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Rough-and-tumble   /rəf-ənd-tˈəmbəl/   Listen
Rough-and-tumble

noun
1.
Disorderly fighting.  Synonyms: dogfight, hassle, scuffle, tussle.






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"Rough-and-tumble" Quotes from Famous Books



... there was a rush of feet, a rough-and-tumble scuffle, the sound of blows, and Archie was down on his knees, panting and trying hard to get his breath silently so that he ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... copious or a Procopius application of the knout can answer. We, for instance, have (or had, for perhaps it has been stolen) a biography of that same Parker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford, with whom Andrew Marvell 'and others who called Milton friend' had such rough-and-tumble feuds about 1666, and at whose expense it was that Marvell made the whole nation merry in his 'Rehearsal Transprosed.' This Parker had a 'knack' at making himself odious; he had a curiosa felicitas in attracting hatreds, and wherever he lodged for a fortnight ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... astounded. They had always thought of Mexico as a land of rough-and-tumble, comic-opera revolutions; a place where one must forever be on the lookout for trouble; where robbers were rife and the days were nothing but a chain of abominations. A sunny, beautiful country, maybe; but no place for a ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne

... Bright on his journeys about the District, as they were usually hurried and undertaken with scant preparation. Very little of the flesh-pots of Bengal sufficed to satisfy Muktiarbad's Chief of Police, who had been thoroughly broken in to the rough-and-tumble of official life in the mafasil. The presence of his family in camp was a hindrance to Mr. Bright, and he was better pleased to return, after his strenuous duties, to the peace of domesticity at his bungalow in the Station. Moreover, there was little of interest in the monotony ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... was sixteen he had fallen in love, at his home in Virginia, and had fought a rough-and-tumble with his man rival, by name William Veach or else Leitchman. He seemed to be holding Leitchman pretty even, too—until his rival's friends jumped ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin

... has produced a bourgeois human being intensively conscious of his capacities and anxious to try himself out in the rough-and-tumble of the market place and on the battlefield; to initiate, undertake, direct, administer. In the main, these are characteristics of the human male, though the female often possesses them in a greater ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... have lasted it would be impossible to say. Bobby had never before used his fists, while the aggressive Johnny, at public school, was the hero of many fights. But as long as Carter insisted on no rough-and-tumble this fact gave the elder boy little advantage. The damage that two light-weights can inflict on each other with round-arm blows is inconsiderable, and Bobby was of the sort that punishment merely renders obstinate. Probably sheer lack of breath would in time have called the battle a draw, but all ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White

... outwardly. Whisky kills him suddenly; it does not sap him gradually. In his youth he must have been a remarkably handsome man, for he is still handsome. I don't believe he is much past forty. A bad one in a rough-and-tumble; all the water-front tricks. His hair is oddly streaked with gray—I might say a dishonourable gray. Perhaps in the beginning the women made ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... the endless variety of chance weapons, there remained those good old-standers the musket, the cutlass and the knife, each of which, in the sailor's grasp, played its part in the rough-and-tumble of pressing, and played it well. A case in point, familiar to every seaman, was the last fight put up by that famous Plymouth sailor, Emanuel Herbert, another fatalist who, like Bingham, believed in having two strings to his bow. ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... bring us into contact with Cartwright and other Methodist ministers, the frontiersmen and bushfighters of the Church, who do not bandy subtilties with Mephistopheles, nor consider that the Prince of Darkness is a gentleman, but go in for a rough-and-tumble fight with Satan and his imps, as with so many red Injuns undeserving of the rights and incapable of the amenities of civilized warfare. We confess a thorough liking for these Leatherstockings of the clergy, true apostolic successors of the heavy-handed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... of it, and then retraced their steps to gather up the fragments of the milk-bottle, which had come to grief within the first twenty yards. Then on they went again, past more cottages and sundry turnings, until at last they reached a curious old rough-and-tumble wharf on one side of the road, where the coal which had been brought by train was piled up in great stacks for the coalmen to take round presently in their carts. Here, too, was drawn up a train—one such as only those who lived in those parts have ever been privileged to see. ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... been in many a rough-and-tumble wrestling match and was able to take care of himself in competition with any ordinary opponent, even when weight was against him; he struggled desperately, but within the space of a very few seconds he realized ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst

... by politeness. He was putting himself in an attitude of defense and was depending on the brawn of a man who had been a tough proposition when he swung his police club on a New York beat. He even moved a chair which might get underfoot in a rough-and-tumble. But his muscles relaxed when he looked at the man ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... time, sometimes took the form of energetic dances (Morris dances, they came to be called, through confusion with Moorish performances of the same general nature). Others of them, however, exhibited in the midst of much rough-and-tumble fighting and buffoonery, a slight thread of dramatic action. Their characters gradually came to be a conventional set, partly famous figures of popular tradition, such as St. George, Robin Hood, Maid Marian, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... of popularity, and the temptation to sink into the dirty old chair in his study, smoke a pipe and go to sleep, hindered again and again his ambition. He had, as so many clergymen have, a great deal of the child in him, a remoteness from actual life, and a tremendous ignorance of the rough-and-tumble brutality and indecency of things. It had not been difficult for Grace, because of his laziness, his childishness, and his harmless conceited good-nature to obtain a very real dominion over him, and until now that dominion ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... replied. "You know, that nightshirt thing they wear is about the stupidest idea for a storm-troop uniform I ever saw. Natural target in a gunfight, and in a rough-and-tumble it gets them all tangled up. Ah, there go a couple of coppers to talk to them; that's what they've been waiting on. Now they can beat it without looking like they been ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire

... purposely use the word, "eventually," because I realize, first, that humor has various stages, and that seldom, if ever, can one expect an appreciation of fine humor from a normal child, that is, from an elemental mind. It seems as if the rough-and-tumble element were almost a necessary stage through which children must pass, and which is a normal and healthy stage; but up to now we have quite unnecessarily extended the period of elephantine fun, and, ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... instant afterward, a muffled voice, like that of a man only half awake, shouted from a room behind me, "Who's there? Get out! I'm a-coming!" This seemed to encourage the individuals who were having a rough-and-tumble on the carpet, for they commenced roaring simultaneously, "Help! murder! thieves! fire!" without, however, relaxing hostilities ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... for no cause whatever. We say for no cause, as it is obvious that Mr. Kilburn, as the agent of the troupe, could have said nothing against Miss Saville which an outsider, not to say a foreigner like Mr. Beauvoir, had any call to resent. Mr. Kilburn is a gentleman unaccustomed to rough-and-tumble encounters, while his adversary has doubtless associated more with pugilists than gentlemen—at least any one would think so from his actions yesterday. Beauvoir hustled Mr. Kilburn out of Mr. McMullin's, where the unprovoked assault began, and violently shook him across the new plank sidewalk. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various

... nice agreeable pair as they glared at each other. If they had been two little street boys they would have sprung at each other and had a rough-and-tumble fight. As it was, they did ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... They were carried by assault, many of the enemy being bayoneted beneath ingenious barricades that they deemed impregnable. The enemy were killed or driven out, and their cannon captured. For ten minutes it was a desperate, give-and-take, rough-and-tumble fight. The artillerymen attempted to reload when the assaulting party was not ten paces distant. The enemy retreated to a second ridge of the mountain, and made a determined effort to form a line, but the pursuit was too hot for the effort to be successful. Reinforcements ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... promise so much? Do you mean that you and I must fall upon him? You forget that he will have men about him. A duel is one thing, a rough-and-tumble another, and we shall fare none so well in this, ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... skirts and lace handkerchiefs at sea. Believe me or not as you like, but, for a man having work to do, woman, lovely woman, is rocks. Now, I suppose you'll think I'm insolent, for I'm younger than you are, Marmion, but you know what a rough-and-tumble fellow I ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... apologize, and say she thought it was a "'possum;" Riar would listen to no excuse; and as soon as Dilsey reached the ground they had a rough-and-tumble fight, in which both parties got considerably worsted in the way of losing valuable hair, and of having their eyes filled with dirt and their clean dresses all muddied; but Tot was so much afraid Riar, her little nurse and maid, would get hurt that she screamed and cried, and refused to ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle

... the two big, over-grown boys seized each other and began a rough-and-tumble frolic. "You're just cuttin' capers, Tim, becuz you've heard that we're takin' the war-path—quit pullin' me, you big Irish elephant! Is it true ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... extremities of the valves were visible as narrow slits, were the long-sought-for molluscs. Judging by the extreme care of the species for its own protection—for it is ill-fitted in model and texture for a rough-and-tumble struggle for existence—one is inclined to the opinion that it must have many enemies. The valves are frail and brittle, and only when they gape are they revealed, and the gape is self consciously polite. The sponge embraces the slender mollusc so maternally that rude yawning ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... made with that over-acted carelessness which betrays hidden pain; but the soldier's senses had been blunted by the rough-and-tumble of an adventurer's life, and he was not on the alert for ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... French, German, and Italian, besides Arabic and Turkish, and as he has been for twelve or fifteen years vibrating between Europe and the East, he must by this time have amassed sufficient experience to answer the needs of rough-and-tumble travellers like ourselves. He has not asked us for the place, which displays so much penetration on his part, that we shall end by offering it to him. Perhaps he is content to rest his claims upon ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... him and looking down at them in a way he had. "But, still, I have a great interest in questions of justice, and I confess that I find a certain wild equity in this principle, which I see nobody could do business on. It strikes me as idyllic—it's a touch of real poetry in the rough-and-tumble prose of our ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells

... vigorously to a spirited rough-and-tumble fight. Talbot, who was the more easily observed by reason of his shining pate and the pink stripes of his pajamas, appeared to be revolving about the person of his neighbor. Wilton, though taller, lacked the rotund ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson

... hardest of man-handling schools, veterans of multitudes of rough-and-tumble battles, men of blood and sweat and endurance, they nevertheless lacked one thing that Daylight possessed in high degree—namely, an almost perfect brain and muscular coordination. It was simple, in its ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... took his place among his mates without much observation. He was reticent in speech and reserved in manner, and he was averse to intimacy; he had, nevertheless, a full share in collegiate life and showed no signs of withdrawal from the common arena. He did not indulge in sports, saving some rough-and-tumble play, nor did he ride horseback or drive, nor apparently did he care for that side of youthful life at all, though he was willing to fight on occasion, and joined the military company of which Pierce was captain. His athleticism seems to have been confined to his form. He played cards ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... quietly, "this is a man's game. I'm playing a rough-and-tumble, catch-as-catch-can fight. In it, the weak must fail and maybe die. But out of it a great good will come to this community. As long as the Indians are here to exploit, this community will be demoralized. I'm using every means fair or foul to ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... something left. You see, I speak of it as a doctrine of life, and as a wisdom for this world. People must be themselves, I suppose. I feel every day as if religion had a greater interest for me; but that interest is still centred on the little rough-and-tumble world in which our fortunes are cast for the moment. I cannot transfer my interests, not even my religious interest, to any different sphere.... I have had some sharp lessons and some very acute sufferings in these last seven-and-twenty years—more even than you would guess. I begin to grow ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the bundle of furs levelled at his head, revenge was his natural sentiment. Drawing his heavy knife from its sheath, he flung it away: the temptation to use it might have been too much for him. Small in stature, but remarkable for muscular strength, and for inventive resource in the "rough-and-tumble" fight, La Marche clenched with the burly store-keeper, who was getting the worst of it, when some of his employes interfered. This led to a general engagement. Several of La Marche's companions now rushed in, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... a mere scrap of a man, with nothing about him full-sized except his mustache. And yet, despite his unheroic physique, he was quick and remorseless in action. In Italy he would have carried a dagger. In England he would have been a light-weight rough-and-tumble fighter. In the violent West he was a gunman, menacing every citizen who crossed his inclination, and he took Kelley's appointment as a direct affront on the part ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... be useful if they will only find their appropriate sphere, which is not literature, but that circle of rough-and-tumble political life where the fine-fibred men are at a discount, where epithets find their subjects poison-proof, and the sting which would be fatal to a literary debutant only wakes the eloquence of the pachydermatous ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... is my turn to be grateful now!' said Longworth. 'In a rough-and-tumble fight I am afraid you would master me easier than you would do in ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr

... until some of them get broad-leaved and succulent, and you have a coarse vegetable tapestry which Raphael would not have disdained to spread over the foreground of his masterpiece. The Professor pretends that he found such a one in Charles Street, which, in its dare-devil impudence of rough-and-tumble vegetation, beat the pretty-behaved flower-beds of the Public Garden as ignominiously as a group of young tatterdemalions playing pitch- and-toss beats a row of Sunday-school-boys with their teacher ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... wrestling there are the side-hold, and square-hold, and back-hold, and rough-and-tumble, the last the catch-as-catch-can of stage struggles. In early boyhood Harlson had learned the tricks of these, and in the college gymnasium he had supplemented this wisdom by persistent training in every device of the ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... excellent scene and most dramatically managed—my interest in the story, which is but halftold at this point, begins to droop. As I said, the "devil-work" chapter strikes me as stiff, and the conclusion but rough-and-tumble. And I feel certain that the story itself is to blame, and neither the scenery nor the persons, being one of those who had as lief Mr. Stevenson spake of the South Seas as of the Hebrides, so that he speak and I listen. Let it be granted that the Polynesian names are a trifle hard ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... must shoulder the main brunt of the fight, because he had the gun in his possession. Steve only hoped Jack would be able to send his first charge straight into the heart of Bruin, so as to bring him down immediately. That would save them all from a rough-and-tumble encounter where claws and teeth would be apt to play havoc with their cuticle, and render their faces far less attractive ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton

... I'm game for a rough-and-tumble. It's sure to come sooner or later, and we may as well ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood

... with the effort. Kavanagh, almost blind with the blood which deluged his face, shortened arms and sought to transfix his assailant, who, however, managed to seize the muzzle of the rifle and close, and a species of rough-and-tumble conflict ensued for about half a minute, each striving to throw the other, and ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... grocery, side that I loathe. Had I remained in the post of Requisitioning Officer, with its variety of work and the possibility of exercising my linguistic gifts, I would have been moderately content. But in my heart and soul I have always longed for the rough-and-tumble of war as for a football match. What I have seen of the war out here has not frightened me in the least, but rather made me keener than ever to take part in the fighting. It is all very well to be an "organiser of victory," but it does not appeal to me, even if I had the particular ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... "that you call yourself a good rough-and-tumble fighter; that you've never met your match. I want to get ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... founded, and his father had brought to a high degree of honor as well as to a reasonable pitch of prosperity. It was, from the younger Guion's point of view, an agreeable practice, concerned chiefly with the care of trust funds, in which a gentleman could engage without any rough-and-tumble loss of gentility. It required little or nothing in the way of pleadings in the courts or disputing in the market-place, and—especially during the lifetime of the elder partners—left him leisure for cultivating that graceful relationship ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... upon, I suppose, by every writer who has occupied his pen at all with the life of the lumber-camps. But to the daring backwoodsman there seldom falls a task more hazardous than that of cutting loose a brow of logs when the logs have been piled in the form of what is called a "rough-and-tumble landing." Such a landing is constructed by driving long timbers into the mud at the water's edge, below a steep piece of bank. Along the inner side of these are laid horizontally a certain number of logs, ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... things in that pit were very confused and very noisy. Both students were big and both were furiously angry. By rule they would have been very evenly matched, but in a rough-and-tumble scrimmage there was no comparison. The classes made silent and neutral spectators, as Landers swung the man around in the narrow pit like a whirlwind, and finally pushed him back into ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... did not do. It is a strange thought, but surely true, that the French as a nation seem to take, at present, little interest in pomp and ceremony. The meetings of the delegates at the "Quai d'Orsay," the handing over of the Peace Terms to our late enemies, were all rather rough-and-tumble affairs, and, in the end, the great signing of the Treaty had not as much dignity as a sale at Christie's. How different must the performance have been in 1870! One man, at least, was there who knew the difference—Lord Dunraven, ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen

... in a very amusing way. Finally the woodchuck took up his abode under the floor of the kitchen, and gradually relapsed into a half-wild state. He would permit no familiarities from any one save the kitten, but each day they would have a turn or two at their old games of rough-and-tumble. The chuck was now over half grown, and procured his own living. One day the dog, who had all along looked upon him with a jealous eye, encountered him too far from cover, and his ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs

... for Udo. He forgot his manners and made a jump towards her. She glided gracefully behind the sundial in a pretty affectation of alarm . . . and the next moment Udo decided that the contest between them was not to be settled by such rough-and-tumble methods as these. The fact that his tail had caught in something helped him ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne

... with failing powers. There was the dark, uncertain male character, who might be villain, yet who might prove extra hero—the strutting postman of baronial ancestry; there was the role of quaint pathetic humour Miss Waghorn so excellently filled, and there were the honest rough-and-tumble comedians—half mischievous, half malicious—the retired governesses. Behind them all, brought on chiefly in scenes of dusk and moonlight, were the Forest Elves who, led by Puck, were responsible for the temporary confusion that threatened disaster, yet was bound to ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... characteristic, and what was of the essence of it was grist to his scribbling mill, matter for his journalising hand. That hand already, in intention, played over it, the "motive," as a sign of the season, a feature of the time, of the purely expeditious and rough-and-tumble nature of the social boom. The boom as in itself required—that would be the note; the subject of the process a comparatively minor question. Anything was boomable enough when nothing else was more so: the author of the "rotten" book, the beauty ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... Spenser were called the Homer and Virgil of their age. They must, however, have appealed to quite different classes. The plain-spoken, jolly humour, homely, lively, direct tales, vigorous patriotic feeling, and rough-and-tumble metre of Warner's muse, and its heterogeneous accumulation of material—history, tales, theology, antiquities—must have appealed to a lower and wider audience than Spenser's charmed verse. The style is clear, spirited, and pointed, but, as has been said, "with all its force and ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... to learn, and not to play; and the modest and more plainly dressed girls, whose fathers did not sell by the cargo, or keep victualling establishments for some hundreds of people, considered her as rather in sympathy with them than with the daughters of the rough-and-tumble millionnaires who were grappling and rolling over each other in the golden dust of the great ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... inspiration came mainly from the two former. On the Spanish side, as a naval battle, it was a fiasco, a mere colossal clerical burlesque. Neither naval strategy nor ordinary seamanship was in evidence on the part of the chief commander or his admirals. The men fought with rough-and-tumble heroism. The sailors were only second in quality to our own, but there was no plan of battle, and the poor Duke of Medina Sidonia had neither knowledge of naval affairs nor courage. Philip's theory seems to have been that any lack of efficiency ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... in my pocket," said Seabrooke; "how can you carry such a sum of money in such an insecure place, Neville? Playing rough-and-tumble games, too, when any minute it is likely to fall out of your pocket. I shall lock it up, I can tell you; and what if you tell me not to return it to you till we are ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews

... him not first discussed and voted on? For him no tree of knowledge is forbid, Or sweeter if forbid. How save the ark, Or holy of holies, unprofaned a day From his unscrupulous curiosity That handles everything as if to buy, 560 Tossing aside what fabrics delicate Suit not the rough-and-tumble of his ways? What hope for those fine-nerved humanities That made earth gracious once with gentler arts, Now the rude hands have caught the trick of thought And claim an ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... night of the laying of the foundation stone I had the pleasure of witnessing a rough-and-tumble fight between two of the most powerful men in Coolgardie. The excitement was intense as one seized his antagonist, and, using him as a flail, proceeded to clear the room with him; he retaliated by overpowering the other man, and finally breaking his leg as they ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... led a rough-and-tumble sort of life, and every one knew perfectly well that hers had been a liberal education at the hands of her father. Yet even Mr. Lawrence would not have blurted out his tale to Jane Erskine, for instance, as he had just ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... man, and fond of studiousness and thought. The more we used to see each other, personally, the less we seemed to like to be together. If he ever had slapped me on the back and snivelled over me like I've seen men do to what they called their friends, I know I'd have had a rough-and-tumble with him on the spot. Same way with George. He hated my ways as bad as I did his. When we were mining, we lived in separate tents, so as not to intrude our obnoxiousness ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... their craft upon the river, and the stalwart beef-eating brutality of prentices and porters. The population of London displayed its antipathy to foreigners by loud remarks, hustled them in narrow lanes, and played at rough-and-tumble with them after the manners of a bear-garden. But there is no hint that these big fellows shouldering through the crowd were treacherous or ready with their knives. The servants of great houses seemed to Bruno discourteous and savage; yet he says nothing about ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... prefer to blaze our own trails, or, rather, to have you do so, and the rougher they prove the better, as long as it is safe. My girls are equal to any sort of rough-and-tumble climbing. How do we get ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge

... days in the pastoral provinces we get contemporary sketches by Samuel Butler, L.J. Kennaway, Lady Barker, and Archdeacon Paul. Butler's is the best done picture of the country, Kennaway's the exactest of the settlers' every-day rough-and-tumble haps and mishaps, and Lady Barker's the brightest. One of the volumes of General Mundy's "Our Antipodes" gives a nice, light sketch of things as they were in the North Island in the first years of Governor Grey. Dr. Hocken's recent book has at ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... poor.' Now, fortunately, Joel had a happy, joyous nature—somewhat fiery and irascible, but still joyous—else he might have become morbidly miserable. As it was, these manifestations only provoked his anger, and led him forthwith into a rough-and-tumble fight, in which, whether victor or not, he always showed unquestionable pluck. If he came off second-best a dozen times, he went confidently into the thirteenth trial, brave as Bruce, and equally successful. At length the voice of gossip was hushed. Joel became the most popular lad ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... you can hold your own," remarked Mr. Hooper. He had led a rough-and-tumble life himself and did not look on a fight as a dreadful matter. ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer

... Senator Green danced for the affirmative and Senator Hammond danced for the negative. Both gentlemen had an international reputation. Senator Green's war-dance in the Senate on the Standard Oil Company is still spoken of in Washington as the most striking rough-and-tumble exhibition of recent years. Senator Hammond is an exponent of a style which lays greater stress on finesse than on vigour. In a single session of the Senate he is said to have sidestepped nearly a dozen troublesome roll-calls without arousing any appreciable dissatisfaction among his constituents. ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky

... apperceiving a stimulus by marshelling associated ideas; in this case they are serially evoked; (what might be called "oniric echelon"); in other cases the trial apperceptions are blended smoothly (oniric fusion) or heaped together in rough-and-tumble fashion, a kind of confusion (conveniently called "oniric entassement") which testifies sufficiently to the failures of the Unconscious t o dispose smoothly of arriving excitations, and so emphasizes; the theory of trial-and-error, as ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... often came to the farmhouse to romp and wrestle with the bear-cub. Nothing pleased him more than a rough-and-tumble, and he was quite an expert wrestler, once he learned ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes

... cry, "A la lanterne!" First I went to my neighbor, the mayor of the city, in pursuit of the desired information. A jolly mayor was he,—a Yankee melted down into a Western man, thoroughly Westernized by a rough-and-tumble life in Kentucky during many years. Being obliged to hold a mayor's court every day, and knowing very little of law, his chief study was, as he expressed it, "how to choke off the Kentucky lawyers." Mr. Mayor not being at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... crept up the tall tree-trunk, all the yelling boys danced in the flaring light. Then, when the capannucci fell with a great crash, the terrible young Florentine urchins never omitted to wage, over the charred trunk and the glowing embers, a furious rough-and-tumble fight. ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks

... Jackson, and the homely appellation was no way belied by his aspect. He never could have been handsome, and now fifteen years of rough-and-tumble life had left their stains and scars on his weather-beaten visage, whose only notable features were the deep-set eyes retreating under shaggy brows, that looked one through and through with the keen glance of honest instinct; while a light tattooing of red and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... the Clouded Tiger was now too clear. Let Jan Chinn comfort his own, for vain was the help of mortal man. Bukta toned down these beseechings to a simple request for Chinn's presence. Nothing would have pleased the old man better than a rough-and-tumble campaign against the Satpuras, whom he, as an "unmixed" Bhil, despised; but he had a duty to all his nation as Jan Chinn's interpreter; and he devoutly believed that forty plagues would fall on his village if he tampered with that obligation. Besides, Jan Chinn knew all things, and he ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... poor Henry Kemble (since dead) as Dr. Caius, Courtice Pounds as Sir Hugh Evans, and Mrs. Tree as sweet Anne Page all rowed in the boat with precisely the right swing. There were no "passengers" in the cast. The audience at first used to seem rather amazed! This thwacking rough-and-tumble, Rabelaisian horse-play—Shakespeare! Impossible! But as the evening went on we used to capture even the most civilized, and force them to return to a simple ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... eulogies of Lamartine, and apotheoses of Louis Blanc; sneering at Espinasse, and eulogizing Cavaignac; vowing that France can be governed only under a liberal constitution, and paying a visit to his Majesty, the Elect of December, with a rough-and-tumble suite of Republican bravos. Assuredly, were such a thing possible in Paris, the gentlemen in question would very shortly be reviling English hospitality under its protecting aegis, if not dying of fever at Cayenne. Nor could Rosas, who was at that time far less firmly seated on his throne ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... beer-bewitched slattern of a mother,—with his living to get, in San Francisco, too, and the world to make friends with,—who has never enjoyed the peculiar advantages to be derived from the society of little dirty boys, never been admitted to the felicity of popular songs, nor exercised his pluck in a rough-and-tumble, nor ventilated himself in wholesome "giddy, giddy, gout,"—to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... newspaper clippings, not neatly rolled up, but loosely sprawled over the desk. At his left a rickety pair of scissors catches a hurried nap, and at his right a paste-pot and a half-broken box of wafers appear to have had a rough-and-tumble fight. An odd-looking paper-holder is just ready to tumble on the floor. An old-fashioned sand-box, looking like a dilapidated hour-glass, is half-hidden under a slashed copy of The New York World. Mr. Greeley still sticks to wafers and sand, instead of using mucilage and ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... Ten years of rough-and-tumble fighting in the blind alleys of political intrigue have now prepared Otto von Bismarck for great things. In the solemn years to come, all is yet to be dignified by the formation of an Empire, ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... afforded, the Englishman was able to examine his visitor more closely, and to estimate his chances of success if things came to a rough-and-tumble fight for possession ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... down again! Miki's jaws fell apart in amazement. Again Neewa climbed up and rolled down—and Miki ceased to breathe altogether. Five times he watched Neewa go that twenty or thirty feet up the grassy slope and tumble down. The fifth time he waded into Neewa and gave him a rough-and-tumble that ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... literature than poetry; and it was natural for the veterans, who had brawnily struggled through the burden and heat of the day, to look with the unsympathetic eye of the sturdy upon those frailer ones of the rising generation who perhaps might, without assistance, be eliminated in the rough-and-tumble of the literary market-place. Of course it was but human for the veterans to insist that any real genius among their youthful competitors "would out," and that any assistance would but make life too soft ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... shortly that Drummond was an athlete. He was quicker on his feet than Hiram and knew more tricks of offense and defense. Hiram, on the other hand, was a bull for strength and endurance, and in the big-woods country had maintained a reputation as a rough-and-tumble fighter and wrestler, though most of his encounters had been friendly bouts. Furthermore, he was cool as one of his Mendocino trout streams, and he fought in a businesslike way and never allowed himself ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins

... laughableness of hypocrisy, first of all. He takes some popular convention, that of medicine or marriage or what you will, and shows you not merely how false it is but how ludicrously false. He purges the soul, not with the terror and pity of tragedy, but with the irresistible laughter of rough-and-tumble farce. To think wrongly is, first of all, so absurd. He proves it by putting wrong thinking on the stage, where you see it for yourself in action, and laugh immoderately. Perhaps you had never thought how droll wrong thinking or no thinking was before; and while you laugh with Shaw at your ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... only reply, and away we went, Gilpin-like, with the horse on the run. We headed off the girl, and after a rough-and-tumble scrimmage threw her into the wagon, kicking, screaming, and scratching like a wild-cat. We took her by main force to the girls' wing of the prison and put her into ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... humor and satire as the 'Tale of a Tub' and the 'Battle of the Books.'" In spite of this, we shall continue to think Aristophanes and even Lucian clever writers, considering the rudeness of the times in which they lived. The "Tale of a Tub" has several passages of rough-and-tumble satire as good as any of their kind, and some hints of deeper suggestion, but the fable is clumsy and the execution unequal and disjointed. In conception the "Battle" is cleverer, and it contains perhaps the most perfect apologue in the language, but ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... time out of Brussels, and ran to such a troop of neat and dwarfish volumes. I understood but little of the merits of the book; my strongest memory is of the execution of d'Eymeric and Lyodot - a strange testimony to the dulness of a boy, who could enjoy the rough-and-tumble in the Place de Greve, and forget d'Artagnan's visits to the two financiers. My next reading was in winter-time, when I lived alone upon the Pentlands. I would return in the early night from one of my patrols with the shepherd; a friendly face would meet me in the ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... saying, the meanness of these mothers in hiving up their young ones and cheating 'em out of the very best years of life, is enough to make a saint mad. The rough-and-tumble season, which gives a child sound lungs, strong limbs, and a brain that thinks of nothing but high play, is just knocked out of their lives. It's an awful swindle on the poor little things, and I'm not afraid to say it openly and above-board here in ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... for the possession of a pitchfork, both naturally preferring it to a rake for bunching up from the winrows—being raked by Bob with a horse-rake—had decided to settle the matter, street fashion, with their fists. They were pretty evenly matched and a rough-and-tumble fight ensued. Ferry stopped to watch the bout and see that fair play was enforced. Everybody else stopped work also, and stood looking that way. Jake Kelly, perhaps the most interested spectator in the field, slid down from the load and strolled ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond

... newspaper office the American desert was visible; that within a radius of ten miles Indians were encamping amongst the sage—brush; that the whole city was populated with miners, adventurers, Jew traders, gamblers, and all the rough-and-tumble class which a mining town in a new territory collects together, and it will be readily understood that a reporter for a daily paper in such a place must neither go about his duties wearing light kid gloves, nor be fastidious about having gilt edges to his note-books. In Mark Twain I found ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... lays off the coast of Eastern Maine, a wild and romantic region, and the incidents of the story are recorded as happening when this country was just emerging from its struggle for independence. It is a capital story of the rough-and-tumble life of the early settlers."—Chicago ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... of bravery shown in that instant. Not one of the Grammar School boys dreamed that they could best Fred Ripley's crew in a rough-and-tumble, but Dick & Co. were all determined to ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock

... there had lived together in the great polar bears' den of the Zoological Park two full-grown, very large and fine polar bears. They came from William Hagenbeck's great group, and both were males. Their rough-and-tumble wrestling, both in the swimming pool and out of it, was a sight of almost perennial interest; and while their biting and boxing was of the roughest character, and frequently drew blood, they never got angry, and never had a ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... sufficiently understood that the learning of Latin and Greek and the forming of expensive habits at others' cost are a positive disability and handicap in the rough-and-tumble tussle of the great city, where greed and unscrupulous resolution rule, and where there are few prizes for feats of memory or taste in words. When the graduate wins in life he wins as a rule in spite of his so-called education ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... to smooth the enemies you make with your rough-and-tumble manners; one who'll win ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... people" in Sangamon County belonged to this party. The Democrats, on the other hand, did not much concern themselves with principles, but accepted General Jackson in place thereof, as constituting in himself a party platform. In the rough-and-tumble pioneer community they could not do better, and for many years they had controlled the State; indeed, Lincoln himself had felt no small loyalty towards a President who admirably expressed Western ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... door, I entered the common room, and found it stifling, brawling and drinking going on apace. Scarce had I found a seat before the whole room was emptied by one consent, all crowding out of the door after two men who began a rough-and-tumble fight in the street. I had seen rough-and-tumble fights in Kentucky, and if I have forborne to speak of them it is because there always has been within me a loathing for them. And so I sat quietly in the common room until the landlord came. I asked him if he could direct ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... "I must go alone. I will take Parks to drive the sleigh, if I may, though. Parks is a steady man, who loves a rough-and-tumble. A typical British ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman

... fact, but the kiss put a rainbow in the sky. It roused a great hope, a joy, an ecstasy, a sense of well-wishing for mankind; and yet it was only he who had changed. The world was the same; Samuel Blount was the same; and the miners, and Stiff Neck George. They were all there together in a rough-and-tumble fight to see who would get the Paymaster Mine and, even with the madness of her kiss in his soul, he pressed on towards the ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge

... top joints of the Westerner's arms. The latter had Barber by the front of his coat and by an elbow. For a moment they hung upon the sill. Then, pivoting, they swung beyond it. As Father Pat closed the door upon them, at once there came to the ears of the trio in the kitchen, the sounds of a rough-and-tumble battle. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... the squarest chaps in the world—ran amuck the last minute. Tried to double-cross me, and in the rough-and-tumble that followed he was more or less banged up. We hurried him to a hospital, where ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath

... rough-and-tumble he would be no match for Jabe. In legitimate boxing he had shown himself his foe's superior; and he was not particularly anxious to emphasize that fact by blacking Jabe's eyes or "bloodying" his nose. He ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman

... his rough-and-tumble house put straight and made comfortable, his hitherto unchecked expenses cut down by one half, and himself petted and made much of by his new acquisition, who sat at the head of his table and sang songs to him and ordered ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... under your orders. If I had a boy I'd put him into the provision trade, for it's the place to see fightin'. Yes, we've no end of guns. I advise shot-guns, for they've more stoppin' power in a rush than a rifle, and I take it it's a rough-and-tumble we're ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... rather than the back, of the stage—or, as he would humorously explain, "left the saint's occupation to take that of a sinner." Johnson seems to have been a man of the world, and he saw a good deal of life, even though he never passed through the rough-and-tumble adventures of Lacy Ryan. When he was born (1665) Betterton dominated the boards; when he died (1742) Garrick had become the talk of London; and it is probable that in his latter years Ben could tell many ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... board a Glasgow steamer, and landed safe at 2 A.M. on the morning of the 7th. The notes of the tour, set down on his return to Chelsea and republished in 1882, have only the literary merit of the vigorous descriptive touches inseparable from the author's lightest writing; otherwise they are mere rough-and-tumble jottings, with no consecutive meaning, of a rapid hawk's-eye view of the ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... average boy's predilection for the brutal, his inherent animalism. Football has for ages been a favorite game with savages, while baseball is a product of civilization. I am not decrying football—I incline to the view that an occasional rough-and-tumble scrapping match in which there is imminent danger of black eyes, and even of broken bones, is good for a boy I simply point out that as an intellectual game it not only ranks far below chess, billiards and baseball, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... Lieutenant P. Whitcomb (who had no business to join in the charge, being weak in the knees), and Captain Fred Langdon, of General Harris's staff. Whitcomb was one of the most notable shots on our side, though he was not much to boast of in a rough-and-tumble fight, owing to the weakness before mentioned. General Ames put him among the gunners, and we were quickly made aware of the loss we had sustained, by receiving a frequent artful ball which seemed to light with unerring instinct on any nose that was the least bit exposed. ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich



Words linked to "Rough-and-tumble" :   disorderly, fighting, fight, scrap, combat



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