Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Tattered   /tˈætərd/   Listen
Tattered

adjective
1.
Worn to shreds; or wearing torn or ragged clothing.  Synonym: tatterdemalion.  "The tattered flag" , "Tied up in tattered brown paper" , "A tattered barefoot boy" , "A tatterdemalion prince"
2.
Ruined or disrupted.  Synonym: shattered.  "A tattered remnant of its former strength" , "My torn and tattered past"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Tattered" Quotes from Famous Books



... into a pitch-dark vestibule which my fancy peopled with "evil ones." A steep stairway led up to the yard, part of which was occupied by a huddle of ramshackle one-story houses. It was known as Abner's Court. During the summer months it swarmed with tattered, unkempt humanity. There was a peculiar odor to the place which ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... triumphal arch The glories of the dawn begin. Our dead, our shadowy armies march E'en now, in silence, through Berlin; Dumb shadows, tattered, blood-stained ghosts But cast by what ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... winked at his wife. She gave him six children before she died of the seventh, of whom the eldest was Giovanna, and the others, in an orderly chain diminishing punctually by a year, ran down to Ferrantino, a tattered, shock-headed rascal of more inches than grace. Last of all the good drudge, who had borne these and many other burdens for her master, died also. Don Urbano was never tired of saying how providential it was that she had held off her demise until Giovanna was old enough to take her place. The ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... saw something lying, as the light from the candles fell on it from above. At first I thought it was a heap of dust or refuse, but on looking closer it seemed rather a bundle of rags. As my eyes penetrated the gloom, I saw there was about it some tattered cloth of a faded green tint, and almost at the same minute I seemed to trace under the clothes the lines or dimensions of a human figure. For a moment I imagined it was some poor man lying face downwards and bent ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner

... somewhat sulkily, and then, as he seemed disinclined to say anything more, Juanna took up the tale, showing in evidence of its truth the spear, the frayed rope, and the tattered white robe which she had worn in her character of Aca, and, indeed, still wore beneath poor Francisco's cassock—for she ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... have treated the academical authorities with more gross disrespect. The needy scholar was generally to be seen under the gate of Pembroke, a gate now adorned with his effigy, haranguing a circle of lads, over whom, in spite of his tattered gown and dirty linen, his wit and audacity gave him an undisputed ascendency. In every mutiny against the discipline of the college he was the ringleader. Much was pardoned, however, to a youth so highly distinguished by abilities and acquirements. He had early ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... dwellings habitable, and as full of comfort as they could, was now their pleasant care, and in a short time each had a cheerful fire crackling on the hearth. Nell, busily plying her needle, repaired the tattered window-hangings, and made them whole and decent. The schoolmaster swept the ground before the door, trimmed the long grass, trained the ivy and creeping plants, and gave to the outer walls a cheery air of home. The old man lent his aid to both, went here and there ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... poor old soldier was close upon them, holding out his hat for a gift. Aunt Amy stopped, asked him several questions, and, finding that he was pious, cheered him with gentle words of hope. She then dropped a piece of gold in his tattered hat, and passed on. ...
— Aunt Amy - or, How Minnie Brown learned to be a Sunbeam • Francis Forrester

... should see what we were about, Curtis and I pro- ceeded to our melancholy task. We took a few articles from the lieutenant's pockets, which we purposed, if either of us should survive, to remit to his mother. But as we wrapped him in his tattered garments that would have to suffice for his winding sheet, I started back with a thrill of horror. The right foot had gone, leaving the ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... were rising in my mind when first I spoke," replied Iskander. "This is a better cue, far more beseeming princes than boyish tears, and all the outward misery of woe, a tattered garment and dishevelled locks. Come, Nicaeus, we have to struggle with a mighty fortune. Let us be ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli

... heavily built man, with tattered garments, walked along the platform with the help of a cane. His face was covered with a beard, and his head was bowed so that his chin almost touched his breast. One foot was partially covered by a cut shoe, while on the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... under an old gateway and into a fair courtyard, which I seemed to have seen before in the pages of Country Life. The house was beautiful. There it lay, in the hot sunshine, all grey and warm and peaceful—a perfect specimen of the Tudor period, and about its walls a tattered robe of wisteria. It seemed to be smiling in its sleep. As we drove up to the great stone steps, the studded door was opened and a manservant ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... the huts to the kitchen-gardens and there finds Terenty; the tall old man with a thin, pock-marked face, very long legs, and bare feet, dressed in a woman's tattered jacket, is standing near the vegetable plots, looking with drowsy, drunken eyes at the dark storm-cloud. On his long crane-like legs he sways in the wind like ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... his age apparently about fifty. The woman looked seventy or more. She too had once been tall, but now old age gave her a withered, witch-like appearance, in spite of her great height. She was dressed in limp, faded garments, with a tattered shawl crossed over her chest, and had a scared, miserable look in her bleared old eyes. There were a few words of explanation from the man who had come home, and then, in gruff but not unkindly tones, he bade Babette be seated, and told his mother to get some supper ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes

... garment, its curves and folds can suggest him vividly to our recollection. I would not too blatantly assert that even a doll on which much affection had been lavished was wholly inert and material in the inorganic sense. The tattered colours of a regiment are sometimes thought worthy to be hung in a church. They are a symbol truly, but they may be something more. I have reason to believe that a trace of individuality can cling about terrestrial objects in a vague and almost imperceptible fashion, but to a degree sufficient ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge

... physical bankruptcy of the British line and the end of the French line immediately in front of him, which for six days and nights he had chased before him like autumn leaves before a whirlwind. Not unlike autumn leaves, red-stained, dust-hued, and tattered, they lay there as if swept into a corner. But even as their conquerors wheeled eastwards, their bugles blew the charge; and the English went forward through the wood that is called Crecy, and stamped it with their seal for the second time, in the highest moment of ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... monk to take him into his convent, volunteering to fulfill the most degrading services, in the hope of procuring a little learning, and escaping from 'those filthy hogs.' How incredulously would the friar have listened to anyone who could have suggested that this desolate, tattered, dirty boy, might and would fill a greater than an imperial throne! Yet, eventually that swine-herd was clothed in purple and fine linen, and, under the title of Pope Sixtus V., became one of those mighty magicians who are described in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... was not long after. It felt almost like sacrilege to peer thus into the privacies of such people; but I hope they did not feel as if it had been done offensively. We called next at the cottage of a hand-loom weaver—a poor trade now in the best of times—a very poor trade—since the days when tattered old "Jem Ceawp" sung his pathetic ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh

... carpet slippers. They have baskets on their arms. Everywhere traces of meagre and humble life, but nowhere do I see the demented wretch common in our London streets—the man with bare feet, the furtive and frightened creature, gnawing a crust and drawing a black, tattered ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... coarse blue kilt or petticoat (for it had none of the checkers that give a showy appearance to the kilt); his stocking—for he only rejoiced in one—was wrinkled down almost over his shoe; his coat was tattered and torn in every variety of raggedness; and the filth, which was almost thick enough to cover the glaring redness of his fortnight's beard, showed that Angus Mohr took very little interest in the great question about the soap duties. "Fat d'ye want, auld man?" inquired the visitor—"bringin' a ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... bottom Dorothy was never able to determine. She only knew that when she got there her boots were torn to pieces, and any respectable dealer in rags would hardly have demeaned himself by bidding for her clothes. Pepin was a curious sight, for his garments looked like so many tattered signals ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie

... there, when she arrived, in the selfsame corner, dressed in one of his remarkable check tweed suits; he seldom said good morning, and invariably when she appeared he began to fidget with increased nervousness, with some tattered and knotty piece ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy

... seated upon a basket; the girl, warming her hands by a few withered sticks that are blazing on the ground, and a wretched mendicant,[3] wrapped in a tattered and parti-coloured blanket, entreating charity from the rosy-fingered vestal who is going to church, complete the group. Behind them, at the door of Tom King's Coffee-house, are a party engaged in a fray, likely to create business for both surgeon and magistrate: we ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... hearts? Were he apprised of your condition, he would esteem himself obliged, and be happy in the opportunity of relieving it." He said: "Be silent; for it is better to die of want than to expose our necessities before another, as they have remarked:—'Patching a tattered cloak, and the consequent treasure of content, are more commendable than petitioning the great for every new garment.'" By my troth, I swear it were equal to the torments of hell to enter into paradise through the interest of ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... potato in this world to hope for any attention from the Prophet in the next. The paradise of the Mohammedans, its shady groves, marble fountains, walled gardens, and cool retreats, its kara ghuz kiz and wealth of material pleasures, no doubt seem to poor Osman, with his one tattered garment and unhappy servility, far beyond the aspirations of such as he. Like the gutter-snipe of London or New York who gazes into the brilliant shop windows, he feels privileged to feast his imagination, perchance, but ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... are both large rooms full of heat and damp and steam. But the soul and function of the two things are utterly opposite. There is only one way of washing a shirt; that is, there is only one right way. There is no taste and fancy in tattered shirts. Nobody says, "Tompkins likes five holes in his shirt, but I must say, give me the good old four holes." Nobody says, "This washerwoman rips up the left leg of my pyjamas; now if there is one thing I insist ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... gesture. There was only one person she had ever seen do that. That person was the artist, Eugene Prince. In spite of the black matted hair that covered the man's forehead, in spite of the black beard that covered the lower half of his face, the tattered cap, the blue shirt and shabby working clothes covered with red brick dust, something seemed to tell her that this was the man the federal officers were now ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey

... flowers I wanted in the garden. I carried three maimed dolls, a headless horse, a three-legged cat, and a Britannia tea-set to a summer-house at the end of a long walk, and made believe that I was Titania, the Queen of the Fairies, of whom I had read in a tattered copy of Shakespeare I found in a lumber closet. By and by, Malviny brought out to me a pretty china plate with four sugar cakes, shaped like ivy leaves, and a glass of very sweet lemonade. Awhile later, Dovey, a half-grown ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... amidships close down to the water-line. The Arabs squatting on the painted poops of these ships seemed sullen. They looked as cut-throat a lot as you could desire. When the boats were loaded up they drifted off, and by means of a tattered bit of sacking for a sail, and a long pole, managed to reach their destination somehow. It was curious to see these primitive craft filled with the black cases of the precious ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne

... places. The method, therefore, was changed during the night. To extract the non-fluent residue, the viscera and muscles, the stiff cuticle had to be tapped here, there and elsewhere, after which the tattered husk, placed bodily in the press of the mandibles, would have been chewed, rechewed and finally reduced to a pill, which the sated Spider throws up. This would have been the end of the victim, had I not taken it away ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... congratulated our arrival. It is not easy to express the benevolence and tenderness with which they embraced us, and the concern they showed at seeing us worn away with hunger, labour, and weariness, our clothes tattered, ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo

... determined, therefore, to lie down in his clothes. There were two doors on the further side of the room, with keys in them; being not at all sleepy, he resolved to examine them; he attempted one lock, and opened it with ease; he went into a large dining-room, the furniture of which was in the same tattered condition; out of this was a large closet with some books in it, and hung round with coats of arms, with genealogies and alliances of the house of Lovel; he amused himself here some minutes, and then ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve

... darkness and the brush and thorns rather difficult opponents to contend with;" saying which, she glanced at her habiliments for the first time, and their tattered appearance caused her to blush; but in explanation, she narrated the adventures of the night, except such parts as related to the cave and her captors, which she deemed it best not to divulge, not knowing into whose hands she was falling. As she finished the narrative, the other man came up with ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison

... clothes and went into the timber. From a birch tree he pulled off a pile of bark, and as he stripped he put his old clothes on it. McTabb could hear the crackling and snapping of the fire when Billy reappeared arrayed in Indian Joe's "second best"— buckskin trousers, a worn and tattered fur coat, a fisher-skin cap, and moccasins a size too small for him. For fifteen minutes the two men talked, McTabb still drawing the dead-line at fifty paces. Then he went back and brought up ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... of home joys. So when Mrs. Nesbit put aside the encyclopedia, from which she was getting the awful truth about Babylonian Art for her paper to be read before the Shakespeare Club, and going to the piano, brought from the bottom of a pile of yellow music a tattered sheet, played a Chopin nocturne in a rolling and rather grand style that young women affected before the Civil War, the Doctor's joy was scarcely less keen than the child's. Then came rare occasions when Laura, being there for the ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... once more remembering these tears of mine are shed alone for thee, in this dark and gloomy vault, and should I perish under this load of trouble, join the song of thrilling accents with the raven above my grave, and lay this tattered frame beside the banks of the Chattahoochee or the stream of Sawney's brook; sweet will be the song of death to your Ambulinia. My ghost shall visit you in the smiles of Paradise, and tell your high ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... have passed beyond caring. His young face was as frayed and threadbare as his garments. The splendour of the moonlight flooding the wild world meant as little to him as the hardness of the rugged track which he followed. He wrapped his tattered mantle closer around him, and strode ahead, ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke

... mass like scouts sent out in advance to drop their silver spears on the heads of ferns and flowers on other hills." Some of the detached portions moved up the valley, others rose slowly above the wooded ridges or trailed their tattered fringes near the tree tops that seemed to have torn their edges. Every bush and leaf was saturated with their life-giving elixir. How the wild sweet carols of the birds ascended from every forest! It seemed ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... celebrated, house in the settlement. Shangois, the travelling notary, lived in it—when he was not travelling. When he was, he left it unlocked, all save one room; and people came and went through the house as they pleased, eyeing with curiosity the dusty, tattered books upon the shelves, the empty bottles in the corner, the patchwork of cheap prints, notices of sales, summonses, accounts, certificates of baptism, memoranda, receipted bills—though they were few—tacked or stuck ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the wretched and decrepid inhabitants of the towns, in whom the real poverty of the people, under the old regime, was still perceptible. In some of these towns, the appearance of the beggars, their extraordinary figures, and tattered dress, exhibited a spectacle which would have been inconceivably ludicrous, were it not for the melancholy ideas of abject poverty ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... know which side huzzaed loudest, the blending of both was so truly symphonius. Now there was a shout for the face of an O'Callaghan; this was prosecuted on the very heels by another for the face of an O'Hallaghan. Immediately a man of the O'Hallaghan side doffed his tattered frieze, and catching it by the very extremity of the sleeve, drew it with a tact, known only by an initiation of half a dozen street days, up the pavement after him. On the instant, a blade from the O'Callaghan side peeled with equal alacrity, and stretching his home-made * at full length ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... the incident well. Robin had picked up at a bookstall a copy of an early and quite valuable edition of Burns' poems. He had sat smoking with me in the library late the same night, turning over the pages of the tattered volume, and quoting bits, in broad vernacular, from "Tam o' Shanter" and "The Cottar's Saturday Night." Suddenly he ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay

... times had flowed into the sea, and had ever since declined the kindly draping offices of nature, vibrated in waves of heat. Even the imperishable cocoanut trees, whose tall, bare, curved trunks rose from the lava or the burnt red earth, were gaunt, tattered, and thirsty-looking, weary of crying for moisture to the pitiless skies. At last the ceaseless ripple of talk ceased, crew and passengers slept on the hot deck, and no sounds were heard but the drowsy flap of the awning, and the drowsier creak ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... of Phil Lancing, the blankets began to heave; and being speedily tossed aside, behold there came forth the figure of a tattered, half-grown boy—a boy with a face as brown as that of an Indian, and with a pair of defiant black eyes that flashed fire as he looked straight at the owner of the ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... hunt with him. The sport consisted in turning into the cover a few dogs, and then patiently waiting to fire at any animal which might appear. We were accompanied by the son of a neighbouring farmer—a good specimen of a wild Brazilian youth. He was dressed in a tattered old shirt and trousers, and had his head uncovered: he carried an old-fashioned gun and a large knife. The habit of carrying the knife is universal; and in traversing a thick wood it is almost necessary, on account of the creeping ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... straw and whitewashed. Inside, it is a shadowy place, stacked up high with sailing and fishing gear, flotsam, jetsam, balks of wood and all the odds and ends that he picks up on his prowlings along the coast. With tattered paper screens, he has partitioned off, near the fire and window, a small and very crowded cosy-corner. There he was sitting when I arrived; bread, butter, onions, sugar and tea—his staple foods—on the round ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... Confederates were ever more impartial in the confiscation of neutral chickens. I was keeping my grapes a secret to surprise the fair Fidele with, but the robins made them a profounder secret to her than I had meant. The tattered remnant of a single bunch was all my harvest-home. How paltry it looked at the bottom of my basket,—as if a humming-bird had laid her egg in an eagle's nest! I could not help laughing; and the robins seemed to join heartily in the merriment. There was a native ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... the window of the little shop outside which he stood were things that seemed to match him—things appealing to the sense that he appealed to. A tarnished French mirror, a strip of faded carpet, some rows of battered, tattered books, a few cups and saucers that had erst been riveted and erst been dusted—all these, in a gallimaufry of other languid odds and ends, seen through this mud-splashed window, silently echoed the silent misery ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... looking gloomily at their masters busy cooking supper on the sand. Negro sellers of fruit and fly-embroidered lumps of meat, or brilliant-coloured pottery, and cheap, bright stuffs, were rolling up their wares for the night, in red and purple rags or tattered matting. Beggars lingered, hoping for a stray dried date, or a coin before crawling off to secret dens; and two deformed dwarfs in enormous turbans and blue coats, claimed power as marabouts, chanting their own praises and the praises of ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... lunge with his bayonet at a gaunt, yellow-faced spectre of a man who staggered on to the boat with a child in his arms wrapped in a tattered blue quilt. A gust of the chilly wind picked his shapeless, loose-fitting hat off as he leaped to avoid the bayonet-point, and his head was seen to be shaven. The crowd on the bank laughed loud at his clumsiness and at his grotesque head. Joel Rae ran to help ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... of foot, which are suspended over the royal arms at the east end of nave. They were presented to the corporation by Lieut. Col. Stovin, of that regiment, and how much their intrepid defenders suffered in guarding them, may be known from their worn and tattered appearance. ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts

... outer edge of the crowd, to get a look at what was coming. I can feel the shiver down my back now! First, a lot of generals in full uniform, and gentlemen in civilian's dress, with the tri-colored scarf; in the midst of them, girls, women, and ragged, tattered men; workmen, peasants, women with babies, soldiers of all arms; smartly dressed ladies, students, whole families clutching hold of each other's hands, for fear of getting lost in the crowd; all jammed together, trampled upon, so that they could barely move; and with it all not a sound but a buzzing, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various

... the little tattered figure strutting on the brickwork plinth under the great tree. Where a native would have lain down, Kim's white blood ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... more and more men running. They were as miscellaneous as if some one had taken the lid off a human dustbin. Some were untouched, some were slashed and battered and bloody, some were splendidly dressed, some tattered and half naked, some were in the fantastic garb of the burlesque cities, some in the dullest modern dress. The King stared at all of them, but none of them looked at the King. ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... This poor baby was a weak little bag of bones when first she came to us. The bag was made of shrivelled skin of a dusty brown colour. Her hair was the colour of her skin, and hung about her head like tattered shreds of a spider's web. She sat in a bunch and never smiled. Something about her suggested a spider. Her Tamil name is Chrysanthemum, which by the change of one letter becomes Spider. ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... this spot the old master who followed Lee's tattered banners over the snow-covered hills of Virginia down to Appomattox sacrifices his pro-slavery ideas, and builds a monument to Negro fidelity and industry; and here the Negro brings the product of his brain and hand in grateful testimony to the friendly feelings between ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various

... much greased in Commons, A hat between a man's and woman's, A tattered coat of college blue, A fustian waistcoat torn in two, With all my rust, through college carried, I give ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... chamber is prepared, with all 510 The very furniture the Prince used when Last here, in its full splendour. (Aside). Somewhat tattered, And devilish damp, but fine enough by torch-light; And that's enough for your right noble blood Of twenty quarterings upon a hatchment; So let their bearer sleep 'neath something like one Now, as he one day will for ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... the shadow of a group of pine-trees, and dropped out of the saddle. With careful forethought he loosened the cinchas of Caesar's saddle and removed the bit from his mouth. Then, with one last look at the purpling heavens, he pushed aside the tattered blanket which hung across the doorway and ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... benches by the fireside and the bed, the only piece of furniture in the room was a coarse wooden table, with a loaf of black bread, a knife, and a pitcher of cider placed on it. Old nets, coils of rope, tattered sails, hung, about the walls and over the wooden partition which separated the room into two compartments. Wisps of straw and ears of barley drooped down through the rotten rafters and gaping boards that made the floor of the ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... hell," he drawled. "I was over here studying literature." And he drew out from his pocket a tattered copy of a report, the result of a careful investigation of work on the docks, made recently by a most ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... creepy way as Lauzanne flashed first past the winning post. He had felt pride in the horse, in the boy on his back, in himself at having overcome his scruples; he would be able to save Alan Porter from dishonor. His heart had warmed to the tattered outcast at his side, who had been the means to this glorious end. It had been all over, accomplished; now it was again thrust back into the scales, where it dangled as insecure as ever. It wasn't ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... leave the prison, and start fresh in some new business. Charles had heard these same plans from his father's lips a thousand times before, and so he took from the cupboard an old book which he had bought at a little second-hand shop a few days before, a small tattered copy of "Don Quixote," and read it by the light of a tallow candle ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland

... are about done for, Joan," Prosper laughed one morning, watching her belt in her tattered shirt; "you'll soon look ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt

... torn, stained dress, and laughed softly; but took the white cluster he gave her, and thrust the stems through a tattered bit of ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin

... her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... a sunburnt, tattered and muscular-looking individual. He wore a ragged red shirt, his trousers were full of holes, and his feet were bare. His face was covered with freckles and he had big saucy blue eyes and an impertinent turned-up nose. When he came up he stopped and ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky

... gleaming mail, high on their armoured horses, riding out in a close squadron from their castle gate with their standard in their midst, some to die in defending it, and some of them to bear home its tattered glories in victory. It was an easy matter for him to identify himself with them and to feel that henceforth he also had a part in their history. And there was more, too, in the sight of the gleaming colours and dancing ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... found that the Indians who once dwelt in The Long House were scattered. Only a tattered remnant remains. Near old Fort Johnson I saw a squaw sitting in her blanket. Her face was wrinkled with age and hardship. Her eyes were nearly blind. She held in her withered hands the ragged, ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... curious collection I have gathered together during several years' reading in out-of-the-way corners. Manuscripts, in public and private libraries; old books picked up on dusty bookstalls, or carried away as prizes from the battlefield of the auction-room; even pencillings on the inside of tattered bindings,—all have been laid under contribution. I trust this medley, or pot-pourri, of snatches of song, grave and gay, will prove as interesting to my readers as they have been to myself. They claim attention on various grounds: some are the works of ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid

... producing from the tattered pocket a small, soiled blank-book, whose pages appeared to be closely written. He handed it to Dixon, who took it mechanically, and, opening it, appeared to glance at ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... brought his former companions to the island. As he came in sight, the man turned his head, and stood for an instant spell-bound by the unexpected vision of a human being on that island, whose matted locks and tattered garments spoke the extreme of misery. There was only one hope for the sad wild boy—it was in flight—and turning, he ran swiftly back; but the path was strewn with rocks, and, in his haste, he stumbled and fell. In a moment his pursuer stood ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh

... made oath, that Jack had been overheard bragging of a trick* he had found out to manage the "old formal jade," as he used to call her. "Hang this numb-skull of mine," quoth he, "that I could not light on it sooner. As long as I go in this ragged tattered coat, I am so well known, that I am hunted away from the old woman's door by every barking cur about the house; they bid me defiance. There's no doing mischief as an open enemy; I must find some way or other ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... her eyes and vehemently wiped away her tears with the tattered lace handkerchief. In all these words and actions, however, she was graceful and touching, because she was natural. She was not posing or conscious, she was hiding nothing. Yet Ashe felt certain she could act a part magnificently; only it would not be for the lie's sake, ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... minutes she returned, bearing a tattered, musty volume, from which the gold and blue had ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... myself for him like the dervish in Arabian Nights assumed the soul and the body of persons over whom he pronounced certain words." And he adds, after describing how he followed a workman and his wife along the street: "I could espouse their very life, I felt their rags on my back. I trod in their tattered shoes. Their desires, their needs, all passed into my soul, or my soul passed into them. It was the dream of a man awakened." One day while he and a friend of his were watching a beggar pass by, the friend was so astonished to see Balzac touch his own sleeve; he seemed to feel the rent which ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... lay in the woods near Manchester, until the next evening, when I started in the twilight, in order to enter before the setting of the watch. I passed over the bridge unmolested, although in great fear, as my tattered clothes and naked head were well calculated to excite suspicion; and being well acquainted with the localities of the city, made my way to the house of a friend. I was received with the utmost kindness, and welcomed as one risen from the dead. Oh, how inexpressibly sweet were ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... experience with the Red Cross did Zaidos find time to watch the marvelous skill of a field surgeon. The soldier, a large and muscular man, was almost in ribbons. His flesh was actually tattered, and the dirt had been driven into the wounds. A leg had been blown off, and both arms were broken. Yet he lived. There was quick and silent work for awhile. When the doctor finally stood up and looked critically at his finished task lying there bandaged like ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske

... chair upon the hearth. The walls were formed of rough, unpolished logs, and upon them, as against an unfinished background, the firelight threw reddish shadows of the old woman and the child. Overhead, from the uncovered rafters, hung several tattered sheepskins, and around the great fireplace there was a fringe of dead snakes and lizards, long since as dry as dust. Under the blazing logs, which filled the hut with an almost unbearable heat, an ashcake was buried beneath a little gravelike mound ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... with its round towers of old, sorrel-colored brick, and the Czartoryski Museum, there is nothing to say that the guide-book would not say better. In the museum, a tattered Polish flag of red silk, with the white eagle, a cheerful bird with curled tail, opened mouth, chirping defiantly to the left, imprest me, and a portrait of Szopen (Chopin) in fine profile when laid out dead. For amusement, there was a Paul Potter bull beside ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various

... at Rydal Mount yesterday early, to wish our dear friends the blessings of the season. Mrs. W. met us at the door most kindly, and we found him before his good fire in the dining-room, with a flock of robins feasting at the window. He had an old tattered book in his hand; and as soon as he had given us a cordial greeting, he said, in a most animated manner, 'I must read to you what Mary and I have this moment finished. It is a passage in the Life of Thomas Elwood.' He then read to ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... to the Isle of Rhe. In the corner of the chapel is the bust of Sir George Rooke, Vice-Admiral, who led the assault on Gibraltar by which it was first captured. And the title of "Warrior's" Chapel is further justified by the presence here of tattered standards, memorials of dead comrades, left by the famous Kentish regiment, ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers

... ladies met in the dressing room to repair damages and, being friends, they fell into discourse as they smoothed their locks and had their tattered furbelows sewed or pinned up ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... importance, as the poddy and I presented rather a grotesque appearance. It was one of the most miserable and sickly of its miserable kind, and I was in the working uniform of the Australian peasantry. My tattered skirt and my odd and bursted boots, laced with twine, were spattered with whitewash, for coolness my soiled cotton blouse hung loose, an exceedingly dilapidated sun-bonnet surmounted my head, and a bottle of castor-oil ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... we held upon the edge of the pit. Edith and Barbara bound up the wounds of the two faithful natives, and the muscular Raretongan was so touched with their tender ministrations that he foraged in his tattered sulu, and with tears of gratitude in his big brown eyes he handed back to Barbara the emerald ring with which she had caused him ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer

... had, like him, so much within?) To let it out in books of all sorts, Folios, quartos, large and small sorts; Poems, so very deep and sensible That they were quite incomprehensible Prose, which had been at learning's Fair, And bought up all the trumpery there, The tattered rags of every vest, In which the Greeks and Romans drest, And o'er her figure swollen and antic Scattered them all with airs so frantic, That those, who saw what fits she had, Declared unhappy Prose was mad! Epics he wrote and scores of rebuses, All as neat as old Turnebus's; ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... good, for he is born to assist his fellows, to labour for the welfare of mankind, and to offer each one his part. His countenance and his soul will betray no emotion as he looks upon the withered legs, the tattered rags, the bent and emaciated frame of the beggar. But he will help those who are worthy, and, like the gods, his leaning will be towards the wretched.... It is only diseased eyes that grow moist in beholding ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... the Fates that attend us With prints in the earliest state, O bargains in books that they send us, Ye come through the Ivory Gate! But the tome that has never a mate, But the quarto that's tattered and torn, And bereft of a title and date, Through ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang

... ambitions, he had asked the man as to his past in general and his future in particular. He was totally unprepared for the undammed flood of confidence which had burst from the lips of the habitually taciturn Carrick. The tattered rags of the fellow's humble past were spread before him in all their pathetic squalor. He saw, as though a living thing, the barren, inarticulate childhood. He heard, under compulsion, the tale of youth's indefinable longings, with the meagre story of a love ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... on his way to the bar. He is a short, wide negro, very black and tattered. A large black negress, evidently his consort, arises as witness against him. ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... of view I am inclined to believe that Kiralfy would have regarded us with scorn and derision, though Jack Falstaff might have been better pleased. We were gaunt, bronzed, and dishevelled, unshaven, dirty, and tattered. Toes protruded from shoes, our hats were full of holes, our trousers hardly deserved the name, and we limped disgracefully. It was the popular impression in Puerto Rico that every American soldier was a full-fledged ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman

... was swift, too. I felt a draught at the back of my neck—a breath of wind. And instantly, as if a battering-ram had been let swing past me at many layers of stretched gauze, I beheld, through a tattered deep hole in the fog, a roaring vision of flames, borne down and springing up again; a dance of purple gleams on the strip of unveiled water, and three coal-black figures in ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... hastily dug. A pouch in the tattered garments contained a few coins of money and a curious small gold cross. Maung Yet touched his tattoo anxiously as he took the latter: it must be, he thought, some strange charm. Then he placed the coins in the mouth of the dead woman, in the belief that this provided ferry-hire over the ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... wall of rain Shuts off the landscape, mile by mile; 50 For a breath's space I see the blue wood again, And ere the next heart-beat, the wind-hurled pile, That seemed but now a league aloof, Bursts crackling o'er the sun-parched roof; Against the windows the storm comes dashing, Through tattered foliage the hail tears crashing, The blue lightning flashes, The rapid hail clashes, The white waves are tumbling, And, in one baffled roar, 60 Like the toothless sea mumbling A rock-bristled shore, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... kingdom, thrown open for the reception of the ragged and pennyless burgess. Imagine the whole country filled with the shouts of drunkenness, and the air rent with mingled huzzas. Represent the broken heads, and the bleeding noses, the tattered raiment, and staggering bodies of a million of loyal voters. My lord, will they pretend, that the measure that gives birth to this glorious scene, is unpopular? We must be very ill versed in the science of human nature, if we ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin

... sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... judge by the sound, Mr. Towser's pupils had turned upon him and were giving him a bad time. Above all he could hear the clear war-cry of Miss Airedale and the embittered yells of Mr. Poodle. Then from the quaking edifice burst Bishop Borzoi, foaming with wrath, his clothes much tattered, and followed by Mr. Poodle, Mr. Airedale, and several others. They cast about for a moment, and then the Bishop saw him. With a joint halloo they ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley

... there which is not a dear, personal friend, and what can a man talk of more pleasantly than that? The other books are over yonder, but these are my own favourites—the ones I care to re-read and to have near my elbow. There is not a tattered cover which does not bring ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... children sick. In half a minute the church was empty, and the street below it full of people, striving and struggling against the blast, and breasting it at an incline like swimmers, but beaten back ever and anon and hurled against one another, with tattered umbrellas, hats gone, and bonnets hanging. And among them, like gulls before the wind, blew dollops of spray and chunks of froth, with every now and then a ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... on a mouldering abbey's broadest wall, Where ruining ivies propped the ruins steep, Her folded arms wrapping her tattered pall, Had Melancholy mused herself to sleep. The fern was pressed beneath her hair, The dark green adder's tongue was there; And still as past the flagging sea-gale weak, The long, lank leaf bowed fluttering o'er her cheek. That pallid cheek ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... him not bread crumbs only, but cake and kisses. She would so like to see him, and lo! she sees him; he comes and perches on her shoulder. He is a jack-sparrow, only a common sparrow. He has nothing rich or rare about him, but he looks alert and lively. To tell the truth, he is a little torn and tattered; he lacks a feather in his tail; he has lost it in battle—unless it was through some bad fairy of the village. Fanchon has her suspicions he is a naughty bird. But she is a girl, and she does not mind her jack-sparrow being ...
— Child Life In Town And Country - 1909 • Anatole France

... father that thieves came upon us, and killed the slave girl and robbed me and threw me into a well, and bound thee and carried thee off. Tell the same story, and put away all anxious feelings. Come up and change thy tattered garments-alas! some misfortune hath befallen thee. But console thyself; all is now well, since thou art returned to me, and fear not, for the house is thine, and I am ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... hard upon the hour of noon when I came, all tattered and wayworn, to the summit of a steep descent, and looked below me on the sea. About all the coast, the surf, roused by the tornado of the night, beat with a particular fury and made a fringe of snow. Close at my feet I saw a haven, set in precipitous and palm-crowned bluffs of rock. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... nothing living to be seen. A trickling stream issued from the rock on one side, and we drank before starting to explore the place. We found a piece of tattered clothing, and paused and looked at each other in dismay. There had been men there! But we discovered nothing else of importance as we continued our circuit of the crater. We had been engrossed in our investigations, however, and when we had finished ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell

... gin-shop which the man's appearance and voice betrayed. How dreadful to the sight are those watery eyes; that red, uneven, pimpled nose; those fallen cheeks; and that hanging, slobbered mouth! Look at the uncombed hair, the beard half shorn, the weak, impotent gait of the man, and the tattered raiment, all eloquent of gin! You would fain hold your nose when he comes nigh you, he carries with him so foul an evidence of his only and his hourly indulgence. You would do so, had you not still ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... I had to do might keep me an hour; but I saved a few tattered rags of conscience by evading a verbal promise to call on him at the end of that hour. So much he took for granted; and, as the things I really had to do were to get the whole party on to "Mascotte" and out of the capital of Friesland, I left my ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... and gold rings, to see us at C—— school: a man in the tenth part of a century learns a deal of worldly wisdom, and his hand, which goes naturally forward to seize the gloved finger of a millionnaire, or a milor, draws instinctively back from a dirty fist, encompassed by a ragged wristband and a tattered cuff. But Attwood was in nowise so backward; and the iron squeeze with which he shook my passive paw, proved that he was either very affectionate or very poor. You, my dear sir, who are reading this history, know very well the great art of shaking hands: ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... he looked. Alas, dear child, then all he said was new, unusual with him, never told before, now it is a beaten road, it is learned by heart, and easily addressed to any fond believing woman, the tattered, worn out fragments of my trophies, the dregs of what I long since drained from off his fickle heart; then it was fine, then it was brisk and new, now palled and dull by being repeated often. Think, my child, what your ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... chanced that, through all his sore trials, cousin Hugo kept safe round his neck a leaden effigy of the Virgin. The infidels disdained to rob him of lead, little dreaming the worth which the sanctity gave to the metal. To the back of the image Hugo fastened the letter, and so, though somewhat tattered and damaged, he had it still with him ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... again the English sought to break the Scottish ranks or to take them on the flank, but to no avail. And then when their ranks showed signs of wavering, Bruce himself gave the signal for the charge. With a shout his men rushed forward and the English were routed. Victory had crowned the arms of a tattered and ragged band of outlaws who fought with English ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... sunlit street still roaring with laughter, a thin, ragged, tattered figure, with the ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne

... women, loaded with fruit, coffee, and charcoal, were on their way to the great fair and market, at Tlacolula. They had now stopped for the night and had piled their burdens against the wall. Wrapping themselves in their tattered and dirty blankets, they laid themselves down on the stone floor, so close together that they reminded me of sardines in a box. With a blazing splinter of fat pine for torch, we made our inspection. Their broad dark faces, wide flat noses, thick lips and projecting jaws, their coarse clothing, ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... that last night at Linderman was a melancholy remnant. Everything of use, including the tent, had been taken by the cousins. A tattered tarpaulin, stretched as a wind-break, partially sheltered them from the driving snow. Supper they cooked on an open fire in a couple of battered and discarded camp utensils. All that was left them were their blankets, and food ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... fellow, their graceless nephew, now a recruit in Captain Davies's troop, braced up in saddle and fixed his eyes fiercely on his file-leader, and for fear of the stern avuncular injunction to "Kape yer eyes to the front, there!" couldn't be induced to peep at Aunt Mollie as she swung a tattered guidon that had been carried by Mac in the ranks of "C" troop many a year before. Captain Davies himself rode out of column and held forth a cordial hand to the old sergeant, as the last troop went clinking by. "We'll make a soldier of the boy, sergeant, ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... is, I have nothing to travel in but these field clothes, and they're shockingly soiled and tattered." ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx

... I now estimate that these tattered persons who would have prevented my leaving, as well as the red fellow that would have hindered my entering, this peculiarly irrational part of the forest, were spiritual intruders into Misery's domain whom Misery had driven out of their wits. No, Niafer, I ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... more affecting than we care to say to read her mother's and Isabella Keith's letters written immediately after her death. Old and withered, tattered and pale, they are now: but when you read them, how quick, how throbbing with life and love! how rich in that language of affection which only women and Shakespeare and Luther can use,—that power of detaining the soul over the beloved object ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various

... us, flushed a little, and gravely saluted. I never liked the man; but will admit he made a fine figure there. And I pitied him a little; for while his eyes rested on Flora, hers wandered to the rear of the third company, where Ensign Ronald Gilchrist marched beside the tattered colours with chin held up and a high colour on his young cheeks and a lip that quivered as he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... broad-brimmed hat, frayed at the edges, and so discoloured that it was hard to say what its original tint had been. His dress was of skins, rudely cut and dangling loosely from his body, and he wore the high boots of a dragoon, as tattered and stained as the rest of his raiment. On his back he bore a huge bundle of canvas with two long sticks projecting from it, and under each arm he carried what appeared to be a ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... steam responded to the summer sunlight. Upstreet, and across the Rue du Canal, one could get glimpses of the gardens in Faubourg Ste.-Marie standing in silent wretchedness, so many tearful Lucretias, tattered victims of the storm. Short remnants of the wind now and then came down the narrow street in erratic puffs heavily laden with odors of broken boughs and torn flowers, skimmed the little pools of rain-water in the deep ruts ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... and apparently on the rocks, the vessel was by no means a wreck, neither had it the aspect of one. There were no broken masts or tattered sails or ropes dangling from the yards. On the contrary, the masts were straight and sound; such of the yards as had not been lowered were squared, and all the ropes were trim ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... a doll, a small work-box, and a tattered book, and settled herself quietly in her favourite corner; this was in Freddie's room, between the back of his couch and the wall, and, though rather dark, very snug and private, and not too retired for her to see all that went ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton

... horribly, the sounding blast, Which Boreas in his sudden fury blows, Scourges with tattered sail the reeling mast: Almost as high as heaven the water flows: The oars are broken; and so fell and fast That tempest pelts, the prow to leeward goes; And the ungoverned vessel's battered side Is undefended from ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... sheet of music before him, for he actually had notes! While all the other musicians, whose playing pleased the crowd infinitely better, were relying on their memories, the old man had placed before him in the midst of the surging crowd a small, easily portable music-stand, with dirty, tattered notes, which probably contained in perfect order what he was playing so incoherently. It was precisely the novelty of this equipment that had attracted my attention to him, just as it excited the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... Verneille lay in a cleft of the rocks, where it seemed he had crawled when he broke down on his last weary march, but the sun and the rain had worked their will, and there was very little left of him. Indeed, part of the bony structure had rolled clear of the shreds of tattered rags. Grenfell gazed at him fixedly, and neither of the men said anything for the next minute or two. The peak above them was fading in the growing night, and the stillness of the great desolation seemed intensified by the soft patter of the rain. Then Weston roused ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... the songs and laughter of the merry dancers greeted their ears, but not as joyous sounds. Each smoked with apparent resolution, blowing forth cloud after cloud of filmy whiteness, and lo! as they smoked each noticed that the other had grown youthful in appearance! Their tattered garments, too, as insensibly as the creeping shadows, changed their forms, becoming ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... own distresses to write to the Duke of Wellington and ask him to do what he could for him. I found him in his old lodging, dressing; some pretty pieces of old furniture in the room, an entire toilet of silver, and a large green macaw perched on the back of a tattered silk chair with faded gilding; full of gaiety, impudence, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... gravely; "it's a great help, of course, to know it, but it isn't necessary. I keep the words in my pocket to prompt Dandie, and the Wrig can only say two lines, she's so little." (Here he produced some tattered leaves torn from a book of ballads.) "We've done it many a time, but this is a new Dunfermline Castle, and we are trying the play in a different way. Rafe is the king, and Dandie is the 'eldern ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... apartment where I could deposit my charge was a narrow loft over the out-house, the entrance to which was both steep and dangerous. With the assistance of my two friends, though with considerable difficulty, it was in the end deposited there, upon a miserable pallet of straw, over which we threw a tattered blanket. On returning, I found the guest-room deserted: the old woman to whom the tavern belonged—the mother, as I afterwards found, of my female companion—was hastily clearing away the drinking utensils, and preparing for an immediate removal to the only ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... to his feet, draped his tattered cloak closely about him, struck a commanding attitude, and began to recite with great solemnity. Louis scooped his claw-like fingers behind his ear, that he might hear the better the words that fell from the wild ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... Wes is poor as money goes, But rich in love and charity; His heart goes out in sympathy To barefoot boy with bleeding toes, And girls in torn and tattered clothes; And with his heart goes Wes's coin, To heal the wound and ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe

... at last, dimly visible through the driving rain. It was a miserable-looking hovel, roofed with sodden thatch, surrounded by a sea of mud. A bare-footed woman stood in the doorway. She wore a tattered skirt and a bodice fastened across her breast with a brass safety-pin. Behind her stood a tall man in a soiled flannel jacket and a pair of trousers which hung in a ragged ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham

... only the stars, that seemed to freeze in the boundless billows of eternal blue. Onward again, before the silver sentinels above us had faded before the blushing face of the dawning. With faces begrimed with dirt, with feet blistered by contact with flinty boulders, with tattered garments flapping around them like feathers on wounded waterfowl, officers and men faced the unknown, as their fathers faced it before them. Meanwhile Hunter was pressing towards Fouriesburg from Relief's Nek, his scouts—the ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... provided with a pick or a hoe, or both, lying over his shoulder, and a large flaxen bag of other implements, &c., suspended from it. Nearly all wore caps, and the whole company looked very shabby, indeed. My clothes were in strange contrast with their tattered garments, for there was not another well-dressed passenger in the whole company; and I felt like one out of his element, because I did not also have a pick or hoe! A hundred Belgians with a hundred bundles crowded into several small apartments ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner

... morning. Guess, however, what was my surprise, when on awaking I found myself lying in my first humble lodging, stripped of my rich vestments, and saw on the ground my former mean attire; namely, an old vest, a pair of tattered drawers, and a ragged turban, as full of holes as a sieve. When I had somewhat recovered my senses, I put them on and walked out in a melancholy mood, regretting my lost happiness, and not knowing what I should do to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.

... not last. By the time he had dragged himself up to the top of their stairs there was nothing left but hunger, the consciousness of tattered, blood-stained clothes, and a sore, tired body. After all, he was only a small boy who had wanted to play with other boys, and had been cast out. Even Mr. Ricardo could never ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... down again, their heads came together across the table; they talked long in low voices. Presently Mr. Pomeroy fetched pen and paper from a table in one of the windows; where they lay along with one or two odd volumes of Crebillon, a tattered Hoyle on whist, and Foote's jest book. A note was written and handed over, and ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman



Words linked to "Tattered" :   destroyed, worn



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com