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Patch   /pætʃ/   Listen
Patch

noun
1.
A small contrasting part of something.  Synonyms: dapple, fleck, maculation, speckle, spot.  "A leopard's spots" , "A patch of clouds" , "Patches of thin ice" , "A fleck of red"
2.
A small area of ground covered by specific vegetation.  Synonyms: plot, plot of ground, plot of land.  "A cabbage patch" , "A briar patch"
3.
A piece of cloth used as decoration or to mend or cover a hole.
4.
A period of indeterminate length (usually short) marked by some action or condition.  Synonyms: piece, spell, while.  "I need to rest for a piece" , "A spell of good weather" , "A patch of bad weather"
5.
A short set of commands to correct a bug in a computer program.
6.
A connection intended to be used for a limited time.  Synonym: temporary hookup.
7.
Sewing that repairs a worn or torn hole (especially in a garment).  Synonyms: darn, mend.
8.
A protective cloth covering for an injured eye.  Synonym: eyepatch.
9.
A piece of soft material that covers and protects an injured part of the body.  Synonym: bandage.



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"Patch" Quotes from Famous Books



... in the middle of the cloth. The poor woman was half dead with fright; so great was her despair, she could think of no other way of remedying the thoughtlessness of the fowl then by covering the unseemly patch with a plate in which she put the fine fruits taken at random from her pocket, losing sight altogether of the symmetry of the table. Then, in order that no one should notice it, she instantly fetched the soup, seated ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... mortal eye, Like roses that in deserts bloom and die. What moved my mind with youthful lords to roam? Oh, had I stay'd, and said my prayers at home! 160 'Twas this the morning omens seem'd to tell: Thrice from my trembling hand the patch-box fell; The tottering china shook without a wind, Nay, Poll sat mute, and Shock was most unkind! A Sylph too warn'd me of the threats of Fate, In mystic visions, now believed too late. See the poor remnants of these slighted hairs! My hands ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... seat at the next table. He found himself staring in a face, a face that still had some of the chubbiness of boyhood. Between the pale-brown frightened eyes, where the nose should have been, was a triangular black patch that ended in some mechanical contrivance with shiny little black metal rods that took the place of the jaw. He could not take his eyes from the soldier's eyes, that were like those of a hurt animal, full of meek dismay. ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos

... out of the sea every day to supply the needs of San Francisco and the surrounding country. These tugs bring in the catches of dozens of smaller boats manned by fishermen who are toiling out beyond the heads, and up the two great rivers. From far out around the Farallones, from up around the Potato Patch with its mournful fog bell constantly tolling, from down the coast as far as Monterey Bay where fish are in such abundance that it is said they have to give a signal when they want to turn around, from ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords

... treacherous—smiling on the confiding houses and gardens which one day may be levelled at a few hours' notice. Next come compact masses of Vauban brick, ripe and ruddy, of beautiful, smooth workmanship; stately military gateways and drawbridges, with a patch of red trousering—a soldier on his fat Normandy 'punch' ambling lazily over; and the peaceful cart with its Flemish horses. The brick-work is sliced through, as with a cheese-knife, to admit the railway, giving a complete section of the work. We are, in short, at one of the great ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald

... attempt to raise another just like it, with the determination not to give up. This has been my experience, although the experiments are made now on a much smaller scale than formerly. Last year I set out 2,500 plants, and only marketed 500 from the patch; the failure was owing to late planting. To avoid any such mistake this year, the ground was made ready for planting early in July, and by the middle of the month some 1,800 plants set out. The ground in this ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier

... life. In general she had an air of such utter placidity and acquiescence that it almost amounted to numbness. The book-keeper at this time of year scratched away every evening with a hoe and trowel in his half of the backyard, where he was making a tiny garden-patch. ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... ofttimes interesting and appropriate and the great majority of portraits include them. As soon therefore as we begin on any detail in the background we connect the portrait with the pictorial and the sitter becomes one of a number of elements in the scheme, the fulcrum on which they balance. A patch of sky, besides creating an expansion in the diameter of the picture introduces color, often valuable, as ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... represents the culmination of years of study of the problem of how to grow a pecan orchard on my ranch. That bunch of hogs represents about one hundred and fifty we selected about three weeks ago to put in our early peanut patch down there to finish them up as pork, but it does not show my breeders or young stock. I could talk hogs to you until the cows come home. I set my mark a year ago last spring, after being twice wiped out by the cholera, I set my mark ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various

... hung and drifted, like steam over a cauldron. At the bottom—invisible in spite of our great elevation—stood the town and camp of Ladysmith. Westward rose the long, black, hog-backed outline of Bulwana Hill, and while we watched intently the ghost of a flash stabbed its side and a white patch sprang into existence, spread thinner, and vanished away. 'Long Tom' ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... "hi nu, hi nu (an exclamation of surprise), where did you get those fine plums?" Unktomi arose and pointing to a crimson tipped cloud, said: "You see that red cloud? Directly underneath it is a patch of plums. So large is the patch and so red and beautiful are the plums that it is the reflection of them on the cloud ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin

... ridge, beyond a narrow valley, and all was quiet at the moment. The views from the spur were very fine, commanding the coast-line in both directions. Trebizond, some fifteen miles off but looking to be nearer, glistened white in the midday sunshine; each patch of level was bright green with growing corn, the higher hills were still crowned with snow, and the littoral as a whole in its colouring and its features was the Riviera faced about and looking north. The general gave me to understand that he would be unable to advance for some days, ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... gloomy like everyone in the regiment, paced up and down from the border of one patch to another, at the edge of the meadow beside an oatfield, with head bowed and arms behind his back. There was nothing for him to do and no orders to be given. Everything went on of itself. The killed were dragged from the front, the wounded ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... long time Betty lay awake, staring at the patch of moonlight on the floor beside her bed. "How mean I should have felt, if I'd told her when she wouldn't tell me," she thought. "I wonder if it's all right now. I wonder if next year is going to be as perfect as it seems. I wonder—" Betty Wales was ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde

... pass that I forsook the place, and by climbing a little staircase cut in the rock, against which the house was built, reached a cavern far above the roof and found at last my ideal writing-place upon the ledge in front of it, where the mallow and the crane's-bill crept over a patch of turf. Here the voices of the noisy little world below were sufficiently toned down by distance. The noisiest creatures up here were the jackdaws, which were constantly flying in and out of the holes in the church wall that rose above me from another and wider ledge of ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... visitors from Carson City, and was also lounging headquarters for many of the officers from the near-by fort, she experienced no difficulty in picking up all the floating rumors. Out of these, with Irish shrewdness, she soon managed to patch together a consistent fabric ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... fire on a patch of dry ground at the base of a six-foot fir. He set up his tent, made his bed, cooked his supper, sat with his feet to the ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... forest's full of the sort of stuff we're handling here. These forests are average and I'd like to say to the Skandinavia, 'you've got to figger results on the average.' We're cutting down to the minimum because we've got to, to feed the booms right. Well, that's goin' on if I know my job. There's patch stuff better. I daresay there's new ground on our limits liable to hand us Shagaunty stuff. But that's just as I say, patch stuff, an' not average. If they want Shagaunty quality right through let 'em get out and get limits up on Labrador. I reckon there's a hundred years cutting up there ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... mountain, we followed up, in the afternoon of the 19th, another stream, in hopes to find a grass-patch like that of the previous day, but were deceived; except some scattered bunch-grass, there was nothing but rock and sand; and even the fertility of the mountain seemed withered by the air of the desert. Among the few trees was the nut pine, ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... quite well; but Arthur, in my story, required a lesson and some punishment, as he became cross without scarlet fever, rhyme, or reason. I hope you will let me know if you think I have invented a good plan to cure a cross-patch. You know I am a great believer in our always trying first upon ourselves, what we propose to 'do to others,' as the very best way of finding out if we would like ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... priest at this day to the best company in England—I am not ashamed to produce him to your ladyship; and if I can remember twenty lines in his favour, I hope you will give me credit for being a sincere friend to the worthy part of the clergy. Observe, you must take them as I can patch them together; I will not promise that I can recollect twenty lines de suite, and without missing a word; that is what I would not swear to do for His Grace the Archbishop ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth

... mother had gone to see Aunt Polly Woodchuck, who lived under the hill. And he knew that his father, with a few cronies, was enjoying a feast in Farmer Green's clover patch. ...
— The Tale of Old Dog Spot • Arthur Scott Bailey

... to Brothertown. This year was also fragrant with blessing, and many souls were converted. After leaving Brothertown Brother Halstead was stationed at Monroe, and next at Hazel Green, where he had Rev. I.M. Leihy as a junior preacher. His subsequent charges were Prairie du Chien, Patch Grove, Mequon, Oak Creek, and Brothertown, when he took, in ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller

... lay upon the grasslands. It was as if she moved through a magic atmosphere upon which some enchantment had been laid. Since that wonderful sleep of hers all things seemed to have changed. Had it all been a dream? she asked herself. Then, shuddering, she turned up her sleeve to find that small red patch upon her arm. ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... sir. Mr. Lather is a good man, in his way, and particularly neighbourly. By the way, Mr. Effingham, he asked me to propose to let him take down your garden fence, in order that he may haul some manure on his potato patch, which wants it dreadfully, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... the country, to bring with them to the New World. Many of these were cultivated to some extent, while those indigenous to America, were cultivated by them with considerable success. And up to this day, it is a custom on many of the slave plantations of the South, to allow the slave his "patch," and Saturday afternoon or Sabbath day, ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany

... Westmoreland—the scaur-gate whence the house was named; and through this gate of mountain often, when the day was waning, a bar of slanting sunset entered, like a plume of golden dust, and hovered on a broad black patch of weather-beaten fir-trees. The day was waning now, and every steep ascent looked steeper, while down the valley light and shade made longer cast of shuttle, and the margin of the west began to glow with a deep wine-color, as the sun came down—the tinge of many mountains ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... could see nothing. Then he put his ear against the thin wall and listened. He could hear no sound but the mumble of voices from the room downstairs; those he could hear distinctly. He glanced about the floor, wondering if the sound was coming up through a crack. A patch of tin caught his eye and he carried the candle over to examine it. It was about a foot square, covering a stove-pipe hole, and was held in place by four tacks. He pulled out his knife, loosened one tack and bent the corner up. Then he put ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop

... stage and then to the window at R. She pulls up the blind and raises the window. The light comes up from the street lamp, throwing out her figure in strong silhouette, and showing a square patch of light on the ceiling. In the C. of this patch, sticking point up in the heavy wooden panelling, can be seen the knife. ROSALIE stands for a few moments looking out at the night. DONOHUE enters down L. ...
— The Thirteenth Chair • Bayard Veiller

... tiny stone-built hamlet, in a sheltered hollow about midway between the plain and the plateau. Above us, rising ridge beyond ridge, slope beyond slope, spread the mountainous moor-country, bare and bleak for the most part, with here and there a patch of cultivated field or hardy plantation, and crowned highest of all with masses of huge grey crag, abrupt, isolated, hoary, and older than the deluge. These were the Tors—Druids' Tor, King's Tor, Castle Tor, ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... you hear any noise in the lane last night? Your room is at the back of the house, and you were more likely to have heard it than I was. I have just seen one of the watch, and he tells me that there was a fray there last night, for there is a patch of blood and marks of a scuffle. It was up at the other end. There is some mystery about it, he thinks, for he says that one of his mates last night saw a sedan chair escorted by three men turn into the lane ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... sky. There were mountains all about them, some darkly green with fir, spruce, and pine, others of brighter and tenderer tints in their dress of oak, maple, and birch, while here and there arose one bald and gray, all of solid rock, with now and then a patch of moss clinging to its time worn sides, but giving variety to the scene and enhancing by ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... but left them to die of starvation, when they weren't there to see. You're a heartless, selfish race, you human beings, and I suspect that Mrs. Tabby is not the only shabby-looking, true-hearted soul, who has to pester people for subscriptions to patch up the dreary end of existence for deserted pets, when caressing ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... pleasure of the King that this place should remain so bad (Isa. 35:3, 4); his labourers, also, have, by the directions of his Majesty's surveyors, been, for above these 1,600 years, employed about this patch of ground, if, perhaps, it might have been mended; yea, and to my knowledge, said he, here have been swallowed up at least 20,000 cart-loads; yea, millions of wholesome instructions, that have, at all seasons, been ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... they had all three to stuff themselves into a very narrow back seat, but that was better, they thought, than walking. They drove over the uneven heaths; the bullocks which drew their cart stopped whenever they came to a little patch of green grass among the heather. The sun was shining warmly, and it was wonderful to see, far in the distance, a smoke that undulated, yet was clearer than the air—one could see through it: it was as if rays of light were rolling and ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... also petitioned in behalf of the said islands that, now and henceforth, the encomiendas be given under the obligation and condition that the encomendero shall work a patch of ground, and assist the farmers and Indians, so that they also may work and cultivate the soil. You shall strive to begin this, and shall give lands and homesteads, farms and horses, for breeding and farming, to the settlers ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair

... clear brown, with a long light line over the eye, and a patch of black-and-white streaks on the back; light and dark brown ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... is being maintained with a bituminous carpet coat, the patrolman will be furnished the necessary tools to enable him to patch the surface with ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg

... have each other's noses and cheeks in charge, and one readily acquires the habit of occasionally taking hold of his nose, especially when it feels comfortable, to see if it is frozen. The frost-bite is at once detected by a white, wax-like patch, with edges sharply defined against the ruddy color of the healthy flesh. When you touch it, it feels cold and hard, and as if you had hold of somebody else's nose. It thaws readily, and without further inconvenience, under the pressure of a warm finger, unless it has been frozen for ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder

... half of the town lay under him, and beyond its edge swept the timbered slopes, the river, and the green pathways of the plains. His heart beat a little faster as he looked. Half a mile away was a tiny, parklike patch of timber, and sheltered there, with the river running under it, was the old home. The building was hidden, but through a break in the trees he could see the top of the old red brick chimney glowing in the sun, as if beckoning a welcome to him over the tree tops. ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood

... all the sheep and laid them on the grass. But he cut off the head of the ram which always led the flock and had bells round its horns. This he took back to the place where they should have been feeding, for here he had noticed a high rock, with a patch of green grass in the middle and two or three thick bushes growing on the edge. Up this rock he climbed with great difficulty, and fastened the ram's head to the bushes with a cord, leaving only the tips of the horns with the bells visible. As there ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various

... as anxious as he could be to do his best. So she went over the ground again, pegging and explaining till the wrinkled brow was smooth again, and he kept saying, 'I see, miss. All right, Miss Molly, I'se gotten it in my head as clear as patch-work now.' ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... lanes, where carpenters, at work with plane and chisel in their shops, tossed the light shaving straight upon the water, where it lay like weed, or ebbed away before me in a tangled heap. Past open doors, decayed and rotten from long steeping in the wet, through which some scanty patch of vine shone green and bright, making unusual shadows on the pavement with its trembling leaves. Past quays and terraces, where women, gracefully veiled, were passing and repassing, and where idlers were reclining in the sunshine, on flag-stones and on flights of steps. Past bridges, where there ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... little white streak showed that the snow still lingered and would linger on until the frosts of autumn bound it in chains to await the universal winding-sheet of winter. Climate varied with the varying altitude of the route. Here, on a last patch of mountain ground, were a man or two and a woman or two and odd children, reaping and binding; there, after a few minutes' ascent, on another sloping patch, a solitary peasant ploughed with his team of oxen. Everywhere on the declivitous ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... Through These Fires The Street of the City All Through the Night The Gold Shoe Astra Homing Blue Ruin Job's Niece Challengers The Man of the Desert Coming Through the Rye More Than Conqueror Daphne Deane A New Name The Enchanted Barn The Patch of Blue Girl from Montana The Ransom Rose Galbraith The Witness Sound of the Trumpet Sunrise Tomorrow About This Time Amorelle Head of the House Ariel Custer In Tune with Wedding Bells Chance of a Lifetime Maris Crimson Mountain Out of the Storm ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill

... came to a briar patch and saw down at the roots little people, not much longer than your finger. Mary spoke so kindly to them; said she would be so glad if they would open a path for her to walk in, she would thank them so much; so they began to pull the briars back until there was ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... Durie went through his fruitless search, and then, feeling hungry, and having suffered no visible ill effects from his first incautious draught of small-beer, he ate and drank heartily. From the way in which the patch of sunlight crept up the wall, it was easy to tell that the time was evening. Could it indeed be that no more than twenty-four hours back he had ridden, secure and free from this horrible care, along the shining sands by the crisp salt ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... spoke, John's eye kindled, and, turning, he looked down at Nan, who sat diligently ornamenting with microscopic stitches a great patch going on, ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott

... world: thou art an ungrateful patch of earth! Thus the poor agent is despised! he labours painfully in his calling, and trudges between parties: but when their turns are served, come out's too good for him. I am mighty melancholy. I'll e'en go home, and shut up my doors, and die o' the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... second terrace, Feller, the Gallands' gardener, a patch of blue blouse and a patch of broad-brimmed straw hat over a fringe of white hair, was planting bulbs. Mrs. Galland came down the path from the veranda loiteringly, pausing to look at the flowers and again at the sweep of hills and plain. The air was singularly ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... absent horses, he said, were principally the ones which had been under saddle the day before, and as we both knew, a tired, thirsty horse will go miles for water. He recalled, also, that while we were asleep at noon the day before, twenty miles back on the trail, the horses had found quite a patch of wild sorrel plant, and were foolish over leaving it. Both of us being satisfied that this would hold them for several hours at least, we struck a free gait for it. After we passed the point where the mules had been overtaken, the trail of the horses ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams

... opposite the church that he ran into the Little Grey Woman of the Night-Light. He had just flashed past a labourer in the road—known to his cronies as the Flap-eared Denizen of the Turnip-patch—a labourer who in the dear dead days of Queen Victoria would have touched his hat humbly, but who now, in this horrible age of attempts to level all class distinctions, actually went on lighting his pipe! Alas, that the respectful deference of the ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne

... and draw away from him; so quickly he had to set to work to patch up the damage. "I want you to get well," he pleaded. "You're so good to everybody—you treat ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... good deal to attract his attention, but surely there was something wrong about the girl's get-up to-day? He kept throwing uneasy glances towards her while the horses were brought out, and Esmeralda strolled about in a patch of sunshine, and picked her steps gingerly over the muddles, like a model of fastidious care. She sprang to the saddle, light as thistledown, and curved her graceful throat with a complacent toss, as the groom smoothed her skirt, bringing the white ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... strengthened by their hearing the cry of sea-fowl. After a pause, lights were seen looming under the haze to sea-ward, which at times resembled water; and a tail like that of a comet was discerned, beyond which was a black patch of considerable size. ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... the type of the mountain dog. It is of the same size as the dog of the Pyrenees, and differs therefrom especially in its coloring. It is white beneath, with a wide patch of orange red covering the back and rump. The head and ears are of the same color, with the addition of black on the edges; but the muzzle is white, and a stripe of the same color advances upon the forehead nearly up to the nape of the neck. The neck also is entirely ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various

... sont dans la nature,' my dear," quoted Lensky, coming in at the open window, "there are even people who like German bands!" Looking down at Pammy through his eyeglass, the sun fell full on his head, betraying an incipient bald patch. Otherwise Lensky had aged not ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... or other, and about something unknown to the rest of us, the Rube and Nan quarreled. It was their first quarrel. Milly and I tried to patch it ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey

... happens in nearly every case. If you look close you'll find that the animal always has a startled expression. I rather think any of us would if a flash like that blinded us just when we'd started to pick up the biggest watermelon in the patch." ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone

... where a patch of dry pavement indicated a bake-house under the street, three or four squalid creatures crouched together and slept. The streets were all but noiseless. It would be two hours yet before the giant of traffic would awake. The few cabmen hailed each other as ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... and, creeping closer to the wild bull, he gave it a cut with his whip. The hooked steel wire plaited round the end of the whip cut out a whole patch on the skin of the savage beast, but it did not move. Another cut reached its neck, chipping away the skin with a sharp crackle. The bull only grunted, but did not stand up, and buried its head among the reeds ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... brocades of that day. There were portraits in miniature of the courtiers and the ladies of the Great Reign on the very ewers and basins. On the flounced dressing-table, with its antique glass and a diminutive patch-box, now the receptacle of Lubin's powder, a sprig of the lovely Rose The was exhaling a faint, far-away century perfume. It was surely a stage set for a real comedy; some of these high-coiffed ladies, who knows? perhaps ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... I should add, the ear is not always so exacting; and ordinary writers, in ordinary moments, content themselves with avoiding what is harsh, and here and there, upon a rare occasion, buttressing a phrase, or linking two together, with a patch of assonance or a momentary jingle of alliteration. To understand how constant is this preoccupation of good writers, even where its results are least obtrusive, it is only necessary to turn to the bad. There, indeed, you will find cacophony supreme, the rattle ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... hold of their hats they sauntered out by the great door, through which they had entered on the night before. The sun was now at meridian height, and his beams fell down upon the patch of open ground in front of the monastery, for a monastery they supposed it must be. A glance backward as they walked out from its walls showed its architecture purely of the conventual style; windows with pointed arches, the larger ones ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... semi-starvation on the corn meal and cereals and very little else that her dollar and a half a week had purchased, and the "garden sass," that her grandfather had faithfully hoed and tended in the straggling patch of plowed field that he would hoe and tend no more. She spent a month practically at his feet, listening to his stories, helping him to find his pipe and tobacco and glasses, and reading the newspaper to him, and felt amply rewarded ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley

... away another night of agony. Confession grew more difficult. As soon as possible he went to bed. He watched a patch of moonlight cross the floor of their lodging, and, as sometimes happens when the mind is overtaxed, he fell asleep for the rest of the room, but kept awake for the patch of moonlight. Horrible! Then began one of those disintegrating dialogues. ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... presage of things unimagined stirring at his heart. Was it even then nineteenth century? Not for him, seeing that the life of each of us reproduces the successive ages of the world. Belwick, roaring a few miles away, was but an isolated black patch on the earth's beauty, not, as he now understood it, a malignant cancer-spot, spreading day by day, corrupting, an augury of death. In those days it had seemed fast in the order of things that Wanley Manor should be his home through life; how otherwise? Was it not the abiding-place of the Eldons ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... earth, sucked out the remnants of moisture. Others shouted that evil spirits had murdered the guards and slashed the bags. But Stas and Kali knew what it all meant. M'Kunje and M'Pua were missing from those men howling above that grass patch. In that which had happened there was something more than the murder of two guards and the theft of water. The remaining slashed bags were evidence that it was an act of revenge and at the same time a sentence ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... range. Fraser's Wells. Mount Olga's foot. Gosse's expedition. Marvellous mountain. Running water. Black and gold butterflies. Rocky bath. Ayers' Rock. Appearance of Mount Olga. Irritans camp. Sugar-loaf Hill. Collect plants. Peaches. A patch of better country. A new creek and glen. Heat and cold. A pellucid pond. Zoe's Glen. Christy Bagot's Creek. Stewed ducks. A lake. Hector's Springs and Pass. Lake Wilson. Stevenson's Creek. Milk thistles. Beautiful amphitheatre. A carpet of verdure. Green swamp. Smell ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... never a bottle of the genuine in America since Columbus's time. That wine all comes from a little bit of a patch of ground which isn't big enough to raise many bottles; and all of it that is produced goes every year to one person—the Emperor of Russia. He takes the whole crop in advance, be it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... beyond a sharp exclamation, remained stolid. He glanced at his companions, glanced round the garden—and suddenly pointed to a dark patch on the ground. ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher

... that tarred shanty and the hedge! Somebody's minding every bit of it like a dog tied to a cart's tail. Patching it and bothering about it. Bothering! Yapping at every passer-by. Look at that notice-board! One rotten worried little beast wants to keep us other rotten little beasts off HIS patch,—God knows why! Look at the weeds in it. Look at the mended fence!... There's no property worth having, Dick, but money. That's only good to spend. All these things. Human souls buried under a cartload ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... wires. This is a very dangerous pastime and everybody wanted to volunteer for the service so I ordered that the men should be chosen by roster, that is, according to their turn. Sergeant Jones got out one night in a turnip patch in front of our lines. There was a German sniper in the same patch so they began to stalk each other. Jones got his man first, but as the German keeled over he fired and the bullet tore some fingers off Jones' hand and gave him a severe flesh ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... the Noah's ark that haven't any names,' the parrot told him. 'All those are considered fair game. Hullo! blugraiwee!' it shouted, as a little grey beast with blue spots started from the shelter of a rock and made for the cover of a patch of giant seaweed. Then all sorts of little animals got up and scurried off ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit

... when all the receipts were in. But so it was, and so did little Ellis Dixon have his burdens lifted, for a hundred dollars will go a long way when fish can be had for the catching, and when one has his own potato patch. ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard

... certain lights he almost looked as if he had been rubbed over with phosphorus. He had lost two front teeth one night, though he could not quite remember how, and this made him speak so that he could not always be understood, and he had a bald patch on the top of his head, which made him look rather like a monk, with a fringe of curly, bright, golden hair round the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... tell you? Why, they went away to Bennett's ranch. Couldn't find a vestige of vegetables nearer. Mrs. Bennett has a little patch where she raises lettuce and radishes. The orderly carried a basket full of truck, and leaves and flowers, poppies and cactus, you know, and you've no idea how pretty they've ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... that ethereal void, Till I have tired my wings and long to fill My breast with denser air, to stand, to walk With eyes not raised above my fellow-men. Sick of my unwalled, solitary realm, I ask to change the myriad lifeless worlds I visit as mine own for one poor patch Of this dull spheroid and a little breath To shape in word or deed to serve my kind. Was ever giant's dungeon dug so deep, Was ever tyrant's fetter forged so strong, Was e'er such deadly poison in the draught The false wife mingles ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... their perfection. We purchased as many as we could carry off for a real. They were full, rich, and juicy, and proved to be a grateful restorative, after our day's exposure to the direct rays of the sun, and their scarcely less supportable reflection from the water. The melon-patch of Las Sandas is overflowed daring the rainy season, and probably the apparently bare, sandy surface hides rich deposits of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... worry. If you behaved yourself they'd knock off a generous allowance and a fellow of your enlightenment and tact might be put to work in the warden's office, or set to collecting potato bugs in the prison garden patch. But it's highly unprofessional to bother about such trifles. We haven't been nabbed yet, and if you and I are not smart enough to keep out of trouble we ought to be locked up; that's my philosophy of the situation. You must conquer that morbid ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... that looked down from the roof. But the green window curtains with gold borders were the most significant symbols of love, in his eyes. Bog felt that curtains of any other color would be wholly out of place in that house. The patch of a garden, scarcely bigger than a bathroom, in front of the house; the single fir tree that grew up in the middle of it; the black iron railing; the door steps, and the pavement—all took their share of beatitude ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... to be listening. The two were approaching the patch of moist earth which bore the impress of Robert Fenley's boots. "By the way," he said suddenly, "are you aware that there is a sort of a theory that your father was shot by a ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... sentence. And now I could see the sunlight lying in a somewhat dreary patch, if the word dreary can be truly used with respect to any manifestation of sunlight, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... blood in the Bulgars. The Bulgar, slow, heavy, inclined to be morose and suspicious of all strangers, does not give so pleasant a first impression. The Serb is light-hearted, inclined to be frivolous, and is much more adaptable. Give the Bulgar a patch of ground and he will immediately plant vegetables; the Serb will devote at least some of it to flowers. Then will come the Greek trader and make a fatter profit out of the product of their ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various

... winked at me and I knew he was kidding Pee-wee. Well, believe me, we hit a plan all right; we more than hit it, we gave it a knockout blow. All the while we were talking, he was taking us across the lawn till pretty soon we came to a little patch of woods and as soon as I got a whiff of those trees, good night, I felt as if I was up at Temple Camp already. That's a funny thing about trees—you get to know them and like them ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... alteration of the pigment-forming function. When the chlorosis was cured the natural color returned. Paullini and Riedlin, as well as the Ephemerides, speak of different colored hair in the same head, and it is not at all rare to see individuals with an anomalously colored patch of hair on the head. The members of the ancient house of Rohan were said to possess a tuft of white hair on the front ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... in the light of the blazing fire. There was, first of all, the little pig; then there were the taro-root, and the yam, and the potato, and six plums; and, lastly, the wood-pigeon. To these Peterkin added a bit of sugar-cane, which he had cut from a little patch of that plant which he had found not long after separating from us; "and," said he, "the patch was somewhat in a square form, which convinces me it must have been ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... open court, set round with tottering houses, a sacred neem tree made a vast patch of shadow. Near it, a rickety staircase led up to Dyan's roof room. Roy, mounting cautiously, knocked at ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... us. An acre or two on my land in Moore County—no king can live half so well if the ground be got ready this spring and such a start made as one natural-born gardener can make. The old Russian I had in Garden City was no slouch. Do you remember his little patch back of the house? That far, far, far excelled anything in all Europe. And you'll recall that we jarred 'em and had ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... and madness, and they don't know what they are about. If they get into the main system of gullies, we shall have them like rats in a trap, for they can never get out by the lower end. Do you see, Doctor, a little patch of white road among the trees over there? That leads to the Limestone Gates, as we call it. If they pass those walls upwards, they are confined as in a pound. Watch the white road, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... though but some fourteen years old, was much more than he had dreamt of. In a parlour in front he found Albert and the landlord cutting off the doublet of the wounded man, so as to get at his shoulder, where a great patch of blood showed the location of the wound. He was some forty years old; his dress was quiet but of good quality, and Edgar judged him to be a London trader. His face was very white, but he was perfectly sensible. One of the servitors ran in with a ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... what is expected of me, if I can only pick up the pieces of this smashed-up life of mine and patch them into a decent whole that you will not be ashamed of, then I ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... for repairs,' as they say of a steamboat when her smoke-stacks are snapped off by a Lake Pepin gale, and she goes ashore. At no distant day we will again go out into the tide. From any quantity of 'wild lands'—which we have the felicity of paying taxes on—we have selected a ten-acre patch in the neighborhood of the city, and are living something after the style of Thoreau, except that we have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... fiercely at the retreating figure of the lighterman, and, turning a deaf ear to a request for a lock of his hair to patch a favorite doormat with, resumed with much vigor his task ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs

... impetuosity! I've frightened your dear mother away. May I ask, by the bye, if she has the good fortune to please ye, since the Maker of all souls made her, for all eternity, with the particular object of mothering you in this brief patch of time?" ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... the wide range of conditions in the country occupied by auratus, extending from Florida to the Arctic, it is impossible to believe that there is any common element in the conditions which demands a scarlet nuchal patch in auratus, while the equally varied conditions in the cafer area do not require that character. It may be added that the same objection is equally valid whether we apply it to the utility of such a character or to the supposition that the character has been caused by external conditions; ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham

... taken as the wild-flowers of an exquisite restlessness, of an unrestricted range in life. Many of them signified beautiful or famous places. There was one point at which Oxford, Newmarket, and Assisi converged, and I was always careful to shift my hat-box round in such a way that this purple patch should be lost on none of my fellow-passengers. The many other labels, English or alien, they, too, gave their hints of a life spent in fastidious freedom, hints that I had seen and was seeing all that is best ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... way from Mulliner's," added the careful Ballantyne. "There's an old mail tin, about a mile or so away from here, near the worked-out alluvial patch. You can always drop a letter in there for me. Haughton's such a good-natured ass that he'll play Mercury for you. Anyway, I'll send him to look in the tin every ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke

... precious piece of scroll, he departed from his cell and groped his way down the stone corridor until the light improved enough for him to see his way. Luckily, a patch of moonlight illuminated the very space in front of the accursed Brother ...
— G-r-r-r...! • Roger Arcot

... years Claire RenA(C)'s days had been very much alike. It was a dull routine, full of heavy tasks, in the tiny crumbling house, in the shrunken garden patch, and grand'mA"re—there was always grand'mA"re to care for. Often in the afternoon Claire RenA(C) wandered in the forest for an hour. She was used to the silence of the tall trees; the silence in the house frightened her. All the people in her land were gone away; ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... smooth side of the rock, fair as his own side with its ripple of muscles, could have hurt him thus. He let the water carry him till he might climb out on to the shingle. There he sat upon a warm boulder, and twisted to look at his arm. The skin was grazed, not very badly, merely a ragged scarlet patch no bigger than a carnation petal. The bruise, however, was painful, especially when, a minute or two later, ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... straggling houses that formed the village of Dunster were soon passed, and then arose the first difficulty. The road for some little distance was direct enough, but at last it came to a sudden termination, or rather, opened out into a wider space, where there was a dirty pond, a patch of grass, and two roads: the one to the left, the other to the right. Right before them, filling up the way they ought to take in order to carry out Elsie's plan of keeping straight on, stood a tiny crofter's cottage, surrounded by its meagre crops ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various

... I looked at Father Letheby across the table in the lamplight, and saw his drawn, sallow cheeks and sunken eyes, and the white patch of hair over his ears, I could not help saying to myself: "You, too, have got your stigmata, my ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... joint candidate with the Tiger. O'Brien used to take him off very pleasantly, and perhaps you may, from his representation, have some idea of this important wight. He used to sit with a half-starved look, a black patch upon his cheek, pale with the idea of murder, or with rank cowardice, a quivering lip, and a downcast eye. In that manner he used to sit at a table all alone, and his soliloquy, interrupted now and then with faint attempts to throw off a little saliva, was to the following ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... only about two, and I don't remember anything about it. Dad came on to the back verandah, and saw me sitting by a patch of dust, stroking something. He couldn't make out what it was at first, and then he came a bit nearer, and saw that it was a big snake. It was lying in the dust sunning itself, and I was stroking ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... exhausted by wars in which they have put forth all their strength and which leave them tired, bleeding and broken, it is not difficult to patch up a peace that may last until the generation which experienced the horrors of the war has passed away. Pictures of heroism and triumph only tempt those who know nothing of the sufferings and terrors of war. It is therefore comparatively easy to ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti

... wounded, but had succeeded in putting the pirates to flight. His boat was not large enough to carry all the party, but he had one of the carpenter's crew with him, and some tools; and, after a little examination, Tom Gimlett declared that he could patch up one of the boats so as to make her in a fit condition to launch. All hands helping, and with the aid of some planks from the other boat, this was done, and at length the two boats were on the water, on their way to look ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... over by the south gate of Gotham there dwelt another wise man, of much the same appearance as Socrates. His white beard was a trifle longer and he had lost his left eye, which was covered by a black patch; but in all other ways his person betokened as much wisdom ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum

... rigged over the rail, stripped to his trousers, and went overboard with a pot of paint. 'I don't like the way this schooner's painted,' said he, 'and I've taken a down upon her name.' But he tired of it in half an hour, and the schooner went on her way with an incongruous patch of colour on the stern, and the word Farallone part obliterated and part looking through. He refused to stand either the middle or the morning watch. It was fine-weather sailing, he said; and asked, with a laugh, 'Who ever heard of the old man standing watch himself?' To the dead ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... as we could patch up our ships, we came a-following and joined forces with Ato's soldiers. We assaulted the Tower day after day. Until the ground and the walks around it were black with our dried blood. But they held out. Not once did they try a counter-attack. ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... of this low earth is smiled upon by that serene apocalypse of the loving will of God. No lane is so narrow and foul in the great city, no spot is so bare and lonely in the waste desert, but that thither the sunlight comes, and there some patch of blue above beckons the downcast eye to look up. The day opens its broad bosom bathed in light, and shows the sun in the heavens, the Lord of light, to preach to us of the true light. The night opens deeper abysses and fills them ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... planned, to park the car in front of the candy-store across from the Armory and he would pick it up. There were masterly arrangements regarding leaving the key, and having the gasoline tank filled; and passionately, devotees of the Great God Motor, they hymned the patch on the spare inner-tube, and the ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... cheer and relaxation treatment does not give relief. Unhygienic living and mind cure cannot go together. The mind that tries to deceive itself cannot cure either mind or body. The man who violates the habits of health cannot patch his injuries or conceal the ravages of dissipation by mental hygiene. Here is the great advantage of knowing how to live hygienically, of observing habits of health, and then concerning ourselves not with ourselves, but with conditions of living for all those whose health can be affected by our ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... close to him, and whispered, "Never mind that little cross-patch. She does not care a pin about the horse; you interrupted her flirtation, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... who was consuming in the flame of want, tacking patch after patch upon his ragged garment, and solacing his mind with this couplet:—"I can rest content with a dry crust of bread and a coarse woollen frock, for the burden of my own exertion bears lighter than laying myself under obligation to another."—Somebody observed to him, "Why do you sit quiet, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... Richard Morfe and Eva Harracles deliberately turned their backs on Trafalgar Road, and hurried side by side down Beech Street. Beech Street is a short street, and ends in a nondescript unlighted waste patch of ground. They arrived in the gloom of this patch, safe from all human inquisitiveness, and then Richard Morfe warmly kissed Eva Harracles in the mathematical centre of those lips of hers. And Eva Harracles showed no resentment of any ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett



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