"Frayed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and he pulled down a second yet more stained and frayed than the first. 'We had a splendid time then exploring the Zuyder Zee, its northern part at least, and round those islands which bound it on the north. Those are the Frisian Islands, and they stretch for 120 miles or so eastward. You see, the first two of them, Texel and Vlieland, shut ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... of Lil's attraction for Dicky Graham, anyway?" the soprano voice queried. "She's a good seven years older than he is, and both her past and her youth are rather frayed ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... tenderly collects Mike, who's in a frayed an' fragmentary condition, an' gently freights him over to us on a buckboard. It's a week before Peets allows he's ag'in ready for the show ring, an' he uses up enough co't plaster on him to kyarpet the Red Light. Little Joolie? We let's on to her that Mike meets up ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... injuries on me that cry out for vengeance. Can I make myself young again by shedding your life, or would there be any profit in changing these rags I now wear for your garments, which are also dusty and frayed? No, no, sir Englishman, this dress of patience and suffering and exile, my covering by day and my bed by night, must soon be changed for brighter garments than you ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... relapsed after this speech into his former bashfulness. But the face and figure she turned towards him were neither young nor fair: a woman past forty, with gray threads and splashes in her brushed-back hair, which was turned over her ears in two curls like frayed strands of rope. Her forehead was rather high than broad, her nose large but well-shaped, and her eyes full but so singularly light in color as to seem almost sightless. The short upper lip of her large mouth displayed her teeth in an habitual smile, which was in turn so flatly ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... her frayed kid shoes upturned on the fender, little Katie Lowry, confident that she had found an all-powerful friend in this queer long man who smoked such queer long cigars, sipping her tea only when she had to pause for breath, poured out the story of her grandfather's fight ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... hand dropped to his gun but as his fingers touched the stock he found himself staring at the uptilted end of Stratton's holster frayed a little at the end so that the glint of a blued steel barrel ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... the skipper of the second skiff, "do you notice that where we make this turn to the left the bushes along the point are kind of frayed, like something had rubbed against 'em a heap ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... not perfect; but, at least, she might be infinitely worse. And Scott would be sure to need a practical wife, to counteract his habitual disregard of concrete things. Catie would see to it that his wristbands were not frayed and that his buttons were in their proper places. She might not enter into his ideals, but she would mend his socks and insist upon his changing them when he had wet his feet. Socks were more important to a man ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Winthrop's indefinite soliloquy melted into the rapt silence of imagination. Below on the smooth black pavement pattered two laden burros. On their packs hung dusty, weatherworn canteens, a pick and shovel, and a rifle in its soiled and frayed scabbard. The sturdy, shaggy burros followed a little, lean old man, whose flop-brimmed hat, faded shirt, and battered boots told a tale of the outlands, whispered of sun-swept immensities, of sage and cacti, sand and silence. Winthrop drew a long breath. Such an adventurer was the Overland Red ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... cat looked up at him, curiously but pleasantly. "Hello, old lady," he said; and she arched her back and rubbed lightly against his nigh leg while the kittens tumbled over his shoes and played frantically with the frayed bottoms of ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... all such gatherings which is totally irrespective of gas or wax-candles. It can shed a mellow lustre on dingy rooms, frayed carpets, and shabby furniture; nay, I have seen its tender rays impart a rare and spiritual beauty to an old, worn, long-loved face; but on the other hand, when this magic light is quenched, or even temporarily shaded, not all the illuminations of a royal birthday are brilliant enough to dispel ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... closely. I noticed now his frayed cuffs and the dinginess of his over-brushed clothes. Not even the magnetism of his spectacles could conceal it. Perhaps I had been forgetting something, whether the Bulgarian ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... had been bought ready-made, of a Chatham Street Jew, without any question—about 1848. It probably cost four dollars when it was new. It was ripped, it was frayed, it was napless and greasy. I could not resist showing him where it was ripped. It so affected him that I was almost sorry I had done it. First he seemed plunged into a bottomless abyss of grief. Then he roused himself, made a feint with his hands as if waving ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... magnificently. But now the frogs and tassles were gone. In their stead had been patiently stitched (I surmised by some surviving "black mammy") new frogs made of cunningly twisted common hempen twine. This twine was frayed and disheveled. It must have been added to the coat as a substitute for vanished splendors, with tasteless but painstaking devotion, for it followed faithfully the curves of the long-missing frogs. And, to complete the comedy and pathos of the garment, all ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... he walked; everything was big about him, his hands and feet, his voice and his laugh, and when he whispered his words were audible at the other end of the room. This giant among men wore an old brown velvet coat, very frayed about the elbows, and though he was by no means handsome, there was such a pleasant, kindly expression on his face that Anna felt drawn to ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... tower moved on its rusty hinges under the hand that struck it and Prince Michael came into the room. Nobody had the smallest doubt about his identity. His light clothes, though frayed with his adventures, were of fine and almost foppish cut, and he wore a pointed beard, or imperial, perhaps as a further reminiscence of Louis Napoleon; but he was a much taller and more graceful man that his prototype. Before anyone could speak he had silenced everyone for an instant ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... gentleman with a remarkably fierce pair of whiskers; he wore a coat of ultra-fashionable cut, and stood with his booted legs wide apart, staring up at the inn from under a curly-brimmed hat. But the hat had evidently seen better days, the coat was frayed at seam and elbow, and the boots lacked polish; yet these small blemishes were more than offset by his general dashing, knowing air, and the untamable ferocity of his whiskers. As Barnabas watched him, he drew a letter from the interior of his shabby coat, unfolded it with a prodigious ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... is composed of units of structure called neurones or nerve cells. "If we could see exactly the structure of the brain itself, we should find it to consist of millions of similar neurones each resembling a bit of string frayed out at both ends and here and there along its course. So also the nerves going out to the muscles are simply bundles of such neurones, each of which by itself is a thread-like connection between the cells of the spinal cord or brain and some muscle. The nervous system ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... jewel is unset, having been taken—as most jewels in stories of this kind are—from the head of an Indian idol. The stone is passed around for inspection. The Hindoo servant is clearing some of the things from the table, and the diamond has just been admired by an old gentleman in a rather frayed dress-suit, when the attention of everyone present is drawn away from the table for a moment or two. When they turn around, the diamond has disappeared. Naturally, the guests are embarrassed, but they all offer to allow themselves to be searched, with the exception of the shabby-genteel ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... other a pretty chrysalis on the eve of her change into a butterfly of butterflies; who is, nevertheless, to attempt flights overhigh and overfar for her frail wings; venturing to unfriendly lands whence she must return with frayed and tired pinions and a bruised and bleeding little soul. And their two destinies, so divergent, are yet fated, ever and again, in the swift swinging round their orbits, to approach, touch, and bound away again in opposite directions, strive though they may to maintain for ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... joined his friend in the doorway opening upon the two stalls. Whitey had preempted the nearer, and was hungrily nuzzling the old frayed ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... Parker bore him no grudge. She pitied the poor young gentleman for having no one to look after him. Out of the smudgy little window you could see an immense expanse of sad-looking sky, and whenever there were clouds they looked very worn, old clouds, frayed at the edges, with holes in them, or dark stains ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... second-sighted wench that has bewitched Elliot, and you too, for all that I can see. Never did I think to be frayed with a bogle, {14} and, as might have been deemed, the bogle but a prentice loon, when all was done. To my thinking all this fairy work is no more true than that you are a dead man's wraith. But they are all wild about it, at the castle, where I was kept long, doing no trade, and listening to their ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... Like birds frayed from their lurking-shaw, Like ripples fleet 'neath a furious flaw, The echoes re-echo, flying Down from the mauls hot-plying; Clatter the ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... served our young man: Crossing to the station, Judson Green took note of this barber shop and took note also that his russet shoes had suffered from his trudge through the dusty park. Likewise one of the silken strings had frayed through; the broken end stood up through the top eyelet in an untidy fringed effect. So he turned off short and went into the little place and mounted the new tall chair that stood just inside the door. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... and escaped convicts, and officers, and students, and Social Democrats, and hired patriots; the timid and the brazen, the sick and the well, those knowing woman for the first time, and old libertines frayed by all species of vice; clear-eyed, handsome fellows and monsters maliciously distorted by nature, deaf-mutes, blind men, men without noses, with flabby, pendulous bodies, with malodorous breath, bald, trembling, covered with parasites—pot-bellied, hemorrhoidal apes. ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... remedy for headache. Old handkerchiefs are excellent for this purpose. Fold in frayed edges, two or three thicknesses will be heavy enough, and have two, large enough to cover the forehead. Wring one out of ice water so that it will not drip, and put on the forehead. Keep the other on a piece of ice and change the two applications frequently. When applied to the neck ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... when it had been any different. Those who came to town as little children grew into gawky youths knowing no more about other parts of the world than their geography books told them. When any one died, a strand in the Life hanging above the town broke and flapped in the wind, growing more and more frayed with the passing of time, until after a year or so its tatters were noticeable only as a sort of roughness upon the pattern. When a child was born, a thin tentacle from the central mass of strands reached out and fastened itself upon ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... gave a sort of internal giggle, a noiseless affair that was almost just a wriggle of delight. Miss Jubb! Did you ever see anything like the dress she made for Mrs. Miller, of 17 Tavistock! Chronic, it was! Like a concertina! And poor old Annie Jubb getting flurried when the material frayed in the scissors! Cooh! Call her a dressmaker! More like a figure ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... could hit on—and had him well cried '|Missing|!! Stolen or Strayed, Lost or Mislaid, |A Gentleman|;—middle-aged, sober and staid; Stoops slightly;—and when he left home was arrayed In a sad-colored suit, somewhat dingy and frayed; Had spectacles on with a tortoise-shell rim, And a hat rather low crowned, and broad in the brim. Whoe'er shall bear, Or send him with care, (Right side uppermost) home; or shall give notice where Said ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... to him is as dear as a rose Would be to a delicate maid; He carries his darlings wherever he goes, In a pocket-book tattered and frayed. ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... names—romantic, splenetic, of opprobrium, or outright endearment—to suit, I imagine, Lakalatcha's varying moods. In one respect they puzzled me—they were of conflicting genders, some feminine and some masculine, as if in Leavitt's loose-frayed imagination the mountain that beguiled his days and disturbed his ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... toward the wide prairie unrolling to the westward. Overhanging it were writhing clouds, hurled hither and thither, twisted, frayed, and burst asunder by the titanic forces of the upper air, and all converging with centripetal violence toward one vast maelstrom. Its long, funnel-shaped form dipped and lifted, trailing back and forth like some sensate thing. With it came ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... now looked the ragged sansculotte to the life, with bare and muddy feet, frayed breeches, and shabby, black-shag spencer. The four men stood waiting together with Juliette, whilst Sir Percy gave them ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... was frayed and stained by the friction of often-tried armor, and in his richly studded belt glistened a diamond handled poniard. Around his massive settle stood servants to do his bidding, while at his side were two or three shaggy hounds, resting their chins upon their master's knee-now soliciting ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... 10-inch mortars, fit only to pound 'fufu,' or banana-paste; add a single brass field-piece, useful as a morning and evening gun for this highly military station. Then we came to Government House, apparently deserted, flying a frayed and tattered white and blue flag, which might have been used on board H.M.S. Dover, but which ought to have been supplanted on shore by a Union Jack. After waiting a quarter of an hour, we managed, with the assistance of a sentinel, whose feet were in slippers and whose artillery carbine ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... could stand comparison with this handsome fellow across the danger line. But to compare any one of the men in Lady Bazelhurst's house party—oh, it was absurd! She looked them over. Dull-eyed, blase, frayed by the social whirl, worn out, pulseless, all of them. They talked automobile, bridge, women, and self in particular; in the seclusion of a tete-a-tete they talked love with an ardor that lost most of its danger because it was from force ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... little girl call me "Traitor!" That, I believe, was my last "false voice," but it made such an impression that I can even now recall vividly the appearance of that dreadful child. It was not surprising that a piece of rope, old and frayed, which someone had carelessly thrown on a hedge by a cemetery that I sometimes passed, had for ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... pocket of his coat he drew out a little beautifully-painted miniature. The frame had long since been worn and frayed. O'Connell looked at the face ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... seems intent on keeping my mind occupied, brought me home a bundle of old magazines last night. They were so frayed and thumbed-over that some of the pages reminded me of well-worn bank-notes. I've been reading some of the stories, and they all seem silly. Everybody appears to be in love with somebody else's wife. Then the people are all divided ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... at least our nerves; As once a ram's-horn solo maddened all The sober-minded stones in Jerich's wall. A year's exemption from the critic's curse Mends the bard's courage but impairs his verse. Thus poolside frogs, when croaking in the night, Are frayed to silence by a meteor's flight, Or by the sudden plashing of a stone From some adjacent cottage garden thrown, But straight renew the song with double din Whene'er the light goes out or man goes in. Shall I with arms unbraced (my casque unlatched, My falchion pawned, my buckler, too, attached) ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... sensation, excitement which its unreal existence does not afford it. Indeed, this band has come to give a cast to the whole of present-day life; its members pretend to represent present-day culture. It is with this group with its frayed sensibilities and tired pulses that Strauss has become increasingly identified, till of late he has become something like its court-musician, supplying it with stimulants, awaking its curiosities, astonishing and exciting it with the superficial ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... And graceful turned the head on the broad chest Encased in pliant steel, his constant vest, Whence split the sun off in a spray of fire Across the room; and, loosened of its tire Of steel, that head let breathe the comely brown Large massive locks discoloured as if a crown Encircled them, so frayed the basnet where A sharp white line divided clean the hair; Glossy above, glossy below, it swept Curling and fine about a brow thus kept Calm, laid coat upon coat, marble and sound: This was the mystic mark the Tuscan found, Mused of, turned ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... dissipation. His under lids were puffy and discolored, and a dozen heavy creases ran, fan-like, from the corners of his eyes. Hair already turning white and an unkempt mustache and beard completed the picture. His clothes were faded and frayed, no linen was visible, and his boots were cracked and soggy. There was nothing about him to suggest the former estate of gentleman save his hands, which, while thin and tremulous, were clean and well-kept, in singular contrast to ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... for gray silk ties, a flower in his buttonhole, white linen gaiters drawn carefully over his patent boots. Certainly the contrast between this scrupulously dressed young man and Naudheim, bordered upon the absurd. Naudheim was shabby, unbrushed, unkempt. His collar was frayed, he wore no tie. The seams of his long black frock-coat had been parted and inked over and parted again. He wore carpet slippers and untidy socks. There ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... down over frayed shirt sleeves, and tried vainly to straighten the celluloid collar that kept scooting his tie up under his ear. Once off the moving strip, he started up the Robling corridor toward the plant gate. Perhaps he would be fortunate. Maybe ...
— Meeting of the Board • Alan Edward Nourse
... frayed edge of the city, where great stretches of sign-plastered vacant lots began to yawn between isolated patches of buildings and the river ran close enough alongside of them to reflect their leftward lights. She smiled, but as ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... overlooking them; and his gardener did not plan so substantially as his architect. In fact, you might suppose that the landscapist wrought with an eye to the loveliness of the ruin it all would soon fall into, and, where he used stone, used it fragilely, so that it would ultimately suggest old frayed and broken lace. Clearly he meant some of the cataracts to face one another, and to have a centre from which they could all be seen—say the still, dull-green basin which occupies a large space in the grounds between them. But he must have meant this for a surprise to the spectator, who easily ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... we stooped to avoid, sheets of water descended. Every now and then the heavy cars would run off the rails, which were of scantling, worn and frayed by friction. Then my Swede would storm in Berserker rage, and we would lift till the veins throbbed in my head. Never had time seemed so long. A convict working in the salt mines of Siberia did ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... the Major curtly, and a brush was brought from the stable, and scrubbed vigorously up and down, with the result that the surface of the cloth was frayed and roughened, though there was no appreciable ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... particle of meal in the barrel—and was now enjoying a period of repose before recommencing hostilities. The shepherd made a rush at him, but, alas, what he wanted was no longer there. A piece of frayed rope dangled on its neck, but the ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... a girl, a handsome lad was he, Despite the pallor of his wounds, each one an agony. A ball had carried off his arm, and zig-zag passage frayed Into his chest—so wild a rent that, when it was displayed, I, veteran surgeon that I was, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... gate which led into the big Flying U field she overtook them. Glory, placid as a sheep, was nibbling a frayed end of the rope which held the gate shut, and Weary, the big box balanced in front of him across the saddle, was ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... point to clear up. He pulled the wedge of paper out of his pocket and began nervously to unroll it. It was frayed and black where the door had ground it against the floor; but, on beginning to open it, it turned out to be a portion of a torn newspaper. It was a Standard of February 4—two days ago—and Arthur whistled again and turned pale as he saw ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... phaeton and the sorrel mare had actually taken the bride and groom from the barn to the railway station, after the fiddle and the bassoon and the horn and the tinkling cymbal at Morty Sands's dance had frayed and torn the sleep of those pale souls who would sleep on such a night in Harvey, Grant Adams and his father, leaving Jasper to trip whatever fantastic toes he might have, in the opera house, drove down the hill through the glare of the furnaces, the creaking of the oil derricks ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... "oh, children of God, put up your steel and pray for one whose white soul doth mount e'en now to heaven!" and forth into the light came one clad as a white friar—a tall man and slender, and upon his shoulder he bare a mattock that gleamed beneath the moon. His coarse, white robe, frayed and worn, was stained with earth and the green of grass, and was splashed, here and there, with a darker stain; pale was he, and hollow-cheeked, but with eyes that gleamed 'neath black brows and with chin long and purposeful. Now at sight of him, fierce-eyed Walkyn cried aloud and ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... observed, that his energy was not exhausted by literary work, and that it preyed upon himself if no means of escape were found. If he was not at the piano, or shaping clay, or at the drawing-board, or walking fast and far, inward disturbances were set up which rent and frayed his mind. The pleasures of society both fatigued and rested Browning; they certainly relieved him from the troubles of ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... goin' to sweep with that?" she demanded, exhibiting the frayed utensil, the business end of which was worn to a stub. "More like a shovel, enough sight. Well, there's pretty nigh dust enough for a shovel, so maybe this'll take off the top layers. S'pose I'll ever get this house fit for Mr. Ellery to live ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... where they knelt in after life, the plain black tressels that bore their weight on their last visit to the cool old shady church. Everything told of long use and quiet slow decay; the very bell-rope in the porch was frayed into a fringe, and ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... were clumsy, square-toed, and thick-soled; one was even patched on the side. The trousers were heavy and rough, of the kind advertised as "wear-resisting fabrics, suitable for youths at school," frayed at the ends, ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... moments, when I took up my pen to write, some evil spirit whispered, Cui bono? and I laid down my pen and hid my manuscript. Once or twice I took up some old Greek poets and essayed to translate them. I have kept the paper still, frayed and yellow with age; but the fatal Cui bono? disheartened me, and I flung it aside. Even my love for the sea had vanished, and I had begun to hate it. During the first few years of my ministry I spent hours by the cliffs and shores, or out on the heaving waters. Then the loneliness ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... much composure and quiet assiduity as if he had never been out of his service, and grumbling betwixt whiles to the following purpose:—"Hump—ay, time cloak and jerkin were through my hands—I question if horsehair has been passed over them since they and I last parted. The embroidery finely frayed too—and the gold buttons of the cloak—By my conscience, and as I am an honest man, there is a round dozen of them gane! This comes of Alsatian frolics—God keep us with his grace, and not give us over to our own devices!—I see no sword— but that ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... teachers' table brought her dinner on a tray and set it by the bed without awaking her. She did not wake up until near the middle of the afternoon. She found that the white mother had stolen into the dormitory with a small book which she had placed upon the pillow. There was a narrow white ribbon, frayed and yellow, wound around the book and tied on one side in a bow. The rooms below now were quiet, for the wind had lulled and the entire school was out ...
— Big and Little Sisters • Theodora R. Jenness
... end of the line until he had drawn in over eighty feet. Then at last he saw. Though he had not forgotten to wrap the line with canvas where it passed over the cliff edge, he had thought the strands must have been frayed through on a sharp corner of rock. Instead, he found himself staring at the clean-cut string-wrapped rope end that he had ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... had suspected so strongly, they had broken away from the anchorage. Doubtless the rope had been frayed by some sharp- edged stone, and when that unusual gust swooped down upon them it ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... poor old woman meant was the workhouse master, and the packet was opened in his presence, and found to contain a child's linen under-garment plainly marked—"Max Vanburgh, 12," and a child's highly-coloured toy picture-book, frayed and torn, and further disfigured by having been doubled in half and then doubled again, so that it would easily go ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... and cold, there was never a change in the old man's raiment. The rusty frock coat—black where it was not green, grey along the seams, and ravelled at the skirts—the broad-brimmed and battered slouch hat, and the frayed string tie had seen fat years and lean years on all the tracks of the Jungle Circuit, and no man could say when these things had been new or their wearer had been young. Old Man Curry was a fixture, as familiar a sight as the fence about the track, and his shabby ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... cotton shirt, with frayed collar and a bosom discoloured with what I took to be ancient blood-stains, was put on me amid a running and apologetic fire of comment. A pair of workman's brogans encased my feet, and for trousers I was furnished with a pair of pale ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... across the coulee she drove the wagon to keep pace with them. Often a man would run up to the wagon, climb upon a wheel and dip a frayed gunny sack into a barrel, lift it out and run with it, all dripping, to the nearest point of the fire. Her part was to keep the wagon at the most convenient place. She began to feel the importance of her position, and to take pride in being always ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... nothing of my intention to Punchard (to the others I had as yet not breathed a word of our purpose) but the next time I went to the well I took a knife with me, and, choosing a portion of the rope where it was much frayed, I carefully sawed through one or two of the strands with the blunt edge. The result was that when I was drawing the full bucket up, the rope snapped, the bucket fell to the bottom with a clatter, and I (to make the accident more convincing) toppled over on my back. Up came one ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... these frayed edges," said Frank, laying them together. "You see that these two pieces were part ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... comparison between which will give as infallible a return as the dry and wet bulbs of the ingenious "Hygrodeik." The first is the black broadcloth forming the knees of his pantaloons; the second, the patch of carpet before his mirror. If the first is unworn and the second is frayed and threadbare, pray for him. If the first is worn and shiny, while the second keeps its pattern and texture, get ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... out. Then it was easy to draw back the heavy wooden panels and allow the moonlight to flood these exposed chambers. Carefully he scanned his immediate surroundings. The paper of the sho[u]ji was torn and eaten by the rats. In places the frayed tatami (mats) bent under his feet, evidence of decay of the supporting floor. There was the mouldy damp smell common to places long closed to the freedom of the outer air. It sent a chill to the bone; which Endo[u] noted with surprise as he turned to the dark inner rooms. He must ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... three and four hundred real buffalo my heart gave a great jump of joy. I tried to view them so as to take in their details, but the apparently shapeless masses of dark reddish brown wool appeared to have none, unless indeed the comical fur trousers with frayed bottoms on their front legs ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... in view of her departure, she was tidying a drawer, something pricked her finger. It was a wire of her wedding bouquet. The orange blossoms were yellow with dust and the silver bordered satin ribbons frayed at the edges. She threw it into the fire. It flared up more quickly than dry straw. Then it was, like a red bush in the cinders, slowly devoured. She ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... ladies gay, To the green-wood haste away; We can show you where he lies, Fleet of foot, and tall of size; We can show the marks he made When 'gainst the oak his antlers frayed; You shall see him brought to bay, "Waken, lords and ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... slit of which last, as she reaches forward and backs out convulsively, half opens and then comes together in an unsatisfactory, startling, tantalizing way, and allows a hint of a red flannel under-something. The frayed ends of the skirt lie across a hopelessly-burst pair of elastic-sides which rest on their inner edges—toes out—and jerk about in a seemingly undecided manner. She is damping and working up the natural layer on the floor with a piece of old flannel ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... Egypt. The astonishing perfection in art handicrafts of all descriptions which we find in China many hundreds of years before the Christian era shows no vestiges of a manufacture of lace; but, in the tombs of ancient Egypt, garments have been discovered with the edges frayed and twisted into what we may call a primitive lace, and in some of the Coptic embroideries threads have been drawn out at intervals and replaced with those of coloured wools, making an uncouth but ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... with the world at large. But as a symbol only it must remain, for the voices of the outer world that call us up as they search for other friends or obstruct us when we in turn are, as it were, groping after ours, have already frayed the temper of our staff. It was inevitable that under such constant irritation these ex-Service men of ours would one day burst into strong military idiom, so we have disconnected our telephone in order to avoid the calamity ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... hand-to-hand bout with the wolf on the threshold—a most practical, philistine wolf, moreover, which never heard of rhyme or rhythm, and whose whole acquaintance with prosody is confined to a certain greedy familiarity with frayed masculine and ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... the hotel went Billy to enter upon a period of waiting that frayed his nerves to an utter frazzle. Inaction was horrible to him, and now it was inevitable. He must wait for word from that agile web of little spies which the one-eyed man was weaving about the Captain's palace, and be ready to start ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... left his apartment dressed in a blue coat with long skirts, much worn, and even with holes in some places. These holes were the work of moths and not of balls, as has been said in certain memoirs. On his head his Majesty wore an old hat edged with gold lace, tarnished and frayed, and at his side a cavalry saber, such as the generals of the Republic wore; this was the coat, hat, and sword that he had worn on the day of the battle of Marengo. I afterwards lent these articles to Monsieur David, first painter to his Majesty, for his picture of the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... bezond, be the Tour of Babiloyne the grete: of the whiche I have told zou before, where that alle the langages weren first chaunged. And that is a 4 jorneyes fro Caldee. In that reme, ben faire men, and thei gon fulle nobely arrayed in clothes of gold, or frayed and apparayled with grete perles and precyous stones, fulle nobely: and the wommen ben righte foule and evylle arrayed; and thei gon alle bare fote, and clothed in evylle garnementes, large and wyde, but thei ben schorte ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... grey mass packed it tighter. It was pregnant with rain. Here and there a steaming vapour broke from it as if puffed out by some immense interior commotion. Thin tissues detached themselves and hung like a frayed hem, lengthening, streaming to the ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... The bills were frayed, lacking the fresh green of new ones; weary looking, with an air of being glad to rest at last after much passing from hand to hand as symbols of wealth. Their exalted present owner tenderly smoothed cut several that had become crumpled, secured them in a neat pile, adding the three recently ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... Palmer's, was confronted by the office-boy ushering to the side of his desk a tall, spare, smooth-faced man with a sober countenance, an ill-concealed manner of being somewhat over-awed by his surroundings, and a coat frayed at ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... back; pinioned in the turns upon turns in which, during the past night, the whale had reeled the involutions of the lines around him, the half torn body of the Parsee was seen; his sable raiment frayed to shreds; his distended eyes ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... little, somewhat insignificant-looking man—at first sight. His clothes were well-worn and carelessly put on; the collar of his under-coat projected high above that of his overcoat; his necktie had slipped round towards one ear; his linen was frayed; his felt hat, worn anyway, needed brushing; he wore cotton gloves, too big for him. He carried a mass of papers and books under one arm; the other hand grasped an umbrella which had grown green and grey in service. ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... of the Marne. "La Marne! Helas, quelle douleur!" said Jeanne, and wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron. "But it was a glorious victory," I expostulated. Yes, but Jeanne, it seemed, had lost a brother in the battle of the Marne. She pulled out of her bosom a frayed letter, bleached, stained, and perforated with holes about the size of a shilling, and handed it to me. I could make nothing of it. She handed me another letter. "Son camarade," she explained, and no longer attempted to hide her tears. And this ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... across shadows that lay long to the east. Newbern was still slumberous. Smoke issued from a chimney here and there, but mostly the town would partake of a cold supper. The boy came beside his father, with Frank, the dog, again on his leash of frayed rope. Dave Cowan was reciting ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... when drink and no money should finally force him to release his relaxing hold upon his fashionable clubs, upon luxurious attire and habits, he would suddenly and with accelerated speed drop into the abyss—We have all caught glimpses of that abyss—frayed fine linen cheaply laundered, a tie of one time smartness showing signs of too long wear, a suit from the best kind of tailor with shiny spot glistening here, patch peeping there, a queer unkemptness about ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... accounts, he was never so ill-inspired as on that tramp; having set forth indeed, upon a moment's notice, from the most unfashionable spot in Europe, Barbizon. On his head he wore a smoking-cap of Indian work, the gold lace pitifully frayed and tarnished. A flannel shirt of an agreeable dark hue, which the satirical called black; a light tweed coat made by a good English tailor; ready-made cheap linen trousers and leathern gaiters completed his array. In person, he is exceptionally lean; and ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shoulder produced suffering which he could not conceal. Each day that we had a fire, I watched mother sitting by his side, with a basin of warm water upon her lap, laving the wounded and inflamed parts very tenderly, with a strip of frayed linen wrapped around a little stick. I remember well the look of comfort that swept over his worn features as she laid the soothed ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... hesitated. He was a bald, grey-whiskered man, fat and flaccid. His cuffs were frayed and there were wine-stains on his shabby ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... from his forehead. He shook hands with the Dean and the Archdeacon, and bowed to the other members of the commission. As he sat down, the Archdeacon, who was very sensitive to such things, and was himself a model of spick-and-span-ness, noticed that the Rector's coat was frayed, and one of the buttons loose. Anne indeed was not a very competent valet of her master; and nothing but a certain esthetic element in Meynell preserved him from a degree of personal untidiness which ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... less excitement about the ride now that it was not her first. She noticed that the upholstery was frayed in spots. Other cars passed hers. The chauffeur was not so smart as some of the drivers. And he was alone. On a few of the swagger limousines there were two men in livery on the box. She felt rather ashamed of ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... from one of which peeped forth some wisps of straw, introduced, no doubt, to make the footgear fit. He slouched and shuffled in his walk, and he was unspeakably dirty. Nevertheless, he was girt with a sword in a ragged scabbard hanging from a frayed and shabby belt ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... that there was another severe engagement near there yesterday, and that our army is victorious. I have heard, also, that we were driven in, and that your regiment lost a great many men and horses . . . I don't know which is true," she added, listlessly picking at her frayed gown; "only, as we haven't heard the guns to-day, it seems to me that if we had lost the battle we'd have Confederate cannon thundering all ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... here is your best coat. That coat you have on has a frayed button. I saw it yesterday, and I cannot bear to have you wear ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... suffering in America today. Citizens are working together less and shouting at each other more. The common bonds of community which have been the great strength of our country from its very beginning are badly frayed. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William J. Clinton • William J. Clinton
... colorless skin, and jetty hair. The colorlessness had degenerated, however, into an unhealthy pallor, and the stubbly beard which covered his cheeks and chin did not improve his appearance. Besides he was terribly out at elbows; his coat was green with age, his boots were broken, and his cuffs frayed and soiled. His hat was unnaturally shiny, and dented in two or three places. Altogether he looked as unlike a brother of the immaculate Oliver and the exquisitely-dressed Rosalind as could possibly have been found for either in the world ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... bell, he had no eyes for any but the frail apparition whose crown of black seemed to weigh her toward the pavement. The change wrought in her by a year's traffic might have shocked, as the eyes might have haunted him; but she was nothing but a symbol by now. A frayed ensign, she stood for an earldom and a fee. The time had been when her beauty had bewitched him; that was when she went flesh and blood, sun- browned, full of the sap of untamed desires. Now she was a ghost with a dowry; stricken, but ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... combinations, proceeding outwards, came the corset, a most serious affair. This exceedingly expensive instrument of torture was compounded chiefly of silk (which easily frayed) and whale-bone. Many good women of the middle class have gone to their graves for three hundred years believing that Almighty God had specially created toothless whales of the Family Balaenidae solely for the purpose ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... lank and lean; he wore a sort of long gown of black cloth, green on the shoulders with age, and frayed at the elbows, while a girdle of plaited wool encircled his waist. He had no collar or cuffs, but his feet were encased in long sea-boots, which peeped out from under his petticoats, and his hair—well, his hair hung over his shoulders almost to his waist, and on his head was ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... "secretary" who shortly introduced the mandarin—a young Shan not more than twenty years old who only recently had succeeded his late father as chief of the village. The boy was dressed in an exceedingly long frock coat, rather green and frayed about the elbows, which in combination with his otherwise typical native dress gave him a ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... to some personal disinclination towards violent bodily exertion on the part of his creator, Father Brown, the criminal investigator of Mr. G. K. CHESTERTON'S fancy, is not a fellow of panther-like physique. For him no sudden pouncing on the frayed carpet-edge, or the broken collar-stud dyed with gore. He carries no lens and no revolver. Flashes of psychological insight are more to him than a meticulous examination of the window-sill. When the motive is instantly transparent, why bother about the murderer's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... eyed him ironically. Mr. Sam wore a black suit, with some show of dingy white shirt-front, relieved by a wisp of black cravat and two onyx studs. His coat-cuffs were long and frayed, and his elastic-side boots creaked as he led the way to ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... schooner lying some thirty yards from the bank. She had been seized for illegal sealing some years earlier, and it was evident that she had been very little used since then. The paint was peeling from her cracked and weathered side, her gear was frayed and bleached with frost and rain, and only very hard-pressed men would have faced the thought of going to sea in her. Wyllard and his companions were, however, very hard-pressed indeed, and they preferred the hazards of a voyage in the crazy ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... a rich man; no more crusades, no more stale bread and cheap tobacco, no more turning my cuffs and collars and clipping the frayed edges of my trousers. I am fortunate. There is a joke, too. Picard and his friends advanced me five thousand francs for ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... the European quarter he smoothed what creases he could out of his sole suit of drills, whitened his soggy topee and frayed canvas shoes with a piece of chalk purloined from a billiard saloon, bluffed a drink out of an inebriated ship's engineer and snatched a free lunch on the strength of it. Thus fortified he visited the British Consul, and by means of somewhat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... my mother. 'You know you did. What else was it possible to infer from what you said, you unkind creature, when you know as well as I do, that on his account only last quarter I wouldn't buy myself a new parasol, though that old green one is frayed the whole way up, and the fringe is perfectly mangy? You know it is, Peggotty. You can't deny it.' Then, turning affectionately to me, with her cheek against mine, 'Am I a naughty mama to you, Davy? Am I a nasty, cruel, selfish, bad mama? Say I am, my child; say "yes", dear boy, and ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... do, too. And I'm going to get out. I'm tired of decorating a set where the shuttle-cock of conversation is worn thin, frayed, ragged! Where the battledore is fashionable scandal and the players half dead with ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... snow from his hat and coat into the passageway and took the single chair; Selwyn, tall and gaunt in his shabby dressing-gown, stood looking at him and plucking nervously at the frayed and tasselled ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... of all was worn and frayed, With tatters grotesquely mended; But flouting the world, and undismayed, The ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... people, even if his presence in a fashionable cafe had not of itself made that seem improbable. On the other hand, he wore heavy, coarse shoes; his clothes, though well brushed, were visibly threadbare, and his clean white stock was frayed at the edge and almost worn out. He had taken off his three-cornered hat, and his high peaked head was barely covered with scanty silver-grey hair. When he dropped his paper and looked about him for the waiter, evidently ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... a scrap of feminine apparel; although what part, or how it had come there, was not at once obvious to M. Flocon. A long and minute inspection of this bit of lace, which he was careful not to detach as yet from the place in which he found it, showed that it was ragged, and frayed, and fast caught where it hung. It could not have been blown there by any chance air; it must have been torn from the article to which it belonged, whatever that might be,—head-dress, nightcap, night-dress, or handkerchief. ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... exceptional study of human nature presented by this fine specimen of an old rustic priest, who was not the less to be respected because he took a great deal of snuff, hated shaving, wore hob-nailed shoes of the roughest make, and a threadbare, soup-spotted soutane with frayed edges. He was not a bit ascetic, and although he had lived so many years by himself, his good-humour and gaiety continually overflowed. It may be that a housekeeper tends to sour a priest's temper more than anything else, and this one knew it. The ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... a newspaper cutting and compared the two then stepped briskly, almost jauntily, into the hall, as though all his doubts and uncertainties had vanished, and waited for the elevator. His coat was buttoned tightly, his collar was frayed, his shirt had seen the greater part of a week's service, the Derby hat on his head had undergone extensive renovations, and a close observer would have noticed that ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... aethalioid, the sporangia ill defined, their walls more or less perforate, frayed, or dissipated, ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... when the wind is up, the roofs show another aspect. The storm, in frayed and cloudy garment, now plunges across the city. It snaps its boisterous fingers. It pipes a song to summon rowdy companions off the sea. The whirling vents hum shrilly to the tune. And the tempests are roused, and the windy creatures of the hills make answer. The towers—even the nearer ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... the Patriarch, the servers of the chalices, the whole body of assistants inside the railing, fell upon their knees while the banner was borne through the gate, and planted on the floor there. Its face was frayed and dim with age, yet the figure of the woman upon it was plain to sight, except as the faint gray smoke from the censers veiled it in a ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... with singularly protruding fishy eyes and a tobacco-stained yellowish goatee underneath a loosely dropping lower lip, had stepped forward, his pudgy hand hospitably outstretched to me: a man in wide-brimmed dusty black hat, frayed and dusty but, in spots, shiny, black broadcloth frock coat spattered down the lapels, exceedingly soiled collar and shirt front and greasy flowing tie, and trousers tucked ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... dropped her axe, and was coming toward them. She was a slim, bird-like creature, with a poise to her head and an up-tilt to her chin which warned that the man had not yet beaten her to the level of the woman. She was dressed in a faded calico, frayed at the bottom, and with the sleeves bobbed off just above the elbows of her slim white arms. Her stockings were mottled with patches and mends, and her shoes were old, and worn ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... public notice fostered this impression,—a sturdy figure with long body and short legs, clad in a woolen shirt and butternut-colored trousers repaired to the point of picturesqueness, his head surmounted by a limp, light-brown felt hat, frayed away at the top, so that his yellowish hair grew out of it like some nameless fern out of a pot. His tawny hair was long and tangled, matted now many years past the possibility of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... with him on the street, suddenly discovered that the Judge's hat was just a shade too wide in the brim, and his coat a little bit frayed around the button-holes. He had never noticed before that the Judge was a little old-fashioned in his manners. No thought of being ashamed of him came into his mind, but it gave him a curious sensation when they entered ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... door; the old farmer in blue linen looking on; and there, drawn up, listening to their captain, row on row of blue-coated men, all hard-bitten, weary, all rather cynical, all weather-stained and frayed, and all ready to go on ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... was wearing a soiled shirt, that his cuffs were slightly but perceptibly frayed, that his eyes were set in half-moons the color of ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... quite a few lessons, I realised that the years which rob us so in passing throw us a few compensations in return for all the wealth they steal, and that although the pattern had all gone wrong, still, there was no sense in leaving my particular square of the patchwork with the edges all frayed. So I took my brains off the shelf and dusted them, with a very fair result on the whole. If I had been a man in a novel I should of course have gone to the New Forest, and lived the simple life in sandals and few clothes, subsisting mainly on nuts; but as I was a woman in real ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... was opened, and another man came in; a striking figure, tall and gaunt, with old and pitifully untidy clothing, and a half month's growth of beard upon his chin. He wore an old black hat, frayed at the edges; but under this hat was a face of such gentleness and sadness that it made you think of Carpenter's own. Withal, it was a Yankee face—of that lean, stringy kind that we know so well. The newcomer's ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... see it. He has not been shaved since last sheep-shearing, and has a short black pipe in his mouth, and the tobacco smells like nigger-head or pig-tail. He wears a coarse check shirt without a collar, a black silk neck-cloth frayed at the edge, that looks like a rope of old ribbons. His coat appears as if it had once been new, but had been on its travels, until at last it had got pawned to a Jew at Rag-alley. His waistcoat was formerly buff, but now resembles yellow flannel, and the buttons, though ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton |
