. And beyond him, in the gloom of the old arras-hung hall, a third man, seemingly standing guard over Seymour Michael, for he was not looking into the room but watching every movement made by the General—tall man, dark, ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... their testicles, which he had preserved of this one, and gave my comrade, remarking that they were intended for some amateur or other, and he could do little with them. The muskrat is not larger than the common rat. It has gray hair, and the fleece is sometimes sold with other peltries, but it is not worth much, although it has some odor. It was about noon when we were set across the creek in a canoe. We proceeded thence ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... "Neither Madam; he was a Wine Merchant." "Aye, I knew he was in some such low way—He broke did not he?" "I beleive not Ma'am." "Did not he abscond?" "I never heard that he did." "At least he died insolvent?" "I was never told so before." "Why, was not your FATHER as poor as a Rat" "I fancy not." "Was not he in the Kings Bench once?" "I never saw him there." She gave me SUCH a look, and turned away in a great passion; while I was half delighted with myself for my impertinence, and half afraid of being thought too saucy. As Lady Greville was extremely angry with me, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... and you keep on with the first feller, and pretty soon he asks you to hold up a minute, he wants to go back and get a cigar; and he goes round the corner, and you hold up, and hold up, and in about a half an hour, or may be less time, you begin to smell a rat, and you go for a policeman, and the next morning you find your name in the papers, 'One more unfortunate!' You look out for 'em, young feller! Wish I had let that one go on till he done something so I could handed him ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... rutting 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 when the ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... up the steps, and my friend let the brass knocker drop just once, for only Americans give a rat-a-tat-tat, and the door was opened by a white-whiskered butler, who took our cards and ushered us into the library. My heart beat a trifle fast as I took inventory of the room; for I never before had called on a man who was believed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... know the worst, I pulled up the horse. I fetched Bose, unwilling, out by the ears. He was a good dog at anything from a rat to a man, but he slunk away that night into the hedge, and lay there, his head between his paws, whining and howling. I walked straight up to the figure, still standing by the horse's head. As I walked, the figure turned, and I saw Harriet's face as plainly ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... her husband's house, and his close intercourse with Miss Ashton; and you may tell her that all the country talks of a visit from the Marquis of A——, as it is supposed, to make up the match betwixt Ravenswood and her daughter. I should like to hear what she says to all this; for, rat me! if I have any idea of starting for the plate at all if Ravenswood is to win the race, and he has ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... from them; but if you write rejoinders they have a contributor working for them for nothing, and one whose writing will be much more acceptable to their readers than any that comes from their own anonymous scribes. It is very disagreeable to be worried like a rat by a dog; but why should you go into the kennel and unnecessarily put yourself in the way of it?" The Doctor had said this more than once to clerical friends who were burning with indignation at something ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... the bar to show that he was of the same breed. He was no longer the athlete, whom "prize fighting" had inculcated with principles of manliness and fair play as well as a strong body. All that, as I had seen often before, was a pitiful lie. He was rat-eyed and soft-handed. His skin had the pastiness that comes of more exposure to the glare of vile dance halls than the sunlight of day. His black hair was slicked down; he was faultlessly tailored and his shoes had those high, bulging toes which ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... and hide, for if they noted that you had me for a passenger they might smell a rat, but would think nothing of seeing you three, for ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... he said earnestly. "Promise me that you won't. I am going to die, and, like a poisoned rat, I wish to ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... a man walked into a shipping office on the East Side, and inquired for the Manager of the Line. He had kindly blue eyes, a stub nose, and a mouth that shut to like a rat-trap, and stayed shut. Under his chin hung a pair of half-moon whiskers which framed his weather-beaten face as a ...
— A List To Starboard - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... started for camp laden with their spoils, Tom stepped softly out of a nearby thicket, licking his chops and apparently thinking of the delicate lunch of fat tree-rat he ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... much effort, losing sanity and control and futilely trying to compensate for the loss by excess of physical endeavor. He knew only the blind desire to destroy, shook Joe in the clinches as a terrier might a rat, strained and struggled for freedom of body and arms, and all the while Joe calmly clutched and held on. The referee worked manfully and fairly to separate them. Perspiration ran down his face. It took all his ...
— The Game • Jack London
... refinements. She did not like to dwell upon anything that was painful or even sordid; and when memory persisted in dragging before her reluctant eyes the dead body of any particularly hateful scene in her past, as a cat will sometimes obstinately lay before its master a rat it has mangled, she was in the habit of dulling her sensibility by drinking a little absinthe in which some chlorodyne had ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... as he did the night Hancock was beat, and he had to have the doctor to give him something to quiet him (the time he wanted me to go right down town and buy a hundred rat traps, but the doctor said never mind, I needn't go). I took him home and Ma soaked his feet, and give him some ginger tea, and while I was gone after the doctor he asked Ma if she ever saw ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... bonds and mumbled something through the gag in his mouth, but Tom couldn't understand what he was trying to say. Mrs. Hill just looked at the planter with wide, frightened eyes. The cadet whirled around angrily. "Why, you dirty little space rat!" ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... It's just a bit of nonsense—nothing that matters. I want him to lend me his bulldog for a rat-fight at my club to-morrow. I've made a bet that he'll kill a hundred in two minutes. And with that I ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... yourselves. I don't care, however, whether you believe me or not. The fact remains that I have eaten one fried pyramid and countless stewed icicles, and the stewed icicles were finer than any diamond-back rat Confucius ever had served ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... Throne of state is seen She whom all Hearts own for their Queen. Three Pages are in waiting by; He with the umbrella is her Spy, To spy out rogueries in the dark, And smell a rat as you ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... made it very comfortable for herself in a hole in a tree. It was safe and dry, and stayed warm the greater part of the night because the sun shone on the entrance all day long. Once, early in the morning, she had heard a woodpecker rat-a-tat-tatting on the bark of the trunk, and had lost no time getting away. The drumming of a woodpecker is as terrifying to a little insect in the bark of a tree as the breaking open of our shutters by a burglar would be ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... only part of it and I suppose it took all your time since to perfect and complete it. You gave yourself away when you experimented on young Ladd. I was a track man myself in my college days and when I saw an account of his running, I smelt a rat, so I came back and watched him. As soon as I saw him crush and swallow a capsule just as the gun was fired, I was sure, and got hold of him. He was pretty stubborn, but he finally told me what name you were running under now, and the rest ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... who would never rat on him while their police records remained in Mike's safe and they could count on him ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long
... about the room; then two heavy objects fell. Beppo crept up. "Mary Virgin, he's killing birds," he said, in an awed whisper, and picked up two owls with wagging heads. The recesses of the chimney were still very lively. "Eh, there he is again," said the old sweep. "What now?" Down came a rat, squeaking for its life, then three in succession, very silent because their necks were wrung. "This is better than a cat any day of the seven," said Sor Beppo. "What a diamond of a poet! He should be crowned with laurel-twigs if I were ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... "you mustn't think worse of me than I deserve. I wouldn't have the heart to take an eye out of a rat itself; I got half a dozen of them from the butcher, and only used ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... 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, if ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... a rat bites at any cheese, from Gloucester to Parmasan, and you can easily scrape up a bit of some sort. Talking of the House, do you see, by the paper, that the civic senator, Alderman W—, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that moment Gladwin made a quick, slight signal. Immediately from the passage with out came the sound of grounding arms, and the rat-tat of a drum. Pontiac stood rigid, as one turned to stone. Then after a moment's deathly silence he ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... Petite-Aurelie, to distinguish her from one of her rivals far less clever than herself, belongs to the highest class of those women whose social utility cannot be questioned by the prefect of the Seine, nor by those who are interested in the welfare of the city of Paris. Certainly the Rat, accused of demolishing fortunes which frequently never existed, might better be compared to a beaver. Without the Aspasias of the Notre-Dame de Lorette quarter, far fewer houses would be built in Paris. Pioneers in fresh stucco, they have gone, towed by ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... is," he said, "and I earned it myself and so I ain't poking it down any rat-hole without being condemned sure that I'll be able to pull it all back again with just as much more sticking to it. That wouldn't be sooavable—and from what you know of ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... bounding over the terrace to follow her as she stepped on to the towing path; and together they strolled by the river in the fresh morning air, Toni gazing half-absently towards the distant hills, Jock keeping one eye and ear anxiously cocked in anticipation of any unwary rat who should show himself upon ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... be praised!" he exclaimed as he recognized Guy. "I thought that you were drowned like a rat, Master Guy; and though Tom here told us that you could swim well, I never thought to see ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... gone?" he questioned Noemi. "The window is open; a rat might get in while I was asleep. Don't you see a rat about?" It is a constant delusion of typhus patients ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... "Say a rat, rather, George. Don't you know they are right? Would not I do the same if she were my girl, knowing you as ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... breed'—ho! yes, I should think so. Game cocks! Fighting cocks! Oh, you old rat! You'll be a dry nurse to a burro, and keep a hospital for infirm puppies, but you will fight game cocks. Oh, Lord! Why, Sarria, this is as good a grind as I ever heard. There's the Spanish ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... collocatur Piscina seu Lavacrum in quo manus lavantur.—Durandi Rat. de Ecclesia, &c. In ancient church contracts the term Lavatorie was sometimes used for the Piscina, as in that for Catterick Church. In the Roman Missal subsequent to the Tridentine council the word Sacrarium ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... home like a drowned rat, And told his old mother what he had been at. With butter-milk, bowl, and a terrible fall, O, if this be called love, may the ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... being interrupted by a thundering rat-tat-tat at the front door, followed by a pealing at the bell, which indicated that the visitor was manfully following the printed injunction to "Ring also." The door was opened and a man's voice was heard in the hall-a loud, confident voice, at the sound ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... the playing of his seemingly unbeatable hand and after the haunting and elusive odor of eau de rodent had become plainly perceptible all over the ship, he began, as the saying goes, to smell a rat himself, and straightway declined to make good his remaining losses, amounting to quite a tidy amount. Following this there were high words, meaning by that low ones, and accusations and recriminations, and at eventide when the sunset was a welter of purple and gold, ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... a secret path, veined with clumsy roots, shadowed with the thick bush of many a clustering parasite, and echoing sometimes beneath from the hollowed shelter of coot or water-rat. Lilies floated in circles about the ponds, like the crowns of sunken queens, and sometimes a bird broke the ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... 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 busts ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... Uncle Remus, in a soothing tone, "I'll des snatch down yo' pa buggy umbrell' fum up dar in de cornder, des lak I bin a-doin', en I'll take'n take you und' my arm en set you down on Miss Sally h'a'th des ez dry en ez wom ez a rat'-nes' inside ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... name Trappist is no rat-trap commoner. Always of the elect, and better known as Port-Salut or Port du Salut from the original home of the Trappist monks in their chief French abbey, it is also set apart from the ordinary Canadians under the name of Oka, from the Trappist ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... we fought in a single year—he brought us in sight of Vienna. It was just a clean sweep. We had eaten up three different armies in succession, and had wiped out four Austrian generals; one of them—a white-haired old chap—was burned alive at Mantua like a rat in a straw mattress. We had conquered peace, and kings were begging, on their knees, for mercy. Could a man have done all that alone? Never! He had the help of God; that's certain! He divided himself up like the five loaves of bread ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... object may be a trifle, but the condition of the subject is most important. Turn a man out with his digestion in perfect order, with the spring in the air and in his veins, and he will cheer anything, any Lewis, Lord Liverpool, dog, cat, or rat who may cross his path. Not that this is intended as a sufficient explanation of the Bourbon reception. Far from it; but it does mitigate it a trifle. At eleven o'clock in the forenoon two troops of the Oxford Blues drew up at Kilburn ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... I said, to carry them into the other room, where there was a little shelf with a curtain in front on purpose for them, as we only kept our nicest books in the drawing-room, when this rat-a-tat knock came ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... wet as a drowned rat!" went on the motherly woman. "What on earth started you out in ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... 'A water-rat from off the bank Plunged in the stream. With idle care, Downlooking through the sedges rank, I saw your ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... quietly re-loading his gun, when he heard a shout from one of his attendants, and, looking up, he saw the lion springing upon him. It caught him by the shoulder, and shook him as a dog shakes a rat. The shaking seemed to deprive him of his sense of feeling, and he felt neither pain nor alarm, though he knew quite well what was happening. The lion growled all the while, and placed his heavy foot upon the doctor's head. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... drunk; avoid him: th' argument Is fearful, when churchmen stagger in 't. Look you, six grey rats that have lost their tails Crawl upon the pillow; send for a rat-catcher: I 'll do a miracle, I 'll free the court From all ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... notice but one more of the early Boston editors, who seems to have been an odd fish—somewhat witty, but, to use a homely proverb, 'as rough as a rat-catcher's dog.' He first established the Boston Weekly Rehearsal, in 1731, and afterward the Boston Evening Post. His name was Thomas Fleet. Massachusetts was then a slaveholding country, and Fleet owned several negroes, two of whom he instructed in the art of printing. Their ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the farmer, "I cordially distaste that dirty rat; he is the worm that eats my bones; but, you never shall marry him; ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... of water-fowl; the fore feet supply the place of hands, like those of the squirrel. The Beaver has two kinds of hair, of a light brown color, one long and coarse, the other short and silky. The teeth resemble those of a rat or squirrel, but are longer, and admirably adapted for cutting timber or stripping ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... to me to quit," he muttered. "I'd be a blooming jackass to waste any more time here. I'll have to work it naturally, though, or Lynch will smell a rat." ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... copyists? . . . Whatsoever questions I may put to you in my letters, dearest, I pray you to answer them. I am sure that you need me, that I can be of use to you; and, since that is so, I must not allow myself to be distracted by any trifle. Even if I be likened to a rat, I do not care, provided that that particular rat be wanted by you, and be of use in the world, and be retained in its position, and receive its reward. But ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... he wore round his neck, and which glittered in the sun. This plate proved his death; for, according to Gun-Deck, he himself shot it through the middle, and the ball entered the wearer's heart. It was a rat-killing war, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... in a few words an unconvincing summary of a long and complicated story—one that I detest telling. However, I could not permit you to sit with me at the directors' table of this bank without knowing who I am, what I am, and why I have run that rat into his hole. Colonel Nelson spoke the truth when he said this was purely a personal matter between us. It is so purely personal that I was willing to spare humiliation to his father—leave Old Bell in control of his bank and end our fight—if ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... Henry was a great electioneerer, Burrowing for boroughs like a rat or rabbit. But county contests cost him rather dearer, Because the neighbouring Scotch Earl of Giftgabbit Had English influence, in the self-same sphere here; His son, the Honourable Dick Dicedrabbit, Was member for ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the next morning the whole Leon household was roused by a thunderous double rat-tat at the door. Addie was even heard to scream. A housemaid knocked at Raphael's door and pushed a telegram under it. Raphael jumped out of bed and read: "Third of column more matter ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... fellow to himself, "if I could find that red-apple barrel in the dark. But then I couldn't tell the red ones from the streakedy ones. But either of 'em would do. I guess I won't try, though, for I might put my hand on a rat. They run about when it's dark. I hope they won't come in this corner. But there's nothin' for 'em to eat in this corner but me, and they ain't lions. I wonder if they'll come down after more cider when that's all drunk up. If they do, I guess ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... control and observation turret of the Star-Streak, Molo and his sister Meka, Venza, Anita and myself. Unobtrusively squatting on the floor was a small, gray, rat-faced fellow, put there, weapon in hand, to watch us. He was a ruffian from the underworld of Grebhar, a member ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... snow, at the base of which they stood shoulder high in their mud cellars. Ten yards to the rear of them was what looked like a newly made grave reverently covered with pine boughs. Through these a rat-faced young man, with the receivers of a telephone clamped to his ears, ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... as silently as a snowy owl flies home in the twilight. A subtle something, the influence of a presence, remained, which mingled strangely with the odours of the clover in the neuk, and the sour night-smell of the byre. Again there was a perfect silence. Without, a corncrake ground monotonously. A rat scurried along the rafter. Ebie in the silence and the darkness had almost persuaded himself that he had been dreaming, when his foot clattered against something which fell over on the cobble-stones that ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... fallen, but the Pomeranian, which had leaped into the hold after him, yelping like a terrier at a rat hunt, ran between his legs and ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... dat holler tree, he did, like a man maulin' rails, twel bimeby, atter he done got de tree mos' cut thoo, he stop fer ter ketch his bref, en he seed Mr. Buzzard laughin' behime his back, he did, en right den en dar, widout gwine enny fudder, Brer Fox, he smelt a rat. But Mr. Buzzard, he keep ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... them. Which was just exactly what was wrong with the computer's logic. In avoiding the traps, it also avoided the best way to hit the enemy. A weak point is weak, no matter how well it may be booby-trapped. In baiting a rat trap, you have to use real cheese because an ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... bowing and smiling, a sneer is on his face. And when he speaks to the horse his voice is harsh and mean. He holds an unlighted cigar in his mouth as a terrier might hold a loathed rat; working the muscles of his lips at times viciously but saying nothing. The soft, black hat of his youthful days is replaced by a high, stiff, squarely sawed felt hat which he imagines gives him great dignity. His clothes have become so painfully scrupulous in their exact conformation ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... The trader was lean, rat-eyed, and of a vicious temper. Comparatively, the worst horse in his string was a gentleman. Horse-trading and whiskey go arm-in-arm, accompanied by their copartners, profanity and tobacco-chewing. In the right hand of the horse-trader is guile and in his left hand is trickery. ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... harrier, as it lay on a slab of flagstone. Hercus called her off as she put her nose too closely to the bird. But Selta was following her instincts; for, in turning the bird with her nose, she disturbed a small rat which was coolly making its meal there. I ran to examine the damage done to the hawk (for I was anxious to give the bird uninjured to Mr. Drever), while Willie followed the dog into the crevice where she had chased the rat. I found the harrier was not much damaged; a few ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... had reached an angle of the road where a few withered tree branches alone separated them from the others. They perceived the brown body of the carriage, half open like a huge rat-trap, and beside it the forbidding faces of their would-be captors. Trenck launched these words through the intervening screen ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... to me of a bunk-house on an Arizona range. The time was evening. A half-dozen cowboys were sprawled out on the beds smoking, and three more were playing poker with the Chinese cook. A misguided rat darted out from under one of the beds and made for the empty fireplace. He finished his journey in smoke. Then the four who had shot slipped their guns back into their holsters and resumed their cigarettes and ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... the country, the electric wires passed through a double wall. They were separated from each other and well covered with insulation, but they were not within an iron pipe, as is now required in many cities. The current was alternating. One night when the lights were out a rat in the wall gnawed through the insulation of the wire and also gnawed clear through one of the wires. Did he get a shock? The next morning, the woman of the house wanted to use the electric iron in the kitchen and it would not work. The kitchen had in ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... 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 ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... remember now. Nervy little rat! It's a wonder I remember anything that happened that night. We were pretty well pickled. Oh, ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... it," said the Ranees. Then the nurse took the hundred and one little innocent children—the hundred little boys and the one little girl—and threw them behind the palace on the dust-heap, close to some large rat-holes; and after that, she and the twelve Ranees placed a very large stone in each of the babies' cradles, and said to Guzra Bai, "Oh, you evil witch in disguise, do not hope any longer to impose by your arts on the Rajah's credulity. ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... you see, Doc, now you say so yourself, and at school you gave me the laugh. That fool Laskowski, so you thought, he'll never get beyond pounding sand in a rat-hole. Have I come up a bit in your eyes? How's that, old boy? Shake hands. Pretty damned long since we have met! (He extends his hand to PAUL, who does not seem ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... unwashed get an idea into their low brows, and you can't tell where it may lead them. Even a rat fights, in its last corner. These human rats of ours have been getting a bit nasty of late. True, they swallowed the Limited Franchise Bill, three years ago, with only a little futile protest, so that now we've got them politically hamstrung. True, there's ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... rat-faced man the path seemed but a wavering line in the wavering mist. His hand gripped the boy's shoulder, grateful for something solid to hang on to. And gripped it the harder when Carette skipped past them and disappeared along that ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... stopped, lifted a rat from his shoulder, placed it on his breast, like a man who arranged his necktie, clicked his tongue against his teeth, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the impetuous Cow with crumpled horn, Whereon the exacerbating hound was torn, Who bayed the feline slaughter-beast that slew The Rat predaceous, whose keen fangs ran through The textile fibers that involved the grain That lay in Hans' ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... lad, with the desperation of a cornered rat. "But I got a right to live. And I've lived worse'n a dorg on this bloody schooner. I'm fair striped an' bruised wi' boots an' knuckles an' ends o' rope. I'd 'ave chucked myself over long ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... (Euphorbia helioscopia), and wolfs-thistle (Carlina acaulis). The mouse has given us numerous names, such as mouse-ear (Hieracium pilosella), mouse-grass (Aira caryophyllea), mouse-ear scorpion-grass (Myosotis palustris), mouse-tail (Myosurus minimus), and mouse-pea. The term rat-tail has been applied to several plants having a tail-like inflorescence, such as the Plantago lanceolata ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... Mr. Noggin, with Mr. Chrome, who had a new flag, walked out upon the parade-ground. The musicians struck up Yankee-Doodle. How it stirred the hearts of everybody,—the sharp, shrill notes of the fife,—the roll, the rattle, and the rat-a-tat-tat of the drum, and the clanging of the bell, and the sight of that flag, its crimson folds and fadeless stars waving in the evening breeze! Never had it looked so beautiful. The little boys swung their caps and cheered, the women waved their handkerchiefs, and the ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... proved wholly satisfactory as a means of demonstrating its value. It has since been applied by means of mechanisms especially adapted to the structure and activities of the organisms, to the study of the behavior of the crow, pig, rat, and ringdove (Yerkes, 1914; Coburn and Yerkes, 1915; Yerkes and Coburn, 1915). The method has also been applied with most gratifying results to the study of the characteristics of ideational behavior in human defectives,—children, and adults,—and in subjects afflicted ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... he accepts it as hazard presents it to him. Among his finds there are little creatures, such as the Shrew-mouse; animals of medium size, such as the Field-mouse; and enormous beasts, such as the Mole, the Sewer-rat and the Snake, any of which exceeds the powers of excavation of a single grave-digger. In the majority of cases transportation is impossible, so disproportioned is the burden to the motive-power. A slight displacement, caused by the effort of the insects' ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... hung a small colored print of the Madonna. No wonder the people of this land spent so much time crossing themselves and calling upon her for protection—they certainly had cause to. The room, in his opinion, was a veritable rat-hole; the place little better than what one might expect to find in ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... tongs—she did the same, Leaving the ruffian, if he came, The poker and the shovel. Suppose the couple standing so, When rushing footsteps from below Made pulses fast and fervent; And first burst in the frantic cat, All steaming like a brewer's rat, And then—as white as my cravat— Poor ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... leaned to her master's ear. "You are blind; you are an earth-rat, Kano Indara. This is not the usual submission of a silly girl. Ume is thinking things we know nothing of. Did you not see that her face was as a bean-curd in its whiteness? She kept so still, only because she was shaking in ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... "Listen, you rat," he told the Ganymedan, who was rubbing his chin and groaning: "you do exactly as I say, if you know what's good for you." He ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... Without waiting to aim it, he tugged at the trigger. Nothing happened! He threw open the breech and gazed impotently at the base of the shell. It was untouched. The ship was ringing with cries of anger, of hate, with rat-like ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... I who speak to you have been hungry, I know that fifty cents will buy ten loaves of bread, or three pounds of the neck of pork, or six quarts of milk for the babies. Fifty cents will help pay the rent of the rat-holes where you live." Once more he was interrupted by angry shouts of approval. "And the labour unions, have they aided you? Why not? I will tell you why—because they are the servile instruments of the masters. The unions say that capital has rights, bargain with it, but for us there can be ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... triumph of love and hate, over conscience and common sense. His Rosa should not be poor; and he would cheat some of those contemptible creatures called men, who had done him nothing but injustice, and at last had sacrificed his life like a rat's. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... activity I see below me wagon loads of nails go by and wagon loads of hammers hard after, to get a crack at them. Then there will be a truck of saws, as though the planking of the world yearned toward amputation. Or maybe, at a guess, ten thousand rat-traps will move on down the street. It's sure they take us for Hamelin Town, and are eager to lay their ambushment. There is something rather stirring in such prodigious marshaling, but I hear you ask what this has ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... can't," cried Farmer Tallington, "he'll die like a rat in a corner, biting, so look out. He's got that long gun of his loaded and ready for the first man who goes up to yon hut, and ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... circumstance, some dream or accident. Some call them after the first strange animal or bird that appears to the new-born. Old Snow-storm most likely owed his name to a heavy fall of snow when he was a baby. I knew a chief named Musk-rat, and a pretty Indian girl who was named 'Badau'-bun,' or the 'Light of ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... him a glance at once of terror and of despair, but there was for him no possible escape. He was shut tight in the room with his dead victim, like a rat in a trap. Nothing remained for him but to obey the summons from without. Indeed, in the very extremity of his distraction, he possessed reason enough to perceive that the longer he delayed opening the door ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... "It's a rat, I shouldn't wonder," said Robert. "Father says they infest old places—and this must be pretty old if the sea was here ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... and finding himself thus beset, old Simon falls to his usual artifices, turning this way and that, like a rat in a pit, to find some hole for escape. First he feigns to misunderstand, then, clapping his hands in his pockets, he knows not where he can have laid them; after that fancies he must have given them to his man Peter, who is gone out of an errand, etc.; until ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... not go away; he came nearer and Julia drew further into the corner, ensconsing herself behind the chopping-block, and looking about as inviting of approach as a trapped rat. ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... Hombre! they swarmed down upon us but a day ago. They came out of the bush in millions, straight for the house. We fled. Caramba! had we remained, we should have been eaten alive. But they swept the house—Hombre! no human hands could have done so well. Every spider, every rat, beetle, flea, every plague, was instantly eaten, and within a half hour they had disappeared again, and we moved back into a thoroughly ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... audience! "Wonderful things kindness will do with animals," said a member of one, a banker and a deacon. "Even human love can be taught to them by kindness. The cat and the rat have been enemies since the world began. Yet here, to-night, we have seen them doing highly trained feats together, and neither a cat committed one hostile or overt act against a rat, nor ever a rat showed it was afraid ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... through a double wall. They were separated from each other and well covered with insulation, but they were not within an iron pipe, as is now required in many cities. The current was alternating. One night when the lights were out a rat in the wall gnawed through the insulation of the wire and also gnawed clear through one of the wires. Did he get a shock? The next morning, the woman of the house wanted to use the electric iron in the kitchen and it would not ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... by the Manchester Weekly Football Boot, stated that his decision, arrived at after a close and careful study of the work of both teams, was that Houndsditch Wednesday had rather less chance in the forthcoming tourney than a stuffed rat in the Battersea Dogs' Home. It was his carefully-considered opinion that in a contest with the second eleven of a village Church Lads' Brigade, Houndsditch Wednesday might, with an effort (conceding them that slice ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Robert Augustus, and carried his middle name until 1840, when he seems to have dropped it as a useless piece of furniture. There is a report that some of his political foes, playing upon his initials, saddled him with the sobriquet of "Rat." Having out-grown one nickname he ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... squeaked, and sometimes vi'lent, And when he squeaked he ne'er was silent: Though ne'er instructed by a cat, He knew a mouse was not a rat. ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... contains some mother-pearl of a reddish tinge, according to M. d'Argenville. The substance sold under the name of Indian weed, and used at the bottom of fish-lines, is probably a production of this kind; which however is scarcely to be distinguished by the eye from the tendons of a rat's tail, after they have been separated by putrefaction in water, and well cleaned and rubbed; a production, which I was once shewn as a great curiosity; it had the uppermost bone of the tail adhering to it, and was said to have ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... cooler I should have tried to fence a little, since my only resource—I being caught like a rat in a trap that way—was to try to gain time; but I was all in a quiver, just as I suppose he was, with the excitement of the situation and with the excitement of the thunderous night, and his short sharp question jostled out of my ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... merciful to him, poor little rat! He wants to be a wicked, hell-for-leather fellow, but he hasn't got the stomach for it! What did Cecily say when ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... fall back in time of need on a plank for their dinner, require a very different-sized cooking apparatus to that of the Carnivora. Thus the rat, the most perfect sample of the rodent order, possesses a digestive tube of a prodigious length, through which the scrapings of wood have plenty of time for travelling, while the minute nutritive particles they contain are being thoroughly disengaged; and as every part ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... make himself more 'general?' Not always be absorbed in her husband. Of course she understood that while Arbella's fate hung in the balance they had to study the case together and have long confabulations over poisons in the Lab'rat'ry...!" (This last detestable word was a great worry to Mrs. Rossiter. Sometimes she succeeded in suppressing as many vowels as possible; at others she felt impelled to give them fuller values and call it "laboratorry.") And so on, for an hour or so ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... themselves to wholesale business. They leave the small necessity of their next-door neighbor to the retailers, who are poorer in statistics and general facts, but richer in the every-day charities. Mr. Bernard felt, at first, as one does who sees a gray rat steal out of a drain and begin gnawing at the bark of some tree loaded with fruit or blossoms, which he will soon girdle, if he is let alone. The first impulse is to murder him with the nearest ragged stone. Then one remembers ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... great height. It could not be called a vessel at all; it was a machine,—and I have seen one of somewhat similar appearance employed in cleaning out the docks; or, for lack of a better similitude, it looked like a gigantic rat-trap. It was ugly, questionable, suspicious, evidently mischievous, —nay, I will allow myself to call it devilish; for this was the new war-fiend, destined, along with others of the same breed, to annihilate whole navies and batter down old supremacies. The wooden walls of Old England cease to ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a description would have made a botanist sneer and throw up his hands. There were enough smaller animals to keep the oxygen-carbon-dioxide cycle nicely balanced, but the animals had not evolved anything larger than a rat, for some reason. Of course, the sea had evolved some pretty huge monsters, but the camp of the expedition was located a long way from the sea, so there was no worry from ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett
... detail of poor Constant's end. The hours dragged slowly and wretchedly on towards the misty dawn. I was racked with suspense. Was I to be disappointed after all? At last the welcome sound came—the rat-tat-tat of murder. The echoes of that knock are yet in my ear. 'Come over and kill him!' I put my night-capped head out of the window and told her to wait for me. I dressed hurriedly, took my razor, and went ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... projections on each side of a central figure. The next following cut represents a turtle. The tail was not always added. The salamander closely resembles the turtle, but notice the difference in the body, and still different is the cut of the musk-rat (see later). Fishes are figured as a straight embankment of earth tapering ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... windows of the Tuileries, the police made a sudden investigation of the palace at four o'clock in the morning; when a scene of the most whimsical confusion ensued. Hosts of supernumerary inhabitants were found foisted into the huge edifice; every rat-hole had its occupant; and places which had been considered as tenanted only by spiders were found crowded with a surreptitious population. It is added that many ludicrous accidents occurred; great scampering and slamming ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... bowler; Polly Lindsay, slow as ever and as sure as when he held the half-back line with Graeme, and used to make my heart stand still with terror at his cool deliberation. But he was never known to fumble nor to funk, and somehow he always got us out safe enough. Then there was Rattray—'Rat' for short—who, from a swell, had developed into a cynic with a sneer, awfully clever and a good enough fellow at heart. Little 'Wig' Martin, the sharpest quarter ever seen, and big Barney Lundy, centre scrimmage, whose terrific roar ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... inserting the tube into my gullet, and thus deluging me with an ocean of Kirschenwaesser, which he poured in a continuous flood, from one of the long-necked bottles that stood him instead of an arm. My agony was at length insufferable, and I awoke just in time to perceive that a rat had run off with the lighted candle from the stand, but not in season to prevent his making his escape with it through the hole, Very soon a strong, suffocating odor assailed my nostrils; the house, I clearly perceived, was on fire. In a few minutes the blaze broke forth ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... that rose ceilingward in thin, shaking columns from two bowls of Tibetan soapstone. An obese Chinaman with a walnutlike countenance in which cunning and melancholy were equally commingled was speaking monotonously through long, rat-tailed mustaches, while the others listened with impassive decorum. It was a special meeting of the Hip Leong Tong, held in their private clubrooms at the Great Shanghai Tea Company, and conducted ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... avoid him: th' argument Is fearful, when churchmen stagger in 't. Look you, six grey rats that have lost their tails Crawl upon the pillow; send for a rat-catcher: I 'll do a miracle, I 'll free the court From all foul vermin. ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... also large black foxes, wild asses, and abundance of sables; those creatures I mean from the skins of which they make those precious robes that cost 1000 bezants each. There are also vairs in abundance; and vast multitudes of the Pharaoh's rat, on which the people live all the summer time. Indeed they have plenty of all sorts of wild creatures, for the country they inhabit is very wild and trackless. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... was free from those furred and scarlet-robed lackeys of death. This man looks as if he had had some such night adventure as Boccaccio's Maestro Simone, and had his bonnet and mantle pickled a little in the gutter; though he himself is as sleek as a miller's rat." ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... again, when I'd have backed myself to beat—cabmen? Ah! I've stood up, when I was a young 'un, and shut up a Cheap Jack at a fair. Circulation's the soul o' chaff. That's why I don't mind tackling cabmen—they sit all day, and all they've got to say is 'rat-tat,' and they've done. But I let the boys roar. I know what I was when a boy myself. I've got devil in me—never you fear—but it's all on the side of the law. Now, let's off, for the gentlemen are starin' at you, which won't hurt ye, ye know, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... un gnie rat,' said Phillips. 'Your conception is clear enough; why don't you ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... immediate harm; but I will lead him to a height from which he will assuredly fall headlong. Thou must depart from this place; for it is perilous to thee, and if thou stayest here, ill will befall thee. I will send a rat to thy dungeon, which shall daily devour the provisions, so that the monks shall not know thou hast fled. In thirty and one years shall the abbot's doom be accomplished. Two years before that time thou mayst return. Then come alone to Pendle Hill on a Friday night, and beat ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of a brook that runs into the river. It was all bordered with reeds and flags and tall flowering plants, quite different from those I had seen on the heath. As I was getting down the bank to reach one of them, I heard something plunge into the water near me. It was a large water-rat, and I saw it swim over to the other side, and go into its hole. There were a great many large dragon-flies all about the stream. I caught one of the finest, and have got him here in a leaf. But how I longed to catch a bird that I saw hovering over ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... was some hours before the moon would rise, and he was solacing himself with a piece of the bread-crust, which was terribly dry and exceedingly hard—"yuss, this is precious nice tackle for a fellow's teeth. Wants nibbling like a rat. Yuss, what I have telled the young governor sounds 'most as easy as cutting butter, only not quite. I can get the helephant up to the door here, and I don't see much hardship in mounting him and riding ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... counts for something in this world; anyway, for the poor craven souls. Riding is one thing; but crashing through timber and undergrowth, dodging overhanging branches, leaping fallen logs, and stumbling and plunging over crab-holed and rat-burrowed areas, to say nothing of charging bulls turning up at unexpected corners, is ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... influence saved them. He showed, too, that in an age of bigotry he was no bigot. Puritan fanaticism, exasperated by the persecution it had endured under James and Charles, often went to the utmost extremes, even as "Hudibras"[1] said, to "killing of a cat on Monday for catching of a rat on Sunday." ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... repulsive—but always intensely human. Reading human character with rare sympathy, he was profoundly touched by the poetry and the pathos of these miserable lives. Through all these studies runs a quaint vein of humor, relieving the pathos of the situations. The picturesque costume of the old Rat Killer tickles the sense of humor, and conveys somehow a delightful suggestion of his humbuggery which offsets the touching squalor of the grotesque little apprentice. And none but a humorist could have created the swaggering hostler's ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... there came wand'ring by at last, The same thing, pit-a-pat, I found as 'cross the room it past, The cat had got a rat. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... guarded watch on "J. Heeney's" plumbing establishment. He watched it like a hungry cat watching a rat hole. And it was three hours later that he had the satisfaction of seeing the plumber ascend to the street and walk hurriedly westward. Trotter could see that he carried a kit of tools under his arm. But to follow him in open daylight was too great a risk. Instead of that, he went down the ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... draw them from his bosom. Again and again he examined them in fascinated contemplation. He had already charged them, and he amused himself by thinking of the mischief he could do, by a single touch upon the trigger, to a poor little wood-rat, that once or twice ran along a decaying log some five steps from his feet. But his object being secrecy, the rat brushed his whiskers in safety. Still he amused himself by aiming at this and other objects, until suddenly reminded of the very important difference which he had promised ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... quiet, and all warm with sunshine. His long hind legs were stiff, his tiny forepaws clutched upon his breast, as if to leap; his poor life cut short upon that mountain by some unknown accident. But the Kangaroo rat, it proved, was no such unknown animal; and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... water-gruel as a dunce, would not my subsequent remorse make me want it myself as a madman? Were your fair hand spread out to me for correction, should I help applying my lips to it, instead of my rat-tan? If I ordered you to be called up, should I ever remember to have you sent back? And if I commanded you to stand in a corner, how should I forbear following you ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... foremen what wages these men and women received. He told me. It seemed impossible that human life could be maintained upon such a pittance. I then asked whether they ever ate meat. "No," he said, "except when they had a rat or mouse" "A rat or mouse!" I exclaimed. "Oh yes," he replied, "the rats and mice were important articles of diet,—just as they had been for centuries in China. The little children, not yet able to work, fished for them in the sewers, with hook and line, precisely as they had done a century ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... on his knees removing the loose board, and for two or three minutes after crouched at the opening like a famished yellow cat at a rat-hole, awaiting his opportunity. Meanwhile the fight under the school was being prosecuted with unabated fury. Dick and Jacker gripped like twin bull-terriers, rolling and tumbling about in the confined space, careless of everything but the important business in hand. Suddenly ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... wasn't trained to hunt, and never killed a rat, And isn't much on tricks or looks or birth—well, what of that? That might be said of lots of folks whom men call great and wise, As well as of that yellow dog ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... suddenly all four started in their saddles, and Sadie gave a sharp cry of dismay. In the hush of the night there had come from behind them the petulant crack of a rifle, then another, then several together, with a brisk rat-tat-tat, and then after an interval, ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for a moment upon the lank figure rolling in the tub, the rat-like face, and the shifting eyes. Then she approached him, concealing in the bosom of her dress a long carving-knife which she had purchased for two francs. In answer to Marat's questioning look she told him that there was much excitement at Caen and ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... there was a ripping sound, and a piece of cloth came loose from his coat. The piece of cloth stayed in Splash's teeth and the children's dog at once began to shake and worry it, as he might a big rat he had caught. And as Splash shook the piece of cloth he growled ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... I said, seeking to reassure her. "There is nothing here more terrifying than a vacant house, doubtless long since deserted. We shall discover nothing more formidable within than a rat or two." ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... leave that to the judgment of your officer, my friend," replied Dennis in French. "But have the goodness not to shake me like a rat. I've got a splitting headache as ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... irritability; its leaves are armed with spines on their upper edge, and are spread on the ground around the stem; when an insect creeps on any of them in its passage to the flower or seed, the leaf shuts up like a steel rat-trap, and destroys its enemy. See Botanic Garden, Part II. note ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... to get out of the ship, you rat," Pyotr Stepanovitch was thinking as he went out into the street. "Well, if that 'imperial intellect' inquires so confidently of the day and the hour and thanks me so respectfully for the information I have given, we mustn't doubt of ourselves. [He grinned.] H'm! But he really ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... David, as his victoria swept through the gates of Linden House. "Sunday afternoon Dickey might ha' bin a dose of rat poison; now she's ready to swaller 'im as if 'e was a ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... before Good Friday, in the morning, his stillness was broken by a rat-tat-tat on the outer door of his studio, administered apparently by the knob of a walking-stick. His servant was out and he went to the door, wondering who his visitor could be at such a time, especially of the rather presuming class. The class was indicated by the visitor's failure ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... terrier were to lose his temper, he never would run a rat to earth. Now your Revolutionary Government has lost its temper with me, ever since I slipped through Chauvelin's fingers; they are blind with their own fury, whilst I am perfectly happy and cool as a cucumber. My life has ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Confederate officers and soldiers were sheltered in the bomb-proof safe during bombardment. On the east side of the fort, facing Morris island, opposite Fort Wagner, there was another apartment called the "Rat-hole" in which we negroes ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer
... we strike Columbus River—pass me two or throe skeins of thread to stand for the river; the sugar bowl will do for Hawkeye, and the rat trap for Stone's Landing-Napoleon, I mean—and you can see how much better Napoleon is located than Hawkeye. Now here you are with your railroad complete, and showing its continuation to Hallelujah and ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... fitly and firmly, with such a blending of just severity and moderation. "Cockneyism," Mr. Tuckerman says, "may seem not worthy of analysis, far less of refutation; but, as Sydney Smith remarked, 'In a country surrounded by dikes, a rat may inundate a province'; and it is the long-continued gnawing of the tooth of detraction, that, at a momentous crisis, let in the cold flood at last upon the nation's heart, and quenched its traditional love." The eighth chapter depicts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... what I say: scholars are pryed into of late, and are found to be busy fellows, disturbers of the peace. I'll say no more; guess at my meaning. I smell a rat. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... the open and die there, if need be! To live in this rat hole, breathing plague, is dying already! Caonabo is a fable! These people! Spaniards have but to lift voice ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... say: "Love me liddle," I say; "Love me long." I say: "Let dat liddle be 'doggone' strong! For, shore as dat rat runs 'cross de rafter, So shore you'se de gal, ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... 1867.—Remain on account of a threatened set-in rain. Bought a senze (Aulocaudatus Swindernianus), a rat-looking animal; but I was glad to get anything in ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... see some rat-holes that Skinner said would justify a trap—they certainly were enormous—and discovered that the room in which the Food of the Gods was mixed with meal and bran was in a quite disgraceful order. The Skinners were the sort of people who find a use for cracked saucers and old cans and pickle jars ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... criticism of Hamlet. "The tragedy of Hamlet is a gross and barbarous composition, which would not be supported by the lowest populace in France and Italy. Hamlet goes mad in the second act, Ophelia in the third; he takes the father of his mistress for a rat, and runs him through the body. In despair, the heroine drowns herself. Her grave is dug on the stage, while the grave-diggers enter into a conversation suitable (!) to such low wretches, and play, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... principality. We entered the bazaars, which were rotting and ruinous, the air infected with the loathsome vapours of dung-hills, and their putrescent carcases, tanpits with green hides, horns, and offal: here and there a hideous old rat showed its head at some crevice in the boards, to complete the picture ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... were deposited in pledge; and it was a part of the manager's duty to dash in his gig on Saturday evenings from one small retailer's to another, and to annex in each the bulk of the week's takings. His was thus an active life, and, to a man of the type of a rat, filled with recondite joys. An unexpected loss, a lawsuit, and the unintelligent commentary of the judge upon the bench, combined to disgust him of the business. I was so extraordinarily fortunate as to find, in an old newspaper, a report ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their own no hands; Nor evil counsellors to bring To justice that seduce the King; 770 Nor for the worship of us men, Though we have done as much for them. Th' AEgyptians worshipp'd dogs, and for Their faith made internecine war. Others ador'd a rat, and some 775 For that church suffer'd martyrdom. The Indians fought for the truth Of th' elephant and monkey's tooth, And many, to defend that faith, Fought it out mordicus to death. 780 But no beast ever was so slight, For man, as for his God, to fight. ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... to quit," he muttered. "I'd be a blooming jackass to waste any more time here. I'll have to work it naturally, though, or Lynch will smell a rat." ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... exhibit for London! Did he realise his own value, he would soon come forth. I joke, but the existence of this antique person is firmly believed in. Sparrows are called 'spadgers.' The cat wandering about got caught in the rat-clams—i.e. a gin. Another cat was the miller's favourite at the windmill, a well-fed, happy, purring pussy, fond of the floury miller—he as white as snow, she as black as a coal. One day pussy was ingeniously examining the machinery, when the wind suddenly rose, the sails revolved, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... Leman I sat down and wept . . . Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long. But at my back in a cold blast I hear The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear. A rat crept softly through the vegetation Dragging its slimy belly on the bank While I was fishing in the dull canal On a winter evening round behind the gashouse 190 Musing upon the king my brother's wreck And on the king my father's death before him. White bodies naked on the low ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... numbers, is computed for you, to save trouble; such and such quantities you will please to buy in our presence, or to pay duty for, whether you buy them or not. Into all houses, at any hour of the day or of the night, these cellar-rats had liberty,—(on warrant from some higher rat of their own type, I know not how much higher; and no sure appeal for you, except to the King; tolerably sure there, if you be INNOCENT, but evidently perilous if you be only NOT-CONVICTED!)—had liberty, I ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... were the marvel of all. He was an enigma to the end. He was quite untamable, rejected all dainties with indignation, swung his heels into people's faces when they went near him, ran at them with his teeth, seized unwary passers-by by their kamar bands, and shook them as a dog shakes a rat, would let no one go near him but Mando, for whom he formed at first sight a most singular attachment, but kicked and struck with his forefeet, his eyes all the time dancing with fun, so that one could never decide whether his ceaseless pranks were play or vice. He was ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... "Hoop, hoop, Roll along, Faster bowl along, Hoop. Slow, to the turning, Now go!—Go! Quick! Here's the stick. Rat-a-tap-tap it, Pat it, flap it. Fly like a bird or a yellow-backed bee, See how soon you can reach that tree. Here is a path that is perfectly straight. Roll along, hoop, or we shall ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... Parlour on that fateful evening. An angry, disillusioned, nerve-racked man, sore and restive under the fancy, or, rather, the realization of deceit, saying bitter and contemptuous words; a desperate, defeated woman, cornered like a rat—and close to her hand the rapier, lying on the old chest where its purchaser had carelessly flung it. A maddened thing, man or woman, ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... the great ladder of animal life, beginning low down in molluscs and feeble sea creatures, then up rung by rung through reptiles and fishes, till at last we came to a kangaroo-rat, a creature which brought forth its young alive, the direct ancestor of all mammals, and presumably, therefore, of everyone in the audience. ("No, no," from a sceptical student in the back row.) If the young gentleman in the red tie who cried "No, no," and who presumably claimed to ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... my nail, A tuft of a mane, and a sprig of a tail; And by these the true colour one can no more know, Than by mouse-skins above stairs, the merkin below. Now such as the beast was, even such was the rider, With a head like a nutmeg, and legs like a spider; A voice like a cricket, a look like a rat, The brains of a goose, and the heart of a cat: Even such was my guide and his beast; let them pass, The one for a horse, and the other an ass. But now with our horses, what sound and what rotten, Down to the shore, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... to the rat! tat! tat! of heels. He bent above the table attentively. And to Gwendolyn was wafted down a ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... with paying of tithes. He had rather have the frame of the fall than the price of corn. If he chance to travel he curses his fortune that his place binds him to ride, and his faithful cloak-bag is sure to take care for his provision. His nights are as troublesome as his days; every rat awakes him out of his unquiet sleeps. If he have a daughter to marry, he wishes he were in Hungary, or might follow the custom of that country, that all her portion might be a wedding-gown. If he fall sick, he had rather die a thousand ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... taking care of its young, or associating with others of its kind, and so on! This is exactly what ought to be and can be. Be it only a bird, I can look at it for some time with a feeling of pleasure; nay, a water-rat or a frog, and with still greater pleasure a hedgehog, a weazel, a roe, or a deer. The contemplation of animals delights us so much, principally because we see in them our own existence very ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... of little, white, wooden sarcophagus which was skipping near us on the waves, sculled by two yellow boys stark naked in the rain. The craft approached us, I jumped into it, then through a little trap-door shaped like a rat-trap that one of the scullers threw open for me, I slipped in and stretched myself at full length on a mat in what is called the "cabin" ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... ferociously. In the same instant almost, the fox was on his feet, but before he could leap away, Finn's jaws descended on the back of his neck, gripping him like a vice, and shaking him almost as a terrier shakes a rat. With a desperate squirm the fox wriggled earthward from this terrible grip, and, as Finn drew breath, stabbing at the fox with one fore-paw, as he would have stabbed at a still living rabbit, to ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... Latham. But he didn't count. And they've bought up Thompson. What else they've done I can't tell yet. But one thing's certain, Doc; we'll win out in a canter. I'm too old a rat to be caught in a trap like this. I've got ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... flower of a series of exquisite moments. The rich, deep grass, with the buttercups and forget-me-nots, is behind her, but she has had enough of that, and is open to more spiritual pleasures. The kingfishers and water- wagtails flit about her. The water-rat jumps into the stream with a soft plash, and his black body scuttles along to the opposite bank. The green dragon-flies float hither and thither; the beautiful frail-winged water- flies float over trout too lazy to snatch ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... we find him safely and legally married to Catherine Gordon. Scotch, and heiress to twenty-five thousand pounds. On the occasion of the wedding, Jack informed a friend that the fact of the lady's being Scotch was forgiven in view of the dowry. Most of this fortune went into a rat-hole to help pay the debts of the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... points in the road and particularly at the entrance to The Wood. I wondered what had become of the audience at the concert. Various sounds, transit of shells, bursting of shells, crashing of near-by cannon, and rat-tat-tat-tat! of mitrailleuses played the treble to a roar formed of echoes and cadences—the roar of battle. The Wood of Death (Le Bois de ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... sufficient. Joseph Conrad, Nicholas Rimsky-Korsakov, and Patrick MacGill all were sailors for many years before they began to write. We owe "Youth" and the first section of Scheherazade to this accident. MacGill also had the privilege of digging potatoes; he writes about it in "The Rat-pit." Mrs. Patrick Campbell learned enough about how to move about and how to speak in the country houses she frequented before she began her professional career to enable her immediately to take a position of importance on the stage. It does not seem necessary, indeed, that the ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... Egyptians supposed that when a serpent attacked you on your way to heaven, you had only to recite this verse, and the serpent would be powerless to harm you: "Hail, thou serpent Rerek! advance not hither. Stand still now, and thou shalt eat the rat which is an abomination unto Ra (the Sun-God), and thou shalt crunch the bones of ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... who, sleek and fat, Shiver at a Norway rat. Rough and hardy, bold and free, Be the cat that's made for me; He whose nervous paw can take My lady's lapdog by the neck, With furious hiss attack the hen, And snatch a chicken from ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... was the fraternity—that goddamned rat house! That was what he had pledged allegiance to, was it? Those were his brothers, ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... that a considerable portion of my time will be unoccupied, the which I mean to employ in sketches of my new experience, under some such titles as follows: 'Scenes in Dock,' 'Voyages at Anchor,' 'Nibblings of a Wharf Rat,' 'Trials of a Tide-Waiter,' 'Romance of the Revenue Service,' together with an ethical work in two volumes, on the subject of Duties, the first volume to treat of moral and religious duties, and the second of duties imposed ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... "She'd smell a rat if you did," Gerald owned "about the motor-car, I mean, and the adopting lady. And what we're to say to Mademoiselle about you !" He ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... confined in the Custom-House. Last evening crowds surrounded the place. We did something dreadful, Ada Peirce, Miriam, and I. We went down to the confectionery; and unable to resist the temptation, made a detour by the Custom-House in hope of seeing one of our poor dear half-starved mule and rat fed defenders. The crowd had passed away then; but what was our horror when we emerged from the river side of the building and turned into Canal, to find the whole front of the pavement lined with Yankees! Our folly struck us so forcibly that we were almost paralyzed ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... playground after dinner, disinclined alike for work and play, when Dell accosted him. Bilk might have known Dell by this time, but his memory was short and his mind preoccupied, and he smelt no rat, as the Irish would ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... he could make nothing of the name they gave it, but wrote it down as best he could—Araughcoune. Another new kind of creature was of the size of a rabbit, grayish white, with black ears and a tail like a rat. It would hang by its tail from a tree, until knocked off with a stick, and then curl up with shut eyes and pretend to be dead. It was excellent eating when roasted with wild yams,—rather like a very ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... walk between Lady Farrington and Aunt Maria up and down the path in the sun till lunch at one o'clock; and after that we went for a drive in the barouche, with the fattest white horses you ever saw, and a coachman just like Cinderella's one that had been a rat. He seemed to have odd bits of fur on his face and under his chin, and Aunt Maria said that he suffered from a sore throat, that was why, which he caught at Aunt Mary's wedding; and so I counted up—and as Aunt Mary is your eldest sister, it must have been more than twenty years ago. I ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... Puranas, calculated to make the widow a voluntary, willing suicide. They would tell Bootea that owing to having been evil in former incarnations her sins had been visited upon her husband, had caused his death; that in a former life she had been a snake, or a rat. ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... has a wife and baby; together they ought to be worth $50,000 to any man. Secondly, he has an office in which there is a table worth $1.50 and three chairs worth, say, $1. Last of all, there is in one corner a large rat hole, which will bear looking ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... Chinese cigar-makers," cried Marcus, in a passion, brandishing his fist. "It's them as is ruining the cause of white labor. They are, they are for a FACT. Ah, the rat-eaters! Ah, the white-livered curs!" ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... beat the world," says he to me after a while—us standing there still talking though he was wet as a rat—"how things is run? Sometimes it seems like we can't help ourselfs, and we all get into the wrong places trying to get into the right ones. Now I'd like to thank that lady; but I can't. She's wonderfully beautiful, ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... understood and enjoyed the game as well as the man on his back, once he had distinguished the bullock they were riding down, needed no stimulant of whip, but would follow him of his own accord, twisting and doubling like a retriever after a wounded hare, or a terrier after a rat. Once the animal was cut out of the herd, the manager would uncoil his lasso, one end of which was made fast to the cinch-ring of his girths, and out flew the looped coil of rope with unerring straightness, catching the bullock round the horns. The ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... a time a fat, sleek Rat was caught in a shower of rain, and being far from shelter he set to work and soon dug a nice hole in the ground, in which he sat as dry as a bone while the raindrops splashed outside, making little puddles ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... him much as a dog might a rat, until the boy's teeth seemed to rattle together. But Tony was used to this sort of thing, no doubt; and he would not have protested, even though suffering ten times the amount of pain that may now ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... merry laugh. The ornaments on the wall of the general's quarters gave Stuart many a topic of badinage. Affecting to believe that they were of General Jackson's selection, he pointed now to the portrait of some famous race-horse, and now to the print of some celebrated rat-terrier, as queer revelations of his private tastes, indicating a great decline in his moral character, which would be a grief and disappointment to the pious old ladies of the South. Jackson, with a quiet smile, replied that perhaps he had had more to do with race-horses than his friends ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... the front door. Since nothing but silence followed, I supposed that the occupant of the place had returned, and had chosen to do so as silently as he had gone. Presently, however, there came from the doorstep a slight but peculiar call, as if a rat was squeaking. It was repeated three times, and then there was the sound of footsteps quietly retreating, and the gate re-closing. Between one and two the caller came again; there was a repetition of the same signal,—that ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... the building was a circular cage that looked like an old fashioned wire rat trap greatly enlarged. Into this cage the animals were introduced to go through ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... up again; for although the fellow had probably not understood a single word of what Jose had said, he had sense enough to know that the two ruffians before him had scuttled the ship, and that if locked up in his pantry again he would probably drown there, like a rat in a trap. His entreaties, how ever, were of course unavailing with two men who knew not the meaning of mercy; there was a Spanish oath or two, the sound of a scuffle, mingled with further cries of distress from the steward, ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... transference was made, not into the island, but into another vessel, containing apples, of which rats are known to be exceedingly fond. A hawser was secretly fastened to the latter, so as to form a communication betwixt the two vessels. On the following morning, it is said, not a rat was found in the one which originally contained them, the whole having gone over during the night to the other. So much for the efficacy of the stratagem. The reader will be at no loss to decide as to the morality of having recourse to it. Mr Bingley relates ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... under a few inches of water, so that the first rat coming forth and starting to climb the bank would set his hind feet ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... against us. I was going west the other morning when I heard a crier announcing a general war upon Stone Boy and his people. The crier was a Buffalo, going at full speed from west to east. Again, I heard the Beaver conversing with the Musk-rat, and both said that their services were already promised to overflow the lakes and rivers and cause a destructive flood. I heard, also, the little Swallow holding a secret council with all the birds of the air. He said that he had been appointed ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... "There's a rat there! I saw it quite plainly; its great big eyes were glaring at me!" she announced in a ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... laughed under his breath, and looking mysterious and very rat-like he led the way to his pantry. Esther watched them in strange trouble of soul. She had heard of racecourses as shameful places where men were led to their ruin, and betting she had always understood to be sinful, but in ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... Deer Black Bear Lynx Wild Cat Red Fox Gray Fox Beaver Raccoon Skunk Otter Fisher Cottontail Rabbit Martin Mink Black Squirrel Gray Squirrel Red Squirrel Fox Squirrel Flying Squirrel Chipmunk Musk Rat Opossum Varying Hare Porcupine ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... is the rifle or shotgun. Rat traps, using black walnuts as bait, are second choice and said to be effective. The banding of isolated trees with tin (one says cotton batting) will prevent squirrels from climbing. A good cat or several of them will be useful, say several reporters. One judicious ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... . . 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
... 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
... 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
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