"Bobtail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... popular with everybody, rag, tag and bobtail and all, like—well, Eben Salters," she went on. "But the folks that count all respect and like you, Hosy. I know ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... read anywhere such an anguished cowering before Conscience, a mighty creature full of eyes within and without, and pointing fingers and asped tongues, anticipating in secret the blazing condemnation of the world. And there is "Bessie Bobtail," staggering down the streets with her reiterated, inarticulate expression of grief, moving like one of those wretched whom Blake described in a marvelous phrase as "drunken with woe forgotten"; and there is "Satan," where the reconcilement of light and darkness in the ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... stories, "Billy Bobtail" is evidently founded upon "The Bremen Town-Musicians"; and, as it is given here, it is an adaptation of a story heard frequently during the writer's childhood. It will readily be seen that "Kid Would Not Go" is only another ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie
... with surprising ease. Manik Chand was so much alarmed by seeing the effect of the big guns of the fleet that he abandoned the place almost without striking a blow, and when the British troops entered they were too late even to make any prisoners save a few of the ragtag and bobtail in the rear. ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... moment she saw him. How it was she could not have explained, but she loved him. Jenny thought these things over long after Mr. Von Barwig had departed on his journey. It made her glad to think how happy he was when he left the house with his valise and umbrella, hurrying to catch the little bobtail car that wended its way across town to ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... Augustus Ebenier had a great many bright parts, he was inclined to be a "swell." He smoked a pipe on the forecastle of the yacht, but when he walked through the principal streets of Rockport, in his plaid pants and bobtail sack, he smoked an Havana cigar, with a meerschaum mouthpiece, in deference to his huge mustache—it was more genteel to smoke a cigar than a pipe. The steward carried a cigar case, which always contained two or three of the choicest brand, and he claimed to have ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... inn, to my cost— For the bill here, it seems, is defrayed by the host— No pleasure! no leisure! no thought for my pains, 20 But to hear a vile jargon which addles my brains; A smatter and chatter, gleaned out of reviews, By the rag, tag, and bobtail, of those they call "Blues;" A rabble who know not——But soft, here they come! Would to God I were deaf! as I'm not, I'll ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... this: with the loyalists I hold the same place as when you left town, with the tagrag and bobtail of the city I hold a much better one than at your departure. For it does me no harm that my evidence appears not to have availed. Envy has been let blood without causing pain, and even more so from the fact that all the supporters of that flagitious proceeding ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... us enjoy our holiday, which I didn't a bit, for I had a sort of nasty presentiment and a heap of uncomfortable thoughts; and all the while you were slaving away at this hideous dressmaking,—I wish I could burn the whole rag, tag, and bobtail,—and never let us know you wanted anything. And you call that ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... in the Major. "I don't know anything more painful than for a man to marry his superior in age or his inferior in station. Fancy marrying a woman of low rank of life, and having your house filled with her confounded tag-rag-and-bobtail of relations! Fancy your wife attached to a mother who dropped her h's, or called Maria Marire! How are you to introduce her into society? My dear Mrs. Pendennis, I will name no names, but in the very best circles of London society I have seen men suffering the most excruciating agony, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... th' day. An' 'tis movin' trunks an' boxes, and the like—Mis' Grace should hire a nelephant at this time of the year, an' so I tell her. An' what with these here foreigners too—bad 'cess to them! I have to chase ev'ry rag tag and bobtail on the place, ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... cracky whether we are or not! Those rag-tag and bobtail vermin are calling us names!—and, if I can't fight, by ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... weeks ago to-morrow. . . . Have a drink with you? Now, hadn't you better leave that kind of talk to your funny man? Can't you tell whether a man's guying you or whether you're being offered the biggest scoop your dull dishrag of a paper ever had? . . . Well, that's so; it's a bobtail scoop—but you can hardly expect me to 'phone in my name and address . . . Why? Oh, because I heard you make a specialty of solving mysterious crimes that stump the police. . . No, that's not all. I want to tell you that your rotten, lying, penny sheet is of no more use in tracking ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... lewd woman, or one that plays with her tail; also an impotent man, or an eunuch. Tag, rag, and bobtail; a mob of all sorts of low people. To shift one's bob; to move off, or go away. To bear a bob; to join in chorus with any singers. Also a term used by the sellers of game, for ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... think there would be many prisoners," said Carmen, grimly. "These must almost be the last, I think—they are. See! Here come the tag-rag and bobtail." ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... soulless usurper. Trading for forty-rod whisky, to enable you to get drunk and happy and tomahawk your families, has played the everlasting mischief with the picturesque pomp of your dress, and here you are, in the broad light of the nineteenth century, gotten up like the ragtag and bobtail of the purlieus of New York. For shame! Remember your ancestors! Recall their mighty deeds! Remember Uncas!—and Red jacket! and Hole in the Day!—and Whoopdedoodledo! Emulate their achievements! Unfurl yourselves under my banner, noble ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... have been with us on Easter Monday, when we passed the day at Greenwich, and were at the renowned Greenwich Fair, which lasts for three days. The scene of revelry takes place in the Park, a royal one, and really a noble one. Here all the riff-raff and bobtail of London repair in their finery, and have a time. You can form no notion of the affair; it cannot be described. The upper part of the Park, towards the Royal Observatory, is very steep, and down this boys and girls, men ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... the girl,' growled Mr. Lespel. 'She comes with that rascally doctor and a bobtail of tea-drinking men and women and their brats to Northeden Heath—my ground. There ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... weeks before it was whispered in the minister's ear that the Grand Duke would be pleased if he were less strict in the matter of his presentations. "Oh!" said Hamilton, "that's what he wants! A la bonne heure! He shall have them all, rag, tag, and bobtail." And so we returned to the Saturnia regna of "the good old times," and the Duke was credibly reported to have said that he "kept the worst drawing-room in Europe." But, of course, His Highness was ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope |
