"Rag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of course. A fellow like you would be sure to be able to pick up a wife with money. My thoughts don't incline that way. I look forward to the Rag as the conclusion of my career. There you meet fellows you know, lie against each other about past campaigns, eat capital dinners, and have your rub of whist, regularly, ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... won't give it up now," said Miss Nancy. "As good an abolutionist as you used to be, make the poor colored folks wash the floor with a rag, on their hands and knees! It can't be that you indulge a hope, if ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... his weak legs would allow, and inspected him critically. He certainly was a forlorn specimen. One of the black beads which had served him for eyes was gone. His ears, which had originally stood up saucily on his head, now drooped in limp dejection. One of them was a mere shapeless rag hanging by a thread. He was dirty and discolored, and his tail was gone. But still he smiled with his red-thread mouth and seemed trying to make the best ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... eye could see that, mum; and a mighty dirty spot you picked out for such a nice little rag to lie in." ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... Uncle Frank," said the commissioner, in a softer tone. "There's no need of that. She hasn't asked for anything of that sort yet. Besides, her case is in my hands. I see now what a little, rag-tag, bob-tail, gotch-eared department I've been put in charge of. It seems to be about as important as an almanac or a hotel register. But while I'm running it, it won't turn away any daughters of Amos Colvin without stretching its jurisdiction ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... a heavy tread, carrying a large rag doll, made the flight very slowly. She didn't trust "them cakes of ice," knowing full well that packing cases, however stoutly built, and however ably disguised in white cheese cloth, were parlous things for a lady of her weight. The prompter urged ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... traces of the murder could be found except in Timea's room. Nowhere was a bloody rag or handkerchief to be found—not even the ashes of anything which could have been burned. Who had drugged the servants could not be ascertained. The household had supped together, and among the various sweets and foreign ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... and other sportsmen, who always sallied forth from Marlborough on that day; and as the manor was not large the ground was generally pretty thickly occupied before sun rise on the first of October; for it will be recollected that, on these gala days, "tag, rag, and bobtail," all had leave, whether they were qualified or not, and all who professed to be sportsmen hurried there, whether they had certificates ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... she rolls the cream over like a pancake with her fingers, and lifts it out in sections. The thick milk is poured into a slop-bucket, for the pigs and calves, the dishes are "cleaned"—by the aid of a dipper full of warm water and a rag—and the wife proceeds to set the morning's milk. Tom holds up the doubtful-looking rag that serves as a strainer while his mother pours in the milk. Sometimes the boy's hands get tired and he lets some of the ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... he had gone, 'what an unholy rag! This suits yours truly. Poor old Jim, though. I wonder what the deuce has happened ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... Syd. "Now, come, be a man. I'm just going to put a little pellet of rag over those two holes, and bind them up tightly. I ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... concerned with the fine arts who had so little sympathy, so little enthusiasm. On the whole, he was distinctly gentle with me, but I made him angry twice. He had done me the honor to promote me to water-color, and as I wanted a rag to wipe my slab and brushes, I ventured to ask for one, on which he turned upon me a glance of haughty surprise, and said, "Do you suppose, sir, that I can undertake to supply you with rags?" This will give an idea of the curiously unsympathetic nature of the man. On another occasion I was ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... which Bill had knocked together from lumber in the packing room and she had stained, two of the sorting tables, fitted into the corners beside the fireplace to make a dais, the conversion of another into a capital dining table by the simple expedient of lengthening its legs, the rag rug, discovered in the village, during a flying trip with Sylvia this morning in her car and ravished from the church fair it had been intended for, the sacks of sheeting Aunt Lucile had been sewing industriously all day, ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... a nigger was to Worcester as a red rag to a bull. "St. Amory's for niggers!" Dick ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... madam. (What a woman it is!) HOW could they be worth more? Think for yourself. They are so much loss to you—so much loss, do you understand? Take any worthless, rubbishy article you like—a piece of old rag, for example. That rag will yet fetch its price, for it can be bought for paper-making. But these dead souls are good for NOTHING AT ALL. Can you name anything that they ARE ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... pass, feeling all over their bodies, taking from them money and whatever else they carry and if they come on them in a lonely place they strip them naked after violating them and do not leave a rag ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... on her lame knees. "Sit down," she ordered, "and I'll take off your shoes. They're as wet as a dish-rag." ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... grew big as a harvest moon and they brought Le Grand Diable to me. Knowing his covetous heart, I told him if he still had the woman and the child, I'd get him a big ransom. At that they all jangled a bit, the old squaw clouting me with her filthy rag as if she wanted to slap me to a peak. At length they let Le Grand Diable unfasten the bands. With my hands tied behind my back, I was taken to his lodge. Miriam and the boy were kept in a place behind the Sioux squaw's hut. Once when the skin ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... now, as you see, the 10th of October, and there has not reached the Island of Upolu one single copy, or rag of a copy, of the Samoa book. I lie; there has come one, and that in the pocket of a missionary man who is at daggers drawn with me, who lends it to all my enemies, conceals it from all my friends, and is bringing a lawsuit against me on the strength ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little pink clouds of the coming morn were blushing in the east, and the rag-women, with their bags ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... paper, few being able to afford white; in some places they were stopped with straw or hay. Another mark of our riches, are the signs at the several inns upon the road, viz. In some, a staff stuck in the thatch, with a turf at the end of it; a staff in a dunghill with a white rag wrapped about the head; a pole, where they can afford it, with a besom at the top; an oatmeal cake on a board at the window; and, at the principal inns of the road, I have observed the signs taken down ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... Conne'ticut man can do. You say Boe, Boe! like a poor benighted crittur as you are, but what do you say to that?" cried the pedlar in a triumphant voice, as he held close to the negro's nose a piece of linen rag on which he had smeared a green greasy substance bearing a strong resemblance to paste-blacking in a state of decomposition. Then, taking up the box which contained this precious compound, he put it in close proximity ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... as a rag, but he felt much better than before, and he could stand some nourishment. ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... astray in her coil of contortions, stumbles like a drunken vagabond against angle and corner, filling the dusty air with scraps of paper and rag. "What fury of foolishness! Are the Gods gone ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... 'if you had taken a piece of rag, or what not, you might yourself... Hulloa!...' He looked down and saw the hole still gaping, and he felt a furious draught coming up again. He wondered a little, and then muttered: 'It's a pity I ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... more now in Congress The bills that should long have passed through; The Mills Bill's a thing of oblivion And its framer can follow it, too. Then we'll carefully fold up the rag, They flaunted so lusty and brave, And bury it with the old relics, 'Way down ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... knew it! Then you have theories! That's what I wanted to bring out. Now I have theories, too. One is the rag-bag theory." ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... gardens, and its fountains, we journeyed back to Paris and sought its antipodes —the Faubourg St. Antoine. Little, narrow streets; dirty children blockading them; greasy, slovenly women capturing and spanking them; filthy dens on first floors, with rag stores in them (the heaviest business in the Faubourg is the chiffonier's); other filthy dens where whole suits of second and third-hand clothing are sold at prices that would ruin any proprietor who did not steal ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... warlocks grim, an' wither'd hags, Tell how wi' you, on rag weed nags, They skim the muirs an' dizzy crags Wi' wicked speed; And in kirk-yards renew their leagues ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the tatter'd ensigns of Rag-fair,[245] A yawning ruin hangs and nods in air;[246] Keen hollow winds howl through the bleak recess, Emblem of music caused by emptiness; Here in one bed two shivering sisters lie, The cave ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... shook them slightly to emphasize his command. One hung on his hand, limp as a rag. The other showed fight, kicking our friend liberally about the shins, with hobnailed boots which ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... to become well-bred, is it logical to begin by encouraging barbarous tastes? Their young minds are very open to suggestion. They quickly adopt our standards, and the blame must fall upon us if they acquire crude color habits. Yellow journalism and rag-time tunes will not help their taste in speech or song, nor will violent hues improve their taste ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... in this water—not until I can see bottom," declared Grace, finally selecting a bit of rag that Betty used to polish the brass work of ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... the same day, October 15th, the choir of St. Paul's took up the headless body of the prelate and conveyed it to St. Paul's, but, on being informed that he died under sentence, the body was brought to St. Clement's beyond the Temple, but was ejected; so that the naked corpse, with a rag given by the charity of a woman, was laid on the spot called 'Le Lawles Cherche,' and without any grave, lay there with those of his two esquires, without office of priest or clerk. His house was attacked, the gates burned, quantities ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... are Augustine and Jerome, Anselm and Aquinas, Calvin and Episcopius, Ballarmine and Jansenius, Baronius and the Magdeburg Centuriators,—natural enemies, here bound over to their good behavior. These dark veterans are Jewish Rabbis,—Kimchi, Abarbanel, and, like a row of rag-collectors, a whole Monmouth Street of rubbish,—behold the entire Babylonian Talmud. These tall Socinians are the Polish brethren, and the dumpy vellums overhead are Dutch divines. The cupboard contains Greek and Latin manuscripts, and those spruce fashionables are Spencer, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... suspended, and candles stuck into glass bottles are placed upon the table. The daily contributions of the benevolent are here disposed of; what one has, another lacks. Old coats, old boots and shoes, old gowns, are freely bartered for tobacco and gin. Women from neighboring rag-shops attend to buy, and candle-makers send their agents to collect fat and grease. Every individual brings his own food, for the proprietor of the house finds lodging only, and not board. The atmosphere reeks with the smell of herrings and fried sausages. After ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... us. But there we crouched in our light dresses, easily seen if one had chanced to look, and separated only by an iron fence with sparse, fluttering vines from a mass of tired, quarrelsome, desperate men. Why! any of them might have run us through in a flash as one would lunge at a white rag for the amusement of his companions. Indoors the family were frantic, not daring to open a crack of the door for fear of ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... publicly accused, so perhaps they were quits. But, poor girl (if she was a girl), she must be feeling up a tree now. She seemed a nice enough person, too; a bit of a fool, of course, but then any one who'd write for the British Bolshevist, that pestilential rag, would need to be either a fool ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... has now been some time in office; from all I saw he seemed a person very fit. He is not the least unpopular, and yet his power is nothing. He is a chief to the French, and goes to breakfast with the Resident; but for any practical end of chieftaincy a rag doll were equally efficient. ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... running over with the rag-tag and bob-tail of all Europe! If you think I'll butt into that Bedlam, my dear child, you're badly mistaken. I'd rather live with the freaks in ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... DISCONSOLATE." Wunsch listened thoughtfully, his hands on his knees. Such a beautiful child's voice! Old Mrs. Kohler's face relaxed in a smile of happiness; she half closed her eyes. A big fly was darting in and out of the window; the sunlight made a golden pool on the rag carpet and bathed the faded cretonne pillows on the lounge, under the piece-picture. "EARTH HAS NO SORROW THAT HEAVEN CANNOT ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... the preparation of something in the fashion of a torpedo, for about a pound of powder had been transferred from their keg to a small tin canister, in whose lid they drove a hole, and passed through it a slow match, made by rubbing a strip of rag with moistened gunpowder, which dried up at once in the hot evening sunshine. At the bottom of the canister a charge of shot had been placed, and upon trying it in a bucket the tin floated with about an inch of its top ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... organ was erected, and some pictures and statues displayed, was proposed as a model to the rest of the nation. But music was grating to the prejudiced ears of the Scottish; clergy; sculpture and painting appeared instruments of idolatry the surplice was a rag of Popery; and every motion or gesture prescribed by the liturgy, was a step towards that spiritual Babylon, so much the object of their horror and aversion. Every thing was deemed impious but their own mystical comments on the Scriptures, which they idolized, and whose Eastern prophetic ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... Sweep the English into the sea." With an alluring cry like this, it will be readily understood how easy it was to inflame the imagination of the illiterate and uneducated Boer, and to work upon his vanity and prejudices. That pernicious rag, Carl Borckenhagen's "Bloemfontein Express," enormously contributed to spreading this doctrine in the Orange Free State. I myself firmly believe that the "Express" was subsidised by Kruger. It was no mystery to me from where Borckenhagen, a full-blooded ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Sisters. You will believe me more readily now when I tell you that I found the soul of Iris in the one that lay open before me. Sometimes it was a poem that held it, sometimes a drawing,—angel, arabesque, caricature, or a mere hieroglyphic symbol of which I could make nothing. A rag of cloud on one page, as I remember, with a streak of red zigzagging out of it across the paper as naturally as a crack runs through a China bowl. On the next page a dead bird,—some little favorite, I suppose; for it was worked out with a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... haystall on the other side of the platform. The wall of the store has an enormous hole in it, but the thickly packed hay prevented the shrapnel scattering. The station-master was hit, and his watch saved him, but it was crumpled up like a rag. Two men were wounded, and one of them died. A whole crowd of refugees came in from Coxide, which is being heavily shelled. There was not a scrap of food for them, so I made soup in great quantities, and distributed it to them in a crowded room whose atmosphere was thick. Ladling out the ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... big department store, next to Troyon's, I was thinking of this, and I turned in there, just aching for some of the boodle that flaunts itself in a poor girl's face when she's desperate, from every silk and satin rag, from every lace ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... has been dark; But now the rag wick sends a spark That glitters in the icy air, And wakes frost sapphires everywhere; Bright, bitter flames, that adder-like Dart here and there, yet fear to strike The gruesome gloom wherein THEY lie, My comrades, ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... and shake out the reefs, sir," he said coolly to his mate, for it was a standing rule of the captain's to seem calmest when he was in the greatest rage. "Turn them up, sir, and show every rag that will draw, from the truck to the lower studding-sail boom, and be d——d ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... mounted the shaky stairs until he reached the garret. Pushing open a door here, he entered a neat little room with only one window in it, but that a dormer facing the south. The floor of this room was bare, with the exception of two or three round rag mats, and the walls were decorated in the oddest manner with pictures cut from old papers and magazines, bits of colored glass, strips of glittering tin twisted into grotesque shapes, and red and green motto-papers fashioned into some semblance ...
— Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... off his rag of a cap, and arranging his tattered regimentals the best he could, off he went stumping among the passengers in an adjoining part of the deck, saying with a jovial kind of air: "Sir, a shilling for Happy Tom, who fought at Buena Vista. Lady, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... mantle o'erhead, We hear the low hum of the volley, we see the fierce bomb-burst of red; Still the rock in the forehead of Lookout through the rents of the windy mist shows The horrible flag of the Crossbar, the counterfeit rag of our foes: Portentous it looks through the vapor, then melts to the eye, but it tells That the rebels still cling to their stronghold, and hope for the moment dispels. But the roll of the thunder ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... kept in raising the expression of trifling thoughts! would not a man have thought that the poet had been bound prentice to a wheel-wright, for his first rant? and had followed a rag-man, for the clout and blanket, in the second? Fortune is painted on a wheel, and therefore the writer, in a rage, will have poetical justice done upon every member of that engine: after this execution, he bowls the nave down-hill, from heaven, to the fiends: (an unreasonable long mark, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... carefully, Miss Mehitable tore up the rag carpet and threw it out of the window, sneezing violently. "There's considerable less dirt here already than there was when we come," she continued, "though we ain't done any real cleaning yet. She can't never ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... religion.[15] In the churches that use these hymns the child is frequently not in the Sunday services; he is in the children's service or the school, while in the majority of churches a weak-minded endeavor for amusement has substituted meaningless rag-time trivialities for rich and dignified hymns. Perhaps the custom of encouraging congregations to jig, dance, cavort, or drone through the frivolities of "popular" gospel songs is only a passing craze, but it is ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... there were four children: a boy,—nothing to the purpose,— and Laura, Maria, and Charlotte. And the poor lasses, not having a rag of legitimacy to cover 'em, must needs fall back on good behaviour and good looks. I saw Laura, a pretty girl, in the garden at Englefield some years since, when I was airing in Lady Pomfret's coach; and as we looked, the little hoyden Maria comes running up in muslin and blue ribbons, ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... 'The French Bossuets, Bourdaloues, Fenelons, &c., whatever may be thought of their meagre and attenuated rhetoric, are one and all the most commonplace of thinkers.' In fact, the mere mention of France acts upon him like a red rag on a bull. The French, 'in whom the lower forms of passion are constantly bubbling up, from the shallow and superficial character of their feelings,' are incapable of English earnestness. Their taste is 'anything but good in all that ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... which our democracy allows its citizens to become,—men to whom the right of suffrage sometimes seems a worthless rag which they would gladly sell,—men on whose weak ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... return, the womb must be injected daily with an antiseptic solution (borax, one-half ounce, or carbolic acid, 3 drams to a quart of tepid water). If inflammation threatens, the abdomen may be bathed continuously with hot water by means of a heavy woolen rag, and large doses of opium (one-half dram) may be given ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... I'll stay so. I'll keep on calling myself Miss Black, and this madhouse my country seat, and the head doctor my uncle, and the keepers servants, until the end of time, so I will. Catch me coming to my senses, when it's so delightful to be mad. I'm too sharp for that. I didn't grow up in Rag ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... hates conventionality and uses the old thrills only to show what dead batteries they come from. His really electrical effects are his own inventions. He needs no dungeon keeps and monkish cells to play about in—not he! He demands no rag nor bone nor clank of chain of his old equipment to start on his career. He can start up a moving picture show of his own, as in Ruth McEnery Stuart's The Haunted Photograph, and demonstrate a new ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... Bignall himself, in the exigency in which his vessel was placed; "Roll up the cloth; in with it all—leave not a rag to the squall! 'Fore George, Mr Wilder, but this wind is not playing with us; cheer up the men to their work; speak to ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... steel beaked and winged helmets and claw-like steel shoes, and jointed steel corselet and rustling steel mail coat; before the infantry of Gascony, rapid and rapacious with their tattered doublets and rag-bound feet; before the over-fed, immensely plumed, and slashed and furbelowed giants of Switzerland, and the starved, half-naked savages of Brittany and the Marches—before this multifaced, many-speeched army, gathered from the rich cities of the North and the devastated fields of the ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... little wire in Leicestershire, though it is far too common in other parts of the Shires. Fences where the warning red board (Fig. 136) or red rag (Fig. 137) is seen, should be avoided, as these signals denote the presence of wire. As these death-traps bear no warning notice in some places (Fig. 138), it behoves people hunting in such countries to keep a sharp look-out for unmarked wire ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... Alanna, getting red, "she is. She gave me a rag when I cut me knee, and one day she lifted the cup down for me when Mary Deane stuck it up on a high nail, so that none of us could get drinks, and when Sister Rose said, 'Who is talking?' she said Alanna Costello wasn't 'cause ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... poor rag of the Muse! In the bag of the clothesman go lie; A farthing thou'lt fetch from the Jews, Which ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... what must they not go forth?" "A camel must not go forth with a rag bound as a mark to its tail, nor fettered, nor with fore-foot tied doubled up, and so with the rest of all beasts; a man must not bind camels one to another, and lead them, but he may take their ropes into his hand, and hold them, guarding ...
— Hebrew Literature
... Captain Lingo," said Aunt Amanda, "I want to know where we are going and all about it. The idea of me sitting here a-straddle of a mule! And this bonnet simply ruined, and my dress just about fit to go to the rag-bone man, and my hair—Look here, Captain Lingo, I ain't going a step on this mule until ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... clean freshness. She had never occupied such a room, with that peculiar, bracing atmosphere. The small mantel with its prim vases looked a veritable home shrine, and the center table with the sprigs of budding lilacs, seemed to the forlorn girl something to reverence. The rag rugs under her feet were so spotless, the curtains so white—it suddenly occurred to the girl these things could not exist in the smoke and grim of a mill town. It was the mill—always the mill found to ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... of having stolen his knife: He solemnly and steadily denied that he knew any thing of it; upon which Mr Banks made him understand, that whoever had taken it, he was determined to have it returned: Upon this resolute declaration, one of the natives who was present produced a rag in which three knives were very carefully tied up. One was that which Dr Solander had lent to the woman, another was a table knife belonging to me, and the owner of the third was not known. With these the chief immediately ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... morning watching for the rag-man. I wish I had taken down a note which day it was I saw him before. I remember it was washing-day, for I had to take my hands out of the tub and wipe the suds off when Johnnie came to tell me that the rag-man was on the ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... could possibly have done. The black walnut extension table in the center, closed to its smallest dimensions because Parson Langley had eaten alone for so many years; the black walnut chairs set back against the wall at regular intervals; the rag carpet and braided mats—homemade donations from the ladies of the parish—on the green painted floor; the dolorous pictures on the walls; "Death of Washington," "Stoning of Stephen," and a still more deadly "fruit piece" committed in oils years ago by ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the handiest J. P. on a charge of attempted suicide. Mrs. M'Bean vehemently repelled the accusation. She explained that she had said her heart was broke only "because she had lost her ould hat, and every thread of a rag on her had been dhrenched and ruinated with the salt water. How could she go for to do such a sin as destroy herself, she urged, and she wid a houseful of little childer waitin' for her at home, the crathurs?" Her arguments proved convincing, and the charge was summarily dismissed, not ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... Carrissima was excellent at making allowances for people! She was one of those tiresome, inconsistent young women who remain blind to the teachings of reason and experience, and ever find some remnants of good in the rag-bags of humanity. ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... an urgent call to come to St. Paul Park I forthwith prepared to go, although not knowing the reason I was summoned. When ready to start, at the request of my wife, I consented to take along a rag carpet which she had made for the Old People's Home out there. I put the carpet into a sack and checked it to St. Paul, rechecking it from there to St. Paul Park. The baggage man asked me whether I had a trunk or a grip. I informed him I had a sack. In answer to his inquiry as to what was ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag
... respect, for we find that its seeming humble functions are intimately related to our highest powers. Sir William's couplet gives a hint of the dominance of the classical method of his day. It overemphasized the importance of reason and too often converted the youthful mind into a rag bag of useless information. The educators of that time and since have thought more highly of human reason than experience justifies. With their medieval bias for a world of will and reason, they drove the young with the whip and spur of emulation toward what to them seemed the one ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... ragtime, and I have rather a weakness for it. So once or twice in his dour days I've found an almost Satanic delight in singing The Humming Coon. And the knowledge that he'd like to forbid me singing rag seems to give a zest to it. So I go about ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... banished him from the little farmhouse (where Ham had kept two rooms); banished along with the superintendent the stiff plush furniture, the yellow-red carpets, the easels and the melodeon, and decked it out in bright chintzes, with wall-papers to match, dainty muslin curtains, and rag-carpet rugs on the hardwood floors. The pseudo-classic porch over the doorway, which had suggested a cemetery, was removed, and a wide piazza added, furnished with wicker lounging chairs and tables, and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... who pretended to stagger under the burden, this popular personification of the Carnival promenaded the streets for the last time in a manner the reverse of triumphal. Preceded by a drummer and accompanied by a jeering rabble, among whom the urchins and all the tag-rag and bobtail of the town mustered in great force, the figure was carried about by the flickering light of torches to the discordant din of shovels and tongs, pots and pans, horns and kettles, mingled with hootings, groans, and hisses. From time to time the procession ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the ground, dead, killed as by lightning. She showed no sign of hurt; there was nothing but a little streamlet of violet blood still trickling from her beak. Prada was at first merely astonished. He stooped and touched the hen. She was still warm and soft like a rag. Doubtless some apoplectic stroke had killed her. But immediately afterwards he became fearfully pale; the truth appeared to him, and turned him as cold as ice. In a moment he conjured up everything: Leo XIII attacked by illness, Santobono ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... to be envious, but contented with my poor clothes, and cheerful about it." I hope the little dear will like the bonnet and the frills I made her and some bows I fixed over from bright ribbons L. W. threw away. I get half my rarities from her rag-bag, and she doesn't know her own rags when fixed over. I hope I shall live to see the dear child in silk and lace, with plenty of pictures and "bottles of cream," Europe, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... Spring, as gossiping a rag as ever was printed. I expect there will be a fine column in it if ever it gets its prying nose into this day's doings. However, we are mum and her ladyship is mum, and, my word! his lordship is mum, though he did, in his passion, raise the hue ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... each number; now the uninviting visage of some exponent of the real and only doctrine and attitudes, now some coral strand in act of welcoming the missionaries of God's mysterious preferences, now a new church in the Victorian Gothic. The vile rag it was! A score of vices that shun the policeman have nothing of its subtle wickedness. It was an outrage upon the natural kindliness of men. The contents were all admirably adjusted to keep a spirit in prison. Their force of sustained suggestion was tremendous. There ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... to be less fit than himself. For the first time America was posing as the champion of legitimacy and order. Her representatives should know how to play their role; they should wear the costume; but, in the mission attached to Mr. Adams in 1861, the only rag of legitimacy or order was the private secretary, whose stature was not sufficient to impose awe on the Court and ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... standing in the lounge of the Hotel M—— at the Base. "I'll introduce you to young C—— of the Guards when he comes in," the Major was saying to me. "He is going up to the Front with me to-night by the troop train. You don't mind if I rag a bit, do you, old chap? You see he's only just gazetted from Sandhurst, a mere infant, in fact, and he's a bit in the blues, I fancy, at having to say good-bye to his mother. He's her only child, and she's a widow. The father was an old friend of mine. ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... made no reply. He was not wholly in his chief's confidence. He merely knew that the name of Lou Chada to Kerry was like a red rag to a bull. The handsome, cultured young Eurasian, fresh from a distinguished university career and pampered by a certain section of smart society, did not conform to Detective Sergeant Durham's idea of a suspect. He knew that Lou ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... sofa, holding her hand, and trying to keep her mobile, inattentive eyes upon Ellen's face. She was a little woman, youthfully dressed, but not dressed youthfully enough for the dry, yellow hair which curled tightly in small rings on her skull, like the wig of a rag-doll. Her restless eyes were round and deep-set, with the lids flung up out of sight; she had a lax, formless mouth, and an anxious smile, with which she constantly watched her son for his initiative, while she recollected herself from time to time, long enough to smooth ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of a bell came from the strange brown wooden structure, an old-time belfry, set not on a roof or a tower, but down on the ground. Slanting out wide at the bottom, to have a firm footing, it did look like a rag-dolly standing on her skirts, or a gingerbread baby, as the ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... As the last fluttering rag vanished from sight, our lads, who had watched the latter part of this performance in silent wrath, turned to each other ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... to me!—Why didn't I go sooner to that there castle? It is all luck, all luck in this world; but I never had no luck. Think of the luck of these childer, that have found a pot of gold, and such great, grand friends, and a slated house, and all: and here am I, with scarce a rag to cover me, and not a potato to put into my mouth!—I, that have been looking under ground all my days for treasure, not to have a halfpenny at the ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... round the waist and break your fat neck by jerking your head backward—snap! I saw him do it to a big buck nigger who was flourishing a razor in front of the governor. It can be done. You hear a low crack, that's all—and the man drops down like a limp rag." ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... "Take that damned rag off my child's neck," Mr. Quinn had roared at her, "an' take yourself off as soon as you can ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... notions, old traditions; but for me I am a Canadian, my mind is wearied with over-much civilization. I hate the English love of land for land's sake. That line of hills, swelling in massive curves, and crowned, not with a tottering ruin, serving to hang some legendary romance or faded rag of superstition upon, but with stately trees—that is ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... the stench and the colour whereof led to the supposition that the inhabitants facilitated domestic operations by emptying casual vessels out of the windows. The dirty little casements on the ground floor exhibited without exception a rag of red or white curtain on the one side, prevailing fashion evidently requiring no corresponding drapery on the other. The Court was a cul de sac, and at the far end stood a receptacle for ashes, the odour from which was intolerable. Strangely enough, almost all the window-sills displayed ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... house we all went in. mother and Aunt Sarah and Keene and Cele was setting up. well when he went in and begun to talk mother and Aunt Sarah begun to maik awful faces and Keene and Cele sed phew what a awful smell and mother sed Keene open the windows quick and sumone birn a rag. what in the wirld have you stepped in boys, go out and scrape your feet on the scraper and wipe them on the mat. you had augt to be moar cairful where you step and Beany he sed it aint that misses Shute i got hit with a roten eg ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... Halloran, 'I was in one of the police-courts this morning doing my work for the Evening Star. You know I report the police news for that rag, don't you? Well, I do. My column is called "The Doom of the Disorderly." Rather a good title that for a column of the kind! There didn't appear to be anything particular on, just a few ordinary drunks, until this fellow Doherty ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... indeed one that has taken a toy at the fashion of religion, and is enamoured of the new fangle. She is a nonconformist in a close stomacher and ruff of Geneva print,[55] and her purity consists much in her linnen. She has heard of the rag of Rome, and thinks it a very sluttish religion, and rails at the whore of Babylon for a very naughty woman. She has left her virginity as a relick of popery, and marries in her tribe without a ring. Her devotion ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... Witness the cider-barrel, the log-cabin, the hickory-stick, the palmetto, and all the cognizances of party. See the power of national emblems. Some stars, lilies, leopards, a crescent, a lion, an eagle, or other figure which came into credit God knows how, on an old rag of bunting, blowing in the wind on a fort at the ends of the earth, shall make the blood tingle under the rudest or the most conventional exterior. The people fancy they hate poetry, and they are all poets ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Torpentia. Frequently moisten the eye with cold water by means of a rag. Cool airy room. Darkness. When the inflammation begins to decline, white vitriol gr. vi. in an ounce of water is more efficacious to moisten the eye than solutions of lead. Tincture of opium diluted. New vessels from the inflamed tunica adnata frequently spread ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... the truth." The price of this very useful article was "four-pence." Off he set on a tour to the north to procure subscribers, "preaching in most of the great towns as a hireless Volunteer, in a blue coat and white waistcoat, that not a rag of the Woman of Babylon might be seen on me." In preaching, his object was to show that our Saviour was the real son of Joseph, and that the Crucifixion was a matter of small importance. Mr. Coleridge is now a most zealous ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson |
